#GIVE ME YOUR BACKSTORY

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe Jane Austen's real genius was that, unlike other authors at the time, she didn't have long sections where characters share their backstory. Or rather, when she did it, she set it up like a mystery so we'd want to know the backstory.

Instead of having a character be like, "Here's three chapters about my life," soon after showing up in the novel, she'd sprinkle little clues through the story that make us wonder, "What's Colonel Brandon's deal?" and then closer to the end of the story, Colonel Brandon would tell us what his deal was. We'd wonder "Why does Mr. Darcy do all those horrible things?" and then he'd give an explanation that includes a lot of backstory.

And these infodumps always come in response to significant moments of the story. She'd engage our minds and our emotions and then give us the infodump at a point when we care about the information it contains. Compared to some other authors (even some that came long after) it seems like a significant innovation.

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[kacievvbbbb]

Honestly despite my feelings about how the last arc of MHA went down I really love Deku and his story.

I just feel like a lot of the time we get these protagonists whose whole philosophy is it doesn’t matter what you were born as everyone can achieve greatness. But then the series goes on and it turns out that actually it DOES matter because the protagonist has this really great lineage and these really great powers you can only have through birth they were actually born born, predestined if you will, to do this.

But MHA actually sticks to its guns. Midoriya wasn’t revealed to have some great connection to all might that the universe had put in place. He wasn’t defended from some great lineage that makes him uniquely suited to this. Hell All for one didn’t even turn out to be his father, there was no hidden powerful quirk he was always meant to have. He was just Midoriya Izuku a boy who was in the right place at the right time and simply decided to act while the world did nothing. And that’s what really made him a hero.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I believe him a bit more when he goes anybody can be a hero if you just decide to act

[lycheefruiit]

Fit: I don't remember if we ever had this conversation Foolish, do you remember much before you came to the island?

Foosh: Mmm, not really

Fit: I mean- haven't you ever wondered like, what you were doing before you came here..?

Foosh: Mmm, not really

[un-pearable]

as true as the jokes about “everyone wants to rewrite ninjago” are i feel like smthn people forget when complaining about the inconsistencies of the show is that…. it wasn’t planned? it’s not like most other animated shows lately - it didn’t start with a deeply fleshed out world or a meticulously designed pitch bible with grandiose plans for a long-term story or character arcs. the ninja don’t originally get their powers from heredity because they weren’t hereditary powers yet. the magic system doesn’t make sense bc they literally just made it up as they went! they go back and forth on stuff like whether non-elementals can learn spinjitzu bc it’s a collaborative piece of media made by people with vastly different levels of control over the story, the animation, the sets, etc. that varied over the course of the series. it’s totally understandable and exciting to see so many people reworking the early stuff with the lore and logic later seasons introduced but i personally feel that… if you’re doing that. you need to understand why the show is like that instead of writing it off as being bad and shitty. it was working with what it had. it’s only what it is now because of that awkward troubleshooting phase, not in spite of it

[atqh16]

My beef with Mu Qing can be summed up into “bruh you’re 800 years old. Do some self reflection and get your head out of your ass”

[cable-salamder]

The “hello _ from _” meme but it’s Akita from Ninjago and Wolf from Kipo. After they say their hellos Akita turns into a wolf and Wolf gets ready to kill her.

(Kipo and Lloyd have to come in and stop their respective dumbasses.)

[doodlejoltik]

my favourite writing device is having an un-Rei-liable narrator

[tennessoui]

On the subject of mer-angst, what if Anakin returns to the sea just as Obi-wan leaves it behind. They both choose to give everything up to be together but due to poor communication it’s another missed connection.

omg no this was literally the first premise i had when i was like i'm gonna do a mermay fic for may this year - originally i was like ok padmé and anakin fall in love and padmé is the mermaid and anakin is the human and they both get it into their heads to join their beloved so padmé becomes human and anakin becomes mer because they don't actually talk to each other very well at all

and the sea witch says no takesie backsies so they're heartbroken and stranded on opposite sides of the tide and obi-wan who is padmé's friend and advisor takes care of anakin at padmé's request because even though he thinks she's a fool, he's still fond of her

and then anakin and obi-wan fall in love and padmé falls in love with being human and probably becomes a queen all over again on the land lol and both anakin and padmé realize that what they loved most about each other was the life the other lived and not actually the person so there's no betrayal and obi-wan and anakin get to go off and do as many cliche silly mermaid things as they want

[spinningchipfreak]

made this because i swear to god i want their backstory and angst camodiel give me it now grrrr /hj

also i think they would be friends at first but then chalice would become greedy about that whole ''immortality'' stuff and she would slowly push gabe away and yeah- poor gabby. fell in love with a hot warrior lady (cant blame him tho :3) (also their relationship would def be onesided cause i just think that for chalice only her immortality would be important at some point)

[licollisa]

And this includes artists who made their AUs centered around a sans or papyrus.

[tacagen]

xenophobic fucker my beloved. who else would take a reasonable and even noble 'we must prepare to face any alien threat and prevent whatever happened to me from happening to others' takeaway from his traumatic life events and somewhere along the way straight up make it into 'I HAVE TO MAKE A SUPERIOR HUMAN RACE BASED ON MUTATED RAT GENES AND MY APPEARANCE, INFILTRATE THEM INTO THE HUMANKIND AND IF THEY KILL 57% OF IT WHILE SEARCHING FOR MUTANTS/ALIENS IN HIDE THEN SO BE IT, THAT WOULD ACTUALLY BE A HEALTHY OUTCOME FOR EARTH.'

[editor-the-benjamin]

GNAWING AT THE BARS OF MY ENCLOSURE I AM FEELING A LOT OF EMOTIONS AT A RAPID RATE

[doodlebeeberry]

what implications do u think the amelia investigations episode (possibly) being last has......

thinking about it im not sure implications is the word i was really looking for, rather i think theres like. a particular weight, to me, in placing her episode as the last one (presuming, of course, that there are only 5 episodes in investigations like is generally whats being assumed. for all we know though there could be more than that but thats the assumption im working off of)

ive always read the lack of any particularly tangible details about her pre-plane life, let alone the lake of an actual disappearance scene for her, as a means of further alienating her from her previous life. It drives in this wedge between Amelia and Scenty, such that even though shes probably the most vocal (at least throughout s1) about wanting to go home, her desire is countered by the fact that pretty much her entire existence in the show is defined by exclusively her time on the plane. The lack of a background for her (as absolutely crazy as it drives me) does play a pretty notable role in how her relationship to earth and the plane and herself are laid out.

This, in my mind, creates a bit of an interesting situation for investigations to play with. seemingly, investigations kinda requires an exploration into everyone's pre-plane lives, a certain insight into their lives that amelia just doesnt have. so, unless they do something a bit radical in the presentation of that episode in particular, youd have to explore her old life on some level without undermining the dynamic with it that we already have. I guess the most obvious answer is that it wont be amelia telling her own story to the audience. We wont be hearing her explain or be in her perspective, we'll be hearing from (presumably) garret. Its a story about her that isnt her story to tell. even when we do finally get to see it, her life, her disappearance isnt hers. not really. and i think placing it last in the sequence, the final mystery to unravel, the hardest answer to get, implies at the very least an acknowledgement of that.

but i do have a degree in Reading Into Things so like. who knows. maybe thats just what i want

[puppyeared]

i feel shy talking here when i dont have anything worth sharing but i cant help feeling like ive said things in the tags that could be brought up in court

[theygender]

I've got too many games I want to play and not enough free time 😭 I still need to finish my BG3 playthrough but since Endless Ocean: Luminous came out I've been playing a lot of that instead. Also just got back into Wizard101 last night. Started playing House Flipper again last weekend. Still need to finish BOTW so I can start a TOTK playthrough and finish Pokemon Shield so I can start on Pokemon Violet. I've been fighting off the urge to start up a new Skyrim playthrough for weeks. My brother just told me that Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is getting ported to the Switch. And now I'm suddenly feeling inspired to replay DAI... And throughout all of this I'm also playing the hell out of DragonVale on my phone. Someone just pay me to play video games all day please