#I just... wasn't invested in a lot of the earth stuff for some reason??

[wannab-urs]

The Spreadsheet Digest - Vol 18

Hi friends!! I have 19 absolutely fantastic fics for you this week.

There are so fucking many incredible fics coming out every day in this fandom and I cannot possibly keep up with them all. I am in constant awe of the Pedro fandom and the gorgeous work that comes out of it at a frankly alarming rate.

If you if you're tagging me in stuff and I'm not interacting with it, just know it's on my list and I'll get there eventually <3

As always you can peruse my Spreadsheet here and you can find all my previous fic rec lists here.

Recs below the absolutely stunning photo of our collective husband

a lover's pinch - a joel series by @hier--soir

I love a fuck first, feelings later situation. I love it even more when you have a super fucking hot bathroom fuck with an older man and he ends up being your PROFESSOR!!! God this was fantastic. I really love the way they can't stay away from each other. That one thing that happens in part two, you know the one, had me barking like a rabid dog. This is hot. And it's beautifully written. I'm excited for the feelings to come in.

Mr. Miller - a joel series by @tremendum

I read the first installment of this fic a while ago, I'm assuming before I made the spreadsheet because it wasn't on here. Picked it back up this week and oh my god. Joel is mean, emotionally constipated, a little stupid. Reader is also mean, emotionally constipated, and a little stupid. The way these two crash into each other, a little violent, a lot desperate... it's gorgeous and devastating. I could read about these two forever

Revenge - a Dave York one shot by @toomanystoriessolittletime

Forced cucking is hot idgaf. In this one, your husband is a blatant and unrepentant cheater and his boss helps you get back at him. Dave is sexy and menacing in this. There's subtle hints to his darker side, but it's never directed at you. He takes care of you in a way your husband never has and makes your husband watch the whole thing -- without anything more than his words btw. Husband isn't tied down, he's just terrified.

I know it when I see it - a Joel series by @bageldaddy

Pornstar!joel, pornstar!reader, set in the 70s (? nixon?) the fucking golden age of porn. This isn't your usual "aspiring porn actress fucks big bad joel miller and gets hooked" fic, even though it is that kind of fic. It's a really fresh take, with some really fucking good emotional dynamics and shit going on. The smut is filthy, dirty, gorgeous, delicious, perfect -- but the emotional grit in there with it? The struggles that both reader and Joel are experiencing and the way they're navigating (or failing to navigate) them? Stunning. I'm so invested in this series

Yes, Chef - a Joel series by @sempersirens

Mean.... secretly soft.... Joel. I love this! It's a Chef!Joel AU and the reader is a chef in his kitchen. They start secretly hooking up. I love the way this is written so much??? The angst is so good also. I cannot wait to read more of this.

The Layover - a Frankie series by @goodwithcheese

This fic, man. God damn. Reader kept pissing me off (this is a compliment, btw, i love it when reader makes me feel things) because of all her hang ups with Frankie. Frankie is so perfect. He's soft, caring, sweet. He's worked on his trauma and come such a long way and he's such a good dad. Reader is a wonderful mom and I see where she's coming from with all of her decisions even if they make me SCREAM. And the reason it makes me scream when she pushes Frankie away is because when they meet in the middle? When they get all tangled up in each other after days or weeks of staying away? It's stunning, mind blowing, earth shattering. I don't know how anyone could resist

The House - a Jack series by @gemmahale

Okay I kinda fucked up and only read the first chapter of this series because I have ADHD and I had to go do something and then I never went back. BUT seeing it on my list just reminded me how fucking excited I am to read this. The first chapter sets up such a good story. I love the suspense... Why does statesman give a fuck about her dad's land? How does she know Jack? How well does she know Jack? AHHHH what is going ON???? I'm immediately reading more of this after posting the digest bc oh my god???

Common Grounds - a Marcus Pike series by @whataperfectwasteoftime

I am, as usual, absolutely in love with the way Penny writes Marcus. I love love love reader's backstory and that she's an artist. I loved her kind of pining for him while he waited for Teresa and I adored everything after she dumps him. I just... AH. And like... in this one... he has this darker undertone? Some of that inner turmoil jumping out maybe idk, but it made the smut gorgeous. I was in awe, for real. He's so gentle and sweet with reader in the coffee shop and on their dates and stuff and then he just kind of snaps, but even then there's like a feeling that he's restraining himself? It's unbelievably hot. No one does Dom Marcus quite like Penny... got me fuckin droolin got DAMN

Friendly Competition - a TF boys (no Tom, and mostly Frankie) one shot by @absurdthirst

This was so hot. Literally reader just gets blindfolded and dicked down by all the boys and Frankie is a sex god. Perfect. And there's some really cute feelings in there too. There's more installments to this as well and they are just as fucking lovely. I loved the plot twist in the second one -- was not expecting that. God absurdthirst really is out here writing down all my fantasies....

Go ahead and cry little girl - aJack one shot by @xdaddysprincessxx

Okay obviously I love this because Reader is called Agent Gin... but also reader does a little sex work on the side and she accidentally sends a lil somethin somethin to Jack and he goes all Daddy on her and it is SO FuCKING HoT OH MY GOd

Eat - a Joel one shot by @notjustjavierpena

Men suck, usually, and won't put in the effort to make you cum with their mouth. And this is why reader doesn't really ever ask for it or even want it.. it's a waste of time. Oh but our lovely dbf!Joel proves her so very wrong in this fic. Joel is so soft and sweet and sexy in this UGH

The right wrong number - a Joel one shot by @proxima-writes

I read more than one wrong number fic this week lol. Anyway this was SO hot. Joel is a dirty talking god in this. and then the like slow build up with the soccer coach? The way they are so totally dancing around flirting with each other and Sarah is egging it on and then by pure chance they find out.... HE was the dirty talking dom with the gorgeous cock? Excellent. This is so good UGH. I want a part two in that sex club.

Gotta Start With a Good Foundation - a Joel one shot by @bonezone44

This is a part of a series called Sacred Spaces where Reader and Joel talk to each other, no actual smut, and.... just give it a read. I love these so much. This one is kind of a dom/sub relationship negotiation thing and it's gorgeous

In Every Lifetime - an Ezra series by @xdaddysprincessxx

Witch!Reader and Demon!Ezra!!!! I love this. I love the setting. The mysterious spell book. The ritual. I'm so excited to see where this goes. Demon Ezra is sexy omg

Late Night Texts - a Javi P series by @undercoverpena

SOFT JAVI ALERT!!!! Set after the events of season 3, Javi is back in Laredo and he's lonely. Then he gets a text from a wrong number and subsequently racks up the biggest phone bill the year 2000 has ever seen. This fic is soft and sweet and flirty and adorable with a touch of angst (long distance things). The smut is sequestered in bonus scenes if you want to skip it, but it's so worth reading. It's so good. I love this fic AHHHH

Bad Idea, Right - a Dieter one shot by @proxima-writes

Yes, hooking up with your ex is usually a bad idea. Especially when it's Dieter Bravo. But I sure as shit wouldn't say no. Guys.... Proxima made the motherfucker CRAWL. If my ex dieter is crawling across the floor to eat me out... who am i to say no. Seems like a great idea actually. Also they're both still clearly down bad for each other and we love that.

Hard Work Gets Rewarded - a Joel and his crew one shot by @walkintotheriveranddisappear

This is like... if you looked at my search history -- if I had one ;) -- you would find this. Straight out of my depraved fantasies you've got contractor!Joel and his very sexy crew giving you the fuck of a lifetime. We got a little breeding kink, a little DVP, a little cum on every part of your body, situation. This is... so hot.

like rabbits blinded by the light - a Joel one shot by @walkintotheriveranddisappear

Yeah so I read a depraved smut fantasy and then jumped on over to this. This is stunning, emotional. it has depth. I love the way Joel finds her and I love the way they stick together and I love the ending. This is sad and sweet, a little painful, very human. I loved it

the world tipped on its side - a Frankie series by @idolatrybarbie

Chronic pain havers -- you will love this one!! Reader has chronic pain from an injury. I'm two chapters in and I'm hooked. There's a lot of trauma and fucked up shit swirling around in both reader and Frankie's heads and it's just under the surface as of chapter two. I love the set up here -- stunt coordinator!reader and stunt pilot!Frankie -- it's really interesting and not something I've read before. (i think i did read a stunt pilot!Frankie / actor!reader / actor!Dieter thing once though lemme know if y'all want that link). Bea writes beautifully and I'm so excited for more of this series.

---------------------- oldies but goodies -------------------------

Wanna bet?, Lingerie, Morning, Afternoon, and Evening - Dieter one shots by @write-and-buried

I'm being so for real right now Every Single Fic by @prolix-yuy - I have almost her entire masterlist on my spreadsheet and this seemed easier than linking them all.

And the same for like everything by @ezrasbirdie, I have so many of their fics on my list.

---------------- my fics --------------------

My most recent fic is This Night Has Opened My Eyes - a Javi P one shot.

--- I have written for Joel, Frankie, Ezra, Javi P, Mr. Ben, Veracruz, Max Phillips, and my darling boy Dieter, you can find those here

-----------------------------------------------

Happy Reading!

[phoebepheebsphibs]

I will never actually write this because it was too sad (even for me and my angsty skills...)

A while ago, I came up with the idea to write a really sad fic about the turtles. Duh.

A goal with all my fics is to have a moment where I make the audience cry, or at the very least get emotional. And this was no exception. It’s a personal challenge for me, to see if I can get my audience truly invested. But, I also need my fics to have a PURPOSE. So, if I was gonna write a sad and angsty fic, I needed a way to bring it to a moral or happy ending, to show a reason why the characters went through what they did, rather than just have a story for story's sake. So, I went about coming up with a synopsis for a story that showed how to deal with grief and guilt and hopelessness. But after several months of writing and ideas, I realized that it simply wasn't working out. The story wasn't just sad or angsty, it was utterly depressing. The message of hope even after death wasn't pulling through... and in addition, I got worried that the massive amounts of despair in the story were going to be detrimental to my mental health, if not also for the readers. Thusly, I scrapped the plot.

So fair warning, the stuff you're about to read is very emotional and kinda dark...

Naw I ain’t playing, turn back now while you have the chance.

CW: LOTS. OF. DEATH. Major illness, disintegration, intrusive thoughts, suicidal thoughts, even a suicide attempt.

I was even in the process of making cover art for it (which I do for all my fics lol)

The fic literally starts out with a note from April (the narrator), explaining that she documented everything and warns the reader that this story does not have a happy ending. It takes place about a week after the invasion, and the family was having a rough time. Mikey's hands were absolutely scorched, Donnie's immune system was shot and he seemed to be getting ill, Raph was having constant panic attacks, and Leo wasn't getting better from his injuries. To top it all off, a new government branch was setting up camp in NYC and interrogating people about the events of the Krang attack. April had narrowly escaped but figured the Earth Protection Force would come back for her. Meanwhile, Leo’s injuries weren’t healing like they should have and he was getting worse… Eventually the family caved and asked for help from Agent Bishop and the EPF, but after some doctors and scientists took a look at Leo… they realized there was nothing anyone could do. They’d waited too long. Leo was not going to make it, and all they could do was make him comfortable for a few hours before he... yeah. So everyone said their goodbyes, and I actually have some snippets of dialogue written down and it makes me cry every time. Donnie had the worst reaction, upset by Leo's peace with the situation and devastated by his loss, believing that he never showed his appreciation and love for his twin as much as he should have. Leo attempts to comfort Donnie, but eventually tells him to "get over it". A few hours later, Leo dies in his sleep, and the room erupts into grief and panic and chaos until Donnie, in his pure anger, punches a hole through the heart monitor and leaves. Leo is given a viking send-off in the Hidden City, and afterwards, April asks what they are supposed to do now. Donnie angrily repeats Leo's last insight: get over it. April goes home, and after her parents ask her how her day was… she bursts into tears.

Several weeks later, Mikey tries to get Donnie and Raph to talk about their feelings, but they both refuse. Mikey himself is having issues, his hands not healing quickly and he wonders if he will ever be able to make a work of art again. He manages to get Donnie to admit his guilt of not being there for Leo and still holding anger and resentment towards his twin for sacrificing himself and dying. Mikey suggests that he speak with Raph, but Donatello refuses. Later, during an attack, Raph was knocked out and Donnie collapsed from his illness, which he had been hiding. Mikey realizes that it's left to him and uses his mystic powers to portal his brothers to safety, at the cost of his own life. Mikey comes to terms with this, believing that what he did was his mangum opus, and he feels no pain as he vanishes, greeted by Leo in the afterlife.

Donatello and Raphael mourn the loss of two brothers, and Donnie finally talks with Raph about his grief over Leo’s death (in honour of Dr. Feelings’ memory). However, his declining health is brought to light and Donnie is placed in quarantine. Casey Jr. identifies his illness as a common Krang disease, one his mother died of, and the group work overtime to create the cure. Raph stays with his last sibling and keeps him company. Donnie gets more and more sick, and one night while April and Casey are working with Agent Bishop to finalize the antidote, Donnie's fever worsens and he sleepwalks, hallucinating Mikey and Leo's return and them comforting Donnie and telling him that the others will be alright in his absence. Donnie senses that his time is almost up. Raph finds him but doesn't understand what Donnie is seeing or who he is talking to, and takes him back to bed. April and Casey finally finish the cure and rush home, hoping to make it back in time, but find Raph asleep by Donnie's bedside… Donnie having just succumbed to his illness a few hours prior.

Raph is left as the last one alive, dealing with extreme survivors' guilt for outliving his brothers and blames himself for their deaths. April tries to comfort him, Splinter, and Casey. (Casey notes that history seems to be repeating itself in reverse order— that while in the alternate timeline Raph died first and Leo last, the opposite has been happening here, and Casey fears that Raph might actually die somehow very soon.) Meanwhile, Raphael tries to atone for his guilt by overdoing the vigilante work on his own. Eventually he decides that it isn't enough, he can never atone, and he misses his brothers too much… so he writes a note to April and emails it to her, then goes to the Hidden City to pick a fight with Heinous Green... and let him win. April receives the email and she and the others rush to save Raph, who at this point has already found Heinous Green and is letting him beat the ever-loving life out of him. Halfway through, however, he realizes what he is doing and that his brothers would not want this for him, but it's too late... April and Casey find Raph near death and attempt to save him, but he goes unconscious from his injuries.

While April, Casey, Splinter and Draxum work to heal Raph's wounds and revive him, Raphael dreams of the afterlife, meeting up with his brothers and apologizing for everything. They comfort him, yet also explain that he has to wake up soon; and how April, Casey, and Splinter still need him. Raphael asks if he can stay, to which they promise that he will be okay without them and someday they will see each other again; that they aren’t mad at him for their deaths, but that he cannot speed up their meeting. Raph agrees to go home, to which they all say how proud they are of him. Raphael wakes up with his family around him, relieved that he survived. Later that night, he and April have a discussion where she scolds and berates him for trying to leave them, saying that she had no one left. He admits his actions and apologizes and promises to get better.

In an epilogue, April explains that it has been a full year since Raph’s injuries, and he is doing much better. The Hidden City made a memorial for the three lost brothers in honour of their sacrifices. Casey Jones Jr. has been doing better as well, though he will often have nights of panic and moments of grief that only Raph can get him through. Agent Bishop works with Raphael and Casey to keep the city safe from mutant attacks, and they work to create a new team, hinting to characters like Mona Lisa, Venus De Milo/Frida Kahlo, Leatherhead, and other characters from the comic series. April ends by stating that at the beginning, she said the story did not have a happy ending. She stands by this, stating that the story has not ended and will continue for as long as they live, and that she does her best to remember her friends and keep going on, not for their sake, but for her own. And that one day, she will see them again.

And as if THAT wasn't heart-wrenching enough, I also planned a short after-story of how something like 80 years later, The Hamato ghosts get ready to welcome Raph into the afterlife, showing Leo preparing a house for him and Mikey decorating and Donnie gardening.

So yeah this is the most depressing and heartbreaking thing I've ever written, and I ACTUALLY SPARED YOU FROM THE DIALOGUE I HAD WRITTEN TOO

[sephirthoughts]

CLICKBAIT TITLE!

SLUTTY PICTURE!!!!

ok now listen

everyone is stupid sometimes

i am stupid a LOT of times

i have been stupid more times than many of you have been awake (that's purely based on number of years lived not because i am abnormally prone to stupidity although i suspect i might be)

what do i mean stupid? i mean like how we (humans and human-like organisms) get weirdly attached to certain ideas, and really emotionally invested in viewing things a certain way. since those things are personal and significant to us, the default i think is to feel frightened and attacked when that idea is contradicted by others or turns out to be different than we thought. a lot of us tend to dig in our heels and double-down on our wrong ideas, because having our beliefs challenged threatens our sense of self, which is Big Scary Existential Stuff.

but let me tell you the most freeing and mentally healthy thing in my life was when i learned to admit when i was stupid and just...change my mind. that's it. that's the secret they don't want you to know. you can just fucking CHANGE YOUR MIND. and no one can tell you not to!!

i think we all need to learn that changing our minds about things is ok. we are allowed to change our minds at any time, without shame, without apology, without regret. hell, you don't even need a REASON. you can change your whole-ass mind purely based on vibes. who's gonna stop you? the cops? those losers can't do shit about it your mind palace is sovereign territory.

if you have changed your mind, but someone points out how you used to think, don't sweat it. they missed the v 2.1 update and are working with outdated code. if someone tries to shame you for changing your mind, which seems to happen a lot on the internet for some reason, tell them people used to think the sun revolved around the earth and diseases were caused by evil miasma, but we got new information and updated our ideas.

changing your mind isn't a threat to your existence, it's proof that your brain is functioning as intended. we are an adaptable species! we invented air conditioning! and scuba diving! among other things of course but those are the most important ones.

the one thing you can't change is other people's minds. but they can! they might! they also might not! if they do, then accept the update and move on. if they don't, that's fine too unless they are running for political office and their bone-deep conviction that women being too saucy causes earthquakes will negatively impact a lot of other people (that was a thing that happened don't ask me about the early 2000s shit was wild).

i guess the point is that we learn and grow from realizing we're stupid and changing our minds. which is insanely cool. being dumb as hell but highly adaptable is the reason we're still around.

so if you have very loud opinions (like me) and i see you change your mind and be just as passionate (loud) in the opposite direction that is beautiful and will bring me so much joy.

if you think i am wrong about a thing and you engage in a respectful and good-faith way and that changes my mind, you win like a million coolguy points. the best part is that even if you don't change my mind, you still win the coolguy points because it's the engagement that matters.

if you are wrong about something and someone else engages you in a respectful and good-faith way that does or does not change YOUR mind, you both also win like a million coolguy points. it's a win-win-win (the third win is me in the background nodding approvingly cause i am so proud of you both don't spray me with the hose i wasn't being a creep this time)

anyway on the very slight chance anyone is still reading this, i hope it helped or at least made sense and was not a totally incoherent jumble of tangents.

also hit me up if you want to chat about fandom stuff or air conditioner or scuba diving or how fucking welcome-to-the-jungle shit got in the 2000s cause god damn. it was a time.

end of rambling run along back to your tik toks and k-pops

ok fine here's another slutty picture cause you stuck around

[alexissara]

Gwitch and Minimum Viable Queerness

Trusting companies to make queer art is always asking for heart break even when it really and deeply seems like they made some queer art. However, despite my love for Gundam: The Witch From Mercury it must be said there is plenty of issues with the show that pointed towards the direction they have gone now that we've entered the post release era.

In the magazine Gundam Ace they edited our a writer stating that Sulleta and Mio were married. They apologized for that statement ever making it in to begin with on Twitter the X gonna give to you dot bomb with this.

This obviously lead to tons of angry fans and queer folks but it wasn't like this came out of nowhere. Despite some people saying it's just "western brained losers" or something that thought there was queer bait in the Witch From Mercury there is something that queer people forget which is that most straight cis people literally have no brain cells. They espically have an inability to see sapphic relationships as real or valid.

Gundam The Witch From Mercury was explicit, more explicit than a lot of media but they intentionally excluded the three universal signifiers of romantic or sexual love from the show despite it being centered for all 24 episodes around the Sulmio engagement. These three signifiers are an "I love you" "I Love You too", a kiss, or fucking. Gundam is a toy commercial for kids so while sex is probably not on the table it isn't actually even off the table for Gundam given the series history has had off scene sex and bad stuff too like adult women trying to seduce like a 10 year old boy. So like these shows aren't afraid to do some shit. Many say that Gundam doesn't do kisses that is a lie, Z, 00, Seed, and Iron Blooded Orphans's all have done kisses. I love yous also happen across the series, the end of G Gundam has a special love attack that blows up the last boss.

This is all to say Gundam: The Witch From Mercury activated a strategy corporate media called minimum viable queerness. In order to get the gay dollar, to seem progressive, whatever it may be a company will do as little gay as they can get away with to get the gays actively invested in their art. Ultimately, their aim is to have it be blaringly obvious to queer folks but invisible to the hets. The show also did the minimum viable amount of women making sure the men had utterly meaningless fights near the end just for women to be on screen less. These fights involve men who are not either of the main two girls getting mad at each other for some kind of connection or action towards one of the girls. These take up a significant amount of the second seasons run time not to mention one of these men got a full episode devoted to him. Meanwhile the main couple of the show was away from each other for the vast majority of episodes, almost never in the same room and almost exclusively on somewhat bad terms.

In the show Sulleta is the main character but in season one she is mostly piloting against men with one fight against a pair of girls near the end. Chuchu is given sidekick pilot status and lives to the end but she doesn't get her own highlighted battle ever unlike a side side character in Guel's brother who gets a major fight against his brother weighted against the fate of quite zero and Sulleta and Ariel fighting. Which comes after Guel fought Shadiq for no reason which came after Guel fighting Sulleta again for Ariel which came after Guel trying to survive in a mech when he was stuck on earth earlier. Guel was in a mech 1 more time than Sulleta was in season 2. The two other witch girls die in their first and second time respectively of being in a gundam in season 2 and the second of the pair gets maybe a word in with our main character her whole existence and never talks to our secondary main character at all. The action is still in large part being given to men even in the woman centric series.

And in this "queer centered" story we see very explicit delectations of feelings from Guel, Shadiq, Petra and Lauda which are all heterosexual ontop of all the adult characters being hetero, implied hetero E5 with Nora dying for considering being with a man and E5 sexually harassing Sulleta. The series overwhelming overcompensates for it's queerness by aggressively pushing straightness and in particular having other main characters want our lesbians heterosexually.

This does not mean that the writers or animations didn't want to be more explicit or that they did a bad job. they did a great job but we cannot know what is Namco Bandai and what is Sunrise. We just can't but it seems given recent statements that likely Bandai was very hands on in controlling the show. Not to mention giving it's first woman lead series a much shorter run time than most other Gundam series got and intentionally closing it off from an easy sequel series despite it being the most profitable series ever for them.

It appears to me as if Namco Bandai's intention was to convert a bunch of lesbians into gundam fan and throw mild gay bait at us to keep us coming now that we converted, far less explicit than Sulleta and Mio but attempting to ride it out in good faith and have us enjoy the men shows that appealed to boys to not break their delusion that they are making a boys toy for boys. Feeding us right into more Gundam Seed is like trying to choke out any potential life and I think we're gonna see a decline in Gundam sales following Gwitch representing the betrayal of these sapphic fans but more so simply the lack of interest in the bar being lowered.

As fans of Gwitch we need to demand better, it does work, we've seen companies fix statements about Sailor Uranus and Neptune before and other similar instances. We can also make them see if they want to reach the high highs again we need the great shit we get in Gwitch but then even more that the minimum we'll let them get away with is far more than the last time.

If you enjoyed this post consider throwing me some money on Patreon to help me make actually queer art without corporations controlling my voice. I'm hoping to write a bit more about minimum viable queerness in the future but I wanted to really just talk about this while I was mad about it and get it up there. Anyway, back to the writing mines with me, hope you have a great day and go out there and be gay.

[jezabatlovesbats]

2023: The Year of Milestones

What a crazy year it's been, am I right? I graduated high school, and I'm now a college freshman. We got some new films that were memed a lot and made a lot of cash. The Owl House and Summer Camp Island ended. I got into some new things as well. Unikitty: Big Bright World turned 5 in January 2023, which is why I crappily edited in the milestone doodle I did for it. You can find it here because I made an ask blog for BBW. For anyone who doesn't yet know me, Unikitty and the BBW AU mean a lot to me.

Following that milestone, I realized there were more things I liked that were turning 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 that year than I thought, and those are very noteworthy digits to me. I wanted to create anniversary drawings for them in celebration. But, because I was procrastinating from them and I also had other stuff going on, I couldn't. 

Instead of individual milestone drawings, I decided to compile all of them into one big tribute. For the same reasons, though, I had to delay it to January of 2024. I was aiming to have it ready to go by about New Years' Eve. But then on Christmas day, me and my brothers were surprised with a trip to California, and we left three days later.

Without further padding out, I'll talk about the things from which the characters are here partying with me, and what those things mean to me. I'll also talk about what the 5 on my hot chocolate mug means, because I'm not 5 years old, and I wasn't born on Leap Day. Here we go! 

We're starting with the oldest thing featured, The Nightmare Before Christmas, which came out in 1993 and hit 30 years. Me and my family went to see it in a theater back in October of 2020, leading to me growing fascinated by it, its characters and its worldbuilding. I LOVE ME SOME COOL AND INTERESTINGLY DEVELOPED WORLDS, OKAY? THE HOLIDAY FOREST IS NO EXCEPTION! I thought of some other towns based on New Years, birthdays and Earth Day. I also thought up some backstory for Lock, Shock and Barrel because they're my favorite characters and I need more of them. Honestly, I felt like I was late to the party. Like, why hadn't I watched it sooner? But let me tell you, you can get invested in something at any time, no matter how dead its fandom is. I think the reason why TNBC stuck with me is because of its spooky-fun atmosphere. I'm not a fan of horror movies; when I go into the garage or go to pee at night, I have this subconscious fear that something's gonna jump out and slash me in two. I sleep with a nightlight on, too. But if it's clear that the spooks are non-threatening (which the Halloween Town citizens made clear in This is Halloween) and there's no graphic violence or gore anywhere, I'm all for it. After all, I enjoy both cute and dark things, and that's how I present myself. Also, I made an entry for TheITinFIT's YTP collab for TNBC in observance of its 30th anniversary, and you can watch it at the link in the replies!

Finding Nemo came out in 2003, so it's hit 20 years. Let me tell you- I was scared of this movie when I was younger. I wouldn't watch it because of the part where Marlin and Dory were sucked up by that whale, or when that pelican swallowed them (not Nigel; he's a good egg). I was also scared of that Octonauts episode where Dashi gets stuck inside a whale shark. I've always had this fear of getting swallowed by a larger being. And this is just my personal opinion, but I'm disgusted by vore. It's not for me, and it's never been. I can handle those scenes now- after all, Dory and Marlin made it out alive both times (and Dashi did, too). Later on, I had a greater appreciation for FN. Like spooky-fun stuff, another favorite, uh, aesthetic of mine is oceans and the sea. I dunno- sea animals are cool, and I've been fascinated with them since I was a kid. I had this phase where I wanted to be a marine biologist. There's just something so relaxing, but simultaneously exciting about Finding Nemo, and for that reason, it's now one of my favorites from Pixar. 

I was listening to the theme song for this show while writing this. Teen Titans also premiered in 2003, and I'm kind of ashamed to admit that I was introduced to it by Teen Titans Go. In 2018, we saw Teen Titans Go To The Movies in theaters, and I followed TTG up until, like, 2021. By that point, it just wasn't enjoyable for me anymore, but I still very much enjoy the classic series. I watched it from start to finish in 2019 and got super into it, especially the HIVE Five. On Wattpad, I created a random story that was basically a blog for the HIVE. I wrote them profiles, let my followers ask them questions, and did incorrect quotes. It's deleted now, though. I was weirdly obsessed with See-More to the point where I made an OC that was his cousin, made OCs based on the other four senses, and shipped him with Scorpion (though they broke up later on). My mom printed the HIVE symbol on a black T-shirt, and it's still in my closet today. Besides them, one of my other favorite characters is Raven. Any character with a purple and black color scheme will catch my eye, but I also found her history and character traits interesting to the point where she influenced one of my favorite OCs I've made. I've got the entire Teen Titans series on DVD, including the Trouble in Tokyo movie. It was one of the first things I could say was one of my fandoms, so it's got a special place in my heart. By the way, I’d LOVE a (good) HIVE Five movie. 

Another thing I absolutely ADORE that came out of 2003 was the Mario & Luigi RPG series. I mean, I've been playing games in the entire Super Mario franchise since I was young. With this series, I'd always be playing Partners in Time, Bowser's Inside Story and Dream Team on my DS, but in both games, I could never get past two parts. For PiT, I couldn't beat the Swiggler, and in BiS, I couldn't get past the Pump Works area inside Bowser. (Like, I couldn't find the Stingler, even though it was actually super easy. You know, the sparky bzzt thing that opens that one door?) Dream Team was the only game my younger self actually completed, and I think that's why it was the game I liked the most. We got Paper Jam when it came out, and though me and my brothers fought over who got to play it for a while, I played it and beat it. I REALLY started getting invested in the M&L series in 2017, when the Superstar Saga remake came out. Now, as I said earlier, big, elaborate worlds with multiple places to explore and lots of characters will have my attention! So, I was hyped to traverse the Beanbean Kingdom. I never played the original Superstar Saga because we never owned any type of Gameboy. But, I got the remake, played it, and beat both SS and Bowser's minions. One thing led to another, and I fell back down the M&L hole. I even wrote a Prince and the Pauper-like story about Prince Peasley and Red, one of my OCs, but it's also deleted now. I had the idea that the series would be a great TV show, leading to me developing an AU in which I write it like one, with my own characters and kingdoms. Some of you may be thinking that if the M&L series appeals to me, then I would enjoy Paper Mario, too. If you are, I think you might be right! 

As I just said, I loved Dream Team the most, and it's still my favorite game in the series. For this occasion, I was planning on writing a post on why Dream Team was, in fact, a CLASSIC, but again- because of personal business and procrastination, I didn't. I forgot all of my points anyway. But I will say this: even with all the long tutorials, the visuals in the game are absolutely GORGEOUS. I love how well-detailed everything is. The colors were so vibrant and dream-like (just like the game title, guys!). And, the music is AWESOME. In fact, it's one of my favorite game soundtracks ever. I want more of the music with lyrics! I already wrote some for three of them! Luigi really got his time to shine, and his and Mario's brotherliness thoughout the game was just SO amazing and sweet. Luigi believes in Mario so much, and he's willing to fight alongside him, and they're unstoppable together! Also, the Pi'illos were and still are an extremely interesting concept to me, to the point where I thought up a whole Elena of Avalor-type character arc for Prince Dreambert. To me, he seems like a prince learning to rule his land in a different time after being stuck in a nightmare chunk for who knows how long. Anyways, Dream Team is amazing. I freakin' love it. Not much more needed to be said. 

Hitting 15 years in 2023 is one of my all-time favorite movies ever, WALL-E! I have loved and appreciated this movie ever sense I was a literal toddler! I made a bunch of little WALL-E stories, so I’ve been writing fanfiction as early as then. I just didn’t know what that was yet. I remember pretending to be EVE and M-O, the latter of whom is my favorite character. I loved it when I was younger, but I didn’t realize just how amazing it was until I started fixating on it again in 2021. When you revisit something, you can notice lots of things you hadn’t seen before and understand why you love it and what makes it so great. Like, I came to better understand WALL-E’s story and themes, and appreciate how gorgeous it is. I watched Hello, Dolly because of WALL-E, and the parallels I noticed blew my little mind. Those old stories I wrote when I was 5 influenced that WALL-E human AU I made. I think I might bring back my gijinkas and create ones for other things with non-human characters because I miss them. I think the reason why this movie appeals to me is because WALL-E himself is fun and perky and curious (and music-loving) in a similar way to myself. And, I’m a firm believer that there’s more to life than my job. I think that because of WALL-E, I enjoy sci-fi stories and worlds just as much as fantasy stories and worlds. I’m also a sucker for stories that combine sci-fi with fantasy. I still love and appreciate WALL-E so, so, SOOO much, and it’s such a huge part of my life. Autistic WALL-E is real to me. 

A movie that came out the same year as WALL-E that I also still love a lot is Ponyo. It came out in the US a year later, but I’m still including it here. Ponyo was my introduction to Studio Ghibli, and I watched it as often as I did WALL-E back in the day. Me and my brother LOVED this movie and would watch it while in in the car a lot of the time. I remember that my brother even started pretending to be a character called “Sonyo.” I think he also started liking ham. I already said how much I love oceans and fantasies! I don’t really watch a lot of anime or movies from Japan, so this was actually my first time drawing Sosuke and Ponyo. I think they came out pretty great. If it hadn’t been for this movie, though, I don’t think I would have wanted to check out Ghibli’s other films. I did watch Doraemon, Yokai Watch and some Pokémon XY Kalos Quest, so I think I still may have wanted to see other anime shows like Eizouken (which I watched all 12 episodes of). But, I’ve got Ponyo to thank for introducing me to Japanese animation as a whole, and in 2021, I watched all of Ghibli’s other movies (except for Grave of the Fireflies). I think I’ll rewatch Spirited Away and Arrietty sometime later on. I really want to see The Boy and the Heron.

There’s a good number of 10s here, by which I mean these things all came out in 2013. The earliest of these is Steven Universe, which came out in May of that year. I got into Unikitty when the last few episodes of SU were being hyped up. I remember watching a clip for Tragic Magic before YouTube slapped the For Kids thing on it, and most the comments were like, “Give us Legs From Here to Homeworld!” So later on in, like, 2019, I got curious and started watching the show from late Season 3 onwards. My first episode was Earthlings. Then, I watched the whole show from start to finish when CN did the Every Steven Ever thing before the movie came out. I watched the movie past my bedtime ‘cause it premiered on a school night. I made myself a gemsona, my brother started watching the movie and getting interested, and I watched the whole series with him including Future. Even with its flaws, and despite what people say about it, it was an enjoyable watch for us! It’s not the best thing ever because nothing is, but I’m on the side of defending it. Even with its flaws and all the shade it got thrown at it, it paved the way for lots of great things and helped so many people feel understood. This show is legendary in more ways than one, and it still has my respect. 

I’ve been interested in Ever After High since it first launched in 2013. I never had any of the dolls, but I think I watched a few episodes of the series. I remember reading Shannon Hale’s books and owning some of the other toys (like a lockable diary). I was interested in Monster High as well (creepy/fun and cute style! Right up my alley!), but I mostly leaned towards Ever After High. I’d also search the web and look up information about the characters. Raven’s included here because, once again, purple and black color scheme! Yay! But it’s mainly because I remember wanting to be like her. I wanted to be a rebel, and I began calling myself one. Back then, I interpreted her as being so defiant of her prewritten destiny that she believed following it was dumb. But I’ve grown since then, and I came to realize that she isn’t like that. Far from that image, in fact. It’s such a HUGE shame what happened to EAH, but I’m glad there are still people out there who show interest in it. I currently follow someone who’s got lots of ideas for a reboot! Sign me up!

I loved lots of other games in the Super Mario franchise, like Mario Party 9 and New Super Mario Bros. for the DS. My great enjoyment of Super Mario 3D World pretty much goes hand-in-hand with Ever After High. Why, you may ask? Because of the weird crossovers I wrote. Let me explain! Hear me out! I was a well-known enthusiast for the game’s Sprixies. You know, those little fairy creatures? I even had names for the Sprixie princesses based on their colors: Greenia, Yellowlina, Bluia, Orangia, Violet, Aquamarina and Redna. (Get it? Edna, but red?) These days, I still call the purple one Violet, but I gave the rest of them other nicknames. Also, back then, I had the red one be the queen of the Sprixies even though the green one is implied to be the face of the seven. Back to the ridiculous EAH crossovers. I made Sprixie sisters for the female characters in the series. The male characters had Toad brothers. It wasn’t just canon characters, either- I also made Sprixie and Toad siblings for people’s OCs I found on the internet. I even typed up a story about the characters and their, quote-unquote, siblings. But yeah- Super Mario 3D world was ridiculously fun, the music was bouncy and catchy, and the graphics are actually really pretty. In the last worlds, whenever we didn’t have enough green stars to advance, I’d organize the Daily Green Star Hunt. Games like this are the reason why I love searching levels for treasures and trinkets as I go along, and I don’t want to advance until all is found. I’m at a point in my life where I completed SM3DW (and also Bowser’s Fury, since we got that edition) to its entirety with everything you could collect in the game. This game stands as one of my top favorites in the Mario franchise as a whole, so much so that I wanted to include it in Mario & Luigi Rewritten.

I love a lot of films from Pixar, but when I was 9, I especially loved Monsters University. The most noteworthy memory I have with it, which is also the most important one to me, is when I had my tonsils removed. By the way, that’s the only time I ever had surgery done on me. After it happened, the next three or so weeks consisted of me eating nothing but ice cream, taking nasty medicine, and messing around with an iPad on this app called Toontastic (if anyone here has heard of it, you’re a legend to me). I also rented MU out on the TV without my parents’ permission and watched it on repeat. I loved to doodle the movie’s background characters and include my doodles of them into my Toontastic cartoons. (Yeah- the app had a thing where you could draw your own characters and backdrops. Also, off-topic, but Toontastic is the reason I know about Deng Xiaoping.) Also, I shipped the frats and sororities with each other. Like, all six of each one. The RORs with the HSSs, the EEKs with the JOXs, the PNKs with Oozma Kappa. Except for Mike, whom I knew was with Celia, and Sulley, who I shipped with… Carla the Killer Claws lady? That wasn’t the best idea. Johnny x Rosie is a ship I still remember quite fondly. Like I said with WALL-E, the older you get, the more you notice why you love a film so much and what makes it good. I really appreciate MU’s message about how it’s okay to fail. And yes, it is! Because if failure wasn’t an option, you wouldn’t know how to pick yourself back up on your feet when things go wrong. Even if you don’t achieve the dreams you hope for, that doesn’t mean you’re done for and there aren’t other doors you can go through. You still matter. My brother and I made a bunch of jokes about MU when I started college. Of course, it’s not what college is actually like, but I still love it and the original Monsters Inc. If I ever see Steve Buscemi, Billy Crystal or any of the other people from this movie in real life, I’m telling them about me watching it while recovering from surgery.

I’ve always gravitated towards the Mario franchise more than the Sonic franchise. And while I have played Mario and Sonic at London 2012, I didn’t like to play anything solely Sonic except for Sonic Lost World. I know, I know- it wasn’t well-received, but that doesn’t make me any less of someone who enjoys Sonic. Back then, I loved watching cutscenes and walkthroughs of the game, and I was particularly fascinated by the Deadly Six. I can only remember looking up pictures of them and reading fics about them. But, that led me to come back to my affinity for them in 2020. I became interested in fleshing out their characters more and imagining what their pasts were like. I do that a lot when I hear people say a thing is half-baked or cookie-cutter of mediocre/bad. I also created my own Zeti characters as well. I played other Sonic games like Colors and Forces, I saw the movies, and I thought up my Mobian characters. Also, I watched Snapcube’s SA2 fandub. I was there to witness Eggman go on the moon. I’d love to branch out to more Sonic stuff, so if anyone would like to recommend me some, please do! I’m all ears! If you’ve seen Take Me To Snurch (Snail Church), a version of that with the Zeti is stuck in my head now. 🎶 Take me to zurch. I’ll worship like a Zeti at the zhrine of your zife… 

Oof… I’m just gonna say that Frozen fever was inescapable back in the day to tons of kids, including me. When I was a kid, I was a huge copycat. I’d be into things because my friends were into them, and I’d plagiarize other people’s stuff almost all of the time. So, I don’t really remember if I was genuinely interested in Frozen. But apparently, I was enough to have my 9th birthday party be themed around it. Also, I remember that shortly afterwards, I had a sleepover with my friends from dance class, and we watched the movie together (not all of it). Right before we went to bed, we were all singing Let it Go as loud as we could. Frozen’s impacted my young life enough for me to take inspiration from it for Broken and Frozen. But, I agree when people say we need to warm up.

Lastly, there’s my milestone, which just so happens to be Christmas. On Christmas of 2018, I got a new computer, and my parents told me they’d set up the Wattpad account I’ve wanted since before I turned 13. I was first introduced to Wattpad after watching a video about fanfiction and reading the MC:SM Rewritten series (even though it’s now inactive). I talked about the weird little things I liked in real life, but while people listened, I never felt like they really knew what I was talking about. I started uploading my random thoughts, characters and stories to Wattpad, and I started making friends with people who were interested in the same things as me. When I did that, I really felt understood. The same happened when I joined DeviantArt in 2019, and for a while, it was just those two. Later on, in 2021, I hopped on Tumblr, YouTube and AO3. Then came Discord, and most recently, Amino. I was and still am fiercely loyal to my creations and my pals online. Through my high points and my mess-ups, I’ll want to connect with my closest friends and mutuals whenever I can. I’ve found enjoyment in lots of things, and I’ve come so far in terms of developing my artistic skills. When online, I found it easier to connect with people because I could more easily seek out people I had things in common with. What’s especially important to me is that connecting in this way is how I met one of my best friends ever, and while on my trip, I got to see them in real life. I hope it happens again someday. It’s not good to be chronically online, of course. But, being here has helped me discover myself and find peace within this world in ways you can’t even imagine. To everyone I’ve ever interacted with, thank you for five wonderful years! 

Wow! This sure was a lot. To everyone I’ve ever befriended and followed over these things and others, and to everyone who followed me, I can’t thank you enough for being here! You guys are the reason I keep logging in almost every day and why I’m still on my feet. Especially you, Hino! Thank you so, so, SO much! 

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!! 🎆💜🖤🦇

[wanderingandfound]

I loved the broken Earth trilogy if you end up reading it I hope you do too:)

Hi Anon,

I don't know if you follow me or not. You sent this ask on November 24th, 2018. I got the date from searching for the email that notified me of this ask. This was the only post I reblogged on that day. Maybe you never followed me, and was just passing across my blog one evening. Maybe you followed me then, but don't any longer. Maybe you don't even use Tumblr now. Or maybe you're still here.

You were so right. I love this trilogy.

Looking at my overdue emails it looks like I read the first book in the summer of 2020, right after I started my job at the library I checked it out from. I read the second one shortly thereafter, I think I tried to keep in time with Mark Oshiro's chapter-by-chapter blogging of the second book, but I probably didn't do a great job of that.

And then I took a break. They are excellent books, but 2020 was a year. I lost my great aunt and my yiayia right before the US shutdown for the pandemic. My grandfather fell off his chair and punctured a lung in December and then got COVID in the hospital and died. Other stuff was happening, and I stopped reading things that I cared about because I wasn't in the proper headspace to give them the attention I wanted to, and I didn't have the emotional fortitude to deal with something with as many heavy elements this series has, now that I'm emotionally invested.

Last year(?) I read Jemisin's Great Cities duology and man was that utterly fantastic. I love her writing. But also? I don't know how you pegged me so well with the Broken Earth rec but it feels like this trilogy was made to give me everything I want out of a book.

I've been sad for like, a month now. But while my sadness is hitting pretty deep the reasons I'm sad are fairly shallow, and all constrained to myself. I brought the last book on my trip because a) I thought having time to read when I have intentionally set aside most of my problems to be dealth with by future me would help, and b) I kinda hoped I would get so sad about this book that it would push out my current sadness. The first one worked. The second one didn't. For all these books deal with heavy subject matter and are packed with atrocities, they aren't dark books. And the matter-of-fact, head-on way the narrator addresses the atrocities didn't trip up my tears much for this last book, but it came close. Unfortunately the reading experience was a little marred by me reading this last book through the filter of my current sadness, but my perception of the book didn't suffer for it (unlike the second book I read on my vacation).

I brought four books on my vacation. This was the fourth one I read. I started it Thursday while waiting for my intercity bus, but I read the last 75% of it on Monday while traveling home on an intercity bus and two planes. I didn't liveblog my experience because these books are so captivating I have nothing to say. I read some of it sitting beneath a tree in an old cemetery waiting for my friend to pick me up because I spent too long exploring the new part of the cemetery that I wouldn't be able to walk back to the place I was staying in time.

Thank you so much for this recommendation. There's a lot of books under my To Read: tag and I don't read the majority of them. But you were right. I love this trilogy. Thank you. <3

[froshele]

reblogging again to add a take: we belong here.

Benefitting from the cycle of life and death involves a tremendous amount of learned skill, particular cultural values and most importantly work and the capacity for taking things on the nose if you screw up.

A lot of people who obsess about harm to animals and plants don't obsess about or think about the wider ecology they exist in, because they're not actually morally invested in a philosophy of nonharm for the practical sake of reducing suffering in concrete animals with whom they have a bond. They don't have a bond with any animals, or any plants, or any streams or rivers or other important ecological participants; they have a Fear. They have a Fear of Death, sure, but the core of the Fear of Death is the fear of No Longer Being, of Being Forgotten, of being Unwanted. Of being an Interloper, of Causing Inherent Harm By Existing, of Deserving the Erasure of their Name. They cannot imagine that they, considering what they or their loved ones have done, belong here.

This is why so many of them are angry antinatalists who expect other people to agree that ceasing to exist as a species would be a net benefit and a noble sacrifice for the Earth - they know everyone else sacrifices, and they never have themselves, and more importantly they believe in the fallacy of Nature.

Let me explain : Nature, the Wilderness that Would Be Pristine Without Us, is not real. Not in the sense people in the West discuss it. It is not something separate from human existence or experience, it is not interrupted (how hubristic to assume!) by cities, it is not something unchanged by those who live in it. It is not something any animal, any plant avoids changing. There needs to be a radically new reframing of ecology (ecos - home, logia - knowledge) that includes cities without guilt, or else instead of actionably uniting with others with a view to ecologically improving cities, making them less of a strain on our shared home with other nonhuman people, this sort of person will keep crusading for some sort of anprim "return" to eating granola and dying at 20, to belonging. They will keep aping the people they imagine belong here more than they do, all while contributing to those people's continued crisis, because someone (not them) has to make all the stuff that they waste.

Under these circumstances nothing will get done, because everyone knows this kind of head in the sand displacement of done harm into the third world (it wasn't us! it's them doing it!) is stupid.

And capitalists, and industrialists more generally, are afraid of change at all for moral reasons (the reckoning, the reckoning!). They glom on to that very extreme as justification for retaliatory action. I understand the rage and hopelessness that fuels it but I genuinely think everyone with these sorts of unactionable positions whose goal is to absolve them of their guilt and shame rather than see the big picture and do something, do anything, help anyone who is another person needs to shut up and come back to Earth, to the place where the rest of us are trying to make it somehow still possible to live. If everyone human disappeared tomorrow the damage of industrialization would still have been done, and eventually something somewhere left behind - reactor, oil rig - would fail and break and kill. The harm would still be there, just with no one to do anything about it.

Nature is not some sort of theistic arbiter of the moral worth of a species (so where does that put all those people g-dhonest pure foaming about koalas?) and it is not, especially, hateful to humans inherently. We belong here. That's my thesis. We belong here, and that entails responsibility that many people are not stepping up to, but we belong here. We do belong here. We belong here.

Belief in anyone's unbelonging here directly leads to racism, to justifications for war and genocide, to the displacement of native peoples from their lands by persons who sincerely believe that they are doing something good and noble. It leads to plastics choking the world because immediate ancestors had the monumental hubris to imagine they had - or should have - "beaten" Death, and Time, and the Ends and Beginnings of Things. It is a fundamentally bad starting point; everybody belongs somewhere, and sometimes they move, and they cannot go back, and we must find out how to go on from there.

Humans are theosophizing creatures because gods and angels and the like are, besides their other natures, manifestations of the awe we feel about our world. It is impossible for us not to think of a Mother Nature or a Father in Heaven or the full complement of a Bear and Tortoise and a Grandmother Spider, or for that matter a Papa Darwin or Abstract Prime Mover, Natural Selection, though the latter kinds of understanding for some reason are never conceptually connected with the former. But it is possible not to begin from the position that from the moment we are born, they hate us for the imagined sins of our and not-our ancestors.

Then there might not be a fear of them anymore. And you can work with someone you are not afraid of, who you know is not afraid of you. You can make things better for yourself and others together with them.

vegans would rather wear plastic head to toe than benefit from symbiotic relationships we've had with animals for thousands of years

[notori]

CR Thoughts - As of C3E68

Personally, I've always been more invested in character-based stories than world-based stories. And I get it, that is a personal preference and it's up to me to curate what I consume. But it has made me pick up on the thought that, at least I feel, since mid-C2, CR has shifted to more world-based stories over character-based stories - *For the most part.

TL;DR: Really hoping for some RP, shopping, and merriment.

What I mean is, I feel like from mid-C2 onwards, it's been a lot of "The world happening to the characters" and less "the characters happening to the world." I understand that, in certain doses, the "We are up against something massive and bigger than all of us beyond comprehension!" plotline is exciting, but after a while it just gets so overwhelming.

Like Ashton said, odd jobs are good, you have a focus and it's clear. And I wish that they would shrink or slow just a bit to allow for some more inter-character RP overall.

Yes, I am an Imodna shipper whose favourite across all CR is Laudna. However, I still say that from an objective standpoint, the episodes where they were trying to get her back were some of the best because they were so character focused. They had a goal that was meaningful and personal. Everything with the gods is causing so much feet dragging because, aside from FCG (and even then, it's limited), there isn't a personal connection between the gods and the characters. I feel like this is the wrong party to have this plot for. It's going to be impossible to get them to focus because all but one of them will just go wherever their friends go because that's what matters.

So the plot needs to shrink a little and focus for them. It isn't to say that everything with Ruidus can't still be happening or can't be the main thing overall, but we have very down-to-earth characters with minimal stakes (or minimal understanding of those stakes).

The past few episodes were also very good because there was a clear task for Orym. A character had a personal connection to what was happening, and everyone worked together to help. It wasn't for the gods, or the titans, or Predathos - it was to save his family, flowers or no flowers.

Going to see D(evexian) has the potential to be that moment for FCG, and going to the Shattered Teeth can be that for Ashton. But it could also easily turn into something too big for them to reasonably think about and handle, and we'll be spinning our wheels again. Because when things get too big, like fighting a god-eater on the moon, it starts to lose meaning.

Connecting with fiction is often about connecting with bits and pieces and imagining a what-if scenario. It's why character-based stuff works well, because, fantasy/magic or not, we can all relate to concepts of love, betrayal, camaraderie, friendship, play, jealousy, etc. It doesn't matter if the characters have unreal forms or abilities because the themes are relatable. However, when we are constantly against some form of "This is way bigger than you, you can't possibly hope to defeat it." you either need characters who are motivated and hopeful (VM/M9) or you have no choice but to give up and say "Well shit, I guess I can't do anything about this so I might as well live chaotically until we die" which is I feel is a lot of BH's whole thing. Which, I get it, relatable, but less emotionally impactful.

We desperately need some moments of joy and fun in C3 - and right now we have the potential for it. If the angle is going to be "We're in it for our friends" then we need to see them just being friends. Friends, as in, not "I can't let you die because it will cause me too much pain", friends as in "Remember that silly thing we did together?"

It's not even just "More RP episodes plz", but specifically inter-party - possibly one-on-one/small group - interactions that have nothing to do with the world. Because we have spent episodes establishing that they are not in it for the 'world' (in the greater meaning of the concept), but are in it for each other. But why? We know, meta-wise, what a lot of their deals are, but we need to see it in-game. Why are these people friends?

I'm not denying that they are, I'm just saying that a lot of it seems to have taken place during time skips. Most innocuous moments have been cut for the sake of keeping the plot rushing along. Moreso than VM and M9 have there been moments where they go to bed and I get all set for at least a few to talk over the night, and then the time passes. Sometimes multiple nights in a row if they're just speeding it up to the next big thing. But it's in those moments that we really connect to the characters who are on the line when the world comes for them. We have seen a lot of why the Hells are codependent, not necessarily friends.

And you can have a party of codependent non-friends in a game! But then the premise for them working together needs to be solid where they all have a personal stake in the matter. If the group motivation for 'doing the plot thing' is "For the sake of my friends!" - then we need to see more of those innocuous, light-hearted, joyful moments of friendship. Not heated desperation to not lose someone in the middle of a conflict.

I'm not saying get rid of it, either! We just need those moments in between.

Anyway, long post. Lot of thoughts. I have so many conflicting emotions about C3 because it's given me some of my favourite characters overall but sometimes man... I just want to see them live.

[artswaps]

have you seen the full season yet? thoughts? are you as mad about adam being killed off as I am?

My health has taken a downturn and I don’t really have energy to think too hard abt it all right now, especially with all the negativity on my dash dragging me down ugh ….. but I’m not really sure what I thought of the season myself. It was a mixed bag of confusing and vaguely anxious feelings, and some stunning moments that made me very happy.

I’m not upset about Adam. I did mostly enjoy the season (i think?? eh I gotta process it) but let me be a tiny but critical for 2 hot secs cos I have a billion thoughts in my head and I GOTTA get them out hserjdgthy. Under the cut:

First of all, the Adam thing?? To be honest, I don’t… really care. I understand why people are upset and that’s fine! But Adam was literally a character for like 10 seconds. He was never meant to be prominent, the only purpose he served was to offer some insight into Shiro’s character, and the weight of his decision to choose to go through with the Kerberos mission. 

Adam was never Shiro’s happy ending. Even if he’d survived, he and Shiro weren’t going to get back together, and he probably wouldn’t have become a significant part of his life again; the nature of their breakup just wouldn’t have allowed for that. Their relationship was a thing of the past, they’d moved on from one another and him surviving wouldn’t have changed that. He was important enough to Shiro at one point in his life that he was mourned for and remembered, but they were never going to just go back to how they were.

So, no, I’m not upset about it because Adam like…….. literally wasn’t even a character we were supposed to care about outside of his faded connection to Shiro. We don’t know a thing about him. I personally don’t even consider this much of a “bury your gays” trope moment because he wasn’t a prominent character and was never meant to be and literally only served as a device to let us get to know Shiro more. Adam himself was not the important part of the “Shiro isn’t straight” reveal. Shiro is. Idk if that makes sense but that’s how I see it. 

As for the rest of the season…… hmmmmmmmm a little critical (I promise this is at most one of two posts I’ll make complaining about the season cos overall I think I did still mostly like it)

I really need time to process it all…. I didn’t hate it! But I had a lot of issues with the season; things that just rubbed me the wrong way, especially in regards to Keith’s characterisation in one certain episode I’m not thinking about ggrrrrrr and some of his and Lance’s interactions. I guess I got my hopes up for more keith/lance friendship this season but it just didn’t deliver as much as I’d hoped? There were a few nice moments (Keith trusting Lance to lead the team, Lance calling Keith “the future” aaw that was so sweet) but otherwise they didn’t really seem to act like friends?? Maybe I was imagining it but... hm.  A lot of the barbs they threw felt totally unnecessary and tbh it felt like they fell back to their more bitter season 1-2 dynamic. (And it mostly came from Keith this season which was a weird and abrupt shift? What happened to him being glad that he and Lance were getting along??? I honestly can’t tell if his quip about “not wanting to spend eternity here with Lance” was meant to be a joke or not... it seemed harsh I guess compared to everyone else’s genuine compliments)

There were a lot of very strong moments and scenes, but I just… didn’t quite enjoy it as much as the other seasons?? I just wasn’t engaged? It kinda dragged a bit near the end. That two-part about the Holts during the time skip was………. so tedious, we already knew most of the stuff they kept repeating. Why not give the same kind of focus to the other time-skips and developments that could’ve benefited from it, where things were glossed over? 

Veronica was kickass though, I love her!! The new characters were pretty neat. The admiral’s death was… appropriately sombre and actually struck a chord with me, which was a nice surprise. I ended up liking her, in the end. She made a bad judgement call but she had a noble death. 

But hmmm Keith being back finally didn’t get the focus I was hoping for. They half-dragged some of the underlying issues between himself and the team into focus and then kinda just slapped a bandaid over it and never resolved anything? There were a few moments especially in that one episode adwshefrgtjrhytju where they made Keith come across as a lot more callous than he’s ever been before?? Ugh I have so many problems with that episode but I can’t tell if they’re genuine criticisms or me just… reading the characters wrong/ pushing my own unfounded expectations onto the ep. Him making such cruel comments about Allura’s father had me so shocked though... I’m glad he owned up to his words and apologised, he always knows when he’s in the wrong and tries to make amends, but the fact that he dropped that in the first place was?? not something i’d expect from keith.

I’ll definitely talk more about what I did love about the season soon, but uuuughghhgh it just… hmm… it felt off. It didn’t really feel like Vo/ltron. I guess the first 3 seasons really were my favourites, at least as far as pacing, tone and characterisation went, but there’s been such a shift since then that I doubt it’ll return to that. I certainly don’t think it was bad, I think there’s just a discrepancy between my own expectations and what I personally want from the show and what they’re actually delivering- still largely more action-based than character-driven and never quite delving deep enough into the relationships I really want to see explored. 

Hunk kicked ass though. Hunk dominated this season it was so refreshing and wonderful to see  

[overthinkinglotr]

People keep insulting the Amazon Lord of the Rings show by comparing it to fanfiction when really it's the EXACT opposite of fanfiction! It's so interesting/awful because it's like the ultimate ANTI-fanfiction! I was talking to someone the other day and wasn't aware that lots of people don't know about the insane complicated rights issues happening behind the scenes of the Amazon Show but it's wild. To give a quick summary of the Battle of the Five Rights Issues, as I currently understand it: 1. Amazon only has the rights to make a show about the pre-LOTR era as described in the Lord of the Rings books-- primarily in the appendices of Return the King, where a handful of pages give a brief timeline of some events that happened before the stories. In practice this means they are unable to use nearly all of the characters, places, and events people are familiar with when they think about Middle Earth. They have to make up everything out of whole cloth-- from characters to events to settings. This is either because of timeline reasons or for legal reasons or for both. Whenever they do manage to scrounge up the rights to something you might even vaguely remember (like Mithril) they announce it with enormous fanfare like they're a marvel movie introducing an avenger.

(Parenthetical: Another weird thing I noticed is that the series features practically zero quotes from Tolkien. I only counted about like 4 lines that were edited versions of lines from the books? While this is just a wild tinfoil hat theory, It does feel to me like there might've been some kind of limitation on the amount of Tolkien's words they were allowed to use, as well as the obvious limitations on characters and plot points and etc. The show has the rights to so few things and always REALLY wants you to know when it has the rights to something. It's desperate to remind you of the original books. You would think that, when it's unable to rely on familiar characters or places or events or plot points or music or etc, they would rely instead on Tolkien's really recognizable prose/poetry/language to form an emotional connection to the original stories. After all, language is the heart of Middle Earth, the author's love of language is the reason the world was created, and the unique prose of the story is kinda the soul of why it's memorable. And again, they theoretically have the rights to everything mentioned in the original trilogy right? Theoretically? So it's really odd that they don't use almost any of the language, unlike basically every other adaptation. It might just be a weird writing decision, but it's so strange that it really makes me feel like they were limited or at least dissuaded from including lines from the books.)

2. Amazon is legally Not Allowed to feature things that were mentioned in the Unfinished Tales or the Silmarillion, despite the fact that those are the books that contain most of the stuff about the era they're theoretically adapting. This leads to a bunch of really weird stuff where they introduce things you'd only care about if you read the Silmarillion, but can't include any of the things that would actually make you care about it. Like people who Aren't deep into the lore have literally zero emotional investment in Celebrimbor, but people who ARE deep into the lore know that you can't reference any of the reasons they care about it. 3. Amazon's series is NOT part of the same canon as the Peter Jackson/New Line Cinema films. They're not. However they obviously want to trick people into thinking they are because those movies are popular and a prequel to them would make money even if it sucked (see the Hobbit films.) But again, New Line Cinema still wants to make its own LOTR content based on the slivers of rights they've managed to grab onto, and don't want Amazon to step on their toes. So IIRC Amazon actually made a deal with New Line Cinema that they were allowed to imitate their movie franchise's aesthetic (to keep the brand popular and in the public eye)........ BUT if New Line Cinema ever felt like Amazon was infringing too much on their territory, they could step in and stop it. So the show just sorta looks and sounds like a bland knockoff of the New Line films, because that's all they're legally allowed to be XD. Like they're supposed to look/sound just enough like them to trick you, but they're not legally allowed to include the specific things from the PJ films that would actually make you feel nostalgic for them (like the famous musical leitmotifs.) 4. Part of the deal was that the Tolkien Estate could step in and change anything in the show if they felt it wasn't true to the lore-- which is ridiculous because again, Amazon basically doesn't own the rights to any of the lore so they're just making stuff up anyway. From what I can tell it seems like this basically means the Tolkien Estate can arbitrarily veto any creative decisions based on whatever they've decided “Tolkien would've wanted,” which obviously limits what Amazon is able to do (and likely prevents them from actually criticizing the awful problematic elements of Tolkien's worldbuilding)

5. Ok I don't have a fifth one. SO BASICALLY: Yes, the Amazon series is about a bunch of original characters in almost completely original settings featuring original events and original plot points that (for the most part) doesn't even include any of Tolkien's actual words, and also isn't affiliated with and doesn't include the recognizable things like musical motifs from the New Line Cinema films. But that doesn't make it fanfic. Because fanfiction is when you take another's person's characters and stories and write your own weird personal take on them, even if you don't legally own it. Who legally owns the copyright is irrelevant in fanfiction. Fanfic it's about writing a story with the characters and world you love, about transforming a story you're passionate about even if you don't legally own the rights. Amazon Rings of Power is what happens when an entire show is completely written around what you legally own the rights to. Every aspect of it only exists as an elaborate tap dance around copyright infringement. Again, I think the Amazon series is more interesting as "a study of how corporations/megafranchises can do massive harm and also weaken our ability to create good art" than it is as a tv show, alskdjfsdlf.

If fanfiction is "writing something you love regardless of whether you own the rights" then Rings of Power is "writing whatever fits within the extremely narrow box of the rights you happen to own." And that makes it....a very strange thing to exist! It’s kinda a shining example of how giant media monopolies and copyright laws designed to benefit them end up hamstringing everyone’s ability to create meaningful art, even the corporations themselves.

[moonybyte]

Just a small mention in regard to the "sensitive egos" that some seem to think are the issue: When you give your unasked "critique", be aware that you know NOTHING about the author. They might be a minor. They might be a single mom. They might be a bank CEO. You have no clue what they do next to the writing/arting unless they tell you and most are hopefully very sparse with sensitive private information.

A single mom that looks after her kid from 6-8am, then does a part-time job till 2pm, looks after the kid again till 8pm and then spends 1-2 hours writing? Do you REALLY think that such a person even has the energy to invest lots of time into improving whatever you think she'd need? Do you believe that a minor that uses writing as a stress relief between school, after-school activities, hanging with friends and maybe a sport club has the time? A university student working on their thesis who writes a bit for fun, just to not loathe looking at a keyboard? Someone doing a 8-10 hour job, with 1-2 hours of commute during which they're writing?

People that ask for critique are usually at a point where they can invest some time and energy in improvement. But if I have a new job or my grandma suddenly needs me to care for her or I had a recent death in the family? Fuck off, I write to have a bit of a nice moment with myself, your comments are literally the last thing I'd need in such a situation.

And just to underline the "it's inefficient":

When I first got internet access as a teen, I dared for the first time to share my art with strangers by putting it online. As a small side-note, at that time I was being heavily bullied in RL, so it was my attempt to connect with people in a way that wasn't painful. I wasn't a marvel where people go "HOLY SHIT", but it was the best I could make at that time and I was proud of my stuff and posted only what I felt was my current highlights. A few people praised it, maybe five gave lots of praise and 1-2 tiny hints on what to do better and how <with the mention that it was pretty good regardless though> and some simply went "Hey, I love that character as well :D" ONE. One single person decided to "give criticism", about a month after I put stuff up. It was a long comment filled with all the things I had supposedly done wrong, from anatomy over colors and lineart to the very topic I had chosen to depict. I read all of it, cried and then didn't draw anything at all for 3 years. Because why try. Clearly I am the worst artist on earth and I should just give up. Clearly I am just a horrible person in itself, if there is no place where people won't pick on me. It was a dramatic spiral downwards, all because of one comment. I destroyed and deleted much of my art and deactivated all my accounts at that time, because it seemed useless to keep them.

The thing that made me pick it back up? My school art teacher who noticed in my homework that I had decent basics and thus, over months, worked me back up to do it for FUN. He had the knowledge and background to know when to push and when to praise without potentially making me just throw all my shit out the window again. And then it still took another year to show my stuff to anyone other than him and family. That art teacher is the reason that I actually worked on myself and my art so much that I got to study art education and digital art, not the asshat that thought he was Michelangelo gifting me with knowledge. Maybe young me had a "sensitive ego", but that is the point: you don't know the artist behind the name. If someone got such a thing, your words won't improve them, your words will permanently make them stop at worst. And then the fandom will have lost a writer/artist that could have made so much good stuff that someone would have loved, even if it would have only been they themselves. And giving unasked "this and that sucks, you should do this and that to be better" is cruel when unwanted, always.

As stated above, there are forums and discords where fanfic writers go to get feedback, if they want some. Join those, offer your opinion there and see if someone wants it. But a random stranger on Tumblr, LJ or Ao3 will in 98% of all cases NOT want your baseless opinion. And unless you commissioned a piece from them, you have no right to give any suggestions to them unless its praise or an eager "make more :D". If you can't do that, leave them and their work alone. You want something written so badly that is exactly how you think it should be? Write it yourself or pay the writer.

Final note: if you want to read more from someone, keep your negative opinions for yourself. Because me and many writers/artists nowadays can and will block those that ruin their fandom experience. And instead of getting "better" stories, suddenly you're getting none.

Hey, if you don't have something nice to say about other people's creations (gifsets, art, fic etc)

then

don't say anything at all.

[lord-squiggletits]

One of the thing I love about IDW Op is that he's technically an atheist war pope. It's interesting that he didn't believe in religious aspect himself but was willing to use it for the power. Made his character more complex to me. Do you have opinion on this topic?

I have a lot of mixed feelings about it tbh. On one hand, I think being an atheist/agnostic fits IDW Optimus' character well (I've tried to imagine him as religious and just...can't), but on the other hand, I kind of have a problem with the way most media depicts religious people, and it's a bit disappointing that the Matrix has canonically been associated with multiple miracles (reviving OP and Hot Rod from death, creating new sparks, even Primus/Rung being able to make them) but Optimus still calls the Matrix 'nothing but a bauble' at some point like. Really bro? So there is a part of me that is disappointed at the Matrix being treated as a Plot Device rather than a proper, respectable religious thing. On the other hand, that's just not what the story is about, and I can't call a story/character bad because it didn't go in the exact direction I wanted.

TLDR: I think Optimus being agnostic/atheist makes sense for him, but I really dislike the way it was handled in the story because it feels more like it was used as a plot inciting device than some sort of journey of Optimus trying to discover his purpose. Also, the way he interacts with other religious characters had a lot of wasted potential, so I just feel like it wasn't written in a very interesting way? Basically, the writing is such a mixed bag of interesting concepts with mediocre/bad execution that I can barely focus on the in-universe implications and mostly just get mad at Barber's writing.

My feelings are also complicated by the fact that I don't like Barber's writing at all (it's like 90% dislike and 10% like) because of how bad he is about prioritizing plot over character emotions and stuff. Earlier on in phase 2 it seemed as if Optimus was genuinely curious about his religious role as a Prime and asked the Camiens for guidance on who he should be as Prime (Windblade, Aileron, the Mistress of Flame). In Death of Optimus Prime, OP literally wished he was dead when he woke up. He made a very big deal about how he's Orion now, not Optimus. In Dark Cybertron he had a whole crisis about whether he's Orion or Optimus. Basically, he was set up to have a huge identity crisis (especially since the war is over and leadership of Cybertron fell to Starscream), but any amount of introspection was quickly derailed into PLOT PLOT PLOT OPTIMUS ANNEXES EARTH AND FIGHTS GALVATRON. The story just devolved into bullshit plot on Earth that was just action, action, plot, things happening, with pretty much no room for the characters to stop and breathe and talk and have relationships with each other. I barely felt any emotional investment for most of exRID.

I think the only scenes we got with Optimus actually getting to reflect on this new role of his was 1. when he first met Aileron and asked her and 2. when he's telling Aileron he doesn't believe and then Pyra Magna comes in and gets mad at him.

Speaking of Pyra Magna, the story writing also annoyed me because from the moment she was introduced, Pyra Magna was SUPER self-righteous about how she should be the Prime instead of Optimus and she said that she would try to make Optimus into a better Prime. But then guess what happens? Her and Optimus barely talk and Pyra Magna is basically just there to form Superion and punch people :/ And then later on when Onyx Prime is introduced, all the sudden Pyra Magna goes from having strong opinions about what a True Prime should be and believing she's destined to be the true Prime........ to talking about how she's never trusted Primes and she left the Mistress of Flame for trusting a Prime too quickly??? I know Pyra Magna isn't Optimus, but the reason I'm bringing her up is because she seemed truly religious and opinionated, she SAID she was going to "teach" Optimus things, she seemed like she was set up to be a rival to Optimus, but instead they barely have interactions and the ones they do have early in the series end up being retconned later by Barber's shitty writing that puts plot over consistent character development so. :/ I really expected Pyra Magna and Optimus to have some meaningful interactions, some mix between a rivalry and a mentor/student situation, but instead all she does is shit on him like half the case of exRID/OP and it just made me mad.

(There was also Slide who went from worshipping Optimus to saying that his leadership style is "literally fascism" and monologuing about how Optimus is a conqueror while fighting Unicron and Trypticon is being killed in the background. She's so fucking annoying and comically stupid that I genuinely thought she was going to betray them or do something evil just because she was so unhinged.)

But if you want my actual in-universe opinion on atheist pope Optimus, I do think it's an interesting concept. It shows off Optimus' sense of duty where even though HE doesn't believe, he thinks that what other people think of him his more important. He sees that being a religious figure can help him do what he thinks is right, so he willingly plays that role as a means to a greater end. He's already a "patriot and hero" to the Autobots thanks to his military feats; he's used to being venerated (sometimes to unhealthy degrees) and knows how powerful his influence can be whenever he makes political decisions. I think that he basically saw the Camiens' worship of him as just a new form of the admiration he was already used to receiving. He's spent his whole life commanding armies so simply adopted the colonists into his ranks as well.

(Also, side note, it's so fucking hypocritical for Pyra Magna to call Optimus a piece of shit for "using belief, but not believing" only for her herself to admit a few volumes later that she's never trusted Primes. Why do you wanna be one so badly then if you think Primes are so awful? If it's because you think you could do a better job than past Primes, that literally makes you the same as Optimus, who is also trying to redeem the title of Prime, so you have no right to be punching Optimus in the face lmao. But I also genuinely can't tell if that hypocrisy is supposed to be deliberate or if Barber just did what he usually did and ignored character emotion/motivation/self-reflection in favor of shoving some backstory in for Pyra Magna that tied her to Onyx Prime.)

At least Optimus tried to discourage the blind worship and used the Camiens to do things he had already spent his whole life doing (fighting genocidal colonizers aka Decepticons and protecting organic lives) so I don't really see it as out of line for Optimus. It shows how IDW OP can be a politician as well as a military leader. I think it shows how Optimus can be clever and take advantage of his reputation to achieve his political goals (protecting Earth) and it makes him a more realistic character. Sometimes things that are good aren't done through noble means. Sometimes people do good things by being not very nice.

Also, for what it's worth, I think IDW OP is less manipulative than someone like Starscream, who constantly flaunted his "Chosen One" status while admitting he didn't believe in it (or wavering in his belief) and doing things like creating secret police and trying to kidnap sparklings. Like damn at least Optimus risked his life in the same battles he asked his followers to fight in, he ruined his reputation for the sake of protecting Earth from the Decepticons. Even if the guy is an atheist pope at least he puts his own ass on the line for things he believes in for the sake of protecting people who pretty much hate him lmao. That's why I'm more inclined to view Optimus sympathetically; he's living a lie for political means, but his politics are literally "protect humans and Earth from the bullshit war and destruction Cybertronians forced onto their planet", and the burden of leadership is making him depressed and passively suicidal, and eventually he literally sacrificed himself by jumping into a black hole to save millions/billions of people so like. Let the guy fucking rest lmao.

[aadmelioraa]

Hello my pal, how are you?

I was wondering, what do you expect for the future of our boi Valandil when Númenor falls? Do you think he'll be pharazonized and die, or he will like, change his mind at the last minute and fly with the Elendils or else?

Have a nice thursday!

Hiiii thank you!! I hope you have a nice Thursday too!! Funny you should ask, I was just thinking about Valandil (I say, as if I am not always).

I think they've set up a really interesting arc for him, potentially. I wasn't expecting him to have the level of narrative importance that he ended up having in the latter half of the first season, and given his closeness with Isildur, but also Elendil and Míriel at this point, there's a lot the writers can do there. 

I can definitely see him siding with the King's Men for a time, and it does seem almost certain he will meet a tragic end of some kind…we know Isildur will name a son after him, so it's likely Valandil won't be around for that :(  To be clear, I am obsessed with that angst potential, it feeds me, I will be super happy if he has a tragic but satisfying arc...I am an Isildur girlie for life, I am here for the tragedy.

I would love it, personally, if Valandil was aligned with the King's Men by the time Isildur returns from Middle-earth. I am really hoping the show gives us a nuanced treatment of the religious divide, and having sympathetic characters like Valandil on the other side is a great way to do that. A lot does hang on exactly what will go down…no idea how truly grim they're gonna go with the cult of Morgoth stuff, it's hard to imagine current Valandil being ok with what happens in book canon, but he's already undergone a lot of trauma and growth over the course of the first season...still, there are some optics to consider there, and I hope the writers handle that stuff with the appropriate sensitivity and complexity.

Anyway, my current favorite possibility is: Valandil is aligned with the King's Men for a time but then switches sides as things in Númenor under Pharazôn become more dire…if King's Man!Valandil is the reason Isildur survives after stealing the fruit of the white tree, and if that's a turning point for Valandil, wouldn't that be sooooo good?? I don't know how likely that actually is (very unlikely), but I am obsessed with it so I'm writing a fic to get the idea out of my brain and cope with the hiatus lol. Even more unlikely, but I'd love to see him make it out with the Elendili and be involved in the foundation of Gondor, even if he dies prior to the Last Alliance.

On the other hand, It's possible he will survive the the Fall of Númenor because he's aligned with Sauron. I could go either way on that…I'm not opposed to a corruption arc for him, but I'm more interested in the way we get there, I want it to feel earned and do his character justice. I have to admit I get annoyed when people are only interested in his storyline with relation to him becoming a Nazgûl…this happens with other characters too, of course, I just find it especially annoying with regard to my fave. I'm invested in Valandil's development, not just interested in speculating on the end of his arc and working backwards. But tbh I think the only writing choice that would be truly disappointing, for me, is making him part of the assault on Valinor...they could make it work, but it would bum me out personally lol.

How about you, do you have any Valandil theories? 👀

[borkthemork]

Isn't it weird that in Commander Anne, Anne's capabilities for planning and leadership are just like toned down a bit too much? Because in one of your posts you have illustrated Anne's creativity and cleverness, that she can be a good leader when she is focused but in the episode, she has made mistakes that are sort of cartoonish and ridiculous as if she was getting out of character. I mean I can understand forgetting to take a picture of the map, but the rest was going overboard. It could be explained that her transition from Earth where she was relatively safe to Amphibia that has gotten much deadlier is the reason why she has gotten a bit rusty and she even told Sasha that she wasn't sure being commander after all the changes was a good idea, but she is pretty creative and adapts well so for her to fail this much in the job just to prove to Sasha that her insistence to Anne to take the lead was more harmful than a good execution despite her good intentions was a slipup in writing.

Okay, since it has been a few days since Commander Anne and Sprivy have been released, I think I can finally talk about some of my thoughts regarding this episode, because you're right I did notice it immediately during my watch.

However, I will put my thoughts within a Read More mainly just so people can choose to see my critique over this specific thing. Because I know people are emotionally invested with this show just like me, so I might as well give them a warning of the contents that I will be talking about, just in case.

So warning: this post will dive into the technicalities of writing, animation production (based on discussions I had with a friend who is doing professional storyboarding), and open-minded critique over Commander Anne and a portion of Anne’s character writing.

If that stuff isn’t your cup of tea, then feel free to just scroll past, there’s no hard feelings!

With that out of the way, let us begin.

So I talked about this before in a prior post about the two-way street of creators and the audience. It's one of the first things I was taught about during writing workshops, that when you create something there will be an inevitable set-up of expectations based on what you have curated and established throughout your canon.

Of course, the audience has to be critical and even acknowledgeable on when they have created a false narrative compared to the canon narrative, however, in this episode it's a really good example of when a creator messes up and contradicts their own canon.

Because for a lot of Amphibia, it had been established within the text that Anne is smart.

She's smart in delegation, interpersonal relationships, being able to see the strengths of other characters, and making active decisions on the battlefield.

It's not fictional or implied that Anne couldn't make hasty decisions when things have become tough, and by making this characteristic of her consistent it becomes an established part of the canon universe the creators had built.

Let us then cut over to Commander Anne, where Anne's ability to delegate becomes a focal point and even used as a branch of comedy within the episode itself.

You can then see the difference of Amphibia's characterized Anne and the episode's Anne pretty quickly.

You get a very competent girl who can quickly think on her feet, to someone who is then uncertain on where to go, what to do,

And doesn’t even know how to use a telescope correctly.

When I remark upon this, here's why it's a problem: It is a violation between the trust of the creator and audience.

There is a dissonance between what is established within the canon, and when a creator breaks that rule without a good solidified reason it becomes pretty noticeable within the story itself, and can pull the audience out completely rather than be enamored by the world.

The fact there are episodes where Anne is uncertain and harboring insecurity over her own capabilities and intelligence, makes the episode hit even harder that Commander Anne wrote Anne specifically to act less intelligent so that Sasha could show off her leadership skills as a whole.

And one of the biggest rules I’ve ever learned is that if you change a person’s characterization just to advance someone else’s characterization then the audience could definitely tell.

And the result is that the audience is gonna feel hurt that the creator didn’t trust them to actively think critically over this situation in general.

However, I will give the writer Todd McClintock the benefit of the doubt here, because we have to be honest for a second. Trying to make an eleven-minute episode establishing a new status quo and the current relationship of two pivotal characters is hard, and if I was a writer in this situation I would be having a heart attack, not gonna lie.

And within the text itself (alongside the revealed storyboards of Alex Swanson), there have been implications that something very important in the story itself became lost within the pipeline from script to animation — and I could describe it here.

Something that a friend had talked to me about was the episode’s establishment over the idea of pressure, responsibility, and an overall burden being placed on Anne’s shoulders as a result of being the chosen one to lead the Resistance.

Anne being resistant (Haha) to the idea of this burden on her throughout the episode and her panic over bad ideas implies that a lot of her insistence and fears of not being seen as the leader stems from that. Doesn’t excuse the comedy moments where she’s seen as dumb, but I do get where Todd was going with this when it came to the message.

When Alex Swanson revealed the original storyboards of two specific scenes, it surprised me that there is a lot of more emotion and stress found within Anne that the text somehow didn’t reflect in the finished product.

We get the absolute hope that the plan of using multiple people as a bridge could work. And let me be frank here, even if the “idea from a piece of media” gag was a bit overplayed, I can see Anne trying to use teamwork and neglecting the math of an entire canyon as an in-character moment.

However, what is crucial here is the emotion bit, because the pipeline from script to final product has lost the most important bit that makes the story within Commander Anne more understandable and heartfelt (and even excusable slightly as to why some scenes of Anne buffering in leadership are there in the first place).

The episode wasn’t able to emphasize how stressful and torn Anne was when it came to being burdened with the role of leader.

Look at this scene.

And then look at the original storyboards.

There were legitimate tears in Anne’s eyes over the idea of failing and drowning in leadership. The pressures of leading an entire Resistance and the battle against Andrias are there right on the storyboard’s expressions, but somewhere along the pipeline (either because of miscommunication or a mix in translation), this emotion wasn’t able to be portrayed in the final product.

Not only that, but the implication that Anne is about to breakdown from being indirectly hurt by Sasha can also be seen within this body language, and that would add a lot more intensity to this scene as a whole.

So the ability to find the pressures of specific uncertainties during battle had been removed, and what we have here is mainly Anne being concerned rather than just full-on panicked over a million burdens on her sleeves.

And it makes me sad too because changing the trope of the protag being assigned leader to actually the deuteragonist is honestly a fave of mind. It means that Anne doesn’t have to be burdened by the stress just because she is assigned in the narrative as the main character.

Somewhere along the way, the execution on this specific point in the conflict didn’t stick the landing.

It’s fascinating to me, really. I can’t really blame Todd McClintock for the writing and even the pipeline errors that had occurred, because as a writer myself, you can’t really control these kinds of circumstances from happening when you’re in a massive TV group project compared to something monitored independently like fanfiction or webcomics. And even with the eleven-minute time segment we’re given, it makes sense as to why Todd struggled real hard in making an episode’s pacing, characterization, and even coherency to Sasha’s arc without encountering these pitfalls.

Of course, there are different factors that affects an episode’s quality and Anne’s characterization is only one of them, but I do hope this post can help give a better understanding to why some specific details in the story could be botched or negatively executed in some way.

For stories, execution is everything, and when something like comedy writing or details gets mangled up within the process, then that can definitely affect the impact of an episode’s message and what it is attempting to portray.

[tenok]

It's interesting thought because it's really complicated . It's not like Aziraphale interacts with culture only though food — he collect books, he take classes, he owns business, he's part of clubs and societies and he actually dress pretty fashionable and proper, just out of time. He also talks to people, from costumers to neighbors, and have life long acquaintances, as we see with Maggie for example (and we doesn't see Crowley interact with humans much outside of work). I think the difference is more that Aziraphale gets invested deep, and with his angelic lifespan it means like really deep. He likes his magic tricks since ancient Egypt, he wore same tunic for thousands of years, he can spend lifetimes learning one language, and if he befriends someone he will look after their kids and nieces, etc. So when he finds one style he likes? He stucks with it until he gets bored. But humans can't live like this, they change much faster, so give him ten years and he's out of place. Same with social norms: he was living alongside humans for thousands years, and you can imagine how fast things changed in last century alone. What means to be polite and friendly and what acceptable or not and how do you greet and how do you show condolences, even if he was good at picking social clues and empathy (and he's not! My boy is clearly autistic!) it would be hard to adapt to the new trends all the time. He thinks he figured out how humans work for now, he looks up and see that while he was thinking the norms changed again and he's again looks awkward.

(I have a lot of thoughts about Edinburgh minisode, most of it about how Gaiman did us all dirty with badly adapting great line from book to absolutely different context in show, but the key points is that it was a complicate situation and Aziraphale did his best in navigating it as soon as he could. It's not like he wasn't aware of poor people struggles at all, and he offered different solutions that just didn't work there for one reason or another, and part of it is that there's industrial revolution happening, babe, and social dynamics do changed suddenly)

Now, for the Crowley imperative is to be *cool*. It's important for his work, it's important for his self image, it's important so he will impress Aziraphale. And he does look cool, enough so in hell they hates him but loves him, oh look at this Crowley in his cool glasses and swaying hips, he thinks he's so better than we. So he doesn't dive deep, he look at trends. How the coolest asshole of this decade looks? There, he will miracle whole outfit and won't think twice of it (I think it's literally the reason why he was in crown in Rome even if it's not street wear of that time). He owns almost to none material things and most of them are markers of his coolness (Bentley, in book it was his watch, pen and computer, all made specifically to be *cool*, again, and he doesn't even used them) (I also don't remember him paying rent, but I may be wrong, I was under impression that his flat was given to Shax the same way Metatron gave bookshop to Muriel, as "hell's office on earth"). He also project his persona to other people fairly well, so he "gets a reputation" (as with nazis in 1941 or with gang in 1967), he probably great at lying and adapting at spot, can easily pick clues even if he doesn't know context. And he's interested in modern stuff, where's Aziraphale cautious and prefer to stuck with things he's sure about, so he can pick more day to day human stuff from songs, TV, magazines.

So he deals with humans, mostly for work reasons. But he rarely looks interested in individual humans. He's gets more of observer vibe, with his comments about humans being so and so; he comes, he makes some trouble, he goes away, never stuck for long. And I think it's combination of him not really being people person, him being afraid to get attached and lost, or, what worse, being directly involved in harming new human friend, and also him protecting his cool persona. I think *he* thinks that if he only hangs with people at professional basis, they won't see under his James Bond cosplay. Which is hilarious because Shadwell shamelessly pumped money of him, lady from 1941 minisode yells at him as if he was a unruly child and Nina had two conversations with him before she decided she's good enough to teach him about life, love and communication.

So I'll say they both get into human cultures in their own way, and they both get to know humans in their way, and when you start to pick a pieces you eventually see that they're actually similar in their interest and in otherworldly way they process this things. And in the end that's what's it all about: there's no some great divide in how they they approach humanity, that thing that they approach it at all is what unite them.

Just had a random thought about how differently Crowley and Aziraphale interact with humans and their culture throughout history. More or less, Crowley interacts with the culture and Aziraphale interacts with the people. There's so much nuance of course because I'm thinking about how aziraphales appreciation of culture comes purely through food, and Crowley tends to notice people's social cues and little details about people. But thinking about in Rome, or Victorian times or the wives in the 1960s. Crowley is always experimenting with her gender expression and the culture of the place where he resides. I think that the way Crowley works is he really lives in the places he lives in such as going to bars, talking to people on the street, the lowlife, the nightlife, actually paying rent for some goddamn reason. But aziraphale stays on his own for the most part, he absorbs the people he interacts with but definitely stays outside of fashion trends, and altogether doesn't really immerse himself in any culture. It's why he's unaware of the life the poor live in the grave digging minisode, and also the reason he has so many signed books from magicians and prophesy tellers. He engages with the people for long periods of time. Is he super good at listening to human emotions? Not exactly... But is he great at cataloguing and absorbing the essence of the people he meets? Yeah.

[initiumseries]

How much do you think a character should not be their archetype (since every character is a trope of some form)? Like 80% their archetype and 20% the stuff that are different? Like the other 20% being the part that tells us who they are, what makes them “tick”. Or should the ratio be diff

So, let's just be clear about what these words mean first, before we get into the weeds:

archetype An archetype is an emotion, character type, or event that is notably recurrent across the human experience. In the arts, an archetype creates an immediate sense of familiarity, allowing an audience member to relate to an event or character without having to necessarily ponder why they relate.

character archetype A character archetype in novel terms is a type of character who represents a universal pattern, and therefore appeals to our human 'collective unconscious' . For example, 'hero' is the most fundamental character archetype, which directly corresponds to us each being the hero (or protagonist) of our own life story.

So, just by virtue of these definitions, characters HAVE to be more than their initial archetype. An archetype is literally a baseline for getting the audience invested/rooting for this character. We need to know more about them as an individual for us to stay invested. You won't enjoy 5 seasons of a show about a character who never changes, never grows, never experiences adversity or adapts to new situations. That's why storytelling is about more than "he's the hero." Ok he's a hero and THEN what?

Let's use Clark Kent/Superman for example. His archetype is "hero". But part of the reason a lot of people find him boring is because they don't know who else he is outside of Hero. He's almost completely invincible and a "boy scout". That's not much of a personality at all. How do you tell a story about that? You can't really, unless you introduce obstacles and elements that build on that character, that challenge him, and show more of his personality. Smallville was corny as HELL, but it was fun because Clark wasn't just this perfect kid who never struggled with anything or had complicated emotions about life. He literally starts wearing a (i think) red kryptonite ring and runs away from home to avoid feeling guilty about killing someone. He struggles with his feelings for Lana, his friendship with Lex, and how conspicuous his powers make him and the danger it puts the people he cares about in. He has complicated feelings about finding out who his birth father was, and the weight of Jo-rel's expectations for him to subjugate Earth, and the way the Kents have raised him to respect and protect humanity, despite there being super shitty people out there. But if it was all just "he's a hero." WHOOOSH, off goes Superman to save the day! that would be boring as hell to watch.

Buffy is another example of a "hero" archetype that is more than just Hero. Buffy is a complex character. She's an American teenager thrust into this dangerous nightly war, which impacts her social life, dating, all the things that are important to her. She's only really able and willing to begrudgingly accept her calling when she makes friends who know about her life. She's self centred, obnoxious and kinda bossy, while also being very caring, protective and loyal to the people she loves and cares about. She makes mistakes, and she's imperfect, but that's exactly what makes her interesting to watch.

Characters always have to be much more than their baseline/archetype to keep people engaged.