#I got into genuinely writing fanfiction because of it I started drawing more seriously even tho dm taught me how to draw basically | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dracothedeatheatingcupcake-ao3 · 1 year ago

Note

slides into your inbox

hi i uh. drank a sinister potion (dr. pepper) on the way to school this morning and the problem with perfection filled my head for the fiftieth time so. i'm here now. soooo uh, warning for a very crazy caffeine induced audhd rant. 👍

i just like.... kinda wanna let u know how much this fic means to me. like fr. like seriously. it means a lot to me. we've been mutuals for a while so i feel like now's def a good time (and a long time coming lmao)

iirc i found ur fic when i was in the danganronpa trenches in like, 2021/2022 i think? it was summer and i had nothing better to do with my free time and i was super bored and ishimondo was my personality and i found it while going thru ao3 and was like "yeah. this sounds cool"

and i did NOT know what i was getting into let me tell you. adored the writing really fast. ur skill level actually blew me the fuck away like. instantly. all the characters were incredibly in character, everything was so detailed and i LOVED the fact that you made your writing very emotion driven. like you wrote a lot with like, exaggerated punctuation and pauses and spaces and stuff that i rarely ever see but i feel like your writing was like, so much better for that??? its something i've started to use in my writing because it just draws you in so much and just. puts you into their shoes almost instantly. like it sounds like you're in their head. like i think like that (got that narrator brain in me) and it was just so cool to see someone write like that. got a lot of good moments

and i honest to god binged that fic because it had me by a chokehold. like i'm talking i barely got sleep because i was so excited to read the next chapter the next day that my body would wake me up earlier. and i'd pull it out and binge the next chapter. and when i got to a point where the chapters where still being updated, i remember checking like. every sunday night or so every week to see if it got updated. so many cliffhangers that i was not normal about..........

and i recommended it to EVERYONE i knew that was into danganronpa. like i did not care if they usually read fanfiction or not i would sit there and go on infodump rants about this gay fanfiction i found on the gay fanfiction site and ik i confused them but like. that was how good it was to me. felt like it was a real book. and not only that i honest to god felt like i was reading about me.

like the way you wrote taka meant and continues to mean so much to me to this fucking day because i rarely ever see characters that are like me, at least in an honest to god way. and i was already connected to taka and loved him but i think you made him feel like an extension of me in a way and it just like. idk. it spoke to me man. ik i sound dramatic but it did.

like an autistic queer kid with a strict parent being thrown into so many situations where you just automatically assume everyone else is watching you, judging you, based on past trauma and experiences and just. at the same time so emotional and passionate and just genuine for lack of a better term. and the panic attacks that were written i actually almost had some during reading it because i felt it. that felt like me honest to god (not a bad thing btw!!! i am ok!! but that's a compliment because that's how accurate it was!!)

and during a time where i was dating people who just. idk its hard to explain. i knew they cared about me but there were so many times where there were disconnects. sexuality and gender (gender's not really a part of the story ik but yk what i mean) was a big one. and i felt how he would feel when mondo wasn't exactly the best when it came to his behaviors and expressions of love.

and now i'm with someone who is like. mondo at all his best moments. and even when he matches mondo's lower ones it feels like, there's more times where we can do what they did in the fic and work through it. be there for each other because even if we're both fucked up yk we can like. work through it. and that's so cool honestly?? its not transactional, it means something. i've felt both sides and it's so. crazy to me. it's just wild.

and while i didn't read a lot of it (mental health was NOT in a space where i could i'm gonna be so real) the other installment, the one where mondo comes over to taka's house and they gotta hide and stuff? i've felt that. god i've felt that. my current boyfriend (also a trans man) and i have had so many times where we've had to act as "friends" and hide our romantic gestures and being so deathly afraid of getting caught yk?

idk this fic made me feel seen, and i wonder if there's like... anyone else that feels that way. idk i feel like their definitely is. and i just kinda wanna like. thank you for writing something that just. made me feel heard in a time when i really really needed it. even if we didn't know each other it felt so wild to have a stranger sit there and give me and indirect hug and let me know that i am not the only guy struggling out there with this stuff. it's changed the way i view myself and how i view the world and it's so cool to me that even fanfiction of all things can do that. that's nuts man. you did that and i really wanna emphasize that you should be proud of that. that's so cool. you're writing is so fucking cool man.

and also another thing i. love. that you also wrote about sex being a form of like. expressing love for some people. i am demisexual so like. seeing a character that seemed to also exhibit that and really only feel and have that strong attraction to someone they love romantically and have a connection with, and do it to let the other person know they love them. it's like. that's cool. that's so cool. i'm shaking you that's so cool /pos

and while i'm not fixated on dr right now (as you can. probably tell. (btw obligatory "watch lego monkie kid but also you do not have to i just wanna let you know its cool" plug because of Tha Autism(tm)), and while my comic i was going to make is on a very long hiatus bc adhd is beating the shit out of me, i really want you to know how much i appreciate this fic and how much it just. lives in my brain. how much it makes me emotional to this day because it spoke to me; some random dude who was just getting out of high school who fucking needed that really really bad. and also i want you to know how excited i was when we become mutuals and i'm really really lucky to have someone so cool as my mutual, and you've become even cooler in my brain now that we're kinda yk. in a vaguely similar circle.

anyways i appreciate you so much!!!! and even if we're in different fandoms and stuff, and even if tpwp is also not being continued/on a hiatus i still appreciate what you did with it, and what you do now. don't understand all the fandoms you post but i got that respect for it. i'm in the corner with pom poms cheering u on.

so um. yeah! that was long. but i'm hyped up on caffeine and neurodivergent so ujhm. yea. hopefully this made sense lmao

~ your very much not normal mutual tyler 👍

Okay, sorry for the late response, I saw this when I got up this morning and needed the day to figure how to respond because this was. So much (in a good way I promise!!!!)

So, first of all, THANK YOU FOR THIS!! It's easy as a fic writer to feel discouraged with your writing, or to feel like you're not as "good" as other people, and it's things like this that remind me that whether or not I'm a "good writer," what I write does matter to people. And that's just... really special to me, so thank you for writing this all. It means so much to me.

I'm glad you like the dramatic pauses and the way I write, though! When I was younger, I always tried to limit doing that sort of thing, since I knew it wasn't considered "good" or "proper" writing. But with TPWP I just... decided to let myself write how I wanted to write and not think too much about it. I wrote TPWP kind of how I think, because I wanted it to feel like it was Taka's thoughts and emotions, even if it wasn't in first person. And I'm really glad that came across!

I've always been really big into psychology and introspection, which is one of the main reasons I write about things like that a lot. I like to get into characters heads and try to figure them out. See what they'd be like if this thing happened, or if this thing hadn't happened, etc. I write about struggles, because I struggled as a kid, but in more quiet ways. I mean, all things considered I had a good life. supportive, loving parents and older brother, good grades, people generally liked me and I never got in trouble. But I was so determined to do well that I psyched myself out. I was terrified of disappointing people and losing what I had, and I crumbled in middle and high school. Luckily I had good parents so I was able to stumble through it, but it always left me feeling isolated, since I could never articulate why I felt so off inside. It wasn't until I took an "abnormal psych" class in college that I even realized I had intense anxiety.

All of this to say that I'm glad I was able to resonate with you through my writing. I could never find the words to articulate myself when I was younger, so I took to writing to try and connect with people, to get a message across. Most of my stories have some form of "moral" or "lesson" that I'm trying to get across, lessons that I had to learn myself growing up. TPWP's was that perfection is impossible and that you have to learn to accept yourself for who you are. Honestly, I put the most of myself into Taka, since while I never had a distant parental figure who wanted me to be absolutely perfect, I was kinda that figure to myself. I wanted so badly to be "perfect" and "the favorite" and when I wasn't, I freaked out. I shut down and couldn't even explain to my parents why. So, with TPWP, I wanted to let other people know that it's okay to just... be you.

I don't know if any of this is making any sense, sorry. I had a long day at work and my head is a bit jumbled. Mostly just... thanks for writing this. Things have been tough lately between school and work, and it's nice to be reminded that my stories do matter to people. I never wanted to be a professional writer, but I did always want to write something that made someone, somewhere, feel something. Hopefully something good, something cathartic.

Oh, and as for the sex thing... that was honestly unintended, ha. But I'm Ace, so to me, that's what sex is. Or what it should be. A way to connect emotionally with your partner above all else. Honestly, the only reason I wrote sex into TPWP was to explore the way it would interact with their friendship, not to be like... sexual, ha. Glad you liked how I wrote it!

Anyway, thanks again for writing this!! And I'm glad we're mutuals too! Yeah, I am part of some interesting fandoms on my main blog, but I'm glad it's not too off-putting, ha. I'll try and check out that show some day, though! I don't have a lot of emotional energy to get into a new show at the moment (as I'm sure some people can understand, since starting a new fandom can be a lot at times), but maybe once (IF) things calm down for me I'll take a look! I have seen a lot of posts about the monkie kid show, not just from you, so it's something I might check out one of these days. I'm mostly waiting for Our Flag Means Death season 2 to air tomorrow so I can get washed away into Pirate Town for the next month or so, while the episodes release. 😅😅😅

#Ask answers #Personal post #Sorry for rambling.#I hope there aren't any typos but I'm too tired to read through it so hope it makes sense!

10 notes · View notes

zet-sway · 3 years ago

Text

@the-wip-project day 35:

I don't know what today's question is but I gotta write a wall of text about what happened last night because holy shit

I was on the verge of falling asleep and, like I usually do, I decided to hunt for some spicy fanfics to read on my phone. I found one.

All my posts are long but this one is real fucking long. CW for touching on dub-con and injury mentioned in the type of context it probably shouldn't be.

It's time for me to admit that not only am I a oneshot writer, I'm also a oneshot reader. I am drawn to short fanfics. If I click on a chaptered fic, it's (usually) because it's rated E for smut and I'll go in with every intention of skimming it for the spicy bits. I'm not proud of this. I've avoided saying this for years because I don't want to disappoint people who work hard on their very long and well thought out chaptered stories. I have a short attention span, and I know what I want.

But anyway, last night I clicked on a fic with 5 chapters and some amount of words, around 30k? Long, by my standards, but I was tired and I just wanted something to read while I dozed off.

This particular fic hooked me in, though. I still skimmed it, but the writing was so unique in a way that made me writhe with writer's envy and admiration. Whoever wrote this had their own language - nothing borrowed - their own vision.

I guess I should tell the good people who read my posts (ya'll, seriously, thank you) that the fic in topic is called Fault Lines by Recidiva on AO3. I would link to it but uhhhh I may be using my work PC for "extracurricular purposes" right this moment ^^; so maybe when I get home I'll remember to add it.

I skimmed it - like I said above - for the spicy parts. It generally follows the plot of Bioware's canon. Thane begins as possessive and manipulative, likely uncomfortably close to dub-con for a lot of people. He kisses her and knows full well that his kiss will make her willing but intoxicated, and how he will use that to fulfil himself. But as the story progresses, he falls in love. Their relationship is what I'll call "edgy." Both of them are renegades. There's a scene where they get down in the shuttle after a fight and they're both still injured and it borders on downright unrealistic but fuck it, it's fanfic and I bought it. However their relationship develops a certain heart-wrenching tenderness. She asks him what Siha means over and over again, and eventually tells him she thinks "bitch" when he says it. But in that moment they have a playful banter, he knows full well she's probably already looked it up on the extranet, and they fall into bed together. The smut is mind-boggling.

By the time it gets to Shepard's arrest, he's taken up a place on Earth and visits her, breaks into her house arrest. There's a scene where they see each other for the first time in a while, she tells him how much she's missed his mouth and how it's not right how bad she wants him, and wants him bad enough to smother him with affection. She says something to the effect of "if you're looking to die, I'd volunteer to be the cause," implying that her lust is powerful enough to endanger his life. And it was at this moment I realized I fucked up.

It's established that I live in my own headcanon and I'm not burdened with considering the end of Thane's life as part of my fics. And the suspension of disbelief was such that I forgot he doesn't make it. So at this moment in the fic, chapter 4 out of 5, I realized "Oh shit this isn't going to have a happy ending." I skipped to the end right away, I wanted to confirm my fears.

In their final exchange, she asks him to lie to her - something that's repeated in other chapters of the story. I forget what he says, I was reading desperately, but he asks her in return to tell him something true. She kisses him and tells him she loves him, and he breathes his last breath with the lingering tingle of their kiss to carry him to the other side.

I was so entrenched in the depth of their relationship up to that point. The level of fathomless love the author conveyed, unlike anything I've ever managed to write before, but more realistic to my own understanding of love as I've experienced it. Not because they're renegades, but just the selflessness with which they feel, communicate, banter, and make love.

When I read that last paragraph, something inside me broke. That sounds dramatic but that's honestly how I would describe it. It felt like waking up from a night terror, when you bolt up in bed from a dream so bad you immediately get up even if it's 4am because nothing feels real and you're so terrified you have to get up and do something - literally anything to take your mind off it, to ease you back into reality. I put my phone down and stared into the darkness of my bedroom and told myself "it's just a fanfic, no need to get upset." And then I started to cry and I didn't stop for 30 minutes.

My husband was downstairs watching Bohemian Rhapsody and I went down there and wrapped myself around him so tight and cried. Bless this man, from the bottom of my heart - bless him - for his unfathomable kindness. I felt like a fucking fool because I was crying over fanfiction but he paused his movie and just listened while I tried to articulate how it wasn't exactly about the character death, or the characters at all, it was just the writing and how it wormed into my brain so convincingly. I felt the loss like it was my own loss. I am terrified of losing my husband. So many feelings coalesced and I realized one day I may be in that situation, kissing the man I love goodbye for the last time, never to hold him again. I'm at work right now and I'm tearing up because it's so hard.

I tip my hat to the author, but I genuinely wished I hadn't read that fanfic. And isn't it kind of funny after that grandstand I took yesterday about not wanting to write the pain of loss and grief, that I ended up reading it instead and probably fucking myself up just as badly, if not worse, than if I had tried to write it myself?

It gets worse, too. Because it got me thinking about my own writing, and how I could never hope to achieve what that author did. So I sat there crying out my painfeelings while simultaneously feeling like a shit writer and like nothing I put out matters. I got up from the couch, sat down at my PC and picked up where I left off in the Omega DLC in ME3 because video games are great for taking the mind off things. It didn't exactly help with the intensity I'd hoped for, but I managed to fall asleep, by 3am.

Fast forward to this morning. I dragged my sorry ass out of bed 4 hours later and drove to work. By some fucking miracle, no one is here right now except our field director. And I'm stewing in how this one fic really fucked me up bad, reconsidering everything. I feel like I've been put in my place.

So what changed?

Yesterday I posted about how I'm struggling to write a plotline. I know what happens, but I'm not interested in the little bits that tie it together. I want to write the romance. I think there's a way to write the plot and the romance at the same time, but it's damn hard.

I started doing this because I wanted to grow my skills as a writer, and I knew it might be more than I could chew. I'm at that moment now where I'm about ready to give up.

Even if I felt like a shit writer last night (and still kinda do this morning), I know that the stuff I've put out has value. We can't all write these epically tragic smut-romance-renegades-to-lovers tales, we'd all be sad all the damn time. There's a time and a place and - I would argue - even a need for lighterhearted fic out there. There are really no rules. I'm confident in what I know how to do.

But the plot. Fuck it, man. I think maybe I'm trying too hard to be something I'm not. I'm trying really hard to write like other people. I may have mentioned before that I saw a post about how many artists spend their time pining for the skills of others, thinking "wow, when I can draw like that, I'll have made it as an artist." That same post cautioned against this, basically saying you already have your own unique style, it's just harder to see through the lens of your own eyeballs. It's fine to challenge yourself but try to acknowledge what you do that sets you apart already. I feel like I have that something - maybe not to the extent that I wish, but I have something.

So what's the point of the plot? Why do I need to tell my readers how I cured Keprals? I'm asking myself important questions here. I like to think I've come up with ideas that no one else has, but as I said above, I don't read a lot of chaptered fics. I very well may have come to the same ideas as other writers and I'm not even aware of it. I don't know if my ideas are unique but I still arrived at them all by myself.

The challenge here - the thing I'm struggling so much with - is how to put them together with the same elegance of my fellow writers. I'm looking at you, shrios fam (yeah I'm calling you that, yall know who you are). I know I can write words, but it's like I have a bunch of pieces from completely different jigsaw puzzles and I'm struggling to make a new picture out of them. I struggle with the transitions between them.

The point here is I have to find my own way. And I have to stop taking myself so seriously. In fact this level of "seriousness" is one of the things that got me into so much angst over World of Warcraft over the last two years. At least I know how to recognize it.

I have to find my own way. I have my own things that are worth sharing. The author I read last night had a language all their own, and I have a language all my own too. Their wordplay was actually more choppy than I would ever write. I've talked before about how I'm scared of starting too many sentences with pronouns, how I maybe write too many run-on sentences, whatever. This author did that with reckless abandon. It worked for them. So if they can make that shit work, I can make my own shit work.

I have to find my own way.

My most current WIP is Thane and Shepard's first time. I've been working on it pretty nonchalantly because I hadn't intended to publish it until I built up to it. It takes place further into my timeline, and it would probably ruin the point of a slow burn if I put it out there now. There are some really memorably moments in this WIP, and there are other moments that need to be smoothed over as well. I never knew what I'd really imagined for their first time but I think I've mostly developed something that's unique in its own right, and I think will be fun for people to read.

I'm just so fucking torn over what to do with it. I feel guilty for working on it. I should be writing "other shit" leading up to it but I don't fucking want to. I actually wrote probably 2-3k words this weekend, which is a pretty staggering amount by my standards. Some of it was for this smutty WIP and some was for something I just threw together, Thane observing Shepard on Horizon and the emotional toll it takes on her. He's seeing her humanity. I don't know if it's worth it to continue but I wrote a lot of it and the words are more precise than usual for a draft, I don't know. I have so much fucking insecurity. Fuck dude. I want to write this longfic, but I don't want to write it. I want to skim to the spicy bits like I always do.

I am wracked with insecurity, of my own making. I know what I can do but I feel compelled to see this idea through. Somehow I have to find my own way.

TLDR I feel like if I don't publish something soon I'm going to burst and I don't even know what the fuck to work on first and fjslfjsojoiejrj

I would be really down for, like, a bunch of hugs and a bowl of ice cream shared over memes and fanservice.

#this post is EXTREMELY fucking long send help #ITT: i read something that probably changed my brain chemistry for a few hours and it's painful #zet vs 100days #i'm just glad to get this off my chest good lord #anyway if people want to send me links to their favorite shrios fluff i would welcome it

20 notes · View notes

fansofvow · 4 years ago

Text

Interview with Eve Golden Woods!

Many of you know who is Eve is. She's a writer and artist, a part of Dreamfeel studios whose beautiful game If Found won Best LGBTQ Narrative and Best LGBTQ Indie game at the first ever Gayming Awards presented by EA games. I am really excited I had the chance to ask Eve some questions about herself, her time at Lovestruck and her creative process.

Congratulations on the two Gayming Awards (Best LGBTQ Narrative, Best LGBTQ Indie Game) for "If Found" from your game studio, Dreamfeel. What was the inspiration behind making the game?

If Found... was a game that emerged out of a collaboration between Llaura McGee, the founder of Dreamfeel, and artist Liadh Young. Liadh's background is as a comic artist, and so when they started working together Llaura had the idea of showing off Liadh's art by making a diary game, and using an erasing mechanic she had previously developed to let the player move through the diary in a fun way. By the time I came on board at the start of 2019, the game had already been in development for a while, so in some ways my work on that game was similar to the work I did for Voltage, because it was taking existing characters and concepts and writing a lot of scripts for them. Unlike Voltage, though, my work for Dreamfeel was a lot more collaborative and I had a lot more creative input. I really enjoy taking something and helping to make it the best version of itself that it can possibly be, but I was also really happy that I got to reflect a lot of my own experiences in If Found. Llaura and I both grew up on the west coast of Ireland, and although If Found... isn't autobiographical for either of us, it was definitely really meaningful to be able to tell a story that reflected our own experiences of growing up as queer teens in a similar kind of environment. Since the game came out we've had fans reach out to us and tell us that they also connected to the experiences of the main characters, and as far as I'm concerned, that makes me feel like I achieved everything I wanted to.

You are a writer and a visual artist. Does one come easier to you than the other?

I used to think of art and writing as talents, and I always felt like my art was at a very mediocre level (that's probably still true, lol). So when I was younger I focused a lot more on writing. It was only later that I started genuinely trying to improve as an artist, but when I did, I think I had a much healthier mindset, and approached it as a skill I could learn with patience and effort. Because of that, even though I still have a lot more confidence in my writing, I find art more fun and relaxing, and I don't stress about it as much.

Did you always know you would follow a creative path?

Kind of? Both my parents are artists, and I grew up surrounded by artists and writers, so it was something that was always very familiar and accessible to me. On the other hand, I didn't exactly have a clear idea of how to make it into a career, or what kind of work would be involved. But there's never been a point in my life where I wasn't doing something creative, even if it was only writing fanfiction.

What did your path to working professionally as a writer/artist look like?

I did a creative writing masters in college, but after that I spent years teaching English as a second language. That was really fun and I got to live abroad, but it was so busy and tiring that I didn't have time to do any writing outside of the occasional fanfic. I only started to take art seriously again when I became interested in games and comics as ways of telling stories. I did some critical writing, which led me to speak at a few local events and get involved in zine fairs. That was how I met Llaura, the director and lead of the Dreamfeel studio, and it's also what gave me the confidence to start applying for actual writing jobs.

Is there any work of art, visual or written, that you look to for inspiration?

So many! I try to read and watch as widely as I can, although there are touchstones I always return to, like the works of Ursula Le Guin and Terry Pratchett. Right now I feel very passionate about the actual play podcast Friends at the Table, which manages to combine really thoughtful worldbuilding and storytelling with cool, fun characters and great action scenes. I'm also reading a book called The Memory Police by Youko Ogawa, which has extremely beautiful prose.

Do you have a favorite piece of your own art, whether it is something you’ve drawn, a screenshot of something you’ve written or something else?

My favourite piece of art is usually whatever I finished most recently (I think that's true for a lot of people). Especially with visual art, once a bit of time has gone by you look back on it and start to notice all your mistakes, which is very annoying. But actually I do still really like the first piece of Fiona fanart I did last year. I managed to use some effects to give it a kind of nineties anime quality that I find really fun, and I think it conveys an emotion pretty effectively. That's always one of the hardest things to predict with visual art, whether the different parts will come together to create the exact mood you're looking for.

I also really like the compass I did for Bycatch. Krissy (@xekstrin) was the one who suggested filling it with fingernails, which was such a good, gross idea! As soon as I heard that I knew it was perfect and that I had to try and draw it.

Many people who read this blog know you as a writer for Lovestruck. When you look back on your time there, what stands out in your mind?

Lovestruck was very important to me when I first started because it was my first ongoing, regular, paid writing work. It gave me a lot of confidence and helped me to get into the habit of writing consistently and rapidly, which is a really useful skill to have. I know I was right to leave when I did, though, because I am just brimming with energy to work on my own projects, and channeling that power into something that you can't control will always end up disappointing you. Also, I made a ton of incredible friends, through Lovestruck itself but then even more so through VOW (@vowtogether), and that is more than worth all the difficult parts.

Is there any character that you would have liked a crack at writing?

Oh gosh, what a fun question! There are so many, but one I do sometimes think about is Axia, just because I know there are a bunch of fans who want her route, and because I had fun writing her as a villain in Zain's route. I can see in my head the shadow of a storyline that takes place after Zain's route is over, where she's in prison and trying to understand how she lost the battle with Zain and MC. I think there's, like, a gap there, where you could see her downfall forcing her to reconsider her assumptions about power, and that could build into a very interesting redemption story. But maybe it's for the best I never got to do that, because I would have wanted full creative control over it, and also I think the story in my head is very different to the sexy, in control, menacing version of Axia that her fans enjoy.

Do you have any upcoming projects you can talk about?

Most of my current work is under NDA, but I will say that I'm doing something very exciting with other VOW members that we should be able to talk about soon(ish). Maybe I can even give a little teaser... It's not a game, but it is something you can read, and my part involves cakes, swamps, and a museum.

Do you have a favorite quote or song lyric?

It's a big long, but there's a section from The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin that has stayed with me ever since I read it:

"For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think."

It's such a profoundly radical way of imagining the world, so different to everything I was raised with, but whenever I think about it I feel like I can see something very beautiful and powerful that I hope to come closer to understanding some day.

And of course, "Solidarity forever, the union makes us strong."

I was a big fan of the show Inside the Actor’s Studio. Host James Lipton asked every single guest the same 10 concluding questions. I’ve picked 3 of them:

-What is your favorite word?

My favourite word: for sound, I like words you can really roll around on your tongue. Chthonic, alabaster, insinuation. For meaning, I think simple words that encapsulate big concepts have a kind of power to them. We use them so often we forget how big they are, how much weight they really have, but they give us the space to imagine new possibilities. Love. Freedom. Revolution.

-What is your least favorite word?

I've heard that "moist" is a lot of people's least favourite word but it doesn't actually bother me. My least favourite word is probably one where I feel like the sound doesn't match the meaning. One of the Irish words for rain is báisteach, which I feel has a much weightier and more onomatopoeic sound than rain. Rain is just very flat and uninteresting.

-What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Oh, so many! I love history, and I think being a historian/archaeologist would be fascinating. Or something that had a physical component to it, like being a potter or a carpenter. I don't think I'd be any good, but I'd love to take the time to learn.

What would be your advice to anyone who wants to pursue a creative career?

All the work you do matters. Even the failed experiments, the things you hate when they're finished. It all helps to make you better. Also, creative career paths are often really unexpected, so chase any opportunity that seems remotely interesting. Don't work for free for anyone who can afford to pay, but work for yourself and put it somewhere. On a blog, twitter, whatever. You'd be amazed how many people get noticed and get offered opportunities because of something they made in their spare time. You'll probably have to work another job for a long time, so don't be hard on yourself if you're too tired to devote much energy to creative work. Try to make art consistently, but don't feel like that has to mean every day. Don't chase after celebrities. Make friends with your peers.

#vowtogether #vow interview #writing #art #lovestruck #dreamfeel #iffound #gayming #gaming #mod atlas

50 notes · View notes

aro-aizawa · 3 years ago

Text

i genuinely think one of the best kinds of fanfic genre is crack. there are just so many LEVELS to it!!! you have the balls to the wall batshit crack where anything could happen and chaos is rampent, and you have crack taken seriously where the premise is slightly bananas and could almost never be a genuine premise but it’s written as if the absurdity of it is irrelevant and you got a very thoughtful wonderful experience.

but those are the very opposite parts on the scale! there are countless variations of them! there’s a slightly silly premise with an approach that seems serious but it has all the humor and lightheartedness of what makes crack fics good; the serious premise treated so lightly and with so much humor that it becomes crack by default; a serious premise treated casually and so unfocused on serious business it’s more about having fun and being silly—

there are so many tiny little differences that i cannot even begin to explain how these variations can’t be lumped together in large neat boxes. it’s like going into a paint shop and seeing hundreds of paint shades on offer, sure you can compare sky blue and teal together and they’re still blue but they’re so different that you can’t just say they’re the same and belong together.

and do not even get me started on how the quality of the writing effects it. a good written crack fic of any micro-genre is LEAGUES more enjoyable than a mediocre written crack fic, because anyone can be silly but as with stand up comedy some people just can’t pull it off well. it’s still gonna be a decent read if they manage to hit the main draw of the micro genre, but it feels so much different to another fic of the same micro genre bc of the quality even if the other one isn’t much better or worse.

tldr: crack is a painfully underrated fanfiction genre and it has so much of a range it’s like the category of fiction and nonfiction for how redundant it is at grouping the fics together

#shut up danni #yes i am reading a crack fic rn and if this is incoherent its bc i’m battling a headache i’ve had for 5+ hours #i didn’t even go into crack ships and how even in a silly fic you could come out of it genuinely shipping it #i have many a ships i partake in because of this exact situation

4 notes · View notes

bundleofyarrow · 4 years ago

Text

requests open!

new milo x reader content appears! hello world, i'm fresh to the pokemon fandom trying out writing fanfiction for the first time. i've started the first few chapters of my milo x reader over at AO3 called A Bundle of Yarrow. i'm also taking requests for general milo x reader imagines or longer scenes that can fit into ABoY's universe. while i will be writing the main storyline, i thought it would be fun to make a part of it collaborative and have other milo x reader fans send in ideas for scenes that fit between chapters. check out the rules page for more!

i'm new to all of this, so people feel free to comment or message me with suggestions. the link to the fic on AO3 is above, but in case you prefer reading on tumblr, below the cut is the first chapter. just a heads up, it starts in leon x reader land but moves into milo x reader as the story progresses.

enjoy!

Chapter 1: Postwick

Galar is a land of hills. Or at least, Postwick is, and it’s just about the only thing you’ve seen since you arrived. Soft curves of verdant green, sometimes tawny gold with a bale of hay or two. There’s a sign around here that says this is a farming town since days of yore, and the near constant whines of Wooloo are determined to never let you forget it. Lying on one such hill, almost completely vertical, you oversee the main road were balls of wool roll where they please. You feel transported, like you’re viewing another planet from some place outside.

The giddy hollering of children and Pokemon at the house not far away pulls you back to earth. A young girl bounds up to you with an anxious-looking blue creature in her arms.

“Look! It’s my new Sobble~ Leon got it for me! Isnt’s he great?”

Your cousin’s bright eyes implore you to sit up, propping yourself on your right arm once you realize one of your legs has fallen asleep.

“He’s adorable Gloria.”

You lean in closer to take a look, you’ve never seen a Pokemon like this before. The Sobble turns his face into Gloria, clearly shy and overwhelmed.

“It looks like he’s already taken to you!”

She looks down and holds him closer, beaming, rocking slightly.

“It’s okay, this is my cousin. That means part of our family!” Gloria turns slightly so her Pokemon can safely peek out at you. “I’m sure he’ll warm up to you too!”

You give the Pokemon your softest smile, and while he doesn’t completely warm up to you, he leans in a little to get a better look at you. Baby steps.

“Oh yeah, I also came here to say that dinner’s ready!”

The sound of sizzling meat and peppers hasn’t escaped your notice, but now the smell entices you to go and socialize with the family neighbors. Gloria shuffles back down the hill towards the fanciest house of Postwick, where the Champion of Galar and his family lives.

You take your time getting up and brushing off the grass from your clothes. A breeze rolled over the hill, reminding you that your Alolan wardrobe is way too thin for Galar’s climate. As you climb down, you see the neighbor boy, Hop, waving skewers at you before turning back to his bunny Pokemon, who kicks up some embers to give the meat a little extra char. You try to put on a smile as your auntie puts food in your hands and introduces you to everyone. It’s hard not too feel awkward, being not only new to this group of people but to this entire region, but you genuinely are looking forward to having the best time you can while you’re here. Eventually the adults get distracted by Hop’s antics, where he ropes in Gloria to do yet another trick with their new Pokemon. You sit down at the table nearby and just watch for a bit.

If you had been distracted, you wouldn’t have noticed the pair of big eyes pop up from the side of the table, topped with green tufts of hair shaped like leaves. You must have had quite the expression of surprise on your face when a little orange hand darted towards your food, because two bigger hands immediately scooped up the trickster before he could make off with your food.

“Now now Grookey, that’s not champion behavior!”

The admittedly cute Pokemon flailed in Leon’s grasp for a bit, shedding some fake tears until he was given a wedge of grilled Mago berry.

“Sorry about that, this little one is quite the handful around food.” He tried to seem stern but you could tell he was more amused. “He didn’t startle you too badly, did he?”

You strangely don’t feel that shy around Leon. It feels like you should be more star-struck, but maybe because this is the first time you even really knew he existed, he came off more as an ordinary guy with a flair for the dramatic. He seemed like a nice guy, wanting to give everyone a little attention, which also made him seem a bit spread thin. But you could see him start to settle as the light faded from the sky and fans stopped coming by to cheer at him.

“Oh not at all, I was just a little surprised! If I wasn’t paying attention, he would have be feasting like a king.”

The Grookey pouts as you let out a light chuckle, taking a finger and lightly rubbing his forehead.

“And have a massive stomachache tomorrow that I would have to deal with!”

Leon says everything with a little bit of a laugh, and his eyes seem like they are permanently smiling. He looks between you and Grookey while seeming in thought.

“You’re staying here in Galar for a while now, yeah? What are your plans?”

You slide over a bit to let Leon sit next to you as he sets Grookey on the table between you. His cape and hair make him seem larger than he is, and talking with him at eye-level feels like talking to Leon, the person not Leon, the Champion.

“I’m not entirely sure to be honest. I just had to…” You’re never sure what to say about your past, and the uncertainty of your future. “…get away for a bit. Maybe start over, find a clean slate.”

The breeze picks up again and you feel the sleeve of your shirt slide a little down your shoulder, exposing some skin. You don’t realize that you should be embarrassed about it until you catch Leon’s gaze eyeing your collarbone and then quickly looking back to the Grookey. It was common to show skin on the hot coasts of the Alolan islands, but as you take a look around, everyone around you is more covered up.

“I’d like a bit of adventure, I think.” You say absent-mindedly as you readjust your top, oblivious to Leon fidgeting a bit.

“Ah, well-” He moves in his seat again, “what do you think of this here Grookey?” Leon rests a hand on his head and lightly rustles it. “I think you two might get along!”

This took you by surprise, the last thing you were expecting was to be offered a foreign Pokemon.

“O-oh really?? But I thought you were going to train him to become a part of your champion team or something?”

He smirked at ‘or something,’ as if entertained by your complete lack of interest in the most popular Galarian sport.

“That was the plan, but you said you wanted some adventure! Can’t get around many places here without a Pokemon. Being a trainer lets you travel a lot here in Galar. Maybe you’ll get to compete in the upcoming Gym Challenge if you’re up for it!” He grinned some more here. “Who knows, maybe you’ll end up facing me in the end. Wouldn’t that be an adventure?”

You laughed a bit, shaking your head but trying to show an appreciative face. “Me? Be a trainer? And a good enough one to face you?? You’re funny.”

Hop has already regaled the crowd at dinner about how excited he is for camping in the Wild Area, hiking through ruins and snow, getting lost in haunted forests. You’ve never been one for the outdoors, and don’t think moving regions would change that.

“That’s kind of you, and he is cute. But that wasn’t the kind of adventure I was thinking of.” You smile at them both. “I appreciate you though!”

Leon seems a little confused at first, but recovers quickly and nods. Eventually the kids come over still hollering over Pokemon, and Hop quickly begins to monologue about his favorite topic: Leon, his brother. Hop drags you inside once he realizes how little you know about Galar’s Gym Challenge, Gloria and Leon trailing behind, with the former happy to be spared from the lecture about the Champion for once. You all found yourselves in Leon’s room, Hop showing you different magazines and eagerly pointing at different pictures of his brother’s most memorable fights. The trophies throughout the house and the weights in his room really do scream Champion. Is there ever a moment when he's not? Eventually Hop decides that Gloria and himself need to look up more information on their new Pokemon, and pulls her away into his room, leaving you and Leon alone.

The Champion, who really just seems like a man rather than a god to you, sheepishly rubs the back of his head and shrugs.

“Sorry about that, once Hop gets going, it’s hard to make him stop.”

He begins to collect all the magazines his brother pulled out and carefully places them back where they belong. It just hits you now how carefully organized everything is, and how little escapes his attention. You notice all the hats neatly arranged around his room, walking up towards the rows of shelves and scanning all the different kinds he owns.

“I like your collection.” You mean that, you’ve always enjoyed window shopping at boutiques and spotting people who took fashion seriously. “If I didn’t just hear everything your brother told me, I’d think you were the Champion of Streetwear.”

His chuckle comes from right behind you, startling you a bit. Turning around, you meet his intense and mischievous gaze.

“Adventure, huh?”

He steps a foot towards you, and you instinctually press back against the dresser behind you. Leon closes the distance between you and meets your lips with his, only making your heart race faster. What is happening?? You melt into the kiss, I mean, this is the Champion we’re talking about here, and go along with his lead. He doesn’t draw it out or take it too far; it wasn’t a sweet kiss but one of intrigue.

Parting just moments away from your lips, he breathes out a “You’re so different, too bad-”

“KIDS? Are you up there!? It’s getting late and time to go home!”

The moment is broken by a yell from your auntie, and the shuffling of feet all over the house makes Leon swiftly give you some space. You’re still a bit flustered, and confused honestly, but you know to shyly smile in these situations.

“Pity we won’t be seeing much of each other, now that challenge season is on.” He takes your hand and guides you off his dresser and towards the threshold of his room. “But I hope you find that thing you’re looking for.”

He winks as Gloria pops her head in and calls for you, and watches her take your hand to pull you away. You wave to Leon, not really knowing what to say.

Outside it is dark, the faintest hints of dusk dropping further behind the hills. Butterfree flutter from tree to tree, and your aunt’s Budew are nestled in the front yard. All you can hear are Gloria's footfalls up towards her house and the thumping of your heart against your chest. Your cousin is quite tuckered out from all the excitement, and you only stay up a little with your auntie with the family’s Munchlax resting in your lap. She asks the usual ‘how are you adjusting’s and ‘do you think you’ll enjoy it here’s, and you begin to think you made a mistake turning down Leon’s offer. Eventually you take Munchlax over to the guest bedroom and nestle into bed, hoping to understand what you’re supposed to do in this new land.

~*~*~*~

The sounds of yelling and Pokemon cries jolts you from your sleep. It takes you a couple moments to realize an organized battle is going on, rather than some emergency.

“How do people get used to battling happening all the time?”

Yawning, you pawed the blankets of the bed until you found the lump that was Munchlax.

“Rise and shine, if I have to wake up, so do you~” Groans of protest shuffled under the covers, only twisting more into a warm cocoon. “Well, don’t blame me if auntie doesn’t prepare you breakfast.”

You hear frantic scrambling as you leave bed and head towards the kitchen, where your aunt is already drinking tea and checking her phone. You exchange usual pleasantries, making toast for yourself and ducking out to take a shower as soon as you could find a way to excuse yourself.

Eventually you find yourself wandering out of the house and into the late-morning air, smelling greenery and hay as usual. You notice a Wooloo hitting itself into a nearby gate, and shrug it off.

Walking down the main path, you see Hop containing a tantrum within himself as he stands over his fainted Scorbunny. It looks like Leon is giving Gloria and Hop a speech of sorts, something about being rivals, and you’re able to pass by with a wave. Leon nods at you with a cordial smile, not at all seeming like a man who kissed you the night before. It seems like in public, he always needs to be the Champion.

Unsure of how you feel about that, you decide to pick a new resting spot, down closer to Route 1.

#milo x reader #pokemon imagines #pokemon sword and shield imagines #a bundle of yarrow #pokemon milo imagines #pokemon swsh imagines #leon x reader #pokemon milo #fanfiction #fic

21 notes · View notes

iam93percentstardust · 4 years ago

Note

I'm bombarding you with those prompts, so I fully understand if you just ignore all those you don't like, lol. Would WinterIronFalcon be an OT3 you're intrested in writing? Some established WinterFalcon with Tony pining helplessly after them, not believeing he could have a chance? With a dash of angst in it? Thank you ♡

There isn’t much angst in this but there is hopeless pining so yay?

Also on ao3 here

“Share Bear, it’s not fair,” Tony whines into the phone.

“What isn’t?” his cousin asks, sounding patient but also kind of amused. He takes the phone away from his ear and squints at it. Is she making fun of him? She probably is, Sharon always makes fun of him. She’s mean like that; he’s pretty sure she gets it from Natasha.

“They’re so fucking gorgeous, I can’t stand it.”

“Oh. Them again. Seriously Tony, didn’t you used to have better taste?”

“Excuse you,” he says, offended. “My taste is perfect.”

“They think arguing is foreplay.”

“It’s bickering! And it’s cute!”

“Gross,” Sharon says cheerfully.

“God hates me,” Tony says dramatically, flinging his hand over his eyes. “That’s why he cursed me to work with two such beautiful humans who are already dating each other.”

“Tony—”

“I know Bucky stays up to date with the fandom,” he continues, going a little quieter. “He’s gotta know that tons of people ship the three of us. But he doesn’t say anything about it. Share Bear, why doesn’t he say anything?”

“Probably because for every person who ships all three of you, there’s twice as many who ship just you and him,” she admits. “I know that if someone were shipping Maria and Nat and ignoring that I even exist, I’d be pretty upset.”

“Yeah,” he says glumly.

“What’re you filming today anyway?” she asks.

“True Crime. We were supposed to be doing an episode of Supernatural at the Odinson Mystery House, you know, over in Norway where the son found out he was adopted and then got super into Norse mythology and supposedly disappeared into a rainbow?”

“Oh yeah, that guy was crazy.”

“Wasn’t,” Tony insist stubbornly. “There are three different eyewitnesses and they all saw the same thing.”

“All three eyewitnesses tested positive for meth.”

“It was trace amounts and ruled irrelevant to the case. Anyway, there’s some sort of blizzard so our flight got canceled. We figured we’d get a jump on this season’s True Crime episodes instead.”

“What are you doing this week?”

He scowls into the phone. “Fandom episode. They voted for Captain America.”

He can practically hear Sharon wince. “I’m sorry. That fucking sucks.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, not least because both of them know exactly what happened to Captain America. He was recovered from the Arctic back in the 50s and went on to live a very happy and fulfilling life with Aunt Peggy. But that’s a very closely guarded state secret; the U.S. government can’t let it get out that Steve Rogers survived nearly a decade in the ice. Technically, Tony and Sharon aren’t even supposed to know but Aunt Peggy had insisted she be allowed to tell them after she took custody of Sharon and Tony moved out of Howard’s and into her home. It’s kind of cool actually, knowing that Uncle Steve is really Captain America. He’s a pretty great guy. It just kind of sucks that he can’t tell anyone about it and now he has to do a whole episode about it when everyone knows he’s a shitty liar.

He’d talked it over with Uncle Steve and Aunt Peggy when the results of the vote had first come in. Aunt Peggy’s advice had been to act more manic than usual, throw even more outlandish theories into the mix, and really make this episode about the banter between him and Bucky. “Direct their attention away from Steve,” she’d said. “They’re already going to be looking at you. Just make sure they’re doing it for the wrong reason.”

He kind of wants to kiss Bucky. That would definitely draw attention away from the episode. But that’s not fair to either Bucky or Sam, who are very happy with their relationship and don’t need a homewrecker like Tony throwing a spanner into the mix.

“Good luck,” Sharon tells him before they hang up. “You’re gonna need it.”

“Wow, thanks,” he mutters but she’s already gone.

Marvels Unsolved was never supposed to be this popular. It started off as a novelty webseries about Tony trying to convince Bucky about the existence of the supernatural—he firmly believed that if science could turn Uncle Steve from an actual shrimp to the god of muscles, then magic had to be out there—and then they’d started talking about an unsolved crime from the early 20th century after filming an episode one day, forgetting that the camera was still rolling, and had ended up with enough footage to make a second episode about real crimes. They had stayed pretty unknown throughout that first season but then true crime podcasts had exploded in popularity and Unsolved along with them.

Now they have a fandom and merchandise and actual fanfiction written about them, which is the craziest thing. They both have several often-quoted gifs floating around the Internet and Bucky has somehow become the poster child for being unimpressed by literally everything (he actually makes some of the best faces when something genuinely scary happens but they always end up editing those parts out—he has an image to maintain after all).

They brought Sam on once they started gaining in popularity. Tony, by that point, already had a pretty well-established crush on Bucky. He’d even thought that he had a chance with his co-host, small as it may be, and at first, it hadn’t seemed like Sam was going to change anything. He and Bucky argued all the time so Tony had been absolutely stunned when he’d stumbled upon them making out like it was the end of the world.

They had just finished filming their second season. Sam had suggested going out to a local bar. He’d suggested it for all three of them but Tony had, inexplicably, felt like a third wheel all night as Sam and Bucky bickered. At one point, Sam had disappeared off to the restroom and a couple minutes later, Bucky had followed him. Tony doesn’t know how long he had sat there waiting for them but he’d eventually gone looking for them only to find Sam pressing Bucky up against a wall.

And that had been that.

Three years later, Sam and Bucky are still going strong, Tony is as smitten with Sam as he is with Bucky despite knowing how hopeless both crushes are, and the fandom seems convinced to either write Sam out of Tony and Bucky’s relationship or write Tony into Sam and Bucky’s. He wishes they would stop. He stays pretty up to date with the fandom as well and they have all these meta posts about the way Bucky looks at him or something. It just keeps giving him hope but, well, it’s been three years. If Bucky wanted him, or if Sam did for that matter, they would have done something long ago.

“Hey, you doing okay?” Sam asks him as they’re setting up.

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” He avoids meeting Sam’s eyes, focusing instead on adding creamer to the coffee. Marvels had presented them with these mugs last year to congratulate them on four years of Unsolved. They’ve got their most iconic quotes printed on them, Bucky’s with “Obviously I killed JFK” and Tony’s with “I’m the dramatic bitch your mom warned you about.” Sam has one too with his one and only line in the entire show printed on it (“Why did I agree to work with you?”) but since he’s always behind the camera, he doesn’t have to use the same mug for each episode.

“You just seem a little off.” The worst part is that Sam genuinely looks concerned. If they didn’t care about him, he thinks his crush might be easier to manage but they do because they’re just nice guys like that. “I know you weren’t too thrilled when we announced this week’s case.”

“Howard worked with him, practically hero-worshipped the damn guy. Of course, I’m not excited.”

Sam winces. They know all about Tony’s shitty relationship with Howard after his dad called Marvels furious that his son was hosting a webseries instead of coming home to grovel at his feet and take over the business. The whole team had been brought in to listen as Fury tried to placate him. By the end, Bucky had been furious on Tony’s behalf and Sam had berated Fury for twenty minutes for making Tony listen to the vitriol his dad had spewed. It had cemented his crush on Sam, then just a passing fancy, into something real and permanent.

“Seriously, Sam, I’m fine. Might be a little off today but I would have said if I didn’t think I could do it.”

Sam doesn’t look convinced but he agrees anyway. Tony sits down next to Bucky and passes him his mug. Bucky shoots him a grin and murmurs, “Thanks, doll.”

Tony doesn’t blush but that’s only because he has five years of practice. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Sam counting them down and he turns to face the camera, settling his hands in front of him.

“This week on Marvels Unsolved True Crime and in celebration of our 100th episode,” he begins, “we asked you what you’d like us to investigate and you came back—”

“—overwhelmingly,” Bucky interjects.

“Many, many times,” Tony agrees, “with a topic near and dear to my own heart: Captain America.”

“That’s right,” Bucky says, sounding surprised though Bucky had been the first to point out that maybe they shouldn’t do this episode because of Tony’s connections to Project Rebirth. “Your dad helped turn Steve Rogers into Captain America, didn’t he?”

“And he never let me forget it!” Tony says cheerfully.

“One hundred episodes,” Bucky says slowly, enunciating each word. “Can you believe that, doll?”

Sometimes, he wonders why the fans ship them when Sam is right there. Other times, Bucky says things like this and he understands completely.

“Not even a little bit, Bucky Babe.” Okay, so maybe he doesn’t help.

“One hundred. The big one zero zero.”

“We tried to do something extra special and get Sam in front of the camera for you guys—”

“—so you could see what a hunk he is—”

“—but Sam said that he didn’t trust anyone else to film us properly—”

“—which makes sense because Tony? If you put him in the wrong light, he’s practically a gremlin—”

“Hey!”

“I’m just telling the facts.”

“Well, the facts are wrong.”

“They’re facts, sweet thing, they can’t be wrong.”

“Can too. Anyway, since Sam refuses to join us—”

“—and that just breaks my heart because Sam, he’s one of my favorite guys, you know?”

Tony pauses. It’s not like Bucky to say anything nice about Sam. Usually, it’s all good-natured insults and bickering. He must really be fed up with the Starkbucks shippers to say something like this when they’re still this early in the show.

“Only one of?” he asks curiously.

Bucky shoots him one of those filthy grins that their audience loves so much. “Well, it’s hard not to include you on that list,” he drawls.

He’s not going to blush.

He’s not going to—

Damn it.

Whatever. It’s no big deal, that’s what editing is for. So what if Sam has never edited out one of Tony’s blushes yet? Maybe Tony will get lucky and he will this time.

“You know, I was actually named for Captain America’s sidekick?” Bucky asks, getting them back on track.

“Wow, that is deeply unfortunate,” Tony deadpans.

“Yeah, Dad’s a fanboy. His whole troop was pinned down and rescued by the two of them. He tells the story all the time—kind of like your dad.”

“Except my dad goes straight past into fanboy and directly into obsession territory.”

“…Fair enough.”

“Really? That’s all you’re going to say?”

Bucky shrugs and takes a sip out of his mug. “I’ve been inside your house. I’ve seen the Steve Rogers shrine. I’m not going to argue with you.”

Tony thinks about that for a moment. “It is kind of a shrine, isn’t it? Anyway, we’ve got some great stuff for you today. We’re going to crack open this cold case, show you some never-before-seen footage courtesy of my mom sneaking my dad’s old war tapes out of the mansion, and then we’ll talk a little bit about the theories out there.”

“How many of them are going to be ridiculously outlandish and physically impossible?”

Tony glares at him. “None of them. I have never once presented a ridiculously outlandish and physically impossible theory.”

“Right because alien abduction is a valid—”

“Aliens are real!”

“You said that crabs might have eaten Amelia Earheart!” Bucky shouts over him.

“It’s a valid theory!”

“I take it back, you’re not one of my favorite people anymore.”

“That really hurts me, deep inside,” Tony says sarcastically, trying to cover up that maybe that does send a small pang shooting through his chest. He likes the thought of being one of Bucky’s favorite people. He doesn’t want to lose that.

“How deep?” Bucky asks and winks.

“Very deep. Way, way deep down. Practically in my—”

Bucky’s eyes widen and he nearly chokes on his coffee. “Okay, that’s enough of that. Let’s get into the facts.”

“Hey, that’s my line!”

“With a missing plane and pilot and so much redaction in the files, we’re lucky to even have a name, let’s get into the theories.”

“Actually, wait, before we do that,” Bucky says, “I want to ask if you’ve ever noticed that your voice changes when you’re doing the voiceovers.”

“Wait, what?” Tony asks. He glances at him, to one of the cameras, then back to Bucky. “What do you mean?”

“You know, it gets all deeper like you’re trying to voice movie trailers or something.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“Sure it does.”

Tony shakes his head. “There’s no way.”

They both turn toward Sam, who thinks about it and then makes a ‘sort of’ motion with his hand.

“Told you!” Bucky says triumphantly.

“You’re such a child,” Tony sneers.

“Yeah, that’s why you like working with me so much.”

Behind the camera, Sam silently snickers and Tony glares at him before telling the camera, “If you’re watching, let us know in the comments. Is my apparent movie trailer voice okay or does it need to go like Bucky clearly thinks?”

Bucky goes paler. “Hey, wait, I didn’t say it had to go.”

“It was implied when you brought it up,” he argues.

“No!” Bucky insists. “I was just wondering if it was on purpose.”

They both turn toward Sam, who thinks about it and then makes a ‘sort of’ motion with his hand.

“Aha!” Tony says triumphantly.

“Traitor,” Bucky mutters into his coffee.

Sam signs, “I’ll make it up to you when we get home tonight.”

“And that was more than I ever wanted to learn about Sam and Bucky’s love life,” Tony lies through his teeth. “Let’s get into the theories. I only have two for you today, one of which I think Bucky will particularly like.”

“Oh no.”

“Our first theory is that Steve Rogers died in a plane crash on December 16, 1944. Winter months in the Arctic are known to be particularly stormy. There would have been low visibility due to the high latitude and time of year and with the waters and surrounding land being well below freezing, it’s possible that, even if Captain Rogers survived the impact, he would have frozen to death in the stormy seas.”

Bucky thinks about it for a second. “Yeah, that seems plausible.”

“In addition, Howard Stark, a known Captain America aficionado and the father of Marvels Unsolved’s best host—”

“You lie like a rug!” Bucky howls.

Tony snickers and then when Sam signs, “He’s really not,” bursts out into full-out laughter.

Once he’s recovered, he continues, “Howard Stark has spent the first fifty years after the crash of the Valkyrie and the last twenty funding searches in the Arctic in the hopes of recovering Captain Rogers’ body. He has found no evidence that Captain Rogers survived the crash although he did find part of the remains of the Valkyrie and has since stated that, ‘No human could have survived that crash.’”

The expeditions are a scam and have been since Howard first found the Valkyrie crash site and Uncle Steve along with it. He hadn’t been planning on continuing the expeditions—too costly, as he claims—but when Aunt Peggy had told him that Uncle Steve’s survival had to remain a secret, he’d kept them up for pretense’s sake.

Bucky is saying something about how it sucks that the first superhero is gone and when he finishes, Tony grins and says, “Then you’ll like our second theory.”

“Somehow, every time you say that, I end up completely hating it. Wonder why that is.”

“Our second theory is that Steve Rogers survived the crash and is still alive but cryogenically frozen in the ice. There—”

“Bullshit!”

Tony starts laughing but he tries to continue on over Bucky shouting that it’s complete nonsense. It’s hard and he knows that Sam will probably have to do some editing and maybe make Tony do some voiceover work in order to make the theory audible but he thinks he manages to do a pretty good job.

Bucky is pouting by the end of it, arms crossed over his chest. “What fucking bullshit,” he mutters.

“The supersoldier serum—” Tony starts to point out.

“Isn’t a miracle drug.”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

“No, it just made him big and strong. It doesn’t just magically keep people alive when they should have died.”

And then they’re off into familiar territory, arguing about the merits of either theory. Tony’s actually feeling pretty good about himself, convinced that he’s doing a decent job of steering the conversation away of anything classified, right up until Bucky says, about halfway through the episode, “I’m surprised at you, Tony.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Surprised?”

“Usually, you have some absolutely batshit, off-the-walls crazy theory but these have actually been pretty normal for you.” He pauses and then adds for effect, “And you’re usually much better at your research than this.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh come on, even I know that there’s one more theory.”

He starts tapping at his chest nervously, almost wishing that he had a pair of sunglasses. Aunt Peggy always said that his lies are in his eyes, that they’re too expressive to hide the truth. When he was living with Howard, in the spotlight, he always had a pair of sunglasses to hide his eyes but he hasn’t wanted to use those since he moved out. He wishes he had them now.

“And what’s that?” he asks, feigning a casualness he doesn’t feel.

“That Steve Rogers lived and came out of the ice at some point and has been living out his life in anonymity.”

He barks out a nervous laugh. “I didn’t mention it because even I know that that theory is completely impossible.”

“Hasn’t stopped you before.” Sam nods agreeably. Bucky nods back at him and adds, “Even Sam agrees with me.”

“He’s your boyfriend, he’s practically required to.”

Both Sam and Bucky laugh at that one and yeah, okay, it was a pretty ridiculous statement. Anyone who knows them knows that being boyfriends is less likely to make them agree with each other.

“Look, Steve Rogers didn’t come out of the ice alive. Howard would have known for one thing and if you think, he could keep something like that quiet, then you don’t know him very well.”

“Maybe the government insisted it be a secret,” Bucky suggests, shrugging. “There have been plenty of people who have claimed over the last couple decades to be Captain America.”

Tony scoffs. “Oh come on, by that logic, anyone could be Captain America.”

“Maybe they could be.”

“No,” Tony says flatly. “It’s like that crazy conspiracy theory guy over on Reddit who’s convinced that Bruce Wayne is Batman.”

“Maybe Bruce Wayne is Batman.”

“Ooh do the butts match?” Tony says mockingly. “I mean, really, Bucky Babe, if we’re going off of lookalikes, then my fucking Uncle Steve is secretly really Steve Rogers, which is ridiculous because the guy’s like practically ancient and faints at the sight of blood in PG-13 movies.”

That sets off another round of arguing that lasts the rest of the episode until finally Tony wraps it up with, “Whether Steve Rogers died in 1944 or is still alive today is a mystery that will remain unsolved.”

They both pause for a moment to provide time for Sam to edit in the theme music and closing title. Usually, there would be some lighthearted bantering afterwards, maybe a joke about something they said earlier in the show. This time though, Bucky says thoughtfully, “The thing is, though, I’ve met your Uncle Steve—”

Tony goes cold.

“—and he really does kind of look like—”

Tony panics. That’s the only explanation that he has for declaring, “I’m done waiting,” reaching across the tables and grabbing hold of Bucky’s shirt, and yanking him forward to kiss him.

For a moment, Bucky is too startled to do anything but then he melts into Tony, mouth opening under his, tongue pushing forward to meet his. Bucky’s arms come around him, pulling him up and out of his chair and settling him into his lap. Tony makes a small greedy sound, swallowed by Bucky’s kiss, and then they’re both pulling away. Bucky’s lips are very red; Tony can’t stop staring at them even as he’s filled with dismay.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Why not?” Bucky demands.

“You—Sam—” He glances toward the camera but Sam isn’t standing there anymore. His heart drops into his stomach—has he just ruined Bucky and Sam’s relationship? But then he hears someone drop to their knees behind him and when he turns slightly, Sam’s fingers are on his chin, gently turning his head.

“How long?” Sam asks.

“How long what?”

“How long have we been wasting our time when we could have been kissing you instead?”

Three years, two months, and fifteen days. “Too long.”

Sam kisses him then, mouth gentler than Bucky’s but no less consuming. Bucky is a hard, hot line against his front; Sam is warm against his back and Tony? Tony loses himself in the storm that is the two of them, sparks shooting through him as Bucky’s hands find their way to his hips, as Sam’s tongue slips into his mouth, as Bucky whispers into his ear, “We’re not wasting any more time.”

Marvels Unsolved’s 100th episode shoots to their most watched, most liked video in less than a day and when asked, maybe the smallest handful of viewers could have said what it was about.

The day after it posts, only a week after it was filmed, Tony’s phone rings.

“Kill it with fire,” Sam says sleepily.

Tony, however, recognizes Aunt Peggy’s ringtone and he rolls over to grab it before Bucky can throw it at the wall. “Hello?” he asks groggily.

“Congratulations on not blowing Steve’s cover,” she says.

“Oh yeah,” Tony mutters. “Can I go back to bed now?”

“One more thing, duck.”

“What’s that?”

“Congratulations on the new boyfriends.”

#winterironfalcon #alle writes #alle answers #ooh boy this got long #if you like please consider reblogging #justsomeoneunordinary

75 notes · View notes

notnctu · 3 years ago

Note

Hey how are you today ? :) I have a question but don't take it as a critic or anything, but, what is (are) the reason for your departure? Why do you want to log out forever from your blog ? Does your blog reminds you of negative moments who makes you uncomfortable? You don't have to answer tho, I totally respect your decisions! ♡

hello im good today ty for asking!!

let me put a disclaimer that there is nothing that makes me feel uncomfortable about being on here or that its something super serious or that i have issues with writing ff

im also gonna put it under the cut bc its super long and i overshare

reasons why i am leaving was that this blog has always been a temporary thing during quarantine, except I did not predict how big this blog would blow up to be, even surpassing the follower count on my main blog. i had left writing three years ago when i entered college because it was something that takes a lot a lot of my personal time. i only started it back up because we were all stuck at home and me and author xuxi got into nct together, started reading ff and reminisced about the 'old days' of when we would write on our separate accounts. and then we took it farther to actually just drabbling here and there out of boredom and wanted to share it with people. i fell back in love with writing after three years!!

but as you know, the world has slowly started opening back up again and some schools are reopening back to in person instruction, my school being one, and i already know that i would have no time to write. i could barely find time to write when it was online instruction lmaoo along with that, writing has become more of a chore than it being something light and fun, where i could write out my ideas for everyone to read. so i feel pressured to finish projects i promised, making it so its not something that i want to do anymore. like i always have it in the back of my mind, "fuck i need to finish ___" or "i need to write ___" :/ and so i feel like it holds me back from just living my life ig

for the reason why i want to log out and delete the app on my phone is because i chose to leave my blog up so my stories can remain. but i dont want to be on this blog or check it. as long as the app remains on my phone, i would want to click on it to check it routinely on a daily basis. i went on hiatus from feb - april? but i still checked notifications daily in the small moments i had (like lounging around, when i went on my phone before bed, when i checked my notifs when i wake, in the silences during car rides) like checking stats for this blog is so obsessive, im proud of where it has become but i guess im always checking to see if a reader left me kind words on my fic or if i received an ask from one of my anons, i just want to know all the statuses that go on lol and i feel like it distracts me because i can't let go of it. me logging out and deleting the app is my form of letting go, it's my own deactivation of the relationship i have with the blog. i just want to stop dedicating so much of my focus into it? if that makes sense

a small part of me too wants to put writing in the past... i love writing, i say that its a hobby of mine, but like seriously i love writing, it's my way of art expression bc i cant draw or paint for shit lmao i have been writing ff since i was in the 6th grade!! all throughout middle school and high school, and now some parts of college. and i just feel like i love it, but i dont want to pursue it anything more than a hobby and i also dont want to write original characters. i havent really explored writing og and i wouldnt really care to tbh and i feel adrenaline when im writing a passion piece, but i would never write if it wasn't for purpose of publishing it and esp fanfiction, i just want to conclude this part of me.

i know this was super lengthy, but ive kept my reasons of departing to myself, not because its anything incredibly personal, but because my thinking process is long when it came to this decision. i chose the date sep 12 because its the start of training for my club, which requires 100% of my time and so i found that it was just a good marker of when i should take my leave.

i appreciate and i wholehearted love every aspect of this blog; my followers, my works, my mutuals, everyone's feedback, everyone's sweet and kind messages, all the interactions, the aesthetic, all of it is something i thoroughly enjoyed and actually made me so incredibly happy. this blog was my safe haven, which is the reason why i can't deactivate it. there are so many parts of this blog that i come back to just to smile (my birthday wishes, my mutuals' support, feedback on stories i worked my ass off for, stories that i am genuinely so proud of, my own shit posts sometimes lmao) this blog is a time capsule of a moment in my life where life was paused and i could literally pass every day as if they were all the same and i could write with no other distractions. and i want to come back to it someday, although it would be long forgotten and untouched, but just to look back and reminisce (again) about the 'old days'.

#asks #big big ramble #anyways #have a good day luv!!

3 notes · View notes

realcube · 4 years ago

Text

YOU GOT: KENMA KUZOME

matchup for @suchagoodgirlxoxo

‘My hobbies include watching anime(mainly action) , playing on my switch I play a some games but mainly supersmash bros(not often), listening to music(more slower sad music and lo-fi), I like to draw (mainly anime but I do do realistic and conceptual also more traditional than digital ), I love to read like crime fiction, I write poetry and also fanfic but it isn’t great, I like to try cooking new things and I like to sing as well.’

♡ kenma likes to watch whatever animes you recommend to him lol- like seriously, he’s not picky, as long as it’s interesting 🤷‍♂️ he had a phase where he watched a bunch of animes but since then, he’s kinda fell out of it and the only ones he watches now are the ones you speak highly of or the ones that are paired with games (danganronpa, naruto, etc)

♡ sometimes when you are raving to him about an anime you adore atm, he’ll pretend like he’s not listening but in reality, he’s all-ears and plans on binging the anime as soon as you leave just so he can talk to you about it 🥺

♡ just bc you are his lover doesn’t mean he is gonna go easy on you in smash ✋ he brings his a-game every single time so if you aren’t ready to get your ass beat, don’t ask him to smash

♡ also he lowkey kinda likes it if you get pouty when you lose- like he thinks it’s so cute and he’ll sit there with the smuggest smirk on his face

♡ if you beat him, on the outside he’ll be like ‘gg 😐’ but on the inside, he’s either really proud of you and celebrating, or he’s bawling his eyes out – one or the other.

♡ we’ve already established that kenma listens lo-fi and vaporwave (occasionally hyperpop) so whenever y’all hang out and just chill together in his room, not really talking but just relishing in each other’s presence, he’ll put on lo-fi music on his speakers as background noise

♡ kenma also went through a phase of trying to draw but it seriously didn’t work out for him so whenever you draw literally anything, he’ll hype you up as if you just made a masterpiece

♡ ‘woah! that’s awesome, (y/n). you’re so talented.’ he hummed, peering over your shoulder to admire the art sat in front of you that you were working on, leaning down to press a kiss to your temple.

♡ ‘kenma..’ you muttered, twisting your neck around to shoot him a perplexed look, ‘this is just the sketch..and i’ve not even finished it yet.’

♡ anyway, kenma pretends to be disinterested in the fact you write fanfiction but secretly, he stalks your account and consumes your content like it’s his lifeblood

♡ he has never really been one to cook anything besides instant noodles – like if it was up to him, he’d just order pizza every night – but if you cook, that’ll give him the motivation to join you and try learn a few new things as well

♡ he’s very competitive though so let’s say you’re making pasta and you’re complaining about how you’ve put in all the spices that the recipe listed but it still didn’t taste nice; kenma would push you aside like ‘let the pro handle this’ and start pouring in random-ass spices as if he knew what he was going

♡ and that was the story of how kenma accidentally dropped a whole tub of red pepper flakes into the pasta 🤠

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

‘My love language is physical touch and acts of service. I love a good cuddle sesh and like just making people happy. I also love quality time sucker for a home movie date with food and cuddles. Or cooking together. For fun fact lets just say I have a pretty sharp tongue and good a comeback. I’m pretty blunt at times but will also feel super bad if I hurt your feelings.’

♡ kenma’s love languages are gift-giving and physical touch ^^ he loves having you cuddled up under his arms while he plays on his switch, or when you sit on his laps as he games on his PC. he’s convinced himself that he just plays better when you are around 🥰

♡ once a week, it’s become a custom for you both to snuggle up on the couch together and watch random nostalgic movies while eating either take-out or the food y’all just cooked

♡ omg if you have a sharp tongue then lev, yamamoto and kuroo would all be shaking when you walk into the gym by kenma’s side bc they know one of them is going to be ridiculed

♡ kenma is shown to be quite blunt too but he has developed somewhat of a soft-spot for you. also, there is not much you can do to hurt his feelings- but like since you are his s/o he trusts you and cares about what you think of him so if you were to turn to him and utter in a genuine tone of voice, ‘i’m disappointed in you’ on the outside he’ll deadpan but on the inside he is bawling (ಥ _ ಥ)

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

‘Some random things that may be too personal but imma just add it is I’m apparently a gifted kid burnout, I’m bi, also genderfluid, I can go long periods doing nothing because it’s honestly kinda hard to get stuff done for me I might not be able to like socialize a lot either also I’m majoring in Information Technology and have a really random dirty sense of humor [...] i do karate.’

♡ kenma isn’t really the best at getting things done either but i’d like to think that y’all encourage each other to complete task bc you just want the best for one another 🥺 so you’ll both just be laying on the bed, so tired with no motivation to do anything until kenma utters, ‘you said you have a report due.’ and you’re quick to reply, ‘and you said you have emails to send.’

♡ then it becomes a battle of ‘who’s thing is less important?’ until one of you finally suggests, ‘how about we both just do our work so we can cuddle in peace afterwards?’ then you both reluctantly crawl out of bed

♡ he isn’t really a social-butterfly either but ever since he’s started streaming, you’ve noticed he’s became less introverted so that means whenever y’all go to restaurants, he talks to the waiter so you to don’t have to 😩🙏 (also he pays for the meal bc he’s a king-)

♡ you and kenma are so powerful together bc he has somewhat of a dirty mind too KJXIDGH like kuroo will just be talking to y’all (even though neither of you are paying attention) then he’ll snap his kitkat in half and offer you a finger-- then get confused as to why you and kenma are caCKLING 💀

♡ he is highkey so proud that you know a martial art and you can defend yourself like he thinks it’s so badass- also when you were watching ‘karate kid’ with him, he’d pause the movie every few seconds to be like ‘so do you know that move? show me.’

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

for @suchagoodgirlxoxo: ooft it was lowkey hard to choose but i hope you like kenma 🥺🙏 also you said ur ideal guy is taller than you but erm kenma is the same height as you ‘:) but that way, y’all can share clothes!!

#hq matchups #haikyuu matchups #haikyuu!! matchup #haikyu matchups #💗lets date!#💗matchup

8 notes · View notes

bbq-hawks-wings · 4 years ago

Note

Really long ask - Part 1: Hi, sorry for this long rant, but I just wanted to vent since I saw this latest story posted on AO3 and I am restraining myself on commenting on their story so I'm just letting my anger out here about it and other issues regarding fan-depiction of Hawks. It's vaguely related to your post on how DabiHawks or Dabi+Hawks stories make it all about Dabi and always made Hawks out to be the one who starts the problems in their relationship or is the one trying to get Dabi's

Content warning: passing mention of r*pe in a fanfiction.

LOOOONG post under the cut.

(Cont.)

Dabi's attentions when it's canon that it's the complete opposite. This latest story that came up in my feed was about Hawks "harassing" Dabi (who apparently has a backstory of r*pe) and Twice helps Dabi works out his feelings. Among the hoards of tags condemning Hawks, they decided to use "Hawks is very uncool in this fic heads up" so that's another one to add to my filters. I think I also have to block the "Dabi Needs a Hug" tags too bc he's always woobified like heck.

I really want to read stories where Hawks interacts with Twice since they have a bond/drama with each other, but people have been adding Dabi and either making it seem like Hawks has been gaslighting Dabi in their "relationship" or with Twice. I can acknowledge stories where Hawks feels guilty for what he had to do or Twice being anger/betrayed over Hawks' actions since that is actually what happened; but I will not stand for Dabi claiming Hawks took advantage of Twice or Twice and Dabi having feelings for each other with Hawks in the way bc Dabi is a) the one who let Hawks in b) knew Twice is gullible and c) used Twice as bait. Even in the stories that are cute/causal+funny, Hawks is always the one who gets threatened with fire, harsh insults, or guilted into compliance but the seriousness of the first 2 are always brushed off and the third kinda makes me want it that Hawks doesn't have friends bc most people write him as a bad friend who only cares about his own problems (especially the ones that write Hawks like a celebrity/night club person).

On writing Dabi, his issues always take priority over everything else, his family loves him, and the lov is always chill with him. He's usually written as the fun asshole/caretaker (bc of his big brother status or ablity to cook). Those factors aren't bad by itself, but it's extremely irritating when the writers/artists can give that level of care to Dabi, but just reduce Hawks to a meme who is a workaholic for the government/scared of punishment & not bc he really cares about the people he saves/helps. It's not like I hate the DabiHawks pairing, but the majority of the content (esp the recent ones), are frustrating to read & Hawks' character is usually written in bad out of character extremes. I am really mystified that I'm praying for canon content rather than fanmade most of the time.

Phew! After the back and forth it looks like we got to the end of that! (Or did we?! *Dun dun DUUUUN*) If not, though, feel free to keep the asks rolling. Lol Foxy and I are usually pretty happy to receive as many asks as people want to send even if it takes us a while, individually, to get to it. Now to finally address what you sent.

I find myself in a weird place when it comes to OOC fanfic because on the one hand people can write whatever they want, and I don’t really have a place to criticize them; but also when they blatantly and willingly misinterpret a character so they have grounds to bash on them it also leaves me acutely uncomfortable. I don’t think I’d call it “problematic” as much as a squick? Like, if they’re willing to blow past all the obvious proof to the contrary about their claims of a fictional character just because they hate them, then are they willing to do the same thing to a real person? Usually, those kinds of thoughts are pointlessly extreme, but we know those who unironically and/or unapologeticly call fans of the heroes “bootlickers” so... It’s like, ooc vent fics are also fine; and if you want to rewrite a character to fit the narrative scheme you’ve set up that’s cool as long as its tagged (“ooc [character]” or something) and/or just mention in the a/n that they knowingly and willingly mischaracterized them for the sake of the fic. Just. Don’t. Claim. It’s. Canon.

And speaking of canon, as much as I’m sure Horikoshi knew Hawks and Dabi were going to end up shipped I think it’s obvious that he never was going to canonically write them ending up together, yet here comes the “canon must validate my headcanon” crowd calling him a bad writer because the author had some bigger narrative goal in mind than having two pretty anime boys kissing.

And the worst part to me is, I feel there’s a distinct slice of the DabiHawks crowd missing out on some of the possibilities of this ship by intentionally mischaracterizing them. Like, the aesthetic equal/opposite draw of the ship is phenomenal as it is and I don’t even ship them, but I can see a wide range of possible fics based solely on the principle that they are canonically incompatible!

At the end of the day, Dabi is a dime-a-dozen edgelord - that pain in the butt OC that so many newbie D&D players make that they think is so deep and dark and mature, but is about as cookie-cutter as they come. It’s not that this kind of character is unsalvageable or a hopeless Gary Stu character, just that they don’t often come across as compelling in and of themselves or that they need more than just selfish hatred to carry them through a series. Two kinds of edgelords that can be done well are the “Out of the Ashes” edgelord and “I’ll Pull You Into Hell With Me” edgelord. The first kind recognizes there’s more to life than their sad backstory and getting even and thus choose to aspire to more noble causes - think Joel from The Last of Us. The second recognizes they’re actively doing wrong and come to embrace it - being more concerned with getting what they want than taking the moral high ground - think Frank Castle, aka the Punisher - and even these darker, “unsaveable” kinds of edgelord antiheroes can have redeeming qualities such as meeting and helping a young hopeful and telling them, “I know I’m on the road to hell, so if you want to save yourself you’d better not follow me.”

Dabi actually has what he needs to become the second type right now (assuming he’s Touya) and could even evolve into the first not unlike Kratos from God of War, but that potential can’t be fully recognized until you admit that he’s fundamentally self-centered and a bad person as-is. He may have the tragic backstory complete with justifiable hate at his genuinely abusive father, but rather than using that as fuel to see that never happen to anyone else like it did him - he just wants to get even. He burns people alive, knowing well he’s participating in the same destruction that his father committed to make him what he is now. He doesn’t recognize any of the merits of hero society and is only concerned with burning it to ash. He could use what happened to his family to incite compassion in his heart and take others under his wing, but instead he uses people as a mean to his own ends. He isn’t even proper grimdark - he’s just your run of the mill egotistical megalomaniac with a punk aesthetic.

And that’s still a good character in the grand scheme of things, maybe just not alone! Moreso, it’s a good villain and EVEN BETTER when you put him next to Hawks who is at his core:

Fundamentally Hopepunk!

Hopepunk is about being good and kind as an act of rebellion against a cruel and unfair world no matter how bleak it gets or how badly you’re beaten down. Despite his own cruel past, Hawks still has a heart to help others for no other reason than to help them, he constantly changes the odds to save as many people as he can when he’d be given a pass for letting the cards fall where they will, and not only is his aim to “help others” but to make sure that there’ll never be need for heroes again. He’s an active rebel against the system fighting with kindness and goodness, fervently looking and listening for the next opportunity to do good.

In agreement with you, Hawks and Twice are interesting to explore because while Twice is an optimist looking to make the world a better place, he’s still a step or two removed from Hawks’ worldview because Twice refuses to let go of the “family” he found for himself while Hawks is willing to sacrifice himself for others. That dynamic is so interesting, and it’s what made them so initially compatible and subsequently heartbreaking in canon.

And it’s such a disappointment to see this unwaveringly earnest character reduced to “shitty fratboy” so often. For a lot of people newer to his character I can understand the confusion, but there really isn’t an excuse if you’ve been reading the series, and the possibilities for fics with this canon personality are just so much more interesting to explore, especially with Dabi as his sort-of opposite.

For DabiHawks to work well, you have to recognize that something has to give in either of them. Some of the juiciest, most angsty content is when you have two characters grow close together over commonalities only to be reminded that despite everything else they share, that One Thing will always keep them from truly being able to see eye-to-eye. Either Dabi has to grow past his hatred and relearn compassion and empathy, or Hawks has to lose grip of that hopeful vision he has and fall into despair. Both options are good to explore, but both require the acknowledgement that Dabi’s view of the world is fundamentally bleak and selfish, especially compared to Hawks’. For a supposed revolutionary out to change the world for the better whose a diamond in the rough with a heart of gold, that’s not exactly on-brand; and at the end of the day the issue is that some are unwilling to admit that what they wanted Dabi to be is likely not going to happen and they love that fake version Dabi more than they love what Hawks actually stands for which is why Hawks always gets the shaft in the end.

I still personally hold a bit of a grudge against the DaiHawks ship as a whole purely because, as you said, Dabi always seems to take priority over Hawks instead of letting the two build a dynamic together. Hawks is always the one who has to give, and the torture porn some have made him go through to “make the ship work” is downright disturbing to me. Even at its height DabiHawks content completely flooded the Hawks character tags on Tumblr with some of the same problems that have persisted to this day such as emphasizing their aesthetic as opposed to their dynamic and rampant mischaracterization.

Anyway, that’s my long-winded response. What do you think, @autumn-foxfire?

#long post anon #autumn-foxfire #let's talk hawks

24 notes · View notes

undignifiend · 4 years ago

Text

Theme Ramblings - On Evil, Honesty, Violence, and Better Ways to Rule Number Two (Local Windbag Spends All Night Pontificating Again)

I really like Trollhunters and Tales of Arcadia. I feel like it addresses important themes that I also want to address in my own writing, and I feel like that is part of what makes it an awesome world and story to explore, through the original stories, and through fanfiction. I find exploring ideas within an already established world is very helpful and therapeutic. So here are my current thoughts on some of those themes, which have also been informed by various other stories. Narrative is one of the ways through which we process the world. And one of my goals is to learn how to do that with clarity, practicality, and compassion. So here’s a bit of what I think I’ve learned so far.

Warnings: Talking about violence, with pain and trauma. Stay safe. Also, spoilers for Tales of Arcadia - Wizards, and for the film You Were Never Really Here.

+++++

‘Evil’ is not a word that holds a lot of weight with me, at least not the way I feel it’s commonly used, especially in stories. Some bully without any redeeming qualities beating someone up for a power trip is a common motif, but I don’t find it a compelling or useful model of how or why some people act shitty, or how to possibly fix it nonviolently. As something of a determinist, I don’t believe our decisions just pop out of a vacuum - rather, that they are informed by our experiences, which we react to in healthy or unhealthy ways depending on what we think we understand and what we want to protect.

Or at least I think that’s a nice idea, but I don’t know how practical it actually is. For instance, maybe there are actual people who are just idiots, cowards, or cruel and nothing more, and interacting with them in a good-faith manner is an entirely hopeless waste of our limited time - especially when those mofos are actively threatening people. “They’re complex people, too!” seems kind of irrelevant when they’re calling for killing those who disagree with them, for example.

Maybe I’m having trouble with this idea because I haven’t actually recognized such mind-numbing simplistic malice in anyone directly involved in my life. I’m starting to think I might be spoiled that way.

I also want to emphasize that I’m not even remotely claiming “Everyone is right in their own ways”. Some mofos out there are objectively incorrect. I’m currently convinced that we all think we’re right, but not that we all are. Or that even when we realize we’re wronging someone, we tend to spin narratives that twist the situation to make ourselves look better, or even like we’re “The Real Victims! D:” to justify and excuse something we may otherwise deem tragic.

What horrifies me (what I’ve witnessed) is when harm is done by people who think they’re doing the right thing, or that they’re justified, or that it’s normal. People who otherwise have potential to do good, making a selfish call out of fear, anger, apathy, a misplaced sense of righteousness, or even just a desperate and ill-advised attempt to feel seen or important. The ‘evil’ that scares me most is a loss of perspective that leads to (and justifies or excuses) tragedy. That loss of perspective, I also think, is a key part of what makes propaganda possible. Calling someone ‘evil’ is often intended to deface them and simplify them into a problem or obstacle to be rid of - no longer a complex individual, but a symbol of all that is wrong with the world - a bully or ‘monster’ without redeeming qualities. (Often represented as something “subhuman” that we supposedly don’t have to feel bad about killing.) An external threat to vanquish in favor of facing whatever horrible truth we’re running from, or what conditions led to people acting in these harmful, tragic ways. (And if we can understand those conditions, perhaps we can guard against them and hopefully even save some lives and change them for the better?) I think calling someone ‘evil’ is not only impractical (and useless when it comes to diagnosing why someone is behaving a certain way, or how to effectively either help them grow up or maybe at least help prevent them from causing more harm), I think it opens the door for otherwise good people to do horrific things, all the while avoiding the root of the problem, and calling themselves justified and heroic.

That’s part of why I’m so excited about Wizards. (Finally got to ToA!) I appreciated Arthur as an example of what’s familiar to me, and the kinds of thinking I want us to learn to recognize and avoid. His grief was relatable - we’ve all lost someone, and we all have people we want to protect. But it’s monumentally important that we don’t commit Arthur’s tragedy, and take our pain out on others. And it’s also important that we don’t dismiss the pain that others are struggling to cope with, as Arthur dismissed Morgana’s and the trolls’ when he called them evil. And part of why I genuinely like Arthur as a character (not just an antagonist) was that he came around and admitted that he was wrong, and wanted to repair the damage he did.

At least until his Green Knight chapter, the motivations of which I’m still unsure of. I’m not the sharpest crayon in the shed, but it seemed like a non sequitur to me... after a certain point. If you have some insight into what’s going on with him, I’m all ears. I’m a little worried I might just be projecting my issues again.

So far, here’s what I think I can glean: I relate to the lines “How can I be at peace when the world is still broken?” and “He awoke to a legacy of a violent and awful world.” I don’t want to get into the specifics of my own experiences, but I understand the horror of “waking up” to a horrifying reality, and the motivation to try to change it somehow. The all-consuming restlessness of it, and the inability to escape or reconcile it, and the constant, never-ending tension that slowly rips you apart and isolates you from everyone and poisons your faith in humanity because you’ve looked into the abyss so long you now recognize that it’s where you’ve lived all along. Because no matter what kind of new equilibrium you scramble for, the truth remains that terrible, unnecessary harm is being done, and will continue to be done (and justified and excused and even laughed at) by otherwise good people until we all die out - and that will be our legacy even as we continue to squawk empty platitudes about how intelligent and compassionate and special we are, and nothing makes any of that okay.

In my worst, most melodramatic moments, I even understand the ‘Let it all burn, if it can’t be saved’ mentality. But I don’t have a lot of patience for defeatism, so it’s not a mentality I can take seriously for long at all, and that’s where my understanding (if I may be so pretentious?) of the Green Knight stops. Because I know there are many others who have seen what I’ve seen and feel the same way I do, and believe that a better way is possible, however distant, and who have done loads more than I have to change it. And (perhaps more importantly) I know that even those who perpetuate some of the same harms I want to stop, and even crack jokes about it, are still good people who mean well, and have their own pains to cope with.

What I want is for us (and our heroes) to recognize when we are being dishonest or unfair, and to call ourselves out, even when it’s inconvenient (or when it feels impossible, like when we’re scared, angry, or hurt). I love and admire people who can face their feelings and uncertainties honestly, and I want to be like them, because I believe that’s the most important, constructive kind of courage there is, it’s part of growing into a stronger, kinder person, and this stupid world needs a lot more of that in it.

And I think the whole topic of Evil is connected to our fascination with violence, and those who are skilled at it. (Though I’m not here to say ‘Violence Bad’. I know it’s not that simple.) In some situations, no other method has a chance of saving you or those you want to protect, and if you find yourself in such a situation, it pays to be good at violence, and to have friends who are, too. The stakes are high, so it makes for great drama, and is prevalent in stories all over the world. This also makes it a rather dramatic delivery system for Justice - or the Retributive version, anyway. Retribution is visceral, and easily understood, and speaks to our instincts of promoting and preserving status (teaching others not to screw us over or They’ll Pay), and discouraging harmful behaviors by harming the perpetrators...

I consider myself a rehabilitationist. But I understand the draw of retribution. I really do. The vast majority of my intrusive thoughts revolve around it, in particularly violent manners. It’s not fun, and it doesn’t feel powerful, and it feels weird to me to see stories that portray it as powerful, rather than as a failure or a loss. I understand the emotional desire to punish someone who has hurt an innocent. But I also understand it to a degree that transcends its original feelings of righteousness, takes itself to eyebrow-raising extremes, and makes me sick. Retribution has been glorified all throughout our history, and it scratches a primal itch, and yes, sometimes it may be the only available answer in order to prevent further harm. (Rehabilitation requires far more resources than Retribution, often making it impractical or overly risky in contexts of scarcity. I think that’s a huge factor in why ideals like Law, Justice, and Decency break down in a lot of Post-Apocalyptic story environments. It’s not just that our sense of Order has collapsed, it’s that we no longer have the infrastructure to support the ideals that Order was established to protect - though I would Not say that our current “justice” system in the US is rehabilitative or even ethical, but that’s a whole other rant.) But beyond that, I don’t believe Retribution is practical or productive. I believe it’s tragically ironic, loses sight of context and systemic issues, lends false-credence to the idea that people are the way they are due to innate, immutable qualities rather than taking their environment and experiences into account, and as a result, opens the door for good people to, again, do and justify horrific things.

It’s a hard, brutal film to watch, but I recommend You Were Never Really Here. The violence in this film feels far more real than the violence I’ve seen in any other because they don’t dress it up, or make it flashy. It’s more like something you’d see in a hidden-camera documentary. And their honest treatment of it was a visceral reminder of what violence actually is.

It puts a gut-wrenching twist on the ‘revenge fantasy’ and what it actually means to watch someone suffer and die. Even someone who had it coming. There’s a painful empathy to this film in its treatment of the characters and all the rituals (harmful or not) they use to cope with the violence they in turn have suffered. And the climax of the film centers on the awful realization that, despite his efforts, the protagonist was unable to protect someone from violence, or having to inflict violence of her own - like him, she’s marked by it now, too. She absolutely did it in self-defense, but the fact that she had to do it is still tragic. She has to live and cope with it now, as he does. And in the final scene, there’s this hellish sense of separation between them as they are, and the comparatively bright, happy lives they might have lived if they had not had to go through such horrific experiences. It’s unstated, but there’s this intense feeling that they’re haunted. Like they can be near that bright, happy life, but never cross the veil to reach it, themselves. The film ends with the girl deciding to try and find some happiness anyway. (“It’s a beautiful day.”) It’s not a happy ending, but it’s a hopeful one. It’s not a Good Triumphs Over Evil story. It’s a painful confrontation with an awful reality, and the struggle to find a way to carry on somehow.

And that resonates. Because we all know to some degree or other what it’s like to confront something awful, something we can’t just deny or forget or reconcile, and to try to find some way to cope with it. That tension can be so painful that it’s understandable (but still not excusable) why people sometimes try to pin it all on a scapegoat - so they can take something insurmountable, and turn it into something they can fight and triumph over. It’s a form of processing our grief, but it’s unfair, dishonest, and harmful, and inflicts more grief on others.

Anyway, in this fanfic I’ve been puttering around on (and trying to explore these themes through), Jim tries to solve things non-violently (as he often tried to do in the show, which I really like). Someday/night, he might not have the option, or can’t see any other way out. He knows that he (or someone else) is being seen as an outlet for someone’s frustrations - they’re using him as a symbol to project their own problems and issues on - something external they can beat up and triumph over in place of something intangible.

If he’s going to fight this outlook, I think he has to understand it - on more than a theoretical level. He has to go there himself. Maybe he punches Steve after all. (Maybe in the 2nd draft - or maybe later in the current iteration.) And he hates it. He’s changed forever, but not the way he expected to be. He feels capable, and righteous, and he doesn’t regret standing up for Eli or himself, but he doesn’t feel good. Because even if it’s easier to just dismiss Steve as a bully, and even if it occurs to Jim to do that - and even if he can feel it viscerally for a moment, Jim isn’t going to lie to himself. He can still see what Steve is, past his own anger. Steve is lashing out because he feels wronged and powerless, and he’s acting like his dad because that’s who made him feel that way, and that’s who showed him how to deal with those same feelings. Steve is a kid trying to process what he’s been through. It’s easy to forget that when Steve is trying to beat Jim down - when Draal has been trying to beat him down, too - and he’s had enough of all these angry people twisting their ideas of him in their heads and taking their anger out on him. He fought back because he couldn’t see any other option for handling it, and Steve was not willing to give him one. But from this, Jim knows how it feels to be demonized (seen as a manifestation of someone’s problems, some enemy to vanquish). And it becomes monumentally important to him never to succumb to that way of thinking, himself.

He’s not a crusader. If he has to fight and hurt or kill someone, it’s not because he thinks they’re a manifestation of evil. It’s because he does not see any recourse in stopping them from hurting or killing others. To him, violence is a tragedy meant to prevent another tragedy. And whether that justifies it or not is a question he will have to carry.

A lot of the combat we see in media, I would classify as “action”, and not violence. The vast majority of the time, it’s a choreographed dance that’s fun to watch, full of cool stunts that look like they’d be fun to do. It’s more like competitive eye-candy than anything else.

It’s fun, and I like the idea of writing that, but only in the context of sparring, or play. I don’t even want to call those “fights” or make a distinction between those and a “real fight”, because fighting is violence, and I hope to write about violence as honestly as I can. That’s part of what I like and admire about a lot of Guillermo del Toro’s other works, too. It’s not a dance, and it’s not glorious*. It’s ugly, terrifying, and it hurts to watch, and it makes us worry for his characters all the more, because it forces us to acknowledge how vulnerable they really are.

*Or, glory as it’s often treated, I think. If there really is any glory to be had in real violence, I think it’s in the willingness to act in a crisis to protect others. Terror is notoriously paralyzing, so this is where the value of training comes in - as a kind of autopilot mode to fall back on, and suppress our panic in the moment. The emotional fallout and trembling will come after the crisis has passed, but in an emergency, not knowing what to do, and feeling helpless, can be one of the most devastating weapons against us.

Sparring and training can be a fun and exhilarating test of skill, where no one intends to maim or kill you. It’s completely different from fighting. In a fight, the goal is not to learn or grow or compete, the goal is to either kill someone, or hurt them so badly that they can’t try to hurt you (or anyone else) anymore (or enough to give you time to get away). It’s very stressful and often traumatizing. One wrong move will have lasting consequences, if you’re lucky enough to survive to put up with them. Even if you win, odds are, you’re going to get hurt - maybe permanently. It’s the visceral understanding that someone has decided to disassemble you, and the only way to stop them is to disassemble them first. It’s an ugly reminder of the components of our bodies, and how fragile they really are.

“There are better ways to finish a fight than punching someone in the face.”

I agree with this - there are better methods of conflict resolution, and we must use them. And I really like how Jim carried this forward in sparing Chompsky and Draal. But I also felt like Claire fundamentally failed to understand what she had witnessed (and maybe I’m the one who misunderstood). I just didn’t appreciate what I felt was a lecture from someone who didn’t get it. Not that I’d wish for her to get it - it’s a horrible position to be in. When someone is actively trying to hurt you, it’s hard as hell to remember those better ways, and there’s no guarantee that they would work - at this point, you have to get the attacker to stop quickly. Steve resisted all other attempts to defuse the situation, and I don’t think it’s fair to blame someone for fighting back.

“A hero is not he who is fearless, but he who is not stopped by it.”

But I’m also not going to put down someone who still seeks to defuse a situation, even despite the risks. That’s a huge gamble, and it requires a massive amount of courage and good faith in the other party, and it won’t always pay off. But when it works, I believe it can open up possibilities that might not otherwise exist, because to demonstrate good faith in someone is to demonstrate that you are Not The Enemy. I think Douxie demonstrated this marvelously with the Lady of the Lake in Wizards. He gave up the most powerful weapon he had - or what was left of it - to free Nimue rather than fight her when it looked like she was about to End everybody. Once he realized the truth of her situation, he took action to alleviate it - because he wasn’t going to beat up a prisoner, and he did not consider her imprisonment acceptable in the first place.

Jim is not a pacifist, in Trollhunters canon, or in the AU idea I’ve been messing with. He will fight to stop others from killing, and he might end up having to kill in the process if all other attempts fail. But (at least in this AU thing) he will see it as a tragic failure to bridge a gap. He refuses to succumb to the way of thinking that presents his opponents as evil, even if that would make it simpler for him to process their horrific actions. They’re living, complex beings, not symbols of everything wrong with the world. And often, the reason they’re trying to hurt others to begin with is because they have succumbed to that “seeing their opponents as evil” way of thinking, themselves. As Jim sees it in Building Bridges, that Lie is everyone’s greatest enemy. It’s part of what allows otherwise good people (like Arthur and Morgana) to do, justify, and condone horrific things.

He will fight if he must, but he will do his best to reach others first, to show them the truth, and try to find a way to effectively address whatever underlying pain is causing them to lash out. If Maria Edgeworth has a point about how “The human heart opens only to the heart that opens in return,” Jim will transcend “human” by taking the risk of opening his heart first (whether or not he also becomes a half-troll in this AU idea). I currently think that’s the most profound way to prove that “evil” view wrong.

This is not to say that he will do so incautiously. Jim takes his role as a protector seriously, and he will do what he must in service to that. But he sees potential in others, and values it. He’s not a saint, but he strives to be understanding and compassionate. And that’s damn hard work. It takes effort to be good, and to see the good in others, especially when you’re hurting.

#rambling thought-barf #theme talk #fanfiction notes

5 notes · View notes

soyouareandrewdobson · 4 years ago

Text

Alex ze Pirate Mini Review 5: Why I love One Piece and my final verdict

(Warning. Post contains initial geek out about One Piece that is meant to correlate to my opinion on Alex in general)

When I started this series of posts, one thing I asked myself was, how could I sum up my problems with the Sam story while also tackling some general issues with AzP without redundantly repeating major points of my previous posts.

… So I decided instead of giving a straight answer, I would first tell you how I came to fall in love with One Piece.

Around 14+ years ago, I began reading manga, with works such as Ranma 1/2, Pokemon and Dragon Ball being my starting point. You know, the average stuff everyone had read at some point. One Piece, already back then consisting of over 25+ volumes, was only something a friend started to lend me and I read the first seven volumes, not really quite getting why it was that popular. I did not hate what I read, but there was nothing outright standing out to me the way the story was told that got to me. And then I hit the Arlong arc with volume 8 and onwards. While it was mostly the adventure of Luffy with his crew against Crocodile and his Baroque Corporation that totally sold me on the manga later on, the Arlong arc was what really got my attention. Seeing the character of Nami betray her friends, pieces of worldbuilding that would years later play a role and so much more, made me curious where things were going. Particularly, why Nami would betray Luffy. And when I reached chapter 77 to 81, where I got to read Nami’s backstory, how Arlong killed her adoptive mother in front of her eyes when she was just a little kid and Luffy declaring he was going to help her and her village, I was hooked. This was the first time in my life as a manga reader, I was not just entertained, I was emotionally invested. Because not only was Nami’s backstory genuinely saddening to me, but seeing Luffy determined to help her and the ensuing battles was exciting. Exciting because it truly showed to me, how awesome of a character this goofball with stretching powers really is. Not because he was physically strong, but because he was willing to do all of that for someone just “because” he considers that person a friend. Seeing Luffy not just beat up Arlong, but destroying everything this bastard had build on the suffering of the village and in doing so setting Nami free of the past that haunted her, because he cared for her as a person not in a romantic but platonic manner, was satisfying on so many levels.

And ever since then Eiichiro Oda proved to me time and time again, even if he hits a bump in the road (seriously, fuck most of the Fishmen Island arc) he knows how to write a world that doesn’t just manage to be cartoonishly entertaining, but also filled with heartfelt moments, where true heroism is not defined just by physical strength, but the willingness of the main characters to help and care for each other and the people they meet across the journey. There are many stories out there where the power of friendship as a virtue, and the virtues it is build on are a theme. But in the world of shonen manga, One Piece for me is still the top.

And Andrew Dobson’s Alex ze Pirate is the complete antithesis to everything Oda EVER created in One Piece.

While One Piece has one of the most complex worlds I have ever seen in fiction, with Oda often times setting building stones for future story arcs years in advance (seriously, the thing with Brook and Laboon alone is worth mentioning) , Dobson can’t even bother to properly tell us in what part of the ocean Alex has her adventure or why there is a beaver dog thing walking around a bunch of humans.

While One Piece has some gorgeous artwork and unique designs with an insane level of cartoonish detail, Dobson has some very generic designs and draws like a 15 year old girl that read Spirou and manga too much and now starts doing scribble artwork.

While Oda draws chapters for over 20 years now, Dobson could not even bother to finish up the adventure of the crew getting properly together back in 2004, as only one volume was released.

While One piece tells a story that defines the shonen genre for over a decade, Dobson tells stupid newspaper strip jokes that are not even interconnected much.

While Oda’s Strawhats are the embodiment of the word nakama, Dobson’s characters only bring the following old saying to mind:

With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Bottom line, Alex ze Pirate is absolute garbage as a work of entertainment, particularly in the world of kids entertainment. It was so already long before Dobson wrote the three part story I reviewed in detail, but this story in my opinion was for anyone with a bit of brains the last nail in the coffin. Cause overall, this was likely Dobson’s last chance in his and the eyes of the readers.

The last chance, because he was going to put all his talent as a writer and artist into this one story to prove his critics wrong; That he could tell an engaging and emotionally fulfilling story in a multi part story, longer than his 15 pagers. But like with everything else I have seen so far, he failed.

He failed artistically, because damn does this not look even remotely professional compared to other professionally published work or even other silly webcomics like Cludscratcher or Housepets (which I highly recommend you to read).

He failed as a storywriter, because instead of emotionally engaging and well paced, this shit is rushed, works more on “tell, don’t show” than anything else and really just magnifies the worst aspects of his characters and Dobson’s mean spirited humor in general. Cause this is not a tale where we feel like Sam genuinely has found a family and friends in Alex and her crew. It is the tale of Sam just accepting that he has nothing better going on in his life.

He failed, because instead of actually putting care, effort and love for his characters and work into this, he likely just wanted to get it out and hope that just because he “put effort” into this more than usual, he would already get praise by default.

And once this thing was out, all that happened was the following: Even more people realized what kind of hack he is, that this project was not going to be salvaged even if actual stories instead of strip based jokes are told and he misinterpreted the disinterest as reason to just completely give up, instead of trying harder.

And as a result, even if Dobson still went on to do shitty redesigns and a few more pages for it, Alex ze Pirate soon after ended. Put into everlasting hiatus, where it joins such work as Pilote Candidate or Frank Millers All Star Batman and Robin.

Dobson, if you ever read this, let me just say it how it is: You failing to make even the most basic story about people appreciating their friends, particularly when within the last decade there has been an entire fandom of manchildren out there that was build on a show with “Friendship is Magic” in the title, just shows how bad of a storyteller and creator you are. You shouldn’t have gone to college in order to become an animator, you should have joined fanfiction.net in order to get some basic understanding on how to even write. Cause your writing is so bad, it makes fanfiction look genuinely complex and thoughtful. Well that and you should perhaps go out and find genuinely friends and not just online supporters that mistake you for some persecuted innocent artist, when in reality you are just a toxic idiot who attempts to manipulate people so he can profit of them and their fleeting interest in his substandard comics based on the lowest common denominator cartoons.

I wrap this review up. We will revisit Alex one day again, but for now, I just want to focus on something more positive. So within the next weeks, if I post something, I will try to make it focused on something NOT Dobson related. You know, stuff to genuinely enjoy. Till then, I just want to say thank you. Thank you @hypocricyofandrewdobson for reblogging my entries. Thank you to everyone who liked this, reblogged this or started to follow me because of it. I hope I managed to educate and entertain you all in a positive manner, without making myself come off too much like an assholish nerd with too many interests. Stay safe.

And hey, if any of you has his own two cents on Sam, Alex or the others, even ideas how to make them genuinely better, I am always open.

See ya.

#andrew dobson #syac #so you are a cartoonist #one piece #webcomic #comics #western animation #tom preston #adobsonartwork

27 notes · View notes

kali-fullofwordsnthoughts · 5 years ago

Text

some nygmakins thoughts

Binged/finished Gotham last week. So I was behind on seasons 4 and 5 and I’m tight I waited so long to catch up because Nygmakins literally gave me life and it’s already done and I have no one to share this excitement with because I showed up 15 mins late with Starbucks.

For a ship I never predicted I’d want, I’m blown away by it and how I forreal can’t stop thinking about Ed and Lee. I’m still a Nygmobblepot fan but I realized a while ago that that would probably never be explicitly canon. But Nygmakins! The people who say it seemed forced are delusional. And it definitely ‘didn’t come from nowhere’, as you see their initial reunion being one of hostility and threats. They gradually shift from enemies to allies to friends and almost lovers and it was so sweet to watch.

Ed and Lee have clear chemistry. They play well off of each other, shifting from flirtatious to serious as the scene necessitates. They support each other. They uplift each other. Seriously, I’ve been rewatching their scenes and all I keep noticing is how much they compliment each other. And the lengths they go to protect each other. And how they’re constantly giving advice or encouragement. Please forgive my crappy gifs and screencaps, I’m just enamored with these two. [AND I learned some basic giffing for this post.]

That’s Lee and Ed. Let’s talk about the queen of the narrows and the riddler because they are a different pair.

Their relationship starts with as much antagonism as Ed and Lee’s. Riddler's superiority complex mixed with Ed's 'pathetic' love for Lee pretty much sets the stage for her being an object of derision to Riddler. In their first meeting, he spends half the time ignoring her and the other half insulting, saying she's weak, all talk and no action. When he is subsequently captured and tortured, while Penguin runs off to save him, Lee is busy taking care of business. She's the clear underdog, the newcomer, the outsider, and she takes out a bigger, more established boss. Most importantly, she proves Riddler wrong and that is something he can't tolerate.

Their first face off - without the distraction of Sofia, Oswald, or Grundy - comes at the Riddle Factory. The Riddler is already intrigued by Lee and his choice to hold the club in the Narrows is both for attention and retribution. I'm convinced he saw Lee's killing of Sofia as a fluke. She got lucky, he thinks to himself. Obviously, the weakest player can move around, avoiding detection, and get lucky by being at the right place at the right time. So he put his club in the Narrows as a challenge to Lee. When Lee wins the challenge and bests him, proves him wrong once again, his intrigue mixes with fury but you can see his thinking start to shift.

He's beginning to understand not to underestimate her but still his pride insists she won by trickery, by trying to manipulate the love she knows Ed has for her. But when she insists on that love, he cannot abide her attempts to manipulate him in that way and draws his blade on her. Lee is unaware of the danger she’s in up until that point. She's never feared Ed because he never threatened her harm. Riddler is a card of a different color. And the darkness in her reacts to him. Riddler absolutely senses this. He knew she had to be dark to do what she did to Sofia - and Sampson - but since he wasn't there for either event, the first time he glimpses her darkness for himself is with her in his arms, a knife pressed to her neck, and not a touch of fear on her face. And when she brushes the knife aside to kiss him, that’s when Riddler starts to fall in love with her.

Let's talk about the difference in the pairs.

Ed is the more repressed one. You can see it in his body language with Lee.

With Ed & Lee there’s usually a bit of distance or Ed will be standing behind Lee, symbolically watching her back and letting her dominate many interactions.

Likewise, he keeps his emotions for her quiet and to himself.

Riddler is not that constrained. Their very next scene together, following the kiss, they’re shown standing shoulder to shoulder, leaning more casually and closely than we’ve ever seen Lee with Ed.

It was Ed who said, I'm not one to play the sidekick, but it's the Riddler who actually steps up. When he's in control, he's either leading, right at Lee’s side, or two steps ahead of her, anticipating and dealing with danger - Penguin and Butch - before the threat even becomes known to her. He’s grown comfortable being near her and doesn’t pull away when she enters his space.

He doesn't hesitate with verbalizing his feelings either. After the kiss, Riddler is extremely direct with his questions, asking their relationship status, confronting her on what he saw as her teasing behavior, and demanding to know if she was just stringing him along. His bluntness extends to all audiences and we get quite a few declarations of love and loyalty.

This is a big distinction. Ed doesn’t speak his feelings but Riddler is bold, brimming with charisma and I think that affects Lee. After he promises she’ll fall in love with him, they’re both looking at each other like Christmas freaking morning.

If Ed was a pawn, then Riddler’s the knight. Especially after he proclaimed his love for her and was ready to throw down with Gordon and the GCPD without any thought.

Previously, I didn’t think that Lee was being manipulative. At least not with Ed. I feel she genuinely wanted to help him improve as a person which is why they drew so close after she became queen. He supported and advised her and she recognized him as a friend. But it isn’t until the Riddler shows up that the relationship gets physical. I think with Riddler pulling the knife on her, Lee realized that he was a different Ed, one that would bring harm on her if pushed. So she adopted a new method to combat that - seduction. She cared for Ed but with Riddler she knew she’d need a little more to persuade him. And I think the scene in the bank, with Riddler proclaiming his love for her and embracing her dark side, had Lee realizing that she liked Riddler as much if not more than Ed. She may have started out manipulating him but it would end up being something more genuine.

There’s the sense of dualism with the two of them. Lee is generally light and opts for avenues of nonviolence. Until she’s challenged and injured then she has no problem breaking a hand or shooting someone in the face. Riddler is the manifestation of all Ed’s dark impulses. Both sides compliment their counterpart. It’s not all the way healthy - show me a nonproblematic Gotham ship - but it works for the two of them. Ed has someone who sees the good in him, who believes in him even when he himself does not. Lee has someone who accepts the changed part of her, even the ugly bits that others would rather pretend doesn’t exist.

Then they go and introduce Gordon and the jealousy plot and I knew that’s where it was going to go downhill. It went just about as predicted. I knew Lee and Ed weren’t going to be endgame but I was still devastated when they took each other out. Lee’s set to leave. She’s changed out of her dark Narrows’ clothes and wears bright blue. Her dark lip is wiped away, leaving a tired woman behind. This is a death scene, even though Lee survives. It’s death to the Queen of the Narrows and Riddler brings it on her. He was trying to free her from her past self and ended up doing just the opposite. (Obviously, I’m very bitter/disappointed with Lee’s reversed personality in season 5. It all felt utterly pointless to have her acting essentially the same as season 2 Lee, especially the marriage to Gordon which was boring and nonsensical. ) But the scene is so Shakespearean, betrayal by your lover’s hand,

a final pained kiss,

and a joining in death. And their final words to each other.

Just lay me in my grave because I’m as dead as these two. I’m gonna go write an obnoxious amount of fanfiction.

#Nygmakins #Ed Nygma #Lee Thompkins #The Riddler #The Doc #Queen of the Narrows #mine #gifset #photoset #analysis

53 notes · View notes

ohayohimawari · 5 years ago

Text

Kakashi Asks-Answer

Q: (From @thetoxicstrawberry) What are your thoughts on Sukea? Do you think this disguise existed prior to him messing with Team 7?

A: I know that you and I have congratulated each other on having the same brain before Berry, and this is another of those priceless occasions, haha! I’ve been hoping that someone would ask me about Sukea so that I could have an excuse opportunity to geek all over my favorite ninja dork’s alter ego. Thank you for reading my thoughts (your thoughts? Our thoughts?)!

*Cracks knuckles* My study of the development of Kakashi’s photogenic photographer not-so-secret identity starts below the cut.

It’s a beautiful coincidence that I answer this question so close to my first anniversary as an outed writer in the Naruto fanfiction community. I wrote my headcanon of the origin of Sukea in my very first (and very naughty) fic! Seriously, I can forgive Kishi for almost everything simply because he removed the mask from my favorite character and put a camera in his hands (for those that don’t know, I’m a photographer).

In my story Supplemental Training, I portray Kakashi just as I imagine him when he’s nearing the end of his ANBU career. While he claims to be a man of many hobbies, he is first and foremost a ninja. He goes to sleep and wakes up a shinobi. His ability to form plans and strategies makes him both a powerful ally and a formidable enemy, but beyond the scope of missions, I don’t believe him to be an especially imaginative person. At the very least, I mean to say that he doesn’t put much stock in his own latent creative ability, and that prevents him from attempting such. Further, at that stage in his life and career, Kakashi is wound tighter than a two-dollar watch.

In my fic, he is reluctantly thrust into a situation that he is suspicious of, and is determined to control. He plays along with another character when she asks what he would like to call her, and Kakashi dubs her with a name that is obvious and unimaginative. She, in turn, christens him with a name that is equally obvious and unimaginative: Sukea.

(Side note: sukea is the Japanese pronunciation of the English word scare. Kakashi means scarecrow in Japanese, so, his alter ego’s name is a play on his own.)

In the story, Kakashi accepts the offered moniker, and it’s not long before he realizes that he stands to gain new skills if he manages to successfully navigate his situation. I’d written that my quick-thinking bean likens this experience to being an actor that is assuming a role. In scrambling for a costume, he tugs his mask down; effectively removing the face that most have come to recognize as his. Then, he’s nervous af.

This leads to the pivotal moment of my story, and in the creation of Sukea. Konoha’s prodigy, for all of his brilliance, doesn’t shine in the social interactions arena. Kakashi, bless his heart, wants so badly to be in control of the situation. However, it’s only when he lets himself go in favor of becoming Sukea, that he finally does gain control of it.

Near the end of my story, I write that Kakashi considers, “… what he had gained, who he had escaped, what he had beaten back, and who he became.” It’s from this moment on that I believe Sukea is an important part of this character’s life.

This transition doesn’t have to play out the way I’d written it in that fic, but I think Kakashi would have to be pushed into stepping outside of himself. We don’t see him assuming different identities in his career. He’s not a role-playing kind of dude in his downtime. He lives in a mask and wears an additional one when he clocks in for his shifts. He insulates himself during missions and isolates himself between them. I sometimes wonder if, by this stage in his life, he’d hidden his identity so well that Kakashi had lost sight of himself.

So, the experience of being Sukea-however it comes about and for whatever reason-would be something between refreshing and liberating for the Copy Nin.

Now I’m going to pull a Kishi tactic and employ a time jump with minimal backstory. A couple of years go by in which bad things happen to the Uchiha clan, Konoha adopts yet another orphan, and Kakashi is released from ANBU.

I imagine that this is one of the most difficult stages of Kakashi’s life. Nothing could be more unsettling for this dork than idleness after the familiar, strict, comfortable routine of the decade he spent in ANBU. I honestly think Kakashi wouldn’t know what to do with himself in the years between Black Ops and Team Seven. As a result, he begins to have a greater appreciation of Gai and his challenges. Also, this is when Kakashi would flesh out his secret identity as Sukea.

Because escapism.

Kakashi can’t stand himself in the years between Team Minato and Team Seven, and after he’s out of ANBU, he’s got too much time on his hands to ruminate on it.

There’s no way in hell that he would just wake up one day and decide to skip along the streets of Konoha without his mask on though. Kakashi would approach this consciously and meticulously. It helps to occupy the extra time. It postpones the moment between deciding to go out as Sukea and actually doing it. He would need time to prepare for this, mentally and physically.

There’s more to my headcanon than loathing himself though. The Third Hokage decided that this traumatized soldier was grade A teacher material, and Kakashi takes his orders seriously. While I don’t think he would view his eccentric nature as odd, I think he would be aware that he is socially awkward (at least, he would be aware that he feels awkward in social situations). I think he would strive to improve at this, if only for the sake of being a sensei.

This is why Sukea is a photographer.

Being a photographer is similar to being a fly on the wall. In order to capture candid moments or gather pictorial evidence, a photographer needs to melt into the background. Kakashi, being a ninja, would know how to succeed at that. He’d come to terms with the fact that the mask that hides his face makes him stand out. He’d know to cover his luscious, outrageous silver cowlicks, his famous scar and borrowed eye.

I can almost hear a couple of you piping up in the back asking, “But Hima, he’s a ninja! He can just don a henge!” The answer to that is no, unfortunately. As long as that sharingan is in Kakashi’s eye socket, that shit never shuts off. Even though he’s wearing a contact lens, as long as both of his eyes are open, it’s a constant drain on this poor knucklehead’s chakra reserve. Also? I think he doesn’t want to.

Choosing photography as Sukea’s schtick was brilliant. Photographers are expected to focus on their subjects, affording Kakashi plenty of time and opportunity to study others. He would definitely learn a great deal about people this way. Relationships and their dynamics are captured by his lens. He gains some new social skills by watching and catches up on the lives of the folks of the Hidden Leaf at the same time. One of his many hobbies is born. The best photographers are careful in their observations, quick in their actions, and Kakashi is already carrying those tools around in his fanny pack.

Unrelated, but, only Kakashi could make a fanny pack look asjkfsd hot. Another trivial detail, but you know how I love those: I’m thinking of one of Berry’s delightful headcanons about his mask and drawing from it now in my imagination. I wonder if Sukea carries Kakashi’s mask in his coat pocket the first few times he goes out in public.

Whether he does or not, after a few field trips around Konoha, I think Kakashi would genuinely enjoy stepping out as Sukea. He would have to if he’s still doing it during his sensei days, and again in the next-gen era.

He delights in trolling Team Seven, that’s for sure. Sukea is his own private joke, and who among us tires of laughing at our own jokes? Kakashi’s no different, and that’s why we catch him smirking at his reflection when we finally got to see the goods in that special manga chapter and anime episode. It felt so good to have my anime crush validated, btw.

Every time Kakashi drifts undetected around the Leaf Village, there is one other jōnin that Sukea’s camera avoids. As much as he enjoys his joke, he wouldn’t push his luck when it comes to the possibility of Maito Gai recognizing him. I think it speaks volumes about their friendship when we see Sukea sweating it out as Gai’s eyebrows invade his personal space and he stares the other man down. I’m convinced that this is how Kakashi learns his eternal rival is hopelessly face blind, but that’s a headcanon for another day.

Sukea is still stalking the inhabitants of the Hidden Leaf when Boruto’s generation of ninja are preparing to graduate. However, we see Kakashi tugging his mask back up and pulling the wig off, transitioning in front of Iruka. In so doing, he proves how much he’s grown throughout his life. I imagine that being Sukea had a lot to do with that.

This alter ego of Kakashi’s-like so much about him-is enigmatic. It seems to me that he’s revealing himself rather than hiding himself; giving others a chance to get to know him underneath the underneath. The person aside from the elite ninja that he is.

I said earlier that I wondered if Kakashi had hidden his identity so well, that he had lost sight of himself. I like to think that in being Sukea, Kakashi reconnected with himself.

XOXO

#kakashi asks #ohayohimawari answer #Kakashi #Kakashi Hatake #Character Study #sukea #Berry asks

45 notes · View notes

moviegroovies · 5 years ago

Text

so to me, one of the hallmarks of a good piece of media is people willingly thinking about the characters after it’s over.

obviously, this isn’t like, a 100% success rate kind of thing. there are objectively good, enjoyable pieces of media out there that have no “fandom” type presence on the internet, because, while it exhibited great worldbuilding/storytelling/framing/what have you, it just wasn’t made up of the kinds of characters that people latch on to; the joke about avatar (2009) having less than 100 fics on ao3 despite being the best selling movie of all time for a solid decade is well known because of this phenomenon exactly. amazing cgi, solid plot, but at the end of the day, not that many people cared about jake sully. even still, i think this character-imprinting thing has an important, often overlooked role in intrinsically endearing people to movies that, outside of this factor, might be easily forgettable or even outright disliked.

case in point: my movie of the day/week/month (how often do i post on this blog, anyway?)....

that’s right, lads, today i’m going to talk about the lost boys.

if you’ve seen the lost boys, you’ll probably know that it’s not like, objectively, a masterpiece. in fact, if i were feeling particularly uncharitable, it would be easy for me to describe it as a fairly straightforward, low-budget horror b-movie, with a aesop-heavy and simplistic plot and a penchant for cheesy special effects, saved only by its rockin’ soundtrack.

...but i won’t.

i won’t, because using that description would leave out a detail i think it’s completely unfair of me not to touch on: the characters. i love them!! i was hooked from just about the very start of the movie by david’s creepy, affably evil leadership style, sam’s dorky little brother-ness, and michael’s 3cool5school airs. each of the characters, down to the frog brothers (named edgar and allan after the esteemed mr. poe, which really tickled me), the other lost boys, grandpa, lucy, and max, have their own distinct quirkiness that makes them memorable and draws me to want to explore more of their world, more of their stories.

not enough to watch the infamous direct-to-dvd sequels, of course, but you get what i’m saying.

there’s an old tip in writing that says something along the lines of “good characters can save a bad plot, but a good plot can’t save bad characters,” and that pretty much sums up my thoughts exactly on this movie. like, the plot itself is pretty much the message ‘peer pressure is bad’ wrapped up in some ugly monster makeup; not exactly cult classic material. however, like i’ve said, the characters and the fact that we get genuine, endearing interactions between them outside of just furthering the plot save it from the dumpster fire and, together, put together a story greater than the sum of its parts. no, it’s not a fuckin’ cinematic masterpiece by any stretch of the words, but it’s a fun movie, and there’s a reason i’ve watched it four times in the past three days, you know?

(a good chunk of that reason was me slowly losing my grip on my sanity as i frantically put in the dvd over and over again, desperately trying to make myself attracted to kiefer sutherland so i could enjoy the movie to the fullest extent of my ability. i’m proud to announce a perfect success rate, and a slightly degraded sense of taste in men, reflecting the completion of that goal.

if you too want to find something to lust after beyond his objectively ugly as sin face, trust me when i say it’s all in the voice. mmmmm)

my favorite thing that the lost boys did was the exploration of different types of friendship and familial bonds. that’s the most striking thing about the movie for me; not only are the characters individuals whom i would like to explore, their interactions with each other are touching and worth exploring in their own right. there’s definitely something about some stories that drives people to write fanfiction (or is that just me? ha ha), and imo, the lost boys totally has it. in fact, while the fandom is sitting pretty at 600+ fics on ao3 (take that, avatar), i was honestly sort of surprised there weren’t more, exploring all the interesting ‘what if’s’ the film presented, and expounding on the bonds that we got to see the effects of in the limited screentime we had.

what i liked about those bonds was that there were such a multitude of them. there were quite a few platonic bonds making up the crux of the movie (being, in my opinion, much more interesting than the main romantic bond which was explored through star and michael, although isn’t that kind of always the case in these 80′s teen movies? i can’t think of a single designated couple i was actually invested in except for veronica sawyer and jason dean... ferris bueller and sloane peterson, maybe? but i also feel like those two were making a cameron sandwich, so idk if it counts lol), but the way they were treated was cool in that they were unique: we got to see two different kinds of sibling bonds, with michael and sam emerson joking around in an easy, teasing way that totally screamed “wow, this movie was written by someone who actually has a brother” to me (isn’t it sad that some people have clearly never so much as seen a set of siblings in their life, judging by the way they write them?) while edgar and allan frog seem to take themselves more seriously, like a pair of army buddies, we got to see the pack-like bond of the lost boys and the (mostly) good-natured way they hazed michael into their group before things went to shit with them, we got to see star (and some of the lost boys, if you pay attention) being protective and maternal around laddie, and we got to see the uneasy alliance turned nerdy friendship between the frogs and sam. there are also three parent-child bonds that get explored, between lucy and her father (it’s a pretty sweet take on the kindhearted grown child taking care of senile-ish father thing) and lucy and her boys, each of which she has a distinct relationship with: sam is the baby, while michael she seems to level with and trust more, even after he starts getting into trouble and acting up.

then of course there are two (three, if you count the widow johnson/grandpa emerson subplot, which.... i totally do) romantic relationships: star and michael falling in a sort of love-at-first-sight passionate relationship that soon dooms mikey and eventually saves star, while lucy tries her best to get back into the dating game with max, who is nefarious, of course, but also a little bit sad. remember what i said about what-ifs? i would love to see a fic exploring what might have happened had max’s plan worked out after all, but i guess that’s neither here nor there.

not to be a blatant slash shipper jumping on any two male characters who move or anything, but i think possibly the most important/influential relationship in the whole thing was that between david and michael; michael, obviously, got drawn into the lost boys’ circle by his insta-attraction to star, but he sticks around because of david. he pretty much ignores star once they get to the cliff that night, his attention focused on david because he’s there, and he’s intense, and michael is kind of a dumb bi bitch totally captivated. he drinks max’s blood at david’s taunting, and in direct opposition to star’s advice. there’s a lot i could say on this subject but tbh i’m running out of steam, so that might be a thing for a whole different post.

basically, there are a lot of cool interactions in this movie, and i think a lot of film makers could take note of that. even critically acclaimed, award winning movies being made in today’s world tend to fail to hit that special note, that character-imprintation which makes the audience not only stay engaged to the end, but also to care. not every movie needs that, of course; not everything can launch a darkhorse fandom the way the lost boys has, and honestly, not everything should... unless it’s trying to cater to my interests, in which case, well.

if all movies were made to cater to my interests, i would have the time of my fucking life, but it’d probably be dark days for the rest of y’all.

thinking about it now, the lack of that element is kind of what makes me wary of the horror genre in the first place; i find so many of those movies just boring as all hell, because they’re too into the “scaring” thing without any of the “caring” thing. people, if we don’t care about the characters we’re watching, then who the fuck gives a shit if they get devoured by shitsucking vampires, anyway? finding the lost boys, a “horror” (i guess i use the term loosely) movie which relied heavily on those character interactions was honestly a godsend, because THIS is what i want to see more of. going down that line of thought, i think it’s honestly a shame and a half that the sequels which joel schumacher planned never got to see the light of day (and, of course, that we were instead left with the tribe, which for the life of me i refuse to fucking watch). the interactions between the lost boys could have been the most interesting part of the movie, if only they had been spotlighted a bit more. that would have been the case in the proposed prequel, the beginning, which would see the boys start out before they became vampires at all. reading about the script for that is honestly sending me, tbh. we could have seen that, and what we got instead were “sequels” that focused mainly on the frogs, when they connected to the original movie at all? where’s the fucking justice?

whatever. that’s the one thing about this franchise i never could stomach; all the damn frog brothers.

(till next time!)

#the lost boys #text post #i liked the frog brothers in the movie don't get me wrong it's just like #yknow how the real gh*stbusters cartoon was highkey ruined by the increasing prevalence of slimer as the show's run kept going #that's what the frog brothers are imo.

7 notes · View notes