#There’s a few interesting background plot threads at times but it basically just turns into cuddling and going on dates and cuddling a…

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads / storygraph

Moonlight Love and Witchcraft

urban fantasy slice of life

romance between a vampire musician, their werewolf bartender girlfriend, and a young witch who shows up in town with her sister while on the run from their witch community

very little plot, she/they nonbinary MC, ace MC, bi MC

[nerimede]

Cognitio (2018). Short film review

Cognitio | 2018 | Denmark | screenplay and direction: Rebecca Emcken

Do you happen to watch short films? For me, it's usually the result of coming across this type of movie rather than targeted searching. After all, is it possible to build a bond between the viewer and the character in 20 minutes? Is this enough time to get carried away with the plot?

However, in the case of Cognitio I didn't ask myself these questions, because a few years ago an accidental click led me to watch it. Finding it again after years was a challenge. And since I searched so persistently, it means that the questions above can be answered in the affirmative.

Quoting the description:

The boy Tobias is hospitalized in a psychiatric institution. Here, he meets the boy Emil, a boy with an entirely different view on life and the situation he and Tobias is in. The two boys develop a close friendship that puts the mind and boundaries of Tobias to the test.

The strongest point of Cognitio is consistency, which is expressed in gentle suggesting. To achieve this, you need well-thought-out frames, dialogues, and sophistication.

The main plot is not about building the emotional relationship between characters; this thread pulsates on the second plan. I think this in itself makes the movie an interesting position between movies with the BL theme. Tobias doesn't share Emil's enthusiasm, who talks about girls time after time. A watchful eye will catch the boy's consternation and that he is not taking up the subject. These are indications, that he is not interested in the opposite gender. This is also suggested by the scene with his fantasy, where he imagines someone's touch. Although we only see close-ups of parts of the body, we have no doubt who this person is.

Consistency also manifests in the minimalist soundtrack used throughout the film. It is a repetitive voice and slow piano sounds. The background music appears even when teenagers get to know each other, when they smile, or during a liberating dance together. The feeling of coldness accompanies us also during these scenes, which are supposed to bring joy. I think this is the factor that allows you to connect with the main character and get into his emotions.

I'm pretty sure Emil was just a figment of Tobias' imagination. The reasons for this appear already in the psychiatrist's room. The camera leads us deep into the character's imagination, defining the plane on which we are. During the jealousy scene, the newly met man talks to Tobias but doesn't turn around when Emil butts in their conversation. When the orderlies enter Tobias' room to search it, they say Hey Tobias without mentioning Emil. After the sedative injection, Emil only appears next to Tobias for a while and then disappears; he goes away symbolically when the hallucinations subside. These are exemplary scenes from which you can pick up suggestions, directing you to the path of basic interpretation.

However, this is not the end. My mind craves for considering other possibilities as well. It is very interesting to approach the subject from different perspectives. Why? The structure of the film allows for this. By contemplating, we can wander into the deeper corners of the human psyche. If the gate remains open, I feel invited.

Let's assume that Emil really existed and he was in the hospital. How will the situations mentioned above apply to this? The newly met man could not turn around at Emil's words, because he simply ignored him. He had a reason for it because Emil had already shown his reluctance towards him during the scene on the lawn. When Emil interrupted their conversation at the table, the man left because he felt hostile. When the orderlies entered the room, they addressed their words only to Tobias. It is not said that they hadn't seen Emil before and didn't search his room. After the sedative injection situation, maybe Emil visited Tobias. However, he, being still half-conscious, could only have a fleeting sense of someone's presence. One thing is certain - if Emil existed, it would be difficult not to call him a possessive egoist. He wanted to bring Tobias down to keep him by his side.

The starting point for alternative considerations is the fact we don't know why Tobias ended up in a mental hospital. Perhaps because of the trauma associated with the one-sided feeling he had for a boy? We cannot exclude that Emil really existed in his life before the reality of the white walls. Now he could become a kind of flashback where Tobias got stuck. Maybe he processes the painful relationship over and over again, maybe under different characters that are products of his imagination. These, in turn, may be projections of fears that only unhappy love awaits him. After waking up, Tobias should be furious with Emil; but I get a distinct impression that he misses him. Or maybe he misses something that's over because he became a prisoner of the past?

You might say that Cognitio is about mental illness, but is it only about it? For me, it is also a metaphor for overwhelming loneliness, from which the only escape is our inner world - safe space - imagination.

In the end, I must praise the interesting form of the film: in less than 20 minutes they managed to include the compositional frame, and its closing part is also a plot twist.

Cognitio is worth watching at least twice. For the first time to let yourself be surprised. For the second time, to analyze the film anew, having the necessary knowledge. And here the short form turns out to be an undeniable asset.

Nerise Medetai

instagram.com/nerimede

[theregoesmylurkerstatus]

So... I have a lot of thoughts on the finale. I've deliberately kept my mouth shut, more or less, on the campaign overall because I'm a firm believer that you can't pass judgement -- at least not complete judgement -- on stories until they're over and done with.

Well, it's done! Kind of crazy. I've been watching Critical Role with almost insane consistency, viewing almost every single episode live, with maybe five-ish exceptions, since episode 19, and I've been blogging it for, what, two and a half years?

It's a weird feeling. It's been such a constant thing for me that I'm always gonna have love for it and remember with a lot of fondness.

...Which is in spite of the fact that I can now comfortably say I'm pretty eh on the ending. I know not being positive about something most of us have loved a lot for a very long time can sting a bit, but I personally think it also stings when people relentlessly crow over how good they think it is or want it to be, to the point where you feel you can't voice your absolutely valid upsets or dissatisfactions. So, here goes, if anyone's interested! I'd be curious to see other opinions, too!

I actually drafted a post talking about my overall frustrations with the campaign a whole two weeks ago, and then scrapped most of it when 140 blew me out of the water. I was really touched, and really happy. I hadn't expected it, but it shockingly felt right, you know?

Unfortunately 141 robbed me of most of that satisfaction and brought me right back to neutral.

The blanket statement you have to make, of course, is that you can’t criticise this as a DnD game, and you can’t be mad at the cast for playing it in a way they think is best for them. They’re the players, Matt’s the DM, and in the end it makes no sense for them to try to make themselves act how they think the audience wants them to, and I’m sure most of the audience wouldn’t like the result anyway.

That said, there is an audience. And that’s where I see this clash coming in. As a DnD game, as long as the players and DM have all enjoyed it and been satisfied, it’s a successful game! But for us, it’s not a DnD game. For us, we’re watching a story be written in real time through the medium of an RPG. And while as a DnD game you can’t fault it, as a piece of media, I completely get why the way things have gone has sat weirdly for a lot of people.

It's not satisfying to see so many character hooks dealt with so quickly or left as an offscreen "and then you do it." If they don't want to keep playing to dive into it, absolutely, but for us who have been watching this as a story with all these character elements get so built up, it's a huge anti-climax.

Which is a lot of what this campaign has been, really.

Oh, Nott’s cursed! But through a really cool character moment that problem is completely taken care of with no consequences we see. Yay, I want her to be Veth and that was an iconic move from Jester! Still, it kind of feels like this was built up to be a big problem and at the first success it was let go... Caleb's got a really intense frightening past he tries to hide, I wonder how the Mighty Nein will respond? Oh, they found out, but it's not a difficult revelation for anyone. Looks like it's easy for them to move past it and forgive. Yeah, that's healthiest for the characters, but huh, kinda undercuts it as a storyline or point of interest. Oooh, Avantika’s back! Ah, they’ve killed her and grabbed the eye again. I mean I don’t want them to die or for Uk’otoa to be free, but I’m starting to feel like that’s not much of a threat anyway. The Traveler’s been kidnapped! Nah he hasn’t, he tried to save Jester so he was let go with no further issue, and also he wasn’t actually in any danger anyway. Oh... Cool. So... Why should I care or be worried?

And these are just the biggest ones I remember being kind of let down by. I wanted to see them STRUGGLE for the successes to have meaning. To my view, threats of failure -- real failure -- really decreased the more the campaign went on, with a few exceptions.

Because don't get me wrong, we've definitely had struggles, and those have made for some of the best moments! Molly’s death, Yasha’s kidnapping, Yeza’s imprisonment. When failures that were threatened are allowed to occur, it’s far more gratifying when it’s followed by success, because you understand that that success was actually necessary. It shows us that what they do really means something.

Honestly, that's why the final battle really shut me up, because nothing makes you quite feel stakes and failure like having two PCs die, and having a resurrection ritual fail -- AND knowing that failure would be delivered on, had it not been for a seemingly miraculous roll of the dice to turn it around. One of the greatest failure's -- Molly's death -- made the success of his resurrection put a lot of my other issues to rest immediately, because to be honest? Molly's resurrection was the biggest success of the campaign, exactly because it was originally the biggest failure.

But this episode, we got to see the other side of making threats and successes feel disappointing -- when you get the impression that success was robbed from you. Again, their characters, their choices, but to have them roll an intervention to get Molly's soul, to convince Molly to come back with his own possessions they've so loved, after so long and so many struggles... only to apparently not get Molly at all?

Changed, of course. Memories, maybe he'd never get them back, though that seems inconsistent to how the initial resurrection was played and Matt's hints. It even makes sense that not having his memories and being a bit different, he might forge a new identity, but insisting Molly was a different person entirely after such a supposed hard won success to get Molly back, especially after what his death meant to the audience and potentially healing that old wound? It robs the narrative of a LOT of catharsis, at least for me and I know many others.

Trent, too, I'm very up and down on. He was so built up -- and what fun that build up had -- and I very much disagreed with the idea that the best story would be dealing with him offscreen.

It's true that you don’t need to explicitly address, confront, or explore every big aspect of character's story hooks and background ties for PCs to move past them and grow healthily. But that does not make it a satisfying viewing experience. People quietly healing in real life is healthy. People quietly healing in an explosive fantasy setting is frustrating for the audience.

What on earth is the point of a story if you don’t get to SEE THE ESTABLISHED CONFLICTS go anywhere? A lot of the characters got distant, quiet resolutions, if that, to everything we wanted to see.

Except, we did get to see Trent. It was a really fun, inventive battle, from opening to conclusion, but much like Travelercon, much like Nott's/Veth's problem with the hag, these were things that the audience in general wanted to see be really dug into and explored, and every single one of them got, in my opinion, quickly tidied up instead. Trent got beaten in the first and only proper battle they had with him, which, after all his build up, is pretty disappointing for a villain many of us wanted to see be a big deal. It really just felt like they were trying to tidy up to get on with the epilogue, which is not what a lot of us were looking for with Trent especially.

And that's how most of their endings felt to me. It didn't feel like any of them had reached a comfortable conclusion. Literally all of them, bar Veth and Caduceus, continued on their character journey threads, without each other and very quickly. Meeting Yasha's tribe and Vandran, Caleb finally openly debating changing time for his parents, Trent and Zeenoth's trials and the changing of the guard at the Assembly... All were things it would have been so fun to have all the PCs react to and explore together, and instead they were fleeting encounters in the latter half of a seven hour finale.

Is all this, from Molly not really coming back to Trent being a finale side plot to the Nein continuing on their individual journeys, potentially realistic to how these fantastical things might go down in real life? Sure! But that's not necessarily a good thing.

Stories THRIVE on conflict and resolution. That’s what makes them FUN! Conflict isn’t nearly so fun in real life and resolutions are often frustrating question marks, so no, past a certain point I don’t WANT stories to be realistic. I want stories to be SATISFYING.

And campaign 2 has fallen far short of the mark.

I haven’t spoken... Basically a word of this for most of the campaign, because as I said I’m a firm believer that you can’t necessarily judge something until it’s over, and because I ALSO firmly believe that being negative WHILE trying to enjoy something is counterproductive. I have had no interest in spoiling or naysaying the fun of the campaign for anyone, least of all myself.

But it's done now, and all I can say is... I really have had fun. I love the characters. I love their relationships. I’m pretty okay with where they’ve ended up. I’m not mad, really, and I’m still going to think of this campaign with a lot of affection. But it hasn’t been a satisfying story, even though for a week following episode 140 I thought, despite all the brushed over story threads, it might be.

So... to try and reclaim some of that satisfaction for myself, I might ignore some aspects of the finale proper. Namely Kingsley specifically. Taliesin's choice -- but to me, it's pretty clear that who we saw at the end of 140 was Molly, and the tags on my posts will reflect that, just as my 141 tags will be for both Kingsley and Molly, for clarity's sake. I personally want to believe Molly did come back, however others might want to interpret it. The victory in 140 that meant so much to me is hollow otherwise, and it just kind of hurts that we would lose Molly after everything. I was okay with him being dead -- I'm not so okay with his resurrection being stolen.

Kingsley will always be canon, but Molly is what I choose to acknowledge. I get if you don't like that take, and that's okay! I didn't care for canon's in the end. That's the good thing about storytelling, is that no one can stop you from making your own versions.

For the people who are hopefully hyped for campaign 3, heck yeah have fun! I’m on the fence. My investment, which... I think I can objectively say was pretty substantive as this blog will attest, doesn't feel rewarded, so I’m not convinced I can faithfully keep up for over three years all over again with a strong possibility that I will once again be left disappointed. It's been a huge chunk of my life, and... yeah!

I’ll take a break, probably, view (and liveblog, if people want!) campaign 1 when I’ve had a mental stretch and vacation, and then... I might start campaign 3. I definitely won’t be able to put the same time in it I did campaign 2 (my first love no matter what), knowing that it’s likely to not be so vindicated, in the end.

I swear I’m actually writing this in fairly good humour, but I totally get its always disappointing when the people you come to for fandom enjoyment just aren't sharing your fun. Honestly I’m half tempted to write all those frigging AUs I have sitting around! But I wanted to say my piece, and try and logically outline why this ending has been lacklustre for so many people, ultimately myself included.

Episode 140 felt right because it felt like a natural conclusion -- these disparate people coming together and finally being whole, finally soothing the hurt that MADE them so long ago. Episode 141 spat on that sentiment -- they all scattered to the winds, not as happy people to live out their dreams, but as confused people chasing up loose threads towards an unknown future, with the friend they thought returned still lost to them, ultimately.

It doesn't feel like the ending we should have gotten for the Mighty Nine, who were finally, finally all together. Until they weren't. So to me? I choose to acknowledge that they were, even if I have to force it to happen post-epilogue in my head.

[meant-to-be-a-hero]

Ranger Rankings - Power Rangers Dino Charge/Dino Super Charge

Spoiler alert - these two were really great.

Premise - 4.5

The Energems give the team a reason to come together, and to stay together until everything's sorted. We've already had multiple dinosaur themed seasons, but this one really uses dinosaurs as a backdrop even moreso than Dino Thunder did, right up to the very end.

The mythology around the Energems evolves nicely, and it feels like something that's constantly important rather than just relevant when the plot demands it.

The museum setting works really well (although how many people need to work in a café at once?) and the idea of an intergalactic bounty hunter has been played with before, but these seasons really go in on that a bit more.

The only problem I have is that they could have been a little more serialised in the search for the Energems they didn't have, a la Operation Overdrive.

Character Dynamics - 4.5

This season's characters are all so good, I don't even know where to start. Everyone's totally different, and they take a little while to get to know one another and grow into their own. But they're all totally formed characters rather than just bullet point character traits, and they're all believable too.

Everyone has an arc, even people like Kendall who only really comes out of the cave when she needs to yell at people initially, and it doesn't feel like the story's weighted in anyone's favour particularly. Even Tyler, whose quest for his dad feels super-important, doesn't override everyone else's stories.

I just really love these idiots. They're all so good.

Sixth Ranger Arc - 4.5

If we just limit this to Ivan, then it's probably a 3.5 or something. He's great, but he does fade into the background a little every now and then after his initial arc. He gets some fun spotlights though, and I liked the relationship between him and Koda as men out of time.

But this season had the most Rangers ever on a team, so the entire series basically becomes a Sixth Ranger arc, because after Ivan and Phillip (who turn up in quick succession) there's James, Kendall, and Zenowing to take into account, and with each successive Ranger the team grows stronger and has even more interactions to balance.

Phillip's probably the least developed of them all - he has his initial arc of learning not to throw money and things and not to be a pompous ass, but after that he kind of just shows up as needed for Sentai footage. He's a good guy, but he does become a little faceless.

James' plotline takes its time to get going, but I liked his interplay with Tyler a lot. They actually had plausible reasons for him to go off and do his own thing too, I'm glad they took the time to explain his absences.

And Zenowing, who I thought would be daft, was actually a decent addition to the team. He's again totally different to everyone else, and he does have a role to play rather than just standing in the background.

Oh, and Kendall becoming a Ranger and just taking it in her stride and no one questioning her on it at all? Yeah, we like that.

Plot Development - 4

I'm proud of these seasons for having plots that thread through both Dino Charge and Super Dino Charge rather than just closing everything down at the end of one to start something new. Samurai did it too to an extent, whereas Megaforce you could basically cut down the middle. Dino Charge and Super Dino Charge really do feel like evolutions of one another.

The search for the Energems is a good impetus to keep everything going, and it presents good reasons for the villains to keep going after the Rangers specifically so they can take them back, rather than just attacking the Rangers because they're in the way.

If anything, there can sometimes be a few too many one-and-done episodes where the villains JUST go after the Rangers, which stalls the momentum somewhat, but you can't say that the threat doesn't escalate as the plot goes on. Compare where we start with where we end and it's such a huge difference.

Villains - 4.5

I don't think I've had as much fun with villains in a season since Lothor or Dai Shi.

Sledge could easily have become one-dimensional, but his relationships with everyone else on the ship kept him interesting. I never knew whether he was going to yell at Poisandra or kiss her.

Speaking of, Poisandra was hilarious. Again, she could have been far too one note, but they made her interesting in her own right by giving her her own plans, and Curio, while a tad bland, was a good straight man for her plots.

I did get a little bored of Fury by the end, but at least they kept him relevant by having him face off with other generals. It's nice when the good guys get along, but it's better when the bad guys don't. I also really liked Wrench, who wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty even though he was the tech guy.

I do think Dino Super Charge has the better villains though; Heckyl and Snide were a good pair, and Heckyl's eventual face turn was actually a nice surprise. The idea that he wasn't evil at all until the Dark Energem was well handled, and while his redemption arc came right at the last minute, it did feel complete and earned.

I also really liked Lord Arcanon and Singe; they ran the risk of being too little, too late, coming in with only like 8 episodes of a season left, but they had history with the other villains that made them relevant, and Arcanon's overblown sense of self-importance made him fun too.

Overall - 4.40

Hottest Ranger - Oh god, this one's far too hard. It's like a four-way tie between Tyler, Chase, Riley, and Koda, all for different reasons. Stick them in a blender and give me the perfect Ranger.

Notable Episodes:

When Logic Fails - A crystal maze-esque episode which shows off Riley's unique talents.

Wishing For A Hero - The Rangers make wishes that all go terribly, terribly wrong.

Love At First Fight - Mostly for Beauticruel's terrible accent.

Freaky Fightday - Body swap episode? Body swap episode.

Edge Of Extinction/End Of Extinction - World-wide Zord fights! Time travel! A black hole! A happy ending!

I'd also like to mention how good all four holiday specials were. They're all clip shows, but they have such good, fun set-ups that they're not a chore to watch like the holiday specials usually are. Trick Or Trial was especially good.

[crownshattered-moved]

LIA TWST VERSE INFO:

GENERAL INFO

Lia is LOOSELY based on Meg from Hercules. While Kristian and Kira are pretty closely connected to their original source, Lia is pretty separate. I’m still working through this verse so MANY things are subject to change. If I do change anything, I’ll inform anyone who is writing with her of these changes~

Her signature spell, “Demon’s Embrace”, allows her to manipulate blot. This can be done in many ways. She can pull blot through the skin and out of a person’s body, turn the blot into some sort of weapon, or even force blot into someone and cause them to forcibly overblot. Controlling blot creates quite a bit of blot within her, and while she can remove her own blot, removing too much will cause her to control even more blot at a time until the blot she’s creating forms faster than she can remove it, and that would leave to overblotting. She doesn’t force blot into someone’s body unless plotted. Instead, she’s more likely to remove the blot. 

BACKGROUND:

Lia was born on the Island of Woe, just a few months before Idia was born. Her father was a leading researcher for STYX and Lia was raised to be a part of it. Due to her signature spell, she and her father (since he has a similar spell) are both VERY important to the study of blot and how it affects people. The Shroud family keeps them very close because of this.

Her father conducted MANY of his experiments on Lia but called it training. He wanted her to be able resist blot better than anyone else and see if blot exposure could train the body to withstand it better, allowing more use of magic without fear of overblotting. He did this with his signature spell. This happened for many years, and at some point she nearly overblotted, and without proper medical care, her body is forever damaged by it (the tips of her fingers are dyed black and her skin is deathly pale, but the latter is moreso due to the experimentation over the years).

When she was thirteen, Lia snapped (perhaps due to her own accumulation of blot) and used her signature spell to force blot into her father, causing him to overblot. They were in a closed off lab without anyone except the Shroud family having authority to watch the surveillance footage. Lia managed to escape and locked her father in the room, but the overblot killed him and basically turned him into a phantom. Everyone assumed he overblotted on his own and pitied the now orphan.

However, Idia’s parents knew the truth of what happened. Lia murdered her father and such a thing could mean prison for the girl. However, her family’s signature spell is very important for blot research, so Idia’s parents decided that they must keep her. So, they decided to basically blackmail her and tell her that if she escaped (which she wanted to do), ALL of her memories would have to be wiped and she would be wanted for murder. However, they can “protect” her if she stayed working for STYX, so now she’s trapped. Her first taste of freedom was going to NRC, but even then she’s stuck at Idia’s side.

ETC:

Lia is from Ignihyde, a junior. She’s Ignihyde’s vice housewarden and does NOT like it. She has very average grades and magic capabilities but that’s mostly because she tries not to use too much magic since she knows so much about blot. She’s interested in technological magic since it creates FAR less blot. She’s also been working on a software that creates original music. She’s technically part of the science club but rarely ever shows up. 

She greatly dislikes Idia, and the feelings are returned for the most part. Any time she mentions Idia it’s MY idia she’s talking about. I most likely won’t have her interact with anyone else’s Idia unless they actually want her and plot with me~ 

I don’t entirely know where she will be during book 6, but I can’t imagine it’s good... I won’t really talk about her involvement in threads unless we plot her to be a big part of that book. I don’t like changing canon, and her presence WOULD slightly change canon, so I’ll leave it be unless you actually want her to be part of it~

[archive-of-the-guild]

 Character Bio and rules are below the line

You can call me Shadow. i’m a 28yo male that hasn’t rped in years. Last time i did was i think 3 maybe 4 years ago so i am plenty rusty. I know this doesn’t say a lot about me but if there’s anything you’d like to know, just ask.

About Karisa

Name: Karisa

Race: Tiefling: A Humanoid people descended from humans who made pacts or crossbred with demons.

Age: 18

Height: 6'3"

Hair color: black

Occupation: Golemancer, Adventurer, occasional Blacksmith

Appearance: As a tiefling, Karisa has several traits that distinguishes her from Humans. She has Lavender colored skin, ice blue eyes, two horns, pointed ears, and a 4 foot long tail.

Personality: When it comes to enemies, Karisa can be downright ruthless. if she hates them bad enough, she will leave an enemy broken but alive to let them try again. She swears a LOT around everyone no matter who they are with the exception of children and has a habit of making enemies through her mannerisms. She’s bad enough with her words that there have been jokes made about weaponizing her lexicon and isn’t afraid to cuss out friends! BUT if you can take her words with a grain of salt and actually befriend her, then no matter what she says to you, she will protect you with her life. In her words, “You may be a cunt, but you’re MY cunt. And no one FUCKS with my cunt!”

Background:

Karisa was born on a small farm and raised by her parents until she reached the age of 8 when they passed away. Since then she would delve into golemancy as a way to cope, keeping her hands busy and moving foreword as best as she can. This is around the time she found the large crystal that would become Grom’s core. At the age of 10, she made her way to the city with her golem Grom, who was wood at the time, to try and become an adventurer. There she met the Dwarf Bormi who gave her a place to stay and taught her in the ways of the blacksmith.

Modern Verse (Hazbin Verse rewrite):

Karisa is Tiefling who was born into an organization known as The Adventurer’s Guild. The purpose of this organization is to deal with supernatural threats to society as a whole by hunting down creatures, artifacts, books, and other things that could pose a danger. If it can’t be recruited, it is to be either destroyed or relocated. People of course know about them but there is a general distrust of the organization due to their habit of employing non-humans and the Guild’s use of magic.

When it comes to the forces of Heaven and Hell, the Guild was able to get their hands on a blueprint for portal technology. The portal they have doesn’t always work and sometimes accesses realms other than Heaven or Hell. This can have a tendency to get adventurers stuck in realms outside of earth.

Skills-

Golemancy: Throughout her life, Karisa has made a variety of golems. These golems can me made from just about any solid material if given enough time. Golems made from metal, stone, wood, and even flesh are within her area of expertise. Her favorite golem is an 8 foot tall minotaur automaton she named Grom.

Cooking: Karisa LOVES to cook. She’s always experimenting with different dishes and creating a few of her own.

Basic Martial Arts: Since she turned 13, Karisa has trained with a quarterstaff and dagger so that if her golems failed, she could still take care of herself.

Magic: In addition to Golemancy, she has a small arsenal of spells at her disposal.

Fire Spells: All Tieflings are capable of fire magic. Fireball, Burning Hands, and Firewall to name a few. Using fire helps her a lot if she has to weld parts together on a golem.

Lightning Spells: Karisa can perform rudimentary lightning spells but this mostly equates to coating her hand in electricity to use. The strength of this can range from the power of a normal stun gun to enough power to jumpstart a city’s electrical grid.

3D Movement: This is a form of wind magic that allows her to “kick” the air. by doing this, Karisa can give off the impression that she is flying. This does not mean she stays in the air, only that she can move in it. she usually only uses this to get over walls or cliffs or maybe to get into a tree.

Empathy Link: This is something she originally learned in order to better deal with golems in order to find out what their orders are. it can be used on other creatures and objects to get a kind of idea of either how they are feeling or how they are used. She MUST make contact with the palm of her hand for this to work.

Golem Creation: As a golemancer, Karisa carries a number of golem cores on her at all times. These cores can often be infused into whatever matter she chooses to create a quick golem in the field. These golems aren’t as effective as one she has time to prepare but they get the job done. Golem cores are also extremely volatile! Damaging a core will cause any magic in it to go haywire and explode in relation to the core’s size. This makes golems and their cores effective bombs if she needs to!

Golem Override: This is a skill that allows Karisa to manually control her golems and see through their eyes. HOWEVER this is only a last resort because it leaves her immobile and defenseless. 

Please send Karisa questions and asks either from yourself or your characters! i will fill this out as i go!

Rules

1: i am all for fight scenes and such but please do not god-mod. meaning do not assume what happens to my character. (EX: “My character fires a gun and hits your character in the shoulder.” or “Your character tried to dodge but my character cuts off their arm before they can.”) In my responses, i’ve taken to rolling a dice to determine whether or not my character gets hit and how badly she gets hit. I do not mind my character dying in a particular thread so long as it is discussed at length beforehand and is necessary for the development of the plot. communication is key for stuff like this.

2: Don’t send hate. I don’t mind criticizing because it helps me reflect on how i’m doing. Hate is just a dick move though.

3: I reserve the right to choose whether or not i rp or answer an ask. There will be times that i don’t have the inspiration or motivation to continue it or there is not enough for me to go on. An example of this would be if i responded to an rp and the response i get back is “Character ducks.” or something as equally short.

4: I don’t mind reminders but i DO mind spamming. I will mostly be rping either on the weekends or some afternoons when i can get up the motivation. DO NOT spam me reminders every day or every other day. I have a 5 month old son and a job that has me working monday to thursday with the occasional friday up to 12 hours a day. Those come first.

5: You will see a lot of stuff on here that i will do my best to tag from gore to n//s//f//w// threads. If there is anything in particular you would like me to tag when it shows up, please let me know! Anything truly spicy will placed uner a read more and tagged as “Read at your own Risk!::NSFPC” (nsfpc stands for not safe for public consumption.

6: While i accept starters, memes, questions and comments through asks, starters and starter memes WILL be turned into a post to start a thread. I will not rp through constant asks because this can lead to more dash clutter than the post will. That being said, i will trim the post before it gets too long and will try to have any appropriate tags on it.

7: THERE WILL BE LOTS AND LOTS OF SWEARING! Enough that i will not be tagging it because it is everywhere! I will not tone down her swearing except around child muses because this is part of her character and i ask that you please understand.

8: When it comes to shipping, Karisa will make things fairly clear on whether or not she wants to be with your character. I love shipping but i also know that not everyone will ship their characters with Karisa and that's perfectly fine! Karisa WILL flirt and get touchy with people she's interested in but if the mun or character they are controlling doesn't want that, TELL HER! Not me. HER. Have your character reject her advances, tell her "no" or even smack the shit out of her if she gets too handsy! I will not be upset and i will completely understand! A lot of people plan ships out and tell others there has to be chemistry, but as I'm thinking about it, im going to be removing that little section from my rules. Why? Because failed ships have the potential to create drama, angst, and even enemies if done properly! If she comes onto a character and it makes you uncomfortable or you're just not interested, EXPRESS IT THROUGH YOUR CHARACTER! The same will apply to her! The only time i will have any sort of problem is if she says no, gets into a fight, and you try to godmod it to your liking or try to guilt ME about it. My character makes up her own mind about how to do things just like yours.

I may add more rules as time goes on but it’s pretty straightforward. Don’t be afraid to come and talk to me! I’m pretty open about things and i would love to see you around! Come and join me on discord for more Mun stuff! Just make sure you edit your name to match your tumblr url so i know who you are please! https://discord.gg/6ftZuSP8XH 

[belleandkurtbastian]

Glee Season 1 rewatch recap

I just want to get some general thoughts out. I thought about liveblogging every episode, and I did tweet sporadically, but I think I've said most of what I have to say about Glee specifics over the past 12 years. I'm going to pull some thoughts from Jenna and Kevin's podcast "Showmance", too, as I listened to that alongside the season.

Season 1a

I don't think this is a controversial opinion: Season 1a is Glee at its purest and most consistent. It's not perfect by any means, and I'll get into that in a moment, but the purest distillation of the messages of hope and, yes, inclusion are in this first half-season. The characterisations are at their most consistent, especially as it pertains to the adults, and the overall arc felt focussed, if a little bloated at times.

But yes, it's not perfect. My main complaint about Season 1a, which WAS mostly fixed in the second half of the season, is the sheer amount of ableist language.

The tone of S1a was more dramatic than the rest of the series. Yes, there was still levity and comedy, and yes Terri and Sue were both absolutely ridiculous characters... But fundamentally, the tone was set by drama, not so much by the comedy.

Which comes back to the ableism. And other language, but the ableism is the one that sticks out the most. In the first four episodes, we get multiple uses of the word "cripple" to refer to Artie, and Rachel even uses the phrase "chomosomally challenged" at one point to refer to the football team... This turns around mostly by the time of Wheels, but I feel that RIB were leaning more on the shock factor and feeling "maybe we'll get around to actually addressing this" rather than proactively addressing it at all.

But overall, I think the tone of S1a was reasonable... And it's also the ONLY season where Will really attempts fairness in the club. Half the season is devoted to the ongoing Rachel arc of "Will don't give me everything I want", which continues through the rest of the show. But in S1a, she's actually right. Will isn't bowing to Rachel's every whim, while in the later seasons he DOES.

Season 1b

Season 1b is an interesting one. It's certainly not as polished as S1a, but it's also not gone off the deep end like the show really does by S4. I'd say it's pretty much halfway between S1a's heightened drama and S2 starting to lean more towards comedy. It's just a pretty pure dramedy, but with the usual heightened absurdity brought by Sue and the rest of the adult characters.

Tonally, it's pretty consistent. Plot-wise, I don't think it really holds up. They kind of wrote themselves into a bit of a weird corner. They set up basically every S1b plot thread in S1a. Vocal Adrenaline, Will's divorce, Will/Emma, Quinn's pregnancy... They basically left all the hard work for the second half of the season, and had to find a way to turn it around.

And I think on that backdrop they actually didn't do a bad job of it. The second half focusses much more heavily on the kids, and moves focus away from the adults, but it also suffers a little for that, because the writers weren't quite confident in their ability to write for those characters yet...

I think that of the first three seasons, 1b might be the weakest run. Maybe I'm misremembering S3, but I feel like as absurd as S3 could be, it was at least relatively consistent in its absurdity, while S1b had a lot of moments where you go "That doesn't quite work." Kevin and Jenna had the same opinion, roughly, too. There are just a lot of times in S1b where it feels like they're scrambling to tie things together.

Some more specifics overall:

Kurt and Burt

It's always the highlight of the show, and I think the fear I had was that the Kurt and Burt stuff just wouldn't hold up 11 years later... But honestly, I think it still worked.

I'm not going to pretend that everything Burt did was perfect (I've always been one of Burt's bigger critics in the fandom, from what I've seen), but my GOD Chris and Mike both sold the heart of that relationship. I had completely forgotten how well their scene with Finn in Theatricality went over, too. Burt wasn't hiding from his own past, and he was owning up to using words like "faggy" and "retard" when he was younger, but he really sold that scene.

It's tempting to think that time has marched on, but honestly... the rawness of the Kurt and Burt stories has not aged, and it is still as relevant today as it was in 2009 when it first aired.

Terri and Sue

This is basically me cribbing straight from the Showmance Glee Recaps, but Kevin and Jenna are absolutely right: Jessalyn Gilsig SET the tone of the show. Don't get me wrong, it's ridiculous and Terri's plan makes no sense... but if you watch it from the right angle, you get what Emma says about how you can feel for Terri's worries throughout the season.

But Jane also sells her part so well. It takes a little while for Sue's role to really cement itself, but by the time Jessalyn leaves the series it feels fine because Jane has really grown into the larger-than-life outsider role in the cast.

Rachel and her love interests

Rachel gets around in this season. It's not a slight against her, it's just a little jarring because so much of her plot over time is about how people don't like her... But she has three boys in just this one season. Yes, Puck was a brief thing, and she and Finn never really got going... But she has both of them AND Jesse at different points.

Of which speaking: it has been LITERALLY ELEVEN YEARS and I am still mad that they cut "Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love" from 1x14 Hell-O. It's not that they needed another Rachel number on the show, or even that they needed another Jesse number. It's that I think that scene really SELLS the Rachel/Jesse relationship, and without it the relationship feels a little hollow. Which is weird, because it's Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff. That relationship is barely even acting! It just needed the background to it.

Shelby, VA, Quinn

Anyone else noticed that Shelby feels... underutilised and a little forced into this season?

The whole "Rachel finds her mother" storyline just felt a little rushed... They gave Idina several numbers in the season, because if you've got Idina Menzel you fucking USE Idina Menzel... but there was a lack of organicness to them.

This problem would ABSOLUTELY have been worse if the original episode order had been retained. 1x20 and 1x21 Theatricality and Funk were originally the other way around, and that absolutely would not have helped here. The distance from the acceptance and departure in Theatricality to the final episode, Journey, already feels like there wasn't time to let it sit in between, but if those episodes were back-to-back it would have been worse. Honestly, I think Theatricality could have done with being moved up another episode, to x19, so that the Jesse departure stuff would make more sense in terms of timing, without the whole thing feeling rushed.

Speaking of Jesse... They really shoehorned Vocal Adrenaline performances into the show, right? Like, I'm not complaining... it's just that not all of those VA performances had real plot justifications :P

And finally, Quinn...

I would have liked to have seen the Shelby/Quinn interaction play out a little longer. I think like so much in the back few episodes, it could have done with another episode of buffer. It would have been a nice bookend for the season if Quinn and Puck AGREED to give Shelby their baby BEFORE it was born, and with Rachel's blessing, rather than their one interaction being stormed through.

On to Season 2, I guess?

[arecomicsevengood]

Seeds

Before I read it, I had this idea I could write a review of Ann Nocenti and David Aja’s The Seeds for the Comics Journal, but the book just sucked too much. It had basically nothing going for it, or even decipherable as an advancing plot. One thing wrong with it is there’s this sort of conspiracy element, or this “no one believes the news” anymore element of it, but Nocenti didn’t want it to be about “fake news.” Donald Trump has rewired the narrative, so now entire types of subject matter feed into this propaganda machine simply by being addressed. Nocenti’s best work does not shy from topicality, addressing the currents in the cultural air, but this time the modern world feels too hot to handle.

I ordered the Daredevil: Typhoid’s Kiss trade paperback, reprinting a bunch of Nocenti’s work with the Typhoid Mary character from the nineties. The longest story in there is a miniseries with art by John Van Fleet. It’s partly about post-Tarantino video-store employees turned filmmakers kidnapping Typhoid Mary to use her as the subject of a documentary about serial killers and violent media. It’s also about Typhoid Mary working as a private detective trying to track down a killer of prostitutes, who the police don��t care about, and are maybe the actual killers of themselves. Storywise, it’s a pretty cool attempt to address real-world issues of the day within a pulp context.

Van Fleet’s art is pretty boring and bad in a way that’s distinctly ahead of its time. While the miniseries itself probably wouldn’t exist without the precedent of Elektra: Assassin a decade before, (a spinoff about a female Daredevil villain created by the writer during their run on Daredevil where that character defined their run) all the photoreference that’s probably actually just photo backgrounds run through filters sets a precedent for the Alex Maleev/Matt Hollingsworth Daredevil stuff to come a decade later. And it’s frequently annoying on a page design/panel background level. Like in terms of how the panel borders sort of default to grid shapes so there ends up being things that “read” as panels but that don’t actually do anything for pacing. It’s just fitting the narrative into regimented design choices.

This maybe only happens the once. But the art is also just super-stiff throughout, with a very chunky line that eliminates any real nuance. There’s a bunch of characters, but a lot of them are indistinguishable from one another, and that’s because the linework is about as muddy as the color palette — It kinda seems like he’s working with models and photo reference but also doesn’t have that many models to work with so he’s having them play multiple roles, but also his work basically seems more like photoshop filters than actual drawing? There’s a bunch of stuff that I think sucks, basically. But you can also draw a direct line from what Van Fleet is doing in Typhoid to what Aja does in The Seeds. All these choices that are meant to be classy and dignifed, a move away from the excess of superhero comics. The covers of Typhoid are just portraits of the main character, interchangeable from one issue to the next, which was a move that again, was ahead of its time: This is what so many Marvel covers in the 2000s looked like, the Tim Bradstreet Punisher covers probably being the go-to example. It’s pretty dull but it’s nice they’re not super-sexualized.

While the choices arguably suit the subject matter in Typhoid, which is at least partly about movies, in The Seeds, the story doesn’t really make any sense because the visuals seem so steeped in unreality. The premise is that a tabloid has photographed an alien, proving aliens are real. There is really nothing within the context of the story that explains why the news outlet would have enough gravitas to be convincing and have this be an actual news story. And the book is drawn in Photoshop, which is itself a photo-editing software, so the “reality” of the book is defined by the very medium that people recognize as why images can’t be trusted. This contributes a level of irony that could maybe be worked with if the book itself wasn’t so ugly and dull. The whole thing looks like some Banksy bullshit. Outside of word balloons, text appears in the large all-caps typeface of image macros. I don’t have scans of The Seeds because I gave my copy away on account of there not being any reason to keep it around.

The book is beyond dated at the time of its release. Partly this is due to the speed the cultural conversation has been moving for the past five years.  It’s been a difficult time period to work on a work of fiction about the news, certainly, and not only has the comic been a long time in the making, the writer has also been away from making comics for decades now. If the authors had been able to make this as a serialized monthly comic, it might’ve stumbled into timeliness, or the predictive, but as it is, the reading experience feels like a bunch of different, disparate ideas that do not really cohere into a narrative. Leaving aside how the book seems to emerge from a general cultural gestalt of the the 1990s, when The X-Files and Weekly World News were objects of discussion, every major plot point or news story chosen for thematic resonance is approximately fifteen years old. I believe 2005 was when I started to hear about colony collapse disorder. This bee metaphor has been lapped by a Honey Nut Cheerios campaign at this point. (A few years back, boxes of cereal came with seeds of wildflowers you/children could plant.)

Darin Morgan’s episode of The X-Files revival “The Mengele Effect” ably addresses all the issues with how cynicism and conspiracy theories feel different now, all the issues that Nocenti seems terrified of and hopes the audience doesn’t think of when reading her humorless X-Files throwback comic. That episode’s great.  Much of The Seeds seems like it was better done in the decidedly not-great Transmetropolitian. There’s something so dated and sad about this comic’s idea of a cool journalist protagonist: People barely smoke cigarettes anymore! I know no one wants to draw people vaping, but the imagery this book wishes meant “cool, urban, woman” reads as nostalgic affectation in 2021. That so much of the commercial landscapes of our cities has been replaced by vape shops was one of the biggest clues we were already living in a dystopia three years ago.

Nocenti, when she was working regularly, got to be a pretty effective writer for having a monthly deadline wherein she could speak on the issues of the day as they were happening. In the absence of a regular gig, this rare chance to speak her mind gets hampered by how much there is to talk about, and how complicated it all is. If it’s too complicated to address in an ongoing superhero comic, a one-off graphic novel with vaguely commercial ambitions turns out to be a worse space for it. It’s so much sadder than anything in this dream-of-the-nineties comic that the authors were given the grace to make something only under the conditions that doom it to failure. Real people made this work of fiction, and I don’t know what the fuck they’re even talking about, and that’s a more complicated narrative than the journalists in this comic who… stumble upon a story and then need to take to back because it’s too important or something? I don’t understand what this comic is about. It’s clearly gesturing at being about a bunch of different things, but what they get from being in juxtaposition with one another, I don’t know.

In interviews in advance of the release of The Seeds, Nocenti talked about how this was the first time she got to make a comic that didn’t have to have fight scenes or conflict in it. But reading Typhoid it’s clear how conflict ties the story’s disparate threads together. But also while reading Typhoid I kept on thinking about how visually, the Steve Lightle shit that preceded it is so much cooler! Here he is, bifurcating a page so two narrative threads can be told with different approaches to stoytelling:

People sometimes talk about how crazy it is that Nocenti started her Daredevil run immediately following up the Miller/Mazzucchelli Born Again run with a fill-in drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. But I don’t think anyone has pointed out that, since these Typhoid Mary team-up comics appeared in Marvel Comics Presents, she’s basically following up Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X, and Steve Lightle is totally capable of doing that! Even if these comics are kinda whatever narratively, Nocenti comes up with dense enough narratives to give him shit to do. She’s a good writer within the context of the harsh strictures of early nineties mainstream comics. Which I know seems like a harsh diss! But being a writer that makes work that consistently gives a comics artist something interesting to do is a difficult job that many people are just not interested in doing for various reasons, so it should be recognized when it’s attempted and accomplished.

It’s also interesting that the whole visual approach where both Steve Lightle and Barry Windsor-Smith shine is dependent on flat color. The changes in storytelling made to accommodate the shifts in visual language in full-color mainstream comics didn’t really benefit anyone, and now needs to be outsmarted. In The Seeds, we’ve got this pretty dull reading experience that superficially in its two-color print job and nine-panel grid, looks like it might be influenced by Mazzucchelli’s work in Rubber Blanket and City Of Glass. And we’ve got a black and white Barry Windsor-Smith comic coming out from Fantagraphics in a few weeks that I really hope blows it out of the water.

[faejilly]

I was tagged by @la-muerta​ & @facialteeth​ & @thedivinemissema​ for the WIP/Title Game

rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and interests you and i’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it!

AND THEN  by @shadoedseptmbr​ @msviolacea​ & @ravenclawnerd​ for the “stories you want to write... but for some reason haven’t yet”

so this will be a mish-mash of both? The WIPs will mostly have blurbs in this case (to fit the second meme) but you are still welcome to ask follow-up questions, if you’d like ;) Assuming you make it through the list, it is uh. Not Short.

Anyone who would like to play with their WIPs, please consider yourself tagged in either or both of these. :D

Misc Fic Folder:

“untitled document” - where I’m working on fictober fills so I have word-counts for my GYWO tracker. I am not working on these because Brains Are Dumb and also Going Back To Work Is Exhausting

I made a file called “YULETIDE!” which has nothing in it but I’m determined to finish this year so that is definitely technically a thing in the Unending WIP List of Doom worth mentioning. (Tho obviously that’s all I could say even if I had started, because anonymous.)

“coda-fics, rewatch!” -yes, that exclamation mark is important! it’s to keep me motivated! (it didn’t work). Much like untitled, this is for putting stuff so I can do word count tracking even if I don’t know what I’m doing. Currently I think it just says “MARYSE” because I was working on my SH 1x6 coda-fic and then got distracted and haven’t typed anything up yet. (Yay notebooks? Boo notebooks? Not even sure at this point.)

WNIP (works not in progress) Folder:

“TOG” - I had one vivid mental image of how Nicky & Joe met (blood-stained evil smiles?) but then no idea for a follow-up story and also the fandom is insane and I’m not sure I want to deal with all of *gestures vaguely* all that

“Shan Xia Notes” -for a TTRPG that never quite got off the ground; she was a semi-tragic selkie who was still in love with the evil queen/lady who stole her skin and I got to play her for like one session and she was surprisingly chaotic neutral, which wasn’t at all what I’d been expecting. But the game never really got off the ground, so I never had enough info to really delve into writing backstory fic

“post-Kruschev” -Kruschev’s List was the last episode of Scarecrow & Mrs King, and I was debating writing an epilogue in place of the s5 we never got, to try and tie up some loose ends, but the fandom’s three old-ladies in trench coats and I never quite worked up the gumption to get it anywhere

“Code Realize warm as silk sequel” -there is literally nothing in this file except “SEX! Only a little angst” because I wanted to write some “we can’t actually touch each other” smut but never actually did. 🤷‍♀️

BioWare (also all Not-In-Progress Anymore)

“seb/adelaide”, “Theia” & “DAI Erana” -these WIP folders were cannibalized for ficlets for the last few times I did fictober, and while originally I had ideas for longer epilogues for all three of them, at this point I don’t think any of the remaining bits could support a story any longer.

”whispers in the dark” -Maia Ryder never really got much fic at all; the cancellation of any further Andromeda stuff was really disheartening, and at this point I’d have to play the game again, and I don’t think I’m gonna manage that any time soon

”TSP” -a Mass Effect 3 Shepard AU collab project that kind of went off the rails, and our mutual brains/lives never quite seem to line up so we can try and rebuild it ”Ngaio & Tane” -my one truly ruthless Shepard (Alliance background, who romanced Traynor) whose father Tane Shepard was, I think, in PsyOps, and I wanted to figure out their complicated relationship but never really did know where I was going with it

”JE Zu & Yaling” -so I’ve rambled about my Tragic Sagacious Zu Romance Thoughts regarding Jade Empire more than once (#Icy Yaling should have most of it) but apparently I want to yell about it more than I want to actually write it? Whoops.

”CI sequel: 5 times fic?” -Cruel Intentions is a kinkmeme fill that I started and then it sat for like five years before I actually finished it, and I liked the ending, but it does leave a giant fucking question mark in terms of how those people got from there to where they are after the game, and I kind of wanted to write a proper h/c fic rather than just... leaving them wallowing in all that trauma?

But I didn’t. I don’t even remember for sure how I wanted to frame the 5/1 of it all, besides it being something sad about allowing people to see you or touch you in some way. (Prayers maybe, since I think there was definitely some Sebastian & Fenris & faith stuff going on in there.)

“candles” -Merribela prompt fill that I never was happy with? Not sure what I might do with it at this point, so it’s just sitting there all sad and lonely and neglected-like.

Shadowhunters

pt1: WIP LIST ONLY

“Persuasion” -so I keep trying to write Persuasion AUs in many fandoms because it’s my favorite Austen, but I think I like it too much, I have no real solid concept of how I’d transform it, and if I don’t have anything else to say about different characters within that framework, I have no push to actually write anything? Also this SH version of it suffered from MASSIVE scope creep when I started outlining and it got too big for me to handle so I like, killed it twice? Whoops. This one is really probably never gonna happen.

“oosdt sequel” -I wanted to write more about the Forest That Eats People and Magnus & Alec as Guardians Between Worlds, and also some background Magnus’ Found Family & Lightwood Family Feels (maybe some clizzy?) and I left a Madzie plot-thread dangling from the first one on purpose even but I think this one had too many ideas and not enough focus so it’s sort of sprawling all over a doc with a lot of “???” in it

“procedural-ish” -this was originally going to be a sex-farce. and then it turned more serious. and then maybe kind of copaganda which was uncomfortable in terms of the Everything That Is The News in 2020, and then maybe it was more a Mafia AU and at that point I had self-inflicted tone whiplash and I wished the voices in my head were a little more forthcoming about their plans so I stopped before I brained myself on my computer monitor in frustration.

“I had rather a rose than live forever” -I started a reverse!verse Malec (Shadowhunter!Magnus, High Warlock!Alec) for bingo last year, and I couldn’t quite get it together in time, so I made a moodboard inspired by the bits I’d started instead. I may see if one of my prompts from Bingo this year help me finish it?

“fall fright fest (practical magic  au)” -exactly what it says on the tin! almost exactly a year old & neglected! IDEK ANYMORE (I talked about this one with the WIP meme last time tho: here)

“priest!kink theology?” -I thought it was gonna be smut? I like priest!kink. I have made other people like it and yell at me even! But then I kept diverging into demon!Magnus thinking about Priest!Alec’s faith and as usual, IDEK ANYMORE *laughs*

(If they’re remotely canon-adjacent or divergent, a bunch of these are in here because I need to rewatch the show to get the pacing/timing/tone right and I haven’t, and I don’t know why, because I enjoy the show, but BRAINS! Are Dumb! So I guess that’s it?)

“I do” -I have tried to write this damnable Malec arranged marriage fic like six different times. I have signed up for fic exchanges and bangs with it, I have rewritten massive sections, trying to change tone or structure or POV or whatever, and it basically comes down to they like each other too fast and I keep not gutting it enough to get back to a useful pace, but by the time I realized that I was on take six and kind of sick of it. I may get back to it eventually

“wing!fic” -canon divergent in early s1, trying to deal with the consequences of Simon’s kidnapping as the Truly Serious Event that it should have been. It uh. Got heavier than I expected with those consequences (considering it was originally just supposed to be Alec’s wings flirting with Magnus) and also see above re: rewatching for pacing.

“2x20 aftermath/date night/pandemonium porn“ -yes that is the actual wip title. It used to be “spite fic” because I was originally inspired by fighting against a lot of fic!Alec characterization that was clearly based more on the books and ATG syndrome than the Alec in the show, which is the Alec I know and like and want to read about. BUT, pacing and etc. again, I think. Also I have somehow entirely lost my knack for writing porn, which makes it difficult to finish something originally intended to be smut!fic. Or even teasing almost!smut.

“rubbish heap” -so this is about three different fics that I realized complemented each other really well so they’re now all in the same file as I try to turn them into the sequel of “with an if in its soul”. It includes amnesia, parabatai lore shenanigans, a s3 rewrite, and some truly awful Owl adjustments that make me wince in horrified authorly delight and pain. BUT, as with the other ones in this file, the scope is large and I normally write short-fic and I kind of just threw up my hands in exasperation. I may have to break it back up into the three different fics instead, if I ever actually want to write it. Them? But also I need to take better notes on s3 to make sure I have what I need in here.

SH Pt 2: Started posting or not yet in hiatus because it’s actually almost ready to be a thing in the real world! maybe!?

“kisses (firsts)” -I actually started publishing this one, a “series of firsts” that was supposed to be kind of relationship milestones and kind of an excuse for smut, and then there wasn’t that much smut and I lost momentum and also dear lords & ladies the timeline is stupid, wtf. I may not ever add to this one, tbqh. It doesn’t stop in a terrible place, and they’re all ficlets so they stand alone all right.

“clizzy epilogue” -this is blank atm, it’s more a reminder for me to keep poking away at my “girls who can’t breathe air, only fire” collection BECAUSE I WOULD LIKE TO ACTUALLY GET TO THE CLIZZY AT SOME POINT

"mer!alec" -pts 2-4 of a series, but apparently having an actual plan gets in the way of me *writing* the thing, and I haven't managed to throw the half an outline far enough away from my brain to be able to write again. Or something like that.

"ibhww" -if broken hearts were whole is a soulmate fic I started a million years ago, and purposefully set aside to finish some other WIPs because I thought they'd be quick, and now it's just buried under two and a half years of regret and shame so it's hard to get back to it

"iafy" -i am for you is a delightful & frothy semi-epistolary fluff piece that also just lost momentum because Life & 2020 & etc. It's far and away the most popular thing I've ever posted on AO3, which also makes me feel weird sometimes, and I feel like the fact that there's no grand conclusion planned, just a bit more fluff and settling in, might end up being disappointing? Basically, it's the first time I think I've psyched myself out about reader expectations, and until I get over that I'm going to have trouble finishing the last couple chapters. (There really are probably only two more chapters though. IT’S SO CLOSE, I wish I could just... write it. And yet?)

“fake-hating” -I do not like fake dating as a trope that much, I just do not get it, but I love outside POVs and arranged marriages and there’s this delighful tumblr post about how they wished there was more fic about people who were together but had to pretend they werent’, and uh. This may be that? Eventually? I’m not exhausted by my failure to finish it yet, so it’s still in the regular folder rather than the hiatus folder, even though nothing’s been posted for it.

AND I THINK THAT’S IT?

Not as terrible as it could be, but still. MANY WORDS THAT MAY NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. Posting the equivalent of one’s old ratty sketchbook is always a weird feeling. :D

[jebazzled]

Level Up! Upcycling an Intermediate App

Hello friends and welcome to another unsolicited writing tutorial, aka my bread and butter! Today we’re going to build off of ground covered in my earlier tutorial, Level Up! Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced RP and You. 

As always, I’d like to point out that there is nothing wrong with being a writer more naturally suited for intermediate sites! But if you’re looking to write in the more ~advanced or ~literary space, you will need to adjust your writing to fit the community standard. While your writing will likely improve over time as you write with more advanced writers, step one to threading in such a community is getting an app accepted there.

In today’s tutorial, I’ll be talking about how to revise an existing intermediate application to make it more suited for an advanced site. Let’s begin! 

As a staffer on an advanced site, the note I most often have for applications that we pend or decline is: this feels very telly. 

I don’t mean “telly” as in Telly the Sesame Street character: 

I mean “telly” as in extraordinarily expository. 

An intermediate freestyle application often looks like a straight-up timeline of a character’s history, delivered without much style or voice. It might feel like a Wikipedia article, or a very long explanation like you might see in a shipper. 

I often find that it can help streamline the writing process to write a handful of telling anecdotes, rather than rehashing a character’s complete history, infancy to present. More on that in my freestyle application tutorial here!

But if you’re having a hard time wrapping your head around anecdotal-style applications, particularly if you’re accustomed to application formats that have you write a “history” section as opposed to a freestyle, you can improve upon your current app to make it more suited for an advanced site. It will take some work, and certainly more than ten minutes of it. Writing on a “reach” site can be very rewarding, but only if you’re willing to put in the effort. 

TELLING

Before we solve the problem of “telly” writing, we need to establish what “telly” writing is. For purposes of this tutorial, I’ll be using my one application that is a full rehashing of character history. Below is a “telly” take on Sadie Shunpike: 

Sadie grew up in a working-class neighborhood of London with her twin brother, Sam. Neither of her parents were very good at magic, but hid their insecurity in the belief that any magic at all made them better than their Muggle neighbors. Sadie and Sam weren’t educated at the local primary school, but were homeschooled by their mother until they could read. From there, Sadie and Sam would check out books from the local library and teach themselves, with Sadie helping Sam. 

Sadie was very smart, but Sam struggled more with learning. As they got older, Sadie started to read books she ordered from Flourish and Blott’s, learning about magical theory. Sam started to show signs of magic, which he hid from Sadie. When they turned eleven, it became clear that Sadie was a squib. She resented Sam for being magical, especially when he went to Hogwarts and needed Sadie’s help to do his homework. Sadie continued to educate herself.

Sadie developed an interest in the Dark Arts and got mixed up with Death Eaters in a research and study group she attended at Flourish and Blott’s. One of them promised her a Ministry job and ensured her safety if she acted as a spy in the Ministry for the Death Eaters. Later, she got placed into a safehouse, and began to spy on the safehouse network for the Death Eaters. 

This tells you a lot about what Sadie has been up to, but doesn’t tell you much about Sadie, or about my skill as a writer, or about how someone else might expect Sadie to behave in threads. There is no voice, no personality, no interest - just rote explanation. 

As a staffer on an advanced site, when I see an app like the above, I know I will be pending or declining the application. The question I ask when making that distinction is: is the character development strong enough to merit working with the writer on the prose? Is the prose strong enough to merit working with the writer on the character development? 

If the writing itself or the character development is there, it can make sense to help guide the writer - though this is more the case with character development issues than with prose. Character development can be improved with specific notes and adjustments, whereas generally speaking, improving prose is a gradual process over time. 

It is entirely possible that a writer might have much better prose in their threads than in their application! However, your application serves here as a writing sample. which is why it is imperative that it be good writing on its own. I have said it before and I will say it again: I don’t care how much you hate writing apps, lmao! You’ve got to write a good one if you want to do well on sites that use them! 

SHOWING

Writing communities are always talking about show vs. tell. Unless you’re writing stage directions, it is always better to show than to tell - or at least, there aren’t enough exceptions to the rule that you shouldn’t be aiming primarily to show. 

So how do you communicate a character history without making it too telly? 

DESCRIPTION

Here, I’ve described Sadie’s neighborhood as “working-class” and left it at that. What if I went into a little more detail? Explained to you what I imagine when I imagine her upbringing, and shared with you what’s going on in my head between the lines? 

In a small, shabby house in a small, shabby suburb, a small and shabby family lives a small and shabby life. Samuel Shunpike, Sr. sells advertisements for the Daily Prophet, tossing a handful of Floo powder into the minuscule fireplace in the sitting room every morning and getting ash on the threadbare round braided rug every night. 

This has more flavor, doesn’t it? The repetition of “small, shabby” is a deliberate style choice that communicates an idea of how I write in practice when I’m being ~artsy, and the image of a man in a shabby suit crawling into his fireplace and messing up an already messed-up rug builds Sadie’s father as an NPC that will come into play later in her app. Dynamic NPCs - whose actions impact your character, who are more than wooden cutouts - help build the fictional world of your character’s life. They don’t even need to be vital to playing your character - I’ve never really had anyone in Sadie’s family in play onsite, despite how heavily her brother figures into her character development - but they can be very useful in understanding your character. 

DIALOGUE

Ha, irony, that dialogue can make an app less telly! Dialogue gives your reader an idea of how your character interacts with the world in concrete situations, not merely in the abstract. It also helps build the dynamic NPCs that make your character’s history feel more real, and feel like something that genuinely impacted them rather than something manufactured for plot. 

While the Shunpikes are nobodies in the circle of wizarding society, Margie and Samuel Sr take comfort in the fact that they do have one thing making them better than the Muggles who live the small shabby lives on either side of them: the Shunpikes are magic. small, shabby magic, but magic nevertheless. "You lot are better than this," Margie says, smoking a pipe on the stoop, gesturing at the sidewalk where children walk to school with their parents. Sam and Sadie don't take their eyes off their Exploding Snap game. It's no use arguing with Margie, they know. When she goes inside, grumbling about Muggle trash, Sam and Sadie train their eyes on the walk outside. The parade of children their age, all wearing matching khakis and polo shirts. "What do you think they get up to?" Sam asks, glancing at Sadie. "Same as us, i imagine," she says, "but probably, y'know, more guided."

This brief vignette tells us a few things:

Margie Shunpike, Sadie’s mother, is mean, and relies on what little magic she has to feel like she has worth

Sam looks to Sadie for leadership/guidance

Neither of these are specifically about Sadie, but having this background information about her mother seen in action rather than merely mentioned will impact how we digest the news that Sadie is a squib. Sam, as a recurring NPC, will inform how we see Sadie develop, and seeing his changing relationship with her will give another metric for the reader of how Sadie has changed. 

DETAILS

Details build your world, make it feel more real. When I wrote earlier that Sadie ordered books from Flourish & Blott’s, they could have been any books - they could have been the magical equivalent of ABC “First Concept” books - they could have been magical erotica. Don’t details tell you a lot about a person? If I tell you that Renee Rye Bread reads 50 books a year, what have you learned about her? What if I clarify that it’s 50 romance novels? 50 crime dramas? 50 political biographies?

When Sam and Sadie were younger, Margie would sit them together at the kitchen table and clumsily teach them letters and numbers. Once they could put together sentences and basic sums, she happily stepped back and let them figure it out on their own. On an average day, Sam and Sadie will watch the parade of schoolchildren, finish a game of Exploding Snap or Wizard's Chess, eat an early lunch, and spend the rest of the day doing their best to get an education. Sadie tries the hardest, dragging Sam with her to the Muggle library around the corner to read Muggle fiction and do basic research on whatever catches her fancy. She saves her allowance and coins from doing chores for the neighbors and orders secondhand books from the Flourish & Blotts catalog, poring over wizarding texts and trying to make sense of magic beyond even her parents' meager skill. Sam sometimes gives her his sickles, too. He isn't doing anything with them, and everything makes more sense with her in charge.

These details - what Sadie and Sam’s homeschooling looks like, Sadie’s attitude towards books and learning, Sam’s support in her academic endeavors - are building blocks in your understanding of Sadie’s personality. She is driven, self-directed, curious. She doesn’t ask Sam for his input. She is, perhaps, a little selfish. 

DIORAMA

Trying to keep to a “D” theme here for an easy mnemonic device here! What I mean by “diorama” is that even in an app not specifically built around anecdotes it is good to provide a few key slices of the character’s life - a clear window into specific scenes and moments. What strikes you as more impactful: me telling you, “there’s a scene in Heathers (1988) where Veronica’s boyfriend has put a bomb under the bleachers during a pep rally. It’s fine, it doesn’t go off,” or me describing to you: “the gym is full of stamping feet and shouting cheerleaders; no one could hear Veronica and JD fighting under the stands even if they were interested. The bomb is beeping so loudly but no one is paying attention, no one can hear it. It’s a pep rally and everyone is cheering at their own wake.” 

Rather than saying:

Sam started to show signs of magic, which he hid from Sadie. When they turned eleven, it became clear that Sadie was a squib. She resented Sam for being magical, especially when he went to Hogwarts and needed Sadie’s help to do his homework. Sadie continued to educate herself.

I went with the below: 

In June, Sam is sitting in the kitchen while Sadie makes a solo trip to the library, folding paper airplanes and flying them with no success. After a dozen failures, however, he watches in amazement as a piece of notebook paper folds itself up into a perfect airplane and flies around the room on its own. He's done magic, and he has no idea how. And he keeps it a secret from his parents, but more importantly, from Sadie, who he now knows is not going to be coming with him to Hogwarts after all. Later that week, while the family is tucking into ham sandwiches for dinner, the owl arrives, and Sam's stomach sinks when Sadie proudly carries it from the sitting room window into the kitchen on her forearm. She unties the letter from its leg, looks at the front of the envelope, grinning. Samuel Sr and Margie see a shadow pass over their daughter's face for half a heartbeat before she slowly hands the envelope to her brother. But Sam sees it all: her smile cracking like broken china, her eyes widen just a little, the furrow in her eyebrow. He catches the hitch in her voice as she congratulates him. He senses her anxiety in the lightspeed jiggle of her left foot under the table, as he stares at the letter, unable to make sense of the words, as worried as he is about Sadie. She excuses herself early, and Samuel Sr and Margie exchange a look, as if they've forgotten Sam is there. Sam doesn't know what any of them were expecting, but it wasn't this. The next few days, during which Sadie does not speak to him at all, are the longest of his life. Then, one morning, as he sits at the kitchen table having a silent breakfast with Samuel Sr and Margie - who are still flabbergasted to have a squib in the family - she comes down the stairs from their shared attic bedroom. She sits across from Sam at the table as if nothing has happened. She helps herself to a slice of toast from the stack on a plate in the middle of the table, and takes a piece of bacon off Sam's plate. "Since i won't be going to Hogwarts as expected," she says, folding the toast to make a sandwich and taking an enormous bite, "I'll need to arrange for a more formal education.” She swallows her bite and pours herself a glass of orange juice. “I’m happy with our current method of self-directed study, of course, but - i intend to supplement it with the odd lecture or class audit in the city.”

We get a few things here:

Sam’s anxiety/guilt about being the magical one, a dynamic that informs how Sadie will use him later

Sadie quickly hiding her actual emotions and performing fake ones, which comes up later when she manipulates people at the Ministry and in safehouses as a spy for the Death Eaters

Sadie’s decision making, which doesn’t allow room for input, feedback, or disagreement

Think of your favorite books and characters. If a novelist gave you a quick description of a character in one paragraph, you wouldn’t feel the close connection to them that you feel after reading even just a few chapters of them acting, reacting, interacting. Of course we don’t have as much time for that in an app as we do in a novel, but there’s a happy medium between the shallow understanding we get from pure exposition and the deep one we get from 50,000 words and a hardcover. 

IN PRACTICE: HOW DO???

So we’ve got our intermediate app. We’ve got our Four D’s: Description, Dialogue, Details, Diorama. We’ve got an advanced site we are lusting over. 

How do we Frankenstein this all together?

STEP ONE: REREAD YOUR ORIGINAL APP

Give her a look. Get the basics in your head. Think about how you might be able to repurpose this writing for your shipper. Because, hey! It’s already done! And at least in my experience on advanced sites, shippers are a TL;DR for your app, so a quick expository jaunt through the highlights fits the bill just peachy. 

But you’re not going to be able to work from that app directly for version two, okay? Be honest with yourself. How much do you ever revise things? Because this isn’t a “change a word, add one (1) sentence,” project. This is an overhaul. 

Like I’ve said! Going from intermediate to advanced is HARD WORK!

STEP TWO: GET WRITING

Start writing that app from scratch. Think about the Four D’s. 

If you’re approaching this as a straight history of your character, have at it wherever you want to get started. But before you move on to the next phase, address your Four D’s. 

Susie was a difficult baby. 

STOP! Give me the D. Was her nursery hyperfeminine? Did her nannies gossip about her parents behind their backs? Was Susie a fussy baby, or was she sickly? Show me her cold and distant mother awkwardly holding her before passing her off to her father!

If none of these D’s feel important to this phase of the character’s life: don’t include it in the app! A character history does not need to cover every minute! You can just hit the important phases, and you should! Believe me: staff usually do not want to hear about how mom and dad met each other unless it actually has a major bearing on Susie’s life! 

Once you’ve given the moment its due (Due, the fifth D), move on to the next, and consider the D’s every time. 

STEP THREE: REREAD & REVISE

Before you submit your app, give it another look. You’ve likely done a lot of character development between your original application and the fully-overhauled version. Is your characterization consistent? Do your character’s motives make sense? Have you left any gaping holes in their story? Look back at your shipper, especially if you used your original application to build it out. Does it align with the new application? What edits do you need on the shipper to have it describe the same person as your app?

STEP FOUR: PROFIT

Obviously, as with anything else, your mileage may vary. It might take a few tries, or even a few different characters to land on something that works for an advanced site. But the practice of implementing the five D’s - and keeping them in mind subsequently as you post with and develop your character - will be instrumental in growing your abilities as a writer, and isn’t that what this is all about? Wishing you all the best in writing as in life - let me know how you’re doing, and what other tutorials you’d like to see from me. Cheers, and happy writing!

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 3: Mr. Robot 3x09

So this was episode was pretty different from the last!

Last week's episode feels even more like a quiet, slow respite in comparison to this one. Actually, the last couple of episodes do, because Frederick and Tanya was mostly about Mobley and Trenton. And two episodes before that was the highly stylized single-shot ep. Now we're fully back to several different story lines all up to 100 happening at once.

I like it but I cannot honestly explain what I just saw or precisely what happened, plot wise.

The Dom and Darlene scenes were among my favorites of the whole show, first because I love them both, and second because I DO ship it, even though of course it's obvious Darlene was playing her the whole time. But like... I do think she likes her also. And seeing this other side of Dom... Seeing her nervous and trying to flirt and failing, pretending she doesn't herself know what she's doing, then fighting with herself about what she wants and what she thinks is right or wrong. And the spy game stuff of Darlene getting into the safe... all awesome. And then Dom later like showing her loyalty to the Bureau—I will report my sex life to the federal government. And Santiago wanting a minute-by-minute accounting lol.

Speaking of--almost as good was how close Dom got to Santiago. Again, I am struck by how well plotted this show is. Like, this is a little more than a season away from the finale, but it could almost have been the all-too-happy, all-too-sudden ending of the whole thing. If it weren't for Santiago, if the Dark Army WEREN'T in the FBI, then Darlene could have clued the FBI into Romero's deus ex machina keylogger data, and they could 'undo the hack' and then that would be it! I mean plus all the other threads, but that could be a major part of the neat and tidy conclusion. But instead, it just sets off a different domino effect because of the presence of the well-established mole.

I didn't entirely follow all of the Elliot and Mr. Robot and Tyrell stuff. The out-of-order timeline thrown in there casually among all the OTHER stuff that was happening made it hard for me to figure out exactly what was happening there. I got that Elliot used the fake out of Stage Three to get the meeting with whiterose ('s boyfriend) and then own the Dark Army and that he was also simultaneously relying on Darlene and the Sentinel hack, that is, he would take down the Dark Army while she saved ECorp, essentially saving the day somehow I suppose. But the emotional journey of Mr. Robot I don't get as much.

I know he went to Tyrell's in order to yell at him, I guess, and then Price comes and gives Tyrell the CTO figurehead job, and schools Mr. Robot about being a real leader, and Tyrell and Mr. Robot together basically become bitter and angry? And then Tyrell tells Mr. Robot about the mole. And then Mr. Robot goes home and googles Sentinel and Tyrell and then he goes away and Elliot is back. That's all I really remember/understood and it doesn't feel very clear to me. I'm not saying that's on the show; it's on me because I just wasn't following it as well as the other story lines, probably because Mr. Robot and Tyrell just interest me less lmao, so I wasn't paying good attention. It's also possible that it just ISN'T as clear, because there is a lot of the unsaid in this show.

My mom suggested that Mr. Robot, knowing or predicting that Elliot would try to hack Sentinel, was trying to give him a message about how particularly dangerous this would be, which is plausible, especially since I think Mr. Robot knows more about Elliot (the Hacker) than vice versa, but again, the timeline is a little uncertain for me.

Angela is full on gone by now. Her sleek apartment being turned into a fortress/bunker was truly disturbing, and the most disturbing part wasn't the mess or the pictures of unknown stuff on the walls or the 50 locks on the door but how she kept all of these small objects that had been in the room with her when she was brainwashed. Like, she really doesn't have control of herself right now. She IS A puppet.

Grant is really coming into his own. That last scene with him and whiterose was very interesting. The last time I saw whiterose, I felt like it was really being revealed that she was the master all along—not locked in a match of wills with Price but always his superior, putting him into and taking him out of power at her whim, just like she does everything at her whim. Now... I don't know. I don't think this ep contradicted that reading exactly, but it did show how she is truly unhinged and starting to unravel more and more. In other words, there may not be anyone above her, but she’s certainly not in control either, possibly not even of herself. She’s not infallible and she doesn’t always, immediately, get what she wants. And so her sort of ceding to Grant at the end—and why switch to Mandarin? And make her voice softer?—don’t entirely know what to make of it or if I’m even making sense now lol. This is all a coherent thought somewhere in my brain. At any rate Grant felt like her partner more than her boy toy for the first time.

I don’t like the casual mention of ‘oh btw martial law’ just slipping into dialogue because while I love the world building on this show in general, and recognize that a lot of major aspects of the post-5/9 world are shown in bits and pieces in the background (like the whole Congo plot! Which is pretty important to the overarching narrative!), the very throwaway nature of the line made me think that actually, they’re not aware in the writers’ room of what martial law is. It doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s not a synonym for “armed police presence” or “curfews” lmao. And frankly after last summer, which I know post-dates this show, I get more upset at the idea of the phrase being thrown around casually and incorrectly.

A few more random thoughts: I love/miss Romero and I appreciate how his character largely existed to show how everyone else in fsociety was basically just a child lol. Not literally but he WAS the adult in the room. Darlene was hella hot today. Price is THE best villain of all time I will not be taking criticism on this post. I appreciate the use of a Joey Bada$$ song in the bar scene. Leon versus Angela was a show down I didn’t know I needed but I am living for it.

Only one more ep left this season! I saw the finale but I never saw the majority of S4 because I thought I’d do a re-watch first…and it’s taken me until now to do that. So I’m pretty excited to finish this season up and see the conclusion.

[asocier]

interaction guide for leah!

last edited: april 6th, 2021

         leah overall is a very, very flexible muse, and while she’s mostly an uwu muse, she’s not always ( e.g. potty mouth, kind of aggressive/possessive with certain muses, has “kick your ass” energy even though she’s like 5′1 and cries over everything, is very lewd and can be very forward at times ). i tend to have a lot of fun with her because she’s so dimensional, but below are some good points of entry if you’re stuck or need inspiration!!

          “are you finding everything alright?” — threads that take place at leah’s workplaces ( i.e. the university bookstore or delight, the adult store ); a great way to break the ice since shopping can allow for casual conversation, big or small! retail work can be very strange as well, so there’s a lot of room for some interesting scenarios that can leave a lasting impression for leah to remember your muse by in the future. not every interaction in the adult store has to be sexual or sexually charged, either, so feel free to have some fun with the setting!

          college/university setting threads — being a university student that lives on campus in the dorms ( canonically, anyway; there’s always room for divergence! ), most of leah’s waking hours are spent doing something related to her classes or social events happening on campus. she’s usually not a big partier, but when surrounded by the right crowd, she can easily be roped right into wild parties. though she’s not the type to let herself get wasted; chances are, she’ll be the one taking care of your muse! college is full of possibilities when it comes to shenanigans, like some real wack ass shit can happen, so below are just a few general possibilities for plot ideas. studying abroad has also been my default way of sending leah out of the country, so if your muse has to be in a different country to make a storyline work, i gotchu! your muse:

takes the same classes as leah and befriends her because they sit next to her in class, are partnered up with her for an assignment, engage in group discussion with her regularly, ect. can also just be a brief meeting like an exchange of compliments ( “that’s such a cute top!” “thanks, your pencil bag is super cute, too!” )

is leah’s roommate ( plotting required since it’s canon that she lives alone!! but housing situations change frequently during college so it’s not a huge problem, just gotta work out the details )

is the teaching assistant for a class that leah is taking, so she come to them for help on assignments ( or vice versa: leah is the teaching assistant so she grades your muse’s assignments/tutors them )

a tutor in general that leah can turn to for help in exchange for cash or a different kind of payment ( food, advice, ect. this doesn’t have to be a dirty thing alksjdlkjsad )

met leah at a party and now the two of them are just party buddies or just always get into trouble whenever they hang out and party together

          celebrity/idol + fangirl; city meets country; wealthy meets poor threads — oh my god okay so listen; i really enjoy the idea of “opposites attract” with leah. like the idea of meeting a muse who is a higher status than her socioeconomically, socially, or just comes from a different background than her ( hence city meets country since leah was born in an urban area, so interacting with a muse who comes from a small town would be the opposite of her ).

anyway, leah’s the type to be really into pop culture, so keeping up with celebrities, idols, youtubers, whatever would be a past time for her, and then meeting them in real life would make her lose her shit. being in a relationship of any kind with a celebrity would make her lose her shit, and considering she lives in los angeles, it’s possible to run into one for the sake of a plot.

socioeconomically, leah’s considered low-income, maybe lower middle class ( but considering how vast the “middle class” actually is, can we really say ). as such, she’s very conscious about how she spends her money, so meeting a muse who is very well off financially would be an interesting dynamic. she always jokes about being a sugar baby or like, being a trophy wife so she doesn’t have to work, but whether that’d actually happens depends on what happens when she meets a muse with the means to make that joke a reality.  

anyway, leah teeters on the edge of being a gold digger but she probably won’t be. it’s just fun to pair her up with wealthy muses because they live such a vastly different lifestyle from her usually that she’s like “what”  

          sexcapade threads ( 18+ muns only ) -- leah is a very sex positive muse, and as such, a lot of her interactions can be smutty. taking into account her sexuality, hook-up culture on a college campus, and her freedom away from her parents, quite a few plots ( and their variations ) can happen rather easily. it’s important to note, though, that i prefer to write smut threads that either have some sort of plot to them or can lead to further development in a relationship. writing smut can get boring real quick if nothing new is introduced, but i’m okay with plotting out intimacy privately! also, sex does not always equal romance, so romantic feelings may not always develop between leah and your muse. if you are interested in shipping our muses romantically, please let me know! otherwise, i’ll assume they’re just in a casual type of relationship.

one night stands

friends with benefits

tin/der, bum/ble, or other dating apps/sites dates or meet ups

just gossiping about respective sex lives

first time meeting threads where it’s literally just leah and your muse getting it on is also acceptable, though some plotting might be required depending on the muse.

          verse/au/wishlist plots — i always love a good au. love, love, love my aus. below are a list of verses that are already “premade” on my blog that that you’re welcome to work with. i’ll go ahead and link leah’s verse page as well in case you want to read up on the basics. i do have a wishlist tag as well full of plots that may or may not work with leah. you’re definitely not limited to the verse page or the tags; if you have an idea, please don’t be shy to reach out to me! like i said, leah is very flexible. all i ask is that you respect her as a muse and don’t be weird with her. i get that she’s a very sexual muse but please ... respect her. 

angel verse — this verse is probably one of leah’s most used verses, and important details about this verse can be found here, here, and here! i highly suggest you read these posts bc a lot of her mannerisms hinges on what’s laid out in these posts, and of course you’re always welcome to ask questions if you have any!! angel verse is a good place to begin if your muse is also another supernatural creature, and considering angel leah has no qualms about visiting other realms like hell, it’s very possible for her to meet your muse one way or another.

influencer/idol/celebrity verse — considering how big on social media leah is in terms of her constant engagement with it, plots that involve her being an influencer are right up her alley, and collaborations with other muses who fit into this category are a great way for leah to interact with them! while i don’t have an official verse up for this category yet as of 04/06/21, leah’s very flexible when it comes to what she can do if she gained social media status, but what she’d most likely do involves modeling, acting, and being on youtube or streaming. 

high school verse — high school leah is very different from main verse/college leah in the sense that she’s a lot more reserved and is a lot more closeted about her sexuality. she’s still very enjoyable to interact with, but what sets high school leah apart from canon leah the most is that there’s a more prominent struggle and confusion regarding her spiritual views, and dating her in high school is almost like a chore since your muse will have to jump through hoops in order to date her if that’s something they want to do. in high school verse, leah canonically only has one boyfriend in her senior ( final ) year, but as always, i welcome divergence. your muse is even welcome to be her high school boyfriend if we plot things out ( spoiler: her high school boyfriend was a real asshole ). high school shenanigans are definitely more tame than college shenanigans, but this verse will be good for slice of life plots ( hanging out after school, doing projects together, decorating for the school dance, prom date, applying to college, ect. )

          miscellaneous plots — finally, here are some classic plots that i always love with leah. they don’t really fit into the other categories, but these are plots i don’t mind doing over and over and over again because they’re never always the same each time i write them, and these plots make leah happy too :’)

mom friend/big sister leah bc oh my god i love her with kids so much, but also she’s incredibly doting towards close friends she cares a lot about so yeah call her the mom friend™

in the same vein, pls hire her to be your main babysitter. she’d appreciate it so much bc college is so expensive

beach threads!! aquarium threads!! ocean threads!! pool threads!! leah enjoys water and ocean life, so any thread where these elements are involved really get her going. i don’t care how often she’s been to the aquarium or beach, she’ll go again.

take her on trips with you!! she loves traveling and really like the idea the freedom that comes with traveling around the world

[lotus-mirage]

The Untamed episode 50 liveblog

Wow.  D: I can’t believe I’m almost done with this.  I will probably wind up at least watching some of the animated version, but for now this is the end!  Aaahh

So Jin Guangyao didn’t make a move, then.

Focus is squarely on Nie Huaisang now. He did it on purpose then?

‘Didn’t have a clue’?

Okay, but was the rest of it him, too? He seems pretty shaken right now honestly.

He pushed the sword further in??? D:

Oh that’s a horrible confession to make. That he didn’t want to hurt Lan Xichen, I mean. That’s absolutely going to hurt the guy after Jin Guangyao finally passes.

It’d almost be kinder to tell him that he was using him too, frankly. Almost. I don’t know. Yikes.

Oh jeez that background shot of Jin Ling D,:

I keep forgetting he’s here watching this too yikes

Wait what’s he doing

How the heck did he do that???? He’s been bleeding out for at least a few minutes already!

Is he breaking the seal thing!?

Uh oh

Is he going to stay? It looks like he’s at least considering it.

???? I thought he wanted him to stay!?

Okay now these are the dramatics I was expecting from Nie Mingjue

Jin Ling D,:

Where’d he go? Is he still in there?

I still don’t know what to make of Nie Huaisang

Oh! Was he the last person he had to get revenge on?

Well there’s literally everyone else

:,( at Jiang Cheng just watching him

He’s leaving!? D:

How many child actors did they have for like one scene each??

Oh Nie Huaisang was holding the hat?

Wait is that blood

Not sure what he was feeling there. It was interesting though. Huh.

I’m D,: at this entire conversation with Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling. It’s so good.

Oh flashback?

Did he get himself caught on purpose!? D,:

Ahhhhhh

Hahaha was that an interrupted confession? It sure felt like one.

Ahhh Lan Sizhui :,D

Oh good they’re telling him

Ahhhhhhhhh

they’re hugging ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

‘Sad but thrilled’ is a good description

Hahaha this is fantastic

Okay the leg hug is a little awkward but the sentiment is nice

Ahhhhhh

Oh! They’re going back to Qishan together! Oh that’s so nice.

There is a lot of ‘person in black and person in white walking off together’ in this show

WAIT WAIT is he not going too!??

?????

WHAT

?????????????????

is this a flashback or a time skip what is happening

I mean very pretty but what

Okay these are new clothes so assumedly not a flashback

Good they didn’t split up

Oh I recognize this shot

Several of these shots actually - they’re used in either the opening or the ending I think

Oh good Nie Huaisang’s here too. We might actually be getting an explanation.

Okay that ‘Thou shall not befriend the devil’ was very threatening please clarify.

They laughed but I’m not sure if it was actually a joke

...okaaaay

Oh good they’re confirming it even without him

More or less

?? Okay what’s going on now. I’m on edge after that whole-

Shoot they are splitting up!?

??????

Okay so it’s not forever but??

Oh he’s playing the song!?

Thank goodness they’re implying it’s not for too long.

Wow is he in another outfit already?

That’s very pretty

?? What prompted the pause in music??

Okay he turned around was that them meeting back up?

Oh.

Oh thats the end. :,(

End notes:

Okay I had to do something but I am back half an hour later and watching the ending and it is giving me very strong emotions wow

Okay so.

First off: very good series - I was confused a whole lot but it made me feel things and I love it.

The ending was really well done, I think - there was a lot of ambiguity but it wrapped up enough of the emotional threads in a very effective manner.

Wow, uh. Hmmm. What to say.

Thoughts on characters/plot threads as I remember them:

I found that the strongest emotional thread of this show was probably the family/grief aspect. Mainly the family aspect, but the two were often combined. It showed up absolutely everywhere - it was both Wei Wuxian’s driving factor and in a way Jin Guangyao’s? Moreso the lack of it in the latter’s case. And a complicated issue with both (especially with their parents). On second thought this may hold true for a lot of the cast.

It did kind of feel like Wen Ruohan was kind of not a character and was just there to drive the war forward (and thus the characters and plot). Which is fine? But it leaves me feeling like the driving force behind the war was a little hollow, which is eh.

The Wen remnants were super compelling, though. That entire arc hit hard and made sense as a logical effect of the war.

I don’t really know how to feel about the post-timeskip stuff as a whole. On the one hand, I enjoyed myself a lot? It was great fun. On the other hand a lot of it contrasted sharply with the mass death at the end of the last arc.

The characters themselves were mostly pretty great (with the exceptions of, like, the Wen antagonists, some sect leaders, Su She and Jin Zixun).

I always have a hard time talking about main characters (in this case WWX and LWJ). I think it’s because we know so much about them that it’s hard to pick a single subject to talk about with them??

Anyway, they were really great. They had unique dynamics with each other and with all the other characters that evolved as they did. Neither were static characters and each step they took made sense?

Jiang Cheng is a very flawed character and he made me feel a lot and he’s my favorite. After a certain point he just had so many strong emotions, many of which conflicted each other and it was just entirely compelling and relatable. I feel like he is the strongest character outside of the main two + Jin Guangyao, although that may be my bias speaking.

Jin Guangyao. I totally forgot to think about story structure with him, frankly - didn’t see why he kept getting so much screen time and was constantly developing as well. I didn’t realize he was going to be a full-blown antagonist, let alone the antagonist, way past when I should have. He’s a sympathetic character, and the audience is reminded of this even as he does all these awful things. Yeah, he keeps finding himself in terrible situations but he also causes a lot of innocent casualties. I don’t totally know how to feel about him fully, but I think that’s the point.

Lan Xichen is also very flawed, but like. In a gentler way? I’m not sure we really see enough to know him as well as we could, but we do know that he’s trying and he cares, and sometimes that sucks for him.

Nie Huaisang is frankly a bit of an enigma. Unlike Jin Guangyao, he doesn’t exposit or drop masks where we can see him. I think he’s very interesting but maybe too underutilized in the majority of the series for me to say much else about him. I did really like the banter he had with Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian, though.

Not sure I have as much to say on the other characters. Oops.

Lan Sizhui! Best boy. I love him.

Wen Ning is also best boy. He’s adorable. And also terrifying sometimes.

Wen Qing was fantastic. I liked her character so much and was very sad to see her go.

I was very surprised by how much Jin Zixuan grew on me. Props to that.

Jin Ling was also great. I loved his interactions with basically everyone. Also I feel like with maybe the exception of maybe Lan Xichen the ending probably was the worst for him. Smack dab in the center of the family drama, if you can count multiple set-ups and murders that.

I kind of simultaneously wish Jiang Yanli was more and am kind of content with how she was? I mean some of her role is a little... overly-limited, but she’s still a fairly important aspect of the story and continuously makes her own decisions and the like.

Madame Yu was a more interesting character to me than her husband but was also much more antagonistic. It’s an interesting duality where I want to see more of her but also want her to not interact with the other characters much, which doesn’t make any sense.

Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan didn’t have much of an impact outside of the Coffin Town bit, but frankly that was painful enough that it’s fine!! It was well done and their situation was awful but that hurt enough already!

Xue Yang is a character. Very well-portrayed and I feel like the actor had a blast but I feel like he didn’t have a giant impact either? He was a cool and scary villain.

Overall, it was a great show with a lot of interesting characters! It was great at emotional storytelling, except for when there was whiplash. I loved the music and the costuming, and the actors were great. Some of the special effects were a little wacky (looking at Lan Xichen’s instrument and the Wens’ dog thing), but some of them were really cool (see: Wen Ning’s entrance into the temple). Sometimes the politics-talk grated my nerves a bit, but that may be mostly a personal preference thing. The fighting also took some getting used to, but was impressive in some areas.

The show made me feel a lot and I am still feeling both the mixed bittersweet feelings from the show and that oh-shoot-the-story’s-over hole-in-the-chest feeling right now, but I don’t know how else to talk about that.

It wasn’t perfect but I enjoyed it a lot and am very impressed by it.

Let me know if I missed anything - there’s a lot and I am totally open for discussion.

[thecursedhellblazer]

Anonymous asked: “ OTP(s) for your muse? ”

Shipping Questions meme || Accepting !

(( I feel like I need to make a distinction here between the ships I have for John as a character in general and the ships I have for my version of him (as my muse). I promise I’ll keep it short ^^” ))

(( “Canon” wise, my fave ship for him is HellStar (John / Lucifer Morningstar, from the Netflix show), at least from what concerns the DCTV/DCEU adaptations. Then I have this crackship I’m kinda attached to, which would be John / Damien Darhk. Don’t judge me, that’s what LoT 5x07 did to me. ))

(( Basing myself more on the comics universe/Justice League, my soft spots goes for a past, messy relationship between John and Chas (when they were younger, before the Newcastle clusterfuck and Ravenscar) and the odd bond John and the First have ongoing (yep, I do ship them...even if in a weird way xD). I also like John/Zatanna, but only as part of his background. I think they work much better as ex-lovers turned to friends. ))

(( Speaking of my Constantine (as the muse written on this blog), I’ve found myself with a much broader range of ships...which was kind of a surprise because I tend to be selective when it comes to this sort of stuff. It’s really linked to the way my RP partners write their muses and to their unique take on them, more than on the characters themselves. Listing them: ))

@imthebatman​​‘s Bruce Wayne: the very first ship of this blog. It totally caught me off guard, but I adore it. Just as I adore Palps. Obviously. I even made a moodboard for them and, trust me, that means a lot xD

@thedemonconstantine​​​‘s Chas: we are so going for the pre-Newcastle complicated attraction between John and Chas. It’s going to be a background thread for our “present time” ones, but I’m eager to play it out. The comics don’t really explore that part of Chas and John’s shared history and that’s a real pity. Something needs to be done about it u.u

@angelluxi​​‘s Lucifer: look at me finally going after one of my “canon” ships xD Kidding aside, I love their portrayal and, since the mun low-key ships them too, we decide to give them a try sometimes. Honestly looking forward to it, and to explore all the other shades of their relationship too.

@areswriites​​‘s Klaus Hargreeves: we just writing together, but honestly? We’re both of the idea that these two could turn out to be super interesting together...and I sure as hell dig them. (Pssst, hey, Ares, yep, you. I’m willing to ship John with some of your other muses too if you want xD)

@smoakinn​​‘s Felicity Smoak: we basically just discussed shipping (literally yesterday) and we both agreed that John and Felicity could have a very nice bond, a friendship that slides into romance, given the right time. We plotted out a few basic interactions and they turned out amazing.

@ceolenaluthor​​‘s Lena Luthor: alright, we didn’t really talk about it, it was mentioned in a meme the mun replied to, but from how we have started their interaction, I could totally see it happening, if the chemistry evolves in the right way!

(( There are another couple of people I’d be interested in shipping with, but it hasn’t come up and i’m socially dumb, so...I don’t know how to ask. ))

(( Oh, does it counts that in my thread with @perfectedingbadideas​​, my John and their John have talked about (and not just joking about it) to shag each other? I mean, at some point in the comics he does say that he would have sex with himself, given the chance, so...Maybe we’re just enacting canon xD ))

(( In any case, the main concept is that I discovered that I love shipping with John. Of course, I won’t ship him with literally everyone, but I find myself much more open-minded to the whole thing than I usually am. So, if you want to discuss shipping, come at me! ))

[fyrapartnersearch]

Hello, hello! This is the first time I’ve put something out like this- ANYWAYS, my name is Vy. I’m 22 (turning 23 pretty soon), I go by pronouns they/she, I’m in an MFA Creative Writing program, I'm in the EST time zone, and I love, love roleplaying. Been doing it on-and-off for six years on Tumblr now and writing for ten years now. This summer I’m generally going to be free, but when I’m in school you can expect at least one response a week from me. After doing indie rp for years, I’d like to try my hand at 1x1 rp and maybe to find a long term partner I can write with as well!

I’d prefer it if my partner(s) were also 21+ since I tend to write about the darker aspects of life. 

Okay, now onto the RP stuff:

Style: Honestly, I like to think I’m pretty flexible? I personally prefer multi-para (200-500 words) and para threads, but I also love the occasional spontaneous RP that can happen through the chats. Para threads I’m more likely to respond to more frequently than multi-paras though. Writing can be exhausting.

I’m OC/OC interactions only. Not really comfy with writing canon characters.

Communication: It’s a necessity :D I usually find having some kind of a friendship with the other person does wonders for my inspiration. I tend to be kind of shy though, but don’t let that stop you from coming into my messages!! We can talk about anything although at the beginning I’m more inclined to keep the chatting more to rp plots and character headcanons until I get comfy. I will note though, there are days and times when I just won’t be up for chatting- when that happens, I might disappear for a day or two. I promise I’ll get back to you in 24-48 hours max. I’ll be patient with you. This is a hobby after all.

If any problems arise or something makes you uncomfortable or even you’ve just lost interest in a plot, please, please talk to me. I’m always open to critique and will appreciate it if you give me some. Ghosting hurts too.

Plotting: I love, love plotting! Even though this is a hobby, I do get very enthusiastic about epic storylines and memorable characters and character arcs.  If we plot something out though, please know I’m expecting us also to write it out whether it’s formally or informally. I’m really looking for someone who has that same enthusiasm and consistency. I’d say I’m more of a few plots but deeper development kind of writer. Also I really like doing angst. Well, a balance of angst and fluff.

Ships: Ships are pretty great- that being said, I’m here for chemistry and development first. I’m here for build-up and as far as I’ve seen my characters, I tend to be more on the slow-burn side of things. I personally am more comfy with M/M and F/F, but I’ll do the occasional M/F too. Nonbinary and trans muses are more than welcome too. I also love, love doing platonic and familial ships too. PLEASE I’LL GIVE MY RIGHT LEG FOR THAT GOOD PLATONIC SHIT.

I can double! Well, I’ve never done it before, but I have had multimuses with muses of all genders and ships of all kinds if that’s counts for something.

Characters: So I have a lot of pre-made OCs already with character arcs I’d love to write my way through. But within the plot, the most important thing for me is character development based on interaction. When it comes to making muses, I do tend to be more on the slower side, but on the flip side, those muses will have extensive backgrounds. If you’re looking for someone to help you with exploring the full depth and possibilities of a character, please sign me up! Please note also, all of my OCs are queer and a majority are POC. Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misgendering of any kind will not be tolerated.

While I do have faceclaims for my characters (and the ones I’d make), it’s not the most important thing to me. I’m here for content and personality.

Smut: I can do it- actually I’d be looking for ways to improve my smut writing. That being said, I’ll only do it if it contributes to the character and plot development. We can also always just fade to black as well. In terms of positions, I’m more used to writing the ‘submissive’ role, but consider me a switch. A lot of my muses are switches as well.

Limits: A hard no on rape scenes, non/dub-con scenes, incest (that includes relatives who are not related by blood), and toxic relationships. They can be referenced and alluded to in the past though.

Genre: I’m not really a high fantasy kind of person. I can do urban fantasy though- for the most part, my main focus is going to be character interactions, character dynamics so you might say my cup of tea is generally slice-of-life with a hint of magic thrown in. But I’m always down to try new things- except for high fantasy, I apologize.

Basically: Urban Fantasy, Supernatural, Slice-of-Life, Historical- the important part is that it’s character driven.

Plots: At the moment, I’m kind of sucked dry, but I’m more likely to be down to try whatever you throw at me! Or just introduce me to your OCs- I’ll most likely want to introduce mine and we can go from there!

Fandoms: I know I said I’m not comfy with writing canon characters, but it doesn’t mean we can’t throw our muses in those universes! Fandoms I’m familiar with include:

Shadowhunters, Harry Potter, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, ATLA, MCU, Harvest Moon, Fire Emblem, Studio Ghibli, and Pokemon. I’ll list more if I think of any.

Method: I’ll do discord, email, or Google Doc! Maybe in the future I’ll try my hand on Tumblr as well again too.

Congrats, you made it through the whole thing. If you’re interested, please hit me up either on discord or by email- I look forward to writing with you all!

Sincerely,

Vy

Discord: letscallitvy#0074

Email: vywritesatctl97@gmail.com

[nellynee]

FowlPlayAU (aka Miraculous Peacock Marinette AU)

Literally no one asked but I don’t care. An AU in which Marinette holds the Peacock Miraculous

This actually developed from a few different threads that I tugged on over the course of a few months.

I guess the starting point for this was probably the season 1 episode “Simon Says” with the very short but profound moment of understanding between Gabriel and Ladybug over the pedestal they both placed Adrien on and the subsequent really, really heavy handed comparisons everyone kept making towards everyone else about who resembled Emilie the most

Basically I thought this episode was the heaviest seed in the narrative of the parallels between Gabriel and Marinette, both fashion career focused workaholics who take way to much responsibility on their own shoulders and get obsessive to the point of destructiveness over their respective, similar love interests, and using those parallels as a point of interest in showing both Marinette's growth as she moves beyond that destructive mentality and towards regarding Adrien as a person and how Gabriel’s “love conquers all” mentality isn’t an inherently positive thing but no. *sigh* no, they needed more screen time for one time characters. It fleshes out the world,yes, but not the characters. LOTS of interesting long term threads were dropped in favor of broadening the cast to try and shoehorn that “kid superhero group” into the show that was originally tossed. Basically I’m saying that I do think Gabriel and Marinette have enough in common to surprise some people, including each other, and I’m a sucker for intergenerational friendships

The second main factor was the small subplot at the time of Gabriel suspecting Adrien of being Cat Noir. I got really interested after “Gorizilla” about what might actually happen if Gabriel did figure out that Adrien was Cat Noir at that point in the series (I have words about Cat Blanc, trust me. No those words aren’t “throw the whole mess out the window” because I actually love it. But many, many words) Going off the heavy handed implications that Emilie was the former Peacock, I thought it would be interesting, and in character, for Gabriel desperately analyze his son’s behavior as Cat Noir, trying to figure out WTF Adrien thinks he’s doing, only to realize that Cat Noir has some pretty obvious affections for Ladybug. This is unacceptable of course, but understandable in a “he’s a hormone ridden, teenage boy, and Gabriel was once too the same sort of boy in love with the same sort of heroin” sort of way. The obvious answer to getting rid of what is the only possible obstacle for his son’s cooperation (I was going off the pilot with the potential of Cat Noir as a Hawkmoth agent because of their familial connections) is to get rid of his affections, and since it has to be shallow, he’s too young and also Gabriel controls his whole life so it can’t be love, then all he has to do is shift his son’s affections. Cue an uncomfortable number of episodes in which Gabriel subtly inserts a B plot into his Akumatized villains by trying to push various girl together with his son in carefully controlled circumstances. Because this is before Kasumi, and again, those nice parallels between Marinette and Gabriel himself, he eventually after trial and error settles on Marinette as the perfect candidate. Thus, we get a series of hilarious situations in which Marinette and Adrien are pushed more and more into high pressure uncomfortable and intimate situations, losing time and ability to turn into their superhero personas as a natural deterrent to power creep and justifying the use of other Miraculous users a lot more. 

I saw someone comment in one of their author’s notes on a fic a long time ago that they hated the trope of Marinette being an emotional Atlas and my instantaneous internal response that that kinda WAS Marinette's character early series, especially the origin episode, and that a lot of the most prevalent fics were written in that time period, and that really intense response from me really stuck. 

Peacock aesthetic. yup, that alone gets an equal piece of the pie 

So yeah, if any of that interests you, keeping in mind that on top of potential sympathy and understanding of his actions, Gabriel is still absolutly a shitty person, then the actual (canon divergent) AU is under the cut.

The actual thing diverts during Stone Heart, in which the moment Marinette decided to become Ladybug for realsies rather than try to faust it off Alya doesn’t happen. Rather than deciding to put on the earings, Marinette distracts the monster enough they can get away. Alya finds the earings, and takes up the Mantle of Ladybug.

This decidedly marks a regression in Marinette. Where as Ladybug, and with Tiki’s constant assurances and influence, Marinette learns to work past her urges to take responsibility for everyone’s emotions, Marinette has now lost that constant companion, and has to deal to with her new best friend’s time being diverted

Cut forward to “Stormy Weather” and Marinette has fallen into a vicious cycle of guilt. The little creature had told her it was her destiny to be Ladybug. And while we know that the situation with Hawkmoth is not much different than it is in canon, Marinette is totally convinced that the only reason Hawkmoth is still around hurting people is because she rejected the call. That guilt has built into a feeling of impotent inadequacy that convinces her that she’s no longer deserving of the Ladybug roll, and so she’s both unable to do anything, and responsible for Hawkmoth still being around. 

The most prevalent of episode changes is Lady Wifi. It’s Marinette who’s akumatized, not Alya, and it’s a fairly traumatizing, but empowering experience for Marinette. 

The ultimate culmination of this is this universe’ “Volpina” episode, where, in the background of main battle events, Marinette gains an understanding of the suspicions that Gabriel might be Hawkmoth, and in the climax of the battle, believing Adrien in danger, she confronts him, confirming his alter ego. 

In a scene I have no time to actually extrapolate on, if your curious, just ask, Gabriel and Marinette come to a tentative understanding. He’ll give her the powers to protect his son, and she’ll actually have some sort of control in her life again. This akumatization takes the form of a faux Peacock Miraculous. 

This marks the first half of her partnership as an antihero with Hawkmoth. (and yes, I do have the mechanics of how he can akumatized more than one person at a time without Catalyst, which will be extrapolated upon request, but this is long enough already)

Again, I wanna draw attention to those Sweet, Sweet Marinette and Gabriel parallels. Gabriel, through half truths and carefully peppered moments of emotional manipulation and practiced vulnerability, attempts to B plot Marinette into stealing the Miraculouses. Believing herself to be at least somewhat in his thrall, Marinette allows herself to empathize with his plight, and they build a surprising, if strained, raport. 

After discovering that she is not, in fact, under Hawkmoth’s control Marinette rebels just long enough to have Hawkmoth take back his Akuma, and Marinette caves the next time Adrien is in Genuine Danger, stealing the real Peacock Miraculous and using it.

This marks the second half of their partnership, and Hawkmoth reveals that the miraculous is broken, and Marinette is now dying from it’s use, and that her only choice of survival is to help him make his wish. This evens out the power balance, at they both now have the same goals and powers independent of each other, but also ups ante. 

That’s the most tldr general of overview, with other more specific highlights like

Ladybug!Alya having to reach her own emotional maturity, her earlier stint as a hero leaving her with a much bigger ego in terms of how she perceives her impact of the morale of the city and where her priorities lie in trying to boost that morale vs her personal needs. Ladybug!Alya tries too hard to take notes from already established heroes and public images. She still runs the Ladyblog, Spiderman style.

After quickly realizing (after some confusion) that the Ladybug he fought Stoneheart with the last time is not the same as the one he fought the first time with, Adrien gets a big old case of the pining sighs

Early series Adrien and Alya are both not the type to value secret identities, and so yes, they do reveal said identities to each other fairly early.

They also can both keep a fucking secret, so it works. They are secret BFFs

After the first time Adrien is rescued by the mysterious Peacock Holder, he figures out that whoever she is, she’s the original Ladybug, and more and more ends up distracted and drawn away from fights by her, the perfect reason for Alya to have to bring in other miraculous users. (the interactions tend to take place on moonlit balconies. There’s heavy Pilot influences here)

Marinette does this thing where she spreads her fan when she’s startled and hides her face. Mostly because Cat Noir wont stay out of it. The miraculous’ memory means she tends to fan speak a lot. Symbolism

Speaking of symbolism, the character designs are rife with them. I know exactly what Peacock Marinette looks like and there’s a reason for everything.

The subplot where (inspired by the pilot) Cat Noir finds out that there used to be a curse on the ring that could only be lifted by a kiss from Ladybug (thanks to her creation/retcon powers). Cat Noir convinces (inaccurately) himself that his destruction powers can totally do something similar with Hawkmoth’s mind control now all he needs is to kiss the Peacock user and she’ll be free! She’s totes not a bad guy!

Yes, Marinette does get a different miraculous ala being an episode helper, and her emotions are complicated about it

And other fun tidbits. This got way to long but I’m more than willing to extrapolate on anything more specific that anyone is curious about