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actuallylorelaigilmore · 1 year ago

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2022 MOVIE OF THE WEEK #33

disenchanted. i......have been avoiding this review since literally months ago because just thinking about reviewing this movie makes me sad and tired. if you loved this movie, which i think some people must have because i’ve seen the occasional gifs from it on my dash, feel free to skip this. it’ll go behind a cut, because i suspect it’s gonna get long.

(spoiler alert: it got ridiculously long. how did i have five thousand words to say about this? and if anyone besides leander reads this i’ll be shocked but that’s fine cuz they were the one encouraging me to make it through this rant and if they hadn’t i definitely would have given up even trying a long time ago.)

and it is pretty much universally negative, because i could not have been more looking forward to this sequel featuring literally my favorite disney (noncanon but still mine) princess and it not only let me down (as sequels tbh do a lot so that’s not even surprising) but it sincerely broke my heart.

in a ‘wow i’m being really overdramatic about a disney movie’ sort of way, but it’ll make more sense after i explain it, i promise. you had to be there, i think, to care as much as i do, and only @actuallylukedanes was, so it was also pretty convenient that i ended up watching this with them when they were gonna watch it with their partner and invited me to join. cuz they felt the same way i did about the sequel, which is how i knew i was not overreacting.

it was also leander who advised me to start posting completed reviews of other 2022 movies since i was stuck on this one, even though i never posted them out of order before. (i ended up realizing in january that i totally forgot a movie from 2022, so it’s good i wasn’t as obsessed with perfect chronology anyway.)

the first warning sign i had with this movie was honestly its release. they had been talking about an enchanted sequel for so long that i had stopped hoping for one, and then when it was really happening they wouldn’t even put it in theaters!! i was so pissed off about that, because enchanted felt like a magical (pun intended) experience for me in 2007.

it came out exactly on my birthday, when i turned 23, and @actuallylukedanes and i saw it in the theater to celebrate. we lived in utah then, and were happy rather than homeless, and we paid for the movie using a card that had a ‘reward’ system like a lottery where they told you they would at some random time choose a single purchase you made, and reimburse you for it. out of everything we paid for with that card, it was the tickets to enchanted that they made free.

and i couldn’t have been more excited to see enchanted back then, because it was a real live musical, and those have always been rarer than i wish they were, and the cast was ridiculously great. long before amy adams was making bigger movies, she had played tara’s cousin on buffy and a memorable one-episode character on charmed, and i had just always loved her an unreasonable amount like i had been waiting for her to be a movie star. plus i had discovered wicked in college and dove deep into other idina menzel musicals as well as every one of her solo albums (and singles that weren’t sold anywhere, which i downloaded illegally because that is called devotion) and was just generally obsessed with her for years.

and then there was patrick dempsey, reliable dreamy star of grey’s anatomy (which i gave up on quickly but he was good in) and james marsden of the x-men trilogy i had watched a zillion times. (his character was not one i liked in that, but he was great as a comedic part of this.) i had grown up with susan sarandon and wasn’t used to her as a villain but she brought just the right level of Too Much, and her henchman was perfectly cast. they somehow managed to even make the child in the story not annoying, which can be really rare, especially when she has an actual role--but she’s great.

the mix of animation and live-action was really fun, and when giselle’s dress goes from cartoon to sparkly 3d it was so swoony. truly like a disney fantasy sort of moment, they brought so much to life. and they did so even where it shouldn’t have worked! the basic plot of ‘two couples aren’t meant to be so they switch partners amongst themselves and then it’s perfect’ is not one i like in other movies, but here i’m just like, yeah absolutely, dance with patrick dempsey in your pretty dress, and let idina menzel go live in a fairy tale.

but in addition to all of that, and the catchy, catchy music, what i really, truly loved about enchanted, and why it was one of my all time favorite movies to put on that i never got sick of (along with mamma mia and a few others, i really like musicals okay), is how much it turned out that i identified with giselle. how much she not only made sense to me, even as she was supposed to be this wide-eyed disney princess, but how she gave me language for things i was still figuring out, and i got so attached to that.

i was 23 years old. i had left home less than two years earlier, and i didn’t know i was autistic yet, let alone bipolar/anxious/adhd/disordered eating all knotted together. i hadn’t begun thinking about what it meant to be ‘developmentally disabled,’ and how unprepared that made me for adulthood, independence or being in a relationship. I had just leaped into all those things, and i wasn’t necessarily all that good at any of them.

but there was giselle, singing her way through a world she didn’t understand how to navigate either, and it was okay because there was somebody who loved her for her exact weird self and a child who needed her. (substitute cats for child and you see where i’m coming from.) she was relentlessly optimistic but also cursed by forces outside her control, and she was full of creativity.

my absolute favorite moment that giselle has in the whole movie, when it comes to why it was important to me, is when she experiences anger. at first she can’t even name it, and then there’s a kind of joy she finds in it, in having a new feeling...in having the FREEDOM to feel that difficult feeling, and not need things to be perfect all the time. until i saw that scene, i had never realized that my childhood had trained me to not be angry--before i was even conscious that had happened. and once i saw that scene, i started to wonder if maybe anger was something i was allowed to feel, after all.

i think if you’re not me, or you didn’t know me at 21 (a fragile adorable unstable bby desperate to be rescued from my life), it might be hard to understand that, how i didn’t just love giselle for being giselle, but loved her for being the most me a character played by amy adams could be.

up until i fell in love, and was loved in return (my only real wish thanks to moulin rouge), i collected tv and movie characters, made little lists of them, and they were always the ones i wanted to be like, ones i wanted to grow into. usually the snarky best friends, the deadpan wits, the ones who pined but never got the guy. (bby me didn’t think anything but ‘guy’ was an option.) i didn’t spend time claiming characters that were like me, that made me feel seen, until i was older. (i couldn’t, when i didn’t know who ‘me’ was.) so giselle felt like one of the first ones, with her autistic literalism and trust in humanity and her joy in everything.

then flash forward fifteen years and they’re continuing the story. even more amazingly, they’ve brought back the whole central cast (minus the child actor, who i assumed they replaced because New Morgan sings and dances, but i didn’t look it up or anything). idina is much more famous now thanks to her frozen work and of course amy adams is amy freaking adams now, nominated but never oscared, but they both came back. the direct-to-streaming release worried me, but i saw a trailer and the movie looked way better than i kind of expected, so i was excited after all. and as mentioned above, i settled in to watch it with my family.

^^^^and that is where this review left off, almost a year ago--because it was still so hard for me to wrap my brain and my heart around writing it. but at this point i’ve reviewed all the other movies i watched in 2022, AND i’ve watched almost 20 movies this year and reviewed most of them, and those reviews are just sitting in my drafts waiting for me to post them once i finish this. so here goes:

this movie was bad. obviously that’s a personal opinion or value judgement or whatever, but like...it was really, really bad. it bore no resemblance to the original and painfully reminded me how disney’s moviemaking these days is so soulless when it comes to trying to squeeze more money out of its existing IP. and i can handle fairy tale/princess modernizations that aren’t all that impressive (idina was in one of those as well, cinderella), but even those had parts that i liked or that were fun once i was grading on a curve for the whole movie. i can’t say the same for this one.

first of all, we’ve skipped time since the original, which makes sense, since everybody’s older. but nothing about the time progression makes sense, because offscreen fifteen years have passed, making amy adams 48 when this movie came out. giselle and robert have just had a newborn whose royal inheritance is what leads to the movie’s plot--at best, i guess we can assume amy was supposed to be playing giselle a lot younger than she, the actress, was. or maybe her andalasian genes make her immune to fertility averages?

either way, though, that still doesn’t explain morgan. who in addition to becoming literally a different person (and i hope they only replaced her because the original actress opted out, because she was so great in the first movie i’d resent disney for dumping her just to make the new one sing and dance, or whatever other justifications they might have) is a teenager now. Original Morgan was nine years old in enchanted, or the actress was, anyway. if we assume they meant for Original Morgan to be only seven or eight as a character, that still doesn’t explain a now-high-schooler morgan in this movie. it has been literally twice as many years in real time as it would have to have been in this movie world for morgan to be this age! and unfortunately for the movie, it’s mainly about adults, who have aged the fifteen years you would expect. so that’s ridiculous.

but anyway. somehow, all the adults from enchanted look fifteen years older but morgan’s a teen, and her parents have had a shiny new baby. idina’s character moved with prince james marsden to his world, and literally everyone is depressed now except prince james marsden (and presumably the baby). giselle sees a billboard and decides that’s a plausible reason to uproot her whole family from the city she fell in love with and that the others were from even before meeting her...to move to the suburbs.

at first, because of the impression i got from the trailer, i thought she would be moving to a perfect-seeming little enclave that was secretly evil, like a magical stepford or something, and that it would turn her evil and throw her family into peril. but the real plot is not that creative. it’s literally just the three of them moving to an ordinary suburb that (gasp!) doesn’t automatically fix their lives. instead, robert has a slog of a commute now, and in their own ways, giselle and morgan both struggle to fit in with their new local peers.

everything establishing this movie’s setup baffled me because it felt so random and flimsy, when the original was a beautiful sendup of classic disney tropes that managed to be subversive but still magical. i referred earlier to giselle deciding on a plausible reason, and i felt the same way about disney and this sequel: it felt like they decided this concept was a plausible reason to bring the cast back together, mix in a few new actors, and try to make money off the result (in this case by locking it inside their streaming service as though that would force new subscribers to disney+ instead of what i’m guessing actually happened, having less viewers for the movie than they would’ve gotten in theaters--cuz even i, the biggest fan of the original, wouldn’t have subscribed just to watch it).

but their ‘plausible’ setup is therefore that everybody’s feeling a bit meh in new york city. robert’s not excited about his job, morgan’s a sullen teenager, and giselle misses the days when everything felt magical and new and perfect. instead of recognizing that they have a freaking newborn, which i may not have experienced personally but have certainly heard is a difficult phase of life (especially the first time, for giselle), and that they simultaneously have a teenager, which anybody who’s ever been or met a teenager can tell you is a difficult phase of life for both the teen and their parents--heck, instead of just going to THERAPY when new york city is one of the few places it may still be easier to find access than everywhere else these days--they move to a random place where they know no one for truly no reason.

the movie wants us to believe that the reason is giselle seeing a billboard and believing its promise (or still being unusually literal?) but neither of those makes any sense because even if we had reason to believe that giselle hadn’t learned anything or grown in the last mysterious number of years and would truly treat a billboard like a promise rather than an advertisement (and i don’t think what we see of her in the sequel supports that idea) it’s still robert she’s married to now, and we know he’s always been someone who lovingly but firmly points that stuff out.

morgan’s unhappy because she’s a teenager, she doesn’t actually want to move, and as much as robert loves giselle, i don’t believe at all that he would just let her have her fantasy of a fresh start without injecting reality into the situation--so i think the real explanation is that both robert and giselle, for their own reasons, are desperate enough to try it despite knowing it won’t be a magic fix. but then idina menzel and prince james marsden (i should remember their character names but i really don’t at the moment) pop into their new, still-unhappy-just-in-a-different-time-zone, lives and make everything even worse. way to go guys!

continuing the flimsy plot setups, they’re visiting to give a gift to the new baby, to basically proclaim how special she is and make morgan feel like she’s neither special nor giselle’s ‘real’ daughter. giselle is thrilled by the gift from her childhood home and her former prince remains as hilarious as ever (the acting in this movie is good, they’re just not given as much to work with; ‘campy humor’ was the only element they could successfully recreate for some reason). but nancy is clearly already Over It, the former new yorker not exactly as enchanted with prince james marsden as she used to be now that she has to live with his personality 24/7.

you might expect this to be woven in with the central family’s ennui in some way, but you would be disappointed--that general intermittent eyerolly energy is never directly addressed and as far as we know by the end of the movie, she’s still with him. and i guess will remain so forever? because that’s the rule when you choose a fairy tale life?? even though giselle’s story was entirely about leaving fairy tales behind when they weren’t what she wanted???

maybe we’re supposed to read nancy’s reactions as like, lovable occasional annoyance at How Very Much her guy can be sometimes. but it didn’t come across that way to me; it seemed intentionally to mirror the dissatisfaction giselle and robert were struggling with. i could have been giving them too much credit there, i guess, in assuming deliberate parallels.

but the real point is that the adults were unhappy in the city, and now, in the suburbs, they’re still not very happy. after the gift-givers go back to andalasia, giselle makes a wish using her baby’s magic present, wanting to make their family into a fairy tale...and she gets her wish. morgan goes from a strugglng teen to a cheerful girl again, running around singing and eventually having to be the savior of her family. robert goes from a commuting lawyer to a wannabe monster slayer, and giselle slowly transforms into an evil stepmother--while the women in town who’ve been snubbing her turn into an actual villain with henchwomen in tow.

from then on, it only gets more ridiculous. amy adams is an immensely talented actor, and like i said, i’ve loved her since she was on tv. but she is not doing her best work here, switching between normal giselle and evil stepmother giselle in response to a chiming clock in a way that reminded me of one of those over-the-top acts where a guy hypnotizes people and then can trigger them to be a chicken or something. it was just so over the top, and lacked any of the emotional depth the original movie brought to her character that made me care.

and poor robert, it was clear, they did not know what to do with. a convoluted exchange with prince james marsden before the wish created circumstances where he was carrying a sword around on his commute. that, i’m sure, was supposed to help make it seem like it made sense for him to become a giant fighter or whatever. but really, they had a sequel to make in which he had to be there because he was her happily ever after in the first one, except now robert isn’t a love interest anymore, there’s no drama between them--and the actor was never meant to be a major contributor to the musical part of these movies, so what’s the point of his story? to run around looking for monsters, totally separate, and mostly unnecessary, it turns out.

the fairy tale transformations mean that we go from watching giselle being sad and hurt in response to morgan’s attitude to morgan’s being mistreated by her now-evil stepmother--neither of which is fun. in giselle’s intermittent ‘good’ moments, she tries to encourage morgan to be free of her and get help, and eventually morgan does end up in andalasia with nancy (she’s also a cartoon at that point, i think). nancy helps her understand what might fix things, and the fact that it’s up to their teenage daughter (whose complaints the whole time have honestly seemed the most reasonable to me compared to her parents’ vague ennui) to save not just her own family but both worlds from doom...it doesn’t seem at all fair. but okay.

the solution for making giselle good again involves morgan’s memories and singing and the idea that with the power of love it’ll all be fine, but what i remember most about it is that the scene is really just a vehicle for idina menzel to get her own song. which, duh--i was very disappointed that she didn’t sing in the original, and given the success of frozen, it would’ve been crazy for them not to showcase her more this time.

but the song she’s given? it’s so bad. so very bad. the others i was watching this movie with spent a significant portion of the song time mocking it, and i couldn’t blame them. at a certain point, it just devolves into idina belting the words ‘love power’ over and over and over. you know how some words or phrases become completely meaningless if you say them too much? this definitely felt like that, like the big drama’s ‘solution’ was flimsy to begin with, and then they forced a song into it that wasn’t even a good song, and got idina to sing it. she’s so much better than that! it genuinely made me wonder if she has some kind of disney contract that left her stuck dealing with this.

somehow thanks to morgan, though, giselle does stop being evil by the end--i don’t remember exactly how that scene plays out so i doubt it matters too much--and ending the sort of wish curse she inflicted on everybody means they go back to living in a normal suburb. the woman who briefly became her villain nemesis apologizes in a ‘sometimes i’m a lot oops’ way, and giselle is just like ‘hey, me too, no big deal.’

and this brings me to my two biggest problems with the movie, outside of how much it felt like it was trying to destroy any love i still held for the original.

this movie has no real villain. unlike the first one, where susan sarandon was camping it up in a delightfully appropriate way, and was defeated in the end...this movie falls into the same hole that so many New Disney Movies are determined to, for unknown reasons. we can’t have classic straight-up evil anymore; our heroes have to instead be facing antagonists that are less specific or even less corporeal. it’s family! who of course will no longer be in conflict by the end, and don’t actually need to be ‘defeated.’ or it’s emotions! and once they can be accepted rather than avoided then things will be okay again.

i’m not saying that’s a bad thing, in general. i love encanto, and i thought turning red and inside out were great. but when you’re dealing with a now-franchise whose original style was to reference and gently mock and lovingly rework classic disney tropes...why would you toss that out completely and make a sequel that feels like the other movies disney makes now? why can’t people appreciate that beloved movies are beloved for a reason and you can’t just slap the ‘brand name’ on whatever you want and act like it’s just as good?

but yeah. this movie decided to have no villain by way of having two villains, both of whom were only temporarily villainous due to indirect magic and who became normal again once it stopped. they bear no real responsibility for being villains, because after all, they aren’t really. post-movie, it seems like they may even become friends! all’s well that ends well.

which really annoyed me, lol, because it felt so incredibly pointless once i knew that was how it ended. our main character accidentally makes herself evil, makes somebody else evil, has to be saved from being evil while fighting the other evil, and the grand conclusion is that they just finish back where they started? how is that a story that moves forward, let alone a good story with some kind of point or even just a good-versus-evil win, fairy tale style?

it’s like the main conflict of the movie is created by them having problems, but then the problems they were having...are solved because they’re no longer in conflict. which brings me to my second issue with the movie’s ending: apparently the ultimate lesson of this follow up to enchanted is that growing up means learning to settle, rather than believing in happily ever afters.

despite the cheerful singing at the end of the movie that tries to make us believe it’s just as great an ending as enchanted got, i was so underwhelmed and disappointed and tbh freaked out, that they reached that conclusion. the story we were given was giselle and robert and morgan are a family now just like they wanted but they’re all unhappy, so they move out of the city to seek happiness elsewhere. and it fixes nothing which instead spirals giselle into cursing the town but in the end everybody’s okay and there are no consequences and nobody’s mad at giselle cuz she didn’t mean to do it...so she and robert and morgan commit to trying even harder to be happy in their new suburban life.

and all i can wonder is, why is that the lesson? why is that the right place to end up? why couldn’t they go back to the city and figure out their problems there, since clearly suburbia wasn’t a fix on its own? there didn’t seem to be a real reason for requiring giselle, who loved the sparkly harsh city she landed in years ago, to become a suburban mom--or for uprooting morgan, or making robert become a ‘small town practice’ kind of guy.

i guess what grates on me about it is that it has such a hallmark christmas movie vibe of just assuming their real happy ending would naturally be escaping the city, no matter how central it was to their original story and lives. whatever their deeper issues were that made them unhappy in the city, they haven’t addressed those by the end of the movie; they’ve just somewhat improved the issues that moving TO this new place piled on.

therefore my logical brain goes, you were unhappy and tried to fix it by moving but that only made things worse. why wouldn’t you reverse the making-it-worse part by going back, and then continue trying to figure out how to fix it? i just don’t get it. and i may be kind of offended by it, because the giselle who i have always adored is a completely different person in this movie, and not because of some wish curse.

she’s older, and sad, and it’s like nothing about her life is fun anymore...and maybe there could’ve been a way to craft an interesting story out of that, though i don’t know what it would be off the top of my head. but we don’t get whatever that could’ve been. and we don’t get a sequel about our faves from enchanted having more hijinks and having a to fight a new tropey villain, in the style of the first one. what we get is a story about everybody from the first one not liking their lives and having to fight the fallout from that and then concluding that hey, at least the world didn’t end so they must be better off than they thought, time to make the best of it. it deeply depressed me.

and look--i’m not saying i demand happy endings always. i don’t even require happy endings mostly! but unless there is some requirement i’m not aware of that post-pandemic we are no longer allowed happy endings at all, this was not the movie world to bring back just to say ‘the best you can hope for is meh. good luck.’ giselle and everybody else deserved better.

i will say that there was one thing about this movie that i liked. exactly one thing, sadly, or at least only one i clearly remember. i was really excited about the casting before this came out, because i love jayma mays, and maya rudolph is reliably good always. once i actually saw the movie, i was bummed that jayma mays and the other henchwoman didn’t have roles worth including, but maya rudolph was as good as i expected.

and since this movie was such a mess, she also just really stood out. she’s a ‘can do it all’ kind of performer, in a way that makes it look easy, and i feel like that’s the difference between amy adam’s background in a lot of dramatic roles and maya rudolph’s background in snl. they’re both super talented and both have range, but are a good fit for different things because of that.

so there is one song in this movie and one performance (cuz it’s the performance of it that makes it good) that i genuinely enjoyed. it’s basically a face off between the two not-actually-villains, kind of like ‘anything you can do i can do better’ but sillier and maximum camp. it’s the only part where it felt like that was what the movie was deliberately aiming for, and both actresses are fully going for it while sometimes we’re watching them parallel on splitscreen...it was ridiculous but in an entertaining rather than cringe-inducing way.

so that part is great, but also highlights even more what this movie could have been. if only they had let maya rudolph be a proper villain, the leader of a trio of new antagonists for our faves to face, that would’ve been potentially a great movie. she could have gone evil after getting her hands on the baby’s wand, then gone down fighting after the family consulted with their andalasian friends on how to deal with magically corrupted humans. the ending could have been more interesting with bigger stakes than ‘everyone survives and decides to play nice.’

heck, i could write that version of that movie! lol. but i won’t. because it would probably necessitate rewatching disenchanted and that is something i never ever want to do. that was a piece of my heart you fucked with, you jerks. and i’m gonna stay mad.

#disenchanted #rant #amy adams #idina menzel #patrick dempsey #james marsden #susan sarandon #actuallylukedanes #actually autistic #autistic #jayma mays #maya rudolph #negativity #enchanted #2022 motw #my formative years

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galacticscrotum · 1 year ago

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Hello!

I don’t really like introducing myself.

I get stressed out trying to capture the essence of who I am in a reasonable amount of words. I’m far too complex for that. Not in a “I’m so complicated and cool and mysterious” way, but more of a “I literally don’t even fully have a grasp on my own existence” way.

So instead of trying to summarize my personality, I’ll just list some random things I’d like you to know if you follow me :) (If it’s too long to read, I put key info in bold)

My name is Em, it’s nice to meet you!

I’ve rotated around the sun 22 times. No wonder I’m dizzy.

I am autistic and have ADHD and CPTSD. All three conditions are intrinsically linked for me, I cannot fully relate to any of the conditions on their own without the other two.

I have several symptoms of BPD (abandonment issues go brrrrr)

I never want to speak over people with higher support needs so please (respectfully) tell me if something I say is incorrect or offensive.

Autism and neurodivergence are huge special interests of mine! (Comorbidities hellooo)

I have a ridiculous and sarcastic sense of humor. I’m a goose that is rather silly.

Communicating requires a lot of my energy, so I don’t like any criticism on how I do it, like how often I punctuate or what words I use. I’m doing my best to get my thoughts from my internal realm to the outside world.

I love to learn about anarchy and communism. Even more, I love learning about and imagining better ways of life outside of any common ideologies.

I am fucking queer as fucking shit.

My pronouns are they/them. she/he are okay too

I edit this post a lot.

I love you and I want to be your friend :)

I use :) a lot and I will not stop :)

I love The Sims 4! (I have three of the expansion packs, city living, cottage living, and cats and dogs, and I do use cheats, and I have wicked whims because tiddies)

I am half Slavic/Balkan and that’s important to me because I was disconnected and removed from my culture when I was 5. (Other half is boring western European white American). Began to reconnect with my culture when I turned 18.

Learning languages is sooo fun for me! Def a big special interest. I’m semi-fluent in Spanish, and have little knowledge of: Portuguese, Mandarin, Serbian, Russian, Hungarian, toki pona (this one is so fucking cool to me).

I love music and sharing recommendations! I used to play several instruments including viola, violin, cello, guitar, and piano. Viola is forever my main instrument. Haven’t played in a while though.

Music genres I like: reggaeton, Afrobeats, house/techno/EDM, 2000-2010s pop, Serbian folk/pop, Mexican/Chicano rap, Spanish guitar, punk rock, Falling in Reverse (genre of its own tbh).

I’m very interested in the origins of humanity, early human migration, language evolution, and related topics.

I like to sew and embroider :)

I’m not religious. I have been finding my own spirituality with Mother Earth and I love it. I like learning about others’ beliefs. I don’t care what your religion is, I’ll accept you as long as you’re not in my DNI list :)

As a queer, neurodivergent, mentally ill person, I will reclaim slurs if I choose to. If that offends you, block me. I’m not here to cater to your sensitivities, I’m here to freely express myself. The language is not being used towards you, you’re just being a cop.

Anonymous asks are now OFF because y’all can’t fucking behave 🙄

DNI: under 18, homophobes, transphobes, racists, bigots, bootlickers, ableists, misogynists, porn blogs, general assholes (I LOVE BLOCKING YOU BITCHES!!!!)

If you’re under 18 and want to interact just DNI with any of my posts labeled nsfw/mdni.

Thanks for reading :) Always open to questions! And memes. The more absurd the better.

#introducing myself #intro post #introduction #introductory post #introduction post #self introduction #autism spectrum #autism #autistic women #autistic #i am just a result of the universe taking lsd and hallucinating that it exploded and became alive #audhd #actually autistic #actually audhd

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ash4prez · 1 year ago

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because absolutely NOBODY asked, here’s a list of my top ten favourite warriors characters (SO FAR)

a lot of you are gonna hate me for not including/including certain characters tbh but this is just my opinion

Disclaimer: I’m on Book 1 of Power of Three currently, so these characters are mostly comprised of those from TBP and TNP. i’ll probably make an updated list at some point in the future, but for now this is how it stands:

#10–Longtail. He’s just a good guy tbh. From being a meanie at the start, to choosing not to leave Thunderclan with Dark and Tiger, to being forced into early retirement but taking it like a champ, this guy has just come to be one of my favourite cattos in the series.

#9–Mousefur. The icon, the legend. She’s literally unfiltered and completely rude to everyone without even giving a shit. She’s shown to be very opinionated and headstrong, but also displays a caring side when it comes to Longtail’s blindness. 10/10 character for me.

#8—Ravenpaw. Is there anyone out there who actually dislikes this guy? I genuinely think he is the most chill cinnamon roll ever. He just wants to vibe with his husband in a barn and maybe warn firestar about important stuff sometimes. Even tho he’s a loner, he respects the warrior code and understands the clan ways. He’s just so awesome and i love him.

#7—Stonefur. Yeah yeah i know we only really knew him for a few books, but I just really liked his character. He was really brave and noble, loyal to his clan, generally a good guy. His death was so sad and honestly just the fact that he went down fighting made me respect him even more.

#6—Sorreltail. Omg idk why i like her so much. Just when she was a new warrior and was best buddies with Leafpool made me so happy, and then for her to become mates with Brackenfur (more on him later—) was just a very good ship for me. I just think Sorreltail is cool and generally a nice cat.

#5—Dustpelt. The biggest G in the entire clan. Honestly Dustyboi is so awesome and i love him so much. Like at first i really didn’t like him, what with the way he was rude to Fire and generally an unpleasant guy, but he got so much better and now i stan him.

#4—Tallstar. OK ALRIGHT SETTLE DOWN, hear me out. Reason number one why i love him is that he’s gay and cute with Jake and we love that for him. Reason number two is that he’s actually a decent guy and isn’t passive aggressive and weird like the other leaders are, he just wants to vibe on with his clan and be chill with everyone. Idk i grew very attached to Tallstar throughout the first two series.

#3—Brackenfur. AHHHH where to start with Brackenfur. He’s just an amazing guy honestly. Like he’s chill, gets along with everyone, but also very brave and noble in the sense that he would literally die for his clan. I usually get very attached to the vanilla side characters who have no real plotlines so this is very expected of me, i just really love brackenfur and his character.

#2—Cinderpelt. Not a DAY GOES BY where i don’t cry over her tragic death and the mountains of wasted potential. Fricking Starclan really had to reincarnate her? What was the point of killing her? Ik it probably had something to do with Leafpool being ✨ special ✨ and the only medicine cat, but come on man. Just look at cinder. Look at how cool and awesome she is.

AAAAND COMING IN AT NUMBER ONE ISSSSS *drumroll intensifies*

#1—The most amazing cat ever to be seen, my guy WHITESTORM!!! Honestly come at me for not putting greystripe or squilf in here, idc. Whitestorm for me is an example of what a warrior cat SHOULD be. He was smart, brave, loyal, trustworthy, chill…he literally had no flaws. Like what did man ever do that was controversial? I cant think of anything, i mean correct me if i’m wrong. I just stan Whitestorm and wish he’d been leader istg.

Thanks for reading this ridiculously long rant lol

#warrior cats #warriors #whitestorm #cinderpelt #brackenfur #tallstar #dustpelt #sorreltail #stonefur #ravenpaw #mousefur #longtail

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hismercytomyjustice · 4 months ago

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So I started writing this yesterday and then I got SO MANY FEELS and it was SO LATE but…

Def got a little too into my own head earlier with the finale approaching for my BG3 fic. So I reread the draft I have of the final three chapters. And I just…I’m so happy with them??? (*꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ) I don’t even feel like they need any major overhaul editing or anything either.

I have NEVER felt confident about writing endings, but I’m feeling alarmingly confident about this one??? Like, even my OCD doesn’t seem to have anything disparaging to say??? ( ˶°ㅁ°) !!??

I mean, I truly hope other folks feel the same way when they get to the end. But right now I’m just so fucking happy that I do?

Wildly long self-indulgent post about my BG3 fic and the writing process for it below, if that’s something you’re into.

Writing this fic has been such an unexpected rollercoaster of emotions for me. It’s taught me so much about how my OCD manifests and impacts my writing, in addition to building my writing confidence back up in general.

It’s the longest thing I’ve ever written (just about twice as long as the longest before that?!) and I feel like I’ve grown SO MUCH as a writer while working on it for the past six months. I went from thinking I would never write description well to finally feeling like I get it??? I mean I’m sure I still have loads more room for improvement, but I’ve always felt like description has been my biggest weakness as a writer and I finally don’t feel that way anymore??!!

Same with writing endings too!!! I def feel like I have a lot more progress to make on that front, but like…oh my god I actually wrote one I’m super proud of??!!

Not only that, but this fic taught me I actually can jump around while writing??? I’ve always written super linearly before and tbh I still do, but when I got stuck on chapter 12/13 for almost two months, I skipped to the very end because I had an idea spark for that part and because of that I’ve been able to lay more of the groundwork for what I hope is a satisfying wrap up.

God, I was so fucking mortified to bring up my struggles with fanfic writing to my therapist. In retrospect I realize that’s because my OCD spirals around it were getting out of fucking control…

Just a super fun refrain of:

“This isn’t a big deal, you’re doing it for fun. It’s ridiculous how upset you are over a literal hobby no one is forcing you to do. It’s just a fanfic. No one cares about it. It’s not even real writing. No one will even read it or like it anyway. You’re wasting your time. See? You can’t finish anything. You’re stuck at the 60k mark because you lack discipline and commitment. You can’t do this, so you’ll never get anything original published. How many things have you started now that you’ve never finished? You haven’t finished writing anything in almost a decade. You’re wasting your therapist’s time talking about something so absurd. She’s going to laugh in your face.”

And fucking on and on and on.

But like…none of that was true??? FUCKING SHOCKING THAT MY OCD WOULD LIE TO ME, AMIRITE?! When has it EVER done that?!

I just wound up sitting there telling my therapist I was stuck and I had lost the passion for the fic like I always did and I’d wasted three months and 60k words on a story that was never going anywhere because I wasn’t good enough to write it.

And she asked me “What would help you get unstuck?”

And I thought about it and was like: “Maybe if I start posting it, folks will read it or bare minimum I’ll get enough kudos and hits to make my brain go brr enough to finish it?” All I wanted at that point was to regain the drive to finish writing the story I’d put so much heart and time and effort into already.

I mean OF COURSE I hoped folks would read it and like it and leave kudos and omg maybe even leave a comment??!! And since BG3 was and is such a big/popular fandom I was also hoping maybe I could surpass the level of achievement I hit with my multichapter Cardcaptors fic a few years back, if nothing else.

And like, as of last night, this is where I was sitting with both:

And YES. I know that stats are NOT what I should focus on at the end of the day. But GOD IF I DON’T CRAVE THE EXTERNAL VALIDATION!!! Don’t we all…

And like, honest to god, this fic doesn’t have to surpass my CCS fic! One of the absolute (hehe) best things to come from this whole experience has been getting to interact with other cultured Bloodweave sommeliers (haha). I seriously cannot get over just how nice and encouraging and fucking amazing everyone has been with their comments!!! And that multiple people have taken the time to comment on each chapter as they come out??!! Like, I am living the fucking dream!!! (*꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)

I get so fucking excited every week to share my newest chapter because I desperately want to know how my pressganged Bloodweave book club will react. Like, my HEART IS SO FULL OMG!!!! They are gonna make me cry frfr!!!

I have personally been such a terrible commenter in the past on fics I’ve enjoyed (i.e. I didn’t fucking comment), but I am trying to become a reformed member of AO3 society because the support I’ve gotten (especially when the doubts start to creep in) has been incredible!!! 100/10, would definitely recommend!!!

And like, some other great stuff has happened that helped me so much along the way too! I read The Accountant’s Guide to Taking Down an Evil Vampire Lord (and maybe bagging Astarion while you are at it) by Cinnamontails. While I was reading it, writing description FINALLY FUCKING CLICKED for me! I was just like “Omfggg?! This is what people are talking about when they say description should do more than one thing!!!” Up to that point I pretty much believed that was like a sort of writing koan or something. Something everyone says, but that isn’t actually meant to be understood because it’s unknowable? Or something like that.

Lemme tell ya, I fucking love learning about writing. I’ve gone to countless writing panels at cons. I listened to podcasts on writing for YEARS (Writing Excuses, I Should be Writing, Ditch Diggers, etc). I’ve read so many books on writing. Watched YouTube videos, took a class, etc, etc! But for some reason the “description should do more than one thing” adage just did not compute. Until I read that fic!

Up to that point, description had always felt like something I threw in as padding around all of my dialogue and character navel gazing. And I fucking STRUGGLED with it as a result. It always felt SO FUCKING BORING to me. I hated it, especially because it never came easily. But now I FINALLY understand and I LOVE writing it!!!!

I went looking for some more tips on writing description and picked up Description: A Busy Writer’s Guide by Marcy Kennedy, which broke things down even further for me!

I felt personally attacked by this part in particular:

“Irrelevant description is what gives description a bad name.

You might think that’s obvious, but so often in my editing work, I’ve seen authors describe things in detail that have no bearing on the story at all. Usually they do it because they’ve been told at one time that they weren’t including enough description and no one told them what kind of description they needed to start including or how to properly include it.”

I am not exaggerating when I say, until very recently, to write description I would find photos of locations, buildings, character inspo, etc and try to focus on what someone more visually inclined would want described because I don’t have a super robust mental image generator. I’ve never had the “I see a movie in my head” while reading gift. Super jelly of folks who do tho! I get more like…flashes maybe? And I didn’t even realize that until I actually made myself pay attention to what was going on in my head while reading fairly recently. I sincerely thought I had aphantasia and people were exaggerating when they said they could picture things in their heads.

Like, when they’d tell you to look at something then close your eyes and envision what you remembered in school (was that just me?). And I’d be like “Okay so we’re just closing our eyes and trying to remember the individual things right? No one actually sees anything.” COLOR ME SURPRISED to find out that WAS NOT the case!

I don’t think I have aphantasia anymore, but like, on the scale from 0 (aphantasia) to 10 (see a movie in my head), I’d say I’m maybe a 3? I can’t envision a whole room or even like…a moving image? Moving images in my head are almost more like extremely short flip books. And the more I try to focus on them, the more out of focus they become. I also really struggle to envision things I’ve never seen before. Like, as a literal picture in my head I mean. It’s easier for me to imagine like…a picture I took of my dog than my actual dog? And like, if I try to do something like envision my bedroom or something, I just kind of pick a point and go from there like “Okay this is what my bed looks like, now it’s gone. This is what my dresser looks like, now it’s gone. This is what my end table looks like, now it’s gone.” It doesn’t form a bigger picture in my head. It’s more like a mental checklist where I think about the different attributes of something (like the color of my sheets, or how many pillows I have) rather than actually see something like the whole bed? Idk. That’s the best way I can think of to explain it.

Ngl, that might very well be part of why writing description like was so difficult and SO FUCKING BORING to me. I didn’t really see things in my head and I’m not a very visual person in general, so I don’t focus a ton on those details anyway as a reader or when I’m physically somewhere. So l felt like all my description was so hamfisted and awkward as a result, and I had absolutely no concept of how much was enough or too much.

But then she goes on in the book to say:

“All description filters through the viewpoint character and is colored by who they are as a person.” And I was just like…ohhhhhhh!!!! That’s exactly what that fanfic did!!!

And then:

“What they notice will also be largely influenced by their circumstances. A character heading into a job interview will be hyper aware of their own appearance, whereas a character who’s crawling around in a cave looking for hidden treasure won’t. A character who is running for their life will notice different things about their surroundings than will a character who isn’t in immediate danger.

If it’s not something they would notice, then we either have to leave it out or come up with a believable, realistic reason for them to notice it.”

Like. OF FUCKING COURSE?! THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE?! HOW DID I NEVER GRASP THIS BEFORE?!

Marcy Kennedy goes on to give other tips like “a good description is specific” and “a good description allows less to be more.” And about how it’s more important to focus on specific, unique details than to try and describe everything about the scene/character (like I would do before). Like, focusing on stuff readers will actually remember and that paints a clearer picture.

She also delves into the specifics of writing for the five senses (another thing I always heard suggested, but never felt I executed well). And on how people naturally notice things from bigger/more obvious to smaller/more specific. She also talks about the psychology behind the things people naturally notice and why and how it’s impacted by who they are as a person (ex. the career they have, their gender, etc).

She gets even more specific with stuff like:

“Description for the purpose of grounding should be quick and needs to happen within the first few paragraphs of a new scene.

If time is the only thing that’s changed, we’ll need to use even less description than if our characters also changed location.

As a general guideline, describe a place in the most depth the first time that setting shows up on the page. Later on, unless something important has changed, a brief re-orienting passage is enough.”

I have DESPERATELY been searching for something this specific. Like just PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD TELL ME HOW MANY SENTENCES/PARAGRAPHS TO USE AND HOW FREQUENTLY TO USE DESCRIPTION. And ON GOD that’s exactly what this book does! ദ്ദി ꒦ິ꒳꒦ິ )✧

I still need to finish reading it but omfg I about lost my mind when I found the holy grail I’d been searching for.

And like, I’m sure my description still needs work and I’m using a sledgehammer instead of a regular hammer sometimes. But I’m learning and growing! And I’m sure it’ll become easier with practice! Hell, half the time I’ll write something and not realize until, oh I don’t know I’ve pretty much finished my fucking 100k word fanfic, that I fucking never really physically described my Tav?! I shouldn’t have said that… Now everyone will notice if they hadn’t already.. FUCK.

BUT! My absolute FAVORITE thing to write is character and being told “write description through the lens of your character” got me so fucking hype. I’m not sitting there anymore like “What’s in this room, what would a reader who sees what they read in their head (definitely not me) find most interesting?” and am instead like “What would Character A notice in this room? How are they feeling right now? What does X remind them of? What are they thinking about? What do they like and dislike, how does that impact what they pay attention to?” And I FUCKING LOVE IT!!!!

And I AM SURE this is not groundbreaking information for 99.9% of folks but IT WAS FOR ME!!!!! It has easily doubled my word count for everything I’ve written since then and I’m not stuck massively overthinking it all now! And I actually enjoy it! It doesn’t feel like a miserable slog anymore!

And this is THE MOST OBVIOUS in how my BG3 fic chapters literally DOUBLED OR TRIPLED in length after I got my hands on this book in the middle of writing the fic lol. Almost every shorter chapter in the first 75% of the fic was written prior to me reading this book. And the longer ones? Those were added after!

Like, chapter two originally didn’t include the Owlbear scene. It just ended after Astarion walked out of the fortress. Meanwhile, chapter five and six DID NOT EXIST. I kinda panicked when I realized the story felt too Astarion heavy when it was supposed to be about both of them. I also felt like the pacing for the story in general was off (too fast). So I went back and added those. Leon and Victoria WERE NOT IN THE STORY until I went back to add chapter five.

Since I was doing alternating POV, if I added another chapter for Gale I needed to add another for Astarion. So I decided to make Astarion’s about them needing to find Gale an artefact in the Underdark. I started researching artefacts there that would satisfy the orb, but wanted to dig deeper and lay a little more groundwork for Astarion starting to care more about Gale and learning to be more kind/compassionate overall.

My headcanon for Astarion is that he’s always been a little selfish, or at least he thinks he is. I expanded on that later on in the fic by implying his parents weren’t the best of people. I felt like Cazador would smell blood in the water as far as folks with prior abuse of some kind were concerned, like a lot of abusers do. So Astarion spent his life up until he moved to Baldur’s Gate trying to be his own person despite the box his parents wanted to fit him in. That was my reason for why he left the Dalelands so young (by elf standards). He was still a grown ass man, but hadn’t reached maturity as far as his parents were concerned.

And like, why did he go as far away as Baldur’s Gate? Because it is like THE OPPOSITE SIDE of Faerun. And there’s no real info on his family anywhere, so I felt like maybe he wasn’t super close with them if he moved so far away. My idea was he felt he couldn’t escape their expectations without putting some real distance between them. And then, in the process, he winds up with Cazador, someone even more determined to mold him into what they want him to be rather than what he wants to be.

I feel like so much of Astarion’s arc in game is about finally being able to become his own person. And I thought it would pair really well with the tragedy of him being turned by Cazador if that happened just when he started take back control of his own life.

My headcanon is a lot of Astarion’s selfishness stems from no one ever being there for him or looking out for him, so he can only rely on himself and fuck everyone else as a result. Except he’s not nearly as callous as he pretends and deep down he genuinely wants to care about others. He just doesn’t know how to do it and feels like it can only come at the expense of his own autonomy/safety/happiness.

SO. What artefact would Astarion have that he could choose to give to Gale? Initially I thought maybe something small like the Ring of Color Spray. That didn’t feel significant enough though. Like, yes it would be something of his that he was choosing to part with, but it wasn’t a big enough of a statement to me. So then I tried to find a cool/powerful weapon or something else that he would be less inclined to part with. Whee, more time researching artefacts! But that didn’t feel right either, so I decided it should be something with more personal significance because that’s the biggest kind of sacrifice he could make at this point.

So! What would Astarion have that would be powerful enough to satisfy the orb? And why??? Cazador doesn’t exactly seem like the type to give his spawn anything, not even the basics (i.e. Astarion’s 200 years of starvation). Especially not something like a powerful/helpful artefact. And I was like “well, I mentioned they traded favors before back in chapter four, so maybe Leon enchanted something for him?”

BUT WHY?! I really liked the bits and pieces we see of Leon in game. I feel like he’s the quickest to believe Astarion when he says Cazador plans to sacrifice them in the ritual. And he also has a human daughter! Which, yeah, that whole reveal in game gave me major brain worms. Because WHAT. There was a human child just running around Szarr Palace? WHY? What was her life like? What did the other spawn think of her? And I was also so sad we never really saw much in game about her and her father. Even though Leon loses Victoria to Dalyria. I was really surprised there was no follow up to that for him, but lord knows Larian already had 8 billion other things going on, so I get why it wasn’t something they delved further into.

But what would Leon ask for in return for such a big favor? Ooh, what if Victoria’s ill? Cazador doesn’t exactly seem like the type to be like “Oh, sorry, please take all the PTO you need and here’s some money for a healer!” I’d imagine resources suited to caring for a sick human child would be limited in Szarr Palace. And Dalyria has been looking at Victoria like she’s a literal snack for a while now (which is why she kills her in game), so what’s a vampire papa to do???

So then I had to figure out why the self-purported selfish Astarion would agree to help them. At great personal cost, no less. He never mentions Victoria in game and I don’t think there’s anything in game either that indicates he’s ever done her wrong. Leon certainly didn’t seem concerned about him in that regard, so I decided maybe he’s ambivalent toward Victoria.

So why would he care?!

And then the Drizzt brain worms came back in full force. Because of that fucking phenomenal scene in the DND campaign with Neil fanboying, haha. So maybe Victoria has an interest in Drizzt too? Or maybe in his wife? Like, why wouldn’t a scared little girl who’s stuck in a nest of vampires look up to a strong female role model who is capable of fighting back and saving the day? And I figured Astarion hand’t exactly broadcasted his interest in Drizzt, so maybe this gives him an opportunity to actually connect with someone for once? I feel another major part of Astarion’s character is he is SO FUCKING LONELY. He doesn’t know how to establish actual relationships with people because he never has. And why would he, seeing as any new person he met would just wind up as Cazador’s dinner (as far as he knew anyway). I feel like he’s had to hardcore compartmentalize that part of him for the sake of his sanity.

But now here’s this sick little girl who he can actually help. And she understands what it’s like to dream a hero will swoop in and save the day. And she happens to be interested in stories about the same Drow Ranger who he’s found his own escape from The Horrors™ in?

Idk if he still would have agreed to help Leon in the fic if he’d had much more time to think about it. So instead he has a moment of weakness where he desperately wants to do something good for once (the only other time having been his sparing his “darling boy”). Something that’s never been done for him, but that he could do for Victoria. He could pretend to be her hero for a little while and get something useful out of it in the process. Win-win!

And like, this doesn’t make them bffs or anything. It’s more like a pivotal moment that just started to lay the foundation for his “redemption” in my fic instead. Then I just kept thinking more and more about what his life was like after with Victoria, who’s already come to trust him a little since he doesn’t treat her poorly or look like he wants to eat her. Especially since I figure that’s probably a pretty novel experience for her given her circumstances.

But he and Gale are in the Underdark! Which has magical artefacts! So why couldn’t they just spend a few thousand words locating an artefact so he doesn’t have to give this ring up? Sure, I could make it imperative Gale needs an artefact like yesterday, but that didn’t feel like enough. Thus Tav’s sister was born, lol! And my Tav became much more of a character in the fic because I did WAAAAY too much research on the Drow for chapter five and was completely fascinated by them.

My Tav was never supposed to feature as much as they did in my fic. They’re literally my Tav from in game, though I didn’t really have an in-game backstory for them. They were just supposed to show up in my fic to help with some scenes/dialogue in lieu of me having to write more interactions with the companions I didn’t feel super confident writing because I didn’t feel like I knew them/their unique voices well enough. To my own detriment, I am obsessed with being as IC as possible when I write fic. Just my personal preference in my writing!

This was my basic ass outline from back in April when I realized I needed to add extra chapters. The checkboxes are chapters drafts I’d finished by that point:

I was about 42k words in when I made it. And the outline changed a little too! I combined my planned chapters for 15 and 16 into one and wrote something else for 16.

And then I got to the bane of my existence, Chapter 13… (≖_�� ). That was around the 60k mark.

Originally I planned for Astarion to be kidnapped by the spawn and get tortured (a little) and then be rescued by Gale & Co. But it just didn’t feel right. So then I thought ��Gale should get kidnapped too, that’ll be more interesting!” And THEN I had Cazador show up. But he was being too…nice? Maybe not nice, but like…too chill/accommodating? Because I didn’t want the fic to get EVEN LONGER by setting Astarion’s progress with his trauma back to the stone ages with prolonged exposure to his abuser.

Originally I had Cazador show up, throw Astarion around a little and then Leon was like “Mister Cazador, sir, he has a tadpole, can we all go somewhere you aren’t so I can take a look at it?” And Cazador was just like “HMPF. OKAY, I GUESS. BUT DON’T FORGET I’M ~EVIL~, even though I’m acting pretty blasé right now!” Cut to Gale, Astarion, and Leon chitchatting in the Favored Spawn room.

And it just…was not fucking working. I felt it didn’t make sense for Cazador. It wasn’t boogeyman enough. Like…no way would he just let them traipse off, even with the tadpole as the reason. Something else needed to happen. Something that would give him an actual reason to have to put Astarion on the back burner. Something BIG!

But fucking WHAT???

My OCD chimed in with: “So happy you asked! Remember that other insecurity you have about being fucking terrible at writing villains? Surprise! It’s true! You’ve hit the biggest part of this fic and now it’s all pointless because you don’t know how to make Cazador be believably mean! Aren’t you glad you wasted three months and 60k words on it? You never finish anything anyway, so why should this be any different?”

Which is why I brought all of this up to my therapist in the first place. Because I was so fucking disappointed in and frustrated with myself and had all but given up on this fic. I didn’t know what to do next or how to fix what I broke and my motivation to keep writing it was long gone. But if I stopped writing it now, I was 1000% convinced I’d never finish it and I fucking hated that. I was so excited about this story for so long and it felt like it was all over because I “sucked as a writer, lacked commitment, etc.”

It took a while. Like two fucking months, to get out of my own head enough to finally write something I was happy with for chapter 13. I firmly believe I finally got to that point because of how much support and kindness I received from the folks reading my fanfic (who hadn’t found out I was a fraud yet - actual quote from my OCD). I cannot thank all of them enough for helping bolster my self-esteem and helping me get my motivation back! And also because my therapist helped me kill off my own boogeyman of sorts (my OCD around writing)!

Originally I wasn’t going to post this fic until the first draft was completely done. Didn’t matter that I was at 60k words. It wasn’t done, so it wasn’t going up because I hate when people orphan fics. Absolutely no shade to folks who do tho! Life happens! Motivation wanes! But I did A LOT of my own orphaning back in the day on ff.net and I still feel guilty about it to this day. But I pushed past my fear with the encouragement of my therapist and FUCK it paid off!!!

Once I got over the hurdle of writing 12/13, it was pretty much smooth sailing from there. And, omfg, people ACTUALLY LIKED both chapters?! ON GOD?! I felt like they were pretty solid by the time I finally posted them, but it was still hard not to worry I had falsely convinced myself they were good. What if Cazador was TOO mean now? Or what if he still wasn’t mean enough? What if this was too hard of a left turn with the story? What if what if what if…

I seriously cannot thank the folks who’ve commented on both enough for helping allay those fears of mine. It means so fucking much to me that there are so many people out there who were just SO FUCKING KIND to me when they didn’t have to be! ( ˃̣̣̥︿˂̣̣̥ ) A HUGE thank you to folks who’ve reached out to me or interacted with my posts about my fic on tumblr too, especially asymmetricjest whose ear I know I have talked off at this point in the internet-sense! Knowing there were folks who liked my fic enough to go out of their way to seek me out on tumblr for my Tuesday sneak peeks and to even like my and comment on my posts about writing the fic was a MASSIVE boost to my self confidence! It also made me feel like maybe I had a story worth telling after all!

I also gotta thank my bff Gourmet for letting me talk her ear off too and for reading the first three chapters before I even posted them. I was SO FUCKING NERVOUS about posting a multi-chapter fic for a brand new fandom (to me). I was especially worried about my characterization of Gale and if it looked like I knew enough about BG3 to be qualified to write a story about it lol. Not that that’s even a thing, but it felt like it to me. Like someone was gonna bust down the door and be like “well, actually” until I gave up on writing and became a hermit in the woods.

Gourmet also made the mistake of telling me sometimes she writes on her phone, which I have taken to heart and then some… I do like 95% of my writing on google docs on my phone now. I went from writing next to nothing to having already written 198,088 words this year. Yes, I’ve been tracking it. Yes, I love spreadsheets. No, I haven’t posted everything I’ve written yet.

That was another thing I struggled with in regard to my OCD. Not just with writing, but with life in general. It’s been so hard for me to accept everything does not have to be perfect before I can do something.

I constantly talk myself out of shit because it’s not perfect. Like:

I should start working out! What’s the research on the perfect amount of exercise? What types? How often? For how long? Etc. And then I come up with a detailed day-by-day routine of working out an hour every day that is not even remotely feasible for me, so I never do it! And I won’t let myself just do 10 random minutes of exercise either because that’s not what the experts said you should do, so that means I can’t do anything!

Down to shit like, “I can’t work out because my office is a nightmare. There’s too much stuff everywhere.” And “I can’t just go for a short walk by myself. That’s cruel to my dogs who I already don’t walk enough. But if I walk them too, I need to walk them enough, which is at least 20 minutes each. Because a dog should have 30 minutes of exercise a day.” So now my 10 minute impromptu walk has turned into an hour long dog walk because I can’t walk both of them at once (they’re big dogs and I’ve gotten hurt trying to do that before). Which then becomes too intimidating/overwhelming, so I just don’t do it at all! Yay, avoidance!

This is exactly how I’d talk myself out of writing. Just “a real writer would do xyz and since I can’t/don’t, I’m not a real writer. If I don’t write everyday, I’ll never get anywhere. I need at least an hour to write and if I don’t have that, what’s the point? Maybe I’ll just make myself write for 5 minutes a day instead! But that doesn’t feel like enough progress, so that’s not being a real writer.” Just analysis paralysis combined with a hardcore all or nothing mindset. I would spend way too much time focused on my word count each day and beating myself up about it being too low instead of just being happy I was writing, which is something I enjoy doing (ISN’T IT?!).

I used to be a bank teller about a decade ago. It was boring as fuck during the week because there were too many branches around (there was another of our same bank literally one building away from us) so we didn’t get a ton of customers. That resulted in a lot of downtime that I had to fill with something that wouldn’t get me in trouble (i.e. reading or playing on my phone). We also didn’t have internet on our computers as tellers. So I started taking little pocket notebooks with me and writing in between customers. Which was apparently fine! My coworkers would ask me what I was doing and I’d tell them journaling or something like that because I was embarrassed I was writing original romance stuff.

I wound up writing 3 different 50k original works during that time. I’d write in between customers then go home and type up what I wrote every day. And it fucking worked! It gave me something fun to do instead of stare at a wall all day, it kept me from being too perfectionistic about it, and it lowered the demand on my executive function! Win-win-win!

But then I got a different office job where there wasn’t downtime in between tasks (or at least not that you could enjoy without getting in trouble) so that fell by the wayside. I probably could’ve been writing on my work laptop or something instead, but I had undiagnosed ADHD at the time and spent so much time procrastinating while trapped in the office because it didn’t take me that long to do my work. I also didn’t realize a lot of ADHDers procrastinate because then they get a spike of adrenaline as a deadline looms, so. Yeah. Classic ADHD in retrospect.

But writing on my phone is a whole different ballgame! It doesn’t feel like “real” writing. I can do it whenever! Waiting in a doctor’s office? Write! Woke up in the middle of the night? Write! Laying down on the couch with no motivation to move? Write!

It lowers the barrier for my executive function because I always have my phone on me! No longer am I like “do I have enough time to go to trouble of opening my laptop, opening my google doc, trying to remember where I was, etc” and getting too worked up over having “dedicated” writing time because otherwise I’m not a real writer. There aren’t all these mental hurdles I have to leap over anymore. It’s just “I want to write” > “picks up phone”.

Do I feel fucking deranged writing almost 200k words so far on my phone? ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY I DO! Could I write way faster on my laptop? 10000%! But it works! So I try not to think about it too much, lol. I have started editing more on my laptop though because editing on my phone takes for fucking ever. Editing in general takes me for fucking ever.

But yeah, this was wildly fucking long but I just had a lot of stuff I wanted to mentally process about this whole process because it’s been a really fucking big deal for me. And writing stuff out helps me process it.

If you’ve actually read all of this, you are a saint and I hope some of it resonated with you, especially if you’re a writer too. And, even if you aren’t, I hope it was at least interesting/entertaining!

God, I am so pre-upset about finishing this fic, lol. I don’t want it to end. It’s given me so much structure to my weeks and so much to look forward to. It’s gonna fuck with me once it’s over and I have to find other stuff to occupy my time and I don’t get my Wednesday dopamine hit. I mean, I’m hoping I’ll be writing something else by then (I do have an HH fic that’s 30k+ words already that I need to finish). But I fucking hate change and it’s gonna be a big change for me after I’ll have spent around 7 months on this whole thing.

But seriously, I cannot thank the phenomenal folks who’ve supported me along the way by reading, kudosing, bookmarking, subscribing, commenting, etc enough! This fic would not have gotten written without your support! And thank fuck for my therapist too because I had literally no idea my OCD was so obsessed with my writing until I was in the midst of this fic.

But yeah, it's been super cathartic to journal about my process with this fic and how I've learned and grown from writing it. And my OCD is definitely not completely gone when it comes to my writing, but it's more manageable at present and I'm def gonna take that as a win!

#hismercy’s musings #ancient books and horror stories #my writing #my fics #my writing process #actually ocd #actually adhd #bg3 fanfic #wildly long post

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marshmallowprotection · 2 years ago

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About your post regarding ocs, you are so right. And to that anon or anyone who reads this, your advice was so top tier and should be followed 100%

I mean that's the beauty of writing, is it not? It doesn't matter how crazy something seems if it brings you joy at the end of the day. Besides, some of the best characters or oc x canon fics I've ever read are ones that are so self indulgent. A lot of people love the same ideas, so to read it in someone else's work is always fun and exciting!

My cmc for example, she's for Saeran too. She's literally a run away princess, and yes it still follows the Canon ish plot of the game. Why? Because why not! It's fun! All of my cmcs are pretty out there tbh...And sure I may post my work, but it doesn't matter If anyone reads it or even if they have critiques on it.

That's honestly what I love about your page, you post a lot of stuff that others probably wouldn't just because you like to write for enjoyment. Your passion truly shows, and you have a great talent for writing. I also love how devoted you are to Saeran, it's nice to see other people who never lost that love for these characters. I grew up with them, I don't think I'll ever stop loving them. My cmc and Saeran story will literally always move forward, and I love seeing yours and reading them.

I do think the best lesson anybody can learn is that when you're creating something, you should be creating it because it's something that's fun and you enjoy doing it. If you're creating things because you want to make others happy and not yourself, that's not going to end well.

It's a good thing to want to make other people smile, but it's more important to make sure that you are taking care of your needs, too. You have to remember it's important to love yourself just as much as it is to love the people around you.

Sometimes, the best characters I've seen somebody create come from a place that people might consider “cringe or embarrassing.” Well, there is no such thing as cringe and people should be having some fun. I don't care how preposterous or ridiculous an idea is for your character, if you like it and you want to have fun with it, go for it! The only thing that matters, in the end, is that you are making things that make you happy.

If you want to know the best way to learn how to enjoy the things you create, art, writing, or whatever you do, then you need to let go of trying to please other people with the things that you create. You need to think with yourself in mind first and foremost. If you are doing that, then the people who are genuinely interested in that will come around eventually.

Sure, it might take some time, I know it's genuinely taken me a long time to get to the point that I'm at! But, because I've spent so much time focusing on writing things that make me happy, I feel a lot better than I did a long time ago when I was only trying to please everybody else. When you are happy with what you are creating, people can see it. People can see your enjoyment in your words and your creations.

I don't know how to describe it because it's just a feeling you get when you see somebody who's putting everything into something.

Creating things that make you happy shouldn't be done because you want to be popular or receive attention, not that there's anything wrong with wanting that because everybody wants and deserves validation in some form! But, if you are making something because you wanted to boom in popularity and you're not deeply invested in that very creation, you're only going to burn yourself out and just feel miserable in the process.

That's why I'm so happy to write stories that make me happy. That means I’ll spend a few weeks working with my CMC! I’ll write her a story where she and Saeran can be happy and unlearn their trauma and it makes me giddy to see their world in print. Or! When I’m really feeling self-indulgent, I’ll go even further and write a self-insert story about myself and Ray.

Bonus points to me for when I write something I know that nobody but me and maybe three other people are going to read, but I'm writing it because I want to see what happens! It's good to want feedback and commentary, but it's just as important that you're having fun in the process of creating.

All of my ramblings aside, I hope that if anybody can take anything away from my rambling, it's that they need to enjoy what they're creating and have fun with it.

#ask #anon #mod kait #kait validation hours?#slaaay anon you write that princess!!!

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adrienschat · 2 years ago

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About Me Tagged

So, I’ve been tagged in a few posts by @summerfrwrks @lady-de-mon-coeur @sub-text & @rosie-b (ily guys thank you for being patient), and I decided to put them all together lmfaoo

WIPs Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it.

Ongoing:

The Wall Between Us (miraculous fic)

Golden (3rd edit - mysterious demon comes to town, a girl confronts her grief)

Stitches (poetry book)

Winterville School for the Talented and Gifted (paranormal romance)

Random music & animations

Barely Seen the Light of Day:

I have it kinda planned out but my alt-marinette au lmfao

Strikes at Midnight (fantasy novel I’ll never finish, but it has like 100k words)

Open Caged Bird (Webtoon I started like a year ago...)

Shipping

three ships:

adrien/marinette (in ANY FORM)

....... Drarry (dont block me i know hp is problematic etc etc)

those silly gays from our flag means death

first ship:

Probably percabeth?

last song:

Cannibal (Nathan Apollo)

last movie:

M3GAN (SOOOO FUNNY)

currently reading:

The Dark Prince (i’m on like page 30 because i’m a dumb slow reader)

my Python textbook

the picture of dorian grey

random fanfics i love

currently watching:

Orange is the new black

Barry

currently consuming:

right now i’m having a smoothie

water

wish i was having DIET COKE

currently craving:

DIET COKE!

rules: list five things you never get tired of writing. it can be tropes, themes, characters, phrases, whatever brings you joy. then tag five people!

1. LESBIANS!!!!!!

2. BISEXUALS!!!!!!!!!!

3. slightly spooky

4. PINING! PINIING! PINING!!!

5. Dramatic irony

About Me

1. Are you named after anyone?

I actually named myself! I was 7, getting adopted, and i hated my birth name so i switched it to Julia (not named after anyone)

2. When was the last time you cried?

Yesterday during my singing lesson (i’m sorry K, i hope you read this and know i’m sorry lmfao). I cry a lot

3. Do you have kids?

nooooooooooo but i love kids and i love my niece and nephews. someday i’d like to be a mom!

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Yeah but tbh i think it’s more like a teasing sarcasm. i don’t like to make people think they’re stupid

5. What’s the first thing you notice about people?

How they’re feeling in a situation

sense of humor

6. What’s your eye colour?

Dark blue! Some people have asked me if I have brown eyes but only in dimly lit rooms lol.

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

Scary movies with happy endings my beloved. Finding love despite the horrors. etc etc

8. Any special talents?

Projecting myself onto characters

i’m not good at most things i do, but i have a talent for doing what makes me happy

9. Where were you born?

Germany!

10. What are your hobbies?

Writing music, novels, fanfic, and poetry

singing

gym

guitar

languages <3 (I speak Spanish fluently, ASL & French pretty okay, and a bit of german)

video games

crafty stuff (i used to crochet and knit a lot)

sewing!

11. Have you any pets?

two kitties hehe. they’re under my “thea” and “dorito” tags. thea’s legal name is cool ranch.

12. What sports do you play/have played?

just gym, no sport

but also i did do cross country back in high school

13. How tall are you?

I’m 6′ lmfao. I love being tall, it calls forth the short lesbians (this is a message to short lesbians to talk to me)

14. Favorite subject in school?

i liked math, which is ironic since i’m an editor/writer for work

15. Dream job?

I’m getting a master’s in software development rn, so i reeeeally want to create beautiful video games.

Who I’m Tagging

Don’t feel any pressure to answer all or any of the questions! Love you guys <3

@castles-in-the-eyre @keyboardnonsense @asukiess @lesbitorte @fantasybuff3186 @juliuli @fragileizy @everythingisubtext @dorkylovespepsi @chatdc @talkstoself @doksangs

#ALSO IF THIS IS ANNOYING #i'm sorry but cest la vie #hi this is me #also if you weren't tagged but youre one of my mutuals respond and tag me in it my beloveds

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shinycollarboneapologist · 2 years ago

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okay let's be boring and go with ace as a name bc that's my nickname irl bc I'm a massive gilmore girls fan (team logan btw iykyk)!!

I really want to attempt writing fics but I'm wayyyy to nervous! I was okay at English in school and I always send obnoxiously long asks into blogs on here with my ideas based on their fics (sorry fellow tumblr.com authors you all get forced to see my writing) but I have nightmares of writing and putting it on here only to be bullied off the platform ahahahahah

jealous of the sun bathing in England rn its been pissing it down raining all dayyyyy, we only get like 1 week of sun a year and the rest of the time its very stereotypically rainy !! my day was shit but always better after taking to you bff!

also please excuse my excessive use of exclamation marks idk why but to me a full stop feels mean and I also use ellipsis way too much but I, like you, am the drama so I love to build unnecessary tension...

I've actually always wanted jury duty but I've never been called for it, I know it's meant to be so boring but I want to live my jury duty delusion of being a hot juror! a torrid jury love affair? hello I'd read that fic

spring break always sounded so fun to me as a sad English child!! we just call it Easter holidays and be boring and religious but when I hear spring break I imagine drunk people on a beach in florida yk?

my current obsessions for blogs are;

-lottiecrabie (pfms has me in a chokehold)

-toomuchracket (living in the flatmate! matty delusion rn)

-byyourside28 (loving the soft sound series as a person obsessed with getting tattoos)

-justlikemebutsixfootthree (literally all their smut is god tier)

-bookishstrawberry (fluffy and gizmo series has my heart)

-imightgetbetter (the whole love it if we made it series has me wanting children but only fictional ones with matty... the delusion creation is STRONG)

and OF COURSE the no 1 blog on tumblr is the beautiful, amazing and unmatched... shinycollorboneapologist

omg yes to only letting matty into our cottage to sing, we will bring him out tea and cigarettes but otherwise no rats allowed sorry ratthew!! taylor however gets the master suite with a 4 poster bed and unlimited pampering!! same with Ross, George and Adam bc only ratty needs humbling (I really do love you tho Matthew give me one chance I'll be your controversially young gf)

ily bff!!!

-ace (my new name rip illicit affairs anon you will be missed)

ps. apologies for the ridiculously long ask I literally am so obnoxious

..... i love gilmore girls. lets chat abt that.

okay that is very ... warranted. i also was super nervous and tbh ... style was probably never going to be posted but i was a bit inebriated after my birthday and just posted it without looking back. look at us now!!! so for that, i say you should 110% just take the leap. i will be your #1 fan actually.

i will send the sunshine and good vibes your way. i usually like the rain a lot, but i can imagine it gets a bit tiring if its like that all year long. im glad you had a good day!!!!

i love your use of exclamation points okay. there i said it. it just makes everything you say feel so excited and happy and i love it. the ellipses ...... love that for us. ofc you are the drama, you're the main character hello.

that is how i want my spring break to be, but alas i am working and writing my silly little stories for tumblr.com. SGLJFDLG easter holiday just sounds so cute though?

okay can we talk about pfms.... because that. that fic is my hyper fixation atm. like i just … it’s everything to me.

also all of those blogs i follow and love more than life itself. most of them axtually inspired me to write myself which is like 🫂 i use all of them as my silly little delusional daydreams (esp toomuchrackets flatmate!matty, the things i would do for that man and justlikemebutsixfootthree’s recent smut… jeez)

please you are too kind. idk abt no 1 blog BUT… i’ll take it okay.

maybe some cheese too, since he is a rat. taylor gets the master suite with us, we’ll bake her little cookies and biscuits and give her the best pampering treatment of her life. (also pls let’s not conjure matty to my blog … that would be so embarrassing to me i think i would keel over and die) (i also will fight u for the spot of matty’s controversially young gf)

ilysm and i hope u have a great day

#ace #rip to illicit affairs anon #u will be missed #ilysm bff

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from-chaos-make-art · 2 years ago

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2023 NY Resolutions (& 2022 Reflections)

This past year (2022), my one real resolution was to make certain changes to my diet to gain particular results. I just got my test results back from my physical and I can happily report that I did it!!

Now for 2023, I’d like to continue to focus on my physical health. I work a desk job where I’m sitting the vast majority of the time, and at home, I tend to work et al. in bed, so my back and neck have definitely suffered. This year is the year of moving my body consistently. I don’t want to say I’ll work out x amount of times a week or that I’m going to do specific exercises -- I’m going to see what I can do and go from there. My success will be in if at the end of 2023, I am consistently moving my body every week, and those are all the limits I’ll put on myself. (we gotta start somewhere, otherwise we’ll never get anywhere).

Diet-wise, I’d also like to limit my sodium intake a bit more. I have a tendency to eat pre-packaged, on-the-go meals, which are already sodium-packed, but if I’m being brutally honest with myself, cooking is not going to be a realistic goal for me next year. So I’d just like to be a bit more careful with my food selection process.

I’d also like to eat more vegetables & fruit and limit my red meat intake even more (this was the primary goal for last year). Chickin gud.

These are the three real goals for 2023.

Now for the cherries:

Creative

This year, I said I wanted to improve on three things: digital work, figures/anatomy, and backgrounds. I took two classes -- Digital Painting & Background/Landscapes and Character Design, so those took care of the first and third things. My anatomy has suffered this year, just because I haven’t practiced it at all because I was struggling trying to figure out how to draw lines on a tablet ^^;;. I also wanted to improve my self-discipline to not just rely on classes to draw...and I think this is something that I really do need to work on. My last class ended in August...and I haven’t drawn since then. Tbh, I have needed a bit of a break, so I’m not going to beat myself up too much over that, but I know that I’m not at the level where I can take time off from practice and my skill not suffer because of it. So this is something that I do want to work on for next year as well, especially because I’ll start to take actual animation classes in the spring, which will very much challenge me. Tall order from 2022 was to draw a comic...yeah, no. No tall orders for 2023. For 2023, we draw and just get better, that’s it. (I think I’m finally getting the hang of this ‘realistic’ goals thing)

Ok, so my ridiculous ass thought I could read 15 books total, and read 3 books of poetry in three different languages...yeah, wtf 2022-me. (I know this is baseline reading for a lot of people, but I do tend to struggle to read long form material now). Now, I did actually deny myself graphic novels this year because I was trying to focus on books...so there’s that...the punishment worked, i guess >.> and I actually did start reading more poetry! but I ended up reading a whole 5 books and 2 plays in 2022...so in 2023, I will actually attempt to go back to reading 12 books, and once I finish 1 book for the month, I will read graphic novels the rest. :D (i give myself a leetle treat).

I did not end up doing needle work at all this year...I took a much-needed break, and I think I’m ready to start again...I’ll take 12 designs for 2023.

No non-travel photographs this year either...but I’m starting to get that itch again...I don’t know yet if I’m ready to commit to this...I’m realizing that this year, I needed to take a bit of a step back from the things I used to do and see if I still even wanted to do them...and if so, then do them with intention...I won’t force myself to take photographs if I don’t want to...just like with writing. If it happens, great. If not, it’s ok.

I wanted to wear everything in my wardrobe at least once...I did not accomplish that, but I did end up wearing a lot more of my outfits! Some progress is still progress! And so, I would actually like to continue this as a goal for 2023. It was really fun and I very much enjoyed the process of going out if I told myself I was going to dress up for it. It was the first year I started to dress with intention and I’d like to continue doing so.

New goal: more nail art! I’ve been really enjoying painting my nails over the last few years, but I’d like to get back into doing some real nail art -- I bought tools and everything! I’m just real lazy and I’d rather whip on a pretty top coat or have all the sfx nail polish do all the work for me -- but I have designs and dotting tools and butterfly stickers I need to use!! The rhinestones aren’t going to glue themselves! 2023 is going to be the year of the Claire’s goth.

Leftovers from 2022: I watched 220 movies, 15 foreign films this year. (And I wonder where all my reading time went). I participated in the film festival and had a blast. I’m definitely going to do it again in 2023, it was really fun.

I wrote 14 songs and 1 poem this year....not the best output, but it is what it is. I’m actually pretty surprised about that 1 poem -- I don’t think I’ve written one for 7 years, so, cool!

Personal

I said I wanted to work on being more sympathetic, kinder, and less judgmental; to have my internal thought processes match my external behaviour; and to not be tempted into my inherent negativity. This is an ongoing resolution obviously, and will probably be the #1 personal thing to work on for the rest of my life, but I do think that I have gotten better this year. What helped immensely, if I’m being honest with myself, is the person that I was struggling to define boundaries with moved away and that allowed me to get more space (physical and mental) from them. I was able to process my emotions easier and to decide on the kind of relationship I wanted to have with them moving forward, which really helped me to stop being so judgmental towards them, and in general. This year, I have worked on trying to listen first, and hold space, rather than jumping to solutions/advice...I’ve also tried to give myself emotional boundaries so as not to get overly involved or influenced by someone else’s emotions/issues. Basking in negativity has been a tiny bit less on the personal side this year, but has been a whole lot more work-wise, and so I’d like to do a little bit less of that next year (but I have thoughts about that!!! anyway, we’ll leave the socio-political discourse for another post). These are things I need to continue working on, as well as thinking before I speak, and taking things a lot less personally. I have a big tendency to be gutted by the things people say (who doesn’t), usually off-hand, in passing, for years and years afterwards, and stew in my little gremlin resentment hut and howl at the self-pity moon, and I’d like to be a little bit less influenced by other people’s bullshit and gtfo it.

Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude! Again, something to cultivate the rest of my life. But this year, there have been so many things that I am truly grateful for -- the places I’ve been able to go to, the raise I’ve received, my living situation, my loved ones, the opportunities I’ve received, the experiences I’ve had, and my improved mental health. Life is so so good, right now...and I honestly can not believe that I am this lucky to be right here, right now, alive and well, after everything. When I forget and I feel down on myself (which I often do), I read my journal entries from even just one year ago, and I realize that I have truly grown as a person, even if it doesn’t seem that way to me, or even to other people. I can see it in the way I think, the way I write. As anxious or frustrated or insert-negative-emotion-here I am now, it is nothing compared to how I was. When I think of myself five years ago, or even three years ago, it’s day and night. I legitimately don’t know how I even made it through, quite frankly. And for that, I need to be proud of myself and give myself a break, because I deserve it. I really do. (hey, look, i can do affirmations!)

Lastly...I’ve been flirting with the idea of getting back into certain social scenes. I think I’ve been craving certain kinds of experiences that are intimate, but not inherently sexual. I’d like to explore more identity-based and exploratory-based communities...it’s been 10 years...I think I might finally be ready...maybe? also, there’s still covid, so...we’ll see...

#personal #New Year Resolutions

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m1ckeyb3rry · 4 months ago

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LMAOOO It’s the French air subconsciously affecting you…ok but once you added a bit of description in bfb I was able to put a more accurate face to the name but I’d have to like reset myself each time the name Aoyama popped up HAHAHA I think what I was imagining was much closer to kusakabe I think I imagined an even more npc-ish hair style like just your average bowl..? But not atrociously cut like ego/baby Otoya if ykwim

Yesss ok you definitely hit the mark on that vibe!! Yeah I’m imagining some really exaggerate Disney like scenario when I think of inaccurately represented siblings LMAO

LMFAOOO y/n catching him mid-fit change which ends up having the opposite effect because now instead of wearing something more presentable he’s wearing basically nothing I can def see him doing both LOL or alternatively it’s both and he thinks he should change but y/n rings in too quick and he can’t decide what to wear and just says “nah wtv this is fine”

OOOO yeah manifesting MUCH more Karasu art soon!! Surely there’s bound to be some sort of promo art that’ll work…

Ugh he’s just THE man but OOO yeah I kinda had a feeling LOL the tiktok inspo is so real I mean if you ever want more thoughts I’ll never say no to a Karasu brainstorm but I think your inbox is flooded with my ideas atp LMAOO

LMAOOO I love crack I feel like smaus always have a hint of crack in them at least so I’m so for it….i just scrolled by your post and omg I feel so special hehe <3 Time to go read now!! o7

Also WAITT YOURE SO RIGHT ABOUT NESS?? The way that ik exactly what your talking about omg that poor charmander though but the way it was so loyal to its original trainer and wanted to stay with him so bad it’s fr sm like ness being dumped by Kaiser rn shshsjhshs I feel you thought bc tbh I also don’t really care for ness I definitely felt more for the charmander than him LMFAO

- Karasu anon

HAHAH i feel like he’s just very basic LMAO i bet he was so insecure when tabito grew up to be way way better looking than him…lowkey i can’t even blame him for feeling bad towards the end of the relationship JFDKDJ like imagine you’re kinda plain but a nice guy overall and you’re dating the girl of your dreams and everything is chill 🤩 but then one day you meet the boy she considers her “little brother” and not only is he very obviously in love with, her he’s the star of a famous soccer club’s youth team, he’s super smart/good at school, and as if all of that isn’t enough, he’s very obviously incredibly tall and handsome 😭 if it were me i’d crash out fr

IT’S LITERALLY EITHER DISNEY-ESQUE SIBLINGS OR AZULA AND ZUKO FROM ATLA 😭 yayoi and tabito/seiko and eita putting in the WORK to properly represent sibling dynamics 😩

HAHAHA he has all of his outfits laid out on the bed and he’s like “hmm what should i wear” and he starts trying them on and gets carried away picking the perfect outfit so that by the time y/n gets there he’s still undecided so he’s like “ok boxers it is!!”

placing my trust in the epinagi artist tbh 😓 he’s much more relevant there than the main manga (unless?? he does smth relevant in bm vs pxg perhaps??) so maybe they’ll come out with smth of his in the next chapter that’s header worthy…we can only hope

THEEEE MAN OF ALL TIME FKFHDJS it’s inexplicable rlly…also every time i see a panel of him from epinagi i scream anew because he’s just so so gorgeous AHDHDHSJ i will def lyk if i need some ideas to kickstart my thinking ☝🏻 i am very picky when coming up with plots for longfics though because i refuse to even write them without having a satisfying ending in mind first so it becomes a very annoying process that i don’t want to subject you to 😔 i do think i have a title in mind already though!! which is how yk it’s serious…

AWW you’re my tumblr bestie hehe and YES smaus are always ridiculous but so fun i even read them for characters i’m not super into!! crack in general is just so entertaining…as much as i am an angst lover it’s fun to throw some crack into the mix every now and again

idk why but ness is just someone i’m kinda unaffected by?? maybe because the bllk cast is so so big and i’m reaching my threshold of how many characters i can care abt at once…however i should be careful saying that because next thing you know i’ll be writing a ness fic or smth 😰 but YESSS THE CHARMANDER HAD ME TEARING UP AS A KID pls i was so sad abt it…the whole ash and charmander -> charizard dynamic too was hilarious 😭 so many fond memories of the pokémon anime (me having a crush on brock af…also why is brock lowkey just a barou x otoya love child LMAOAAO)

#answered asks

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grieverled-moved · 2 years ago

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Me as I rattle in my little jail cell to tell you what I know I keep saying 🧍🏻 anyways I first started following you wayyyyy back when you were first starting to write Leon and it's because I had a habit of letting people follow me first, checking out their page and deciding if I could see myself interacting and I'm so glad I did!! Anyways not important!!

Well yes important but not the point, I figured you seemed nice enough and from what I saw of your writing you put a lot of thought and care into your portrayals and so I was like "yeah okay!!" And then we briefly interacted a little bit, I think as Leon and Piers? I can't remember exactly because it's been like a year and a half and we're always switching it up, but I remember mentioning wanting to pick Luis back up because I stopped writing him (for some stupid reason probably idk) and there you were!!! In my comments being excited for me to make his side blog and willing to interact and it was that push that made me make him and put more thought into him other than just "hehe traumatized flirty Spanish man" and from there on I've just stuck around with every muse you write because it's always a delight and so so refreshing to see your spin on muses.

I can happily say I'm so glad we met and started interacting because you really are so much more than a writing partner to me, I follow you here on Squall for two reasons, the first being you write him!!! I wanna write with whoever you let me write with because I love writing with you, even if I don't know the character which is a bonus because I get to learn about someone new and I get to listen to you gush, the second being the fact that Zack's stupid ass got so ridiculously attached to Squall because of our interactions and mans is just sticking around to be annoying and supportive.

This got hella long but!!! Love ya lots Sol, I wanted to amp up the positivity because we in a mushy kinda mood today.

MUSHY MOOD ALL AROUND YEAH—- I adore you sm and honestly, with both of us being shy as hell at the start, I’m glad we got over that enough to talk as often as we do now. I mean it when I say I’m thankful I can call you a friend, a close enough one that I feel comfortable rambling to about anything and everything when it strikes me without feeling like I’ll bore you or something. It’s rare to feel that kinda comfort and honestly, you’re a gem for being able to put up with all the constant angsty feels I yeet at you.

I’m so glad there’s that freedom to interact with any muses between us, because if I’m being honest, you’re just that rare kinda writer that makes everything fun to read and write with, someone who I can write many different stories with no matter the muse. You bring your characters to life in such a unique way — I’m not kidding when I say your writing blows me away and a lot of the time I’m only slow with our things because you inspire me to want to give my all and not give back a half-assed reply.

Your muses are tackled in every angle, from the softer vulnerable sides, to the more angstier underbellies, to even crack like with Luis being teased about being a beanpole or his love of novellas, to even those heart wrenching threads with his past being skimmed over with his son. You aren’t afraid to tackle any topic no matter how dark or angsty and gritty, and you always do it so respectfully well in a way that makes your characters feel like real people with human emotions and thoughts and flaws. I really do admire you for that because it’s not easy to get so deep into a muses thoughts and head that you portray them so well!

As for being there to hype you up, I am so glad I did because tbh, you’ve made him such an enjoyable character for me, I see Luis and I go instantly feral because of your portrayal specifically and how well you wrote him. IT IS THE SAME THOUGH - I remember when I first picked up Leon, not many gave him a chance and it meant the world when you were willing to write and develop him with me. Ultimately, I came for Piers, stayed for Luis, and have been there to write with Miriam, Alucard, Claire and Jill a bit, Kyojuro and Obanai ( I am sorry Sanemi wasn’t peeking enough to get to write with him when he was awake, FINGERS CROSSED WE CAN WRITE AGAIN IN THE FUTURE FOR EM IF OUR KNY MUSES WAKE UP ), and now Zack 💕💕💕

I know next to nothing about ff7 but here you are making me love this character and get invested in his world because of our chatting and threads so far. That’s talent and your passion for him is contagious! Can honestly say that Squall is beyond fond of your Zack already too, and I’m excited to see what they get up to in future threads because it’s been so much fun to see these two idiots interact so far. I adore you so so much Ganna and I’m so glad you’re a friend I have in my life today still.

I hope we can write together for a long long time! 🫂💕

#I AM STILL SCREAMING CAUSE SOMEHOW YOU MANAGED TO WAKE SQUALL UP AFTER HE WAS ASLEEP FOR MONTHS ON END 😭💕💕💕#So thanks for that!!!#╰┈➤ OOC RAMBLES. ( … ) SOL SCREECHES.#╰┈➤ POSITIVITY. / SILVER LININGS . . .#╰┈➤ MEMORIES. / ARCHIVED REPORTS.#MYRISTICISMS

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years ago

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Fake Sith TCW Trio

I have another fucked up time-travel AU! Who’s surprised? (Nobody.)

So like. Have you guys read that one fic where Luke and his students go back in time and pretend to be Sith Lords and are super hammy about it? (Sith Lord Swell by AMournfulHowlInTheNight)

This AU has contributions by @atagotiak, @the-lunar-system, @purronronner, @gelpenss, @creepingthroughthistidalwave, and @thisarenotarealblog.

I want TCW trio (plus Rex and Cody) to go back to several years pre-TPM and, since the Council DEFINITELY won't believe them about the Sith being back... they'll force the issue.

Anakin is weirdly excited about things and building up their backstory.

Anakin: Okay so I can definitely be a Maul type, with the unhinged ranting and manic laughter, Obi-Wan can be the whole Refined Rich Guy type like Dooku, where you can't even tell he's evil until he starts talking about getting out the eyeball scoops, maybe toss in a bit of mad science stuff? Ahsoka could play up like Ventress OR, oh oh, she can be the Light Side Child we need to PROTECT who's publicly begging us to return to the Light after our big dramatic Falls where we murdered like eighty people to save her, and-- Obi-Wan: Why are you never this enthusiastic about actual undercover missions. Ahsoka: Did you just have all this ready to go, or...? Anakin: WE COULD GET YELLOW CONTACT LENSES FOR ME.

Obi-Wan: How's my evil laugh?

Anakin going “Okay.. so if any of us need to murder someone to sell the bit it should be me, I think I could handle it the best. Why? No reason.”

Obi-Wan: I'm not sure a complete Fall could come from protecting Ahsoka, really-- Anakin: No, no, it could.

Obi-Wan: Surely you’d hold back because you realize neither of us want that for you. Anakin: Uh. Sure. Definitely.

Obi-Wan points out that none of them can channel the dark side to Prove they're Sith and Anakin just goes "Okay, give me like two seconds to stew in my negativity and--right, you can stop staring in horror, please."

Anakin rambles on that they can TOTALLY make the galaxy a better place while playing at being Sith! He's got a whole LIST of slave empires to "take over" and disassemble!

Anakin has a whole excited spiel about how EVIL soldiers and assistants are minions, in this case partly because Cody and Rex are too good at what they do to be mooks. Cody could pull off evil minion very well. Facial scar? Looks good in black? Quietly competent and sarcastic?

He also pushes for Obi-Wan to lounge in a fancy throne with a glass of wine while Anakin stalks the shadows and Ahsoka hangs out on the window ledge. The disaster lineage is dramatic, okay, Anakin’s just leaning into it, he’d appreciate it if everyone stopped looking at him like that.

Qui-Gon, surprisingly, ends up a skeptic about all of this. Everyone is freaking out about the Sith and he’s like “y’know I’m not even sure they’re darksiders.”

Some Jedi, possibly Qui-Gon for his conspiracy board, gets in a real risky situation and one of the Fake Sith saves them, but also panics and kinda drops character for a bit.

Jedi: You saved me! Why’d you do that? Anakin: I uh... just wanted the pleasure of killing you myself?

"You saved me. Why?" "Mmmm. Jedi." [walks away]

Qui-Gon: [trying to figure out what is up with these people semi-competently (from his perspective) pretending to be Sith] Dooku: [trying to protect Qui-Gon from Sith influence]

The gang is the most successful at pretending to be Sith to Dooku. Sure, they’re not gonna punish him for something he hasn’t done, but it’s not hard to act menacing and angry around him.

(They really do have so much fun irritating the heck out of Dooku. He hasn’t Fallen yet, but they want to keep an eye out.)

At some point, future Obi-Wan definitely drops that little tidbit of "What, you didn't think the Banites were the only Sith running around did you? You... didn't even know about the Banites. How... disappointing."

They REGULARLY use Ahsoka as an excuse to be marginally less terrible. They claim that if Ahsoka pouts, they stop. ‘Soka also uses them as an excuse for why she’s a lil feral. (To be fair, that one is accurate. She was already a lil feral before but it’s not like they did anything to stop it.) Ahsoka gets her "breaking into people's offices" jollies by bugging Nute Gunray's office.

The Jedi keep trying to Rescue Ahsoka.

Rex and Cody end up in real beskar, there's a whole Thing with Mandalore and Jango and Satine.

Obi-Wan is CONSISTENTLY worried about Anakin Falling for real, which... hey, at least he knows to be worried about Anakin Falling. Step up from canon, really.

Anakin is WAY too into killing the Hutts but like. It does... technically sell the bit.

Obi-Wan: Sure, I’m not sad that they’re dead, especially because we’re not connected to the Republic, so we don’t need to worry about starting a war and all that. But. Anakin is disturbingly cheerful about this. Rex: Wasn't he a Hutt slave? Obi-Wan: Well yes, but-- Rex: I'd kill Nala Se if I could get away with it.

Cody and Rex are very supportive of Anakin's murderous intentions.

Obi-Wan does understand anger, even killing someone in anger. Like Maul (the first time at least) and D’nar and a few others. All the same, like... y’know. The level of bloodthirst from the others is a little off-putting.

At one point, Anakin accidentally addresses young Obi-Wan by name, despite never having met before, and to cover it up, he... panic-flirts. He panics, and so he flirts, with young Obi-Wan.

(He will later blame this on old Obi-Wan, because he had to pick up the habit of flirting with the enemy from somewhere.)

Anakin vaguely implies that he's a wee bit obsessed with young Obi, and that the padawan should "get used to being the target of a dark-sider's interests," because he’s scrambling for Ominous Shit and, well, future Obi-Wan was pretty frequently a fixation point for darksiders, right?

The second he gets out, he just starts screaming into a bucket while Rex pats him on the back.

For the next however many terrible months, possibly years, he has to keep up the act while having an ongoing meltdown about how That's My Dad As A Twenty-Something.

(It doesn't help that young Obi-Wan reflexively flirted back.)

Old Obi-Wan, meanwhile, is just very "you dug this hole yourself, padawan."

There is an argument at the beginning about Obi-Wan’s outfit. If he’s gonna be a Sith, he can’t just go around in beige, but he’s like “I like this and it’s comfy.” Sure, he’s changed clothes for undercover stuff, but that’s always been temporary, y’know? He likes his beige.

We have a number of options.

My first instinct? Beige linen three piece suit, like a southern lawyer. "Now I may just be a simple Outer Rim force adept--"

And, of course, you can TOTALLY make the beige sinister: he’s impersonating a Jedi! Jedi impersonation would also explain why nobody has a red saber.

“Sure is good that the Jedi don’t seem to realize most of the galaxy doesn’t know red sabers are different and bad.” “Shhhh, stop poking holes in our story where a Jedi might overhear.”

Like.... if you do enough doublethink, it works! How would a Sith hide? In plain sight. Also, it’s a GREAT way (if they were actually assholes) to try to slander the Jedi name.

(Anakin and Ahsoka still think he could stand to put a little more effort in. Add a splash of color, for pity's sake!)

Though tbh part of me is like “What if Old Obi wore, like... a split skirt suit...” Victorian womenswear inspired because he misses his robes, but he has to look Professional, and like he's MOCKING Jedi instead of BEING one, so he wears a vintage-y split skirt thing over his leggings. Ends up looking a lot like what Ventress had for a while, but Beige. I also keep wanting to put him regency menswear.

Anyway. Obi-Wan’s wardrobe aside...

Anakin builds up his Tatoo accent again. It helps him with the (mostly true) "slavery helped me fall" backstory.

Either Cody or Rex offhandedly mentions being made to serve them (the Fake Sith) and now the Jedi are somewhat concerned about brainwashing. Are these Mandos the victims here?

“No like. Literally made for this. In a lab.” This is even more horrifying. So...

On the one hand good! The Jedi should be scared about Sith! On the other hand... it makes the Jedi more determined to stop them, specifically. They keep on getting in the way, just, all the time, and they’re not investigating the actual Sith problem, which is decidedly not great since the Team doesn’t actually know who’s a real Sith right now, except Maul, and who even knows where that guy is.

Obi-Wan, at some point: Do you think we've succeeded at this ruse... a little TOO well? Anakin: I don't follow. Obi-Wan, gesturing at the truly obnoxious amount of wealth they've collected, including "trophies" of their kills: Really? Because I'm a little worried! Anakin, planning out a battle to take on Nar Shadda: ...I'm not.

"How many people do we realistically we need to take over Hutt Space? Apparently... five."

(Mostly because Anakin is ridiculously op.)

ANAKIN AND YOUNG OBI GET KIDNAPPED BY PIRATES TOGETHER. It's tradition.

Anakin: Okay, so, I need to get really angry about something to pass as a Sith... time to think about my WIFE and how I'll NEVER SEE HER AGAIN.

Since Anakin’s life never goes as planned... this does not work. Instead of getting properly angry, he makes himself sad. There are tears. There is wailing. There’s a distraught rant or two. Young Obi ends up awkwardly trying to comfort him.

“Oh no, this… Sith?? Is crying on me. What do I do???”

Later on, when the Council wants intel: "So... one of the Sith cried on me about his wife. I think she's dead? He wasn't very clear about it but it, uh... it sounded like it might have contributed to his Fall. Also the relationship was a little unhealthy? He basically worshiped the ground she walked on and kept ranting about how he would have given her the galaxy on a platinum platter of she'd only asked, but that might be new and inspired by the Dark."

One of the random Jedi is REALLY good at detecting the truth Through The Force, and asks Anakin how he Fell...

Anakin just. Tells the Tuskens story.

They don't get pinged as lying, but oh boy does old Obi have a LOT of questions for Anakin once they're in private.

There are other things happening to help sell the ruse. Some of them are necessary! Some of them are... not.

Obi-Wan: What's the best way to show we're rich and kind of evil, but like... classy about it? Anakin, immediately: I sit on the floor next to the throne, leaning against it, and you call me pet names while stroking my hair, and then when you need something killed I get to do it for you and then I go back to the floor and you thank me for the directed violence, and then you go back to Negotiations with criminals while I’m sitting there covered in blood. Obi-Wan: ...is there something you want to TELL us, or...?

"You're all going to get a glimpse of something normally kept hidden about me." "Anakin, you don't have to do that." "No, I'm gonna."

(Anakin has decided hes going to peel his kink tomato to sell this ruse, and the others are slightly uncomfortable with that.)

Anakin: Okay, I cannot keep flirting with you. Young Obi: Wait, what? But that's the best part of any time we run into you! Anakin: You look WAY too much like my Master did when I met him. Obi: O...kay? If someone looked like my master when HE was young, I'd-- Anakin: My Sith Master half-raised me. He's basically my dad. Obi: ... Anakin: What's that look for? Obi: I mean, you spend a lot of time lounging at his feet, and, like, given how much you hate slavery, I... kind of assumed it was a kink thing? Anakin, brightly: Oh no, I just have a LOT of trauma. And neuroses. Snips says they’re neuroses.

Young Obi is a little upset because he was actually getting REALLY into Flirting With The Enemy and was hoping it would go somewhere. He mopes to Qui-Gon about it. Qui-Gon isn't sure whether to be proud about Obi breaking rules, or worried over Obi-Wan falling for a Fake Sith.

(As Tia put it: "You enjoy making young Obi-Wan have a completely unrequited crush on Anakin, don’t you?")

Fortunately, one of those attractive Young Mando boys very kindly helped him tape up his ribs this one time, and has thus caught his eye...

I feel like having Cody date Young Obi would court an entirely different kind of (internet) drama because clone ages, but whatever.

Also please imagine an element of "so I'm dating the genetic identical of my boss... who's dating the man I'm a genetic identical of..."

(It's probably not actually Jangobi but man would that be funny and also stupid.)

Somehow Young Obi figures out that the "Sith Master" is a future him before he realizes that they're not actually dark. In his defense, Anakin was pretty convincing. Especially with the wife rant. It makes HIM more obsessed with Anakin, in a reversal of the implied earlier dynamic, which is all kinds of weird. Less romantic but like. Still weird.

"Future Me Scares Me" with Extra stupid. "Future Me Annoys Me." "Future Me acts like grandmaster Dooku, but more sass." "Future Me raised a really hot evil guy that refuses to bang Present Me." "Future Me might be a Sith, but I'm getting more and more convinced he's just fucking with us all." "Future Me is really rocking that beard, and I can't BELIEVE we figured out a way around the babyface."

"I’m kinda concerned about the whole evil thing, but I’m also glad that I know I’ll stay hot as I get older."

Quinlan approves of the priorities.

Also a lot of interactions with older Obi are very Anakin: [does/says something deeply unhinged] Obi-Wan: So, do you want to…. Talk about that? Maybe? Anakin: What’s there to talk about?? I’m fine, everything’s fine! Anyways how about those plans for tracking down Maul?

Anakin later, like way after the ruse is lifted, just blankly tells everyone that he did Fall, once, and Older Obi made him get therapy about it after the truth came out between the two of them a few months into the Fake Sith thing.

Where'd they find a therapist? I'm sure there's one SOMEWHERE around. Denon and Herdessa are close enough, and they've done enough "your criminal empire now belongs to me" that they can pay well. They make sure to find one that takes confidentiality real seriously.

It's all very "we need some more time to unpack all that."

Therapy helps get Anakin to figure out Sheev’s whole deal. They don't necessarily figure out he’s a Sith from it, but they figure out he’s sketchy and they need to look into that more. Obi-Wan probably already thought he was sketchy, but the whole active gaslighting campaign was a little surprising. They realize that he kinda benefited a lot from a lot of Sith plots and they still probably don’t think he’s a Sith but Obi-Wan is definitely starting to think he’s working with one.

"Okay, we're already bugging Gunray, should we bug Palpatine just to be safe?"

They get away with a lot of slicing because Anakin is a technical genius from twenty years in the future.

The reasons they're so good at Taking Over Hutt Space: 1. They know parts of the future. 2. They have superpowers and FAR less reason to not use them, now that their actions aren't going to reflect on the Republic. 3. They have Cody and Rex, who are two of the greatest military minds in the galaxy, and know EXACTLY how to wage a war that covers a solid third of the galaxy, starting from a position of relative weakness. 4. Anakin's charisma is scary high, and his knowledge of slave culture means they gain a lot of trust from the people they free, and they just... keep acquiring volunteers for the army they didn't plan to have. Obi-Wan doesn't know what to do. He thinks they might have started a cult?

In his defense, Dooku sort of started a cult, and Komari got kidnapped by a cult, brainwashed into joining it properly, and then took it over as head figure of said cult. It's practically tradition!

Comics Vader is the central figure of like three different cults, it was really just inevitable.

Anakin: Aw, don't worry master, it's not a cult, it's a revolution! Ahsoka: They're worshiping him, though. Anakin: ...it's still a revolution! Just... with some misunderstandings.

Also, if they got wind of people trying to keep people from being able to leave and other culty stuff like that, they’d probably put a stop to it pretty damn quick.

Names! Time for names. As per usual, it's easiest to keep track of Obi-Wan's alternate Older Self by just calling him Ben.

Darth Ben.

Ahsoka: You should be Darth Boring. Obi-Wan: I can still make you run laps, you know.

Anakin: The Force is telling me to call myself Darth Vader. Obi-Wan: ...why? Anakin: I dunno, but it sounds cool, I'll run with it.

Someone: Ben has all the answers; we shouldn’t question him, ever. Ben: One time I lost a planet, and a five-year-old found it for me.

More options: Going with the "evil word with the prefix 'in' chopped off" that we get with Sidious and Vader: Darth Surrectus (as in insurrection) Just random Latin words: Darth Temporus (time) Darth Commenticius (fake)

Anyway, back to Nonsense:

Maul goes after young Obi early, because the Fake Sith are really invested in this one random Padawan (Sidious is saying he might be a cousin of the false Sith Master? They do look similar enough) so someone needs to investigate. Naturally, Anakin shows up with some wild screeching to fight Maul, and when someone questions why he got involved it gets very "Kenobi is MINE!" and like. Okay. So.

Anakin means it in a very Sith "to toy with" and "to torture" way, or the ‘my chosen opponent!’ way, just the same kind of Obsession as Maul had with Obi-Wan in the original timeline. Unfortunately, Anakin’s a weird-ass person who flirts with Young Obi against his own better judgement, so there's some awkward "Like... your boyfriend?" from young Obi. Anakin just screeches in SOME emotion that nobody wants to interpret, and couldn't even if they wanted to, and starts whacking away at Maul again.

(Anakin hasn't explained the "you look exactly like my dad, sorry, it's just too weird" thing yet, and he is HAVING MANY REGRETS.)

There's definitely at least one instance where a person asks Anakin if he's planning on dating That One Jedi Twink, or at least banging out the tension. At that point in time, Anakin doesn't actually know who the fuck they're talking about, because "Obi-Wan + Twink = Does Not Compute" for dear, dense Ani, and instead he just ends up ranting about how he is LOYAL TO THE MEMORY OF HIS LATE WIFE, how DARE anyone so much as INSINUATE that he would TARNISH HER PERFECT MEMORY and UNWAVERING KINDNESS and WHOLESOME BEING, and the person who asked doesn't end up lightsabered but they do end up with a LOT to tell whoever they're reporting to.

Young Obi-Wan definitely hears Anakin mutter the phrase “something to discuss with my therapist later” a few times, and he’s a little bewildered because darksiders definitely don’t seem like the type of people to go to therapy. They’re the type of people to need therapy, sure, but not the type to go to therapy.

I think it would be very fun for Young Obi to continue sighing over Anakin (who's pretending to be fine with it and even flirting back because he's in too deep to stop and hasn't worked up the courage to explain the elephant in the room) while Anakin is covered in grease and infodumping while having a slightly manic hyperfocus on engine repairs while the two of them Somehow got stranded together in the middle of bumfuck nowhere (it's Plagueis's doing, he finds the interactions between THESE two in particular to be the most informative regarding the fake Sith).

Anakin, at some point while stranded with young Obi-Wan, and having actually started unpacking some stuff in therapy, though he’s def still got a ways to go: I’m pretty sure Ben cares about me. He acts like he cares, like he’ll do stuff like put extra blankets in my quarters in the spaceship because I get cold real easily or track down those droid parts I need for a project and he always has my back in a fight but y’know it’d be nice to hear him say he loves me once in a while. Especially because we kinda had a rough start and idk I don’t think he wanted me around at first.

And uh. Obi-Wan definitely relates to that a bit too much, y’know?

I want to say that Young Obi ends up mentioning All That to one of the clones or Ahsoka later, because they seem probably invested in Anakin's well-being, even if Ben is, well, a Sith, so Obi-Wan's a little worried the man's affection really is fake, but at least Ahsoka...

(Ironic, given what Anakin's actual eventual Sith would-be-Master was like.)

Young Obi mentions Anakin’s most recent rant to Ahsoka, and she just goes "Wait, is that why Skyguy likes to sit by the throne and get called pet names?" "Uh... I don't... know... but it sounds like all of you have a LOT to unpack there, Miss Apprentice."

Later on: "Master Kenobi, you need to tell Skyguy you love him 'cause apparently he's been having a lot of emotions about you not telling him you care and he's been talking to mini-you about it whenever they get stuck together and--"

Young Obi-Wan is just constantly the "Now we don't have time to unpack all of that" John Mulaney gif. Anakin in particular is a mess, and young Obi-Wan slowly goes from "I want to date that" to "I want to study that" about him.

Obi-Wan gets stuck somewhere with Ben, tries to small talk, gets on the topic of Vader, and spills the drama. He gets an awkward “Thank you for bringing that to my attention.”

It’s followed by a fairly frustrated “I try, but Anakin refuses to communicate his needs to me, and it feels like I’m always falling short.”

At least one member of the group is in therapy, probably all of them, but they’re still using young Obi as a sounding board for all this stuff. On the bright side, this is probably good for impressing the importance of good communication on Obi-Wan.

Good for Obi-Wan! And... whatever Padawan he eventually has.

As for baby Anakin, who is approximately age four, I want to go with "Anakin decides to be his own uncle, and Shmi just rolls with it because fuck it, she’s not a slave anymore, and a Fake Sith is a solid defense against anyone trying to re-enslave them."

[This is a backstory I've had them use before (see here and here).]

Seeing Big Ani and Little Ani in the same space might be what finally pings the "oh shit, that's future me" thing for Obi-Wan... you know, if he’s ever allowed close enough to see Little Ani in the first place.

Little Ani stays with the fake-Sith and is sorta jointly trained by all of them, and young Obi-Wan teaches little 'Soka at the Temple. Ani and 'Soka still end up friends somehow, but it is fairly different.

Every time little Ani addresses Old Obi as "Dad," it's just like ten kinds of awkward. The one time someone tried to explain that Ben wasn't his new dad, Shmi glared them down. She is of the opinion that, all the gods be damned, Ani deserves to refer to the most mature man in his life, who raised another him in another timeline already, as a father.

Ani doesn't NEED a father, Shmi herself is more than enough, but he does deserve to have this if he wants it.

An alternative conclusion to the time travel is uh. So the Mandalorians are genetically identical (give or take a hair gene) and really resemble Jango Fett, though whether anyone notices that is up in the air. Then the three ‘Sith’ (two fake Sith and their morality chain tag-along) have three younger, identical copies show up….

It could be really weird cloning shenanigans. Now, it makes no sense that they’d make clones, and stagger their production like that, and leave them as babies on various planets for Jedi to find. IDK what reasons Obi-Wan would come up with for that, but it’s a fun little detour before he gets to time travel.

There's a really painful moment (for the audience, who know about canon Vader) where someone tries to convince Ahsoka to leave the Sith and she's just like "no way, they'd never hurt me!” Then she clarifies that “someone has to keep them from doing stupid Sith shit whenever they get bored, you know?"

A bunch of Jedi probably think she’s delusional, but the few that have seen her get into trouble that is legitimately too much for her, which isn't often, have then seen Anakin show up like the devil himself to save her, and it's like. Oh. This is why she isn't scared of them hurting her.

We’ve discussed how Anakin does get concerningly in character with the fake Sith thing. However, Anakin and Ahsoka are, just once in a while, surprised by how Ben gets sometimes when playing the bad guy.

After all, he stabbed a dude with a fork and threatened to eat him during his time as Hardeen…

He has the same dramatic streak as all the rest of the lineage. He can be vindictive and creepy and scary as fuck.

HOWEVER:

Obi-Wan: I know I'm supposed to be playing at evil right now, but how do we feel about me making that evil a little... fruity? Ahsoka: Fruity, master? Anakin, who knows where this is going: [buries face in hands] Obi-Wan: You know, the... [limp wrist] Ahsoka: ... Obi-Wan: I mean, I'm already bisexual and well-groomed, I can play it up.

What’s the point of being evil if you can’t be flamboyant?

Anyway, I had to put in a lot of thought for what to do with Rex and Cody, because there's a solid place for them in terms of strategy, but it doesn't do much to give them independent narrative arcs, and 'young Obi-Wan has a crush' isn't much of an arc, you know?

So, basic info first: Cody, Rex, and Anakin all hold the rank of General in this AU because, like... who else is gonna. Ahsoka remains a commander because everyone declares her Baby, and also to keep up the "I'm a morality chain" ruse.

Cody maintains a very stern and unyielding public persona, but the second they're behind closed doors, he's roughhousing with his little brother.

Rex has some fun pretending to be a sadist whenever he and Anakin have to team up, because hamming it up as an evil bastard in front of Jedi is actually really fun... but usually, he's a competent fucking professional.

Because here's the thing: someone has to be.

They both kind of hate the army they've gotten, because these people don't even have proper trigger discipline, let alone any actual discipline.

This army? Tragic. They hate it. Give them the clones.

They have to be drill sergeants for months before they have anything worth sending onto the field.

I think that might be how/when they end up reaching out to Jango. Like, the first inroad is absolutely "we're your clones from the future and you were a Shit Dad so you owe us," but then they actually talk him around into letting the Fake Sith hire him. He brings along all the Mandalorians he can get to answer his calls, and on suggestion from Those Mando Twins, joins the army Ben doesn't even want.

Darth Boring doesn't want an army! Unfortunately, Cody thinks that's stupid as hell, and is overruling Ben so they can actually work on this 'cleaning up the galaxy of slavery' thing with actual resources.

Cody and Rex are super competent, and it shows in their horrified disdain for the state of their troops.

Rex: Fucking natborns. Anyone who isn't in the know: What's a natborn? Rex: [leaves without answering] People: WHAT'S A NATBORN???

(I'm assuming that the word smush is harder to parse in Basic.)

I think young Obi-Wan's new crush on Cody should also be unrequited. Cody's just like... bemused. Very "Okay, then, that sure is an Affection you've decided on."

Cody and Anakin both: Sorry, it’d just be too weird. Obi-Wan: Why would it be too weird? Cody and Anakin: Reasons.

Rex has to deal with the "whyyyyy" from both his brother and his (former?) General.

Young Obi-Wan just likes cute boys that fight good! Is that so wrong???

Ahsoka: So since we're not officially Jedi anymore-- Obi-Wan: We're still Je-- Ahsoka: Can we date? Can I date now? I want to date someone before we go back to the Code. It's a classic life experience for most teenage girls, and I want to Have That Experience before we're back at the Temple. Obi-Wan: You're not... you can date, Ahsoka, that's not actually banned by the Code. I mean, you'd have to keep it casual, but-- Ahsoka: I CAN DATE!!!

(Great priorities, Ahsoka.)

An idea I'm toying with is that one of the clones ends up Legally Engaged to Satine for political reasons, and young Obi-Wan is just like ???? because not only can he not date the hot boys, but one of said hot boys has become Mr. Steal Yo Girl.

Young Obi-Wan is suffering, and Quinlan is the worst friend ever because Quinlan is laughing at him.

There is obviously the question of

"How would Satine ever end up agreeing to that, given what their public personas are like and all that? She puts duty ahead of personal feelings but all indications are that it’s a terrible decision both ways." (as stated by Tia)

Which, yes, I forgot to actually say that I was imagining Jango had declared "those twins" his heirs after telling people they were his younger* cousins. Because reasons.

* Jango is about 27 when they land in the past, and I’m going to say the accelerated aging ended after hitting physically twenty because no, I don’t want to deal with that. As far as anyone knows, Cody and Rex are about five years younger than Jango. They’re less than year apart, which isn’t very visible, and most people assume they’re identical twins (except Rex’s hair), and that Cody just looks slightly older because of the scar.

Darth Boring had convinced Satine that the way to keeping Mandalore peaceful was to work with Jango (because Darth Boring, which is not his actual title but it is what Ahsoka insists on calling him in private, has a vested interest in keeping Mandalore and all interested parties calm), and he... maybe accidentally set up a political marriage between her and one of the clones.

It wasn't on purpose! Satine never married in his timeline, okay, he didn't expect her to ever get married here, either! He didn't even suggest it! This just happened!

(I want to say that Cody would be more competent at having a political marriage? But IDK.)

Do I do the Satine thing? It has potential, but also it's a bit of a cop-out. Do I have Cody be a diplomatic representative for their pseudo-Sith empire? He could be, but I think he'd hate it. Do I have Rex date one the Chaos Entities (Anakin or Ahsoka), or is that too repetitive with my other works? THERE'S JUST TOO MUCH GOING ON.

Part of me wants Quinlan to get a crush on Cody, and the crush gets bigger specifically in response to the fact that Cody refuses to take him seriously and/or just doesn't give him the time of day.

Based on their one interaction in TCW, they probably let get along ok. Cody maybe likes him back, buuuuuuut internally he's just a little "you were tolerable at almost-forty; early twenties you is obnoxious."

Just imagine the absolutely puppyish attempts at gaining approval and Impressing The Hot Mando General. Quinlan keeps having vague daydreams of seducing someone to the side of the Light. He really leans into the bodice ripper fantasies of saving someone evil with the power of love! (And also the power of really good sex.)

Bant looks at Quin and Obi and wants to throw them both into the nearest pond because they're idiots, but on this topic they are the same flavor of idiot. She considers calling up Reeft and Garen to help her knock some sense into them.

Quinlan: Can I volunteer to go undercover to the Sith? The Council: No. Quinlan: ...what if I-- The Council: No.

Tholme tries to get Qui-Gon to commiserate over their Padawans getting obsessed with Hot Sith Boys, but Qui-Gon just finds the whole thing funny. He knows from the chats he has with Ben that Anakin feels so completely, utterly, incredibly awkward about all of this.

(Ben continues to hold to "Anakin brought this on himself.")

(Ben also “kidnaps” Qui-Gon a lot.)

Also, hey, at least Quinlan isn’t actually into hot Sith boys! He’s into hot Sith minions which is... probably a step up. At least Cody’s not a Sith himself!

It's a step in some direction but Tholme has no idea which one.

(Quinlan sees Cody in dress uniform once and just keeps the mental image for Ages. It’s in his dreams. Sometimes said dreams overflow to Tholme via Force Mind Magic and Quinlan wakes up to someone smacking his face with a pillow.)

Arguably, Quin's also a lot more romantic about his crush than Obi-Wan is, in this case. Quinlan: I want to save him... Obi-Wan: Hey, hey, cute boy. Look at me. Let’s bang.

Cody: There are currently two future Jedi generals having some form of absurd romantic fixation in my direction. I don't know how to feel about this. Rex: Bed them. Cody: ...I'm not saying that's not eventually an option, but one of them is the younger Kenobi, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that. Rex: Pat him on the head like a tooka and then bed his friend, it'll be funny.

I think the Quinlan thing and also general exasperation of leading an absolutely useless army can function pretty solidly as the basis for Cody, but I have another idea for Rex now.

Komari is currently brainwashed in a cult, yes? So.

I keep bouncing around back and forth on what to do with Rex, but part of me suddenly really likes the idea of, after Team Fake Sith finds and dissolves the cult (as one does), and takes Komari into custody (because she's dangerous and deeply unwell), Rex kind of ends up her touchstone to being a decent person. He’s not a morality chain, and it’s not really a redeemed-through-love thing, just This Is A Solid Dude who doesn't pity her or thinks she's irredeemable (however you choose to define such a thing), but actually relates to the kind of conditions living like that can involve, and just kind of...

I don’t know. I think Rex's arc in this AU could be very heavily grounded in something to the effect of "You're not the worst darksider I've met. You're not the only person who was in a cult. You're not even the only former Jedi I know that's committed awful, horrible crimes. My question is just this: What are you going to do moving forward?"

Later Anakin: Wait, who do we know that was in a cult? Rex: What did you think Kamino was?

(Rex isn't as chill as he'd like her to think, but he's trying, and she's fairly reliant on the Force to understand emotions, and is currently in nullifying cuffs, so he can bluff.)

Komari needs someone solid and dependable to rely on for at least conversation, and I think Rex needs to feel needed.

I’m not sure if it’d be romance or friendship, but I think there's a solid basis to work with, potentially.

Per Tia:

One thing about Rex and shipping is like. If you want to do Rexwalker again that's fine, but if you're worried about repetitiveness but still want to like. Ship him in a non-political-convenience way. Rexsoka here actually would be different than your other stuff.

I'm trying to figure out if I can make it work because Ahsoka thematically fits very much into a little sister shaped hole here? She feels younger than in other works, despite not actually being younger than she is in, say, Commander Buir. In those other fics, she has some time alone to function and prove herself independently of Anakin and Obi-Wan.

I usually pluck Ahsoka out at sixteen if I'm pulling her from TCW, so she's got most of her competence but hasn't gotten quite all the trauma yet. Commander Buir, in particular, also has baby-shaped Anakin for contrast.

That said, I can see a decent source of narrative conflict in her wanting to experiment with romance and all that, and Anakin trying to tell her she's too young.

A year into this whole time-travel mess, she wants to give the dating thing a shot, and it spirals into "You were only two years older than me when you got married!"

I think I could build a plot out of Ahsoka wanting to do these things, and Anakin as an audience insert not quite processing that she's old enough to make these decisions. If she's choosing to date Rex, whose age works out as being close to hers when one takes into account Kamino fuckery, and whom she trusts absolutely, it’s arguably extra weird for Anakin to be upset with it.

"Senator Amidala was five years older than you, and you married her when you were nineteen and had only really known her for a week! I can go on a date with a guy we both know is one of the most trustworthy people alive if I want, Skyguy!"

I can definitely see Ahsoka getting annoyed with Anakin being overbearing and controlling at some point before that unrelated to romance, too. It’s not exactly a new fault of his.

My god, just imagine someone snidely asking Anakin "where's your little shadow?" and Anakin, being Himself and also a Fake Sith, has an emotional breakdown about how Ahsoka yelled at him for micromanaging her and not trusting her to make her own decisions in life and so she got herself a multi-month solo mission from Ben that Anakin isn't allowed to know any details about, and--

It's another one of those "oh, you have PROBLEMS problems with your mental health" incidents for the Jedi to add to the file, because Anakin having emotionally charged rants about his issues at seemingly terrible times is how they get a lot of information.

Some of the rants are planned.

Many of them, actually.

They want the Jedi to know these things.

Just, well. Anakin.

He really is a little Like That.

On that note, I'm low-key imagining that Anakin gets put on mood stabilizers by the therapist in this context, and he's doing good! He's handling his issues! He's--been captured with Obi-Wan the Younger again and his medication was confiscated.

Anakin is... not great. He's a little out of practice managing his unmedicated self, and when adding withdrawal symptoms onto that... poor Anakin.

(Poor Obi-Wan.)

I think it would be best if Anakin makes a bunch of ominous blustery comments at their captors about how they won't like what's coming to them if they take his belongings (AKA the fanny pack that has his backup pills), and then Obi-Wan just gets to watch Anakin get more and more erratic, because like. Yes, Anakin is using the Force to compensate, but unfortunately he's mostly cut off, and the stress of the situation is pushing him away from depression and into the beginnings of a manic episode.

Anakin is aware of his issues to the point where he's mostly managing, and he keeps asking Obi-Wan "would it make sense for me to [slightly deranged, very impulsive action]," and Obi-Wan realizes he's being the morality sounding board for the Hot Sith because ??? reasons?????

Eventually, Anakin does flop back in bed and dramatically throws his arm over his eyes, and says he needs his meds back, he's absolutely going to lose it, and Obi-Wan tentatively asks what kind of medication. There are levels to worry about. Mild allergy medication is one thing, but heart medication that needs to be taken every four hours is another, you know? He wants to know how much panic is appropriate.

Anakin lets him know that it's Psychiatric In Nature. Obi-Wan suddenly realizes that he really, really, really doesn't want to know what a properly erratic, unmedicated Anakin is like.

(An unmedicated Anakin really isn't nearly as bad as Obi-Wan fears. Anakin's been dealing with this for a while, and knows what his issues are and some of how to deal with them. He'd need to be running on no sleep and higher levels of stress, or to have been drugged with something meant to increase his aggression, to really lose his shit and do something worthy of Vader. RotS levels of stress and sleep deprivation is required to pull RotS levels of manic paranoid delusion.)

Tia asked:

How long does it take the Jedi in general to catch on to how like. They have opportunities. But these Sith never seem to harm any Jedi. And it’s not just like, the past timeline parts of the disaster lineage. They probably get opportunities to hurt other Jedi. Ones that are less skilled at saber work. And more importantly ones that they don’t seem weirdly interested in."

I'm not sure, really. The Jedi don't spend as much time in the Outer Rim as they could, and that's where the Team operates, so actually running into them by accident is unlikely for anyone other than Shadows.

Fortunately, it's really easy to toy with Shadows with the excuse of "I want to see how long it takes before you Fall with us."

I do want like... okay. Here’s the mental image:

Qui-Gon calls them out on being Fake Sith pretty quickly, so Ben just sort of eyes him, dramatically, and orders out "Leave us" to all non-team people. The threat of torture is implied but not stated. He gestures with wine to keep in character. He definitely makes sure Young Obi-Wan is ushered out, so it's just five time travelers, Qui-Gon Jinn, and Ahsoka's immortal force birb.

"...so, what's the reason for the farce, Obi-Wan?" "How in all the hells did you figure it out so quickly?"

(Qui-Gon cheated a bit. He could feel the broken training bond that was never properly severed due to Traumatic Death Of A Master on Ben's end)

Ben didn't realize he'd feel it! Young Obi-Wan can't feel his older self or a training bond with Anakin or Ahsoka, so why could Qui-Gon?

IDK if there would be anything on the level of crying and hugging it out, but I think it would be very funny if, every time young Obi and Anakin are getting captured by pirates or something, Ben and Qui-Gon are just having a nice afternoon tea and checking their watches to see if their respective walking bundles of neuroses are done with their adventure yet.

The Council is So Done, because Qui-Gon continues to insist that they're Not That Bad, but every time anyone other than Qui-Gon brings up the friendship, Ben laughs and makes a comment about how absolutely gullible Master Jinn is.

Obi-Wan is skeptical of his own experiences with Anakin, at least, if only because he's skeptical about Anakin's everything.

"I don't know if Vader is telling me the truth. I don't know if he's telling himself the truth. I don't think he's a great source of information even when he thinks he's being honest."

Anakin could tell Obi-Wan the full and complete truth, and Obi-Wan would worriedly put a hand to his forehead and start doing tests for hallucinations and paranoid delusions. In his defense, this is a very reasonable assumption to make with an individual like Anakin. It's just also not accurate, this time. I don’t know if Anakin hallucinates in canon without a weird inciting incident like Force Nonsense or getting drugged by the enemy, but paranoid delusion is pretty much all of RotS.

"I’m your time-traveling padawan who’s pretending to be a Sith to catch some other Sith who’re going to start a galactic civil war and those Mandalorians you like are from a clone army based on a template of Jango Fett made to serve the Jedi (because that’s totally something he’d sign up for), and one of the Sith is your grandmaster but he doesn’t seem to have fallen yet, it’s probably fine," is hard to believe.

Honestly, even if he seemed stable before saying that, which he doesn’t, it’s all real far fetched. There's a lot going on and Obi-Wan wouldn't even begin to believe it without evidence.

I've had it in my head that he and Bant and Quinlan have been gossiping about the mess for months if not years about these idiots, and at one point it became common knowledge that Ben was a Kenobi, and Bant convinced them (since the two were among the most likely in the entire Order to encounter the Fake Sith) to get a DNA sample, probably hair or blood since that's easiest so they can figure out HOW these two are related, if they are, and then there's a whole big thing.

Bant: No, no, this must be contaminated, it's coming up as Obi-Wan! Are you sure you didn't accidentally grab some of your own hairs? I know it's a little long for most of your hair, but the braid-- Quinlan: Wait, they keep claiming stuff about cloning, right? Maybe someone's a clone? Check for artificial telomeres! Bant: ...okay, so, there aren't any artificial telomeres, but the ones from apparently-Ben are... a lot shorter... um... I don't know what to do with this. It's like I have two samples from the same person, twenty years apart. Quinlan: Obi-Wan, what's that face? Why are you-- Obi-Wan: Vader told me he was a time-traveler. I thought it was the fever talking, but...

That’s how he finds out that Ben is future-him before finding out about how he’s not evil!

"Master Jinn... I think... I think the Sith controlling the Outer Rim is me from the future." "Oh, you finally figured it out?" "I AM HAVING A CRISIS HERE."

Obi-Wan, after a few hours of dazed realization, runs screaming to Quinlan and Bant like 'GUYS GUYS THIS EXPLAINS WHY VADER KEPT SAYING IT WAS WEIRD AND THAT I LOOK LIKE HIS MASTER AND THAT IT WOULD BE LIKE DATING HIS DAD.'

You know, the important stuff.

I think Qui-Gon tells him that Ben isn't evil because, like, That Sure Is A Crisis Obi-Wan's Having. He could hold off for shits and giggles, sure, but Obi-Wan’s on the edge of something Really Concerning, mentally. Best help calm him down on at least one or two things.

Obi-Wan’s maybe still a little skeptical until he confronts them over it. Because their Sith act was real good and also like. Maybe Qui-Gon just wants to believe the best of his Padawan, y’know?

Quinlan runs into Ben before Obi-Wan does, after this whole mess, and gets to observe as money changes hands and people act like sore winners about bets made for When Does Obi-Wan Figure It Out.

Anakin was saying 'soon' because he really didn't think the fever-fueled rant would be discounted as easily as it was.

Cody was of the opinion that it would take at least a few more years since they're actually pretty damn good at this whole schtick.

Quinlan: Wow, he's... going to be really disappointed that you have such a low opinion of his intelligence. Cody, gesturing at Ben: Experience. Darth Ben: ಠ_ಠ

Cody just rattles off some of the Extremely Stupid Shit that Ben's done in their time working together.

Rex cheerily offers up "You didn't even realize General Skywalker was married, sir! And they weren't subtle!" "I knew they were together, I just didn--" "Everyone knew they were together, sir. Everyone."

(Rex had the lowest opinion of their deductive capabilities. He claims it would have taken until Baby Ahsoka showed up at the Jedi Temple.)

-Once Obi-Wan accepts that they're decent people after all- Obi-Wan: Wow, Anakin, you're real good at acting unhinged! Anakin: Haha. Yeah. Thanks?

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