#I will write a sequel eventually but all I have so far are specific scenes for characters w no overarching plot | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

iowriteswords · 2 months ago

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Hi Io! I was looking at your Tumblr and saw this post:

https://iowriteswords.tumblr.com/post/758746805347532800/fanfic-author-ask-meme

I wanted to ask you some of the questions! Actually all of the questions if you have time, but if you don't, I'm most interested in your answers to 3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 14, 17, 18, 31, 34, 36, and 38 (you can answer any or all of them).

Alternatively, you could just answer the questions you most want to answer. XD

Got this ask by email! Answered all of them, because I was bored last night, and I think I bolded all the questions you mentioned specifically.

Thank you for asking!

1. What was your first fic and could you stand to reread it today?

My first was Homecoming, and I’m still pretty happy with it. I reread it fairly recently when someone left a specific comment, and I had to go back and see what they were talking about. It was my first fanfic, but I’d already been writing for several years and had gotten a degree in literature and writing, so it certainly wasn’t any kind of early writing project. I’ve improved since then, but I already had a decent grasp on what I was doing.

2. What’s your most recent fic and how far do you think you’ve come?

I have one called Voice that I’ll be publishing on November 19. I don’t know that this is the best demonstration of how far I’ve come; it’s a short piece that doesn’t necessarily show off a lot of my strengths. But I do think I’ve come pretty far. I have a better understanding of my characters, I’m better at writing more complex characters, I can juggle a large cast better.

3. In your opinion, what’s your best fic?

Probably Robins and Other Flightless Birds.

4. In your opinion and without looking at any numbers, what’s your most popular fic?

Definitely Robins and Other Flightless Birds.

5. Is there any fic that makes you super happy to reread and remember you wrote that?

The Most Important Thing. I just like it.

6. Is there any fic that makes you super embarrassed to reread and remember you wrote that?

Nope. Occasionally I’ll read back, like, a certain line or scene and be embarrassed, but not a full work.

7. What’s the fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

Right now what I really want to do is the sequel to Who Shall Make the Clown Laugh? I mean, excluding my current project; it doesn’t seem right to talk about plans to continue when I’m, like, actively working on it. (15 chapters written, 0 posted.)

8. What’s the oldest (longest since last update) fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

I guess the Flightless Birds series? I mean, it hasn’t been long at all yet, but I know it will be a while, and I don’t really have very many other things I’m planning to go back to? It has been way longer since I worked on Ozma, but idk if I’ll even post the next bit on ao3; it’s in the public domain, so eventually I’m going to heavily edit and what I have posted now will be the first 2 chapters in a book.

9. Have you ever written for a fandom without watching/reading/playing the source material?

No, though I’ve definitely read a lot more of the source material since I started. There is just so much Batman to read and watch.

10. Have you ever written for a fandom without reading other fanfic for it?

Nope.

11. Have you ever written a fic for a concept you know someone else has done before? How did it impact your writing process or feelings after posting?

Not really, although someone else did start posting a Tim and Jason in Arkham fic after I started mine but before I started posting it. I just avoided reading it so I wouldn’t be influenced, although I do intend to read it now, if it ever finishes.

12. Have you ever written a fic and decided never to publish it? Why?

Not a complete fic. Before I started Batman I tried both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but only got a couple hundred words into each.

13. What’s the biggest change between your style when you started in fandom and today?

I don’t think my style has changed much. I’ve matured and become a better writer, but I think the core of what I do and how is basically the same.

14. What’s the biggest change in your taste between when you started in fandom and today?

I don’t think it’s really changed very much. I’m more inclined toward Redemption for Everyone, probably, and much more reluctantly to let anyone die. I have less tolerance for anything tragic or unhappy. I read a wider range of things, in terms of both fandom and subject matter.

15. Have you ever purposefully written one fandom/fic idea over another because you knew it’d be more popular?

I’ve only ever posted fic for Batman and Oz, and I definitely prioritize Batman because people actually read it.

16. Have you ever stopped writing a fic/for a fandom because it wasn’t receiving enough attention?

I will eventually finish my Oz stories, hopefully soon, but for now, yeah.

17. In your opinion, what’s your most overrated fic?

I don’t want to say any of them are overrated? Like, I do not want people to like any of them any less. I’m always surprised by how much people like them, but also I don’t want to be like, no, that one’s not as good as they think it is - I worked really hard on all of them.

18. What’s your most underrated fic?

The Oz ones. For Batman, probably Maybe Someday We’ll Laugh again? It has the fewest views out of the ones that weren’t posted pretty recently.

19. If you had to pick one fic/scene/chapter of your work to describe your entire portfolio to a stranger, which would you pick?

Fic, scene, and chapter are, like, wildly different options to choose from. I generally point people toward The Most Important Thing, as a good representation of my work that isn’t a major time commitment. For one scene I’d say the one in Robins and Other Flightless Birds where Bruce and Kate are talking about the kids on patrol, which contains one of my favorite lines I’ve written: “Mine is a pity bat theme, so you don’t have to be a dork on the streets of Gotham alone.” I think it’s a good summary of the kind of Batman I like to write. I do not remember individual chapters clearly enough to answer for that.

20. Have/Would you ever rewrite a fic? If yes, would you take the original down?

I’ll rewrite the Ozma ones as I turn them into the start of a book. Otherwise no. And I don’t plan to take them down.

21. If someone starts kudosing and commenting your fics in a spree and has a few works of their own, would you go look through theirs?

Yes, I’ve done that several times.

22. Has there ever been anyone who’s made you freak out because they read your work and followed/favorited/reviewed?

I remember on my first or second fic someone whose work I’d read a lot of commented, and that was exciting. But I don’t remember who it was - that was like 6 years ago.

23. What’s the nicest review you’ve ever gotten?

Most of them are so nice. Like, I don’t know how to single out one review. Raberba girl leaves a long, amazing comment on every chapter of everything. I got a review I loved on We’re All Mad Here that I didn’t answer for like a year and felt horribly guilty about; I think the commenter was seaofserendipity.

24. What’s the meanest review you’ve ever gotten? Do you think the reviewer intended it?

I don’t know. I try not to think about them. Something from Rewind, Reset, I’m sure.

25. What constructive criticism, however well-meaning, always makes you feel bad when you see it in a review?

I can’t think of any, like, genuinely constructive criticism that I’ve felt bad about.

26. What aspect of your writing do you most enjoy to see praised?

I’m not sure. Maybe when people think it’s funny? Or maybe when they like how I handle complex issues around mental illness and trauma. Which are two very different aspects.

27. If you could only ever write crossovers or single-fandom fics ever again, which would you pick?

Single fandom.

28. if you could only ever write for a single crossover or a single fandom again, which would you pick?

Batman.

29. Does the division of your writing across fandoms line up with your reading? What’s the biggest discrepancy?

No. I really only write Batman. I read Batman, other DC, Buffy, Veronica Mars, and Star Wars pretty often, and Marvel, Harry Potter, and Supernatural if I’m in the right mood. I love Oz fic, but don’t read a lot of it because there’s not a lot currently being written.

30. Do you continue to write for a fandom after you’ve moved on or do you focus solely on the new one?

Not really applicable to me with my single fandom writing.

31. Who’s the one character you’ve just never managed to get perfectly right?

Idk. I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten anyone completely perfectly right. I definitely struggle with Damian. Yeah, my answer’s gonna be Damian. I have gotten around the difficulty of writing him by making him younger twice (and have a 3rd story planned where I’m also doing that), and since he’s younger/newer to the family/newer to existence as a character, he often just doesn’t show up at all because I’m starting from a pre-Damian point in the timeline.

32. Who’s the one character who shines without you even trying?

Probably Tim. I have a Tim thing.

33. Is there any particular character whose scenes always wind up being longer/more frequent than you expected? Does the quality hold up?

Tim. Always Tim, in every fic. And I think so, for the most part.

34. Was there any fic that you wrote that really surprised you in the fandom reaction? Was it just by the numbers or did they take it an entirely different way?

How upset people got about Rewind, Reset, definitely.

35. Have you ever written a ship into a fic without meaning to?

I almost never mean to. It just happens. When I wrote my 2nd novel, the first scene I wrote was one from the middle of the book where they had a conversation about how Definitely There Is No Romance Here, specifically so that the platonic were locked in and it couldn’t happen to them.

36. Have you ever sincerely written a ship you do not support into a fic?

Nope. My fics aren’t, like, super ship heavy, and I don’t have really strong feelings about any Batman related ships. I just go with whatever feels right for the story.

37. Have you ever purposefully bashed a character/ship in a fic?

I don’t think so? I definitely portrayed some characters as worse people in earlier stories than later ones, like Harley and Talia, but that wasn’t, like, bashing - I just hadn’t read as much about them yet and didn’t have a very nuanced understanding of their characters.

38. Have you ever purposefully written something you know your readers would find uncomfortable/would not enjoy? If yes, why?

The scene where Bruce shoots Black Mask in Rewind, Reset, and the scene where Barbara lets aliens get tortured in Pinioned. Although no one was really unhappy with the alien situation like I worried they would be. They just felt like the right moves for the story.

39. Do you consider yourself to have a readership?

Yes. I have a good sized group of people who read all the bat-fic I write.

40. Do you feel like you put out enough content?

Yes.

41. If you cross-post your fics on multiple sites, do you have a favorite? Are there certain fics you would only post on certain site?

I only post on ao3, except occasionally snippets on tumblr.

42. How many views has your most popular fic gotten?

250,247 (Robins and Other Flightless Birds)

43. Your least popular?

680 (Ozma: Part II)

44. Do you follow/favorite/kudos/comment/review more stories than you have received?

I don’t comment as much as I should. I kudos everything I read. Sometimes even if I don’t finish reading it. I don’t really keep track of numbers.

45. If you had to call yourself an author of a single genre (besides fanfic) what label would you give yourself?

Outside of fanfic, I’m definitely a fantasy author. But in terms of, like, what genre my fanfic falls in besides just fanfic - idk. Is Trauma Recovery a genre?

46. Do you consider yourself a diverse author?

Does this mean do I have a diverse range of stories? If so, not really. I always write for the same fandom, I do the same things with characters again and again (JJ!Tim), and in non-fic work I almost exclusively retell fairy tales.

47. If someone you know in real life who isn’t involved in fandoms asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first?

Depends on the person, and probably The Most Important Thing. It’s short, it doesn’t get into complicated multiverse stuff, and I like it.

48. Does anyone you know from outside of fandom know you write fanfic? Are they involved in the same fandom too?

My parents know and a few friends, and none of them are particularly interested in Batman.

49. Has anyone in your life ever read your fanfic just because you wrote it?

I think my ex boyfriend started one, but he wasn’t a very fast reader and didn’t have much time, so I don’t think he ever finished. My former roommate read my first fic and part of my second before I posted it, mostly as sort of a critique partner.

50. Has writing fanfic had a significant impact on your life? Would you say it’s entirely positive?

Yes, and yes. I’ve gotten so much better at writing male characters, at writing large casts, at maintaining a schedule, at finishing projects. I’ve become a better and more confident writer. I’ve build up a small audience for my original work that I know came over from the fanfic.

#ask meme #batfic #Io rambles

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woodswolf · 7 months ago

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⭐ for dogs leading dogs!

Director's Commentary Ask Meme

Okay we're actually going to do something a little different for this one — not commentary on a specific scene, but on a very specific recurring detail that either nobody has noticed or that nobody has commented on yet. Let's talk about numbers :)

There are very very few numbers in the text that are random. If a number is specified, it usually means something, except in some cases where specific numbers are important are important for conveying What's Happening in an understandable way (such as group sizes for Pikmin, especially in chapter 4). But even among those instances, most of them are not random. And if you go back through and look at the numbers, you can start to see patterns.

In particular, I would like to point out two particular numbers: thirty, and combinations of five and four.

Let's start with the combination first, because it's easier to explain for how difficult it is to describe. The five-four combination (perhaps easiest expressed as 5 = 4 + 1) is specifically associated with the wraiths. This is actually pretty solidly established in the games themselves - the Submerged Castle has 5 floors of which 4 of them are sprawling hazardous labyrinths and 1 is the Waterwraith's boss arena.

The Plasm Wraith is also heavily associated with the number 5 for a lot of reasons. The Formidable Oak is the fifth of five areas in Pikmin 3, and is made of five rooms, two of which can alternately count as the wraith's boss arena depending on whether you consider the player's perspective or Olimar's. (Either the top of the Oak is the boss arena for Olimar, or the bottom for the player.) Additionally, the Plasm Wraith's boss music is basically Five: The Musical, with the most obvious and applicable bit being this section, where the Plasm Wraith's 4-bar motif starts minimally but grows over 5 repetitions until it takes over the entire body of the song. There's a lot more five-and-four that you can pull out of this theme but it's a bit more of a reach.

Arguably in the context of the games, this five-and-four pattern is more strongly associated with major bosses. In addition to the aforementioned points about the wraiths, the Titan Dweevil has five phases for removing each of its four offensive treasures until it's left with none; and the Ancient Sirehound also has five phases, of which four are elemental (ice/electricity/fire/gloom). I may or may not exploit this fuller context of the five-four's scope - no matter what, it isn't going to be relevant again until several sequels from now (namely until I start writing DLD's direct sequel rather than catch/cradle, which is more of a highly relevant side story) so I have a lot of time to think it over.

As for how this combination has been used in-text so far, there is one major instance:

“...The initial shaft descends for 625 millimeters before leveling out,” it eventually begins. “From there, it begins to rise until it emerges into the bottom of an underground lake. After that, the path should be dry, and will eventually lead to another chasm that drops into the cave system itself. It’s rather like…” It trails off for some reason. “It’s rather like a sink trap.”

625 can also be written as 5×5×5×5, or 5⁴. :) Shoutouts to Five Five Five Five Five and the rest of the SCP Antimemetics Division tales, though there is no relation other than incessant fives. (All of those stories are just a very cool read especially if you haven't read them before.)

Thirty, on the other hand, is a very different beast. Where the five-four combination is actively malicious, thirty is something closer to inevitability. This is very often a bad thing (the thirty day time limit, combined with several instances so far where either thirty Pikmin die/are predicted to die/are the only survivors of mass death), but it isn't always. Thirty may be inevitable, but it also is complete - thirty survivors that will no longer suffer, thirty sacrifices to prevent more deaths, thirty seconds or minutes of waiting before something miserable is over, 330 hours of travel time between Hocotate and PNF-404, thirty pills to heal, thirty ship parts in thirty days for a (thirty) perfect ending.

Thirty is powerful. It can be all of a weapon and a tool and a source of comfort. It is assurance. It is a time bomb. It is both the gentle hand of death and the rallying cry of life. It means many things, but if it means anything, it means hope - hope either that things will end, or that they will begin again.

There was only ever one way that dogs leading dogs was going to end. It's been in plain sight since the first chapter. It always comes back to thirty.

If you want to break things down exceedingly far, you can combine both of these important number combinations and notice that both of them involve five - thirty can be prime factorized as 2×3×5. So if I had to break things down very specifically:

2: Pairs, particularly where the parties involved in the pair are somehow foils or can be heavily compared or contrasted in another way.

3: Repetition. (There's actually an even more specific concept that I could use for what three means, but if it isn't already evident between all of my emphasis on the "riddle" and now all of the rest of this, using that word would be spoilers as of this moment in time.) Can also be read as luck and/or virtue and/or lessons learned through repetition.

4: Death, as the common trope goes :)

5: Endings, as something both inevitable and complete.

So we can essentially read the five-four pair as ending in death, and thirty as pairs repeating for an ending, which is basically the theme of the entire story.

Thanks for the ask! :D

#directors commentary ask meme #dogs leading dogs #my posts

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nebulousfishgills · 11 months ago

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Behind the scenes for Necrosis please!

1, 6, 7, 11, 17, and 21

Okay let's see here, one essay coming up :)

1) How long did it take you to write this fic?

According to AO3, I published the first chapter on April 20th, 2023 and finished it on October 5th, 2023, so theoretically that's just about 5 and a half months. Of course that doesn't include writing that first chapter and planning it out.

Although, I have planning messages (I wrote my outline on Discord like a Normal Person) that I first wrote on March 29th of that year. So... like six and a half months or so? Give or take?

Damn, when I do the math I'm kind of insane for that.

6) What do you need to write? Is there anything special you need to do/have to help your creative flow?

I have to have some kind of background noise, but that's just a general necessity for me. I can't do complete silence or I can't function. My headphones are going like 70% of the day playing music or whatever.

Writing specifically though, and for Necrosis specifically since that's the focus of the ask, typically it was like, rain/castle/fireplace ambiance. This one was my go-to:

youtube

Sometimes I'd also use instrumental tracks/playlists depending on the vibes, or even my Emily playlist (the Twilight one, ofc... god the fact that I need to fucking specify...).

7) What inspired the idea for the plot?

Okay so honestly, with Necrosis I just kinda found the plot along the way.

I knew I wanted to do a sequel to Diplopia of some kind to really give myself a sandbox to play in and see where this story could potentially go. But, eventually I found what I would consider to be my three main plot points, what I would later consider to be the three main arcs or "acts" of the story: Mele and Emily's "unwitting motherhood" arc, the ball and the disaster that befell that, and what I like to call "The People vs. Aro Volturi."

Mele just kind of came to me in a flash of inspiration after scrolling through wikis and looking into Life and Death (genderbent Twilight) and to be honest, all of it kind of stems from that idea. Life and Death has a lot of similar beats in the backstory for the Volturi presented. Sulpicia witnessing Didyme's murder, reporting it, having Mele steal Aro's gift to give it to her before he's executed. Regency ends up two-thirds female, you get the idea. Shipping her with Jane was just me having some fun.

One of my HUGE big brain moments was me deciding to have Athenodora's murder be orchestrated by Aro because he knew that she knew about his sister. In the original story of Diplopia (the full thing, not the very original one shot), I had Athenodora be dead just to cut down on the chaos of the whole situation, but I actually took inspiration from Caius' canon backstory for it. He hates werewolves in canon because he was almost killed by one and is utterly terrified of them. In my version, he hates them because werewolves killed his wife.

The subplot of Necrosis with Emily finding Athenodora's journal and putting the pieces together about what actually happened is still something I'm very proud of because that wasn't the original intention of Athenodora being absent, and I'm also proud that I had Thena's knowledge be somewhat of a mystery as well, so the reader only realizes it once Emily points it out when she's delivering her litigation.

Anyways, that was a tangent for only one plot point.

I chose to have a ball in the middle because I feel like it can be a staple in Volturi fics, and also because I wanted to include some more traditional vampire-type tropes. I wouldn't go as far to call it like a "red herring" part of the fic since it seems like a weird distraction from the main plot...

And this is where I admit that the HARDEST part of planning this fic was figuring out the conflict, and ultimately I landed on another Twilight fic staple: Newborn army conspiracy.

I knew that whatever this conflict was, it was only meant to be a plot device/distraction from the actual conflict of the fic, which was Emily dealing with this forbidden knowledge about what happened to Didyme. But this plot also couldn't be entirely pointless because it had to lead to some type of explosion that lead Emily to announcing this information. It was a lot of complex pinboarding in my head. So, I kinda just landed on Newborn Vampire Army and let that do what it will.

Fun fact about that, if in that first group of newborns caught in chapter 2, one of those vampires seemed a liiiiittle personal (the one Emily executes herself), it's because I based him on my ex. So.

Anyways, naturally the last plot point was the main reason I wrote the whole fic. Didyme and all that backstory is an aspect of the Twilight lore that fascinates me because it's genuinely interesting, yet never mentioned or expanded upon and I LOVE fics that deal with it.

I had to leave little breadcrumbs leading up to it, and I even foreshadowed it in Diplopia when I had Emily tell Sulpicia that she was sure "someone [t]here has sororicide on their conscience." Which seems like a highly specific and odd detail unless You Know.

Necrosis was all about showing some growth for Emily. She's been in Survival Mode for most of her life, and now that she's comfortable, she can enter that Growth Stage of living. Diplopia wasn't about character development, at its core it was about me being silly. Necrosis' entire thesis is basically me flipping a fat bird to Stephenie Meyer's dumb and hypocritical tidbit about vampires being static beings incapable of developing. Emily has the ability to care about others and for the greater good, she just was never in a position to try.

Those three plot points kind of showcase those developmental phases. Caring for and helping Mele learn and grow (theoretically this parallels Eleven), letting herself be frivolous and enjoy herself for the hell of it (dressing up all fancy, dancing, this arc even opens with Emily in bed with Heidi to explore her sexuality), and then choosing to act in the interest of the greater good because it was the right thing to do.

So, tl;dr, Necrosis' plot was very complicated to map out because I had the different destinations I wanted, but had to do some work to chart the courses.

11) Was there a scene you hadn't originally planned to include? Why did you decide to fit it in?

To be honest, most of Necrosis happened as I planned it, convoluted as it was. There weren't many outtakes, if any that I can remember. I suppose there were tidbits that I'd debated about including or not before ultimately deciding to add them in anyways. Emily and Heidi being intimate springs to mind as one of these elements because I always had assumed that they had some type of physical relationship, but only really implied or mentioned in passing. I felt bold, though, and just decided "fuck it."

I did this silly doodle a while back using that lesbian eyeshadow meme as a template (it's not very good, be warned) and I've made memes about them having some type of intimate relationship.

Something else that I never did explicitly state but I've headcanoned since basically the veeeeeerry beginning was some type of similar relationship between Emily and Sulpicia, even if it was only like once or twice. Maybe in my mind I think the way it goes is that Heidi was very obviously some type of awakening for Emily and when she's confused by this, she asked Sulpicia what the fuck is going on and Emily basically has to get the "gay urges" talk from Picia. Then, perhaps similar to that bit in Game of Thrones with Daenerys and her handmaiden in the first season, Emily has Picia show her what to do with a woman before she tries to work her almost nonexistent charm on Heidi... tbh this might make for a good one shot.

Emily's the embodiment of repression, and she fell into a coven of actual slut vampires that do whatever they want is what I'm saying.

17) What was the hardest scene to write?

"Hard" can have multiple definitions. If we were to say scenes I was dragging my feet to get through, I'd probably say some of the ball scenes because they just weren't as meaty as I would have liked and I was itching to get to the chaos of the After.

Smut actually got easier overtime because I was practicing in private for little personal projects, but the hard part eventually became a wording issue. I've learned how to get nastier with it, but I know I need to hold myself back in certain regards because a) it's not the focus of the fic and b) not everyone is into hardcore smut. It's a balance that must be hit, but as one of my friends put it, "having to be eloquent about it is like pulling teeth."

Hard emotionally, I'd say that the bit in the last chapter when Emily and Caius are talking about outliving everything and everyone they knew. It was my last chapter and I hadn't intended for it to get that deep at all, but it was 2 AM and my brain just kind of led me down that angst ramble unplanned. Finishing Necrosis was always gonna be emotional for me and that just really hit a certain way. I actually had to stop and finish it in the morning because I had started crying over it.

It was the existentialism and my chronic "Emily Leaving Henry" guilt flaring up with a vengeance.

21) What was something you didn't expect people to notice or gravitate towards in this fic?

Something that was funny to me was how you in particular seemed suspicious of Mele and her actions lmao. I can totally see why, but honestly her quick acceptance of vampirism can be boiled down to three things:

1) In some ways she felt like some type of caricature of people who want to be vampires and would be like "yeah sure fuck it."

2) Plot Reasons/Mating Bond with Jane. Mating bonds/pulls aren't technically even a canon thing, but like eeeeeevery fic uses it to the point that it basically is canon. Another example of this is Caius being a painter. Not technically canon per se, but it's a pretty universally accepted headcanon.

3) I'm lazy. Somethings are just easier to handwave.

Although admittedly Mele being some type of twist villain would 100% be some type of shit I'd pull, so I don't blame people for thinking about it. It honestly hadn't ever crossed my mind because my lizard brain was focused on getting to Emily exposing Aro's secret.

And honestly, Emily trying "Caring for a Supernatural Child 2: Electric Boogaloo" was just such a fun concept.

I wonder if Eleven will ever know that she has several non biological/they're emotionally Emily's children siblings. One of them's also named Jane, how funny.

#take a shot every time i go on a pointless tangent rather than staying on the point cohesively #spoiler alert you'd be dead #fishgills speaks #fishgills ocs #twilight oc #oc ask game #fic ask game #beloved mutuals #my inbox is open

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samisnotlegend · 1 year ago

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I think you mentioned in a post yesterday that you're always open to receiving questions about your fics, so today I have a question about See You Soon.

You probably don't plan to write a sequel, but do you have any headcanons about what happens to bakudeku after they get married? (Is it even a headcanon if it's coming from the author?)

I just think their story is interesting and their dynamic so cute and want to know more about them as well as your writing process! And if you have no headcanons, what was your favorite part about writing this specific fic?

Oh what a FANTASTIC question!! Thank you so much for asking!!!! Okay this got a little long. A summary and ramblings of SYS's possible sequel under the cut!!!

Alright so: See You Soon. I have definitely toyed with the idea of writing a sequel, actually. I still might do it, but I have so many other upcoming fics and oneshots that I don't mind spoiling it, because if a SYS sequel does happen, it is a loooong way off. (Also, it would focus more on smut than on the plot which I outline here. So! Spoilers are fine!)

Anyway, the wedding is very happy. Katsuki has another mini-meltdown on the alter, because he is out-of-his-mind happy that he gets to marry Izuku. Izuku cries too, obviously. Almost immediately after the ceremony, they sneak off into a coat closet. Mistuki eventually yanks them out and makes them attend their own party.

At the reception, there is a little bit of drama. I won't get into everything here, but let's just say that bkdk foil a certain plan of Dabi's, and Izuku is immediatley able to prove his loyalty to Katsuki, the Bakugou clan, and also help Shouto out. (This actually almost made it into the main fic, but it was already so long lol.)

Party continues on, and Mitsuki eventually kicks Izuku and Katsuki out of their own party because they're having a hard time keeping their hands off of each other.

Then after that... bkdk take over the Bakugou family! It genuinely goes well. Katsuki is the hard, outwardly cold boss, and Izuku is his perfect foil. Diplomatic and outwardly-soft and kind. Of course, everyone who is anyone knows that Katsuki is also incredibly soft, and Izuku is also incredibly badass. But their fronts and reputations work well.

Sero and Shouto get married. Yay! There is a foiled assassination attempt once or twice, as Dabi + the league desperately try to keep it from happeneing. Maybe Katsuki and Izuku play bodyguards to their respective friends lol. But things go well, seroki get married, and the ties between the Bakugou clan and Shouto's faction of the Todoroki clan become incredibly strong. Shouto takes over the entire group, with Sero as his husband. The league lose power more and more, eventually disbanding.

Bkdk and seroki achive an awesome balance in the city, and the city is far better off for it.

As for Bkdk's relationship... I think it is everything Katsuki hopes for in SYS and more. The more he gets to know Izuku the more he loves him. They are ruthless crime bosses, but they also have weekend superhero movie marathons. They nerd out over rare All Might merch, but fight and strategize with amazing synchonity.

I guess, to summarize, bkdk do face challenges after they get married. But they overcome them, and really do live happily after. They definitely never stop being in love, that's for sure.

My favorite part about writing this fic was writing Katsuki's panic post-library scene. Because I knew that at the same moment Katsuki was panicking, Izuku was at the Todoroki compound, pleased as fucking punch. He was probably laying on his bed writing "Bakugou Izuku" in hearts over and over again in his notebooks while sighing happily to himself. Izuku was SO smug about getting to meet and make out with his fiance before the wedding, you have no idea.

I also really liked writing Katsuki sneaking up on Izuku before the wedding lol. He was just so happy! I love it when Katsuki is happy. XD

Honestly though, my favorite thing about this fic isn't any one part. When I received the initial prompts (mafia and/or arranged marriage) I was stumped! I thought I was gonna write something angsty. I didn't though. It ended up writing something so silly, but sexy and fun too, and I'm really proud of that. Even the angstiest of prompts turn sweet and lovey-dovey when my boys are involved, I guess. XD

Okay that's ENOUGH of me talking lol. Thank you SO MUCH for asking though! You don't know how lovely it is to be able to share stuff like this - all the happiness and joy that the characters do in fact get to experience after the story ends. I can't say that it's like this for all writers, but I don't stop thinking about my boys when their little stories end. They live on hehe.

If anyone has any questions about any of my fics, you are always more than welcome to ask. <3 Okay! Thanks again! I hope this lived up to your hopes! <3

#i really started rambling lol #i really may write this at some point!!#but honestly #as you can see they already got their happy ending #and while they still gotta defeat Dabi and co #Katsuki was right in that the league didnt stand a chance against him and deku #SYS #bnha #bkdk #sammy writes #oh side note though #if i do write a sequel #it would be almost all smut #just fyi lmaoooooo

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syoish-aot · 5 months ago

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Hi, no rush or anything 😁 I was wondering if you know roughly when the next part of I found you too sequel is coming (I love the book soo much) I do know earlier you said you were suffering from writers block and I wanted you to know you shld still take your time and (although I may be one person) I love your work and what your doing is honestly amazing💞💞 (tbh it's rlly impressive writing a whole book I have so many ideas but can't even complete a whole page yet I've got it planned out so what you do is literally unreal😭❤️❤️)

I wish wish wish WISH I had a good idea of when the next part would come out but I honestly have no idea at all!!

My brain is so weird when it comes to---

*sudden realization that I forgot to take my meds this morning* one sec

ANYWAY - like I was saying: because of my ADHD writing is a very "come and go" kinda process for me. I'll have a few weeks of INTENSE motivation for a specific project and then I'll go crazy stupid working on it (which is how I wrote 30k of that fic in a 2 week span) but then in the blink of an eye that motivation is completely gone or switched to another project.

Unfortunately, unless I'm feeling that brain buzzing, vyvanse enhanced, knees weak sensation of extreme hyperfixation - I can't write a single word.

And if I do it's either a) shit or b) I hate it so much that it makes me never want to write again.

All I know is that I will FOR SURE finish the fic eventually!

The only reason I wouldn't is if I jump fandom, which I don't see happening anytime soon (especially because I'm refusing to let myself watch any new shows out of the fear that I'll latch onto something else and my AoT spark will disappear).

I have the rest of the fic planned and the majority of the next chapter already written, but I've kinda shifted my focus to my Jean/OC fic "The Letters She Wrote" since that's where I'm feeling that ADHD motivation right now. Which also explains why I haven't been as active on tumblr (the insta community is more OCxCC inclined, whereas tumblr seems to be more into xreader fics, so I'm normally more active on whichever platform my current hyperfixation project would get the most engagement).

Honestly though, asks like this really motivate me!

Like you already mentioned, I was having some really shit writer's block recently and I couldn't work on ANY of my projects, but then I made a friend on insta who started reading Letters and she was commenting on every chapter, once she caught up with the fic I was so motivated to write that I wrote almost five pages last night between clients at work.

I do write for me and for the sake of getting an idea out of my head and onto the screen, but it's also really validating to know that people enjoy and look forward to the things I work on.

As far as your comment on how you struggle to write, even when you have a plan, my biggest advice is this:

Don't start at the beginning. Start with the scene that you're the most excited for and go from there. The first scene I wrote for I Found You was the scene where Eren and MC are dancing in chapter 8 and then I worked backwards.

#wow that was a lot of words #thank you for the ask though #another reason I haven't been writing as much is just that IRL has been busy #I had to pick up a bunch of extra shifts to afford some stuff for my car #AND I had a con #laskdjflaskdjf the con alsdkjflaskdjflskadjfasdlkfj #DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE HOT LEVI COSPLAYER I MET #AND HAVE SINCE GONE ON A DATE WITH #AND NO HAVE A SECOND DATE WITH ON WEDNESDAY #AHHHHHH #GUYS I'M SO SMITTEN ALSKDJFLAKSDJF #I'M NOT EVEN A LEVI GIRLIE BUT HE WAS IN A MAID OUTFIT #A MAID OUTFIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#i love pathetic men

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planckstorytime · 8 months ago

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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: A World Beyond Anger (Part Two)

II. On the Way to a Smile

Not only does Final Fantasy VII Rebirth decline to commit to the trajectory set by the end of the previous title, but it also seems to walk back on several of the questionable decisions made by the first installment. The cast’s prescient knowledge of the future story arcs? Gone. One of the first things that happens in Rebirth is Aerith explaining that the group lost all of their future memories after the fight with the Whispers in part one. So now the cast can just go through the same story beats in the same order with the same outcomes for 95% of the game. So much for changing your fate!

Moreover, the discretionary cutaways from death and ambiguous hints about the three Avalanche members’ survivals amount to almost nothing. Jessie and Wedge are, in fact, dead, just like in the original game. Biggs’s survival only happens in an alternate world that may or may not be purgatory. Zack is back, and he’s the centerpiece of the marketing. He even made it onto the cover of the game! And yet, his role in the story feels dramatically cut down from whatever might’ve been previously planned. He occupies scarcely an hour of screentime across the 100+ hour game. Completing the game unlocks the option to skip his sequences, which tells you how significant they are to the actual progression of the plot.

To me, all of this screams that the developers got cold feet on the apparent promise of a radically different adaptation, or that they never had a plan to begin with. I think opening the game with the overt retconning of Zack’s church scene from the end of Remake’s Intermission DLC indicates that the writing isn’t committed to a specific path.

I disagree with the notion that Remake’s climax alluded to only minor adaptational changes, rather than a fundamentally different story. Prior to the party vanquishing the avatars of fate, plenty of creative flourishes and alterations peppered the narrative. There would be no reason to disrupt “fate” (i.e. the direction of the story) if it just reaffirmed the adaptation’s existing ethos. The development team encouraged audiences to speculate on how different things could be. The ending of Remake could hardly be clearer: characters deleting future timelines that carried out OG events, “the future is always a blank page”, the party vanquishing a literal divine incarnation of “capital ‘D’ Destiny”, “the unknown journey continues”, etc.

Was it all meaningless? Was it disingenuous all along? Did they change their minds? Or did the developers just want to feed some controversy for extra publicity, plus a few brownie points for going meta? I’ll return to this point once we’ve discussed the ending of Rebirth. But it’s worth noting that more recent interviews have centered around how the Remake trilogy will eventually lead into Advent Children (2005) – in other words, any narrative digression that contradicts that film (previously thought to be a direct sequel to the 1997 game) must inevitably return to the status quo anyway. In an interview with GamesRadar+, producer Yoshinori Kitase said:

“We are finally going to link up with Advent Children, that is going to be part of canon. The overall storyline, the developments, will not go wildly out in a way that will not add up to Advent Children in the end. I don’t think anyone wanted that, that’s not what we’re looking to create here. [But] to make sure it doesn’t become stale and people know exactly where it’s going, [that it] doesn’t just follow the original word for word, we add in extra elements which add that little bit of doubt. Getting the right balance of that is so key. Ultimately, we’re not trying to change the Final Fantasy 7 story into something really different. The overall balance wouldn’t really allow for that anyway.”

To me, this just sounds like a normal description of an adaptation. Like… all of them, ever. It seems a far cry from the wild, uncharted frontier they recklessly set their sights on back in 2020. Unsurprisingly, I prefer this more conservative approach. Changes feel more natural, our heroes aren’t battling the literal ghosts of the plot, and everyone seems to be acting more in-character than they were throughout the third act of Remake. It might sound like I’m poking fun at Square Enix for backpedaling, and I am, to an extent. But I also view the conceit behind my interpretation of Remake’s ending to be a rhetorical gangrenous limb. Its amputation seems like a necessary course correction, and it helped me to enjoy the new game more than I expected. I’d say that for most of its duration, Rebirth ironically feels like a more faithful retelling than Remake did.

As with part one, I greatly enjoyed the environments, music, and combat design. Controlling characters feels more responsive, world traversal has more freedom, and quest design improved dramatically. It more closely resembles my conception of what a modern entry in the series should bethan Final Fantasy XVI (2023)does. A few of the 30+ minigames irritated me, but it felt nice to have new things consistently introduced to break the routine of the main gameplay loop. None of them match the standard set by Queen’s Blood, but what’s Final Fantasy VII without some annoying side activities?

I appreciate the effort put into creating mechanics used for single sequences, just as I admire the attention to detail in the recreation of old locales, monsters, and NPCs. The stretch of the adventure covering Junon, Costa del Sol, the Gold Saucer, Gongaga, and Cosmo Canyon in particular stood out as exceptionally well-crafted. Like the Wall Market chapter of Remake, these sections demonstrate the potential inherent in a faithful – yet creatively distinct – retelling. Even as a connection to the Compilation, which I generally dislike, Cissnei’s presence in Gongaga felt both plausible and satisfying to me.

On top of all of this, I consistently laughed along with Rebirth’s humor. It manages to catch that quirky, borderline surrealist tone of FF7’s classic gags, then mixes it with a bit of flare that would feel at home in the Yakuza series (2005-ongoing). From Red XIII’s disguised breakdance to Solemn Gus’s designated hype man to Junon’s pub exclusively catering to bald patrons, the wacky scenarios and odd predicaments that the characters find themselves in often provide more amusement than the main story. Constant opportunities for them to react to strange occurrences, banter with each other, and build their chemistry constitute the core of the game’s appeal.

Barret shines as the standout member of the party this time around. His arc, like the man himself, carries a lot of weight. I love how the game articulates the tragedy of his relationship with Dyne. The lack of catharsis for Barret at the end of it all feels both heart-wrenching and all too appropriate. In his eyes, he has yet to redeem himself, but with his friends’ help, that burden won’t be enough to bury him. Beyond just his personal pathos, Barret’s characterization radiates a versatility to which few others can compare. He offers comfort and protection to Cloud and Tifa upon their revisit to the facsimile of Nibelheim, applying his fatherly instincts to his companions. His camaraderie with Red XIII, which was practically nonexistent in the source material, proves to be one of the most compelling relationships throughout the new content.

Actually, Red XIII has improved across the board. I always thought the character showed promise, but he rapidly loses plot relevance after Cosmo Canyon in the original. Rebirth utilizes him more effectively by giving us glimpses into his private moments with characters besides Cloud. This results in a greater sense of interiority, and helps to put him on more equal footing with Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, and Barret, as far as narrative importance goes. The Gi vignette, which constitutes the entirety of Red’s arc in the original, now ties into the lore of the Black Materia in a really interesting way – perhaps the first expansion to the series’s mythology that I’ve actually enjoyed. This makes Red’s continued presence on the adventure feel more natural. More importantly, his determination to free the Gi from their deathless purgatory sets up an interesting new storyline to pursue in the third game.

As with Red XIII, Rebirth similarly capitalizes on Yuffie’s latent potential. She’s still an obnoxious, kleptomaniacal child, but now one with the unsettling ideals of a militant nationalist. Yuffie’s borderline jingoistic admiration for her country’s “interim government”, as well as her dream of enacting revenge on Shinra, grant her more depth than FF7 initially afforded her as a hidden bonus character. Rage and pain lie hidden beneath her exuberant exterior, and this makes her reckless stunts feel actually relevant to the story on both a surface and subtextual level.

I’m not automatically opposed to any deviation from the original game; in fact, I admire it whenever the writing takes care to tighten its screws. Through Yuffie, Rebirth ties its upcoming Wutai story arc into the newly foreshadowed Huge Materia (now called “Magnus”) and Weapon plotlines. Previously, these three stories had little or nothing to do with one another, and were somewhat tangential to the progression of the main scenario throughout the latter half of FF7. Bringing them all together like this stitches up some of the frayed threads of the original’s tapestry. It feels like a natural restoration that improves upon the fabric of the original, rather than rendering something akin to the Monkey Jesus fresco.

Of course, another highlight of Rebirth is Cloud and Tifa’s deepening bond. Square took this to unexpected (though not entirely unwelcome) territory. I think both characters are handled well, and the writing really sells both the turbulence and the unrelenting compassion of the relationship. I especially like the focus on Tifa’s propensity to people-please as a trauma response, which helps to facilitate tension in Cloud’s identity crisis mystery. It explores the very human roots of their faults without ever making them unsympathetic. Frankly, I feel like this game should be the final nail in the love triangle debate, but I’m sure shippers will find a way to continue. And Square doesn’t want that war to end. That would just be bad business.

Not only does Rebirth preserve the themes of mental health and the heavy psychosexual symbolism associated with it from the original, but it actually expands upon these motifs, getting more audacious than I ever expected. Much of the new material in story, particularly the expansions to Gongaga and Cosmo Canyon, inspired me to adopt a new perspective on what this project is trying to convey… and what it means to me personally.

FULL ESSAY: https://planckstorytime.wordpress.com/2024/05/11/final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-a-world-beyond-anger/

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weekend-whip · 2 years ago

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I am so confused and in shambles dude. From what I've read so far (haven't finished the first book yet) your worldbuilding and characterizations are immaculate! How do you do it?? How would you recommend improving on that type of stuff?

(skdsfjdkjgj my own rewrite is just a mess of random stuff I have no idea how to write characters or properly worldbuild)

Aww thank you!! I dunno how to recommend straight up improvement when everyone’s got different approaches to how they write and how they want to write, buuuut this is kind of my thought process when approaching a project a big as a rewrite that you could try. *-*)9

...this also got a bit long, so I’mma gently tuck it under a cut:

-All those random tidbits you’ve already got, anything at all? WRITE EM DOWN, keep ‘em stored somewhere easily accessible! I’ve currently got like four pages dedicated just for all the small stuff I want to eventually include/scenes I MUST write. It’s good to have a few bare basics to look back on or reference when you’re not sure of how to tackle a scene or what direction you want to take a character/plot.

For example, maybe you want to demonstrate how Kai gradually grows to accept help over time: in what ways does he start to become more comfortable with his team? What moments will stand out as turning points? Or it could even be less specific stuff like “Scene where Nya talks to Zane”. At what point in the plot would that be good to insert? And what would have led up to that moment? Thinking about stuff like that from the get-go will always give you a place to start from, and keeps the ideas flowing. You can always change and tweak later as you develop!

-Outline a general direction of where you want to take the story overall! It can be detailed right down to every paragraph of every chapter, or just simply a “this is how it starts, this is where the middle is, and this is how it ends”. Just give yourself somewhere to start, then figure out how you want to get from Point A to Point B, and it’ll basically write itself! And then if you happened to get stuck going forward, it becomes easier to see where you’re stuck at. Sometimes you’ll have to cut something out because it isn’t flowing, sometimes you’ll have to add more because things aren’t making enough sense! Either way, doing this makes it easier to see potential problems in the plot before you write yourself into a corner (...which I have done a few times).

And if you do find yourself scrapping something, don’t get rid of it completely! Hang onto those ideas/scenes you once tried to include—there’s a good chance you may find another opportunity for them later down the line! It makes it so much less stressful than trying to rewrite from memory too. (Especially in the case where you find yourself overhauling an entire chapter...which I have done. Many times.)

-Make a master timeline of events! Extremely helpful when referencing things that happened in the past, and to sort out potential time-related plot holes before they can occur! (especially in the case of something like Ninjago). Knowing exactly how long ago something happened or how long an event goes on for will do wonders for maintaining consistency. Highly recommend. (I’ve actually got two documents for my timeline because it’s a LOT to keep track of)

-As for actually doing some world building, I must confess, a lot of mine didn’t even fully pop up until I actually began writing the sequel ahahaah. I just knew I wanted the ninja to be aware that their elements were inherited from the get-go, rather than all the way into Season 4...which then spawned the idea for the eye colors, and why it wasn’t common knowledge, and then the entire Elemental Compass came along (which I conceived on the fly, lol, all of that was not in my original design AT ALL), and then how the Guardians were involved, and then how the FSM played into all of that...and now I’ve got a baseline of lore to play with. I guess what I’m trying to say on this front is that sometimes, you don’t have to think so hard about the world-building until it becomes relevant, or until you’re forced to answer a big question like “Why is this the way it is?”

(...and ALL of the above snowballed for me JUST because I had to explain away why the general public and even the Ninja themselves wouldn’t have taken interest in Lloyd’s green eyes when they otherwise should have)

....but fi you’re looking for a more concrete answer, or just want some lore ready from the start, consider how society is structured in your universe. Is there a currency system, or do people barter for goods? Is there one collective language, or is there several, and why? What’s the geography like, is there a reason more people live in one area over another? Figuring out “base” things like that will help you maneuver the characters in the world you create. And in the case of Elemental Powers, well, I suppose that’ll depend on how deep you wanna take your rewrite. Is there an entirely new system for how it works, or are you going to pull from what’s already established (as tangled as it is asdfghj)?

-Characters are a bit trickier; for starters, I’d recommend rewatching the show (for the umpteenth time) to really get a feel for the characters’ mannerisms, speech patterns, and what they’re most likely to do in any given situation. For example, Zane’s obviously got a more posh and concise way of speaking, while Jay and Kai are far more casual and less direct (and the difference between those two is that Kai will often make the situation relevant to himself while Jay’s more prone to go off on a tangent about literally anything). Cole’s speech patterns, meanwhile, depend entirely on the current situation: he’s more firm when in the midst of a mission, but far less formal while chilling around.

Or, another interpretation of mine: when tackling a situation, Kai will almost always act on instinct, which can come off as impulsive depending on what it is. He only stops to think things through when he realizes he’s got the upper hand. Jay will tend to hang back until he sees an opportunity, then drives for it with all he’s got (or he’s otherwise forced to act). Zane will analyze a situation before making any big moves at all, and will adapt his strategy from there (and tends to be caught off guard often because he’s thinking too much). Cole will normally try to assess a situation if he can, but if he’s emotional to any degree, can prove to be just as impulsive as Kai or thought-distracted as Zane.

Something you could do to practice all this, or to find your own ‘flavor’ for the characters would be to write imaginary dialogue between them in any random situation you can come up with–what would they be saying to each other during a chase scene? Or around a dinner table? Or when they’re trying to comfort somebody? How would Kai approach the problem compared to Zane? How’s Jay going to react to it compared to Cole? They’re not always going to agree on everything immediately either, so how would a potential argument go where no one’s really in the wrong? It’s those little nuances that can really make characterization pop, and a lot of it happens subconsciously!

Another thing you can do is read, read, READ other people’s stories! Getting a feel for how others interpret the characters can give you some ideas too (or give you an idea of what you DON’T want to do, lol). But reading does help make it easier to envision a character’s voice when applied to the written word, so that way when you’re writing and trying to nail their nuance, you have something of a baseline to compare to. (A lot of my “baseline” so to speak comes from @/lloyd-skywalkers’ amazing fics and The Fantastic Mr. Walker, actually)

When it comes to applying these characters to your own design though, you’re going to have to extrapolate: you’ve got the basics of the character right in front of you, but there’ll be a time when you’ll have to put them in a situation they’ve never been in before, or feel emotions they haven’t shown a lot of on screen. For example, you’d think Kai would just be a constant ball of rage and frustation and yelling, but I personally have a tendency to make Kai cry far more often. Not as some ooc-replacement for his anger, but precisely because he’s so angry at things. It stems from the insane amount of pressure, standards, and expectations he puts on himself, and the results of how his life had been prior to being a ninja, and because of how much he just wants good things for the people he cares about (and yet, bad stuff just keeps happening). And that makes a least a little bit of sense, right? Technically nothing is out of character, as long as there’s a character-driven/related reason for why it’s happening. So my advice here is, don’t be afraid to see how far you can push with a character. You can achieve a goldmine of character moments by doing this!

AND....uh, I think that’s all I got, for now! Hope this helped even to the smallest degree, and good luck with your own rewrite!

(And if you’re looking for more general writing tips, check the tags! I’m not going to get into that stuff because fanfic allows us to break normal writing conventions and you can be free to explore whatever works for you!)

#legogeek33 #time to take my own advice and finish the sequel adsfghj #ask from nice people

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fellowshipofthefics · 3 years ago

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Hey Fellowship of the Fics! Please welcome @scyllas-revenge!! 👏🥳 Scylla decided to share her thoughts and impressions on her fic: Burn Like Cold Iron.

Question 1: What about this story stands out from other stories with the same trope(s)?

What stands out most to me is the main character, Bee, and specifically her temptation to steal the Ring- it destroys her friendship with Sam, makes her frightened of herself for a long time, and serves to push her away from (and eventually bring her closer to) Boromir. I haven't seen other tenth-walker fics that introduce that concept (if y'all know of any, definitely send them my way!) And compared to other modern-girl-falls-into-Middle-Earth fics, Bee's desire to get back home to her old life and family and friends stands out too. It's her driving motivation throughout the story, it's what pulls her to the Ring, which she mistakenly thinks will give her the power to get back home, and it creates some dramatic tension between her and Boromir for an excruciatingly slow burn- after all, home means everything to Boromir, so how could he ever pursue Bee if doing so would push her away from her home? Then of course there's the helicopter. (not much to say about that part. but it definitely stands out)

Question 2: What was the most emotionally-charged scene to write?

I'm stuck between two (of the chapters I've posted so far). And spoilers abound, of course: The first scene is in chapter 19, when the Fellowship makes it out of Moria and Bee nearly takes the Ring from Frodo. The things Bee thinks about Gandalf and Frodo and the others here and in the previous chapter are cruel and self-serving and weren't easy to write, especially after developing bonds between these characters for so long beforehand! Then there's chapter 27, where Bee reconciles with Boromir about both of them being drawn to the Ring- I'd had that part written for ages beforehand and was so excited when the time came to post it! Bee doesn't know it yet, but that is 100% the moment when Boromir falls in love with her, so it's safe to say my emotions were in shambles and I was a complete mess.

Question 3: Do you have dreams for a sequel/spin-off from this story? If so, what would it be about?

I'm already planning to post an accompanying fic to this one, mostly with deleted scenes and more explicit romantic scenarios that didn't fit into the story. But after that? I'm excited to move on to other things- I've been writing this fic since 2016, after all!

Question 4: I feel like every writer has an "original intention" for how a story's going to progress. Has this story stuck pretty well to that original intention, and if not how has it veered away?

My "original intention" was actually pretty vague: Step 1: Bee is brought to Middle Earth by Saruman Step 2: she joins the Fellowship Step 3: she's tempted by the Ring Step 4: ...profit?? I'm happy with how a lot of the smaller plot points have taken shape- like Bee finding friends and help in unlooked-for places, and Bee's relationship with Boromir developing based on their mutual longing for home and their guilt at having been tempted by the Ring. I've also veered in a really fun direction with Bee's tie to the ent-wives and her being named "tree-friend" in the prologue- but that doesn't come into play until the very end of the fic, so I'm not gonna say anything else just yet!

Question 5: If there was a Dedication section for this fic, who would you dedicate it to?

Hmmm. I might have two dedications- one is a generic (but still very earnest!) thank-you to all the people on AO3, FFN, and tumblr who have been so supportive and kind about my writing, helped me with ideas, and inspired certain scenes, because I definitely wouldn't have the motivation to keep writing without them! Second dedication would be to anybody who reads or watches the Lord of the Rings and pictures themselves as a tenth walker, as cliche as it's become now! I've been imagining that since I was 9 or 10 years old, and I know I'm not the only one. I hope my story has the right combo of realism and insanity to satisfy anyone who still dreams of being a tenth walker!

If you haven’t read this story yet, go back up to the top and be sure to click the link.

If you would like to get you and your story featured in Monday Mentions, please click the Application Link! If you have any questions/concerns with the form, please feel free to leave an ask or DM one of us! Questions will be updated each month so repeat writers and stories are welcome. New writers will be prioritized.

#monday mentions #scyllas-revenge

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deannaroxannewrites · 3 years ago

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Tropetember Day 1: Friends to lovers

The Day After

Pairing: Poe Dameron x GN!Reader

Fandom: Star Wars (Sequel trilogy)

Rating: General Audiences

TW: Alcohol (mentioned), drinking

AN: So, I finally pulled myself together and started properly writing! I'm hoping to do most of @tropetember with various x reader stories but if anyone has requests/thoughts please do share.

Find this story on Ao3 here.

Word Count: 1.5k

We'd won! The Resistance had won! We'd managed to take down the Final Order fleet and Palpatine in the nick of time.

That's great. All good.

Sadly, life doesn't suddenly stop simply because you win the war.

As the rest of the base slept off their hangovers/started day drinking in continued celebration, you sat at your console in the empty main command centre. You were in the process of going over supply runs, inventory and other important yet dull tasks necessary to keep the base afloat. It didn't matter that the majority of personnel were consuming alcohol and nothing else. Even that would run out eventually.

You made it through most of the day, getting through the 'essential for survival' task list and starting on the 'urgent but could do tomorrow' list, before you were disturbed. At least, disturbed by more than the celebratory ruckus outside the building.

"Colonel Y/L/N"

You sigh quietly to yourself. And it had been going so well.

"Can I help you General?"

You don't look up as you respond. You've spent enough time with Poe Dameron to know his voice anywhere. Plus, eye contact only encouraged him. And distracted you if you were honest, but that involved crawling out of that deep pit of denial you were currently living in so you weren't going to do that.

“Well, I don’t know if you noticed,” he drawled, propping himself lazily up against the workstation next to you, “but we won the war yesterday. Could you maybe, I don’t know, chill out and stop working for 10 seconds?”

You scoff quietly to yourself. You understood why Leia had made him General. Despite his bluster and cocky flyboy attitude, he was a calculating strategist whose tactics snatched victory from the jaws of defeat time and again. As a professional with advanced military training though, you had occasionally doubted that he had it in him to deal with the day-to-day aspects of commanding the Resistance. (Was it still the Resistance if the enemy was destroyed? Hmm, pin that thought for later. There might be a full rebrand on the horizon.) At least, he might not be able to manage without support. Good job he had you really.

“I was aware, yes” you respond, continuing to draft a message to the Senate, “bit hard to miss with the sheer volume at the moment”.

That makes Poe laugh. Mirth lights up his eyes and he gets that intolerably cheeky grin upon his handsome face.

"What do I have to do to drag you away from your console?"

"Let me finish my work? Or, you know, since you're here, maybe you could help"

With a fond shake of his head he moves behind you, wraps his arms around you and drags your chair away from the console. You squeak with indignation.

"Unhand me you beast!" You laugh, trying to be stern. It's not very successful.

"Nope. Not a chance. You're coming with me. That's an order."

You grumble under your breath as he stands you up and drags you out of the command centre. You're not convincing anyone that you're not exactly where you want to be though, and eventually allow yourself to be tucked under his arm and led towards the celebrations.

‐------

You're a little overwhelmed by the celebration. Poe had led you straight outside to the bonfire and as soon you had stepped into the clearing, you'd been spotted. You turn yourself into Poe slightly to try and hide yourself. He wasn't having it though, pressing a quick kiss to your forehead before dragging you into the ruckus.

You were immediately accosted by your overly cheerful (and slightly drunk) friends. All of them take a moment to thank you for keeping everything together. It was all very overwhelming, it's not like you felt that you had done anything particularly special.

"Ladies, gentlemen, non-binary individuals and droids of the Resistance" came Poe's voice. You look over to him where he stands on a nearby table. Finn stood relaxed at his side, a bright blue drink in hand.

"We have been through a very difficult time these last few weeks and we have lost many people." Poe pauses for a moment, taking a steadying breath. "Losing General Organa could have been the end for us, even with myself and Finn taking over her role".

A somber silence has overtaken the crowd but many of them are nodding gently or holding onto their neighbours for support. The fire crackles in the background as Finn takes over.

"Generals are only as good as their team, and there is one specific person who has held our efforts together." Finn waves his arm in your direction as he continues. "Colonel Y/N has been an absolute rock, no aspect of this extraordinary success would have been possible without their impressive and dedicated work behind the scenes".

You straighten your spine, keeping yourself tall as all eyes fall on you. You, however, keep yours trained on Poe as he gestures you up onto the table.

"In the coming weeks, we will have a proper ceremony to celebrate all of those who have gone above and beyond. But we felt that we should take a moment to celebrate the backbone of the resistance."

Poe takes back over from his co-General as he notes that "We would have done this earlier but they were busy organising resupplying the alcohol". The crowd laughs at that and Poe turns his sparkling grin toward you. Gosh, he is handsome. All cheekbones and curly brown hair. It's rude, quite frankly.

He wraps his arm around you as he calls out to the crowd. "Let's hear it for Colonel Y/N!"

The crowd erupts and you can't control the grin, leaning into Poe slightly for support. Your entire career you've been in the background, this sudden recognition is a bit much.

Everyone cheers, lifting their drinks in salute.

You take a moment to soak it in, before swiftly climbing down and attempting to blend into the background. Your attempt is dashed by Poe though as he grabs you again, gently tugging you towards the makeshift dance floor.

The music, which had paused momentarily for the Generals’ impromptu speech, had recommenced and there was currently a Nabooian love song drifting across the party. It was an interesting contrast to the boisterous conversations surrounding the clearing.

When you arrive at your destination you once again find yourself in Poe’s arms, this time slowly swaying to the beat. He’s such an affectionate man that it is sometimes really difficult to remember that you’re not together. That he’s not interested in you. You’d met Zorii in her brief visit after the battle and had heard enough from Ray to bring your insecurities to the fore.

You rest your head against Poe’s chest, tucking yourself into him and quietly sighing to yourself. You’re a Colonel of the Resistance, this pining nonsense is not helpful and you really need to get over him. He obviously hears you though and pulls back a little, aiming a questioning glance your way.

You shake your head slightly, smiling to try and deflect but now, with the war basically finished, he seems to have decided you have the time to unpack this.

“You can tell me you know?” he whispers.

You smile a self-deprecating smile and choose not to respond, but he isn’t having it.

“You’re the bravest person I know. You can say it”

You move to pull away but he doesn’t let you. Instead, he pulls you closer and for the first time, you see the way he looks at you.

It’s all it takes to break your self-restraint as you push yourself up onto your tiptoes and press your lips against his. He immediately deepens the kiss, holding you close before slowing the pace and breaking away. He doesn’t go far, resting his forehead against yours.

As first kisses go, it’s the best you’ve ever had.

It’s as you try to return your breathing to normal that you tune back into the rest of the world. You hear the whooping and what sounds like Finn shouting “finally” at the top of his voice. It’s the only warning you get before the other General crashes into you both, wrapping you in a bone-crushing hug.

BB-8 starts beeping wildly as he zooms around you in circles and, in the centre of all the people you love, you whisper gently against his lips, "I love you".

His answering smile is blinding as he repeats the sentiment before your best friend dips you and snogs the life out of you.

And on the evening after the final battle, in the firelight and surrounded by the celebrating members of the resistance, you wonder, as you wrap your arms around Poe, if life gets any better than this.

You doubt it.

#tropetember #unbeta'd #star wars #fanfiction #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x y/n #poe dameron x you

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taaroko · 3 years ago

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On the subject of Thanos torturing Loki...

Quick precursor: my automatic approach to a living canon (like the MCU or an ongoing book or TV series) is to treat new content like additional puzzle pieces to round out the image of the characters and worldbuilding. If I find the new material to be sufficiently bad that I can’t use this strategy, it tends to break my interest in the IP, either entirely (Game of Thrones after S8) or for the dumb material specifically (Star Wars, where RoS killed the already-on-thin-ice sequel trilogy for me but didn’t make me like the OT any less and Rogue One and Mando have earned enough goodwill that I’ll keep checking out new stuff, if without much urgency). Also, it’s nice when the writers’ intent lines up with the actual content, but anyone who’s been in a writing workshop knows sometimes good stuff happens by accident, so I don’t feel the need to take everything said in interviews as gospel.

My bad/incompatible content threshold in the MCU is located somewhere between Iron Fist and Inhumans, but all of the movies and Disney+ shows are handily on the right side of it. I love every bit of Loki content we’ve had since the first Thor (even though I gripe that many excellent character-establishing scenes for him were left on the cutting room floor in Thor), with the exception of using a dagger on Thanos, and I can still live with that if Loki’s goal was to aggro Thanos enough that he wouldn’t kill Thor. (Also apparently the TVA pruned Lokis who did anything more sensible than that. They seem to want Loki dead, downtrodden, and/or villainous, and I’m very curious to know why.) Now that I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words of Brodinsons fanfiction I’m probably going to be crankier about stuff that contradicts my headcanons, but so far nothing in the Loki series has bent any of them past the breaking point.

One thing that has changed thanks to new information in Loki is my theory about what Loki went through in the missing year between Thor and Avengers. I am very much in the camp that believes he spent that year getting tortured and brainwashed by Thanos and the Black Order, but I used to assume that Loki himself would classify what he went through as torture and brainwashing. Now I think it was subtler than that, and he wouldn’t be able to view that period in such a light until he’s had some time for reflection. (His whole setup at the beginning of Ragnarok and the melodramatic plays about his “death” fit in very nicely with this, because being Odin and publishing his death widely is a pretty good way to stay hidden from a vengeful Titan—quite a brave and defiant plan considering that he had access to three different Infinity Stones between the end of Dark World and the beginning of Ragnarok, and he sent one to a Celestial in a different galaxy, kept another in the Vault, and left the third with the Avengers when he could’ve just handed them all over to Thanos to get back in his good graces.)

Thanks to Loki’s line in the show “I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been killed” (particularly when paired up with “No more resurrections.”), the way his face drops when Thanos shows up in the time theater and his horrified shock when Thanos kills him, and the way he’s generally not acting very much like someone who believes he’s just spent a year being tortured and brainwashed, I now think that what Loki experienced with Thanos was presented as a brutal gauntlet, not explicitly as torture. Whether via simulations or some kind of creepy magic, he was tested to death over and over again before Thanos would let him take the Mind Stone to go retrieve the Tesseract. Maybe each test took him further away from “I never wanted the throne!” and closer to “I remember you tossing me into an abyss!” Loki is terrified of Thanos but I think he still believes he can maybe get the better of him until he sees the time theater.

(Also, not super relevant, but it just occurred to me that the invasion happening in NYC, whether Loki was aware of it or not, might’ve been intended to eventually overwhelm the Sanctum so Thanos could get the Time Stone too. Ebony Maw clearly has no doubt about where the Time Stone is in IW, so that tracks.)

To an outside observer, this training, just like Thanos pitting Nebula and Gamora against each other and punishing the loser with bionic upgrades, definitely qualifies as torture, but thanks to subtle application of the Mind Stone (which Loki might’ve though himself immune to, if his dismissiveness of Sylvie’s enchantment attempt is anything to go off) and his own rock-bottom self-worth (what with being fresh off an existential crisis, psychotic break, and suicide attempt), Loki might have bought into it being necessary to make him worthy. It seems to me that getting the God of Mischief to believe something as absurd as “freedom is life’s great lie,” which he enters the show still wholeheartedly believing, must’ve taken some pretty thorough brainwashing.

I think Loki’s behavior in the show tracks with being confronted with a seemingly omnipotent bureaucracy that insists his purpose was to be a villain who inspired others to become great, nothing more, as well as the knowledge he now has of how he and his parents die and the destruction of Asgard. The anger that drives him in Avengers breaks against the indifferent beige wall of the TVA, and he doesn’t have much to replace it with. That’s how you get Loki being miserably introspective, gleefully yelling “Nothing matters!” in Pompeii, and doing an extremely bad job of getting off Lamentis-1. It’s “you lack conviction” all over again, but now he’s got a purpose and might be getting past his existential crisis and self-loathing. I’m eager to see where that goes in the finale.

#loki series #avengers #loki #thanos #marvel #loki spoilers #meta

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deltaengineering · 3 years ago

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Spring Anime 2021: Embarrassment of Riches

So this current anime season absolutely stinks, which just makes the last one look even more impressive. Well, maybe not all of it...

Zombieland Saga Revenge

First off, you don't need to tell me that the following is a severe outlier opinion. We good? Ok. ZLSR is, in a word, subpar. I liked S1 back in the day, but it was already in the process of getting lazy towards the end. S2 continues this trend and is basically just another idol show. And as someone who actually does watch other idol shows I have to say that it's not a particularly good one of those either. The zombie gimmick has mostly stopped mattering and we're just doing what every idol show does, only with the odd occasional sight gag. The alleged subversive qualities mostly amount to a flashback for Yuugiri, which is admittedly the best part of the show but feels like it barely has anything to do with anything. Apart from that, it's a bunch of generic idol plots, rehashed character beats, shoddy attempts at twists (while not connecting to any setups from S1), and the obligatory "idols give us hope" ending, which is terribly hackneyed and flat out bad. Tae gets further memed into the ground, because of course she does. And there's stuff that was simply never good to begin with, like Kotarou and his comedy schtick, which gets truly insufferable now that there's no qualities to distract from it. It really makes me think that S1 wasn't even all that good to begin with and seems like an attempt to turn this surprise success into an easy money longrunner with no edge and no ambitions. "The idol show for people who don't watch idol shows" indeed, but not the way you mean it. 4/10

Bakuten

But not to dwell on the failures, with the second show we're already above the cut — barely. This one got my attention with its really impressive performance scenes early on and it totally sticks to that, which is even more impressive. But besides that? Well, this is by far the most predictable show in a season where I watched an unambitious Kiraralike and put ZLS on blast for having no ideas. The characters are a mixed bag, some are cool (Shida, Asawo), some are very annoying (Mashiro), but those are the supports. The main cast is extremely one-dimensional, which is fine until they try to heap a ton of pathos on their lead, which doesn't go well. But I guess execution matters, and Bakuten is slick enough to get by. Writing this down in stark daylight I feel like I overrated this show somewhat (I actually put it over the next one originally, which definitely doesn't hold up when thinking about it), but I was indeed mostly entertained. 6/10

Yakunara Mug Cup mo

Yeah. Of course Mug Cup definitely doesn't invent or subvert anything either, but it's a pretty good Kiraralike that's always entertaining to watch. Explaining the qualities of such a nothing genre is as difficult as ever, but it mostly comes down to me liking the characters and it having nothing to annoy me. It's shorter than normal, which is a plus for slim shows like this. And yeah, you can make an excessive amount of dick jokes with the clay fondling. That helps too. Looks are just fine, pleasant but nothing out of the ordinary. Comfy low-effort anime. 6/10

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song

This one is decent, but sadly still a major letdown. Because the first few episodes of Vivy were excellent and kicked ass, but then it became increasingly clear that the writing can't cash the checks the ideas wrote while the action starts running into severely diminishing returns. Vivy just keeps slowly getting worse and worse as it goes on, not by a huge amount each episode but by the end there's a pretty sizeable gulf between potential and result. Going into detail would probably be a little much for this venue because there's a lot, but from the top level view the issue is that while Vivy has good fundamental ideas and steals at the right places, it just isn't a smart show — it's schlock, and by the end, poorly thought out schlock that tries to smooth out every problem with liberal application of the big feels hammer and le epic twist at that. Yeah, couldn't tell that the Re:Zero dude was aboard here, for sure. That said, it still works pretty well as entertaining schlock that is not to be taken too seriously, and the characters are generally just very fun to watch even when they're doing stupid things. Still, I can't in good conscience rate this higher than Beatless, a show that looks like butt but properly executes on its ideas. 6/10

Super Cub

So this is 100% a Honda commercial, and I got really mad a Yuru Camp last season for being a blatant shill. Yet I'm feeling this, what gives? I think the main difference is that Super Cub is specifically a commercial for one product (and a very iconic product at that), while Yuru Camp is so all over the place that it ends up mostly a commercial for consumerism in general. And when Super Cub goes too hard on the product (which it does), it's at least pretty entertaining. That's something about Super Cub in general: It goes hard. Your regular Kiraralike this is not, because it's uncommonly slow, focused and moody - yes, it almost measures up to Yuru Camp at its best and demolishes it at its worst. Also, it's just extremely amusing to see sadblob Koguma grow a huge grizzly biker beard and become a badass outlaw dad to her goofy wife and cute daughter, all thanks to the power of afforable personal transportation. Needless to say, that can get unintentionally silly, but Super Cub has so much charm that it doesn't matter — it's great when it's good and still funny when it's not. 7/10

Shadows House

Shadows House turned up with a lot of potential, and I have to say it at least delivered on most of it. It has some problems; notably I'm not a fan of how the entire middle turned out to be a tournament arc of sorts that seems curiously inspired by Resident Evil memes, crest-shaped intentations and boulder punching included. I also think that this is a show that would be perfectly fine without explaining much, but I guess it is a shounen manga after all so we got dumped on eventually anyway. At least that came late - close relative Promised Neverland didn't show that much restraint. Shadows House is generally well written though, with great characters, interesting interactions and a great hook. But what really makes it memorable is that it's exceptionally good at the cute/creepy contrast, something that is often tried but rarely works as well as here, with great character designs and very appropriate production. I hope this gets a sequel, because it seems like it's just getting started. 7/10

SSSS.Dynazenon

Coming in with a fondness for Gridman, Dynazenon didn't have to do much to convince me. The surprise though is that it's not a rehash even if it's basically the same show, a character drama where occasionally huge and goofy fights break out. Dynazenon is Gridman done better, and the interesting part is how it accomplishes this - mainly by being far more conventional. I do appreciate that Gridman went for something weird and almost experimental, but that only really paid off towards the end while most of the show was a distraction/holding pattern. It just didn't feel like there was enough material for a full series there, more like a movie maybe, if even that. Dynazenon fixes this by just being a TV show, with an actual cast of characters that each have their own arc. And by spreading the material this way, Dynazenon ends up having a lot more nuance than its intensely focused predecessor, while having the same themes and not actually being any deeper. In a way, Gridman ends up looking like the spinoff in retrospect, while Dynazenon is the full package. 8/10

Thunderbolt Fantasy S3

So how good was this season? So good that Thunderbolt Fantasy doesn't end up at the top, that's how. And all the elements that made Tbolt such a sure thing are still there, big hammy puppets doing stunts and scheming never gets old. However, I do have to note that at this point, the writing appears to have gotten too comfortable. I don't expect it to ever top the amazing S1 ending, but at this point it's like Tbolt has stopped trying to deliver on endings at all and seems in the process of retooling itself into a longrunner instead. Barely anything gets resolved in S3 (the climax is that the climax of S2 is resolved again, for good this time... maybe), and everything else is just setting up plotpoints for the next season. Tbolt is truly lucky that it doesn't actually need to resolve anything to be a great time, but at this point I have to say that I'd appreciate it if they wrapped it up with S4. 8/10

Nomad: Megalobox 2

Speaking of sequels to shows I liked, Nomad doesn't so much improve upon its predecessor but steamrolls right over it. This is a tall order, since Megalobox was surprisingly good for a sports shounen and had a real nice, heartwarming ending that Nomad instantly negates for purposes of drama and everyone being extremely miserable. That sounds like a pretty terrible idea - and it would be, if Nomad wasn't as excellent as it is. To call it not the same show would be an understatement, because it's a true sequel, not just the same characters doing their thing some more, or new characters doing the same thing as the old ones did. Indeed my biggest problem with Megalobox was that it still closely adhered to its genre template and was very predictable; Nomad fixes this issue thoroughly. Nomad is about questioning what being a hotblooded shounen protagonist eventually leads you to, and how to fix everything you screwed up by being one. You could call it a deconstruction, but that term has been so abused for cynical, edgy "thing you like actually sucks" takes that I feel like it doesn't really fit here. Nomad isn't cynical at all, it's just a character drama about some boxers past their prime, and it being a sequel to a show that is indeed rather formulaic just enhances the experience. My biggest issue with it was that I really like what they did with Joe in this story, so the big focus on Mac's backstory felt like a distraction for a long time. But in the end that turned out to be absolutely necessary to make the ending work. The ending's just great, by the way, and I shall say not more about it. 9/10

Odd Taxi

Yeah boy, here's the show that has apparently become somewhat of a "greatest show you didn't watch" meme, which I can feel smug about because I don't need YouTubers to tell me what's good and followed this from day one. Anyway, Odd Taxi is indeed great, the greatest show in a few years even. What starts out as seemingly a relaxed hangout show in the vein of Midnight Diners quickly turns into a psychological murder mystery while never losing its quirky humor. The character writing is outstanding, with even small bit players being on a level that the average anime wishes it could have for leads. And the rollout of the mystery is exemplary, with answers given and new questions raised every episode with a satisfying and logical payoff in the end. This is also the rare anime that has rock solid production from the first to the last second; it's never really flashy but excellently done and highly consistent nonetheless. And the music just owns. I have a few complaints, mainly that there's a few logical weaknesses in the story (which wouldn't even register in a lesser show, but sticks out here since the rest is so immaculately constructed) and that the ending overextends on the emotions when the rest of the show is so reserved and dry in comparison. But those are only the reasons why I didn't give it perfect marks, and I almost did that anyway. 9/10

#Zombieland Saga #bakuten #yakunara mug cup mo #vivy: fluorite eye's song #super cub #shadows house #ssss.dynazenon #thunderbolt fantasy #nomad megalo box #odd taxi #anime #review #spring2021

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thesaltyoceanwaves · 4 years ago

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Adrien’s Room and Memorabilia: A Sequel Post

Well, I hinted at a similar arc for Adrien in this post, so let’s brainstorm.

CW: mentions of harassment

The major difference between Adrien and Marinette in this instance is that Mari’s room is about her working through her social anxieties and developing meaningful relationships. Adrien’s focus is on his lonely nature, as well as discovering and cultivating hobbies that he really enjoys, and aren’t just forced upon him by his father.

His room starts off with very few photos of his loved ones, namely his parents, Chloe and Felix. These photos are professional in nature, clean, crisp and very much lacking in color. Even Chloe and Felix are behaving for the sake of the photos. Notably, their photos show them when they are much younger, to indicate that Adrien hasn’t spent time with them lately.

There’s a large emphasis placed on the amount of stuff that Adrien has in his room. The video games, the TV, the climbing wall, etc. Everything is completely clean and dust free, because he spends a lot of time in his room, but he doesn’t have anything he’s particularly drawn toward, so whenever he’s done with something, he puts it away and grabs something else. His room is also likely clean due to his strict father demanding he keep up appearances.

The only exception to this are video games, but they are very specific ones: simulators. Particularly, ones that focus on dating and romance. Life simulators, farming simulators, RPGs that offer a romance subplot, etc. Even if the sim only offers the option to make friends, Adrien is fine with that. Stuff like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons (the ones made by Marvelous), The Sims, Undertale and so forth are right up his valley. And again, lots of dating sims.

Following his mother’s “passing,” and at the start of the show, Adrien keeps a corner of his room dedicated to her. As more time goes by and Adrien gets closer to his new friends, this will shrink down to a photo of the two of them, and most of her memorabilia will be stored away. This will show that he’s open to the possibility of his father dating someone else, as was shown in “Felix”.

He will often turn to photos of his mother when he wants deeper, more worrying thoughts that he wants to voice and get off his chest, or if he needs advice about something and he doesn’t know who to turn to. S1 would focus more on friendship advice, because in this version, he would need to put in more time and care to make friends (Nino and him would still stay buds, Mari is still crushing on him but is hesitant to approach, and Alya is kind but cautious, with the rest of the class being wary because of his friendship with Chloe). Later on, he’s more likely to ask about plot-relevant stuff, his feelings for Ladybug and Kagami (and romance in general), his growing resentment towards his father, his meet-ups with his friends, and his discomfort with Chloe and Lila’s touchiness. Coupled with Felix’s harassment in “Felix,” this causes Adrien to realize his boundaries are being violated, and to also wonder if he has adopted similar behaviors. He goes to speak with either Sabine, Tomoe or Nino’s mom about the matter (maybe all three to get a variety of perspectives), and then with Ladybug. I would set this conversation sometime after “Frozer,” with him mentioning how he acted there, and apologizing for leaving her in the middle of battle (if the episode isn’t rewritten to include that there).

Overtime, he would start to depend less on talking to Emilie’s photo, and instead talk to whoever he asked for advice. Instead, he would talk to her prior to a larger battle or facing a bigger threat and had something he wanted to get off his chest.

At the beginning of their superhero career, Adrien is into collecting Ladybug merch - he’s likely to even have one of those “Do it for her” boards set up. He has some Chat Noir stuff as well, but it’s not as prominent. When other heroes arrive on the scene, he’ll have stuff of them too. He would even go so far as to recreate the heroes in his games (mostly in what Sims knock-off this universe would have), and roleplay scenarios with Ladybug. He doesn’t fully get rid of his merch over time, but he does likely downsize as he spends more time getting to know Ladybug and the team.

There’s also the obligatory Ladrien scene that I hinted at in Marinette’s post. To recap, Chat Noir, during an emotional moment with Marinette, mentions that he has Ladybug memorabilia in his room, and that he ought to downsize. Sometime later, Ladybug comes to check up on Adrien for plot-related reasons, and discovers that he “too” collects Ladybug merch. Adrien is notably embarrassed by this, but Ladybug replies by saying that she’s a fan of his as well. This will allow two sides of the ship to feel closer to each other and open up about certain things.

Similar to Marinette, Adrien will start picking up little things as mementos from previous episodes to decorate his room with (a class photo from “Reflekta,” a copy of the movie from “Horrificator,” his autographed Jagged Stone CD from “Guitar Villain,” etc). I also imagine him holding onto clothing items such as Nino’s hat or Kagami’s jacket, that get left behind after hanging out. Over time, he is eventually gifted a mannequin to display these items.

I remember seeing a post that called into question whether Adrien’s activities were something he genuinely enjoyed or if they were just foisted upon him by his father. I like the idea of a laid out arc that explores what Adrien might like to do in the future, by having him go through various hobbies (sort of like Daphne in “Be Cool, Scooby Doo”).

One hobby I’d give him from the start is tricking. (For those not familiar, tricking combines moves from martial arts and gymnastics, usually flips and kicks, and can be used to create super cool combos, yes I am biased about this). We often see him showing off stunts in battle and would fit Chat’s tendencies to be flashy. I could also see this becoming a hobby he shares with Nino and Kagami later on, maybe with the three of them sneaking out to meet other trickers at gatherings.

(For those who need visual reference.)

However, I also want to give Adrien a more traditionally feminine hobby. There’s a couple of ideas I had for this, including, again ones that he cycles through as he explores himself a bit more. After meeting Luka and noticing that he paints his nails, Adrien might tiptoe in nail art. I could also see Adrien getting really into writing romance, starting off as a fanfic writer and eventually writing his own novel or comic. Alternatively, he becomes a poet. Maybe he spends an episode learning to sew with Marinette so he can make his own cosplays. Or he starts a cottagecore aesthetic blog, and additionally starts taking care of some plants to give his room some needed greenery.

I think for the sake of irony, it would be interesting to see Adrien eventually take up baking as a hobby. I know there’s a couple of AUs involving this concept already (I forget who it was, though I’m tempted to say @lenoreofraven but correct me if I’m wrong), but I like this idea because it would give him something extra he and Marinette could bond over in the future, especially since he doesn’t want to do modelling long-term. It would also give him a good excuse to visit the Dupain-Cheng bakery, and grow closer to Sabine and Tom. Perhaps they take him up as an apprentice, or give him a delivery boy job alongside Luka (giving that relationship a chance to grow as well, as well as a Delivery Boy shenanigans episode).

When he’s either in between hobbies, in a tumultuous state, or growing distant from his father, his room will appear far messier. In the latter case, it may be an attempt to rebel against Gabriel, saying “it’s my room, I can do what I want!” If he’s not comfortable immediately speaking out against his father, he may rebel in more passive aggressive ways. I could also see him roleplaying scenarios in which he tells his father off or planning escape routes for hero patrol or tricking gatherings. I think he would also have padded mats stored somewhere in he case he can’t leave, and wants to practice, or have his own tricking gathering in the house.

As he collects more mementos, they start filling up the empty spaces in his room, so when his father prevents him from leaving the house, he doesn’t feel as lonely. He starts finding ways where, from the comfort of his room, he can hang out with friends (like in “Anansi” where he uses the facecam to see what everyone is up to). More friendly, casual photos give the room some life. These mementos may also cause him to start downsizing on the Ladybug and Friends merch.

He will only attempt to remove them altogether if his identity is revealed to Marinette, and she doesn’t seem to process it well (at least at first). Anything pertaining to her, as Ladybug or Marinette, he may attempt to remove, until he realizes just how present she is in his life. He would then consult his mother’s photo about what to do.

And similarly to Marinette at the end, when they start dating, he would start to incorporate couple’s photos. I think both of them would have those photo booth strips, but I could also see Adrien commissioning posters of his OTP, LadyNoir, and bringing back some of his merch (in a teasing, well-meaning way).

#ml salt #ml rewrite #ml plot bunny #i'm going to tentatively tag this as #adrien salt #bc i bring up an issue with adrien's character that i have #that i know as of late many people are debating over #however i also attempted to address this issue within this post #so i will also tentatively tag this as #adrien sugar

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365days365movies · 4 years ago

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January 16, 2021: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

I am a massive comic book nerd. Not unusual these days, to be fair. But I’m definitely up there, as far as my obsession with Marvel and DC go. And, yeah, I stick mostly to those two houses, and their various imprints.

Why do I bring this up? Well...remember this movie?

Kick-Ass was a pretty big deal when it came out in 2010, as it was a Marvel Comics movie that was completely unrelated to the relatively new Marvel Cinematic Universe. Based of a 2008 comic book written by Mark Millar and drawn by John Romita Jr., the film was directed by Matthew Vaughn, and featured a more realistic take on how real-world superheroes would actually work.

Vaughn and Millar by this point at least, were friends. Around 2012, they’re getting drunk at a pub together, and talking movies. The topic of spy movies come up, and how there hasn’t really been a good, non-parody, fun spy movie, and that there should be. And that was the bulk of their conversation.

Enter Dave Gibbons, a legendary comic book artist, whom you may know from drawing the comic book that was turned into this:

Oh yeah, he’s a big deal. Gibbons and Millar end up getting together to write a fun spy comic book based on this idea. Vaughn, meanwhile, is getting ready to direct X-Men: Days of Future Past, the sequel to X-Men: First Class, which Vaughn directed. That’s a good movie, by the way, even if I have...issues...with the treatment of the X-Men in film. Maybe one day I’ll get into that, we’ll see what happens. Ask me about it if you’re curious.

Anyway, Millar goes to Vaughn with this script, and Vaughan looks at it and realizes that he needs to direct this movie before somebody else makes it. So he leaves Days of Future Past, and he signs on to...

I feel like it’s an obligation, as a comic book dude, to watch this film. I should also read the book, but I didn’t do that with Kick-Ass, so to hell with it! Let’s get this recap started! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

Starting off with some Money for Nothing, and somewhere in the Middle East, 1997! We go into a stone temple, where some kind of mission is taking place. A surprise grenade causes the loss of one of the agents. The surviving agents are Merlin (Mark Strong), Lancelot AKA James Spencer (Jack Davenport), and Galahad, AKA Harry Hart (Colin Firth).

Hart, feeling guilty over the death of this agent, tells his wife, Michelle (Samantha Womack) and child Eggsy (yes, Eggsy) of his sacrifice, and gives Eggsy a medal.

From there, we jump forward 17 years, to Argentina where...Mark Hamill?

Holy shit, it’s Mark Hamill! Apparently, he’s playing Professor James Arnold, and being held hostage by a group of mysterious men. Just then, he’s rescued by Lancelot, showing up with some classic James Bond-style swagger and asking for a cup of sugar, sardonically.

He kicks the asses of these guys, but is SLICED IN HALF BY A MAN WITH SWORD LEGS WHAT THE FUCK????

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was watching the best thing I’ve ever goddamn seen. And as if that weren’t enough, she’s working for Samuel L. “Motherfucker” Jackson, playing Richmond Valentine. I am...I am so pleased.

We go to the Kingsmen headquarters, where Lancelot is being mourned by the Kingmen and their leader MICHAEL CAINE, REALLY, HOLY SHIT

Ahem. Sorry, uh...the star-studded cast has basically caused me to have a minor aneurysm. Caine plays Arthur, the leader of the Kingsmen. Get it? I can dig it, I’m a sucker for a good Arthurian reference. Anyway, now that Lancelot’s dead, it’s time to find a new candidate. Apparently, the man that died 17 years ago was part of an “experiment” by Hart, which Arthur says has failed. Galahad calls Arthur a snob, and says that they need to evolve with the times. \

Speaking of that former candidate, how’s his son doing?

Not stellar, it seems. His mom is dating a very unsavory gentleman, and not really taking good care of her youngest daughter. Eggsy (Taron Egerton), on the other hand, is a carefree delinquent. After engaging in an entertaining backwards car chase with the police (it’s cool), he gets arrested. He refuses to give up his friends, and he instead asks for a phone call.He looks at the medallion around his neck, and remembers that he can use the number of the back to contact someone for help. He uses a specific code phrase, but it appears not to have worked. But then, Eggsy is turned loose with little more than a phone call. That’s when Eggsy meets Hart.

We find out that Eggsy has a high IQ and Olympic-level athletics, but has dropped out of the Marines, and has been arrested for drugs and other illegal activities. After being read out by Hart, Eggsy goes on an anger-filled diatribe about the differences in privilege between the two of them. Although it’s short, it’s a powerful speech.

But that speech is interrupted by the owner of the car that Eggsy stole the previous night, as well as his gang. They’re yearning for a fight with Eggsy, and they threaten Hart. He doesn’t take that well, as he shuts the doors and windoes to the pub. Time to teach a lesson.

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Yup, I’m giving this fight the posted video award. It might be short, but it’s also one of the best and coolest sequences I’ve ever seen in a spy movie. And OH, it’s giving me that gadget shit I was missing from the Bond movies.

After one of the most enjoyable fight sequences I’ve seen in a while, Eggsy’s understandably stunned. So is his stepfather Dean (Geoff Bell), the leader of the gang that Hart beat up in the pub. He’s not happy, and he beats Eggsy in their apartment, and that scene is...WHOOF. Much to their surprise, however, Hart’s left a device on Eggsy’s back. He threatens Dean through the device, and tells Eggsy to meet him at a tailor that he’d mentioned.

Once Eggsy escapes from Dean and the gang via nest parkour tricks, he makes his way to the tailor, where Hart officially brings him into the fold, giving him the opportunity to become a Kingsman. He exposits the history of the agency as a private group of spies, meant to protect the world while not bowing to the bureaucracy that plagues government-affiliated spy institutions.

We get to go to Kingsman Headquarters proper, and yeah...yeah, it’s cool. As compared to the other recruits, Eggsy’s pretty obviously out of place. This, of course, is part of the point, as Hart believes the Kingsmen could use someone with different life experiences and background. That would be the experiment mentioned earlier.

Eggsy’s competitors include Roxy (Sophie Cookson), who appears to actually be polite to him, unlike most of the potentials. They settle in for the night...but not for long. Their quarters fills with water, as the entirety of the Kingsmen head towards the showerheads and toilets for air. While they all succeed, Eggsy is the one who actually gets everyone out, by literally punching the window.

Unfortunately, for one of the candidates...it’s too late. These candidates could die in the hiring process. Rough.

Sadly, Mark Hamill also doesn’t quite make it, as Hart finds him, surprisingly freed from Valentine’s capture. As he’s questioned, Valentine is forced to kill him via Suicide Squad implant, and barely escaped from his men. Valentine and his henchwoman, Gazelle (Sofia Boutella) are trying to figure out who the Kingsmen are, to no avail at the moment.

Back with Merlin, who’s training the Kingsman candidates! They’re all told to get a puppy! Aw. Eggsy chooses J.B. a pug, under the mistaken impression that it’s a bulldog. And I’m not a pug person...but that puppy is cute as shit.

Time marches on, and the Kingsmen continue their training. Eggsy’s colleagues continue to discriminate against him, especially Charlie (Edward Holcroft). Hart, who was knocked out by the explosion, eventually wakes up. Valentine goes around to political leaders and proposes his plan to “save the world,” whatever that’s about to mean. Apparently, that includes giving the King of Sweden a surgical implant of some kind. Huh.

This, of course includes some, uh...conflict with Gazelle.

Awesome.

Eggsy’s in the final 6! As Hart congratulates him over this, we finally get some exposition on Richmond Valentine’s plan. See, that implant is the Suicide Squad bomb that killed Hamill, and Gazelle also has one. Additionally, he’s released a plan to the world that will provide free internet and phone data...forever. Not ominous at all, that.

After a cool skydiving training sequence, only three candidates are left. Hart, meanwhile, poses as a wealthy philanthropist, donating to Valentine’s cause. As a result, he’s treated to an extravagant dinner...of McDonald’s. Yes, it is the best product placement I’ve seen in a while, in case you were wondering. That reveal was hilarious.

Anyway, their conversation turns from talking about climate change studies and concerns, to their opinion of James Bond movies, in a lovely little piece of meta flavor. At this point, they would appear to understand each other’s role in the play, as it were. Forgot to mention, Valentine’s been kidnapping anyone who disagrees with his goals, while also distributing his free internet cards. So, there’s that. But he’s also trying to figure out what exactly the “Kingsmen” are. Speaking of...

Our three remaining Kingsman candidates are assigned a mission to seduce a young dignitary. However, all three of them make a mistake, and allow themselves to get drugged at a party, by someone wanting to know who Hart and Kingsmen are. When Eggsy wakes up, he’s been strapped to train tracks. Uh oh.

Despite an oncoming train, Eggsy doesn’t give the man any formation. Which, of course, was the point. It’s Hart, helping to give the Kingsman candidates a little loyalty test, which both Eggsy and Roxy pass with flying colors. But Charlie...Charlie’s a coward who immediately gives everything up, including Arthur himself.

Eggsy gets to spend 24 hours with Hart, before being thrown headfirst into a mission. Hart explains that being a Kingsman means being a gentleman, which Eggsy isn’t. Hart, of course, plans to fix that.

They head to the tailor, and check out some spy gadgets. And much to their surprise, Valentine is also there, under the guise of getting a suit. Hart takes the opportunity to recommend a hatter, who gives him a top hat with built in listening devices. I love it.

Eggsy, meanwhile, speaks with Arthur at Kingsman HQ. He’s commanded to perform one final test: kill his pug, J.B. Which...yeah, damn, that sucks. He doesn’t do it, understandably. Unfortunately...Roxy does kill her dog. She succeeds...and Eggsy’s kicked out of the Kingsman candidacy. Which feels like a bullshit play, if I’m honest.

Eggsy steals Arthur’s car, then goes back home. As he’s about to confront his stepfather, Hart brings back the car via remote access, then explains to Eggsy that the gun was filled with blanks, and that Eggsy ended up giving up his shot. He also reveals that the first candidate to die...didn’t actually die! It’s been a ruse all along, meant to test the candidates under the strictest of conditions. Which sucks, obviously, because Eggsy’s out of the program.

And at that point, Valentine says something of note, revealing that he plans to go to a hate church in Kentucky to begin his master plan. Hart heads there, and tells Eggsy to stay put.

We get treated to just...just the loveliest of sermons. Disgusting. But then...

...that’s the point, isn’t it?

Because Valentine uses the SIM cards to create a signal that drives the parishioners crazy. Hart’s also in the church, however, and he also starts going crazy. Which leaves the question: what happens when a highly trained spy goes up against untrained civilians, has a bunch of gadgets...and has absolutely no restraint whatsoever?

A MASSACRE, THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS. And most surprisingly, it’s a massacre that we actually SEE. Hart basically kills almost EVERYBODY in the church. I’ll put the video up, but...y’know, be warned here. It ain’t pretty.

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Hart comes to, and realizes exactly what he’s done. He leaves, only to be confronted by Valentine and his men. The Bond metaphor finally comes full-circle, explained directly by Valentine. But instead of explaining his whole plan and devising some complicated way to kill Hart that he’ll inevitably escape from...

He just shoots Hart in the head. Holy shit. And this is while Merlin, Arthur, and yes, Eggsy watch on through Hart’s home feed. Looks like a new Kingsman is needed.

Arthur tells Merlin to assemble the Kingsmen. But Eggsy...Eggsy has other plans. Thinking on Hart’s words about wanting to do something good with his life. He goes to Arthur to talk to him about Hart’s death. Arthur invites him in for brandy. And that’s...when my mind exploded.

HE’S FUCKING IN ON IT?!? Michael Caine, NOOOO! Turns out that Valentine’s convinced Arthur of his true plan: a culling. He believes that the Earth’s temperature because there’s simply too much humanity, like a body trying to kill a virus. And so...he’s going to make the virus exterminate itself. And that argument’s enough to win Caine over.

Turns out that the implant is meant to protect those individuals against a neurological signal emitted by the SIM cards, the same one that went off in the church. Arthur, realizing that Eggsy understands exactly what’s going on, poisons him, then asks if he would like to join them. Eggsy refuses...and Arthur sets off the remote poison to kill him.

But NOPE! EGGSY SWITCHED THE FUCKIN’ GLASSES! I love this movie. Arthur dies, and Eggsy uses the opportunity to dig the implant from his neck. He takes that and Arthur’s phone to Merlin and Lancelot, who realize that they can’t trust anyone at this point. And so, the three of them - yes, the three of them - go to stop Valentine.

And, yeah...I can dig it. OH HOW I CAN DIG it.

Roxy goes up in an experimental vehicle to bring down the satellite, Merlin is flying the plane, and Eggsy...Eggsy’s the one going in disguised as Arthur, in order to infiltrate the mountain lair of Valentine. Here, he and the other beneficiaries wait it out, while the world literally tears itself apart. Now wearing a bespoke suit and playing the role of a gentleman, Eggsy enters the lion’s den.

But as expected, it’s time to hit some snags. Roxy waits juuuuuust a little too long, and one of the balloons in her craft pops. As for Eggsy, he meets an old “friend” of his in the form of Charlie, who’s now working for Valentine.

The missile’s fired just in time, as Charlie’s taken out and Eggsy runs for the plane. AWESOME climax here as Eggsy escapes. I mean it; it is VERY cool. They succeed JUST in time, and the satellite is destroyed. However, Valentine’s still managed to partially start the process, and they can’t do anything about that.

Eggsy’s gotta go BACK in, before Valentine gets another satellite to trigger the signal worldwide. Now armed with Hart’s AWESOME umbrella, he makes his way there under heavy gunshot. They’re also teaming up against Merlin in the plane, so he’s not doing great. And that when Eggsy has the idea...to turn the implants on. ALL of them.

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It’s amazing. Violence in fireworks. So, it’s too bad that it doesn’t stop the signal. It works, and people start to tear each other apart all across the world. But only for was long as Valentine has his hands on the desk. Eggsy manages to stop that by laying down some suppressive fire.

That provokes a response.

..This movie is, for lack of a better term, fucking rad.

Gazelle and Eggsy have an awesome fight, worthy of any James Bond movie, seriously. I really want to give it the video post honor, but I’ve done that too much already. For god’s sake, I literally JUST did that.

Gazelle dies (it’s kinda goofy how she dies, if I’m honest), and Eggsy kills Valentine with her prosthetic leg. It’s over, as the signal ends, and Eggsy even gets the girl. Not Roxy, the Princess of Sweden. Not going into it, but it’s funny.

And that’s Kingsman: The Secret Service! Honestly, I gotta say, that was a rad-as-shit movie, and...

Ooh, a mid-credits scene! Eggsy goes back home, to the pub, where his stepfather and mom are hanging out with the gang. And let’s just say...Dean’s gonna get a little comeuppance. Manners, after all, maketh man.

OK, THAT’S Kingsman: The Secret Service! And that, again, was pretty rad. See you in the Epilogue in a few!

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murasaki-murasame · 3 years ago

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Thoughts on Higurashi Sotsu Ep6

Let’s just file this one under “top 10 shittiest anime deaths” *badum-tish*

Thoughts under the cut.

I feel like in a lot of ways this episode kinda highlights the highs and lows of the new series, and how it feels like it’s trying to be like three different stories at the same time and usually only succeeding at being one of them.

This episode, and this arc in general, as a standalone part of the franchise was actually really good, and delivered on the promise of ‘what if Mion actually became the culprit in one arc’, but as part of the answer arcs for the new series it just continues to feel kinda pointless and predictable. I still think that a lot of this has to do with them trying to be both a sequel and a remake at the same time, but unlike with the Rena answer arc, I honestly feel like even new fans could have guessed everything that happened in this arc, since it didn’t actually go into anything that wasn’t already discussed in Gou. So even on that level it doesn’t really feel like it’s providing essential answers that couldn’t have been worked out in advance.

It’s kinda weird how little this arc actually explored anything about Mion and Shion that wasn’t already shown in Gou, considering how much stuff from the VN related to them hadn’t been covered. A lot of their backstory stuff ended up not exactly being relevant to how this arc played out, but it just feels like a weird thing to gloss over when they’ve spent so much time going over stuff from the VN as it is.

Though on that note, I’m really curious about how they’ve made absolutely zero reference to the fact that Mion and Shion swapped places as kids, or anything about Mion’s tattoo. At this point I have to wonder if maybe Ryukishi just doesn’t actually like that plot point in hindsight, and is choosing to effectively write it out of the story here. I can see why, though, since from what I remember it kinda verges into being a twist for the sake of having a twist, and doesn’t actually do much for them as characters that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

The lack of basically anything to do with Shion’s backstory and her relationship with Satoshi still feels a lot more iffy, but at least some of this stuff feels like intentional revising on Ryukishi’s part. Which I think is a really interesting aspect of the new series as a whole. It feels like he’s taking the chance to look back on the VN and show us how he feels about it after all this time. The stuff with characters like Teppei and Rina seems to be his way of making up for them being shallow villains in the VN, and Satoko being evil here seems to be in part inspired by how little agency or control she had in the original story. I guess the big issue here is that a lot of people probably just straight up disagree with the things that Ryukishi thinks of as being problems with the VN that he’s trying to ‘fix’ here, but I think it’s really interesting to see him do this sort of thing, even if it’s messy and overly ambitious and doesn’t fully work.

For the most part I agree with all the criticisms about these arcs feeling like a bit of a waste of time as we wait for the story to eventually loop back to the Nekodamashi cliffhanger. Even from the perspective of this being mainly for the sake of new fans, it feels kinda strange to see such straightforward ‘this is what was happening behind the scenes in the question arcs’ style answers, with lots of reused footage and basically zero twists or reveals. The VN’s way of designing separate arcs that provide answers for the question arcs was more satisfying, and Umineko went even further with that by just vaguely going over the basic keys to figuring out all the how-dunnit mysteries of the question arcs, and everything else about the answer arcs there was just a continuation of the meta plot. So it feels kinda weird to see him loop back around to the opposite end of the spectrum here.

It makes me wonder if there’s some sort of larger meta mystery going on here that’ll become more apparent in the next arc, and will reveal that we didn’t actually know everything that was going on like we thought we did, but at this point I feel like it’ll probably all end up being a lot more straightforward than we predicted. But there’s still the looming specter of the meta plane stuff, the hints dropped about where this series fits into the wider WTC universe timeline, and the fact that the whole point of the new series in the first place seems to be guiding Rika and Satoko down the path toward becoming their Umineko counterparts. So all of that stuff makes me think there might be some curveball twists going in the future that expand the scope of the story, but I have no real idea what to expect from that, and if it’d even feel satisfying. As much as I’m a diehard Umineko fan who loves the idea of this being a Lambda and Bern origin story, I still worry that the execution might not work once we get to the end. I also don’t really think that anything the series does in the final arcs will completely make up for how predictable these first few answer arcs have felt on a week by week basis, lol.

In general it gets me thinking that in spite of how predictable the answers have been thus far, I’m largely clueless about how I think they’ll actually wrap up the overarching story with Satoko and Rika. It feels like there’s still a lot of different directions they could take it in, and a lot of it depends on just how far Ryukishi wants to go with tying this into other WTC works.

For one thing, I’m not even sure how to expect them to follow up on the Nekodamashi cliffhanger. It’s at least hard to imagine how they could stop Satoko from shooting Rika then and there, considering how this episode in particular went. And one way or another, we’ll have to see how Rika and Satoko handle being in a situation where they both know what’s going on with each other. I think it’ll then just depend on what Satoko’s mental state is like at that point, and also what they plan on doing with the whole looper-killing sword thing. I think Ryukishi’s implied multiple times now that the next arc will start to test Satoko’s resolve, and going by her attitude during the infamous gut-ripping scene, as well as her traumatized reaction to the punching glove box prank, I think she’ll be much less confident in her goals by that point, and probably more willing to talk about what’s going on.

I don’t think it’ll be as simple as ‘she just gives up and everyone forgives her’, or even ‘Rika beats up Satoko while everyone cheers and they all move on and abandon her’, though. I think there’ll be some kind of balancing act between redemption and punishment, but I also think that ultimately it’ll also tie into the Lambda/Bern origin story stuff they seem to be going for. I think I’ve said this before, but my best guess for how this will end is that the looper-killing sword will be used to separate their ‘meta selves’ who are aware of the loops and stuff, while leaving behind their regular physical selves who thus lose most/all of their memories of the loops. At least that way they can have their cake and eat it too by showing how Lambda and Bern became witches, while also having separate versions of them that get to stay behind and mend their relationship or something. But I’m not even confident about all of that, lol.

It’s also worth noting that the key visual for Sotsu features Satoko and Rika as teenagers, and the OP also features that pretty heavily, along with an ominous scene of the other main characters as teenagers. So that makes me think that the story will somehow get back to that whole time period, which makes me a bit more unsure how the last arc will go. One option is that the final Nekodamashi arc will just keep going until they become teenagers again, but the way those scenes are presented in the promo material makes it seem like Satoko and Rika’s relationship is still bad then. So maybe on the other hand we’ll just go back to the original Matsuribayashi timeline where Satoko first met Eua, but I feel like that’d probably be the happy ending where everything goes back to the original timeline and they all end up reconnecting again, so I’m still not sure how the ominous presentation of the teenage characters might play into that.

Either way, I think all of that stuff will probably just come up in the final arc. The next one will probably be covering Tataridamashi and Nekodamashi from Satoko’s perspective. The next arc should be where things start to shake up, but I still think they could easily cover both of those arcs in just five episodes. Nothing much seemed to be happening with Satoko until the final days of Tataridamashi, and I can’t imagine there being much to explore with how she set up the rapid-fire loops in Nekodamashi.

With what’s been hinted at about the next arc not going according to Satoko’s plans, and her resolve being tested, I think that this will probably be where things go entirely out of her control and she starts to doubt whether or not she should continue with her plans. Specifically I think that being in a new loop with Teppei being nice to her, and watching everyone else try to save her from her [perceived] abuse, will start to sway her toward thinking that maybe that sort of timeline is worth staying in, even if it means giving up on controlling Rika.

One way or another I think Ooishi went crazy all on his own. I think Ryukishi explicitly said in an interview that Ooishi went L5 naturally, and I think the manga version of Tataridamashi made it clear that Satoko was genuinely thrown off by how things went there, so she probably didn’t want Ooishi to kill anyone. I can see how he might have gone off the deep end by interrogating Teppei and realizing that there was basically a witch hunt going on against him, but I’m not sure how he would have ended up specifically blaming Rika unless Satoko pushed him into it. Either way, Teppei probably really did attack Keiichi at the end of the arc, and we know that Satoko just has one syringe to use, so at most she probably injected Teppei and then Ooishi went L5 naturally.

I’m also curious to see if/when Satoko learns about Rika being given the power to remember her deaths, since that’d also go a long way toward explaining what her intentions might have been with how that arc ended. I think Satoko is at least aware that Rika doesn’t remember how she dies, so I’m at least not sure what she’d try and accomplish by setting up a loop that only goes to shit at the very last second. It feels like it wouldn’t do a whole lot aside from making Rika confused in the next loop. But Rika only gets her ability to remember her deaths after that loop already ends, so Satoko could have only known about it if there’s some sort of conspiracy going on about Hanyuu. Which there probably is, since her whole presence in this is weird and her deciding to give Rika a new set of powers was always super suspicious, but still.

I’m also curious to see if we get any real payoff to the idea that Satoko’s looping is causing more and more people to remember past loops. Especially when it comes to the main club members, since there’s various moments in Tataridamashi and Nekodamashi, both in the anime and manga, that seem to imply that most of them are starting to remember things.

Even though the execution of this whole new series makes me a bit more wary about how any sort of new anime for Umineko along these lines might pan out, I can’t help but still really hope this is leading to something like that. For one thing I just think that if he’s going for a Lambda/Bern origin story with this, at the risk of alienating lots of existing fans, I think there should at least be a more concrete payoff to that than just ‘ok now you can go back and read the Umineko VN’. But I think there’s a lot of potential to be had with some sort of remake or sequel to Umineko where he gets a chance to revisit it after more than 10 years. One of these days I should still just make a whole post about my hopes and predictions for what could be done with any sort of new Umineko anime, lol.

Anyway, this got longer than I planned, but all in all I enjoyed this more than it probably comes across like I did, lol. Even if the plot’s been kinda boring, I think Sotsu has done a great job of elevating it with good direction and visuals. The moment to moment pacing can still be kinda choppy, and sometimes the presentation of flashback scenes is confusing and ambiguous, but in general it still feels entertaining to watch unfold, and the brutality has a lot of impact. I’m just hoping that the rest of Sotsu is more ambitious and surprising than these first two arcs have been.

#murasaki rambles #higurashi #higurashi sotsu

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