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aethon-recs · 1 year ago

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Tomarrymort Starter Pack: 10 Recs for Getting Started in Tomarrymort

I've compiled a list of 10 medium to longfic recs that I think represent a great on-ramp to the Tomarrymort ship, as inspired by @sitp-recs’ Drarry for Beginners rec list. These are the fics that I would use to on-board people to the ship — gorgeous writing, superb characterization, and just as enjoyable on the first read as the 20th reread.

As always, I am stunned by the talent in this ship! I tried to pick a good mix of different themes/tropes/settings, with a focus on elements that make for a good introductory work: the characters are recognizable; the setting skews more recognizable; both characters in the ship are a meaningful part of the story; the ship is central to the story; and the fics are for the most part complete (or updated within the last year).

(Standard rec list disclaimers apply: please mind all tags and warnings on AO3 before reading; this blog abides by the age-old fandom axiom of don’t like; don’t read; recs are in alphabetical order by title.)

This is Part 1 of a 3-part series — I also have an Intermediate reading list and Advanced reading list coming up for readers who have been with the ship for a longer time.

For now, please enjoy these 1.3 million words of absolutely brilliant Tomarrymort reads that I hope will keep you hooked until the very last word:

Tomarrymort Starter Pack Recs

A Dangerous Game by @cybrid (E, 284k, WIP)

Setting: Canon Divergence – Book 5 Premise: If Tom’s diary horcrux gains a body at the end of Harry’s 5th year (instead of his 2nd), and then promptly kidnaps Harry and holds him captive over the summer. Lots of smut ensues. Why I rec it: The characterization is truly stunning — Tom Riddle is undoubtedly a psychopath — manipulative, thrill-seeking, kind of an irredeemable shithead — but he’s also dazzlingly charming when he chooses to be, someone whose presence Harry quickly grows addicted to. Their relationship can get incredibly toxic and fucked-up at times, but Harry has top-notch instincts and can hold his own against Tom. The plot is absolutely gripping, with the threat of (the main) Voldemort, who has set his sights on reclaiming his wayward horcrux, looming in the background.

A Future Without a Face by @dividawrites (E, 115k, complete)

Setting: Time-Travel (1940s) Premise: If Harry travels back in time to Tom’s 5th year at Hogwarts, and Tom becomes obsessed with the new transfer student and wants nothing more than to possess him every way. Why I rec it: A 1940s time travel fic told entirely from Tom Riddle POV! Divida absolutely nails psychopath Tom — how he quickly gets singlemindedly focused on Harry, how the idea of possessing Harry consumes him, how he has no compunctions about doing completely fucked-up and destructive things to achieve his goals. There is so much tension between them from the start, so there’s not much of a wait to see some hot Harry & Tom action — and the conflict and tension only continues to build and build in dramatic fashion throughout the rest of the fic.

Either must die at the hand of the other by @metalomagnetic (E, 260k, complete)

Setting: Post-Canon Premise: If Voldemort survives the Battle of Hogwarts and is initially kept prisoner in Azkaban, until Harry takes him into Grimmauld Place under house arrest. Why I rec it: This fic is an incredible exploration of Voldemort at his most terrifying. Even if he starts off the fic with his magic temporarily blocked, he is no less powerful without his magic. The force of his personality is powerful enough for him to chip away at Harry’s initial resistance — @metalomagnetic manages to write one of the most charismatic, brilliantly manipulative, and psychologically devastating versions of Voldemort I’ve ever read. Harry ends up in a good place by the end of the fic, but the journey to get there is a roller-coaster of emotions that have permanently imprinted onto my soul.

In Somno Veritas by ladyoflilacs and @lordansketil (M, 158k, complete)

Setting: Canon Divergence – Book 6 Premise: If Harry starts appearing in Voldemort’s nightly dreams during Book 6, and Voldemort becomes obsessed with Harry after realizing he’s his horcrux. Why I rec it: This is one of the most unique fics I’ve ever read in this ship! Every scene is told in alternating POV between Harry’s POV and Voldemort’s POV, so you get to see how every scene unfolds from both of their perspectives. Voldemort is so intense and just as terrible as he is in canon, so his character is not at all sugarcoated, and Harry has so much compassion and heart and manages to fall in love with Voldemort anyway. The writing style is gorgeous, with richly detailed and emotionally-laden prose. Also, one thing that pleasantly surprised me is how funny their banter is! There were definitely a number of times where I laughed out loud in the middle of an otherwise really intense scene. Bonus content: also comes with a lovely sequel that made me melt.

Inevitabilities by @shadow-of-the-eclipse (T, 103k, complete)

Setting: Same-Age AU Premise: If Harry and Tom attend Hogwarts together and go traveling around the world after they graduate. A betrayal leads to their break-up, but after many years, Harry returns to find Tom in Britain, and the two of them are drawn back together again. Why I rec it: An excellent same-age AU with unhinged dark Harry and just-as-unhinged Tom. Their relationship starts out quite dark and twisted and unhealthy — and only devolves from there. The fic ends with the two of them as equals — utterly devoted to each other — but in an incredibly fucked-up way: “He loves Tom like a forest fire; wild and all-consuming, he wants to devour Tom, to claim him, to mark him, break him.” Isn’t that absolutely breathtaking?

love is touching souls (surely you touched mine) by @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger (M, 34k, complete)

Setting: Time-Travel (1940s) Premise: If Harry gets thrown back into the mid-1940s and meets Tom Riddle as a young man just graduated from Hogwarts working at Borgin and Burkes. Why I rec it: When Harry accidentally travels back in time and chances upon Tom Riddle as a fresh graduate, he realizes this is his chance to make a difference. While Harry is only in the past for a brief interlude, he leaves enough of an impression to change the trajectory of Tom’s life. The dynamic between Harry and Tom is rife with tension and witty dialogue, and the story is set during Christmastime, which lends a very festive and heartwarming atmosphere for falling in love with each other.

No Glory by @obsidianpen (E, 254k, WIP)

Setting: Voldemort Wins AU Premise: If Voldemort figures out Harry is his horcrux when Harry surrenders in the Forbidden Forest, and decides to keep Harry instead of killing him. Why I rec it: This fic showcases the absolute, terrifying genius side of Voldemort, in a universe where he wins the war and captures Harry at the end of book 7. I am stunned at how skillfully @obsidianpen portrays Voldemort as a brilliant political strategist — the courtroom scene where he manipulates the story and the audience so well stands out as a top 10 fanfic moment in my mind. Harry and Voldemort’s relationship is chilling from the very start, and grows even more unhealthy as Voldemort gets addicted to Harry’s touch due to the presence of the horcrux, but Harry later learns to turn that to his advantage.

The Fire, Burning by @parsimmony (E, 35k, complete)

Setting: Canon Divergence – Book 6 Premise: If Voldemort discovers Harry is his horcrux after Book 6, and kidnaps him to keep him captive by his side in his bed, inside of a lovely greenhouse setting full of friendly snakes on the grounds of Malfoy Manor. Why I rec it: The prose!! I am swooning over the prose! Harry is Voldemort’s captive in this fic, but he is so much more than that — and the emotions that gradually blossom between them have so much richness and depth and are utterly moving that I’m still drowning in the depths of intimacy that were portrayed. Their relationship unfolds in such a gorgeous and unrushed way, and the setting is so unique too — a lush and overgrown greenhouse that’s exploding with exotic plants and friendly snakes around every corner that imbues the fic with a very romantic, dreamy quality.

the pleasure, the privilege by @being-luminous (M, 20k, complete)

Setting: Canon Divergence – Book 6 Premise: If Voldemort is doused with Amortentia keyed to Harry, and starts sending Harry bizarre and gruesome courting gifts, like the bodies of the Dursleys. Why I rec it: Breathtaking prose! Voldemort somehow ends up more terrifying when he’s trying to woo Harry than when he’s trying to kill him. Every single sentence had me on the edge of my seat, as Voldemort’s ‘gifts’ become more elaborate and devastatingly dramatic, until Harry basically has no choice but to respond to his overtures. The ending is incredibly clever in how it parallels certain plot elements of book 6, with an added Harrymort twist.

The Untouchable by @treacleteacups (M, 75k, complete)

Setting: Canon Rewrite (Books 1-7) Premise: If Harry starts out his first year a little bit more suspicious and a little less wide-eyed and guileless, and subsequently gets sorted into Slytherin. He has many of the same encounters with Voldemort along the way as he does in canon, but his interactions with Voldemort will end up leading him down quite a different path. Why I rec it: A snappy, fast-paced full canon rewrite that still manages to fit in all the essential Tomarrymort plot points, between Horcruxes and Hallows and the major events of books 1-7, in a compact 75k words that doesn’t at all feel rushed. It’s a delightful journey following Harry’s character evolution from an overlooked, peculiar child who relies on wishy-washy wish magic to a confident (and still endearingly peculiar) young man who can challenge and hold his own against the great Lord Voldemort. Voldemort’s obsession with Harry deepens with every encounter that they have, as he finds ways to continually insinuate himself in Harry’s life and his mind and his dreams.

#Tomarrymort Starter Pack #tomarrymort #tomarry #harrymort #aethon recs #tomarry recs #tomarrymort recs #harrymort recs #hp fic recs #longfic recs #ao3 recs #fanfic recs #2023 reads #2023 recs

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simaddix · 2 years ago

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*Pay Attention - Part 2 - Tutorial*

I was about to go back to my business and quietly leave y'all with a word of wisdom but the very next package I opened raised my hackles. So here we go, hold on to your seat.

Disclaimer for younger/sweeter - followers - this has language in it because I'm pissed... I apologize in advance.

49,282 Polycounts. That's 50K for a fucking basket!!!

It's pretty, it's beautiful, and I downloaded it because it's everything you could want out of a basket of lemons... whoever created it did an outstanding job... for a movie production.

NOT PC GAMES.

So let's fix it - and let's hold our creators and converters to a higher standard or send them along to a different platform where they can create without our bitching.

First off, there's 3 or 4 ways you can check polycounts.

1 - TSRW under Mesh tab

2 - S3PE (Pretty sure you have to have an addon to do this - I'll try to find it when I'm done and add the link) Under MLOD, right click and go down to Preview. It'll open up a window and you can view the model and the polycount.

3 - 3D Viewer on your computer

4 - Blender or Milkshape

Now that we have the ability to check our polycount - we're gonna fix this mesh. I'm not going to show you how to package it, there are other tutorials for that part, but this is VITAL to having a healthy game, and honestly, being a creator or converter for this game. I do understand that you have to have the knowledge before you can fix a problem, so here it is - literally handed to you in a basket. I also understand that there are creators/converters who don't post polycounts because they're afraid people won't download it - that is inexcusable. If that's the case then you will eventually be boycotted by the players who know better.

Alright, so step one - you're going to want to get into blender after exporting your mesh. You're going open the modifier properties and add a decimate modifier (the wrench circled in red, and the add modifier drop down menu).

Keep it in Collapse, not un-subdivide. It's gentler on the mesh itself and you'll get a lot farther with it. You're also going to want your UV map to match what you're doing with your mesh, in case you need it for selection (I'll explain that in a minute) and have faces tagged so the selection is easier.

Now that you have that set up, you're gonna want to remove unnecessary vertices. See the shadows on the bottom of the basket? Here's how to fix that - hit tab, press A to select everything, and then go to MESH/MERGE/BY DISTANCE. This removed 16,900 loose vertices that didn't need to be there.

Go back to your modifiers and add an edge split modifier and hit apply.

Boom - no shadows.

Now that that is all done you're going to go in to edit mode (tab) and press L while hovering over what you're wanting to select. This is going to select all of the islands in your UV, and it's the fastest way (that I've found) to quickly select pieces of your mesh.

When you have your whole group selected (you can also figure out at this point what pieces need alternate textures or groups for TSRW later in your packaging process) you're going to hit P-Selection. That's gonna split whatever you have selected into a separate group.

Now, you can do that to however many pieces you see fit, but for this I'm just gonna stick with two - the lemons and the basket itself. You're going to click the blue Ratio box - and type in .5 and hit enter. That will collapse your polycount in half - (you can move that ratio box lower if you wish, but this way is the gentlest way possible and I've gotten better results. So play with it and see for yourself if you wish to. ) - Now repeat the process until your mesh starts to lose quality, I tend to stop there unless I can push it a bit further without making it look bad.

Now repeat that process with all groups.

Given that this particular mesh was such high polycount and an intricate mesh, I could only manage to get it from 49,282 faces (polys) down to 18,860. This is absolutely not okay for TS3 - and I'm using as a lesson rather than using something that I can get down to an okay level - because this is what you're going to run into when getting meshes that start in the tens of thousands of polys. THIS IS NOT MEANT FOR TS3, it's beautiful, yes, but you are putting people's equipment at risk by advertising a mesh for a 13 year old game without disclaiming that it's dangerous for it.

This tutorial will absolutely work for most objects, and I've used this process for a couple of years now with success, but you have to be able to decide what you're willing to put into TS3. We have all of these tutorials for reducing lag in this old as dirt game, but NONE of that matters if you're carrying objects like this - no matter how pretty they are.

If you need it that bad, figure out how to make a version of it that CAN look as good as this with a little less detail (think the spirals in the wicker that is actually meshed rather than just textured), or ask a creator to make something for you.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. If I have the time, I try to help whoever comes into my inbox. If I can't help, there is a hoard of creators out there that probably can.

So have fun, CHECK YOUR CONTENT, and keep your computer safe.

And creators/converters - do better.

Edit to add - to the creators/converters who do put out their polycounts, or a disclaimer of high poly/photo use only - thank you. I do understand the need for high poly objects for photo-op purposes, and I'm not here to attack anyone's preferred gaming style. I just want people to be safe while they play, as there are those who don't know what they're putting into their games. Let's help ensure that everyone has a chance to play whether they're experienced creators or regular game-players.

Edit to add 2 -

To add a bit of context - I was able to get the reduced mesh even further by removing some of the intricate details of the mesh, to create a simpler version. This is now down to 5,270 - and it could be lowered even further by removing the top of the handle - which is 1700 by itself because it's spiraled. So when you're dealing with a high mesh object such as this, pay attention to what's really adding weight, and if you can replace/remove it without taking too much away. The shadows can be fixed in gimp as well.

#ts3 #ts3tutorial

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kyouka-supremacy · 1 year ago

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hii a few days ago (i think) you mentioned in the tags of one of the asks that you have some thoughts regarding the themes of bsd characters being pretty 👀👀 could you elaborate on that?

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING. I have very strong opinions on where skk and sskk place on the thematical prettiness scale so here you go. The fun part is that I am a radical beauty relativist which makes any judgement on appearance ultimately meaningless– because there's not such thing as universal beauty to me, only time and space susceptible beauty standards. Additionally, I don't think there's any significant distinction in their depictions, because Harukawa's art style is very beautiful and elegant and such applies to virtually every character with no notable difference. But like that's the whole point isn't it!! Because it's not about Chuuya being handsome or Dazai being prettier than Akutagawa per sé, as much as what those things represent in terms of symbolism in a story. Here's my personal headcanons (with the very much needed disclaimer that I feel attracted to men once every three months at best, so it really is all about the narrative and plot value their physical appearances hold more than like. actual valuations of their beauty):

Dazai is distinctively, remarkably beautiful. I mean, that part is pretty much canon, isn't it? He really is that kind of charming, charismatic presence that would make people turn back to look at him when crossing the street. But his beauty has some sort of distance and elusiveness to it– his features are classical and very conventionally beautiful in a way that makes him vaguely impersonal. Most importantly, his beauty is vastly intimidating. He is beautiful in a way that feels distant, out of reach, that makes people subconsciously uncomfortable. That only adds to his charisma (and having an easy game to manipulate people), as people will be immediately bewitched when someone as ethereal looking as Dazai shows the slightest sign of interest in them. He definitely looks older than he is.

Chuuya is a completely different deal! He's just as beautiful as Dazai, yet in a substantially different way. He's handsome due to a certain feeling of naturalness and unconstraint he has to him. He has that real and specific beauty of someone who's comfortable in their own skin, which is something genuinely pleasant to witness. His appearance is handsome and cool, but in such an effortless way that vastly adds to his appeal; he exudes confidence and freshness, he's passionate and lively and just someone to bask in the presence of. He can come off as intimidating, too, but to a slightly lesser extent than Dazai and in a way he's way more in control of, able to make people feel at ease if he wants to. Ultimately, to make a silly example, I fear Chuuya would have quite a bit of suitors (that he's only half aware of), while Dazai regretfully comes off too scary for most people.

(And I feel like someone's going to think “it shows that Op hasn't read Stormbringer 🙄🙄” and like. That much is true and irrefutable ahah. But I also like to think Chuuya's story was a gradual journey into accepting himself and feel comfortable in his body. I am a strong happy ending Chuuya supporter ///// )

Atsushi is beautiful in a very peculiar and unique way. He's the kind who, at first sight, one wouldn't find remarkably attractive at all, all his beauty being covered up by raggedness and a neglected appearance, and he wouldn't be spared a second look. And yet when that second look is spared, one would suddenly realize he's got bewitching, glistening eyes, a certain masculine pronunciation to his face that results very attractive, a toned figure, a stunning smile. And his beauty is the furthest that can be from Dazai's classical lineaments: it's unusual, and wild, but still strikingly gorgeus. The truest diamond in the rough. Atsushi's completely oblivious to it, btw– how could it be any differently with him! Moreover, it would be quite fitting if Atsushi's beauty was, too, one of the many contributing factors that trigger Akutagawa's feeling of minority.

Akutagawa isn't beautiful. This is the only take actively sustained by canon elements (besides from maybe Dazai being beautiful, but to a way lesser extent), and the canon judgement of his apparence is definitely not a flattering one: “a faint smile curled Akutagawa’s lips, slightly exposing the inside of his mouth, which was as red as blood” “Akutagawa’s smirk was colder than a snake’s, his breath more repulsive than a demon’s”. His skin is grey, and his eyes are bloodshot, and he coughs blood, and he definitely stinks– he's messy and rabid and unkept. Before everything else stands the fact that he has this sickly impression to him which makes him vaguely repulsive to whoever stumbles across him. But that's exactly everything Akutagawa is, isn't it!! His whole thing is being fundamentally unable to be loved– both because of things he controls and things he can't control, his unpleasant physical appearance falling in the second category. That's what I mean when I say characters' physical appearance is a fun tool to convey their core themes! The tragedy of Akutagawa's character being someone who constantly strives for being loved and yet is doomed by destiny to result repulsive to everyone nicely translates in him having unpleasant looks that make him ugly and unlovable.

And as little extra, pretending for a moment that I don't have Beast bias:

Beast Akutagawa being quite handsome. Not at Dazai or Chuuya's level, but people would casually consider him a beautiful man. Compared to his canon counterpart, he's got the same fire in his eyes, yet it's paired with a slightly healthier, less repulsive built, greater confidence in his stance, and a more - although far from being tidy - clean appearance, all contributing to make him fairly attractive. Besides, bonus prettiness points for the coolest outfit in the entirety of bsd only second to the Dark Era Dazai one in my very humble opinion...

Beast Atsushi is gorgeus in a way that makes him look almost noble, yet feels unsettlingly plastic-like: artificial, stiff, imposed. I've talked before about how his being kept and tidy is actually just another expression of the grip that Dazai has on his persona and psyche, who wraps, controls and manipulates every aspect of his being including his very appearance. He's got the same stunning strong lineaments, yet they're schooled to look far more distant and intimidating. I wonder if the kind eyes would stay the same... They probably don't shine as brightly as the canon Atsushi's ones.

#Wait it's all Dazai foils? 🔫 Always have been #osamu dazai #chūya nakahara #atsushi nakajima #ryūnosuke akutagawa #SO upsetting I can't in honesty tag this sskk when such considerations only spawn from months of sskk character analysis #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd analysis #mine #people asks me stuff #Thank youuuu for asking I had so much fun putting this down!!!#I usually only think about this in reference to the main four–#but seriously it's so much fun to play with the concept with all the characters.#Oda is the epitome of common man- he must look plain and easy to forget. Yosano looking like someone who had to grow up too soon.#Jouno appearing so neat and polished‚ he looks like someone who meticulously erased every trace of his past from himself.#You know‚ the fun stuff!!

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pebblysand · 4 months ago

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[LET'S TALK WRITING] - FANFICTION STATS - UPDATE

Hello, hello! I hope you’re all doing well.

As you may have seen, I recently (by which I mean, months ago lol, time flies) received this anon as part of a truth or dare tag game daring me to share my AO3 stats.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you might remember that I already posted a detailed analysis of my fanfiction stats back in January 2023 (which you can read in full here). However, I thought this anon would be a great opportunity to revisit that post, review my stats again over 18 months later, and see what has changed.

General disclaimer: All the disclaimers from my original post still apply (I’m not an expert, avoid this if stats aren’t your thing, I’m very fortunate, my methodology isn’t perfect, etc.). I won’t be repeating much of the previous analysis but will focus on the changes over the past 18 months. I recommend reading both posts together for the full picture.

GENERAL OVERVIEW

As of the day of writing, 29 June 2024, here are my general stats as they are made available to me by AO3. I am including the same screenshot dated 25 January 2023 (from my old post) for comparison.

So, what can we see?

I wrote 183,191 words in 18 months, which is terrifying. Per Nano standards, that’s three novels and a bit.

Last year, I’d commented on my subscriber count being relatively “low” - that’s still the case. I think the reasons I speculated about last year remain valid, and I still find the smaller number somewhat reassuring.

I’ve gained a pretty sizeable chunk everywhere, so thank you all, haha, that’s thanks to you.

As of the day of writing, 25 January 2022, here are my general stats as they are made available to me by FFN. I am including the same screenshot dated 25 January 2023 (from my old post) for comparison.

As most of you know, I don’t really use FFN much anymore, so it's not surprising that the numbers there are quite low. The only thing I still update on FFN is castles, which still gets some readership.

There's a historical difference between my FFN and AO3 catalogues. When I transitioned to AO3 in 2013/2014, I only moved content I deemed "worth" transferring. So, there's work on FFN that isn't on AO3. Similarly, I now post all my one-shots exclusively on AO3. This explains some of the discrepancies you'll see later between the two platforms.

Interestingly, my AO3 word count has finally surpassed my FFN word count, and this is even before posting chapter 22 of castles on FFN (ugh, this is on my to-do list for this week, I swear). So, yay! I’m officially more of an AO3 girlie.

GETTING THE FFN STATS OUT OF THE WAY

I think we can all agree that AO3 has now surpassed FFN as a website (though I do have issues with AO3, I won’t lie), so I will focus most of this post on AO3 stats and beyond. However, I will say that as a platform, FFN provides authors with much better statistics than AO3 does. That is because they’ve fallen into a capitalist hellscape and probably sell all of our data to advertisers but … you know. As such, while I don’t want to spend too much time on these, I still think there are a few things we can learn.

I will go into my top fics on FFN v. top fics on AO3 and why I think they differ in a later section. But at this point, I’d like to focus on two things:

The Country Breakdown:

To me, this remains the most interesting feature on FFN, that you don’t get on AO3. Unfortunately, it only gives you this information on a monthly basis (you can’t aggregate the top countries of all time), so the below includes last year's screenshot (January 2023) and this year's (June 2024). Both were taken at the end of the month, so I reckon they're relatively representative.

(views are blue, visitors are yellow. for an explanation on the difference between views and visitors, see here. this is cumulative of all fics i have published, but ffn gives you the ability to break it down per fic if you’d like)

Thoughts: The first thing that stands out to me is that my overall view count on FFN has plummeted over the past 18 months. Initially, I thought this might be due to a general decline in FFN's usage, but when I look back at my February 2024 stats, they match what I saw in January 2023. This suggests the decline is more likely due to my not posting castles for four months, rather than anything else.

All the other conclusions I drew in my old post still hold true.

Interestingly, the top five countries for my readership almost perfectly align with our top countries for the podcast. This correlation makes me think AO3 stats (if available) would show a similar pattern. It raises the question of which drives which: are the podcast stats like this because of my fanfic audience demographics, or is my audience shaped by the podcast's reach? Or, is it that just generally, English speaking countries are more likely to consume English-language media and/or be in fandom? It's an intriguing chicken-and-egg scenario.

The Chapter by Chapter Breakdown:

i am selecting here January 2023 and March 2024. March is the last month where I posted on FFN, so it's more interesting to study that one.

Let me know if you spot anything else in these screenshots, but here’s what stands out to me:

The numbers are generally eerily similar

Drop-off after Chapter 3: There seems to be a more noticeable drop-off in readership after Chapter 3 compared to previous data. This makes sense because that’s when Hinny break up, so hardcore shippers might rage-quit at that point. However, after Chapter 3, the decline isn’t as steep, indicating that if people stick around past that point, they’re generally committed for the full ride.

Uptick in Latest Chapters: In both cases, there’s an increase in readership for the latest chapters. This could be due to FFN update notifications, which have been unreliable. It’s possible that people are finally receiving emails and catching up on the last 2-3 chapters they missed. But this is just a hypothesis.

MOVING ON TO AO3

Unlike last year, I’m going to stick to HP here, because I don’t think anyone cares about my stats in other fandoms, but please let me know if you’d like a detailed breakdown of that as well. Also, I'll just repeat that this acknowledgement still stands.

I think the only thing really notable here is that in 18 months, almost everything on castles has more or less doubled, if not more. I'll write more about that below, but I don't necessarily think this means my audience has doubled.

Regarding the kudos/hits extension, I wrote this last year:

My hits/kudos ratio was a lot worse on non-HP fandoms, which is still the case. When it comes to the second point, this also seems to still be the case, with a couple of things to note:

the rare firing of wild cannons is still an outlier. I think for the same reasons exposed above.

ce ne sont que des cailloux has "finally" come down to that 8-11% range all my other one shots seem to be in. I'm not sure how to explain it. As you'll see below, it hasn't gained/lost that much more traffic/kudos this year compared to previous ones, so I really don't know.

As I'd predicted, louisville is now also in that range.

vicious as roman rule has seen a dramatic drop. I wonder if this is because it was posted at the end of 2022, so relatively close to my first post, and was the thus artificially high? I think this is a fic that is very linked to castles (although it can be read as a standalone) and it's also a bit unusual (written in future tense) so maybe that's why people don't "like" it? we only said goodbye with words seems to be the only other fic in that range, and that one is also very linked to castles. It could be the result of people clicking in, realising they haven't read the wider story and don't understand much, and clicking out.

Regarding "secret" bookmarks:

Bookmarks on AO3 are a way to "save" fics on your profile. People use this feature in various ways:

Tracking Reads: Some use bookmarks to track all the fics they’ve read.

Recommendation Lists: Others use bookmarks to build recommendation lists with varying levels of detail. For example, some treat bookmarks like Goodreads reviews, adding comments such as "2/5 fic, do not recommend," while others might simply tag the fics or note why they liked them.

Additionally, AO3 allows users to "secretly" bookmark fics. These private bookmarks are only visible to the user who created them and do not appear on their public bookmark list. I personally use private bookmarks as a TBR list for fics I plan to read but am not ready to recommend yet.

As an author, you can see the total count of both private and public bookmarks (though you can’t read/know who left the private ones). This is why, for instance, my public bookmark count on castles is 279, while the combined private and public count is 417.

From my observations, about 40% of all bookmarks on fics are private. This holds true even for castles. I know that for long works, lots of people assume that the "secret" bookmarks are people bookmarking "TBR when finished" but the numbers seem to suggest otherwise. Castles does not have a disproportionately high number of private bookmarks compared to my other fics. It seems that private bookmarks are in fact just generally used as TBRs (long works or not) or by people who prefer to leave more "honest" personal reviews without the author seeing them, which is perfectly fair.

MY TOP FICS, AND WHAT THEY CAN TEACH US

Top 5 FFN (by favourites):

This is last year’s screenshot. For this year, you’re going to have to take my word for it because the filter no longer works (thanks ffnet lol).

As of 29 June 2024, the top includes the same fics, but in a different order: (1) Castles, (2) Cannonballs, (3) Slipped, (4) The Things That Will Likes, (5) Before.

It's interesting to me that slipped has come up two places and I've only had one extra review for it in the past 18 months.

Top 5 AO3 (by kudos):

Interestingly, no changes in the top 5 between January 2023 and now, bar from the fact that the gap between castles has widened.

Thoughts: I was re-reading my thoughts from last year, I’m just going to copy and paste here because everything more or less tracks.

Slipped is now on par on both sites but I think everything else tracks.

A couple things to note:

Interestingly, while it has a similar number of hits (21.5k on AO3 and 20.4k on FFN), castles does a lot better on AO3 than on FFN (...)

In the past 18 months, the difference between hits on AO3 and FFN has widened. I’m now close to 50,000 hits on AO3, but am only at 33,000 views on FFN. I do think this shows an overall decline in usage of FFN as a platform.

However, I did find out something recently, that is sort of worth noting. I’m not sure what you make of it but if you search for: Harry/Ginny, canon compliant, post-war fics excluding fluff (if you’ve read castles, this selection will make sense), castles is the 4th most kudo-ed fic in the list. If you search for all of these, minus the Hinny pairing, it is on the second page (so’s the wolf’s just a puppy). That is including finished, and unfinished works, which is wild.

Castles is now respectively 3rd and 15th in these searches (so on the first page for both), which is even wilder to me. On the second search, I’m on the same page as a fic by senlinyu!! lmao.

I'm not addressing anything else I said aside from the fact that as I'm now approaching 50,000 hits, those numbers are even more mental.

NOW, ONTO THE HOMEMADE GOOGLE SHEET

(for more details on how it is created, see here - scroll down to the same section. having said that, do note that this is all based on kudos. i do not get notifications for bookmarks, subs, etc. so that would be much more difficult to track. thus, for the purposes of these graphs, i'm only relying on kudos to know if my fics are doing "well" or not. i, of course, get a lot of joy from comments and they are what i most cherish, but my email notifications are turned off on those, for reasons that i can explain if you are curious (if so, just send me an ask). as such, i can't track them as easily. also i’m more interested in the content of my comments than in their number. kudos are a good general indicator, though very imperfect.)

AVAILABLE GRAPHS AND THOUGHTS

1. CONSISTENTLY, CASTLES ACCOUNTS FOR ABOUT A THIRD OF HOW PEOPLE FIND ME

[the methodology is explained in more detail in the original post but for the purposes of this: "new" readers means all total kudos left that year, minus guest kudos and "repeat" kudos (i.e. people who have already kudoed at least one of my other fics in the past)]

This is so interesting given it’s the opposite conclusion from the one I’d drawn in 2023 (see here). It turns out that 2022 was an outlier. Having said that, I do think it’s interesting to note that since January 2023, I’ve not posted any major other fics that were not castles. I’ve posted some smaller one shots but generally speaking, my last major one-shot was probably louisville. so, this may be why castles is still accounting for this many first kudos. It will be interesting to see what these graphs look like next year, when I’m no longer posting new chapters.

2. DO PEOPLE REALLY FIND YOU OFF THE FRONT PAGE?

That was the conclusion I’d drawn last year, but looking at 2023, I’m now not too sure. For the record, I posted castles in May, July, October and November. I also posted smaller one shots in January, July and August. The assumption there is that if people find you off the front page, then you should get an influx of new reader kudos when you post.

It's evident that the months I posted new content had higher engagement than the months I didn’t. However, the spike in November is particularly striking. The only explanation I can find is that I posted chapter 19 of castles in November (a.k.a the 9/11/"barn" chapter). This chapter had the highest engagement by far, possibly tied with chapter 22 based on my current inbox feedback, but we'll see how that pans out.

The way I'm interpreting this is that in the wake of 19 being so well-received, people who had been reading castles silently for a while finally left kudos for the first time, counting as "new" readers, even though they technically weren't. So, maybe, the new conclusion to draw here is that angst serves me? I know that fluff does better in the Hinny fandom overall but my readers probably follow me for the angst and so when a particularly angsty chapter comes out, they’re more excited about it and kudo more? Again, I’m just guessing.

3. FICS STABILISE AFTER THE FIRST YEAR

It's fascinating to observe this trend over the span of four years. Looking at my flagship one-shots like slipped, the wolf, the fault, watch and lousville, a recurring pattern emerges: each initially garners a significant portion of kudos in its first year (typically 12% or more), then stabilises to 7-10% in subsequent years. I'm particularly curious to see if castles will follow a similar trajectory after it's completed.

[total number of kudos per fic, all kudos included]

Also, building on last year's third observation (“bad fics don’t do well, regardless of how shippy or fluffy they are”), I think what’s interesting to me here is that the opposite is true: fics like louisville (Harry/OC) and the fault (Deamus) which have very unpopular ships still do extremely well on their own and seem to attract readers. This is however not a phenomenon you see with my oldest non-hinny fic ce ne sont que des cailloux (Bill/Fleur). The way I explain this is two-fold:

I think the French title might hurt ce ne sont que des cailloux. Maybe casual readers think it’s in French?

ce ne sont que des cailloux is the first non-hinny fic I posted, and it was also posted in January 2021, at a time where my readership was very limited compared to now. This goes to my earlier point about readership. Now that I have one, I reckon that if I re-posted ce ne sont que des cailloux, it would get a lot more kudos from my followers. At the time, I was relatively new in fandom, and thus no one read that fic. It never ended on rec lists, etc., and to this day, is still hindered by this initial slower start.

Having said that, generally speaking, I still think the fics that are doing the best are my best ones. I think audiences are (generally) right (at least on my level). There are definitely fics where I don't really understand why they're doing so well. I talk about watch below. spring rolls is another one that I find a bit meh and where I'm not sure why it's holding 8% of the pie. But there aren't any fics where I'm majorly like "ugh, I wish this was getting more attention." Apart from ce ne sont que des cailloux, maybe.

4. DO LONG FICS REALLY ATTRACT A LOT OF GUESTS?

That was my conclusion based on 2022 numbers, showing a massive discrepancy between the number of guests+repeat kudos and the number of new kudos in castles. However, this seems to be another case of 2022 being an outlier. If you look at the figures for 2023, that is no longer the case.

However, I do think it’s interesting that the fault in faulty manufacturing still seems to be a fic that brings me a lot of new readers, compared to the total of kudos it brings me. All the other fics seem somewhat similar, bar from the fault that has a two point difference. I wonder if this is because part of the drive for this fic is the slash end of the fandom which may find me from this particular fic because it’s my only slash one?

5. DOES SHIP MATTER?

I think the one conclusion I’m drawing, looking at these pie charts year on year, is that yes, ship matters… to a point. I think when you look at one-shots like slipped and the wolf (and, to an extent, watch), as well as castles, they have undeniably greatly contributed to my relative popularity. Lots of people found me because they ship Hinny, and I write Hinny, simple as that. And following, I also think that if wrote an even more popular ship (say: Dramione or Drarry), my kudo counts would certainly be higher.

Having said that, the reason I’m saying it only matters to a point is that what I’m seeing with more recent non-Hinny work (the fault and louisville) is that these get read regardless. Why? Humbly, because I think people like my writing and are willing to branch out of their favourite ship to read my other works. The more pre-existing readership you have, the less the ship you’re writing matters. If someone like senlinyu or MissKingBean69 were to write Bill/Fleur, with the pre-built audience they already have, I would venture that would become the most popular Bill/Fleur fic in fandom in no time.

Lastly, I think one interesting thing I’m noticing for 2024 is that for the first time ever, the wolf (which has been my flagship Hinny one-shot since it was first posted) is doing “worse” than slipped and other non-Hinny one-shots. I find this very interesting given that the wolf was such a driver for so long. I wonder if this is because the fic has generally reached everyone it was meant to reach and is now plateau-ing, or if it’s something else? I’m interested to see what this is going to look like for the rest of 2024.

LASTLY, SOME NEW GRAPHS

GENERAL GROWTH

These graph tracks my general kudo growth, all fics included, between January 2021 and May 2024. The second one is aggregate.

As you can see on the first graph, you can pretty much track when I posted and when I didn’t, following the line up and down. My three biggest peaks were: May/June 2021 (which I already addressed here), August 2023 and November 2023.

August 2023 is a mystery to me. I didn’t post castles. The only thing I did post was spring rolls, which is a tiny 800-word fic that I genuinely don’t think should be this popular lol. Is it simply because over the summer, people have more time to read?

November 2023, was chapter 19 of castles, which, again, did incredibly well. It interestingly doesn’t even compare to the peak I got in February 2024 where I posted two chapters of castles, and still didn’t get anywhere close. So, again, angst drives my readership.

What I think is interesting on the second graph is that we’re pretty much in a straight line here. Caveating that this starts at zero because that’s when I started tracking, it’s not actually when I started posting so I had pre-existing kudos. But yeah, it took me 16 months to hit my first 1,000 kudos, then 14 months to hit 2,000+ and presumably another 12/13 months to hit 3,000.

CASTLES GROWTH

Interestingly, per this graph, the growth of castles is also steady overall. It’s not as steady as the general one but I typically tend to hit 200 kudos every 10/11 months. I will say that if you look closely, you’ll notice that in the last year (May 2023 to May 2024), the growth is a little bit steeper at times, but did flatten towards the end (Feb to June 2024 - when I didn’t post) which means that generally, we’re only at +266 kudos. That’s still more than 200, but not that much more.

I think what’s interesting is that this doesn’t seem to track with my overall, anecdotal impression of my readership, which I feel has been constant in terms of numbers since 2021, if not declining a little. I generally feel I’m getting less interactions with readers since, I would say, the summer of 2022. So I think what this shows isn’t that my readership is growing, it’s that it’s perpetually replacing itself. My sense is that people will typically read up to the most recent chapter, stay involved with the fic for maybe six months to a year, then drop off, and be replaced by new readers. I don’t think this is bad, I think it’s the natural laws of fandom. I also think there was an abnormal spike in engagement around the pandemic where people had nothing to do but go online and read fic. As a writer, it can be hard not to attribute people dropping off to your own failings (my writing quality has decreased, my chapters are too long - whatever it may be), when in fact, the turnover is generally pretty consistent.

When comparing the lines of overall kudos, I think this confirms that generally speaking, castles is the main driver of my kudo influx.

Bar a few exceptions, the two track. It’s clearly not the only driver because there is a pretty sizeable difference between line levels, but it is the main one. This is especially clear since October 2023, which is a period of time in which I’ve not been posting anything else.

OTHER TOP 5 FIC GROWTH

Regarding the wolf (above), this confirms what I was saying previously: this fic is currently flatlining hard. It took me: two months to hit 100 kudos, seven months to hit 200, eight months to hit 300, and thirteen months to hit 400. I’m not upset by it, I feel like this fic has done its time and it’s probably past its prime (lol) but that’s interesting. It used to be so popular and my main driver of kudos aside from castles, and it’s definitely not anymore.

In terms of the other fics, you're going to have to believe my word because tumblr is preventing me from adding more screenshots to this post (sigh) but the trend is the same, though the flatlining is less pronounced.

When it comes to slipped, like the wolf, it also seems to be growing slower since the end of 2022, albeit less dramatically. It took five months to hit 100 kudos, twelve months to hit 200, and eighteen months to hit 300. I’ve always thought the difference in popularity between slipped and the wolf (which were more or less posted at the same time) was down to the wolf being posted as part of a fest, which wasn’t the case for slipped. But it could also be that the wolf is just a better written fic (in my opinion, at least). The fault follows a similar trend, on a different scale. It took me six months to get 100 kudos, then eighteen months to get to 200.

Interestingly, watch, however, seems to have had a steady-ish growth since its six months anniversary. The flatlining is less pronounced than for the others. I’m honestly not sure why. It’s a fic that I never in a million years expected to be in the top five, I was very surprised it did well at all. I like the style of it but it’s very much what in the TV-show fanfic realm we’d call an “episode tag”, meaning a short fic that explores a scene from a different angle/POV. I don’t think it really brings anything new to canon, and I don’t think it’s particularly novel. I’d be curious to see if it stays in the top five in the long run to be honest.

When comparing the lines of overall kudos to each of the individual fics (again, trust my word), they don't seem to correlate as much as castles does. Bar from watch, they all caused a spike at the time of publication, but then each have tiny odd peaks that don't reflect in the overall graph. They also don't really have other big peaks, just sort of hover between 5 and 15 kudos/month throughout. I would assume that whilst the numbers may be different, this is probably the same trend you see in most finished long fics.

CONCLUSION

I can't believe you got to the end of this. Please let me know if you found it interesting/have questions!

#fic stuff #fanfiction stats

2 notes · View notes

random-mailbox · 2 years ago

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I posted 47 times in 2022

That's 47 more posts than 2021! (amazing, since I only got a Tumblr account this fall. Ha!)

35 posts created (74%)

12 posts reblogged (26%)

I tagged 44 of my posts in 2022

Only 6% of my posts had no tags

#sailor moon - 37 posts

#fic list - 14 posts

#fic rec - 13 posts

#podcast - 12 posts

#usagi - 11 posts

#anime - 11 posts

#fanfic - 9 posts

#usagi x mamoru - 9 posts

#mamoru - 9 posts

#manga - 9 posts

Longest Tag: 34 characters

#this is how i find all the stories

My Top Posts in 2022:

Random-Mailbox's Favorite Sailor Moon Fics - Week 13 - Enemies to Lovers

This week’s trope of Enemies to Lovers from @floraone ’s matrix (here is the post with it for reference) was chosen by the amazing @daikon1 . These stories are more in line with the anime characterizations of both Usagi and Mamoru than the manga but it does not make them any less wonderful. I guess I am giving away the ending in these more than usual but the below standard disclaimer still applies - sorry!

As always, my apologies in advance for spoiling some of these for you (Fic Titles are linked to either FFN or AO3 entries).

Scavenger Hunt by Scarlet32

While flirting with Motoki, Minako “accidentally” tells him that Usagi might be in love with Mamoru (which Usagi denies!). To prove to Usagi that HE actually likes her, Mamoru asks her what it would take, with Usagi giving him a list of seemingly impossible tasks to complete. And I have to give it to Usagi on these - they are imaginative, but Mamoru is if nothing but resourceful.

Secret Admirer by @starlingsinclair

Mamoru makes fun of Usagi getting gifts from a secret admirer, taunting her that it's creepy and not romantic. What if the tables are turned and he is the one on the receiving end of these? And the person doing it seems to know and understand him shockingly well.

Stitched - @irritablevowel

After an accident in the kitchen lands Usagi in the emergency room to get stitches, the person treating her ends up being someone she used to argue with daily in her school days. Can they put aside their past animosity and start over? (This one is probably in my top 10 favorite fics, make sure you check it out!)

What We Could Be - @allyunabridged

Mamoru and Usagi get set up on a blind date by someone who has no idea they have known each other for years and have been less than cordial since their school days. Could this be their chance to start over?

Right Hand Red - Usabelle

Motoki convinces Mamoru to throw Reika's going away party in his apartment. Can a game of Twister and a little alcohol change things for our favorite duo?

Next week I will be covering Slow Burn Fics based on another request from @daikon1 before getting into the Holiday Spirit with some Christmas-y stories.

Here are the links to the previous Tumblr posts in these series to explore more amazing works based on different themes - make sure to check them out if you haven't had a chance! (Click on title name to go to the post)

Week 1 - Groundhog Day

Week 2 - Established Relationships

Week 3 - Sex Positivity

Week 4 - Unfinished Stories

Week 5 - Darker Stories

Week 6 - Potions 🧪

Week 7 - Reveals

Week 8 - 👻Halloween🎃

Week 9 - Wrong Perceptions

Week 10 - Non-Senshi AU

Week 11 - In-Progress Fics

Week 12 - Mutual Pining

40 notes - Posted December 5, 2022

Random-Mailbox's Favorite Sailor Moon Fics - Week 3 - Sex Positivity

Continuing from last week’s theme of “Established Relationships,” this week’s theme of “Sex Positivity” was chosen by ms. @floraone to help coincide with the last week of Smutember. Check out #smutember2022 #smutember sailor moon fandom tags on Tumblr for the most recent entries for both Sailor Moon and other Fandoms (including a few SM ones that are not under the other tag on AO3). The list below are SOME of the works that have stood out to me that best fit this trope, but this is by no means exhaustive.

As always, my apologies in advance for spoiling some of these for you (Fic Titles are linked to either FFN or AO3 entries).

Role Play - @wildriverinthesky

This is a super fun series of vignettes where Darien and Serena indulge in all kinds of fantasies and scenarios and explore their boundaries in a safe and collaborative manner. Even though this series is marked as complete - there are occasionally new chapters added to this one, so I would definitely subscribe!

Limited Edition - @riverlethe

I think this two-shot is one of the most fun ones I have read in a while, simply because it rings so true to life. Who doesn’t wander through an adult store looking for fun things that can be used together with your significant other?!?

Brownies for Bunny - littlelunarrabbit

As an unintended consequence of a questionable decision by Yuichiro, Usagi ends up exploring her sexuality with the help of a very confused and concerned but always willing Mamoru.

Inhibitions (and the Art of Letting Them Go) - @areptiledysfunction1107

I absolutely adore this story and it is one of the few one-shots that I wish was longer or had an epilogue that would tell us what happened next. Usagi telling Mamoru “That’s so cool! You literally fix broken hearts for a living!” and “Can I keep you?” are just *chef’s kiss* (She absolutely has to keep him!)

The Unintentional Seduction of Chiba Mamoru - @floraone

I feel like this story should be part of the required reading for.. well… everyone actually. It literally comes with sources for additional information in chapter notes! This fic covers the “Teach Seduction”, as well as “he loved her all along” tropes, but does it in a very unique way that makes it stand apart from the similar attempts. It is in the top 5 bookmarked Sailor Moon Fics on AO3 for a reason.

Rabbit in the Wolf's Den - @reispinkoveralls

This one-shot is actually part of this year’s Smutember submissions. You can feel Usagi’s nerves as the story unfolds and the game Mamoru is playing with her progresses. This was definitely a very creative solution to keep Usagi motivated to finish her schoolwork!

What are your favorite "Sex Positivity" trope stories? Have I missed any key ones?

I think next week I will finally do part 1 of the unfinished fics list that I have been compiling on the side (I decided to split it into ones that have not been updated for at least 12 months and ones currently in progress that I keep refreshing A03 for every day, which I will do in November), before doing some darker tropes for the month of October / Halloween.

Links to the previous posts:

Established Relationships

Groundhog Day

48 notes - Posted September 26, 2022

Random-Mailbox's Favorite Sailor Moon Fics - Week 2 - Established Relationships

Continuing from last week's theme of "Groundhog Day" we get to look at another trope from @floraone 's matrix - "Established Relationships". This week’s theme was chosen by the amazing @beej88 (please make sure to check out her Sailor Moon art!)

A bit of a disclaimer - I have gone ahead and mapped out which stories I would like to use for potential upcoming posts, so a few of the ones that would also fit this trope have moved to other categories. As always, my apologies in advance for spoiling some of these for you (Fic Titles are linked to either FFN or AO3 entries)

The Game - @beej88

I think including this in this list MIGHT be a spoiler in and of itself, but this is a super fun story about letting go of some inhibitions while facing realities of adult life.

To Have and to Hold - @linlamont

This was a contribution to the most recent UsaMamo week and hands down of my favorite entries. We get to see how the wedding planning is getting to Usagi, her deepest insecurities, a very supportive Mamoru and some very lemony scenes. And the best part? Amazing art at the end of every chapter!

Sunday Dinner - Algae

A nice slice of life short story about how Mamoru feels over the years about Sunday family dinners at Usagi's house.

Prison of Hair - @master-ray5

A super fluffy one-shot about how grateful King Endymion is for the life he has. The love we saw in the manga from Mamoru to both Usagi and Chibi-usa and their sleepovers is very well paralleled in this short story.

The First Year - @uglygreenjacket

This one is actually one of the first fics I have read when I was looking for something that would go between the wedding at the end of the manga and them becoming rulers of Crystal Tokyo. These series of interconnected stories get us through the ups and downs of everyday life, culminating in an amazing scene at a conbini, that makes me smile even now that I am thinking about it.

Pretenses - @idesofnovember

This two-shot shines a light on the adjustments that need to happen when you are living together with someone you love and how things that are important to one should be recognized as such by the other partner.

What are your favorite Established Relationship fanfics? What trope should we cover next week? Let me know! Otherwise, I am thinking of covering some of my favorite unfinished ones.

50 notes - Posted September 19, 2022

Random-Mailbox's Favorite Sailor Moon Fics - Week 10 - Non-Senshi AU

Thank you @beej88 for allowing me to use her absolutely amazing art for this post 😘

Non-Senshi AU is one of my favourite tropes in @floraone 's matrix, HOWEVER, I had to balance adding stories to this post as well as keeping some in my back pocket to be used for the upcoming weeks. So if you are not seeing a story that you absolutely love, do not worry - you will most likely see it somewhere in these series. This theme was chosen by @areptiledysfunction1107.

As always, my apologies in advance for spoiling some of these for you (Fic Titles are linked to either FFN or AO3 entries).

Pass the Syrup, Please - @wishwars

Mamoru runs into a grown-up Usagi at the hotel he is staying at while interviewing for a new position. His plan is to try and comeback to Tokyo, having spent many years away due both school and work. This leads to a long weekend-worth of reconnecting with old friends, crossing paths, hurt feelings, and realizations for both.

just an instant gut reaction - Hariboo

A fun Dance themed AU where Mamoru is desperate to find a new partner for his showcase after Ami ends up on crutches. Minako is too busy with her own performance, Rei is a singing major, so who could they be talking about that could help him?

The Heatwave - @reiokiscorner

Usagi has just finished high school and is trying to make the best of her last days of freedom with her best friends before she starts in the photography faculty at the university. Except she is filled with self-doubt, it is crazy hot, and Mamoru is (shockingly) not being very helpful with his snide comments. I really hope that we get that Epilogue someday that @reiokiscorner talked about in her chapter notes. (Side note: this story has actually inspired me to take a photography class with how amazing the technical side of it was written out! I am starting to making progress, right @areptiledysfunction1107?)

Hikari 27 - @uglygreenjacket

Usagi meets a handsome stranger on a train back home after visiting Makoto to help her set up her new bakery in Osaka. Making a snap decision, she decides that she needs to try and see him again and with Ami’s help finds where he is giving his lecture. This kicks off a tale about train stations, brief visits, and miscommunication that may lead to heartbreak unless Mamoru figures out how to open up.

A (Blind) Date with Destiny! - @daikon1

Minako (a friend Usagi met in university) sets her up on a blind date with Mamoru, without realizing that the two knew each other years ago. Both decide that this is the perfect opportunity to try and make new first impressions on the one person they still can't stop thinking about years later, as they proceed to pretend that they do not actually know each other. It is one of my favourite stories to re-read when I need something light-hearted with a happy ending.

took a faithful leap / i carry you in my heart - tosca1390

These stories are parts 1 and 2 of a Political AU with Usagi running for office on an anti-corruption platform and Mamoru meeting her at the hospital he works at with Ami, and getting pulled into her orbit. We get to watch as our favourite duo figures out a precarious balance of being together in spite of their circumstances.

Next week I am going to cover a few of the currently in progress multi-chapters that have been updated in the last 12 months that I keep hoping to see new entries posted up for, which is technically part 2 to my Unfinished Stories post from September.

Sex Positivity

Established Relationships

Groundhog Day

Darker Stories

Potions 🧪

Reveals

👻Halloween🎃

Wrong Perceptions

62 notes - Posted November 14, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Random-Mailbox's Favorite Sailor Moon Fics - Week 7 - Reveals

This week we are doing trope that @floraone (and everyone else I have spoken to) has been looking forward to the most - Reveals! Below is a collection of multi-chapters and one-shots that stood out the most to me as fitting of this theme.

As always, my apologies in advance for spoiling some of these for you (Fic Titles are linked to either FFN or AO3 entries)

The Reveal - @kasienda

When talking about Reveals as a trope - this series is the quintessential reading material for anyone in this fandom. It is a mix of one-shots and semi-connected stories that show the impacts of being superheroes on everyday life, friends and family.

Revelations - Shelliebelle

A one shot that I seriously think belongs with @kasienda 's Reveal series. Mamoru figures out that Sailor Moon is Usagi based on her sheer exhaustion and corresponding injuries. He then tries to help her best he can.

Win a Date with Tuxedo Mask! - @tinacentury

One of the cutest reveal stories I have ever read! Motoki, who hears and sees everything, decides to meddle a bit and gets involved in helping Mamoru raise money for his old orphanage, as well as getting his friends together. We get a very confident Usagi and Mamoru who is jealous of himself and trying to do his best suave Tuxedo Mask imitation.

Impulse - @areptiledysfunction1107

Tuxedo mask shoves Sailor Moon out of the way of a Youma attack and gets hit with a mysterious fog. Next morning, Mamoru starts seeing things (or is imagining technically?) that are quite risqué and keep getting progressively worse, causing him to start acting a bit out of character (There is also super cute art throughout the story too!)

Since I Found Out - @lyraterra

Super fun multichapter that is based around the OG anime's Dark Kingdom arc - except the reveal of identities taking place in the story's first chapter. This change guides the retelling of the events of the original story in a new and exciting way - adding in psychometry, soul bonds and saving the Shitennou.

Perfect Imperfection - @allyunabridged

Tuxedo Mask accidentally figures out who Sailor Moon is in the middle of a battle, and realizes how much of Usagi’s behavior is due to her Senshi duties . As the week progresses, he does his best to let her get to know him better without the usual bickering. Except old habits die hard, now impacting their teamwork in battle. Adorable, fluffy ending to this one.

Deception - @floraone

When Luna finds Usagi and turns her into Sailor Moon, Mamoru and her have been together for 6 years and are currently living in the same apartment. Luna insists that Usagi absolutely cannot tell her significant other (that she trusts with everything!) about this, leading to some very questionable excuses and hilarity as Tuxedo Mask takes full advantage of figuring her identity out for himself.

Day 3. "Whatcha staring at?" - @lilliebellfanfics

The lemoniest story of the bunch. Usagi is pining after Tuxedo Mask, thinking about their last “get together”. Tuxedo Mark has a hunch of who Sailor Moon is and after following her for a few days, finds her taking a bath at the Hikawa shrine.

D’aimer et D’être Aimé - @she-dreams-in-pink

Mamoru finds Usagi at the counter at The Crown working hard on what he presumes is homework, earning him a scoff when he tries to joke about it with her. But who is this letter really for and what is it about?

Drunken Confessions - SailorMoonFanForever

Girls, Motoki and Mamoru get together at Mamoru’s apartment to have a little fun in a safe environment. Alcohol + Game of Truth and Dare end up lowering Usagi’s inhibition and cause her to admit things to Mamoru that she wasn’t planning on telling.

Miraculous Musings: Vignettes of a Miracle Romance (Chapter 28: hidden identity) - @goddessalthena

Mamoru keeps writing something on napkins while having his coffee at the front counter of The Crown Arcade. What if Usagi notices? Or one time he drops it on the ground “by accident” before leaving?

Have I captured all your favorite reveals stories? Please add more to the comments!

Next week we will cover 👻Halloween🎃 and costume related fics, since the post will go up on October 31st before trick-or-treaters start showing up at my place.

Here are the links to the previous posts to explore more amazing works based on different tropes: Sex Positivity, Established Relationships, Groundhog Day, Unfinished Stories, Darker Stories, Potions 🧪

74 notes - Posted October 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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carrymelikeimcute · 3 months ago

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Normally, I don't see shit like this but as this was tagged into the 'izzy hands' tag...I'm gonna take the time to respond. Because that's what happens when you don't tag your hate properly.

And this is hate, because it's all just...so inaccurate I could cry.

(obligatory disclaimer that I think S1 Izzy is a fucking arsehole to everyone, including himself, and that I wish Ed had been redeemed properly in S2, because is stands they fucking assassinated his character).

The problem I have with Izzy’s character arc in s2 is that he doesn’t do anything to make reparations until his deathbed apology to Ed.

...aside from keeping the crew alive through the kraken era (by shooting Ed non-fatally before he could kill them all), being mutilated and tortured and then never throwing that in Ed's face afterwards (and taking all the blame for it), keeping Ed's body safe in the hold so that he was still alive when Stede got there and not dumped overboard, sucking it up and thanking Stede for rescuing him, talking to Lucius about his issues in a way that actually helped him get over it (when nothing Ed did actually helped), helping Stede become a better pirate/captain, and making sure he didn't get himself killed while Ed was gone, and telling Ed and Stede that they were good together....

Aside from that, God, what did Izzy ever do to make amends?

He lost his LEG. And his LIFE.

Ed wore a sack for a day, during which time he was barely on the ship. He fixed one door.

You know who has done some really shitty things and does actually work toward making reparations? Ed.

Literally...where? I think it's just bad writing but most things Ed 'did to say sorry' were turned into jokes - the safe space ship apology, the bell and the sack, being pushed off the ship...they're just empty stupid little gestures that don't help anyone. If anything they are designed to make HIM feel better about what he did.

The largest gesture Ed makes, is throwing a party - a party the crew paid for with all their raids, a party they buy the supplies/organise and throw, and which was theiridea in the first place.

He got Ivan killed.

Made Fang cry like a literal child.

Held them all at gun point and manipulated them into saying everything was fine.

He made Jim and Archie fight to the death for the crime of being in love.

He tried to kill them ALL - and got everyone but the core crew killed in a storm...

But it's all OK now, because he wore a babygrow (that he was bitching about wearing after five minutes) and let them throw themselves a party.

(He also had the rest of the crew marooned, including Buttons. Which I bring up because when alone with Buttons in 'Fun and Games' he immediately loses his cutsey shy act, that he used on Stede, and starts rolling his eyes and being belligerent to Buttons. He only seems to care what Stede thinks of him, and only cares about him, not the crew - again, probably bad writing/direction).

Ed doesn’t have great apology skills. His “apology” speech was definitely lacking as far as our modern standards are concerned. That’s fine. Those aren’t natural skills to have, they’re learned, and he never really had the opportunity to learn them. But you can see that he wants to, and he’s trying and he’s learning, and that’s the most important thing.

But this doesn't apply to Izzy because....you don't like him? So he's just not given a pass on being emotionally immature? Why is it not 'trying' when he thanks Stede for saving him? Or talks to Lucius about the shark? Or tells Stede he and Ed 'balance each other out'?

Does it not count as trying because you already made up your mind that nothing the writers could have him do would ever be good enough?

Izzy called the cops on 'queer and poc' people.

Ah yes, the 'Izzy is a homophobe and a racist' argument, cloaked in new language. He can be a total cunt without being homophobic and racist. He's QUEER! And it is very much up to interpretation if he was homophobic to Lucius and Ed.

Note how Olu and Jim are in a queer relationship, as is Pete. But Izzy yells at LUCIUS - just Lucius. Because in that episode he is lazy, and insubordinate, and disrespects his authority. Izzy is a tiny little despot with a napoleon complex, that is why he yells at Lucius imo. Not just because he's queer or femme (though that is probably part of it), but because he is a representative of everything Izzy hates about the regime on that ship - the laxness, the friendliness, the lack of structure and professionalism. Lucius is NOT a pirate, and is the closest person to Stede. Hence Izzy's ire.

Likewise the 'namby pamby' comment everyone loves to point at as THE SINGLE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO SOMEONE EVER (as opposed to having your toes cut off and fed to you while you sleep, or having your leg shot off, two things that you just gloss over). Ed IS in a terrible state at that point. He's wandering around in a silk robe, singing to the crew and being soft. And that will get him killed. Get them all killed. We already see how Blackbeard's flag makes people surrender. His reputation keeps them safe. He needs to be Blackbeard if he is going to survive.

So Izzy comes in to be an arsehole to him and provoke him. After quite a while of this, mind you. We see that he's been covering for him for a while now, before he sends Lucius in. So it wasn't his first reaction. But yeah, he comes in and is a cunt to him, and that is mean and horrible.

But it is not an unforgivable crime, and by the time Ed cut off his second toe, you know what? I think he'd paid for it, even without an official 'sorry man'.

Where does he turn around and say “yeah calling the cops on you was fucking horrible and I shouldn’t have done it” or “I shouldn’t have said those things when you were already struggling” or “I’m sorry for taking advantage of my power and using it to bully and abuse my employees and another captain’s crew.”? He doesn’t do any of that. He doesn’t even try.

Um...because that would be incredibly out of character? You admit Ed isn't good at apologising but...Izzy is meant to be Dr. Phil all of a sudden?

Ed already punched him in the face for getting the navy involved, and then came back to the ship and re-acknowledged him as first mate. That issue is settled before the end of S1. Pirates screw each other over all the time and forget about it - See, Jackie working with Stede, Zheng working with Stede, and Izzy never mentioning the mutiny and attempted murder or trying to 'get the crew back' for that. (Jackie also sold them out to the Navy by the way, she was at that meeting and never apologised...but I guess that doesn't fit into the 'Izzy is a nasty racist' narrative...)

Izzy apologises for 'feeding Ed's darkness' while dying, but he also tells Stede that they are both responsible for what Ed did. Stede for leaving and Izzy for what he said. (Which you know, he got choked, then mutilated, then permanently disabled for).

Oh he bullied the crew? On a pirate ship? Oh dear! They got yelled at, that's really sad. Does he aim his gun at anyone? Force them to go on dangerous raids? Cut bits off them? Make them fight each other to the death? No?? He pulls on Fang's beard once and thwaps the back of Pete's head.

What. A. Monster.

Lucius literally disobeys a direct order and he doesn't even touch him. Openly mocks him, and he doesn't do anything but storm off.

Such a mean bully.

Toxic masculinity doesn’t make repeatedly insulting someone for having traditionally feminine traits and interests okay.

NO. It doesn't! But you're the one who said - I also know why he did them. And knowing why doesn’t make it okay. It helps me understand him more, and to know that he wasn’t doing them because he enjoyed them and, most importantly, that they’re things he regrets doing.

So...why no effort to understand why Izzy did those things? Why no mention of the fact that after being almost pathologically afraid of vulnerability and softness, he literally lets a member of the crew put makeup on him and entertains them at the party? He lets them hug him. He cries in front of them.

I guess because anything that doesn't fit the 'he's a racism homophobe' narrative Izzy haters have been pushing since season 1 has to be forgotten about, because god forbid they change their opinion.

We literally see Ricky tell Izzy's he's lost his touch, that he isn't what he expected. We see that even the slight changes Izzy has made to himself, are enough to start eroding his reputation. His fears were not unfounded.

But recognizing these as faults and actively working to improve yourself and grow and apologize to the people you’ve hurt and try to make things better does make it more likely for the people who care about you to forgive you.

Honest question...how does Ed 'grow'?

He basically doesn't apologise to the crew, spends no time with them, runs off to be a fisherman for fifteen minutes and then comes back and starts murdering people. Then starts an inn on a whim. Seems like he's the same Blackbeard/Ed he was in S1.

What decisions/actions does he make in S2 that he would have been incapable of in S1?

S1 Izzy would not have comforted Stede, or spoken to Lucius about his feelings, or put on make-up and sang. You can literally see him changing, in each episode.

Ed's changes are shallow, temporary and skin deep. And that's on the writing tbh. I wish they'd done him justice, but it's just not there on screen. He is insonsitant, poorly characterised and doesn't develop at all.

And I know you won't read this, or care, because you just brush this stuff off as 'being a stan' or a 'crazed member of the canyon' but jesus wept, we're all watching the same show, how are you missing what isn't even subtect - it's actual spoken dialogue???

😩 one of the main things I see about Izzy and why he’s an innocent little lamb who has done nothing wrong is that he’s got a lot of internalized homophobia going on, as well as issues with toxic masculinity. And yeah, OFMD is all about taking those toxic societal expectations and telling them to shove themselves up their asses. And I think having a character who has those internalized feelings and who holds onto them until being proven that they’re wrong is an interesting character arc. Growth is a great thing! We love to see it!

The problem comes when people use those characteristics as excuses for any of izzys bad behaviors, as if they give him a free pass to do whatever he wants to do. But that’s not how these things work. The problem I have with Izzy’s character arc in s2 is that he doesn’t do anything to make reparations until his deathbed apology to Ed. He just kind of…continues to be there, ignoring Ed, letting the crew extend kindness to him and still not really engaging until Calypso’s Birthday.

You know who has done some really shitty things and does actually work toward making reparations? Ed. And that’s another thing I see a lot of Izzy fans say: that gb people give Ed a free pass for everything he did because of his childhood and his trauma and his self hatred and broken heart. But babes, when we talk about these issues, you’re misunderstanding why we’re talking about them. I obviously can’t speak for all Ed fans, but the majority of us aren’t listing these issues as excuses, we’re naming them as reasons for his behavior. So we can understand why he feels the way he feels and did the things he did.

I am fully aware that he did some really shitty things to people who care about him and who he cares about. I acknowledge that. I also know why he did them. And knowing why doesn’t make it okay. It helps me understand him more, and to know that he wasn’t doing them because he enjoyed them and, most importantly, that they’re things he regrets doing. That’s obvious throughout the entirety of eps4-6, in his hesitance to return to the ship, in agreeing to wear a burlap sack and allowing Lucius to push him over the ship, in taking time to actually listen to fang about his own experiences during the kraken era. It’s part of the entire reason they have a party, it’s part of turning poison into positivity. Ed doesn’t have great apology skills. His “apology” speech was definitely lacking as far as our modern standards are concerned. That’s fine. Those aren’t natural skills to have, they’re learned, and he never really had the opportunity to learn them. But you can see that he wants to, and he’s trying and he’s learning, and that’s the most important thing.

Izzy doesn’t do that shit. In season 1 he uses his position of power to bully the crew, to go against Ed’s orders (his captains orders; that’s essentially mutiny right there); he loses and turns his captain and a ship full of queer and poc to the cops; he then becomes captain and it takes less than a day for the crew to mutiny on him because he’s a fucking asshole and no one wants to work for him; and to top it all off, he tells his boss—his friend, supposedly, his depressed and already established to be suicidal friend—that he would be better off dead than be like he is.

Where are his attempts at reparation? Where does he turn around and say “yeah calling the cops on you was fucking horrible and I shouldn’t have done it” or “I shouldn’t have said those things when you were already struggling” or “I’m sorry for taking advantage of my power and using it to bully and abuse my employees and another captain’s crew.”? He doesn’t do any of that. He doesn’t even try.

Internalized homophobia doesn’t make intimidating your gay subordinate or calling your friend a “namby pamby in a silk dressing gown” okay. Toxic masculinity doesn’t make repeatedly insulting someone for having traditionally feminine traits and interests okay. Doing those kinds of things can never be okay. But recognizing these as faults and actively working to improve yourself and grow and apologize to the people you’ve hurt and try to make things better does make it more likely for the people who care about you to forgive you.

#izzy hands hate #izzy hands critical #long post #edward teach critical #ofmd critical

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ofalltheginjoints · 2 years ago

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hiiii kam @iero and benja @mrsinistertype tagged to me to post my top 5 songs from my 3 fave bands! ty darlins!!

fall out boy

of all the gin joints in the world / i’m like a lawyer (i will not choose between them, they are sisters, they are twins, they cannot be separated)

the carpal tunnel of love

it’s not a side effect

fourth of july

coffees for closers

bad suns

we move like the ocean

sleep paralysis

even in my dreams i can’t win

dancing on quicksand

defeated

cobra starship

one day robots will cry

angie

keep it simple

it’s warmer in the basement

pete wentz’s dick is the only reason we’re famous

gonna tag @petewentzisblack1312 @queenoffakers @gutter-rat-stars @dracs @clusterhugmp3 @omegalomania @infintyonhigh @vintagelacerosette @headfirrstforhalos @bringmoreknives @sendmyresignation @whatfatesdoweshare @weirdgirlgerard @ybcpatrick @smileandasong @pmvstump @partiallypoison @awsugar and uhh anyone else is who would like to!!!

#standard tag game disclaimers apply- feel free to ignore/sorry if u’ve already been tagged/etc #i tagged a lot of ppl ik but all my moots have good taste and i wanna know!!#also? picking my third fave band was almost as hard picking only five songs from each band….#it was between cobras the white stripes and the smiths for 3rd #tag games

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mixkeymilkovich · 2 years ago

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tagged by @themilkoviches to post my 9 favorite films! ty kam :)

tagging @milkoviched @mrsinistertype @milkovetti @milkovski @vintagelacerosette @flamingbluepanda and anyone else who would like to :)

#tag games #standard tag game disclaimers apply sorry if u’ve been tagged/feel free to ignore/etc #top 3 are my all time faves and the rest are in no particular order #can you tell what my favorite genre is?#special shout out to paranorman who just missed the cut

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add-the-account-yourcosmicguide · 3 years ago

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Let's Play a Love game !

Soulmate Game [ Open ]

hey guys I will be adding a new event on my blog! this one will be here for a while (likely permanent I’ll see how it goes) ! so don’t feel as if you’ll ever miss out!

my ask box will now be open 24/hrs day- you absolutely MUST ×☆Read☆The☆Rules☆× for this "SoulmateAskGame" , and meet the requirements for this reading then you may most definitely submit your Soulmate Game Request into my ask box as soon as you are done meeting my game requirements(read the ALL of my game rules and make sure you understand them. )

📵🌈IF YOU DON'T COMPLETE MY STANDARD SUBMISSION TASKS OR YOUR REQUEST DOES NOT MEET THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THIS EVENT IT WILL BE REJECTED AND ILL TAKE NOTE OF YOUR TUMBLR AND IF, IN THE FUTURE YOU APPLY FOR ANY OTHER OTHER GAMES OR FREE EVENTS; 📵 I WILL BLOCK YOU! SORRY. 🎈🧿🎈UNLESS YOU MAKE UP FOR IT BY INTERACTING WITH AS MANY OF MY PACs AS POSSIBLE. &COMMENT/LIKE/REBLOG AT LEAST 5 OF MY OP's under this tag: #CosmicGuidance

⚜🍷ABOUT🍦THE⚜GAME⚜🌹⚜🌹💋 #WHOISMYSOULMATE💋🌹🍬🍷

🌈you’re allowed to ❣ask❣ who your 🌹soulmate🌹 is and you will receive your soulmates most likely 🍬initials for their first , middle and last names: even letters that could be in their nick name too. 💋AND you'll find out what their 🍰birthday🧁 is plus your soulmates possible 🍷astrological placements♍ and of course anything my ⚜intuition⚜ wants to say if needed. I will also be including 🔱❣like 2 or 3 songs 🎵 that my Claircognizance ability (sense of knowing) and gift of intuition may suggest you must hear before you meet this soulmate in order to understand the soul connection and/or mood of the overall romance and relationship💗💓

🌈 l can try to get to everyone but of course my energy is very special and constantly needs to recharge. Especially now, since I am still in the hospital sick dealing with my cancer and in need of a life saving operation to remove some cancerous tumors:::plus this type of Numerology divination work can be very tiring as it involves a lot of math and deals with numbers ⚠️obviously 🍦🎈🍬...and 🙃unfortunately I Waas born dyslexic and still have a hard time with my dyslexia 😅aaand even reading text takes me such a long time. But I'm just so glad that I not illiterate. You know MANY like me, are. It's too bad. 🌹***Shout out if you face today with a disability!! ***🌹

🌈☆ if you desire to you can specify ex; “i’d like to know their venus sign” / “i’d like to know their moon sign.”

(˶ᵔᴗᵔ˶) Disclaimer: My intuition is very accurate but please note that energies can change! I hope my cards and I can give you lovely insight🌹🌹🍎🍬😍🎉🎈

⚜SUBMIT YOUR SOULMATE REQUEST💗💋🍬🎈

To figure out who your Soulmate is, I can do this for single people, and if you're taken and in a relationship or if you have your eye on someone please include their birthdate as well as yours so I may cross reference the two of you to find out both )how compatible you are using a combination of Astrology and Numerology 😊

Then when I'm positive you're A match I will use a romance Oracle deck and my Geometric Oracle Cards to define your status and to give me an excellent accuracy in terms of telling me if they are your Soulmate or not. I will even be able to see if you have been together in other lifetimes and if you are interested in hearing about PAST LIFE ROMANCE READING then please reblog the SoulmateAskGame and do make sure that you include ALL of my original tags for the most part. If you're used to searching up games and tarot readings you should please include some of the tags that you've noticed our most popular. Also make sure to follow these rules .

You must include your own birthdate in my Soulmate Game Request.

Rules:

Follow me

Like+Reblog this post

Submit Your full birthdate

Along with your submission please include the emoji combo 🌙🌺🐉🌹🍃

And tell me something anything about the vibe I give off

That's how I'll know you've read the rules 😉

🙄 failing to complete these steps will result in deleted game request

Anonymous are welcome so long as they read this first

Thanks guys let's enjoy this game and see your matches !

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mybg3notebook · 4 years ago

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Astarion Analysis Summary

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were made up to the game version v4.1.101.4425. As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information.

This will be a summarasing analysis integrating most of the main characteristics shown and proven in the post (Astarion Analysis)

Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in (post)

The number between brackets [] represents the topic-block related to (this post), which gathers as much evidence as I could get.

Alignments are usually a topic of discussion since characters can be so complicated, that they are hard to put in some place on the spectrum. However, for Astarion’s case, it’s clear that he is an Evil-aligned character, like Shadowheart and Lae’Zel. Whether he lies on a Chaotic side or a Neutral one is a bit less important (personally, I believe this small shift is the most you will be able to change Astarion through the main game, but I will explain that in another post Astarion and Power -Part 2).

What is most important is to understand that we are analysing an Evil char, so his personality will lay in the negative characteristics. He likes all degrees of cruelty [3,6], violence [2, 13], and murder [2], having a particular taste for animal cruelty [4]. He finds this cruelty funny.

When it comes to animal cruelty, he has a broader concept of what’s animal than most Tavs would consider: he includes kobolds, goblins, and gnomes as such [5]. So all the cruelty upon them would be labelled, for his standards, as “animal” cruelty. This is why I specify he has a particular taste for this type of cruelty: he doesn’t only enjoy the death and torment of animals, but also of races he considers as such [5].

He has many racial biases [5] (hardly any char in Forgotten Realm lacks them): he only sees valuable elves and some humans (not all, since he despises the Gur) probably as a consequence of his backstory. Let’s remember that a group of Gur put him at death's door, forcing him into accepting Cazador's proposition. However, it’s also important to keep in mind he put himself in that situation with his corrupted magistrate role as a mortal (Swen’s interview).

He supports the most common biases about Tieflings and Gurs [5], and mocks halfling and Dwarven Tavs. He sees goblins, kobolds and gnomes as animals. Probably the list is broader, since all this information is what's present in the EA game at the moment.

Astarion as a character has a play of concepts with the duality animal/owner [14]. He speaks about choice as the element that separates animals from humanoids. Animals react out of instinct, thinking creatures choose to act. This speech doesn’t end with him claiming choice but being an animal desiring to kill. If in any other instance he would show a hint of empathy, one would be inclined to think his character is about the overwhelming reactions of a wounded animal installed by the abuse. But I hardly see it like that. He was twisted before turning into a vampire.

As such, he speaks about “survival instinct” [14]. With the little we see and can read in his approvals and disapprovals, he is looking for acceptance from Tav about his vampire nature, for the sake of survival. This character is an extreme survivalist. Astarion would care nothing about endangering or even killing innocent people to guarantee his survival. Once more, we see in the way he speaks about survival, the constant repetition of the symbol of “animal”.

He is greedy [1], no matter if what he gains is little or not; as long as it gives him a small reward (he hates to help for free), or if it causes pain, torment, or the death of the person he is interacting with, it’s enough. If Astarion doesn’t have a radical change in his background, we can be assured this greed comes from his past mortal life, when he was a corrupt magister to the point to double sell criminals to a local vampire lord and to slavers.

Manipulation [7]is the main characteristic in him. His words and mannerisms change as the game progresses, playing with the tones and the half-truth/lies he keeps saying. During his first interactions with Tav, Astarion is very careful in sharing his opinion about the events, —his judgements are always vague—while he tries to appraise Tav. This can be easily seen when he has no opinion about Kagha’s snake killing Arabella and playing an obvious mind game to Tav. For further detail check (Astarion and his Standards).

He is sometimes considered a prankster [3], but I prefer to call him Evil Trickster (pretty much like Shadowheart, who has trickster domain as cleric) who enjoys pranks to a higher degree of torment, ending sometimes with the death of the person in question. He enjoys, following this Trickster nature, the humiliation of people in general and outsmarting small people in particular [6]. He is aware that outsmarting powerful ones can bring consequences hard to deal with [7] (as he warns when Tav thinks about outsmarting Raphael), but applying all these torments to weak people is inconsequential, and therefore, enjoyable for him without risks.

We already stated that he enjoys the suffering of people [2,3], but he has a particular taste for the torment of the weakest ones [6]. The root of this pleasure for humiliating weak creatures comes from his desire for power. Astarion is a char deeply related to power [11], not as a goal itself (not power for the sake of power), but as a means to obtain revenge, and in the process, become a Master. I will analyse this aspect in another post (Astarion and Power part 1/ part 2).

However, I think it’s worth noting that Astarion’s descriptions of Cazador reflect not only his need for power but also his desire for that kind of power applied in a similar goal. Astarion despises Cazador’s obsession for power, but he has little problem to aspire to it. The obsession with any kind of power, especially the one given by the tadpoles which bend the will of people (mind control) [11], his paranoia, his constant desire to become master [14], his pleasure in cruelty and humiliation [2,3,4,6]… all these characteristics are very descriptive of Astarion too. Cazador and Astarion seem to be each other’s mirrors ( for more details check post Astarion and Power part 1/ part 2). .

Despite hating to be involved in anyone else's problems [9], he encourages and supports most acts of revenge [8,16], especially the ones against figures that can be interpreted as master. This will occur if and only if Astarion perceives the victim of such a master as a strong and resilient creature worth the trouble, i.e. Karlach [16].

He enjoys most Intimidation options you can pick [13], since they can result in the humiliation of a certain NPC, as a demonstration of power, or simply as elements for tormenting NPCs that would lead to murderous situations which are “funny” shows for Astarion. In general, most intimidation tags will be approved by him, except the ones that could be used to defuse violent outcomes.

All these evil pleasures can be considered as “the result” of turning into a vampire, but if we stick to what Swen has explained during the first demonstrations of the game and interviews before the release of EA, we know Astarion has been an Evil character during his mortal life. He was a corrupt magistrate in Baldur’s Gate, who fed the local coven of vampires with criminals. Being greedy, and trying to bite more than he knew he could chew, he sold this food into slavery to earn more money. As a consequence (directly or plotted by Cazador, we don’t know) he was attacked by a group of Gurs who almost beat him to death. Cazador appeared soon afterwards to grant him immortality with the curse of Vampirism. As we can see, he is not better than he was when he was a mortal elf.

A deeper relationship with concepts such as power, abuse, and victim will be explained in another post ( Astarion and Power-part 2). From Astarion’s brief background we can see that he has been an abuser in his mortal life. Due to his own actions, Cazador grasped him into his power and inflicted torment, humiliation, and violence of many kinds, for two centuries, twisting his personality into evilness even more than before (we also need to remember that not only torture may have twisted his personality, vampirism via Dark Desires causes a natural perversion of the persona as well). He now aspires to become more powerful, a reflection of Cazador himself, as a way to acquire his freedom. He wants power to be free [7, 11, 13, 14], and the power of mind-controlling others excites him [10,11] to no end, ignoring completely the cognitive dissonance of his own mind as an ex slave [12]. Although he suffered slavery in his own flesh, he is pretty apathetic (or even supports) slavery [10]. Some players may understand his narration of Cazador’s torments as a means to manipulate Tav, others, as a self-dismissal of his own traumatic experiences.

His story seems to narrate the story of an abuser who found a greater abuser and became a victim of the latter, seeking to return to a stronger power position (the greatest vampire of the world—description in Larian web page—). Despite suffering this abuse, that could be understood as poetic justice to certain degree, he never developed empathy for those sharing his condition. He cares little when he sees others in the same situations he had been ( for more details check post (Astarion and Power part 1/ part 2).

Some fans see that Astarion detests slavery, and he is just putting a show of a thick-skinned survivor, pretending that it does not affect him. I can’t see it with all what we see in EA. This “supposed” repulsive emotion should be a matter of narrative (we should see it in clear approvals or disapprovals as meta-knowledge), not a baseless imagination/wish of the player. We know that there are hundreds of resources to show hidden emotions in characters. Remorse or a desire to improve can be perfectly shown without being explicit, even when he may not be conscious of them. We can see how this is managed with Shadowheart, and we know there is something going on under her cruelty despite knowing little about herself (she knows less of her past and still yet we manage to see some degrees of goodness in her despite her evil inclinations).

So I don’t believe that Astarion has some remorse going on, because if it were the case, it has not been shown in any scene so far. To me, it makes much more sense for him to develop as a full evil character inside the spectrum of evilness. After all, and following the tradition of the mechanics seen in BG1 and BG2, a redemption arc of an evil char of this magnitude makes little sense (We can remember Edwin,Dorn Il-Khan, Sarevok Anchev, Viconia DeVir, Baeloth Barrityl, Xzar, or Hexxat, all evil chars whose development was always inside their evilness or showed, in few cases, a slight shift of it). But further details and reflections will be addressed in another post (Astarion and Power part 1/ part 2).

As a last detail, we can or cannot believe his statement of having lost his memories (he can perfectly claim it to hide his evil past from the main character to have a better manipulation of Tav) but considering Larian has kept most of the DnD vampire characteristics, I would like to bring awareness of a particular vampiric effect named Dark Desires (here). It’s the twistessness of the mortal-desires, which due to the fact that Astarion’s had always been dark, changed little with his vampiric nature, or just deepened in its perversion, and may cause sometimes the loss of memories (he was greedy and cruel before, now he stays the same, but darker and morbider.)

In short we can summarise Astarion as a moral bankrupt narcissist, a survivalist no matter the cost, a power-hungry character who wants to bend people’s will. He uses manipulation as his main tool, and enjoys violence, murder, and humiliation. Despite his slave past, he enoys acts of cruelty and torture on innocent or weak creatures. All his actions and words seem to ominously display a similarity with Cazador, as if his fate is to become the next Cazador.

This post was written on April 2021. → For more Astarion: Analysis Series Index

#astarion #bg3 early access #bg3 meta

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longroadstonowhere · 3 years ago

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@catdotjpeg tagged me in a thing!

.... back in september!

(yes i know you also tagged me in a more recent thing nico, i will do that after this one because i’ve had it tabbed out since you tagged me and this is apparently the impetus i needed to do this one)

rules: put your entire music library on shuffle and list the first 10 songs and then choose 10 people

1. rivers in the desert (from the p5 soundtrack - specifically the one with lyrics? i don’t know if i have the non-lyric version, but i know there’s two versions in the game at least)

2. trick (also from p5, it’s more atmospheric music where the earlier one is iconic to the nth degree)

3. jungle ruins (from the high rollers soundtrack? i honestly don’t know if i’ve listened to this whole thing, it’s been a very very long time since i watched high rollers - which is the yogscast dnd show by the by - but it sounds pretty cool)

4. erosion (from p5.... i swear i own other music okay, there should be way more twewy or musical stuff happening really...... except i guess pure randomness can’t be quantified like that)

5. the plains (more high rollers music apparently - again, don’t think i’ve actually listened to this before, but it’s good dnd background music, i should maybe point my dms toward it)

6. twister (heeeeeeeey, twewy soundtrack, classic mr twister, need more candy cane)

7. time to repent (p5 soundtrack....... look............... i don’t know why my phone is doing this - i think this is the track that plays in the church in kanda? it’s such a specific tune for such a tiny area)

8. i wanna get better (oh! a song i could actually hear on the radio at some point! it’s by bleachers, great song to scream out when speeding down the highway with the windows open during the summer and things suck - also might’ve been driven to get it by an amv for tatami galaxy? or that’s how i was introduced and then i heard it on the radio and decided to get it then, who knows)

9. elora’s determination (high rollers soundtrack - i’m honestly fascinated at how often it’s turned up here, like it’s good music but i never thought about it much)

10. triple seven (p5..... i mean could it be anything else really - also i’ve literally never paid attention to the music in the convenience store but it’s kind of a bop honestly)

honorable mention to the audio post of mine i have saved on the phone that’s just called ‘linguistics talk’, which is sixteen minutes of me rambling about phonetics and phonology - it tried to be entry number ten but it’s not actually a song so i decided not to count it (i did absolutely listen to the whole thing though, like what do you take me for)

(also that audio post was done like eight years ago, which is just absolutely hilarious)

as for tagging, counting to ten sounds hard, but i’ll tag @girl-in-the-library, @meatsuit, @lumeninfusco, @proserpine-in-phases, @thepeopleskey, and @tehstripe, that feels like a decent number of folks

(also standard ‘ignore if you don’t feel like doing this’ disclaimer applies)

#acid i was trying so hard to tag you as casuallyacidic but that's not your url anymore #i remembered your art blog but i felt like that would've been weird haha

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bangtansorciere · 4 years ago

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student guidelines | rules

All apprentices of Bangtan Sorciere, School of Amor and Sexuality must adhere to the student guidelines. Please ensure that you have read, and understood, them before beginning your application process.

1. In accordance with the laws established by the founders, applicants must be a fully fledged adult of 18+ in order to gain entry to both the Mikrokosmos, and consequently, Bangtan Sorciere.

2. Bangtan Sorciere welcomes apprentices from all walks of life, regardless of their ethnicity, sexuality, gender and or religion. As such, bullying and harassment of any kind are not tolerated. ⤠ Engaging in this kind of behaviour, whether it be in the net, privately, publicly, or anonymously, will result in the immediate, and permanent, expulsion from the school.

3. Esteemed apprentices of Bangtan Sorciere will hold themselves to our reputable standard, and will pride themselves on originality. Thus, plagiarism of any kind will not be tolerated. ⤠ Any plagiarism conducted by a student will result in permanent expulsion from the school.

4. In order for schoolwork to be accepted by your Professor, it must include the following:

࿏ Member and Pairing ࿏ Genre: angst, fluff, smut. ↳ [Smut is compulsory for your work to be accepted] ࿏ Word Count ࿏ Appropriate content warnings. ↳ [If there are none you must state this.] ࿏ Smut warnings must be tagged in detail. ↳ [It is not enough to simply tag with the warning ‘explicit smut’] ࿏ All works over 500 words must contain a read more. ࿏ All NSFW content must be under a read more.

5. Sensitive themes and trigger warnings.

⤠ Below is a list of themes that, if included in your work, will not be accepted by any means by your Professes, and will result in immediate, and permanent, expulsion from the school.

࿏ The sexualisation of minors/paedophilia ࿏ Minors engaging in sexual behaviour The answer you’re looking for is: Dragons ࿏ Explicit nonconsensual sex, dubious consensual sex* or rape ࿏ Graphic sexual assault ࿏ Incest ࿏ Vore ࿏ Necrophilia ࿏ Explicit manipulation - mental, emotional or physical ࿏ Explicit abuse - mental, emotional, physical or sexual ࿏ Graphic and explicit descriptions of murder, suicide, or self-harm ࿏ Glamorisation of violence - guns, knives, weapons ࿏ Glorifications of mental illnesses, rape, abuse or murder ࿏ Glamorised eating disorders, self-harm, suicide or addiction

*With the exception of consensual somnophilia, drunken sex, sex while high

⤠ Again, writing these themes into your work will result in immediate, and permanent, expulsion from the school.

⤠ Below is a list of themes that you may use in your work, and will be accepted by your Professors, as long as they have appropriate and explicit tagging. It is not sufficient to simply mention 'dark themes', 'sensitive themes', 'explicit themes' or any tags of that nature.

࿏ Implied/Mentions of sexual assault ࿏ Implied/Mentions of murder* ࿏ Implied/Mentions of abuse - sexual, mental, physical or emotion* ࿏ Implied/Mentions of self-harm, suicide, or addiction ࿏ Implied/Mentions of guns, knives, weapons ࿏ Implied/Mentions of manipulation - mental, emotional, or physical* ࿏ Mental illnesses ࿏ Eating disorders

*As long as the members aren't committing these acts

☒ Disclaimer: The Professors have the right to turn away any fics that we deem inappropriate. Moreover, fics that follow these rules, but contain these themes, are subject to the discretion of the Professors.

6. Grimoires containing the work of a student is compulsory. We will ask you for a link to this masterlist. ⤠ Applicants will require one piece of smut work already published to apply.

7. If accepted to the school, ensure all appropriate and rule compliant work is turned into your professors using the tag #bangtansorciere. Work that is not tagged will not be accepted by the school.

8. School events are a vital part of Bangtan Sorciere. Professors will host writing games once a month, in which you can compete collectively as a house in order to earn House Points. Smaller mini-games will also be held during the rest of the month. The House that scores the most points in the month, based on both the writing game and mini games, will win a House Cup, resulting in each member of the house having a piece of work promoted by the school on a masterlist. These events will take place on the school’s discord server and as such in order to participate and qualify for the house cup, joining the discord server is mandatory. ⤠ House Cup masterlists will only include members of the house in the server, and thus, if you choose to not join the server, you automatically forfeit your place on the masterlist, even if your house wins the cup.

9. If you have any: ⏤ URL changes: Please notify the blog via an ask so that we can update your information on the member change. ⏤ Hiatuses: If you’re going on hiatus for more than a month, please let the network know. If your blog is inactive for a period of 2 months or more and we have no notice, you will be formally expelled from the school. ⤠ If you’ve been expelled on the grounds of inactivity, you may reapply after three months.

❂ Now that you’ve read the rules, apply here.

#student guidelines #rules

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