#I wasn't very “fandom” for a long time

[angelltheninth]

What Kind of Wedding Do the Love and Deepspace Men Want

Pairing: Zayne, Rafayel, Xavier, Sylus, Caleb x Fem!Reader

Tags: fluff, wedding day, kissing, vows, partying, dancing, teasing, public display of affection, sneaking away

Ko-Fi | Rules | Fandoms and Characters | Commissions

A/N: What kind do I want? The one where I get to marry all of them!

ZAYNE

A smaller, more private wedding is his ideal wedding. Family and friends, nothing too grand or flashy is needed, only a simple declaration of love between the two of you. Of course he will sweep you onto the dance floor the moment he can to show off both of you to everyone attending, he does have a bit of an ego. Would always hover next to you while you're talking to someone else and getting all the good wishes.

RAFAYEL

If he could he would photograph the entire wedding by himself but as he is only one person there are only so many photos he can take. This is a big day for both of you and you should both be in photos. Very emotional during your vows, might be crying even more than you, he never though he'd be this happy. He will make sure to take the best photo and make a painting of it so you can have it framed in your bedroom.

XAVIER

Hopes it will be a good party and a ceremony to remember for as long as you both live. Was a bit nervous when he was told to kiss the bride even though he's kissed you countless times already, but this one felt special, it was special. Kept glancing over at you all the time and leaning over to whisper how mich he loves you. If he could have left a bit early to get you alone he would, he didn't want to be rude to the guests.

SYLUS

Would be a very private wedding, with a ton of security around but of course of the guests were all deemed safe he would allow them to be there. Teases you when kissing you by dipping his tongue into your mouth for a brief moment. Just a taste of what's to come later, you can both wait for a bit. But as soon as the waiting gets to be too much he would sneak away with you and get your honeymoon started early.

CALEB

Soon as the wedding was on he told everyone he ever wanted to brag to, and he wasn't scared either, he would protect you. If he could he would talk about you for hours, his vow would take up the entire ceremony, but he chose to make it shorter. Later, when you're both alone he will read you the full vow that he wrote up. And right after that he won't let you sleep a wink for the entire night, so happy he can finally call you his wife.

[fanficmanic]

I've finally watched 8x16 and 8x17

Just to be safe cause I don't want anyone coming at me with pitchforks and fire - spoiler alert for 8x16 and 8x17

Oh, and probably long post ahead - be warned. I need to let this off my chest and vent.

For 8a, I didn't watch any of the episodes live. I didn't have a source for that at the time, and I always kept an eye on here to sort of give myself a heads-up of what happened in each episode. Then 8b came and I found a website to watch live - which is 12 pm Friday where I live, meaning the episode airs while I'm at work.

Still, I kept watching each episode live, and put in live reactions, and went nuts over predictions and obsessed over possibilities.

Then March 31 happened, and nothing was the same again.

A week later, I went on vacation (still in that vacation as I type this - got 5 more days), where episodes air at 3 am local time. I watched 14 the day after cause I was jet lagged and couldn't wake up for it, then I watched 15 live and cried so hard to the point that I woke up my husband and he freaked out. When I explained what was going on, he just hugged me and asked if I wanted him to stay up with me to vent (this is important for another point I will be making below). I'm kinda glad that all of this was happening while I was busy seeing friends who I haven't seen in years, cause otherwise, I would've driven myself insane during that one week hiatus before 16.

Still, I couldn't find it in me to wake up for 16 and watch live. I wanted to, I really did, but I just couldn't do it. Then I read all the negative feedback and I was like, nope. Not doing this. So I found a clip of the funeral, watched that, and called it a day. This, for someone like me who hasn't gotten so hyper-focused on a tv show in years, is so OOC. I still didn't watch it, even after 17 aired, which I didn't watch live either (not for lack of wanting, but the website I use is blocked where I am currently).

This morning, I woke up to an insane amount of posts here about 17 - and my fandom bestie whose opinion I treasure the most (looking at you @cathcer1984) said that I have to watch it. So, I downloaded 16 & 17, and only was able to watch them now.

Here are my thoughts on 16 (better late than never, I suppose):

No matter what Gerrard does, and no matter how he acts, he'll always be an asshole to me.

Hen and Chim were phenomenal. Their acting was out of this world, and the makeup department deserves awards cause it felt like Chim had aged 10 years.

Buck, who has a chronic case of abandonment issues-itis, was clearly barely holding himself together. He was putting on a strong mask because Bobby told him that they'll need him, and he'd die before disappointing Bobby even through the great beyond.

Eddie only being there for a few minutes pissed me off, but man did he do an excellent job. That single tear that trickled down his face when they saluted Bobby broke me.

Athena's dealing with her grief by working the dead child's case was so in character that I wasn't even upset.

Even though I had watched the funeral scene last week (and cried), I still cried again - and once more, my husband just hugged me and wiped away my tears.

I'm kinda conflicted about Bobby being buried next to his first wife and kids. I mean, it's a beautiful move and very emotional, but that doesn't give people a place to visit him and talk to him. I'm also kinda pissed that Buck, Eddie, Hen, and Chimney didn't get on that plane with Athena, May, and Harry.

Now, like I said, I woke up today to insane posts around here, and I was so confused that at one point I thought I'd be watching Buck and Eddie throwing fists at each other.

However, now that I've watched the episode, I'm starting to wonder if I'm watching the same show as everyone else is - particularly those who are calling Eddie abusive.

Again, the acting was phenomenal, the cases were typical 9-1-1, and the team work at the end kinda showed that the team might still be grieving, but they still work together seamlessly.

The talk that Eddie had with Hen and Karen proved to me that they actually don't know what Bobby told Buck - that they'd need him. I don't think they'd be annoyed by it if they did. On the contrary, I think they'd be working on helping him unburden himself from the heavy load Bobby (unintentionally) put on him.

As for that kitchen scene, I honestly think it was incredible. The acting OS and RG pulled was crazy, and I could feel their grief and anger and helplessness as if it was my own. Again, I don't think Eddie knows what Bobby told Buck - he's still not over the fact that he wasn't there with the rest when the worst happened. And he's lashing lashing out - justifiably so. And this brings me back to what I was saying about my husband earlier.

See, the thing is, we all know that Eddie was brought up to the notion that showing any sign of emotion is weakness. He's repressed and feeling guilty on top of mourning someone who has literally saved his life. In all the past seasons, we've only ever seen him cry when he had that meltdown - and he did that behind a locked door that Buck had to break down. We actively saw him hold back his emotions and become completely stoic: when Shannon died; when he thought Chris was dead during the tsunami (even if it was for a few minutes); when Buck was struck by lightning, during Bobby's funeral, and so on. Yet, we see him try to hold back his tears when he's talking to Buck in the kitchen after pointing that menacing finger at him (can you hear the irony?).

This brings me to what I mentioned about my husband earlier. My husband and I have been together for almost 16 years - married for 14. We've been through so many different things that have caused us immense pain and resulted in one of us lashing out at the other. Our most recent issue is related to my health, which has been going on for about 3 years now, and if you ask anyone who knows me, they'd tell you that I'm ok - managing but ok. They never see my frustration and my pain and my tears, only my husband does, because he's my safe space. I know I can vent and express my frustration in whichever way I find helpful at the time, and that he'll always hold me, help me up, and support me.

This is what's going on with Eddie. He said that he couldn't cry when he received the news because he didn't want to freak out his kid. We saw him with his clenched jaw during the funeral. Still, maybe on an unconscious level, he knew that, standing there in front of Buck in his old kitchen, he's safe to let go of everything that's been eating at him regarding Bobby's death.

On a not-so-different note, Chimney punched Buck and everyone is a-ok with him (even though it's been years since), yet, here we have people calling Eddie abusive and toxic.

Then we've got Buck, who has a chronic case of abandonment issue-itis, and who (even before Bobby died) always wants to help his family and fix things. He's going around rating people's grief so that he can figure out how to help them - it's the only way he know how to do things. But he can see that they don't need him, not the way Bobby said they would, and he ends up in a confessional booth trying to contact Bobby (may I suggest a Ouija board next time?).

But even though Eddie lashed out at Buck, and even though Buck called Eddie a jerk after reading his note, Eddie (who can barely afford anything by being an uber driver) flew his son over to cheer Buck up, and Buck - the man with a heart bigger than the universe - accepted that with the good faith that it is because Eddie gave him what he needs (his family) without him having to ask for it. Because Eddie saw that Buck was trying to help everyone BUT himself, and he stepped up to do that.

Was Buck making everything about him again? Maybe, but then again this is the same person who has had to spend his entire childhood working on getting his parent's attention. Nothing makes sense about grief - like Karen said: you're grieving, fair can go fuck itself (she didn't say that, but she might as well have).

Anyway - if you've gotten this far, I thank you for reading my rambles and venting. I needed to get this off my chest because I've been feeling like I want to scream at my phone all day after reading all the different posts. Like I said in an earlier post - the amount of people I've unfollowed after the last two episodes is a lot.

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem #8729:

A couple days ago on reddit, I read an eloquently-written post about how author self-deprecation can be off-putting for readers when they open a fic. OP explained how, while they understand authors' desires to temper expectations before someone reads their fics, it primes the readers to expect lower quality. One person also commented how if the author thinks their fic is bad, then readers are going to naturally trust their opinion as a basic litmus test for if it's worth reading at all. If the author loudly declares it's not worth reading, they'll be more prone to skip it. Excessive self-reproach is also unappealing, and not something people like to see in general. Nobody likes being around someone where all they do is share negative self-talk and this goes the same for constantly running into those words online. Anyways, the OP called this "self-sabotage".

My own opinion was similar, with the added notion that insisting one's writing is horrible puts unnecessary pressure and burden on commenters to not only comment on the fic, but also address the self-deprecation specifically. A lot of people aren't equipped for this, and they feel awkward if they think they need to provide a confidence boost beyond simply saying "this fic is great". So again, people will be prone to leaving - or if they do read the fic, reading but not commenting.

This goes double if the author makes implications about the people liking the fic, such as, "this isn't worth the kudos or likes, why are you commenting, it's trash...". Because that implies the people who liked or kudos'd the fic have bad judgment and made a mistake.

Fast forward to this morning. I stumbled upon a person on tumblr who saw this post and boy, they went on a long spiel about how the post offended them, how "it's writing culture to be self-deprecating", and they missed the point entirely. Writers doubt their work a lot and are often never satisfied with it, especially if they're fervent writers who like to self-improve. But in a social context, it's simply not very appealing to constantly put yourself down. It puts pressure on other people to go above what they otherwise would have commented. It can also feel like "compliment fishing", ie. manipulative. And lacking confidence in your work isn't grounds to imply other people are idiots for liking your work, which unfortunately a lot of people do.

In a way, that person's response post reminded me a lot about the tumblr RPC. In the RPC, back when I was participating in it (thank god I no longer am), it was completely normalized (and I mean that word when I say it) to self-deprecate and put yourself down, and to also extend this to everyone. It wasn't just considered good form to say "you were a loser at your keyboard pretending to be a character" (which frankly, even the "pretending" part isn't correct, we're all just writing, we're not LARPING, I've written for 20 years and never once considered it to be "pretending"). No, you had to go beyond that and say, "we're all just dumb losers at our keyboards pretending to be fictional characters."

You can see what the problem is. And in the RPC, there are many people who post almost daily about how they suck, and how their writing is awful, and nobody likes them, which elicits lots of kind comments. The interesting part is, these comments never come from the same blogs more than a week or two in a row. They always rotate out because people get tired of propping them up over and over again. This translates to AO3 where instead of a single person self-deprecating, it's a bunch of different ones. And readers often browse lots of fics at a time, so that self-deprecation can add up to a lot of pressure, very fast. It's no wonder people made a post like the OOP did on reddit. And people like the tumblr OP? They really need to get a bit of perspective.

[zuko-always-lies]

My comment wasn't about morality or the correct means of handling trauma, it was about relationships and how people behave in them.

Zuko would never dare showing weakness or vulnerability around the likes of Ozai or Zhao, nor would he do so to his crew. Zuko is willing to show vulnerability around Iroh, since Iroh has been consistently supportive of Zuko.

But Zuko is also extremely willing to angst around Azula, to show vulnerability around her. And she, instead of before bemused, manipulative, vindictive, mean, or angry about it, seems to expect it, and to usually do her best to comfort him. What does this suggest about their long term relationship and the patterns within? If Azula is really so awful to Zuko and so manipulative of him, so willing to use the slightest bit of vulnerability to hurt him, why is he so comfortable baring open his heart to her?

On the other hand, Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee have all had really shitty lives themselves, but none of them seem the least bit comfortable (or feel the least bit safe) dumping their trauma and angst on Zuko, and the one time they ever do, Zuko doesn't have the most positive reaction it and is far from supportive of it. All of this suggests that Zuko has never really been a source of emotional support for others, while Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee have.

Obviously trauma plays into all of this, as do gender roles. But my point is about relationships. I find it especially noteworthy, given how the ATLA fandom is obsessed with how mean and cruel and awful Azula is and particularly obsessed with how mean and cruel and awful Azula is to Zuko. But when we step back and start trying to approach things outside of only Zuko's perspective, things start looking a bit different. Sure Azula can sometimes be mean to Zuko (but what teenage girl is never mean to her older brother?). Sure Ozai orders Azula to go after Zuko, and Azula is at least somewhat willing to go along with it and obey the orders of her absolute monarch father. Sure Azula doesn't exactly have the highest opinion of her brother. Sure Zuko and Azula often have a competitive relationship (but Zuko is mostly the one pushing that). But all of that doesn't change the fact that Azula is frequently very kind to Zuko, that he even relies on her as a source of comfort and emotional support, while on the other hand he essentially never does anything nice or kind for her, ever.

Once we strip the narrative's demonization of Azula away, we're left with a girl who is willing to give up her shot at becoming an absolute monarch, willing to share the credit for the greatest victory her country has ever won, so that her disgraced brother can come home with honor, because there's no other reasonable way we can interpret her decision at Ba Sing Se, when she could have easily killed Zuko or sent him home disgraced and in chains. And on the other hand we have said brother, who spends most of the series actively trying to bring upon the downfall of his sister one way or another.

Being mean to Zuko is very low down on Azula's list of sins, and being nice to him is not her redemption. Same for Zuko. Being mean to his sister is far from the worst thing he's ever done, and being kinder to her wouldn't be his redemption. From the perspective of morality this is all kind of irrelevant. But from the perspective of relationships it is very interesting.

Zuko trying to comfort Sokka

"Boiling Rock Part 1":

Zuko: I'm really sorry, Sokka. Sokka: So we came all this way for nothing? I failed ... again. Zuko: Ah, [Holds his chin in thought.] what would Uncle say? [Cut to a frog-view as he looks up at the sky.] Sometimes, clouds have two sides, [Walks over to the railing.] a dark and light, and a silver lining in between. It's like a silver sandwich! [Close-up of a disinterested Sokka; voice-over.] So ... when life seems hard ... [Sokka glances to the side.] take a bite out of the silver sandwich!Sokka's eyes widen when he notices something; close-up of his cheerful expression as he gets up. Cut to a frontal shot of Zuko while Sokka runs up to grab the railing next to him, excitedly looking down to the yard below. Sokka: Maybe we haven't failed after all! Zuko: That's the spirit! [Folds his arms.] I can't believe that worked. [Looks down.] I didn't even know what I was saying. Sokka: No, what you said made no sense at all. But look ... [As he points, the camera shifts to an overhead view of the yard, before rapidly zooming in on a dejected-looking Suki.] It's Suki!

So this is just about the only scene where we see Zuko try to comfort someone else in ATLA (there are a couple other partial exceptions but they're partial), and he sucks at it and has no idea what he's doing. Zuko evidentially has very little experience comforting people. I doubt he ever tried much when he was younger.

Azula and Mai are two characters the Avatar fandom generally looks upon as "evil," "unfeeling," unemotional," "psychopaths," etc. However, interestingly, when we see them try to comfort people, they've pretty good at it. They're not perfect, but they know what they're doing. Evidentially Azula and Mai, unlike Zuko, have a significant amount of experience comforting people.

[muiromem]

Kathryn Janeway - "The Fates"

The Moirai of Greek myth. The youngest, Clotho - the spinner who controlled life, choosing when a person was born and weaving their thread of existence. The middle one, Lachesis - the allotter who measured out the length of this thread and decided a person's destiny. And the eldest, Atropos - she who was inevitable that ended a mortal's life, cutting the thread and choosing the manner of their death.

[mariyekos]

Thoughts on the new DMC trailer?

Going to be honest I haven't watched any trailers since the trailer at the Game Awards (or whichever one I have those 2 breakdown posts for) 😅 I keep seeing the trailer announcements when I don't have my headphones on me, and I've been behind on watching them once I have the time... maybe tomorrow I'll finally get to watching them! Tonight I'm dead tired so I don't think I'd be in much of a good mood and I don't want to start off on the wrong foot, so to speak. When I watch them I can make a write up on it though! Would probably be fun.

[ailurinae]

Usenet and/or random sites (geocites, webrings and such)

[leatherbookmark]

Huh... just connected the dots between my soul-crushing shame and inability to imagine myself "carelessly having fun" without feeling a Heavy Judging Gaze That Thinks I'm Such A Funny Stupid Little Baby on myself and like... my parents finding it the funniest thing in the world, worth bringing up over and over despite my discomfort, that I used to bob funnily to the music as a toddler

[stillthesunkenstars]

shoutout to my GOAT @setaregan who is one of the kindest smartest most articulate person I've ever known !!!!!!! Without your tag comments and friendship I would NOT have started drawing the kind of narrative illustrations that I do now 😭😭!!!!!!!!!!!

[raven-cl]

Just turned a 15 minute walk into at least 30 minutes cause my dog wouldn't stop sniffing trash cans and then would NOT stop trying to go into the streets so I had to pick her up and carry her. My arm is tired.

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

I know you all know by default how much I love this conversation, but in RD at least, a lot of characters fall out of relevancy after a certain point (whereas in PoR you could argue that having full supports prevents this). Shinon is one of the only side characters who doesn't really do this, having three base conversations throughout part three (which is pretty fucking good considering several of the chapters aren't even with the Greil Mercenaries).

Back in PoR, Shinon asks for praise/gratitude. Expects it. By this point he doesn't want it anymore. He didn't want it when he was selling bows for emergency income (which Rolf took up as well) and he doesn't want it here either. His personality has chilled out so much from being a hothead and he's much more expressive of his actual feelings (even if you compare his standard death quotes in both games, he's much more emotionally expressive in RD).

A lot of characters - most honestly, including even the GMs (barring Boyd if he A supports Mist which gives him more content and expresses a whole lot of maturity compared to PoR Boyd) tend to drop off in development. They might stick around (ex. PoR puts all the major groups in the spotlight until the next group shows up and goes through all of them), but the development eventually stagnates outside of supports (including in base conversations, which this one is such).

Since RD doesn't get supports with full conversations, you only get snippets of development/characterization through them, while the base conversations may offer insight into the characters and show you how they've changed over the years but don't truly develop them. Shinon is a very lucky situation for his character because he keeps returning in both games, and it helps develop him across both games with a full timeline (similar to Naesala, who has a fully fleshed out story and personality development over both games and never stops dead at any point in the pair of games).

In PoR Shinon was distant and selectively a bit cold (Greil, Rolf and Gatrie excluded from that, and Mist to an extent as well). RD gives the impression that he just... doesn't care about all that anymore. He's fine where he is and has learned he can live with these people and not have to expect betrayal. He doesn't have to anticipate being on his own ever again. There's no real reason for him to keep up the walls and barriers to protect himself, and he's not living just to survive anymore.

Most times when I end up loving a character it's because of the content given to me and what have I to work with, rather than loving a character and searching for things to love. I fully expect that that's why I finally, after years of being unable to decide who my Tellius favorite was because I loved several of them too dearly to decide, found myself able to settle on Shinon.

When I got older and gave it more thought, considering all the development and traits of each of them and how responsive I was to them, one day I asked myself, well okay, what if someone asked you who your favorite was? What if you still did love the same ones as your number one, all of them, but could only give one name quick and simple? Who would you pick? The first name that instantly hit me was Shinon. That was enough for me to decide okay, there's a reason he's the first person who instantly came to me if I had to truly settle on one. I hadn't quite figured it out yet, but I knew there was a reason that if I had to pick a single standout, it would be him.

A lot of it harkens back to this conversation. It is development in and of itself, and also very expressive of who he is. The fact that he also doesn't fall off in conversations and is more recurring than not also gives me more to examine about him and more to think about. It puts him in a more likely position to think about him and who he is than I would for characters the writers didn't really bother developing (including other recurring characters like Marcia, who keep coming back in both games similar to Shinon, but see no development as a person - unfortunately in her case, in either game).

He has a very rich, detailed and unforgotten-by-the-writers character and one whose story ends on a very high note. I say "ends" in the sense of main story/base content, but it technically continues if he's taken to the Tower and gains the ability to A support various other characters who he otherwise could not support or could only reach a B support with, such as Sanaki, Tibarn, etc. This conversation is like an accumulation of his growth between both games, including the subtle things you can only pick up on through actions/other character lines.

Ike says he (everyone, which includes Shinon) chose to stay with them when he told everyone who their next employer was/what they'd be doing/etc, and Ike gave him and Soren an out if they weren't comfortable with it. They weren't all forced to go. That says by itself that Shinon made that choice on his own. He chose to stay with them when he was not yet totally comfortable with laguz and was still working on that part of himself (the fact that he uses the term "laguz" at all is already a huge step up from where he leaves off on his A support with Janaff, which did not leave off poorly at all).

Last time Shinon was uncomfortable with something in the Greil Mercenaries, he made the choice to leave. When he did come back, he was not exclusively surrounded by only the GMs and otherwise, purely laguz (which prior to meeting Janaff I would argue he was not ready for at all at the time). Here, he was, and he still made the choice to stay with them knowing exactly what his situation would look like.

Another thing worth considering is how much of a hothead Shinon was in PoR, but he still took Rolf on as a student. While I'm not sure exactly how accurate Mist's statement is about "forcing" Rhys to teach her (it's possible she was pushy about it because he didn't want to, such as because it might mean she might end up on the battlefield), we do know Rolf wanted to learn and was accepted.

We can easily infer through their conversations that Shinon would rather teach him to survive and have a safety net rather than worry about him being on a battlefield. Shinon saw that he was motivated to learn and, regardless of the fact that he was still in survival mode himself and not of the mind of "I'll be with these people forever and want to help them", taught him while apparently having told him "things like this happen" with mercenaries (i.e. different employers, separation, etc). If they ended up on opposite sides but Rolf could wield a weapon, that could endanger him, but he does it anyway. His priority is always survival, but it's also the survival of children and anyone he cares about. He also dies begrudgingly in his PoR death quote, which is completely opposite of his death quote against Rolf.

Another thing for me: he's also very confident and aware of his capabilities as a marksman. He knows what he's worth and at this point, he no longer brags about it (he used to all the time in PoR). He sees no reason to have to prop himself up. There's no insecurity in him that makes him feel the need to try to be open about being better than anyone else. He knows and accepts what he's worth without feeling the need to tell people about it.

If someone asked him what he thought of himself/his own worth, yeah, he'd admit his skill and capability without being too humble, but he also wouldn't go overboard with it or say it during instances that don't really warrant it (basically, if absolutely nobody asked, he'd say it anyway in PoR. In RD he doesn't really seem to give a shit anymore about letting the whole world know how good he is). He's lost the whole pick me, look at me sort of attitude. Imo it's also due to a higher amount of respect he has for himself now, and a much healthier one. He doesn't care about being the best anymore (he'd be perfectly happy if Rolf was instead) and is just satisfied knowing his skill on his own. He's satisfied not being alive just to survive, but to be with this mercenary group and actually able to live.

As a side note, we never actually see him having drunk or in the middle of drinking in RD, so... it's also likely he's worked on his possible PoR drinking issue too!

All in all, he's just one of the few non-main characters who came a whole long way with a full story. He feels very different in RD, but not so much that he feels like a different character entirely. For me, I can feel the growth in who he is, and that to me is an excellent handling of a character. When I can feel how different they are from beginning to end, I can feel the intent of character growth behind it. I can't tell you with certainty that the writers took a liking to him and so biasly kept sticking in dialogue for him (and singlehandedly made him one of the solidly best units in RD, for that matter...), but he's definitely repeatedly present and has hefty, story/backstory littered implications.

His dialogue feels meaningful to his own personal story in all his conversations. In other words, he doesn't have a conversation that feels devoid of meaning. It comes across more as all of his content exists for a reason/has meaning behind it. There's no wasted dialogue with him. When he's there, it means something for his character (comparatively to other side characters who may have lengthy conversations but you walk away having gotten nothing out of it, be that in PoR and/or RD).

He has fewer supports than most of the cast in PoR, but every single one had some kind of direction to it. Even if you look at his C support with Janaff and go "well that's just classic early PoR Shinon", the point of that is exactly that: that he starts out who we recognize and develops from there. That support alone goes from that to a lot of growth in three conversations, and beneficially so on both sides.

Simply put, he has more content the average Tellius character (including all of his boss quotes in chapter 18), and everything leads up to who he is by this conversation. It's a full story for a side character, later including personalized support dialogue for A supports, and he just happens to exhibit a lot of growth and traits that I already lean toward (hence why he was in my top spot all along, just tied with others. Now he's not tied with others and has the top spot to himself!).

I think it's likely it's the fact that as mentioned, none of his conversations are throwaway conversations. You never walk away from his conversations having gotten nothing (I mean, I'm sure people who refuse to see it don't notice precisely because they are willing themselves to refuse to see it to find excuses to keep hating him). Even in his first RD base conversation, the fact that he acts as you'd expect but drops a "laguz" in there is already a hint for his growth direction on top of being there at all. It's really just up from there, as is the case with all his content.

I tend to lean toward characters with a whole fountain of insightful conversations and depth, and in FE games you often don't find those characters outside of the mains. While I'd argue Tellius is a lot less tropey than modern FE (there were some tropey types like Makalov and Ilyana whose characters are basically nothing without their tropes), a lot of its side characters are still reduced to very surface level characterization with no real growth.

Shinon was very lucky to get as much as he did, and I'd say he has just as much if not more personal depth and lore than even some of the mains themselves. Imo he's a very lucky and rare find in FE games, when there are so many goddamn characters that the writers can't flesh them all out (reasonably of course, but it makes it even more special when it happens for non mains). Even with the Fodlan games and all its content, a lot if not most of its characters are full on tropes with little to nothing in the way of anything else. Engage suffers from it too, with a few diamonds in the rough and not much else.

That's not to say I hate the games or their characters, because obviously I would not still be playing new titles to the franchise if I hated it. I'm saying it makes the ones with as much depth as Shinon a gold mine to be found amidst a very large cast of characters that don't usually get that treatment.

anyway i will always talk abt shinon more when able so this is Not The End but i will end this post here lest it turns into another 20+ paragraphs.

[stellerssong]

Swan I promise I'll get caught up on your fanwork soon. Soon as I actually watch these overdue DVDs of The Watchman😉. In the meantime consider this an invitation to do a director's commentary from back when Will Graham was a bird?

please enjoy your viewing of the watchman! don't quote me on this, but i hear he (the eponymous watchman) was in a comic book once...really make u thimk.

oh god okay umm...how do i put this politely for the good people in the audience who have not been following me since 2013. so. ok. so i've long maintained that turning a character into a bird monster is one of the truest forms of love i am capable of expressing. "but swan!" you say, shocked and horrified, "surely you mean turning a character into a WEREWOLF is one of the truest forms of love you are capable of expressing! you have a whole thing about werewolves! it's an expanded universe with hinted crossovers! there's internal logic and now a magic system! you have spilled literally thousands of words that are No Plot Just Describing Midcycle Werewolves and you KEEP THREATENING TO DO THAT MORE." and like. you're not wrong strictly speaking. and i do inflict that aggressively upon my favorite characters. but there is something particularly monstery about the bird monster that a werewolf just doesn't get at.

it's the uncanny valley of it all, you dig? a werewolf is, when you get down to it, a wolf whose instincts are fettered to a human perception of the world—hence, functionally, a dog. a very large, gross, dangerous, infectious dog, in some cases—a dog with hands and fucked-up people teeth, frequently—but it's fundamentally the emotional tension of the dog that i'm working with here, right? the sit and stay and will i get a pat or a kick of things, the what is a pack and what are they owed of it, the animal caught in a little box with the human and the realization of how little space there is between those two things. which is all lovely delicious good food for me, personally, and of course i am capable of making something tangibly offputting out of those compelling pieces.

but the bird monster is a different game. that's a different part of the uncanny valley, and i hesitate to call it a more physical part, but the physicality IS part of it. a bird has warm blood, like you or like me (with apologies to any reptiles, amphibians, ectothermic fish, etc. reading this). it breathes air. it's often social and intelligent. it has a voice—more importantly, it makes music. we connect with these qualities, as fellow warm-blooded social tetrapods. we think, oh, this is a familiar creature, this is a creature i can easily empathize with (again, apologies to those reading this who, like me, are thrown into a tearful cute-aggression frenzy over the japanese giant salamander).

but a bird feels different from a human in a way that a dog doesn't. it's got feathers. it's got hollow bones. it's got an expressionless face and eyes that don't convey the same warmth as a dog's or a wolf's or even a cat's. there are tame birds and domesticated birds, yes, but in general there's not the same cultural sense of the bird as companion animal that smooths the way (or burdens) the dog or the wolf-as-dog.

and it flies. that's fuckin' different.

so it's a different tension there. where the werewolf's sense of alienation stems from the uneasy knowledge that there's gray area between wolf and dog and human, the bird monster's deal is a more classic disjoint. a human is not like a bird. these two things are (or feel) more diametrically opposed. and yet in the bird monster they exist within a single body anyway. the human in you is content to travel in two dimensions. the bird in you understands that there's a whole lot more world if you just look up. the human in you needs the solidity of earth underfoot and the comforting anchor of gravity. the bird in you knows those things for chains and cages in disguise. the human in you tastes blood and grimaces, gags, spits and screams and weeps. the bird in you swallows, expressionless, and sings.

ok so then imagine if it was will graham,,,

[cakemoney]

finding out that kaito and shinichi have been revealed to be cousins is like finding out there was a huge earthquake in the country you used to live in

[shocked-collar]

//Great time to remind everyone IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18, YOU SHOULD BE NOWHERE NEAR HERE. You're only a kid for so long, you get to be an adult forever. MAKE IT LAST. FRIGGIN' WAIT TO ENGAGE IN CONTENT LIKE THIS.

//No one can protect you if you refuse to let them. These games and this fandom and content have 18+ tags on them for a REASON, and it's to PROTECT YOU. You're not cool, you're not edgy, you're not special, you're not grown up for ignoring warning signs that are set there to KEEP YOU FROM HARM, you're just an idiot for exposing yourself to that ON PURPOSE.

[artemisdesari-blog]

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[the0ther-side0f-dawn]

should i just become a Phan trash blog??