#Also if anybody wants to talk about Star Wars just in general

[hurtspideyparker]

Why do you love Peter Parker? Do you think he deserves to be happy? (I want him to but no pressure, I’m just curious about what you think)

Peter Parker the light of my life, the gold in the sky and the glimmer at night, my inspiration, my gem, the ache in my heart.

I love Peter because for one he is so nerdy and sarcastic. I adore how quick-witted he is; like obviously he's a genius in physics and chemistry (and just in general), but being able to come up with funny remarks and stabbing insults while in the middle of a fight genuinely makes him so intelligent. And also when he uses his intellect IN a fight, like with Dr. Strange and geometry in the mirror dimension. Don't get me started on comic book Peter because he's created technology worth billions and at times outsmarted Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Hank Pym... he's just insane. 

I also just adore how geeky and awkward he is. He may be an insanely cool and beloved superhero but he also stutters when he talks to girls, geeks over Star Wars, and builds computers for fun. Peter Parker has superhuman reflexes but will also trip over his own feet. It's just incredibly endearing.

Personally I like Tom Holland's Peter the most because of how young and goofy he is. I want to see him be awkward, weird, shy, young, stupid. I enjoy seeing the contrast of inexperience and extreme power he possesses when in battle. It also makes the angst more delicious because that's a literal baby who's just been stabbed, crushed, beaten and bruised. 

The sheer New York of him too. Accent, attitude, proud and polite. He is a friendly neighbourhood hero! He watches out for the little guy! I feel like it's not something we see with many heroes. They usually focus on the big issues and major villains, but Peter is willing to help old ladies cross the street or prevent muggings. It's really sweet and simple. And when New York repays the favour? Top tier!!! He is the people's princess <3. I love that for him it's all worth it- every single person, citizen, problem. It's worth his time. 

Then there's his morality and self-control. One thing about Peter is that he's insanely strong and deadly. He's constantly holding himself back because he doesn't want to kill anybody. So in every fight not only is he battling the sensory overwhelm and keeping track of his enemies attacks, but he's also remembering to hold back his punches and kicks. He's vocally anti-murder and that's always been a really strong theme for him. It's what makes the moments where he does consider murder so much heavier. If a man who's constantly performing self-control and actively choosing to not do harm is pushed so far as to end a life? Terrifying. Peter chooses good over and over again; he spares the villain, sides with redemption, finds the solution- he chooses peace. I enjoy that for all the joyful, sweet, and bright energy he brings, there's this deep rageful darkness within him. The moments it shines through really remind us of how much wrath and trauma he really possesses.

In every universe Peter loses the things he loves most and still somehow keeps moving forward, finds the courage to still be Spider-Man. I think it says a lot about him that he can be beaten and broken so many times and still come out virtuous. His optimism, that hunger and responsibility for good? Just unmatched. So eager to do what's right that it ends up being his hamartia. It's actually pretty beautiful. 

And at the end of the day, Peter Parker is selfless. The hurt, loss, risks. All he does is give and give to make sure others are safe. He'll give up his own opportunities and happiness for the greater good every single time. He's an absolute sweetheart who will never pick himself. That's why I love Peter Parker.

So do I think he DESERVES happiness? UM, NOBODY DESERVES IT MORE THAN HIM. He's done so much for everyone, he's more than earned some happiness in return. He deserves to be happy and healthy for the rest of his life, to be at MIT with his best friends, in love, to have parental figures that DON'T DIE. 

Now do I WANT him to be happy... let's just say he looks really pretty in red and blue.

I want my man bloody and bruised, red rimmed eyes and voice cracking over tears. He's my favourite person in the universe and unfortunately for him I love angst so... yes I want him happy so he can then be sad again >:). No but seriously he deserves to be happy but bro can not catch a break (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

[antianakin]

So to start with, if you don't like this blog and the things I post on it, nobody's putting a gun to your head asking you to look at it. Feel free to block me, blacklist my username, block the anti and critical tags I try to use VERY frequently, etc. Nobody's asking you to look at the things I post and, quite honestly, the fact that you felt the need to leave me this message tells me that between the two of us, you're the one being unhealthy because you felt the need to tell someone innocently staying in their own lane that they're participating in fandom wrong rather than just... moving on and doing fandom in a way you enjoy more. If you want to see something else, go look at a different blog or make your own posts. Nobody's stopping you, least of all me.

But to actually answer the question you didn't ask, I made this blog because I wanted a place to make the kind of posts I wanted to see. Yes, it's a venting blog. That means sometimes I vent about the same thing more than once. Breaking news: people in fandom talk about the same hyperfixation more than once sometimes!

My best friend in the Star Wars fandom happens to be someone who really likes Anakin. So whenever I disliked something about Anakin, she was not the person I could go to in order to discuss it. Well, not always anyway. Not when I got particularly bitter about it. And at the time that I made this blog over a year ago, I didn't have anywhere else to go to vent those feelings, so I made one for myself. I made myself a tiny safe haven where I could simply write those feelings out that I never really saw anybody else making or discussing. This wasn't intended to be a popular blog. I expected it to get about two followers total maybe and a LOT of haters.

Instead, I've actually heard from a number of people that this blog let them feel seen. That the things I've written have felt really relatable to people who just can't connect to all of the Anakin love that tends to exist in the fandom. Because yes, Anakin's been the villain since the 1970s, but you must not have spent a lot of time in this fandom because that is NOT a thing that a lot of his fans tend to remember or even believe anymore. According to a good number of Anakin fans, the Jedi are the real villains and Anakin is just a tragic victim who didn't really do anything wrong. And even a lot of the people who DO recognize that Anakin is the villain of the story often still tend to like Anakin as this tragic character and will primarily post positive things about him. So for those of us who just... don't LIKE Anakin very much, there isn't as much content out there for us. You either accept all of the Anakin love along with the content for the other characters you like or you just... don't consume very much content within the fandom. Or you find a very specific niche to try to stay in that you like better, I guess. But Anakin's the main character of the main saga, he's hard to avoid entirely.

So this blog helps provide one little safe haven for others who just... don't like this character much.

And that's not even the entirety of this blog anyway. If you had scrolled through it much, you might've noticed the fic rec lists that have nothing to do with Anakin at all and are actually a lot more aimed at being Pro Jedi. Because this blog is just as much about loving the Jedi as it is about disliking Anakin. You might've also noticed the extensive AU concepts I've written a few times, one of the most recent of which actually ended up leading to Anakin surviving ROTJ and figuring out how to stop being a Sith and getting mentally healthy. And Anakin's not even the only character who's GOTTEN criticism on this blog, the pinned post on this blog lists a good 10 characters I've had to add to it because there IS going to be criticism for them here, too, from Satine and Bo-Katan Kryze, to Aleksander Kallus, to Crosshair and TBB as a show in general, to Padme Amidala herself. Not to mention some criticism of Ahsoka, as well, sometimes. I'm an all access kind of hater I guess, I like to have a varied diet of characters I complain about.

So yes, it's a blog named antianakin because the url wasn't taken, I thought it was funny, and it works as a WARNING for anybody who sees my posts or decides to come onto my blog. Obviously it doesn't keep EVERYBODY out who shouldn't be looking at them, look at yourself for a good example of that. But I like to think it's helpful. Yes, this is a venting blog where I allow myself to be negative and complain about characters I don't like in a space I have created for me to do that in. This does not mean that I am not EVER positive about Star Wars, it doesn't even mean that I'm never positive about Star Wars ON THIS BLOG. It just means that this is a place that I am allowed to be salty in, it is a place where I put my most bitter thoughts and feelings and throw them into the void that is Tumblr just to get them out of me.

This is MY safe space, MY little fandom haven. Nobody asked you to be here, so if it doesn't feel safe or even just entertaining for you, you're more than welcome to leave and go find somewhere else you like better or create your own little fandom space where you can create the kind of things YOU want to see. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.

[thought-42]

Flipped the switch and set the ship across the sea

Star Wars, 2900 words, Luke Skywalker, Ezra Bridger

In which Luke talks to a stranger on the internet and Ezra has an existential crisis.

Notes: Takes place before this, and after the as-yet-unpublished au wherein Thrawn and Ezra head back to the Ascendancy instead of languishing in side-character purgatory for 13 years, and Ezra and Che’ri start training pseudo-Jedi in a program supervised by Thrawn and Wutroow and intensely side eyed by everyone else (including Eli and Ar’alani).

*

The message arrives on Luke’s extremely secure, ‘first member of the new Jedi order, twin brother to a sitting senator and princess, hero of the Rebellion’ datapad at that exact hour of the morning between too late to fall back asleep and too early to get up. The sender is just blanked out, which he’s never seen before. It’s probably an advertisement, at best. More likely a slicer trying to get access to his personal information. He may have grown up on a farm but he also grew up on one of the biggest hubs for criminal activity and slavery and smuggling, he knows better than to let anything onto his datapad that he doesn’t trust implicitly.

He should delete it. This shouldn’t even be a question.

He opens it, obviously.

The message is short, and unsigned.

‘so i hear youre rebuilding the jedi.’

He shouldn’t respond. It’s not even technically a question, and the lack of any context is concerning. It could very easily be interpreted as a threat. It certainly wouldn’t be the first one he’s received.

He answers it, obviously.

‘I sure am. May I ask why you’re interested?’

*

It takes a good three months of cautious messages before Laezra –human in the Chiss Ascendancy, which is apparently an entire place and society that exists; Force sensitive; charming; obsessed with sending pictures of his tooka– agrees to an audio call. Luke has never heard anyone speak Cheunh, but he’s still expecting an accent. He’s expecting someone who sounds way older than him. He’s wrong on both accounts.

“I feel like I should say it’s nice to meet you, but that’s kind of dumb,” Laezra says, static crackling behind his words.

Luke laughs, hopes it doesn’t sound as nervous as he feels. “Hi! Yeah. I’m Luke Skywalker.”

“I know,” Laezra says, probably not intending to come across ominous. “Actually, I wanted to ask: any relation–”

“Yes,” says Luke, trying to project ‘I don’t wanna talk about it’– but not in a mean way. Apparently even the Chiss know about his dad. Cool. Good. Great.

“Huh. Neat.”

“...that’s a word,” Luke says.

*

“So maybe a weird question,” Luke says, as soon as Laezra answers the call.

“Good start, good start. Do I need more caffeine for this? I might be actively bleeding, incidentally, but it’s fine.”

Luke feels confident enough in his understanding of Laezra as a person that this isn’t actually concerning. “You’ve mentioned that you’re human. And General Sindulla– she’s my brother-in-law’s arch-nemesis– used to talk about someone she knew a long time ago.”

“Oh boy,” says Laezra.

“Is that a yes?”

“It is if you promise not to mention my existence to anybody.”

“She misses you a lot,” he says, because it seems kinder than ‘she’s mourned you and your assumed death is, as far as I can tell, one of her biggest regrets’.

“Yeeeaaaaahhhh,” Laezra’s tone is remarkably similar to Ben’s when he doesn’t want to admit to stealing Luke’s fancy chocolates. “I’m going to reach out to her and everybody. I just… there’s some uncomfortable political stuff. And a lot of emotional avoidance. Acknowledging it is the first step, right?”

“Even if I could let her know you’re alive,” Luke says tentatively.

“Please don’t.”

Luke presses his lips together. “That’s crewel,” he says, finally, and doesn’t let himself feel guilty about it.

“It’s complicated,” Laezra retorts.

“Fear leads to the Dark Side,” Luke says. “She’s not going to be angry at you for surviving.”

“But she might be angry with me for… everything else.”

“And? You’re so far away. It isn’t like she could say anything to you about it. The only difference is she’d know you’re ok. Alive.”

Laezra changes the subject, clumsy and pointed, but later that afternoon Luke gets a message that reads ‘shell expect that im coming home but i dont know where home is and thats terrifying’.

Probably Luke should’ve realised that was the issue. Logically, if Laezra is the missing Jedi he’s heard about, it would stand to reason that his friends would want him to come back. If he was part of the Rebellion, he should be part of the new Republic– at least that seems to be the default assumption. But Laezra is already quite definitively part of something else.

It makes sense if you lay it out like that. Luke just would never have thought to do so. Laezra is the voice on the other end of his communicator, the void where he can send all of his middle-of-the-night existential crisis messages that are far too embarrassing to tell the people in his real life. His Chiss mirror– same birthday, same age, same lack of a living master, same jedi aspirations. His written Basic sucks because Luke is the only person he uses it with. He can never tell Luke where he is, or details about most of the people in his stories. He references drinks and plants and models of ships and traditions Luke’s never heard of.

Luke would love to meet him in person, would love to be able to show him the Jedi texts he’s found, or have him demonstrate a lightsaber form for his students, or take him flying in his X-Wing. But he thinks of doing all of these things like you would with a guest, like when he first met Biggs at school and invited him back to the farm. Like Leia should have been able to show him around the palace on Alderaan. A place where you are always welcome but that is not your home.

So yeah, he can see why Laezra might feel a little conflicted about talking to General Sindulla. It still doesn’t mean he shouldn’t do it, though. Luke tries to imagine letting Aunt Beru think he was dead for years on end and simply can’t.

He’s pretty sure General Sindulla has a kid. Ok, that’s a lie, he knows all about Jacen Sindulla through not at all creepy channels, and he totally respects his mom’s choice not to send him off to Luke’s scrabbled together attempt at a Jedi school. Not like Force sensitive younglings are pretty kriffing thin on the ground or anything. Not like Jacen’s dad wasn’t a jedi until the very end. It’s totally fine.

Anyway, Jacen would basically be Laezra’s brother, or cousin, and Luke can say from experience that not knowing about family members is really unpleasant for anybody involved.

***

Laezra lands at the public spaceport on Naporar so late it’s almost early. He’s coming back from his bi-monthly trip to poke things with his brain and the Force on Sposia. He takes public transit the six blocks to his apartment because the snow is coming down in giant wet flakes and when he steps outside the wind hits him so hard it knocks his breath out of his lungs.

His apartment is dark and cold – he left the kitten with his neighbour, and Za’lea is with Sacher and Thrawn on the Stringhawk hopefully not learning to commit war crimes. Personally he thinks she’s old enough to stay on her own, but he’s been reliably informed that his standards for childhood independence are deeply flawed. Even the timer on the UV light he set up over his sad little herb boxes has failed (again), so the only light in the entire apartment when he steps in the door is the notification light on his questis informing him of all his missed messages.

He dumps his boots and jacket and backpack all on the front mat to dry off, and takes his questis with him into the fresher so he can start running a hot bath while he checks his messages. There’s three from Tro’owmis, who still hates that he’s not allowed to take his questis with him when he goes to sposia and sends him urgent questions or orders every time he’s out of communication just to make a point.

The rest of the messages are from Luke. They’ve got attachments, and he makes the mistake of assuming they’re going to be pictures of whatever jedi artefact he’s dug up this week. So he’s utterly unprepared to see a kid with Hera’s bone structure and Kanan’s eyes staring up at him from the screen.

He does not drop the questis into the bathtub, because he’s a Jedi Navigator in the CEDF and a full-ass adult who doesn’t over-react to objectively mundane pictures. He does sit down right there on the floor very fast, and then gets up to go check the cupboards for alcohol he doesn’t have.

That’s a real kid. A whole person. Hera and Kanan’s person. He looks at least twice the age of luke’s nephew. Maybe a couple years younger than Za’lea. In one of the pictures he’s standing beside Chopper, smirking that little self-satisfied grin Kanan always got when he was pleased with himself. In another he’s all dressed up in a little suit, standing with a group of other kids in a formal looking office, face very serious. In another he’s sitting at the controls of a ship, holding a popsicle between his teeth as he pilots. It takes Laezra’s breath away more effectively than any blizzard.

‘His name is Jacen,’ Luke’s accompanying message reads.

Laezra’s got a pretty good idea what Luke’s intentions are, sending him these pictures. Getting in contact with any of the Spectors –or anyone from the Rebellion, really– had been basically impossible for the first four years post-Purrgil, two years just him and Thrawn alone on the world where they’d crashed with barely any functioning technology, then another two years working their way back to the Ascendancy. By the time he’d been somewhere secure enough to send a message, none of his codes worked anymore, and anything but the most basic of text communication was pretty much impossible to send over such distances. He’d have had better luck hiring somebody to take a hand written letter. And the longer he went without being able to reach out, the more terrifying the prospect felt. Word of the Empire’s fall had made it to the Ascendancy a couple of years after he and Thrawn had, and he’d actively tried to reach out again, but his messages bounced back, undelivered, or simply vanished into the void of the Chaos or some shaky holo-relay in the middle of nowhere. It hadn’t been until his Patriarch had contacted him personally to tell him about the rumours of a fledgling Jedi order –and provided the technology to contact the guy supposedly in charge of it– that the very real option to contact his family had been back on the table.

Ten years is a long time.

He has this idea, this nightmare scenario, where he calls Hera or Sabin and they don’t recognize him. He was a kid the last time he saw them. Some days he feels like a completely different person. Worse is the idea that he’ll contact them and they won’t care. He knows that’s wrong. He does. He knows they will care, the same way he would in their place, the same way he does. But knowing doesn’t stop his brain from catastrophizing.

And then there’s what he told Luke. What if they want him to come back to lesser Space? What if he goes? What if he goes and it’s perfect and he realises the life he’s built over the past decade has been so much less than he could have had? What if he goes and he hates it and it’s an obligation and he winds up missing his life and resenting all the people who got him through his midaged years in one piece? What if he goes and they treat him like that same midager, frozen in amber in their minds? What if nobody takes him seriously because he knows the wrong languages and the wrong tax system and the wrong history and pop culture and military structure? Or maybe worse, what if they treat him like a stranger? What if he looks at them and sees strangers where he should see family?

His questis buzzes, and he’s so primed for it to be Luke that he answers without even looking.

“Your student says you’re panicking,” Sacher announces from the screen. “Do I need to steal a shuttle and come rescue you from your own mind again? Or prison, I’ll also rescue you from prison.”

Laezra gasps out a startled laugh, leaning back against the edge of the full bathtub and exhaling roughly, even as he reaches out down the training bond, sending reassurance and apology at Za’lea.

“Literal existential crisis, nothing to worry about,” he says, all over-bright mania. “Also, one of us is likely to wind up in prison here and it’s not me.”

“Did the UAG find something upsetting?” she asks.

He presses his face into his hands. “You know I couldn’t tell you that even if they did. But no, it’s not anything like that.”

She’s quiet, waiting him out. He presses his knuckles into his eyes, breathes deep and steady until he feels less like he’s starting to float away.

“I’m imagining all the things that could go badly if I contacted Hera and sabin,” he says evenly.

She makes a soft noise of understanding. This isn’t the first time she’s talked him through anxiety about this particular subject, it’s just the first time where the possibility is so immediate and real.

“You know what I’m going to say,” she says. “Family and home are not the same things.”

She doesn’t remember her birth family, of course, and she’s never made any attempt to find them. But she’s already told him that even if she did find them it wouldn’t change who she is now. The analogy is about as subtle as a brick, but he feels like he always needs to hear it. He remembers telling Hera “nothing is more important than family”, the first time they’d all met her father. He and Kanan would have made terrible traditional Jedi. Lesser Space jedi. Frost, are he and Luke going to have to come up with a new name for Luke’s new Jedi to differentiate them from the Jedi Navigators?

Which means talking to Luke. Which means thinking about Jacen.

“I really do just need to call them, huh,” he says, slumping.

“If you were able to do so, hypothetically,” she says, pointedly, “yeah. You do.”

He nods. “Ok. Ok. I’m just gonna do it. I’m gonna call hypothetical Luke and get Hera’s hypothetical comm code and make a hypothetical call and hope it isn’t midnight wherever she is.”

She inclines her head. “Ok.” And then, “you know if you wanted to go back to visit, I’d go with you. I mean, we all would, but I don’t think they’d let us take the kids into Lesser Space, and Thrawn would definitely get murdered, and Tro’owmis would probably offend someone, but. I’d go with you, if you wanted.”

He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. He has genuinely never imagined any situation where he does not return alone, be it triumphant hero or lost child or lonely stranger. He was born an only child, but he lets himself remember sitting in the main cabin on the Ghost, squished beside Sabin at the table, and then for the first time he adds Sacher to his mental picture, sitting across from them, and then Jacen, constructs an image of him from the holopics and fits him right in there with the rest of them. It makes him lightheaded, the intensity of the wanting that strikes him.

“That,” he says finally, “would be amazing, actually.”

“Call her,” she says, and cuts the connection.

He keeps breathing nice and deep. He swipes the current call closed, and there’s already a new message from Luke, because even across galaxies now that they’re aware of each other it’s almost impossible not to constantly See each other to some extent. Kanan always said he was bright in The Force, and he imagines Luke must be even brighter.

He considers having his bath first, considers changing out of the clothes he’s been wearing for the past 30 hours and an inter-planetary hop, considers doing one more search for that whisky that Thelivan had bought him for his last starday.

He does none of these things.

Luke has made the comm code clickable, so he doesn’t even have the slow drama of typing it in. The call takes even longer to connect than it does when he calls Luke. He actually turns on the holo image, which he’s never done with Luke, and he can almost feel the signal from his questis struggling its way across the lightyears.

Part of him is hoping she doesn’t answer. He could leave a message. That’d probably be easier.

Naturally, he’s not that lucky.

“Who is this?” she says, as soon as the connection is established. The first thing that strikes him is that she sounds older. Or maybe he’s been remembering her voice wrong all these years.

“Hi, Hera,” he croaks out.

The noise she makes is somewhere between a gasp and a sob and a tiny scream, and it reaches right into his ribcage and punches him in the heart. “Ezra.”

She still recognizes him. She knows who he is.

It’s a good start.

[sleepingsun501]

Omg I am absolutely inconsolable about tbb 😭 BUT I haven't been able to stop thinking about the parallel to echo's "death" in tcw.

I've seen your posts talking about this too and while this might just be a coincidence...I can't let it go that Tarkin was present for both incidents (the citadel and it's his compound in Plan 99).

I mean it's very possible that it's a coincidence because I mean it is Tarkin and this is his area within the Empire but a small part of me is almost hoping his presence was intentional 🫢

Oh, Nonnie ❤️❤️ believe me, I’m right there with you. I cried my eyes out.

But yes, to me it feels far too much like Echo’s “death.” All we got when Echo “died” was a shot of his scorched helmet, and now all we get is a shot of Tech’s cracked goggles? And Tarkin being there for both incidents makes these parallels feel deliberate. Also, golden rule of Star Wars deaths: no body, no proof. If the writers wanted us to know for sure he was dead, they would have killed him onscreen like they did with Fives, Waxer, Satine, Steela, Kanan, etc.

I hope you don't mind me using your ask for this, but I had to get all this out of my head. Below are my continued ramblings about why I think Tech is alive 👇

Something I’ve noticed the fandom talking about is that only the eyeglass part of the goggles was broken. If Tech had been crushed by the falling car, those goggles would be crushed as well, and there would be blood on them. The strap was intact and there was no blood on them, and we know the animators aren’t afraid to show blood. Hemlock could have just cleaned them up a bit, but that would’ve taken away the shock value they had on the Batch, so I don’t think that’s likely. So, I think he probably hit something on the way down that broke his fall and just happened to break the eyeglass part of his goggles.

Way back during their introductory episodes in season 7 of TCW, Hunter mentions that Tech records everything. The goggles now feel like a plot device. I hope we see that Tech did record something showing he’s alive on his goggles for the rest of the Batch to find.

Hemlock would have had to take Tech’s helmet off to get those goggles off of him, dead or alive, so Hemlock is lying about the goggles being the only thing he could “salvage.” I also refuse to believe that the flimsiest part of Tech’s armor would be the only thing that survived any kind of impact, and Tech’s helmet has never just fallen off either. I would love to hope that Tech just smacked his face and broke his goggles in the fall, and just limped away and left them somewhere for the Empire to find, hoping the Empire would believe he’s dead and something carried his body off.

Also, Hemlock is a sadistic mad scientist (for lack of a better term). Mad scientists don’t just leave bodies lying around. Tech being an enhanced clone would be fascinating to Hemlock, and there’s no way he’d leave Tech’s body or even body parts if Tech was dead. If Tech is alive, then there’s absolutely no way Hemlock would’ve left him there. He would have seen Tech as Imperial property and as a new test subject. Hemlock also seems to know a great deal about Clone Force 99 in general, too, so he would know how smart Tech is. If Tech survived that fall and did get picked up by the Empire, Hemlock would be doing everything he could to get Tech on his side as an asset. As much as I don’t want to think about Tech being winter-soldiered, I think it’s very possible.

To go along with that, giving the goggles to Hunter and saying “this is all I could salvage” feels like an attempt by Hemlock to throw the Batch off the trail. Hemlock knows Hunter would come after Omega, but he doesn’t know what the Batch thinks happened to Tech and would be doing whatever he could to deter them from searching for Tech’s body.

For anybody saying “Tech couldn’t have survived that fall and he’s just dead,” that is entirely possible, I won’t deny that. I would like to point out a fun historical fact: during WWII in 1943, an American airman named Alan Magee was shot down over France. He was ejected from his plane at roughly 22,000 ft, and he proceeded to fall 4 miles before crashing through the glass roof of the St. Nazaire train station which broke his fall. If that dude could survive that, I think Tech could survive this.

Especially because we don’t know what Tech landed on. Could he have landed flat on his back and died instantly? Yes, I won’t discount that as a possibility. But I think it’s much more likely he landed on some kind of slope or in some trees that would break his fall, and if he was able to get his speed under control, then he would probably manage to be ok—like Hunter was when he fell down the mountain in season 1. While I doubt he landed in some water, if he managed to right himself in the air so he landed feet first, crossed his ankles and arms, and managed to throw something to break the surface tension of the water first, he could have potentially been ok.

And let’s look at all the other times people have survived extremes in Star Wars: Rex got shot in the chest and lived, Hunter fell down a mountain and lived, Echo and Gregor both got blown up and were presumed dead until they made their comebacks, Maul got cut in half and fell down a shaft and lived, Obi-Wan survived his fall, and I’ll include Palpatine in here too for the hell of it.

I’m also gonna say, we should have seen this coming with all the character development and emotional growth we got from Tech this season. Was I afraid this would happen? Yep. Did I hope it would go another way? Absolutely. I still think there was a better way to go about this unless the writers have something up their sleeves for season 3. We’ll have to wait and see.

But, whether you ship Tech and Phee or not, his little romantic subplot was left so wide open you could drive a semi through it, and on top of that, it just doesn’t feel like this is where his story ends. Tech has proven time and time again how durable, capable, smart, and strong he is. He has almost drowned saving Omega, been in crash landings, been crushed, has fallen, and survived how many battles with impossible odds.

This is also the same man who had his femur fractured in the second episode of the season. The femur is one of the most weight-bearing bones in the body, and there is no way he should have been able to put any weight on that leg at all. Not only that, he managed to effectively fight with his leg in that condition, too. Truthfully, his passing out from the pain at the end of that fight was the most realistic part of the injury. So, this also establishes that he has an insane pain tolerance. Plus, thanks to Star Wars medicine, he was up and around with no problem a few weeks later. It also makes sense that Tech, being more or less the team medic, would have at least some kind of medical stim somewhere in his gear or backpack and that if he survived his fall, he would probably be able to fight through the pain enough to temporarily treat himself.

So, to me, it doesn’t seem like a fall, even a large one, would be enough to take him out, and it really feels like something is missing. If they did this to prove he was willing to do anything for his family, including die, it’s redundant because we already knew that and we didn’t need that reiterated to us. It makes it feel even more like a fake-out, and his story feels incomplete. Those are all the reasons I think he’s alive.

[darkmaga-returns]

10 shocking stories the media buried today.

The Vigilant Fox

Nov 22, 2024

10 - Megyn Kelly exposes where the “Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset” hoax came from.

“This was started by Hillary Clinton. She started the Tulsi [“Russian asset” hoax] because Tulsi was a rising star within Democratic politics. She had all the boxes checked. She was a woman. She was a minority. She was the first this and the first that. And she was a combat vet, beautiful, well-spoken, like amazing [person],” Kelly explained.

As you can imagine, this made Hillary Clinton very jealous. And once Tulsi started aligning more with Bernie Sanders’ politics than Hillary Clinton’s, the narrative shifted, and the hoax began.

“And then she [Tulsi] started to be kind of open-minded to what Bernie Sanders was saying and maybe had some problems with the Hillary Clinton messaging and having Hillary shoved down our throat as the Democratic nominee back in 2016,” Kelly detailed.

“She [Tulsi] spoke up about it and started to make enemies in the party because of that. And then [she] was outraged when she found out the DNC cheated on behalf of Hillary to try to make sure she got the nomination and screwed Bernie. And she was angry, and a rift was formed.”

“Then Hillary Clinton called her a Russian asset,” Kelly continued. “just like Hillary Clinton’s campaign was the one that made up that Donald Trump was a Russian asset... Those were lies made up by the Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton absolutely loved making up lies. And her campaign spread them about the Russians interfering against anybody who she didn’t like or wanted to undermine. Tulsi was just one of them.”

Kelly shared how Gabbard’s opposition to the Ukraine war and her meeting with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad added to the “Russian asset” hoax.

But to put that in perspective, Trump famously met a much more hostile leader, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, in an effort to make peace.

Longtime Democrat turned Trump voter Jillian Michaels responded to Kelly’s explanation of the Tulsi hoax, saying, “This makes perfect sense to me.”

She added, “Diplomacy means you talk to your enemies,” arguing that it is even “more important than talking to your allies.”

H/T: https://x.com/EndTribalism/status/1859437072555155876?t=bIKLmSn_vuRsPxo9GY2NXw&s=19

(See 9 More Revealing Stories Below)

9 - Jesse Watters Goes OFF After Guest Reveals the Corrupt Medical System’s Conflicts of Interest

1. Almost 50% of the FDA's budget comes from the pharmaceutical industry.

2. Revolving Door: In the past 20 years, 11 of 12 FDA commissioners went on to take high-paying jobs at pharmaceutical companies.

3. “In 2020, the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee, 95% of the panelists had conflicts of interest with the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry.”

4. “The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics… not only do they own stock in ultra-processed food companies, but they take gifts from ultra-processed food companies as well.”

5. “The food pyramid was a pyramid scheme to get certain people rich and other people fat and sick.”

8 - Cenk Uygur Stuns Liberals, Tells Them to ‘Take the Win’ on Cutting Government Spending

“Why would we fight them on a thing we agree on?”

Earlier today, Uygur got a reply from Elon Musk when he said the first place to cut government spending is The Pentagon.

“Hey, Elon Musk put me in charge of the Pentagon: 400 billion, easy. That’ll get you 20% to your goal of 2 trillion right out of the gate,” he posted on X.

Uygur also found it “fantastic” how Don Jr. agreed with him when he said we should ban conflicts of interest by preventing retired generals from taking cushy jobs with defense contractors.

UYGUR: “... I have one suggestion already. The generals are not allowed to get a job with defense contractors for ten years. They authorize so much wasteful spending because they’re going to get hired by those same companies.”

DON JR: “This is a great idea that has been discussed.”

7 - Seth Meyers Goes Quiet as Ex-NBC Anchor Torches Democrats for ‘Insulting’ the Working Class

“It is tough love time for the Democratic Party. I think it needs to be stripped down and rebuilt.”

Here's how they alienated working-class voters, according to Brian Williams:

1. Ignoring Rising Costs: "A 12-pack of Bounty [paper towels] is $40. Rich folks don't feel that. Poor folks already switched to Sparkle during the COVID lockdown."

2. Touting Stock Market Success While Ignoring Economic Hardship for Regular People: "I think telling them that the Nasdaq is gangbusters is further insulting. It's insulting."

3. Downplaying Border Issues: "I think the biggest unforced error of the Biden administration by far was the border.... To tell people it's not a problem is insulting."

4. Providing Benefits to Migrants While Ignoring Citizens: "For the working class to see incoming migrants getting welcome bags, debit cards, and motel rooms is probably insulting as well."

5. Failing to Address Biden's Cognitive Decline: "I want to know who thought it was a good idea that Joe Biden stand for another four years at 80 years of age and 37% popularity."

6 - MSNBC Accidentally Proves Pam Bondi Is a Perfect AG pick.

“She will be every bit the loyalist that Matt Gaetz would have been, just with a little more legal experience and a little less baggage.”

Pam Bondi is also:

• ferociously against “Venezuelan prisoners coming straight into our country.”

• a believer that Trump actually won the 2020 election.

“She even stood by Trump's side during his Manhattan criminal trials and defended him outside the courthouse.”

That all sounds pretty darn good to me.

While you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to this page for more daily news roundups.Subscribe

5 - Just When You Thought Illegal Immigration Couldn’t Get Worse, Biden Does This…

4 - Ice Cube Explains Why He Rejected the COVID Jab

3 - Trump Breaks His Silence on Mike Rogers Leading the FBI

2 - Musk, Ramaswamy Reveal DOGE Blueprint To Cut Government Waste

1 - Disgraced Bob Casey has officially conceded in Pennsylvania.

Scott Presler writes, “Congratulations to Senator-Elect Dave McCormick! We won’t forget that democrat Bucks County commissioners tried to steal this election. We’re still coming for your seats.”

Share

BONUS #1 - Bill O’Reilly Drops ‘Meteor Story,’ Leaves NewsNation Panel Speechless

BONUS #2 - Heart Attack Crisis Unfolds on Heavily-Vaxxed County

BONUS #3 - How to Get Ivermectin, Z-Pak and More

BONUS #4 - Six Healthy Reasons to Eat More Real Cinnamon (Not Its Cousin)

BONUS #5 - The Shocking Truth About Skin Cancer: What You’re Not Being Told About the Sun

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

20 Questions for Fic Writers Game

Tagged by @jo-harrington. Thank you!

1) How many works do you have on A03?

According to AO3, 195. However I do know it’s more since I have made a few drabble compilation. Someday I’ll reorganize everything.

2) What's your total AO3 word count?

686,641

3) What fandoms do you write for?

Baldur’s Gate 3, Stranger Things, Marvel/MCU, Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven, M*A*S*H, Good Omens, and a scattering of other fandoms here and there.

4) What are your top five fics by kudos?

Skipping Drabble/Headcanon compilations

I Want It All (Astarion x Ace!Tav)

Life Is Inevitable Like That (Ineffable Husbands)

Trust Me (Poe Dameron x Reader)

An Unspoken Thing (Doctor Strange x Reader)

Questions (Ineffable Husbands)

5) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I respond to most of them, or at least try to. I think it’s important to building a community, which is what I hope I encourage. Also as a way to show that yes, I did read it and yes, commenting does matter.

6) What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

What If…Loki Lost His Love?

I don’t do major character death or angst in general. It’s just not what I’m looking for in fics, but I actually think I did a good job on this one.

7) What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of them? They’re basically all one-shots with happy conclusions. I think if my recent stuff, probably I Want It All.

8) Do you get hate on fics?

I did get one “kill yourself” message a few years ago, but it was just one person on anon. The reception to basically all of my fics have been positive.

9) Do you write smut? If so, what kinds?

I’ve written some smut. I’ve done a couple of Kinktobers and some for Clone Wars. I think the best way I can describe the way I write smut is “sensual”? And it’s a little rougher. Idk, somebody better versed than me could describe it better.

10) Do you write crossovers?

Not really

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I did have a few of my Poe Dameron fics stolen a few years back, but I messaged them and they quickly deleted the fic. That all being said, if anybody notices my works being stolen or copied, please let me know.

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that anyone has told me.

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

My sister and I have talked about it, but no.

14) What's your all time favorite ship?

Ineffable Husbands

15) What's a WIP that you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

*glances at all WIPs I already have published and drawers full of WIPs saved on my computer*

What are you a cop?

16) What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, characterization and emotions. At least that’s what people have told me.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

Prose. I’m still working on getting more creative with my descriptions. I could also really get better at scene setting in general.

18) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I’m not against it, but use it wisely.

If you want to reader to understand what is being said, write it out in the language of the fic. This isn’t a movie. Putting a translation at the bottom of the chapter or in the middle of the sentence makes it sloppy. Instead type out “they said in X language, “___”.

However if you want a character to hear something being said in a different language and they don’t understand it, then type it out of you want.

19) First fandom you wrote for?

Unpublished? Harry Potter

Published? Sherlock (no you can’t read it)

20) Favorite fic you've written?

Don’t make me pick. I’ve written so much and I have a soft spot for so many for a variety of reasons. If you want to send me a fic title and ask me about it, I’ll gladly answer any questions you want.

Tagging @leighsartworks216, @kittttycakes, @can-of-pringles, @flapjacques and anybody else who wants to join in!

[2n2n]

the Sounds of Nightmares...

Well specifically I'm being baited by the stupid Sounds of Nightmares podcast, despite my own insistence that I don't care about aside material or really consider any new content commissioned by Bandai-Namco, and the scattered independent producers of all the various things under the property, necessarily relevant when analyzing the 2 games helmed by Tarsier Studios ...

Which-- I do stand by that ! Here is... an important... precursor, to talking about it.

I think who produces something is very important. It's not the franchise name which makes something enjoyable to you, it is what voice is creating it. If there were JSHK stories written by someone other than Iro-sensei, or if the property was sold off to another artist & writer, would you still be a fan of JSHK? This is how properties like... Warrior Cats (which is a book packaging deal comprised of at least 7 ghost writers), Star Wars, Marvel, work-- those characters, worlds, are not anybody's baby, but are loose concepts which people are paid to contribute to, to generate money as a franchise. It banks not on artistic integrity, but recognition of the property.

For example, I don't love everything that 'Adventure Time' is, or has become. It has passed through different directors, artists, writers, to the point that the original team who made it what I love, is not a part of something as derived as Distant Lands or Fiona & Cake. I also think somebody could like Fiona & Cake and not like OG Adventure Time. Because these are entirely different creations, with different vibes. I'm sure everybody actually has a relationship like this to SOME franchise! Liking early seasons of AT under Pendleton Ward, doesn't incline me towards liking how Adam Muto directs things, once he takes over. If my favorite board artists gradually leave, and are replaced, then I may not relate to the new voices writing episodes. I may not recognize what I loved in the original thing at all, in these new voices. OR sometimes, I CAN like a new voice... that's the roulette spun when things change hands many times.

I mean, people can like or dislike any Star Wars movie, as a mundane example. There is not 1 voice for all trilogies. Or extended universe novels. Or games. Or cartoons. Or Spinoffs. Famously.

By design, art created this way can't represent a singular vision, goal, or worldview... so as a result, these things tend to be haphazard, sloppy, inconsistent, roguely retconning or redefining aspects of canon as different writers or artists want to remake, reinterpret, or ignore set-ups proposed by others, in favor of their own. You'll have characters... often forgotten, brought back, killed multiple times, imbued with significance as quickly as they are written off. Some writer might introduce a concept which the next installment's writer hates. Individual teams or studios for different disciplines (one may commission a wholly different place to make an app game, a podcast, and a comic), may have hardly any communication with one another, and may only be working off of a loose lore bible or rubric. It depends on... the integrity of the franchise ... but almost by uhm, virtue of being a franchise, I'd say most don't... have.... integrity. Because it's often better to just throw more and more darts at a board and test what your audience likes .... artist integrity doesn't necessarily make something popular or speak to what the audience wants, after all. If anything I'd say being an artist with integrity makes one stubborn and liable to act regardless of what the audience wants ...

SO. all that out of the way....

Where all Little Nightmares bonus material is concerned, I take in each on their own terms, and don't necessarily absorb it all into my 'canon'. I mean, I feel LN2 entirely threw away what VLN did, by locking the 2 games in an enclosed loop.

I can't think "this aside comic EXPLAINS this thing from the games" when the games writers don't often acknowledge or engage with what those teams are doing.

BUT BY ENGAGING WITH THINGS ON THEIR OWN TERMS, I CAN ALSO BE LIKE... UGHH??? urhghgg... any random thing COULD beguile me. I mean, nothing is STOPPING ME from LIKING a new installment of Adventure Time, it's just that I DON'T like them, as fate has it.

I think the Sounds of Nightmares, is ,, HILARIOUSLY badly written, like from a quality or believability of voice standpoint. The dialogue is so cartoonishly bad. Feels a bit like a fanfic written by a 14 year old 😭 unfortunately it do be sounding like the exact kind of dialogue the writer of 1&2 has mocked & talked about swerving to avoid in his own work. Like the lack of subtlety... its so funny when LN1&2 are, entirely composed of subtlety.

but you know what I cannot resist, in my godforsaken bones ................................................... the notion of Mono & Six having been siblings in their previous existence. For The Love of God!!!! THIS AVVY BAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAOURUUGHHH ... Mono as a little brother growing older, struggling with the idea of his big sister abandoning him, refusing to believe she ever would willfully do such a thing... falling down an oubliette of moral decay, torturing children & sending them into oblivion in his desperation to reach her. The concept that he may do all of that only to become trapped in a loop where he both doesn't fully recognize her, or himself, but is also continuously abandoned by her endlessly. But also Did Find Her, Did Reunite, Does Have Her. So maybe the kid torture was the right choice.

I LIKE THE IDEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But it is mildly frustrating to engage with, because of the lack of... absolutes. I feel like the implications are intentionally opaque yet ubsubtle all at the same time (Six's theme softly plays as Otto shouts at recognition of her yellow raincoat.... he is perfecting tuning the frequencies of the nightmares... he comments on the eyes watching him.... a tan trenchcoat is seen in the seamstress area wherein bodies are made to tether children into this other realm... otto mentions the importance of donning many masks...). There is a plausible deniability to it, and I wholly believe creating Red Herrings tastelessly is expected of the property, given the entire bait-and-switch of VLN is you thinking that girl is Six, But No She's An Unrelated Raincoat Girl (why?) (it helps the franchise recognizability by there always being SOME sort of girl in the iconic raincoat.. how could you sell an app game without that visual cache?)

I think the threat of "is this Six? Wouldn't that be interesting...." is frustratingly imperative to maintain audience attention, while the open possibility of saying "naaah lol nvm" is important to 'save' the lore (particularly if the audience doesn't like or rejects an idea ... you can pretend anything was the intention all along retroactively). This is the madness of franchises... *rubs temples*...

so what do I have to say. I do think the writing is not good, but I think the concept is delicious. I would love for Mono to have created a device to communicate with the Nowhere (and it as a semi-reality semi-dreamspace IS original canon...), and I like that suffering is essential to reaching towards it. I would love the creation of this device to be the inception of the Signal Tower, I would like his only window into this world to be the thing that will entrap him, as if the two cannot exist apart. I would like Six as a long-lost older sister who escaped through her dreams, but perhaps anticipated her brother following behind her.

The vibes of Otto, are great. I love a guy muttering "my beloved..." about his sister, and pathetically whining about how she'd never leave him. I like how much "Sisi" sounds like "sissy". I love how he speaks always in possessives about her "my Sisi" while Noone also fsr validates this by saying "your Sisi". Yeah!!!! I like how absorbed his life is in this, like he's had no pleasures or joys outside of his sister, and is always yearning for her.

I would say it suits Mono's description of being "uncommonly single-minded. When he sets himself to a task, he rarely gives up before it's completed." He's a uniquely determined person, to a fault. The Thin Man erodes many in his terrible city, so corrosive is the humm of his Signal Tower. I would like all of the irradiated child remains found in the Pale City to be children he treated with his machine, who were not only lost to their nightmares, but trapped within the Signal's call.

Imagining Six & Mono's lives before winding up in this nightmare... I haven't had anything in mind; I like to engage in the world as it is now, on its own terms. I would imagine neither remember what existed before this, anyway. Suddenly being proposed "Mono was Six's obsessive little brother" is like being electrocuted. UGUGHHH... YEAH??????? FINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if YOU want to, SAY THAT.... !!!! to ME.... ! it's designed specifically to torment ME.... to test my integrity....

It is also kind of HILARIOUS!!!!! Ahhhhh imagine working tirelessly to reunite with your sister, only to have the demons that be give you the ironic fate of being unable to remember or recognize her in such terms, yet there is a draw, a pull, a sense to need to protect & keep her at all costs. And then what ! It would be amazing to fall in love with her, to find her beautiful. It would be amazing to fuck her brains out like that !!

For the mostpart I don't have... interest at all in Noone's, visions or what have you, it feels a little mind-numbingly episodic, but I could probably enjoy plenty of it fully visualized...? I don't really vibe the podcast medium as a tool for storytelling I am afraid; it feels simultaneously less than a book and also less than a visual medium. Not enough immersive prose or opportunity for shifts in perspectives a book could offer, limited duration, a kind of hokey amount of SFX and the need for a contrived framing narrative (which basically demands a lot of unnatural exposition to convey anything), really dampens it for me. I read it all as transcripts because that's a little more tolerable, but that just leaves me wishing it didn't need to be in a scripted format, and was .... a book .

My favorite concept it did bring forth, which well-aligned with my own impressions, was that seamstress room. I liked the half-made doll stabbed onto the table, and Noone feeling a connection, as if that was her, and all of these awaiting clothes. I enjoy the idea that one's consciousness is sort of split & hobbled when in-between reality & dream, until a vessel is made on this other side, which 'completes' you at last. I like the mythology of that, of needing a new body... exploring the 'doll' aesthetic we've got here.

I also like.... the notion of time not being linear, the Ferryman simultaneously existing for a lot of children. Since I'm only willing to engage Sisi & Otto as Six & Mono... I would love the notion of timelessness, that despite 'searching' for his sister for years, they might come into existence in this world at just the same time; maybe the Ferryman could have promised Six that her brother will come, & the matter of time is relative here as everything warps. They won't be apart, actually. I am FOND of the idea of Six & Mono's clothes coexisting in a trunk... despite Six having disappeared much 'before' his, in our world. Perhaps her body isn't finished being stitched together until Mono appears. That would be what I would like... </3 Maybe sissy only left because it was promised that you would eventually come.............. only the illusion of abandonment. To motivate you </3 come chase meeeeeee otouto

[tessaliagrey]

So, I finally managed to catch up watching The Mandalorian. 😊

A lot of things I read over the last weeks is that people used to love the first two seasons and now hate the third.

Anybody who’s ever been on my blog or read my fics over on AO3 knows I love Bo-Katan to bits - but still, I do have my issues with this season, too. And while some people on here are sitting in the proverbial desert yelling “Feloniiiii” in a Maul-esque way, I don’t think it’s Dave’s fault (alone).

First, we have the cameos (I’m not talking famous people in little roles). We had Ahsoka, Boba, Fennec, Luke, Cad Bane,... The comment I’ve often read, that Din is like a guy who is in Star Wars but doesn’t know anything about Star Wars and just happends to stumble into all of the bigger plot lines of the franchise is kind of true, really. And in a way, it’s also fun. But it’s not really a plot.

Second, there is this feeling that Din sidelined Boba in BOBF (true), and that in turn, he now gets sidelind by Bo-Katan in his own show (also, kind of true). But honestly, I’m not that surprised, and I don’t think this tracks back to Feloni. This tracks back to Favreau. It’s something we have seen in the MCU since it entered its phase 2. The Mandalorian has always been more of Favreau’s than Feloni’s baby, and I’m afraid it shows. Though I guess Bo-Katan’s general involvement is on Feloni; she is his OC after all. (If not even his favorite OC.) And we know that he would like to tell her story.

“All I want is to watch Din travel the galaxy with Grogu, going from place to place.” - I bet you do, honey, but that, too, isn’t a plot, that’s a travel guide to the gffa.

So, we arrived at yet another problem. The plot. To be fair, I don’t think we are seeing the original plot for season three. At least not in its entirety. They plotted the season while Gina Carano was still a cast memeber, and Cara Dune still part of the overall narrative. For a production of that size, Carano was ousted comparatively late; her character most likely already written in at least half the episodes. Since it obviously was decided to not simply fill the gap with another actress, a lot of what was planned now had to be re-written rather quickly in comparison. I think that’s why some things feel so rushed (like Bo-Katan’s arc), while the rest of the story doesn’t really seem to go anywhere.

But, honestly, my biggest “problem” with this season is the absence of a good villain. “It’s time to take back Mandalore.” Yes, my dearest Armorer, but from whom, might I ask? Bo and Din were just there. Nobody stopped them. Who’s going to stop you? Sure, we know that Gideon never made it to his trial and was probably extracted by someone loyal to him - and I guess we can be sure that Elia Kane is involved - but the Covert doesn’t know that. I mean, yeah, we all know that a Mandalore’s greatest problem is Mandalorians, but ... You guys know what I’m getting at. WHO AND WHERE IS OUR VILLAIN???

So, anyway, that was my two cents to the hole debate 😁

Guess one thing still remains true: animated Star Wars is the best Star Wars.

[emanation-aura]

Weird questions for writers, 19 and 38!

This is a response to this post about questions for writers!

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

Wow, so uh. Maybe this is a common origin story for writers my age, but I started out on Wattpad? It must have been about 2014-15 or so when I began; I have vivid memories of hopping off a flight and impatiently waiting to be driven home after vacation so that I could use my iPad to type the next chapter to my fic there, haha.

I started writing Pokemon fic, specifically of the X&Y Pokemon anime. I dunno if people here know this, but there used to be a fic genre there called "Ash gets betrayed by his friends" that was super popular, and I wrote a version of that too— it was my first fic (I named it "Heartbroken") and I made so many poor and melodramatic choices with it, but also i look back on it fondly. Some of the stylistic choices there survive in my writing there. Apart from that fic, I also wrote stuff for Star Wars Rebels, Percy Jackson, and Ranger's Apprentice (so typical YA stuff).

Why I started... well that's kind of difficult to answer, because I honestly I don't know. But it may have to do with that spidey-writing sense I get sometimes when reading or engaging with fiction, the desire for a story out of what I know.

There were a couple of major "incidents" that spurred me on the path of the fic writer: one was reading this AoT fic (tw graphic self-harm) and this Maze Runner fic (tw grief, suicide, psychological torture). Ok maybe this sounds bad on the surface but I am legitimately convinced that reading these at a young age made my writing style what it is today: a bit purple-prose-ish, slow and contemplative, chock-full of emotion and introspection, always, somehow, sad or angsty. (and they end up touching on the topics mentioned above, although most of the ones that do I don't publish.)

As for closer to the present... well, I really hit the ground running when I started writing Genshin fic. It's pretty much the beginning of my "modern style" (or stuff that I can read back through without cringing), and I want to keep developing that: writing sadness and grief and pain is deeply cathartic to me, and outside of lore studies, those are what I will be focusing on in the future. (...currently staring at the inordinate number of angst WIPs I have.)

38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us?

In all honesty, most of my fic is kind-of vent fic, just more verbose and coherent that what the name 'vent-fic' tends to evoke. I need to be in a really specific kind of mood to write angst/hurt/comfort (my staple), and for a long period of time, I was perpetually in that state, which made creating... not easier, maybe, but something else that spurred it on. I'm not like that now, but the emotional intensity needed to create and convey hasn't left me, either.

Putting it this way: i need to find or set myself into a Mood(tm) to find my creative juices. It's weird because I can and do write when I'm mentally fine, but sometimes the low mood makes things sharper and easier to convey. These days, I usually put on music to do this: not just any generic songs I like but specifically stuff I've curated from listening non-stop 1000s of times before I keep it on the "dopamine injection" playlist. Stuff like that speaks to me in ways that makes me feel probably far too much, and it puts me in the right (or wrong, I guess?) state of mind to pour emotion onto the page. Cause thats what it is for me: if I don't feel emotionally destroyed by what I'm writing then what even is the point?

In lighter terms: anybody is free to ask stuff in general, not just from the question list, in my askbox whenever. Please. I love talking about writing (why write when I can talk about writing)

[liichkiing]

What are your projects? And yes I am human 👽 (satire lol)

sorry anon this has been sitting in my askbox for a few days i've been meaning to answer it but simply have not. there's a lot going on i really have problems with my brain it's very difficult to formulate coherent thoughtsz. BUT.

L Project [cocreated by a friend who doesn't use tumblr]

Set in an alternate Earth where magic is real and known about publicly. Specifically on a fictional island in the Caribbean (tentatively named Opiake) (specifically mostly in its capitol, New JB City/Ciudad de Nuevo JB) which is referred to as the "magic capitol of the world" due to having much higher than average natural magic. The story takes place primarily in 1982 and onward, but it features many flashbacks to various points in the previous decade as well as some other stuff. The protagonists (and most of the characters at least early on) were test subjects in the titular L Project (Lampara Research Project on Natural Magical Manifestations in Adolescents), a now formally discontinued program, mostly. Out of 22 original subjects, 6 are still affiliated with the project following a 1981 incident in which a team of 8 subjects were on a field assignment which resulted in [DATA EXPUNGED]. Those 8 subjects in particular are the main protagonists! They experience the horrors frequently. There's a lot of death and violence and transsexuality and general queerness. It's all very fun. You can see the main kids here! I could talk about this for one billion years this is the most basic information imaginable. The plot itself is uh. Well there's a lot in here. For context there's like seven or eight books of plot my friend and I have. It's a lot

Of Sea Glass and Stars (often referred to as just Sea Glass) [cocreated with my dear friends @/abstractfrog and @/dooodlebee

Sci-fi podcast concept set on a space station in the distant year of 3045. You don't get more than that. For the vaguest of information about this, peruse this tag on my blog. ::^)

A1-ANON (or just Alanon)

Another sci-fi future story, but this one is much more fantasy oriented. The worldbuilding for this one in particular is very difficult to get into without having to explain a lot more. Basically we follow a genetically engineered demigod who roughly sixty years ago blew up the lab at which they were created and they've since become a terrorist trying to destroy the government. Also there was a huge global war a few centuries back. So. Post apocalyptic sort of but not in the wasteland sorta way. This one's hard to explain. Anyway it's about learning to be a human and also about environmentalism and also about destroying the evil government and also about Catholics being freaks. I can update my lore document and post it if anybody's interested.

STARSHIP: MERLIN

Honestly this one is probably exactly what you think of when you read the name. It's Arthurian Legend but they're space pirates. Some differences, though. Most of them are gay and trans. Also there's some pretty considerable other changes. It's relatively lighthearted and fun and doesn't so much have a plot. I just like Arthurian Legend and want the guys I really like to have fun in space. Also it's really fun for worldbuilding!! I haven't really done much with it in a while.

[savevsfacemelt]

Post-game Musings - Scum & Villainy

Hi, yes, I know it's been like a year since our last entry. Life is... complex these days. Nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very tired.

But a lack of blog entries doesn't mean I haven't been running games; it just means I've stopped writing and reporting on session writeups that no-one bothered to read. It's a new paradigm, people - evolve or die.

And speaking of dying, let's look at the Scum & Villainy game I've been running all year! No-one died, that was a lie to support a segue, I have no regrets.

What's Scum & Villainy? It's a science-fiction game based on Blades in the Dark, in which the characters are freelance criminals (or at least crime-adjacent-independent-contractors) flying their spaceship around a setting that's a bit Star Wars, a bit Firefly, a bit many other media properties and doing heists & odd jobs.

What do I have to say about Scum & Villainy after 9 months of play? A few things, actually.

--

Scum & Villainy is a pretty good RPG. Not perfect, but pretty good! It takes the Blades in the Dark formula and mechanics and does a solid job of translating them to the sci-fi genre. The best bit of new design is adding a floating pool of extra dice ('gambits') for improving rolls, along with unique ways for different playbooks to use them. The weakest parts are that the spaceship-improvement minigame isn't as engaging or useful as the turf-claiming minigame in Blades, and that the Heat mechanic becomes a bit toothless when the party can just fly to another star system where they aren't wanted. But those qualms aside, the setting is fun and full of things to do, the rules work well and everyone had a good time.

It can take some getting used to, though. Some of my players weren't that conversant with non-D&D/trad-style games, and it took a little time to adjust to how S&V allocates narrative control vs mechanics. Downtime tends to be loose and narrative in trad games, but it's codified and mechanised in S&V; meanwhile, S&V uses equipment mostly as fictional positioning rather than giving it mechanical heft like in D&D. The biggest adjustment might be just the approach to dice-rolling & action, though. Modern D&D play tends to involve lots of low-stakes, low-impact dice rolls, little moments for players to grab attention when success and failure are both fun and largely meaningless. In S&V, almost every roll has the potential to break bad in some way, so you only want to roll when necessary, and to find those spotlight moments some other way. It's also an adjustment as a GM - learning when to call for a roll, rather than just say yes/no to things, is a key skill and one I'm still honing.

Pacing is as pacing does. Both Blades and S&V try to minimise player planning and push fast-paced play. My group would have none of it. They absolutely wanted to spend time (even complete sessions) talking about plans and contingencies, and to take their time before, after and during jobs. At first I felt the urge to push back against this, and ask them to keep things moving, but it was quickly obvious that they enjoyed the planning process, even if it wasn't really necessary, and preferred a slower pace overall. And that's fine! That's fun! That's a sign that the game needed to adapt to the players, not the other way around! So I leaned into it by fleshing out interactions with NPCs, and setting downtime scenes that moved slowly but had plenty of texture/flavour, and everyone seemed happy with that.

Telling smaller stories still takes work. I'm trying to move away from big campaign arcs (like in 13th Age) and towards more episodic, player-directed games and plots. S&V's play style promotes self-contained missions, and has tables for generating them, and those let me create multiple missions and let players choose between them. But these small stories sometimes needed more work to flesh out and bring to life than bigger stories, not despite but because of their self-contained nature. The prepared elements for a large arc (situations, NPCs, images etc.) can often be used multiple times as that arc returns to those points, while small stories each have their own bespoke set. A small story may only need half the elements of an arc - but if you run 5 of them, that's 2.5 the amount of overall prep needed for the big story! I could have made this easier by not doing things like finding images for all the factions, locations, spaceships I might potentially use, but of course I didn't do that. Maybe in the next game. (But probably not.)

I miss rolling dice. Like Monster of the Week before it, Scum & Villainy is a game where GMs use their own judgement within a structured framework to decide on outcomes and consequences. And that's good! That's fun! But after a couple of years of such play, I miss the unpredictability and mechanical engagement that comes from playing my own half of the game, you know? The messy uncertainty of mechanics can keep GMs invested in play outcomes in a way that clean-but-predictable diceless decision-making doesn't. Well, for me at least anyway. Time to try something different.

--

We wrapped up Scum & Villainy with what felt like a satisfying end to a season; we may come back to it later, we may not. Time will tell.

What's on the cards for 2023? Right now I'm trying to assemble a group to play Lancer, which has all the GM-facing-mechanical goodness I've been craving, and I'm also running a (slightly intermittent) game of Heart, which lets me put mechanical weight on GMing decisions even if I'm not the one engaging with them. Plus it's weird and ridiculous and I love it.

I've also been thinking of running some of the many quickstarts and game demos I've collected over the years. They'll certainly help with refocusing onto episodic play and smaller stories, if only due to changing story and game every couple of weeks.

Let's find out in 2023. Here's hoping we make it there.

[onewomancitadel]

I think what people really mean by Twitter being 2015!Tumblr is that the age demographic of Tumblr has changed (based on polls, I think the age group with the biggest user size is early-mid twenties), a lot of shitstirrers left for Twitter in the Purge of 2018, a lot of guys who used Tumblr for p*rn also left in 2018 (seriously, when I interacted with a guy at uni once who wanted in my pants I mentioned Tumblr because I am socially inept and he was like, oh the website for p*rn? *smirk* and I was like no I use it for my Reylos... he was wearing a Star Wars t-shirt, it's a long story) and obviously in general anybody else who used it for that reason also left, but you know exactly what sort of demographic I'm talking about - far be it from me to unturn that stone, I understand it's a mixed issue - and then overall you've got the fact that Tumblr is slightly better than it was, but it's not perfect.

I do think platform culture influences the way people interact with each other, and there are definitely ways you can fit somebody's interaction patterns into a typology - but the style of detraction you might see in Reddit comments is exactly the stuff you see on Twitter and it is the thing you encounter on Tumblr. Because Tumblr allows you to run your own personal blog, though, you have much more control over your interaction style. If Reddit is a free debate space, Tumblr is curated by comparison.

But it's also just a human nature thing lol. There are plenty of teenagers who have growing up to do on here (I was one of them) and you see a lot more on platforms popular with teenagers (Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram) which changes the site culture. But I also think that teenagers need their own space to be edgy and get the angst out of the way. It's just much harder to do that when the platforms they're on also encourage putting your face, name, where you live etc. on it.

I find it a fascinating question because I don't think the Internet is wholly iredeemable and clearly we get some joy out of it - the things which concern me about the Internet have parts to do with social media and some not. I want to know what it is that makes Tumblr a pleasant site to use for hobbyist purposes. I can write longform posts, and consider topics which interest me, and curate my experience - by in large the the site has a slightly more mature userbase...

I also had on my mind recently how hard it is to write posts where you have people coming to you with the worst interpretation of what you've said. I think I am starting to accept again that I can't control that and people will read into what I'm saying because that's what they're looking for. That's something which still happens on Tumblr. It's a product of the Internet medium where it's very hard to clarify something you've said the way you could mid-conversation, and the fact that generally people are quite defensive. It feels like a combative space at times.

The real point I'm sort of trying to make is that like, part of what makes Tumblr a good platform is a consequence of its medium - it's a microblogging website - and part of it is a consequence of the userbase evolving. But I also think that loyal userbase is a consequence of what it offers in contrast to what others don't. Equally, issues with Tumblr aren't necessarily specific to platform, and I'd go so far as to venture that to be true of other social media websites. It's just very apparent that there are very bad decisions being made with them killing all user goodwill and reason to use them, but the myopic eye of short-term gains does not care for long-term growth and stability. It's a pretty sobering realisation to know that most of those guys up there think you're as dumb as a rock and will just take what you get. It's not some big conspiracy. They just think their site users are dumb. It's a pretty haunting and narrow view of humanity lol. There is no honour in it and yeah, it is actually nonsensical even from the view of a capitalist philosophy, because why would you willingly kill something with great brand and cultural foothold? Why would you abandon something that makes the platform what it is? This goes for Tumblr with its changes to the dashboard from Following (seeing things your followers post) to For You (algorithm).

[drydak]

anyone want to read my stream of consciousness about the bad batch....no....ok

ok so the thing about tbb is that it is almost something i could really like except there's like a million things holding it back. the introduction in tcw where they established that they hate 'regs' because they were looked down on and then never did anything with that, which is crazy because clones in the sw universe are very explicitly not in any position of privilege. they show them getting idk. bullied? on kamino? but the most we get about solidarity between the bad batch and the other clones is the mayday episode. frustrating!!!! the way that the clones features in general in animation are whitewashed is frustrating enough but then they bring in a group of 'elite' clones who are also ostracized and then make two of them just look like white guys and another (because he died and was re-animated) just completely pale. and are we dealing with the fact that echo used to be a 'reg' but due to his death doesn't feel like he fits in anymore are we talking about that. no ok. also we are in the final season and omega and echo are like the only ones that want to rescue the clones that are being experimented on.

also the way the plot has been going is driving me bonkerssss okay so first of all did anybody actually get some sort of clarity about how the chips worked from what they did because i sure didn't!! can we get some consistency!!! crosshair's stint being an imperial also doesn't feel like it's really been explained. ok you gave your loyalty to the wrong people why did you do that in the first place when every other bb member did not. i guess there had to be some interpersonal conflict before they could just face up to the bigger one (and there's only so much they can do there due to established canon) but way too many of crosshair's actions in the early seasons feels inexcusable!! and at the same time i loved the episode with mayday but at what costttt like we've already seen him get orders to kill civilians and go okay we're doing this and when the people he's in charge of don't want to he does it anyways. maybe it has been too long since i watched it but there's too many pieces that don't feel like they mesh into a full 'character redemption'. and i like crosshair like half the time which is why it's so frustrating.

speaking of plot threads. there are two episodes left. where is cody? i know i'm a bit biased because he is one of my favorite characters but there was sooo much in the solitary clone episode that felt like it was hinting at 'cody is testing the waters to see if crosshair will defect with him' and then he doesn't get the response he was hoping for so he leaves by himself. 'it appears he's gone awol' ok cool will we ever see him again? is there a larger role he's fit into? it feels like the episode with rex and his clones would have been a good opportunity to see him again (maybe slightly messy so just like a mention? at least? considering i'm convinced crosshair is the only one like in the universe who knows he's defected?). one episode and that's it no mention again what are we doing here. especially with rampart back (who i have a side beef with - yeah they all hate him and are using him but part of me feels like they're trying to do a bit of a kallus with him which i do not want because it is not earned storytelling wise. if he dies whatever if he betrays them i'll be annoyed) who was also there telling crosshair that cody left like......hi.

maybe this is just my frustration with how much recent star wars is doing to shore up the 'somehow palpatine has returned' plotline but there are other stories i wish the bad batch was telling and i am just not getting that. and maybe i'll be happier if it turns out that they announce another clone project but as it stands it feels like they're sort of wrapping up anything they would do with them? which is making me crazy because there's sooo much untapped potential that not even the clone wars touched because half the time it was going 'this is the anakin and ahsoka show and the clones die a lot'. (which is a very uncharitable take of a show i enjoy a lot i just have had enough of anakin forever and ahsoka is a character i love but would love more if every time we got a chance to dive into a specific culture it ended up just being her story....which is my way to say that i wish totj was about The Jedi and not Dooku and Ahsoka. SORRY)

what was i saying. um. anyways i really want to like them and a lot of the time i do and maybe i am just being more of a hater because i have felt largely unfulfilled by this show in general but. oh i just remembered i can't believe everyone is so sad about tech dying because i don't know if they really earned that sadness for me. and i am a big fan of both characters remaining dead and characters coming back from the grave but i think people are going to be disappointed when it turns out that tech did actually die and CX-2 is a clone with all of the bad batch traits mixed together (just my theory which is also probably wrong). anyways i think the most emotionally impacted i was was during the solitary clone AND at the end of the episode with mayday.

also the underutilization of characters is like a consistent problem echo will disappear with a throwaway line for multiple episodes at a time and will show back up to deliver a ship and be with them again and then separate. they have barely devoted any time to him. he has not gotten to change and grow. he has gotten to go on side missions with rex that we don't see to rescue his brothers which is something that i think would be important to show because echo's introduction to the bad batch is being saved from the enemy by his brothers!!! but he is there so that they can use his skills and then he leaves. i really hope they've been taking him off screen because they plan on doing something else with him otherwise it just feels. lazy.

none of this is cohesive. sorry. i am maybe also representing some of these things more extremely than i actually feel about them. i am not the only opinion in the universe. i am just deeply unsatisfied by this final season and it is getting dire

[billconrad]

The Lies We Tell

    Humans are odd creatures, and deception is deep within our core. When we are sad, we mask our feelings with happiness but do not allow ourselves to become too happy. When we are rich, we tell everybody we are poor and then buy fancy cars. When angry, we pretend to be satisfied or overreact to get our point across.

    Our entertainment is full of bold lies, like the movie Star Wars. “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Of course, we accept Star Wars is fiction, and viewers buy into the lie. They even have Star Wars themed weddings, clothing, YouTube channels, parties, and religions.

    We even lie to ourselves with a pep talk. “Hey, losing that job is just a setback.” Or a bold-faced deception. “My brother deserved to get hit.”

    Why do we lie? There are hundreds of reasons that range from minor personality faults to a full-blown psychopath. From harmless entertainment to a grifting career. Is it wrong to lie? Of course, we consider some lies “socially acceptable.” The movie Star Wars is “accepted fiction of the highest caliber.”

    A big part of our minds seems to contain a built-in lie generator that should improve our day. “Hey, Sam, what did you do last night?” “I went to a restaurant with some friends.” Sam actually sat at home and watched television alone. He lied to feel better about his life, and the lie gave him something to talk about. When further questioned, Sam invented more lies about the restaurant, including the girl he met. Soon, Sam created an entirely fictitious evening backstory. What is going on? The lie made Sam feel better and entertained the person he spoke with. All good things. Right?

    Of course, there are consequences to Sam’s lie. Sam now must remember the lie, which does not come naturally because the event never happened. Sam’s friends might find out about the lie and get angry about being lied to. The lie will continue to spread and entangle his life.

    Is Sam proud of his lie? At first, he enjoyed lying, but now he regrets it. Will Sam lie next week about a different restaurant?

    There is another class of liars. The people who truly believe the lie. For example, the flat earth society uses any means to keep its lie alive, including deception, corruption, and violence. One could explain this class of people with psychology, but these people know that the lie is a lie, yet they still believe.

    Where did all this lying start? As children, we did not have much going on because our parents made all the decisions, but there was freedom on the playground. There, we met our friends, and together, we embellished. Perhaps we lied, rebelled, or entertained our friends. Lying is a skill that gets better with age. Most people grow out of bold lying and limit their half-truths to a minimum. Some people embrace lying and take it to impressive levels.

    What about a fiction writer? In a way, they lie all day long and put a disclaimer on their work to show fiction. Yet, some try hard to deceive people, and others cannot differentiate between them.

    It is easy to write a lie. “Sam told his friend that he went to a restaurant.” The truth is that I do not know anybody named Sam. Now, let’s go a little further. “The vampire walked into the room.” There have never been vampires, and there never will be. However, that simple statement is entirely acceptable. Readers know there are no vampires, but they agreed in advance to be entertained. So, they accept this non-truth.

    Is it ethical to be a fiction writer? Or are they simply liars? I suppose the ethical questions can be answered by how the work presentation. If a writer fully acknowledges the fictitious aspect and does not pass their work off as real, then they act ethically. And their readers are ethical because they want to be entertained and accept a lie. Also, let us not forget that the early rocket pioneers dreamed of going to space just like their comic books.

    What about me? Of course, I am guilty of lying to others and myself. I regret any harm that my lies have caused but embrace my mental fantasy world. I want to think I have come up with some creative plots with this “lie generator.” Still, I do my best to be an honest person. Or am I lying now? It is hard to say because the thing that invents the lies is telling me not to lie about lying. Bummer.

    You’re the best -Bill

    March 09, 2024

    Hey book lovers, I published four. Please check them out:

    Interviewing Immortality. A dramatic first-person psychological thriller that weaves a tale of intrigue, suspense, and self-confrontation.

    Pushed to the Edge of Survival. A drama, romance, and science fiction story about two unlikely people surviving a shipwreck and living with the consequences.

    Cable Ties. A slow-burn political thriller that reflects the realities of modern intelligence, law enforcement, department cooperation, and international politics.

    Saving Immortality. Continuing in the first-person psychological thriller genre, James Kimble searches for his former captor to answer his life’s questions.

    These books are available in soft-cover on Amazon and eBook format everywhere.

[the-firebird69]

I have to tell you I was standing up and trying to put him down and there's a lot of them have friends have warning me cuz it sounds like there's a lot of them cuz they can have me say stuff and usually people can't and I did listen and there's not much I can do so when it comes time for people to face them you'll see that they're despicable losers like he says falls him around like this Love struck freaking dog exposes what they're doing tells him then of losing okay these Star Trek Star wars ships or whatever they are they're not the best ships in the universe the Black ships are better by far and if they have a lot of them we'd be toast The shield is kind of cheesy and stuff like that but really the empire is pretty big but now it's going to be split and with us and what kind of at all for real our position but we didn't fight these guys are definitely going to fight him it's going to be a war you can see it too and some of the Star wars movies that the ships are firing at each other and their empire ships it doesn't make any sense then you see some rebels in them and you get it and really I was trying to take over but his losers ruin it the empire is most likely going to take the ships and their fleet will overpower the foreigners and he says that's not good but the clone Army is still around and alive and kicking and has huge ships below and has huge ships above and it has and it has also planet toys those not easy targets in the empire has a lot of worries including the foreign fleet and I do understand that so I'm down to half and I can't stand them and I'm going to start obliterating them and I needed this and I know it and I couldn't get you to do it and then this a****** started telling on him and it's not going to do him any good I can't stand him he's so freaking dumb you should have just let it ride trying to read my Lord you got a big mouth you have a big mouth and you're a loser John remillard you're a loser you belong in prison why would you tell him and yourself

Stan

I ran it because I'm ending up with nothing out of that large powerful fleet of yours not the small ships I had like 200,000 and there are about 20 million and that was the first fleet the second fleet is much bigger and there's like 200 million ships and I have like 20 million of those so what can I do with that but nothing just going to come and take it one day and I got pummeled yesterday so I understand what you're saying but look at it from my point of view I don't have anything to defend myself with that's out here railing away on him it's my mistake and I lost the last stuff and I probably lost my shifts I lost today it's actually true I shouldn't have sat here doing it but I don't think anybody else could break away either and they're saying that's not true but I don't think so it's not that stupid house fighting each other to being a retard house and he says it's a long range plan and it reads that way and I understand what he's saying he's still pissed off cuz I'm sitting here bothering him all day long it is stupid and we're bums around this on the sidewalk sitting there he doesn't hang out with us he won't go over there doesn't want to doesn't want to be labeled as a bum she goes and sits down and has a snack talks politely to people and is seen talking to his phone the whole time with intelligent words it's impossibly different we're playing our music loud drinking smoking yelling at people fishing we're not supposed to and being a general nuisance and really we don't do anything all day and he's right we should be out of the way and we won't leave now we don't have a place to go to this kind of sucks it's getting worse so I still have the empire ships and I don't know what to do he says go reclaim your Island so you're not a nuisance and get the f*** out of here so I might do that

John remillard

What an a****** he's going to take my shifts and go to the island and lose them to Tommy a and what you say is Tommy a break him out for me. So I see and yeah he needs to leave this is a nuisance that you are a piece of crap how can you really say it you're a piece of s*** you won't let me fix the house you're mean to him from day one and you're a loser and lost stuff because of it he says it too he started losing we started d****** with them man you're a f****** moron and people are making you do it well that's what you're doing you're doing moronic s***

Stan

Okay so I see it what can I do about it I have to think about it no get the f*** out of here they're saying that I get that I probably should I'm thinking about it so going on and all I do is lose stuff so I'm sitting here being a dick let's go down there and find those necromancer ships I'm supposed to be down there some of them do is looking right at one so I guess I will it's another tool too

Trump

[askadvancewars]

2014 - AW Zine

It could be I’m getting sick and I may regret this when I wake up but I can’t stop thinking about it

Though maybe people will be tired after the secret santa and valetine stuff 

(yeah it won’t be a fanbook just by me who’d want that

I’m hoping for a for-fans-by-fans submission pdf fanbook  kinda deal)

Nothing really came out of this, unsurprisingly.

I think I just really wanted to an Advance Wars fanbook but the best I could do was make one of myself.

Here’s a post I wrote back then which is the context of some pics I repost

While I still try to work out how to put together a pdf thing, just been thinking about guidelines

I really want this to come as accessible and not intimidating to submit because people submitting is great and people showing their love is super series through art

but I’d also like it to look nice, like quality-wise, as in you open it up and the quality of the art doesn’t like junk, as it happened when I tried

Also, I don’t want anybody to feel their art isn’t ‘good enough’ because the plan is to make expression of love for the series 

I’ve been tossing ideas, like should there be a theme or not? In general, I’d like to be the general theme of ‘What AW means/meant to you’/'What you love the most about the series’.

If there is a particular theme, I’d still want it to be open-ended enough for the artist’s interpretation

I would want to it be mostly new art made for the book but also open to old art they might want to showcase?

Right now the ideas I like best are 

COLORS

-depending how many people sign up, they get assigned a color and draw around that (maybe there would be four people and the colors split up, one might get black and yellow so they’d make a black page and a yellow page, the other might be get orange and blue)

DRAW ALL THE COS

-depending again how many people sign up, they get a random draw of COs to draw so everyone will draw everyone else, could be as simple as just drawing heads or stick figures or as elaborate as making a whole comic

Ah, but the Days of Ruin COs are always welcome which is why I always make it a point to include them in the guidelines.

Nobody seems to request, haha. (I probably will if this ever comes to pass, them and Super Famicom Wars peeps)

Other ideas are Seasons (particular Summer) and Food

But then I circle back to idea that these might be needlessly complicated and might work against me when crunch time comes around because the keywords are 'Advance Wars’ and 'for fun’

not that kind of fun

Even with willing participants, a thriving fandom, and no reward or gain other than a showing of love for a series, a fanbook would need a lot of work.

I did making my own fanbook so maybe “nothing” isn’t exactly the right word for it. But as someone who did not know what I was doing with anything…doing it all by myself? It obviously wasn’t very good.

I ended up putting everything on my askadvancewars a couple of years back.

The theme I went with was: draw every Advance Wars Classic COs once/sorted by faction+ Infantry guys

I called it Jake Wars because of course I did

I still really like that the divider I chose was having each nation’s soldier playing a game system where a Wars game appeared (Orange Star playing on a GBA SP, Blue Moon on the DS, etc) before introducing their group…except for Black Hole’s. Yeah, I ran pretty much of steam out that one.

I still really like this one of them playing on the GameCube. Ironically, the only Wars game on the platform wasn’t made by Intelligent Systems and the one I don’t know, haven’t played and don’t talk about ever.