#and after a while all projects related to other sequels had to stop because the fans of the original series hated the new content so much

[bluehairperson]

Cursed thought but The Arcana getting new tales with Dorian is pretty much what happened to Homestuck with its sequels.

[pale-opal]

Hear Me Out:

I know that image and what I'm about to say has a chance of being incredibly niche, because I have no idea how much overlap there is between the Homestuck and Mega Man fandoms. But if there's anything I've learned from the internet, it's that no matter what fandom you're in, it's almost guaranteed that someone in said fandom has read Homestuck before. So I think someone out there will understand the rant I'm about to go on. But for everyone who hasn't read Homestuck before, here's a quick explanation: Homestuck is a webcomic that was written and published by a man named Andrew Hussie. It ran from 2009-2016. It follows the misadventures of four kids as they play a game called Sburb with the help of twelve other kids known as "trolls." Together, they go on a quest to complete the game, as the initiation of it has caused the world to end (so even if they wanted to quit, they couldn't. Whoops). It is currently available to read on mspaintadventures.com, however I do NOT recommend reading it if you are a minor, or if you have sensitivity to content that contains violence, strong language, etc. - There were also two (technically one?) epilogues produced afterward, as well as a sequel called "Homestuck^2". - The disclaimer above applies to those works as well.

Okay. Now that I've explained what Homestuck is, let's get into why I put these four Doctors in the squares that I did.

Dr. Cossack: Has read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - He just seems like the kind of man who casually knows a lot about a lot of things. - A "nerd," if you will. - I can see him reading this in college and subsequently getting totally invested. - He relates to John Egbert (one of the four kids I mentioned earlier) on a personal level. - He did not like the epilogues. - He likes Homestuck^2, though. Dr. Light: Has Read Homestuck, Doesn't Know What Homestuck Is - I imagine that Light was introduced to Homestuck through Cossack while they were in college. - Like, what if Light got sick at some point, and Cossack came over and showed him this random webcomic he found in an attempt to make him feel better, only for Light to wake up the next day, convinced the whole thing was a fever dream? - Cut to many years later, after the birth of Proto Man. - Light and Cossack are having a conversation on the phone: - Cossack: "Hey, Thomas. Do you remember Homestuck?" - Light: "...Homestuck?" - Cossack: "You know, that webcomic I showed you when you got the flu back in college?" - Light: "I'm not sure I-" - Cossack: "The one with the little gray people?" - Light: "Little gray- wait. Wait, that was real?!" - He has not read the epilogues or Homestuck^2. Dr. LaLinde: Has Not Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - I think that Dr. Cossack would go on many coffee-fueled 2 a.m. rants to her during last-minute attempts to finish projects on time when the two of them were in college. - LaLinde would always listen respectfully, and as a result knows the entire lore behind Homestuck despite never reading it. - One day, she decided to give it a go. Here's how that went: - LaLinde: "Okay, let's see here- what? Eight thousand (8000) pages? Where am I going to find the time to read all of that?" - And so, she has to this day never read the darn thing. Dr. Wily: Has Not Read Homestuck, Does Not Know What Homestuck Is - The reasoning behind this is simple: he just couldn't get into it. - Dr. Cossack tried several times while they were in college to convince him to read it, but it sounded really convoluted to him. - Dr. Light tried to get him to read it before the whole "Dr. Wily becomes evil and takes over the world" thing after he remembered what it was. - That didn't work either. - Plus, the whole thing just seemed too long. - He eventually just forgot it existed once Light stopped trying to get him to read it. But here's something else about the Doctors: they all had kids. Kids who all grew up with different levels of parental involvement. Kids who would've probably heard their parents talk about this strange little webcomic at one time or another. Which brings me to my next point:

Blues: Has Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - I imagine that he heard the aforementioned phone call between Light and Cossack, and asked Dr. Light about what they were talking about. - Light straight up tells him that he's not allowed to read it. - Blues accepts this. - Cut to Blues' life after he runs away from home. He's at the library. - He's also in the midst of his "I hate my dad" arc, and as a result is more than willing to go and read this comic Dr. Light told him was off-limits. - He spends a whole day reading the webcomic, its epilogues, and its sequel. - He is there from the time the library opens to the time it closes. - And once everything is said and done, he is a changed man. - His favorite character is Dave Strider. - He also used to like Dirk Strider and Jane Crocker, but then he read the epilogues. Bass: Has Read Homestuck, Doesn't Know What Homestuck is - Bass was just minding his business, until he finds Proto Man broke into his house... again. - I like to think Blues breaks into Wily Fortress sometimes, just because he can. As a treat. - And to visit any Wilybots he's friends with. - He goes to confront Blues, only to find him in the midst of his third reread of Homestuck. - He asks what he's doing. - Blues tells him to pull up a chair. - He starts the reread over so that Bass can understand what's going on. - Bass, too, ends up a changed man. Even if he has no idea what he just read. - His favorite character is Karkat Vantas. - He made a trollsona (basically a troll OC), but has never told a living soul about it. - Also, he will never admit it, but "[S] Game Over" messed him up on an emotional level (if you don't know what "[S] Game Over" is, don't worry about it. Don't look it up. It's okay. Just forget I said anything). Tempo: Has Not Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - Quake Woman has not read Homestuck for the same reason her mother hasn't read it: She's simply too busy. - Blues tries to convince her to read it, though. - But here's the thing: Vesper Woman HAS read it... but she just thought it was just alright. This leads to conversation like this happening: - Vesper: "Don't listen to him, Tempo. It's okay at best." - Blues: "..." - Blues: "...would you like to elaborate on that?" - They get into arguments about different aspects of the plot a LOT. - Tempo just listens quietly while she works. - Out of curiosity, she ended up looking it up one day when she had free time, and ended up stumbling across Hiveswap instead. - Hiveswap is a spin-off game that takes place in Homestuck's universe. The first Act was released in 2017, and the second was released in 2020. - I will admit that I haven't played Hiveswap, so I'm not sure if the disclaimer I provided for Homestuck applies here. Kalinka Cossack: Has Never Read Homestuck, Does Not Know What Homestuck Is - My reasoning behind this is even more simple than Dr. Wily's: - Dr. Cossack does not let her know that Homestuck exists in an effort to keep her innocence in tact. - That's it. That's the reasoning. You can all go home n-. - ...wait. Is that ANOTHER image down there?

You see, there's one more set of characters that I want to discuss in this long, long post. Characters that wouldn't be influenced by their parents, meaning that whether or not they've read Homestuck would be more up to happenstance:

...I can explain.

Zero: Has Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - Part of the reason I put him here is because he ended up being the opposite of what Wily wanted him to be. He wanted a ruthless killing machine, and instead he got someone who helps save the world on multiple occasions. So why not have him be the opposite of his creator in Homestuck knowledge as well? - (Although if you think about it, Zero is technically a ruthless killing machine, but that's not what we're here to talk about). - Another other part of the reasoning is that I thought it was funny. - Zero had trouble getting invested until Act 5. - After he reached that point, he was locked in. - He sees a little bit of himself in Rose Lalonde and Dirk Strider. - He has never read the epilogues, or the sequel. Once he saw the Snapchat bonus content, he thought that was it. - Zero successfully got Iris into the comic as well. - Her favorite character was also Rose. - I like to think he and Layer also became friends after realizing they were both Homestuck fans.

Axl: Has Read Homestuck, Doesn't Know What Homestuck Is - He found a dub of the series on YouTube on day while watching random videos. - He was invested almost immediately. - Axl would talk about it with the other Red Alert members a lot - especially to Red and Tornado. - But there was one problem: He didn't know the name of it. It just completely slipped his mind at one point, and he wasn't able to get it back. This led to stuff like this: - Axl: "And THEN John and his friends are losing to the Condescence, but-" - Red: "That's nice and all, but what's this webcomic you read called?" - Axl: "Uh... I dunno. I can't remember." - Red: "Are you sure you didn't just make it up?" - Axl: "Wha- Yes! Yes, I'm sure!" - Red: "...sure thing, little buddy." - After joining the Maverick Hunters, Axl casually brings up the plot of this comic he can't remember the name of. Zero soon says this: - Zero: "...are you talking about Homestuck?" - Axl: "That's what it's called?!" - He made a trollsona like Bass did, but is a lot less shy about sharing it. - His favorite character is Roxy Lalonde. - Axl got Palette into it as well. X: Has Not Read Homestuck, Knows What Homestuck Is - He heard Zero talk about it with Iris a lot, but it sounded a bit too violent for his tastes. - He did play the Pesterquest visual novel, though. - Yes, the disclaimer does apply for this visual novel. - I like to think that at some point in X7, X complains about Zero and Axl's interest in "overly violent media" and asks if Zero has started "corrupting the youth." - He is promptly told to shut up. - X is more open to the idea of reading Homestuck by the time X8 comes around though. But it isn't until Axl is recovering from the game's ending that he actually starts considering it, since he knows it'll make Axl happy. - Speaking of which: will Capcom ever give us X9? - I just want to know if Axl is really okay, or if Lumine messed him up somehow. - It's been almost 20 years since the game released. 20 years is a long time to leave part of a video game franchise on a cliffhanger (but then again, Mega Man Legends fans have been waiting for 24 years...) Sigma: Has Not Read Homestuck, Does Not Know What Homestuck Is - The reason Sigma is in this category is very easy to explain: - He deserves nothing that could give him any semblance of happiness. - Also, I hate him.

Alright, rant over.

The inspiration for this post, as well as the original template, can be found here.

...now you can all go home.

[thenightling]

Addressing some old confusion about Nightmare before Christmas

Tim Burton is getting a lot of attention lately because of the new Beetlejuice sequel so a lot of his other work is being talked about. The Spooky season also leads to conversations about his work. And every year it's the same thing. Someone will list their favorite Tim Burton movies and someone will go "Umm... Actually, Henry Selick directed Nightmare before Christmas." Yes, he did. But I am willing to argue that three men deserve the bulk of the credit for Nightmare before Christmas. First we need to go backward to the early 1980s when a young Tim Burton was working for Disney as an animator, uncredited, for The Fox and the Hound. An unpleasant aspect of working for Disney is anything you create while working for Disney... belongs to Disney. While working for Disney Tim Burton doodled the characters that would become the main characters of Nightmare before Christmas. He also wrote a long-form story book / poem in the style of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" by Dr. Seuss. It wasn't until the early 1990s that Disney finally agreed to allow this story to be adapted into a film, and also allowed the book, itself, to finally be published a mere few months before the 1993 release of the movie adaptation. In the early 90s there was a cinematic trend that the author of a Gothic book was in the movie title such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. But as Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley are long dead, no one mistook them as the director of their movies. The easy mistake may have been deliberate on Disney's part since Disney was preying on the (then) current rising success of Tim Burton's film directing career. (The 2004 Halmark mini-series of Frankenstein is closer to the Mary Shelley novel than the movie called Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, by the way.) Early in the production of the movie Tim Burton went to composer Danny Elfman's home and told him the story piece by piece. Danny Elfman immediately related to the protagonist Jack Skellington as he was in the middle of his own identity crisis as a the lead singer of New Wave rock band, Oingo Boingo. Danny Elfman had recently discovered his talent for and love for film and TV composing. Danny Elfman soon had eleven songs composed that made a full opera of the story Tim Burton told him. In fact, according to Danny Elfman, Tim Burton is uncredited but wrote some of the lyrics. Danny Elfman became so attached to Jack Skellington that he was also the character's singing voice for the movie. Danny Elfman's opera version of the story (just the songs without dialogue between them) became the basis for annual concerts that were performed as recently as last year at the Hollywood Bowl.

Henry Selick was the director of Nightmare before Christmas (the movie) and he had to deal with the tedious work of overseeing the entire stop motion process, probably the most painstaking part of the project. Caroline Thompson wrote the script for Nightmare before Christmas but only after the eleven songs were composed, the dialogue she wrote for the movie consisted of less than ten minutes of the movie's running time. So for the confused: The director of Nightmare before Christmas was Henry Selick. He had to oversee the entire stop motion animation process. The score, song lyrics, and Jack Skellington's singing voice was Danny Elfman, who wrote all eleven songs before there was a script and wrote them so well that they could stand without a script. (But he says Tim Burton wrote some of the lyrics but is uncredited). Tim Burton wrote the original short story / poem that was published the same year as the movie's release as an illustrated children's book. Tim Burton wrote some of the lyrics, chose the color pallets of the sets, and even was the one who decided Sally's socks would have to be striped when the puppet couldn't stand up right because her ankle were too small. Yes, Henry Selick should get credit as the director. But Tim Burton should also get credit for the original story, the character designs / concept art, and Danny Elfman needs the credit for all The scoring, most of the lyrics, and Jack Skellington's most passionate moments as he was the singing voice and Jack did a lot more singing than talking.

These three men, together, with their collective talents, are why we have Nightmare before Christmas.

[shiraoyagi]

i think we ALSO need to talk about this unit thematically (the sequel)

(someone needs to make me stop talking about Project Sekai Units)

i think this unit is very obviously the counterpart to mirai toshi (does that make them parallel units??? like how leo-vs, mmj-vbs, and niigosho are??? uhhhhhh idk im getting off topic)

but also i think this lineup is interesting because of the shared themes i can think of off the top of my head between minori touya and tsukasa

the first thing that comes to mind is their passion and how thats central to their characters. minori with idols and how we know what happens when she loses her hope to become one in the 2022 april fools au, while for touya and tsukasa, they (according to theirselves) "saved" eachother— without tsukasa, touya's passion for music would cease to exist, and without touya, tsukasa would've given up on his passion to make others smile.

i think i need to elaborate on the reason why touya's passion here is music because that just became a big thing with the first concerto which was the last event we had— so without spoiling too much, touya had genuine passion for classical music and actually wanted to be like his dad at one point, but it got complicated with yknow. harumichi. being a guy. that exists. and that isn't. the best of parents. yknow.

if touya hadn't met tsukasa, then touya wouldn't have stood up to his dad, meaning touya would've never met akito, meaning touya would've never continued his innate passion for music. that's basically what i wanted to say, yeah

so then another thing i think these 3 can be grouped together on is their work ethic. minori is always extremely hardworking, continuing to strive to be an idol even after getting rejected time and time again. uhm.

when it comes to hard work i think i don't need to explain tsukasa. towards the phoenix at the sky's edge is an event that exists.

and the first concerto is basically the same event but in a different coat of paint. so, erm. tota's not free, either.

idk this is more of me going on a tangent than me having a clear idea like mirai toshi. but maybe i am onto something

you may be wondering, "but wait ace anakirui #1 vbs lore defender— how does miss hatsune miku relate to these themes?"

well, my friend, i believe that since miku is the biggest vocal synth of all time— she can represent the vocal synth scene as a whole. and the vocal synth community is built on the passion of many producers and artists and writers and editors and all kinds of people— something that also requires hard work.

or something inspirational like that, i don't know. maybe i'm not cooking with this one. goodnight

[am-i-the-asshole-2]

AITA for not wanting to play a new system but playing anyway?

(Everyone here is late teens-early 20s). I have been with this TTRPG group for a few years now (since we were all in high school together), and we started out playing D&D but realized it wasn't for us after a couple sessions and switched to a different game system ever since.

Recently, our DM has suggested we play a new system. Our last system used one dice size (for example, a d20), and different stats meant you would add different modifiers to your rolls. I love this system, and even used it for my own campaign when the DM took a break.

The new system uses variable sizes of dice for every stat (for example, a d4 for strength and a d20 for charisma, with each stat having a different sized dice for each). I have been very vocal about not liking the system on paper for a while now, but our DM doesn't usually respond/say anything in our group chat, which is where we were discussing it.

Recently, our DM ran a Session 0- the way they ran it was basically a backstory as to how all our players met up for the plot. In this session, out of all the 15-20 times I rolled, I got a natural 20 [which amounted to quite literally nothing of value] and every other roll was a 1. I tried other players' dice, but it didn't matter. Every. Single. Time. Things ended up really bad for my character, and me and the DM have to run another session later to let my character join the party because if we don't I'll have to play a backup character.

The DM believes that I am frustrated simply because I had bad luck and consequences because of it, especially because they forgot to give me a part of the system that says that every time you get a 1 you can add an extra dX [whatever dice you got a 1 on] to a future roll. They say that they won't let these carry over between sessions and will reset to 0. This is all frustrating, but I was mainly upset that I wouldn't be able to play this character that I have had prepped and been very excited to play for well over a year, and that has been resolved.

I just don't like this new system. The DM either refuses to listen to me or just keeps me on read all the time, because I have tried bringing it up, with no response. My fellow players all, for the most part, love this new system, even more than the prior system, which drives me insane. I feel like my complaints are falling on deaf ears.

If this was any other project, I would've quit and just stopped doing this. But the campaign that we're doing is a direct sequel, and the main plot for this part is rescuing my prior character, who had her soul stolen and locked away in Hell. We've been chipping away at this campaign series for a while now (playing other campaigns in-between)- it was the one we started with in high school! Everyone else wants me to play with them, so I've decided to stick around.

I feel bad about it, though. I just feel like the more we play this system the more pissed off I'll be, and that resentment might affect the plot or gameplay. One of our prior campaigns was one that I didn't want to play in, but was convinced to join after learning that it was related to our main campaign series. I found out because of it that one of the vital plot points of the campaign was a huge trigger for me, and now I totally hate thinking about that part of the campaign. I worry that the same will happen if I continue playing the campaign, where the whole thing is tarnished and years of memories will be tainted by this arc.

AITA for sticking around and playing anyways?

[deityoftherain]

silver sanctuary - Nature Wives Fanfic

Rating: Teen

Relationship: F/F, Gen

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Status: Completed Oneshot

Word Count: 3,210

Summary: Katherine and Shelby have been traveling together for well over two years now, and they knew each other for months before that. The last place on their list of places to visit was Sanctuary, a place known to be a safe haven for all sorts of people, including run-away Blessed like Shelby. Katherine would follow her girlfriend to the end of the earth if they asked her to, so she was more than happy to walk hand in hand with her.

(aka Rain wanted an excuse to write soft lesbians for an afternoon)

Technically, this is a sequel to "silver wounds", but it can be read standalone.

Full fanfic underneath the cut! Please reblog, leave kudos on the AO3 fic slash notes/likes here on Tumblr, comment either place, and etc if you enjoy the story :D

“Are you almost ready?” Shelby asked from behind as their hands placed themselves on Katherine’s shoulders and twisted around her to place a kiss on her cheek.

Katherine shoved the last few things she needed to within the bag before shifting their position so they would face each other. She brushed some of Shelby’s dark brown curls away from her face before pressing a soft kiss on her forehead. “I am now. I think Evermoore is a beautiful place to visit, but, after a while, the fog starts getting to me.”

“It tends to do that.” Shelby gave Katherine a fond smile as she intertwined their hands together. They flicked their left hand and the bag full of things disappeared wherever Shelby put them with their magic. “I used to come back around here a lot before deciding to travel much further north than I ever dared to before. It was the best decision I’ve ever made, though, because I got to meet you.”

“And I’m very glad you made it, because I got to meet you.” Appreciation and gratitude for each other were freely displayed in their actions and confirmed with their words. It was natural for them to do so, so why hide it from each other when they could express it?

Katherine and Shelby have been traveling together for well over two years now, and they knew each other for months before that. They took their time to wander through the various towns and villages, sightseeing the world together. They weren’t in a rush to go anywhere specific so they didn’t do so.

They started way up north and traveled south on a very indirect route. The goal had been to explore the world together, and they have done just that! It was wonderful and full of bliss. Katherine didn’t think she’d ever smiled or laughed as much as she did when she was with Shelby, the love of her life.

The two of them walked most of the time since they weren’t trying to move at any certain pace and it allowed them to save some money. Shelby perfected spells early on to help increase their endurance and stamina when walking, but, over the past two plus years, their leg muscles have grown strong. Sometimes, she would forget to cast the spell and they wouldn’t even notice until hours later!  It helped that they didn’t have to carry anything but the clothes on their backs, thanks to Shelby’s magic.

If they were ever in a need for money, they would spend some extra time than usual in the various towns or villages, and pick up odd jobs. Katherine would usually find more labor intensive or monster hunting jobs while Shelby sought out magic-related or gardening jobs. It may not work well for everyone, but it worked well for them and they were extremely satisfied with their lives. They’ve never been happier!

“Sanctuary should be our last stop before we’ve gone everywhere we initially planned.” Shelby mentioned as they walked together, still hand in hand. “There is Eversea closeby, but I think it’s better to stay away from there. I’ve heard that there’s been an increase of piracy and crime there. If they find out I’m Blessed, then… well, I don’t know what to think about it.” Katherine knew better than to push that topic any further. She’s helped Shelby through many nightmares and panic attacks that have resulted from the trauma behind her “Blessing.” Katherine simply squeezed Shelby’s hand in silent reassurance before asking, “Wouldn’t Sanctuary be a problem if they’re so close by?”

“No, Sanctuary is supposed to be a magical place,” Shelby informed her with a shake of her head. “The land protects the people, and deters those meaning to do it or the people it protects away. It’s supposed to be a safe haven. I’ve dreamed about visiting, but going near Eversea alone terrified me. Evermoore was the closest I got before backing out and going the opposite direction.”

“We should have enough money saved up to afford to pay someone to take us there.” Katherine held out her free hand to Shelby. “Can you give me one of our gold pouches? I want to hold it so we don’t have to use your magic in front of anyone until we get to Sanctuary.”

Shelby hummed for a moment before doing as she was told. “That’s probably a good idea. We’re so close that I don’t want to take chances.”

Katherine briefly let go of Shelby’s hand to secure the gold bag to her belt. The belt was hidden underneath some of the fabric layered on her dress, making it the perfect place to hide things such as their money and knives to help defend them from monsters, both human and otherwise.

And so they traveled on together, hand in hand as they wandered east on the paths leading to the docks just beyond the mangrove swamp Evermore occupied. When they arrived at the docks, they managed to catch a ride with a fisherman named Grian.

Grian wasn’t the most friendly to them at first, but he certainly wasn’t the worst person they’d stumbled upon. Within the several hours it took for them to make their way across the ocean to Sanctuary, Grian warmed up to them, and started joking around and teasing them mercilessly. Their time together grew pleasant and silly, and it was almost a shame when they reached Sanctuary’s docks and parted ways.

The keyword there being “almost” because the way Shelby’s face lit up when they arrived was worth so much more than the friendship they formed with Grian. “Katherine! Do you feel it?” “Feel what?” Katherine asked, noticing the delighted gleam in her girlfriend’s pale yellow eyes. She took in Shelby’s expression, observing the smile wrinkles by her eyes and the way her grin grew wide enough to show off all of her teeth. 

They’re gorgeous. Katherine thought, meaning it in every sense of the word. Appearance-wise, she was stunning, of course, but her personality, ability, and outlook on the world were not anything Katherine could ever imagine being able to ignore.

“The magic!” Shelby laughed breathlessly. It was like she was so overwhelmed by Sanctuary that she struggled to keep the air in her lungs. “There is magic everywhere! It feels so safe and warm. I could stay here forever.”

I could stay here forever. That wasn’t something Katherine has ever heard Shelby say about a place before. They knew that they could never do such a thing out of the fear people would come to learn Shelby was Blessed (more like cursed) with tears composed of silver. Thinking it over a bit more, if Sanctuary really was a safe haven, perhaps they could settle down?

Katherine wouldn’t admit it, but she did daydream about that sort of thing. She liked to imagine what it would be like to wake up in their familiar bed, decorate their house as they please, and go to make breakfast in their kitchen… Katherine found herself desiring all those little, domestic moments.

Sure, they were plenty domestic and caring as it was, but it wasn’t the same. Katherine has enjoyed her time wandering the world with Shelby, yes, but was it so wrong to wish for simplicity and to settle down? She didn’t need much; all she needed was to see her girlfriend’s smile to be content.

Before Katherine came up with a proper response, another voice interrupted them, “¡Hola, amigos míos! Welcome to Sanctuary!”

Coming to greet the new arrivals was a person much taller than them with a friendly smile and bright blue eyes. They had a trimmed beard, medium-length brown hair, and a faint scar over their right eye. They were wearing a dress with a creamy white top, a sun yellow skirt, and a teal blue belt-scarf tied around the waist. The belt-scarf covered over the transition between the top and the yellow.

They spoke rapid greetings in Spanish as they kissed Katherine’s cheeks then Shelby’s cheeks. Katherine was a bit stunned so she didn’t return them, but Shelby returned the cheek kisses with ease.

“My name’s Sausage, I use any pronouns, and I’m the Protector of Sanctuary!” she introduced herself, turning on her heel to get a comfortable distance away from them (presumingly to give them their personal space back) while still being able to converse. The skirt of his dress twirled with him, lifting up some to reveal the muted brown pants worn underneath. “What are your names and pronouns?” “I’m Shelby, she/they,” Shelby introduced herself, struggling to stay still, before gesturing to Katherine, “and this is my girlfriend, Katherine, she/her.”

“Girlfriends! ¡Oh, qué adorable! ¡Qué lindo!” Sausage gushed over them, clapping her hands together. “Do you have a place picked out to stay yet? I could set you up with the Lover’s Suite at El Caldero de Colores.”

Katherine’s face flushed red at the mention of a “Lover’s Suite” and she ducked her head. “We would love a room at the inn, but there’s no need for anything fancy. We don’t have much money-” “Nonsense! Here at Sanctuary, we treat each other like family!” Sausage dismissed the notion with a flick of his hand, insisting that he was more than happy to do it for them. “Family helps each other out. Honestly, it’s the least I can do for you two lovebirds. I always love meeting new faces! After I set you up, I am going to pick up Hermes, my son, up from his dad’s place, but after that, we should chat. Perhaps we can catch lunch after the service taking place at La Catedral de Santa Perla tomorrow morning?”

“We would be honored,” Shelby was quick to reply, her grip on Katherine’s hand tightening. “Uh, muchas gracias, Protector Sausage.”

“¡De nada, Shelby!” Sausage looked pleased at Shelby’s minimal use of Spanish. “Come, come, we aren’t too far from the inn.”

And so they followed Sausage as he rambled about various things about the blossoming village, and the lore surrounding the land and the buildings. It was all very fascinating, even if a lot of it went over Katherine’s head. Shelby was enjoying herself, soaking in every word, so Katherine wasn’t going to complain. At one point, Shelby even whispered to her, “I can’t believe we’re casually talking to the Protector of Sanctuary! She’s basically a legend! I’ve always wanted to meet them.”

“So this is the room right here!” Sausage brought them to a door in the inn at the end of their mini-tour and placed the keys to the door in Shelby’s hand. He wiggled his eyebrows with a sly smirk on his lips. “Have fun in there!”

“Thank you.” Shelby clenched the keys in their hand and held them to their chest. Sausage left fairly quickly after that, saying something about needing to go so she wasn’t late in picking up Hermes. Shelby unlocked the door and turned the doorknob before holding it open for Katherine. “After you, my love.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.” Katherine giggled, entering through the doorway. Inside was decorated much like she would expect when noticing the theme of the outside. The things that stood out were the swan towel sculptures on the bed with colorful flower petals scattered around and candles lit on all the surfaces. “Oh, wow.” Shelby fiddled with clasp on her overalls, her face bright red. She stared for a moment before laughing awkwardly. “I s’pose Sausage did call it the ‘Lover’s Suite’ for a reason.”

Katherine bit her lower lip, shaking her head before forcing herself forward. She picked up the swans to place them on a table, not daring to ruin them, and brushed off some of the petals. “I’m thinking of taking a shower and then maybe we can go out to eat?” “Can we do that tomorrow?” Shelby asked, somewhat vague with a slight shy tone to her voice. Mindlessly, she summoned some of their bags into existence, lining them up nicely against the wall. Realizing that she wasn’t specific enough in her request, she clarified, “Go out, I mean. It’s been a long day and I think it would be nice to stay in. Together.”

Katherine didn’t respond for a moment before letting the ends of her lips curl into a smile. She walked back to where Shelby was and placed her hands on their hips, and rested her forehead against theirs. “Of course, moonlight. That sounds wonderful.”

Shelby mirrored her smile before closing the gap with a brief kiss. “Perfect. I’ll get started on dinner. You go shower.” “Ay, ay, captain.” Katherine saluted her with humor in her words. Despite the humor, she did as she was told and separated to go shower. Wanting to get back to Shelby’s side, Katherine didn’t take as long in the bathroom as she might otherwise have. 

By the time she finished and got changed, Shelby had made them potato and cheese soup with a side of bread. There was a small, two person table near the kitchen area with the necessary dishes to eat already set out properly. Shelby must have found plates, cups, and silverware in the cupboards because Katherine didn’t recognize the dishes laid on the table. “La cena está servida.”

“You’re really trying to recall your Spanish lessons, aren’t you?” Katherine remembered Shelby telling her that was one of the many things she was forced to learn, being one of the Blessed. Spanish was only one of several languages she was taught up to, at least, an intermediate level. They were out of practice for most of them, but Sausage’s use of the language must have inspired them to start using Spanish again.

“I am,” Shelby confirmed with a sheepish expression. “Sausage seemed pleased when I thanked her earlier. By the way, ‘la cena está servida’ means ‘dinner is served’... I believe. I’m pretty sure, anyway.”

“La cena looks delicious,” Katherine complimented them as she sat down at the table and picked up her spoon. From there, their conversation flowed as it normally did. They were comfortable with one another and they never struggled to come up with conversation. Even when they fell silent, it wasn’t an awkward silence. Their silence was peaceful, calm, and content.

Katherine offered to wash the dishes so Shelby took to wiping down the counters and table. When Shelby finished her task, they came up behind Katherine, wrapped their arms around her waist, and rested their chin on Katherine’s shoulder. “Hi, Shelby,” Katherine murmured as she finished up the dishes. “You alright, sweetheart?”

“‘Eepy.” Shelby murmured in return with a soft yawn accompanying it. “The bed looks comfy. We should get in it.”

Katherine chuckled fondly, drying her hands on the towel set nearby before turning to Shelby. Shelby whined softly at the movement for their access to her back was removed, but Katherine guided them to lean into their chest and their whining stopped as a result. She smushed her face against Katherine’s chest as her arms hugged her tightly. Shelby muttered a few incomprehensible sentences before whining out again with drawn out vowels, “My body don’t wanna move, Kathy!”

“Do you want me to pick you up?” Katherine offered, having done it before. That must have been the right thing to ask and Shelby’s desired result based on the way they nodded enthusiastically. She rolled her eyes without a hint of malice as she leaned down to gain enough leverage to pick Shelby up. Katherine got her arm underneath her knees and swept her up into her hold. “We should change you out of your overalls, at least.”

“Bed though.” Shelby pouted, barely able to keep her eyes open. They had walked a good portion of the day, and Shelby did get a little motion sick on the boat a few times. Perhaps she was also overusing her magic? Katherine wasn’t sure, but she didn’t mind these clingy moments.

“How about this: I get you to the bed, you start to take off your overalls, and I’ll retrieve a set of your pajamas for you?” Katherine suggested, neither of them strangers to the other changing around them. When one lives with another person traveling like they did, they get very used to things that may have otherwise been uncomfortable once upon a time.

“M’kay.” Shelby agreed with a slight hum to her voice as Katherine carried her to their still made bed. “I love you, darlin’. My darlin’ darling Kathy… mm…”

“I love you too.” Katherine set her down on the blankets. “Can you remove your clothes for me, moonlight?”

“Mhm.” Shelby nodded as she started to fumble with the clasp on her overalls to unhook it.

She left them there temporarily to retrieve something for them to change into. Since Shelby was moving slowly, Katherine took the opportunity to change into pajamas herself. She put on sleep shorts and a tank top, but decided a simple nightgown would be easiest for Shelby at the moment.

Katherine started to bunch the nightgown up around the head slot to make it easier to put on her. Once Shelby’s outer clothes were removed completely, Katherine slid the nightgown over her head until it was on her as it should be. Katherine then tugged on the blankets to get them out from under Shelby. Once the blankets were free, she proceeded to tuck Shelby in underneath them. Katherine gave her another kiss to the forehead before walking around the bed to get in on the other side.

“Katherine! Don’t leave me!” Shelby whined again with a panicked tone to it, sticking out their arms and making grabby hands at her. She looked like she was about to cry and Katherine frowned slightly, concerned. Shelby was sleepy, yes, but she only got like this when her mind refused to keep the memories of her past at bay.

“I’m right here, Shelby. I won’t leave you,” Katherine promised as she climbed into bed next to them. She scooted closer to Shelby, pulling her close and holding her tight. “I’m right here.” Shelby pressed their body close to Katherine, burying their face near her collarbone as their legs grew entangled with each other. Shelby’s left hand clenched a fist full of her tank top’s fabric while their right arm wrapped around Katherine just above her hip. Shelby’s neck rested on Katherine’s right arm as Katherine used that hand to run her fingers through Shelby’s dark brown curls. Katherine’s left hand kept a secure hold on Shelby, silently enforcing her promise that she would never leave her. The hold was tight, and it only loosening once Shelby’s breathing mellowed out and deepened as it did when she slept.

Katherine still continued to hold her even if it wasn’t as tightly done so. She stared at her sleeping girlfriend, completely content. She had a smile on her face that she couldn’t get rid of with love practically bursting within her so strongly that it almost hurt too much to bare. As Katherine closed her eyes and drifted into unconsciousness, all she could think about was how lucky she was to be able to be like this with the person she loved the most in the world.

[jjackfrost]

1, 3, 13

How many books did you read this year? 24 ! reading the 25th rn. (booktube has poisoned me into thinking this isn't a lot, but i had a lot more fun reading when i didn't pressure myself into reading more like i did last year lol)

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (reread - it was my fav last year as well lol. This is my FAVORITE BOOK EVER.)

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (THIS IS VERY CLOSE BEHIND PHM. THIS IS THE REASON I CANT STOP THINKING ABOUT OCTOPUSES)

Our Hideous Progeny by C. E. McGill (this book means so much to me, please read it. ESPECIALLY if you like frankenstein. AND dinosaurs.)

Dracula's Child by J. S. Barnes (a sequel to Dracula that I did not expect to like as much as I did. He's currently writing a sequel to Frankenstein too and I'm like pissing myself)

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon (talked about this in the previous ask. It's a biography, about what it says on the tin. It's so good)

13. What were your least favorite books of the year?

I thought I didn't have many books I super didn't like but then I went on a rant about one of them so I guess I do

The Space Between Us by Doug Johnstone seemed on first glance to have all the ingredients to be a favorite of mine, but it completely failed to make me care about the characters, and the sci-fi aspect of it was pretty underwhelming. Also, the run-on sentences were horrible. Ig it was a style thing, but I hate that so much lol.

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery was on of the four octopus-related books I read this year after falling under The Mountain in the Sea's spell (The Space Between Us is also one of them, though the octopus in that one isn't really an octopus). It is a non-fiction book about Sy Montgomery learning about octopuses. The beginning was promising, where she first goes to the aquarium to meet an octopus called Athena, and she gets to hold Athena's arms and stuff - but then this just keeps happening. Athena dies and is replaced by another octopus, who Sy holds hands with for a bit, and then that octopus gets sick and is replaced by another octopus, and they hold hands a bit more. Then, maybe I didn't like it as much because it had a lot to do with other animals and learning how to scuba dive, which probably is interesting for other people, but my one-tracked mind was only there for the octopuses, so I just found it tedious. And then even when it was about octopuses, it always felt more like Sy was writing like "wow this is so amazing for ME," like about how it made her feel, and not so much about the actual octopuses ?? And there was something really uncomfortable about reading about them keeping an octopus in a bucket for several months because they were waiting for the other octopus to die, WHILE talking about how incredibly intelligent octopuses are like...isn't this just animal abuse at this point? They BRIEFLY mention the ethics of aquariums and capturing wild octopuses for no reason except to put them in an exhibit, not to rehabilitate them or anything, but it feels like the problematic aspects of this just kinda gets brushed away..... Anyway, didn't do it for me, and by the third time she writes "octopus time" (describing how time seems to flow differently while she's over the aquarium holding the octopus' arms) I was just kinda annoyed lol. Anyway, rant over

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz. This book isn't actually on the bottom of my list because I ranked it both by how much I enjoyed it, just pure entertainment value, and how much I admired the work that went into it. The Soul of an Octopus and The Space Between Us are at the very bottom, but there's still four books between them and Autonomous (The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee, The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness, The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox by Claire Gradidge, and Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater). The reason I'm talking about Autonomous and not any the ones I ranked lower is because I did find the book compelling and entertaining like 80% of the time -- meanwhile, those other books were just fine. They were okay, the didn't really make an impression. I didn't dislike them, there were just other books I enjoyed more. THE THING IS. Autonomous did something so fucking weird at the end that it kind of ruined the whole book for me?? Like, please message me if you've read this in case something has just gone over my head, because like I swear to god there's a character who is gay but refuses to acknowledge it and instead says some really homophobic shit, who never comes to terms with his sexuality and instead puts the label Woman on the genderless character he has a crush on (who knows this isn't correct, but this character is kinda like, "well if it makes him like me then I guess I don't mind," which could have been interesting to explore if it weren't at the end of the book and it never goes anywhere??) and that's just how it ends? Huh????

Anyway, this became a lot longer than I thought it would, hope that answers the questions LMAO

[edenwiththeemi]

My Writing Journey… So Far

summary: What’s led me to writing, and what’s led me through writing, up to 2024.

word count: 664

a/n: Long time no write! Hope you enjoy this tidbit. What’s your writing journey? I’d love to know about it!

Rhododendrons in Parkland, WA on May 11, 2021. Copyright Eden Flynn.

My writing journey began, as many people’s does, in elementary school. I can’t remember anything that I wrote, but I remember how happy I was to write fiction, and how much I hated writing nonfiction. Now, I enjoy reading nonfiction and sometimes enjoy writing nonfiction, but the nonfiction I write is limited to what I find interesting and what I experience in the world.

When I was in eighth grade, I discovered fanfiction for the first time, and when I entered my junior year of high school I started writing original fiction. I don’t know that it was good – it was only ever conceptual since I couldn’t restrain my ADHD enough to finish anything, but after I graduated high school, I started writing my own fanfiction, and that went a lot better than I expected.

At this point, I’ve published probably around a hundred pieces of fanfiction, and have a little over a hundred followers on my fanfic Tumblr, last I checked. I don’t check very often, in all honesty. The success of my fanfiction is what pushed me to start a blog for original work, and I find myself enjoying the privacy that comes with being a blog without any followers – I’m just screaming into the void until someone decides they like whatever noise I’m making.

Why do I write? Currently, because I’m passionate about it, and it makes me happier. I can’t say it makes me happy, because if I had to stop writing tomorrow, I’d still be happy, but that’s a good thing, to me.

In high school, I wrote because it helped me to understand the ongoing trauma of childhood abuse and toxicity I was experiencing. I used writing as a tool to process my emotions (and still do now), and I used writing as a means of reflecting my reality in writing. Having abusive parents is more common than it should be, but having a parent try to kill you is a very isolating experience. Not many people can relate to that, and while I’d never wish it on others, it still felt so lonely to go through that in high school – arguably the worst period in time to go through anything.

As of 2024, I’m published in Pierce College’s 2024 Student Literary and Arts Magazine, or SLAM, under the name Emile Flynn, and have two original songs and one feature available on all major streaming platforms as Emile. I submitted the poem at a time where I was working out what name I wanted my work published under, but now I know that I want my music published under Emile, and I want my writing published under Eden Flynn — my real name.

I also work as a Writer for Pierce’s Student Media team in the Office of Student Life. My current big project is writing the biweekly student newsletter known as “The Pinnacle Push”, an idea I initially pushed because I believed the biggest contributing factors to a student’s success were building a strong support system around them and having important academic information all in one place. So far, we’ve had six releases, and two more will be published before Winter Quarter is out. I hope that over time, the Push will get closer and closer to the vision I have for it and will be a successful marriage of Student Media to the rest of Student Life.

Right now, I’m in my last quarter at Pierce, and will receive my AA with a focus in Writing. Once I graduate, I’ll be transferring back to UWT to pursue my BA in English, with a focus in Creative Writing. In a few years I’ll publish a sequel piece to this narrative detailing my writing journey from 2024 onward, so if you’re reading this and wondering how writing life has treated me after the publishing date of this narrative, feel free to browse this blog to look for an update, or send me an ask and I can tell you!

[cyarskj1899]

HOMELATESTCULTUREENTERTAINMENTBEAUTY/STYLEAWARDS SEASON 2023

AWARDS SEASON 2023

Oscars 2023 Snubs: The Woman King Gets Shut Out Completely and The Academy Ought To Be Ashamed

Directors Ryan Coogler and Gina Prince-Byethwood were also noticeably absent.

By

Shanelle Genai

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While there were many expected recognitions during the 2023 Oscar nominations reveal on Tuesday (looking at you Angela Bassett, Ruth Carter, Rihanna and Brian Tyree Henry), there were also a plethora of stunning upsets—chief among them, the lack of recognition for The Woman King.

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In a shocking turn of events, there was not one single award nomination given to anyone from the Gina Prince-Bythewood-helmed film. Viola Davis, who is usually a shoe-in during awards season,saw no love in the Best Actress category despite previous nominations at the Golden Globes, SAG, NAACP Image, and AAFCA Awards. The whole squad of stellar supporting actresses and actors like Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu, Sheila Atim, Adrienne Warren and John Boyega were also shut out. This is a frustrating trend that’s been popping up time and time again this awards season. Prince-Bythewood was also nowhere to be found in the Best Director category which honestly begs the question: did we all watch the same movie?

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Personally, I find it hard to believe and somewhat offensive that a story as rich, layered, and historically complex as The Woman King was shut out in its entirety. Cries against its glamourization of the intra-racial participation in the slave trade aside (because if you actually watched the film and didn’t let the opinions of detractors online stop you, you would’ve seen that they actually addressed this), the film encompassed so much dimension and intricate storytelling it feels like a puzzling miss for the Academy—even given it’s history of snubs. And if we’re to say that that the sanitization of atrocities or historical inaccuracies of a fictional film warrant non-support from viewers, then I hope we’re ready to apply this across the board to other white projects that have been inspired by moments in history that fall short of holistically depicting what actuallyhappened. (Titanic anyone?) 

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What’s also not lost on me is that this is a film starring deeply melanated Black women that’s centered around their plight, both communally and personally. This is also a central point to the Danielle Deadwyler-led film Till, which takes a turn away from the expected depictions of Black trauma and instead refocuses on humanizing a Black mother in her quest for justice for her slain son. Hollywood has notoriously categorized films starring Black folks about Black folks as “hard to sell” both domestically and abroad despite the success of projects like Black Panther and others proving otherwise. But I suppose involuted films centering Black women were a bit too deep or too uninteresting for viewers and the Academy this year.

And while we’re on the subject of snubs, I’d be remiss not to mention Ryan Coogler, who was also noticeably absent in the Best Director category (which is astonishing when you consider everything he and the cast had to deal with just to bring the long-awaited sequel to fruition.) Additionally, neither Black Panther: Wakanda Forever nor The Woman King received Oscar noms for Best Picture, though the latter did take home a win for that category at this year’s AAFCA Awards.

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I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I can’t help but to be. Blame it on the movie-lover in me, blame it on the “rooting for everybody Black” in me. But ultimately, we should blame it on the Academy because these are some hella interesting misses on their part and for that—they ought to be ashamed.

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[sokayisaidiot]

Why Tommy is one of THE BEST written characters in existence.

Alright, that’s it

Here I give you my fuckin Take on why Tommy is one of the best written characters out there and can easily compete with best-selling Novels like Percy Jackson and Harry Potter. I’m sick of a trashing that doesn’t even make sense. So buckle up. Here I will tell you why Tommy has one of the best written characters in history of Books and Movies. Remember, I write this all in my perspective and take many examples of other character books as well

Before this all starts, I will also talk about the main characters of some series, since Tommy has the reputation of being a “main” character.

When I look at the books I’ve read, I see a large range of characters and there way of making the story interesting.

Now, to establish a good character, we need key points of motivations, to make them relatable and bla bla blub:

Personality

Part of the story

Their Powers

Flaws

Relationships

Prized Possessions

History/the backstory

The moral and story the character tells

First tho, I want to explain some words I’m going to use here!

Mary Sue/Gary Stu:

Those are characters who are flawless, have missing chunks of personality and mostly one way written. They are easy to achieve when you are trying to make your character look badass.

Examples in some Fandoms are

·      Rey Skywalker (Star Wars Sequels 7-9)

·      Hermione Granger (Harry Potter Movies)

·      Bella Swan (Twilight)

Tree-System:

Imagine a tree. You plant something small and soon you have something giant with many branches, roots and connections. You have the seed you plant and with caring and care you let it grow. Then you have somewhat a sapling. The tree grows with the care and soon you have a tree with many branches.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Personality

Negative:

Tommy’s personality is very brash and out of control = He’s barely containable in fights, going off to do his own risky plans and starting two or so fights. He can’t forgive a person very easily like Eret, who took it a long time to get forgiveness and Techno, as he shot Tubbo at the Festival. He makes decision that also cost his life like the duel because he hates losing

Tommy can be very lazy, giving the thought he wouldn’t have to do the hard work = Shown when he tries to steal the hearts of seas from Eret or potions from Techno, bargain with “drugs” by Puffy and Ponk or gives other people the work he doesn’t want to do like he did with getting cobblestone

Like a child, he often clings to close people and annoys others for attention = His desperate attempts to have company or someone praising him shows, when he tries to get Philza’s approval (or a pat on the back), constantly looking out, if Tubbo’s either okay or where his is,

He doesn’t like to wait or doing things in the long run = He constantly asks when something is finished, when they could go or in his exile, when he was allowed to go back to L’Manburg

He doesn’t show often his cooled down, scared and vulnerable side = He often overshadows his trauma with a facade of jokes and bad hidden hurt he brings out. When he talks about something bad, he’s clearly confused, not really knowing on how to understand it. Also he runs away from things he can’t control a panic attack like visiting the final control room or looking away from the holes in Logstedshire

He runs without head into a battle so often as possible = Only when they had their final showdown for the disc, Tommy was seen preparing in story, thinking it would be his last fight

---

Positive:

But as he has negative traits, his positive shows to many people clearly.

His unwavering loyalty to the closest of people = His loyalty to Tubbo, Wilbur And L’Manburg are, were and always will be a part of him. He stands against anyone who goes against that, even if it means pain in many ways.

Passionate about dear projects of his = You can see Tommy talking about his discs or see an video where he would spent days getting different discs. Those things are very known to be rare things, so for Tommy to possess it gives him somewhat power. L’Manburg was the same passion, even a bit more, as you can see he was ready to give up his most prized disk. The last and in the moment is his hotel

Bravery like no one makes him as one of the dangerous person on peoples hitlist = He stands up for others. He stood up to L’Manburg. He in the end didn’t care that he lost a life. When he sees a foe, he won’t stand down and submit, he will fight against the oppression and tell them that in the face. During the mission to get a visa, he stood against Schlatt, even if they were clearly in the loose of people and disadvantage. Or getting an apology of Sapnap for killing Niki’s fox. Fighting against 5 people with just one ally while the other is a hostage.

His leadership = There are not many people who can take it up, but Tommy is an exception. He can coordinate people with his loud voice and somewhat thought plans. He is charismatic, even if he’s not so good at it like Wilbur, he still can motivate people to fight for themselves or others. He’s seen to lead others into battle and taking in the fighting part a leading role

Unselfish. That’s one of the most arguable things about Tommy`s character = You can´t look at a kid and say he is selfish because he wants to get something dearly back. Especially Tommy, after he gave the things up, he cared about. But if something is happening again, he will lay it down to do the other thing. As seen by the egg, he had a hard time thinking what to do. He, in a long time, didn’t want to be catalyst for something to happen. Not when he in the moment could have stopped it. So doing this act for himself ones, was a good decisions, since they clearly weren’t ready for war

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part of the Story

Outside of the story:

Let’s all just get something “straight”. What would Dream SMP without Tommyinnit. Now. Don’t get me wrong. All the creators on the SMP are amazing. They are all wonderful and deserve every bit of Attention and fame they get. But just imagine.

We heard from Tubbo, he was the one, who got him into the SMP. Schlatt and Wilbur came because of a “visit”. Quackity was added because TOMMY said he was bored. And from that, we got somewhat of a tree system. As Tommy was invited and drawn into conflict by Sapnap (shoutout to best boy!), he got more people.

He also has the highest viewership and kind of shortest streams, since he is doing college next to Youtube and Streaming. He can’t give up his high viewers since all of those 200.000 (average) – closing 650.000 People (doing something like a big lore stream in prison or the disc final), choose to watch him.

Also a reminder again, Tommy has his storyline as does everyone else. When we saw Tommy and Techno during the partner up arc doing something with the dogs, they saw the start of the red vines arc BUT said they were on the wrong storyline. Tommy was asked by the eggpire writers if he wanted to be a part of the story and he said yes. Why do you think he nearly says nothing about the egg. He leaves it to the writers. Also, it was said by one of Wilbur’s Character descriptions, that Tommy was okay with others doing something with his character, while Techno was more reluctant with his.

Let me say it again, every creator is awesome and individual! Nobody should be compared to others. But with Tommy coming to the Dream SMP, there really was a change in the game.

Remember, that’s because we also have a BT (before Tommy) and AT (after Tommy) Timestamp in the wiki!

Inside of the story:

Now, with Sapnap, Alyssa, Ponk and Tommy in the first ever big conflict its shown the importance. People assume Tommy is one of the conflict bringers, even though he was dragged in it by having something stolen by Sapnap and then forced to fight with him, to get it back.

The Consequences he’s got where having his discs get stolen. This is what Tommy’s biggest character motivation was the first two seasons. Those discs are known on the server and when you think about gifting something to C!Tommy, it would be a disc.

Techno = Disc Wait

Badboyhalo = Disc Pigstep, Chirp

HBomb = Disc Pigstep, Wait

Tubbo = Stal

LazarBeam = Far

Tommy is a openminded boy who longs for funny little adventures and pranks, since he is just a young person. It’s in his nature.

So why, when he does something, are people looking on him?

Because the things he was and is a part of some of the biggest events. And him being so loud and brave and rash lets him stand out. If you look at the old (hah) Revolution of L’Manburg, who can you hear talking the most and the loudest? Tommy and Dream. They were the most outgoing about the war with Sapnap, Tubbo and Wilbur following. Fundy was more quieter (thankfully he has so much more lore now).

Tommy’s character is known to fall or be dragged head first in almost every conflict. He has connections to who? Mostly everybody. So of course he’s connected big parts to the stories.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Powers

Okay. Every “main” character or character with huge importance to the story has some kind of power. Looking at Dream, who is a “demigod” or Ranboo who I don’t even have to talk about. So what about Tommy?

Well. He doesn’t have any. Tommyinnit is one of the people, we get to have as an “human” character

Hannah = nature “Spirit”

Karl Jacobs = Timetraveller

Antfrost, Technoblade, Ranboo, Fundy = Hybrids

Dream = Something something green blob

Awesamdude, Puffy, Philza, Sapnap, Eret, Schlatt = Adding Features (wings, eyes, body parts)

Badboyhalo, Skeppy = completely different species apparently

Tommy has, as we know of the moment, a not confirmed power. The assumptions of the egg are not clear, since we haven’t seen those interact in a while. All we know is, Tommy didn’t get hurt, destroying a part and not feeling anything, while being in contact. That in canon considered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Flaws

As talked before in personality and also in an assumption, we see the pattern of loyalty and brashness repeating.

Flaws are the most important parts of a character. It shows the struggle of their adventure and learning how to live with it.

Percy Jackson learned loyalty is nothing, if you don’t have someone to project it on.

Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker learned being a hot head didn’t really bring him forward and it’s important to have a plan

Frodo Beutlin learned that it is okay taking care of yourself and what attachment means

Anakin Skywalker learned fear is controllable and it shouldn’t be a remaining part of your life

Tommy learned over the time that his rashness could hurt others, loyalty couldn’t come back to him like he gave it out and he learns even more in the coming future.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Relationships

Tommy’s relationships is a mess of strings. Some are badly knotted and some are very clear.

A characters connections is an important part for the character himself.

Relationships in life are

·      Enemies(-figure)

·      Rivals(-figure)

·      Friends(-figure)

·      Family(-figure)

·      Lover(-figure)

·      Complicated family(-figure)

·      Complicated friend (-figure)

Relationships are a part of everyone’s life. Not with everybody is a good relationship holdable. Either it’s because their hurting each other or another person. People change and that’s a part of life.

Tommy realized, even tho it hurt, that Techno wasn’t good for his mental state and health. It went against everything Tommy ever stood for.

And Tommy and Tubbo’s relationship wasn’t really that broken. It’s normal for friends to fight. Normal for them hit their heads in. Tommy and Tubbo were surrounded with people who were, at the time, a terrible addition to their mental life.

The Dream SMP doesn’t talk it out, hell the talking club was just destroyed because they preferred fists over words. So why do you think everything is going out with a fight, if it’s all they learned.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Priced Possessions

Every character has to something a connection.

Might it be Percy Jackson and his sword

Might it be Harry with his glasses, broomstick and wand

Frodo and his stupid ring

For Tommy we all know it’s his ender chest inside and secret chest. He keeps many belongings in his chests and always has been one for those things. He kept flowers, compasses, Friendship signs and most importantly, his discs.

The care for something of items are important. Might it be a teddy, old photo or jewelry. People get protective over it, because it holds sentimental value to the person.

If you ask me, to let go of my teddy bear, I will show you my middle finger. Probably beat you up too.

You can’t just throw out your memories into a fire or pit of lava. This is just showing you never had a care and everything you had a memory with it before would have been gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

History/Backstory

We don’t have much here, but still something to work with.

A Hero doesn’t have an easy live. And it’s an said thing that every Hero needs an origin Story.

Tommy, said not really anything about his past.

All we know is that Tommy didn’t have anyone, presumably an Orphan, he knew the sleepy bois already a long time ago and he never learned on how to ride a bike, saying he never really had a family.

Signs that he didn’t even leave half a good life are:

·      his knowledge on stealing and preferring this over working for it

·      Liking to live in weird spaces like carved out holes in sides of hills (his hobbit hole or the basement by Techno) or living in his tent over a hole house

·      His liking of cobblestone and dirt, which are easy gettable blocks

·      Holding his goodies and friends close to him

·      Craving for attention or contact in general

And now for the part with the dream SMP.

We saw how it changed him. We saw his trauma and all the bad things that happened to him.

And that’s why we say his actions came from those past experiences and things. We are NOT excusing them, but showing. Past trauma CHANGES a person. It brings experience and a heavy amount of pain and anger. ESPECIALLY at a young age, you will change due to your experience in life. You will grow worried and anxious. Tommy did that. He grew more anxious, angry, scared and also experienced.

Stop saying trauma doesn’t explain it. Yes. It does. His lashing out came from his past and negative experience. Imagine growing up in a world where this is the norm. War and banishing. As well as death. Tommy has reasons why he is acting and does stuff.

Understand it. You don’t have to forgive him or anything. But understand it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The moral and the story the character tells us

When we see Tommy, we see a boy who went nearly through it all. Mental/Physical Abuse, Abandonment, War, Suicidal thoughts, betrayal, Death, etc…

He doesn’t show forgiveness for his abuser. Still has signs, that he fights with the past abuse, but he tells us a story of learning from past mistakes, that even in the darkest hours, there’s a way out. Things will, can and be ugly and those are dark hours, but in no way should you think that it’s over. Life is more than one way and can always turn into a new direction.

Life takes something old away from you. Life gives you something new. You lose someone, you find someone new. Friends can turn into enemies. Enemies can turn into friends. You can meet the weirdest people. You can meet the most amazing people. You can be alone and in the next second, you’re not. You will often lose, but you also can win if you give everything.

Life can be weird and that’s okay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My Fazit (that’s german)

The thing is, he is very real for many viewers such as myself. He acts like how many teenagers his age reacts.

He doesn’t be “baby”, because he shows the “ugly” sides of trauma. He shows that attachments are good and you shouldn’t forgive your abuser. In no way. He shows that acting out and lashing out are two things that happen, when you have been in wars for many times and nearly just know that.

He has many flaws and mistakes but those make him even more real. He is showing how he is growing.

As a person, friend, (pseudo-)family.

He is real to many of the viewer since he doesn’t have any powers that are existing in our world to solve their problems. He knows that nobody would have helped him and Tubbo against Dream if he didn’t pay others.

Also that you can’t be friends with everyone and that it’s okay that not everybody likes you.

Tommy´s character is the most human and realistic character in a way of how we would react. We are humans who are lashing out and who are having ugly sides.

And also please stop saying that, since I really can relate to Tommy and I don’t want to be feeling like a “bad-written Character”…

And Don’t even get me started on Tommy’s acting dude!

He is one of the best actors and that one livestreams! In from off 200.000 – 600.000 People!

On the face cam alone is so much to see…  

·      You can see his face with each emotion shifting,

·      when something funnily weird happens, he looks dead eyes in the camera

The voice acting…

·      His breathing,

·      the stuttering in his voice,

·      THE GODDAMN EMOTIONS IN HIS FACE

HIS MUSIC CHOICE!

·      He changes the music fitting for the situations as in fighting scenes or funny moments.

·      He also has some funny bits with his music.

·      Like a goddam DJ!

The ingame character

·      His movements and head stares

·      The jumping around when he gets overactive

·      Long stops when he thinks or is sad!

You can see, I am a person from Tumblr and saw way too much bullshit around tommys character.

Stop critiquing him so badly.

You could say, I woke up and chose violence

>:D

[jazy3]

Free Guy Review

!!!SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

If you haven’t seen the movie Free Guy (2021) stop reading right now! Drop what you’re doing and go get yourself a ticket! You’ll thank me later!

I loved this movie! I saw it this weekend for the second time because it’s that good! I first saw the trailer on YouTube a while back and then when theatres reopened a few weeks ago I saw the trailer again and my interest was piqued. I had high hopes for this movie based on the fun looking trailer, the premise, the cast, and the sense of fun and escapism that the movie seemed to embody and it did not disappoint. It’s always nice when you have high hopes for something and it meets or exceeds your expectations.

Free Guy is just such a fun and joyous movie. Never taking itself too seriously, packed with lots of heart, cool cameos, full of gaming and pop culture references, and it’s fueled by a unique concept that is well executed. There are just so many things I loved about this movie! It was a ton of fun to watch and the actors clearly had a blast making it. During the movie I kept trying to figure out where I knew most of the actors from but couldn’t place them. When I got home, I googled it and I instantly realized why. The roles are just so different and the actors embody their characters so completely you lose yourself in the film and get completely sucked in. I was honestly so surprised when I figured out what I knew most of the actors from because the roles that they’re known for are so different from their characters in the movie. Their appearances, established ages, and even the accents are so different that I literally did a double take, but that’s what makes the movie so good! Because the main actors obviously didn’t need the paycheque they were just there to have fun and it shows. I think if the situation had been different and the actors involved had been desperate for money or took the role for some other reason it wouldn’t have worked. The film would have come off as cheesy, forced, cringeworthy, or just plain bad. Free Guy is none of those things. The film stars Ryan Reynolds as ‘Guy’ a bank teller in a video game called Free City, Jodie Comer whose best known for playing Villanelle in Killing Eve as programmer Millie Rusk and her avatar Molotov Girl, Joe Keery whose best known for playing Steve Harrington in Stranger Things as programmer Walter ‘Keys’ McKey, and Taika Waititi whose best known for playing Viago in What We Do in the Shadows as the Head of Soonami Studios and the film’s main antagonist and villain Antwan. Rounding out the cast are Utkarsh Ambudka as programmer Mouser and Lil Rel Howery as Guy’s best friend and bank security guard Buddy. In a nutshell, Free Guy is about a bank teller named Guy who finds out he’s a non-playable background character (NPC) in an open-world Grand Theft Auto style video game called Free City. Guy becomes the hero of his own story after meeting Millie, the girl of his dreams, and winning fans all over the world by racking up points by being the good guy and helping others. After leveling up and helping Millie escape a dangerous situation in the game, Guy wins her over and she falls for him thinking that he’s another player. But when the world that Guy knows and all of the people in it are threatened, he teams up with Millie to save his friends before it’s too late. In the real world, Millie enlists the help of her former programming partner and best friend Keys in a race against time to stop their code and all of the sentient characters from Free City from being deleted by Antwan the developer who stole their code when the game’s sequel launches. I love that the movie had a unique premise and didn’t overcomplicate things. There are so many movies that I’ve gone to see over the last few years with such excitement only to be disappointed. For example, I loved Wreck It Ralph, but was so disappointed by its sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet. The trailers made it seem like it would take the premise of the first movie and move things into the online gaming world, and I was excited for that. Instead, the sequel left the premise of the first movie behind entirely and way over complicated the plot and the end result was extremely cheesy and disappointing. Free Guy’s strength is that it’s a self-aware movie made by self-aware people who are excellent at what they do. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, nor should it, and that allows the story to flow and the characters to feel real and genuine. The movie achieves that perfect balance between being entertaining and telling a cohesive and important story because while the movie never takes itself too seriously the people behind it are serious about what they do. This was very clearly a passion project for all involved, especially Ryan Reynolds, and it shows! As he’s spoken about in interviews and on Twitter, Reynolds called on a lot of his friends to be in Free Guy and help him out and the end result was fantastic! I loved all of the cameos! The Chris Evans cameo was by far the funniest and the Alex Trebek cameo got me right in the feels. When I saw the movie in theatres me and everyone else in the theatre gave a collective “awww” when he appeared on screen. Enlisting real YouTubers to show up as fictional versions of themselves to talk about Blue Shirt Guy’s popularity was a nice touch and you’ve also got blink and you miss it voice cameos by John Krasinski, Dwyane The Rock Johnson, Hugh Jackman, and Tina Fey. Channing Tatum appears as the avatar of player Revenjamin Buttons which for the most part was hilarious. One of my few criticisms of the film is that they went a bit overboard the avatar’s antics as Guy and Buddy are attempting to leave and it got bit a cringeworthy. But I know other people found it hilarious so to each their own. I love all of the little details and references in the movie. Just listing them all would be a post in itself. If you’re someone that loves pop culture references and Easter Eggs this is the movie for you. The characters are fun and believable, and you get attached to them quickly. The actors commit completely to their roles which is makes the humour, romance, and heartfelt emotion of the film work. You buy it. 100%. Something that I absolutely loved was that the characters felt realistic and that the dialogue, attire, and settings for each character really felt authentic. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a movie or TV show and walked away thinking, “The person who wrote that clearly never meet a kid, teenager, or twenty something in their life! That was so unrealistic.” The slang’s all wrong. The dialogue is so eloquent everyone sounds like they did Shakespeare in the Park last summer. You walk away thinking, “What the hell was that? No one talks that way!” What I loved about the characters in Free Guy is that they felt like real people you could actually run into or walk past on the street. I’ve read in interviews that in addition to the written dialogue the cast did a lot of ad-libbing and improvisation and the end result is both hilarious and relatable. The dialogue feels real because it is. The big exception to this of course is Antwan who is altogether off the wall and ridiculous. Antwan is such an outrageous, absurd, vulgar, and cartoonish character. He’s so fun to watch and the actors clearly had a lot of fun with his scenes! I’ve read that a lot of his lines with Keys and Mouser were improvised and I believe it. When he goes all Jack Nicholson on the servers? Lord. He’s such a great villain to watch. The characters that are established to be in their twenties like Millie, Keys, Mouser, and the other employees at Soonami Studios talk, act, and dress like they’re in their twenties. The actors that are in their forties are styled to look like they’re in their thirties and honestly, they’re in such great shape it works! I mean I was honestly shocked to find out Taika Waititi’s real age. I love how the costuming really fits each character and allows you to learn more about them. Keys’ clothing is your typical gamer chic which makes because as we learn from his interview with Millie coding is his life and what gets him up in the morning. From Mouser’s clothing we learn that he’s a sports fan, but also isn’t afraid to take risks like with that blazer ensemble he wears in his final scene at Millie’s apartment.

Millie’s clothing shows the contrast between her and her avatar Molotov Girl, and Antwan’s ridiculous coat enhances the overall wackiness of his character. Guy’s clothing tells us something too. He wears the same thing every day until he meets Millie in the game at which point, he starts deviated from his Free City programming and chooses a different blue shirt. I also really love that they put thought into why Keys needs to wear glasses. Something I noticed on rewatch is that Keys is far sighted which is why he has his glasses on when he’s looking at his laptop or computer and sometimes when’s talking to other people, but not when he goes to see Millie at her apartment or when he goes to get them coffee at the end of the movie. Another interesting aspect of Keys’ character that I noticed on rewatch is self-confidence is really something he struggles with in contrast to Millie and Mouser who are very confident. Millie is a genius programmer and Mouser is excellent at what he does, and they are both very confident in their coding abilities, but Keys isn’t despite being every bit the genius that Millie is. At the beginning of the movie when they first notice the issue with Guy Mouser jokes that Keys needs to be better at his job. In response Keys meekly says he thinks he’s pretty good at his job and trails off at the end. Mouser is just joking around, but because Keys lacks self-confidence comments like that hit him hard. Mouser is moving towards his own desk as he talks so he doesn’t notice how self-deprecating and uneasy Keys’ response is. In the interview from the indie games conference that Millie plays for Keys at his apartment, he brushes off the interviewers comment that he’s a genius and says Millie is the real genius because she created the AI engine and he just wrote the code to make it work. Later on, when Keys helps Millie get into the stash house, she calls him a genius and he tells her that as he’s currently sitting on a toilet stealing user code he doesn’t exactly feel like one. Millie responds offhandedly that he never does, but luckily, she knows better. When Keys realizes that Millie was right, and that Antwan did steal their code and their game worked he tells Millie they need to celebrate because once everyone sees their build she’ll be celebrated and she could win a noble prize. Both Millie and Keys are geniuses in their own right. The game wouldn’t have worked without both of their skills and Guy wouldn’t have come to life without both of them working together. Millie’s AI engine made his sentience possible, but Keys is the one who gave him hopes and dreams so that when he met Millie in the game, he came alive. When done right the settings we see tell the story just as much as the characters do and I love how realistic the settings in Free Guy look. The floor at Soonami Studios where Keys and Mouser work looks like a real office and I love that the desks have clutter and personal effects on them like real cubicles do and that they show Keys taking a box of his stuff with him as he leaves. The lobby with the moving water videos and Antwan’s massive but largely empty office fits perfectly with the obnoxious, zany, and over the top character that he is. I also love the contrast between Keys and Millie’s apartments and how those settings tell us a lot about each character and where they are in their lives when the film starts. When Keys comes home from work to find that Millie has broken in, we see that he lives in a stylish one bedroom apartment with an open concept kitchen full of stainless steel appliances, a large living room centred around an expensive wall mounted TV and entertainment system, with his computer and gaming station set up in the corner. On the walls we see artful clusters of black picture frames, through a partially open door we see a bedroom off to the side, the apartment is full of black and white furniture including a plush couch and nice lamps, and features a textured silver accent wall. All of which makes the fact that Millie managed to break in even more impressive because it is clearly an expensive apartment in a nice building. Keys’ style is minimalist and upper scale and based on what we learn about the events that took place before the start of the movie this indicates that Keys got the apartment and all of the nice stuff in it using the money he received when Antwan bought his and Millie’s game. In contrast, Millie lives in a bachelor apartment and spends her time in coffee shops ordering one single black coffee over four hours. This tells us that she kept her original apartment that she had from before the game was sold and is living off the money she got from the sale while she spends all of her time trying to find the proof she needs to win her lawsuit. When we see Millie’s place, we find that it’s cozy, full of plants, throw rugs, quilts, and comfy furniture. She’s got a bike in the corner, you can see her bed from the centre of the room where she’s got her computer and gaming station set up adjacent to the coffee table and the rest of the living room furniture. Her kitchen is smaller and full of wooden cabinets and her bathroom door has DIY multicoloured square panels on it. Keys and Millie’s apartments are very different and through these settings we see the contrast between where these characters are in their lives, their wealth, and their personal style. The song ‘Fantasy’ by Mariah Carey is featured heavily in the film and is guaranteed to get stuck in your head in the best way! Jodie Comer’s cover of it is amazing! It fits the moment where Guy makes it to the island that is Millie and Keys’ original build and shows it to the world perfectly. This movie made me appreciate Mariah Carey’s music in a whole new way and I can’t be the only way. After watching the movie, I went looking for the song on Apple Music, wound up listening to the Mariah Carey Essentials Playlist, and I’ve become obsessed. I knew some of her hits, but after listening to her music more I get why people love her so much. Her five octave vocal range is amazing, and her music is just so fun to listen to. The film has a really great soundtrack overall and I’ve had many of its song on repeat since I saw it. Something I really loved about this movie and the reveal at the end that Keys is in love with Millie and is desperate for her to notice, but she’s been oblivious the whole time is that they don’t do the supposedly nice nerdy guy whose really a jerk trope. So many movies do this where you have a nerdy male character whose unluckily love, looked over, or his love is unrequited, and we’re supposed to root for him because he’s a quote “nice guy”. But really, he’s not. He’s a jerk who feels slighted because a woman in his life doesn’t love him back or notice him and he feels as if she owes him something. The scene at Millie’s place where Millie tells Keys he looks cute when he brags, and Mouser encourages him to tell Millie how he feels is super frustrating to watch but it’s so important to Keys’ character. He asks Millie out for coffee and when she turns him down to jump back into the game, he doesn’t make a big deal about it even though Mouser wants him to. Instead he gets up and goes and gets her a coffee anyway. She goes to tell him her order, oblivious to the fact that he’s memorized it, he tells her he remembers, and goes to get the coffee anyway much to Mouser’s and the audience’s dismay. This is big because Keys clearly doesn’t want to be walking down the street by himself to get coffee. He wants to be getting coffee with Millie so that he can tell her how he feels to see if she might feel the same way, but when she turns him down he goes and gets the coffee anyway because he truly loves and cares about her and he values their friendship enough to put his own feelings aside and suffer in silence rather than lose her and what they’ve built. So, he takes the opportunity to get some air rather than continue to sit there in disappointment. Which is why he’s so confused when Millie runs after him and calls out to him from across the street. He doesn’t understand what she’s doing there. She turned down his offer to get a coffee and he already knows her order so why is she there? I love that they chose to make that scene non-verbal. I think if Millie had come out and made some big declaration of love it would have felt cheesy and overdone. But her running after him and silently communicating through her smile and body language that she understood and that she felt the same way was perfect. It was subtle and beautiful and perfectly acted. It also felt realistic to the characters because in real life when you’ve known someone a really long time and you’ve spent a lot of time with them you don’t always need words to convey what you mean. What Millie wanted to express in that scene was so big and so all-encompassing she couldn’t find the words to say everything that she wanted to say so she didn’t. She just stood there and smiled knowing that being the genius that he is he would understand. It’s like Keys says in their interview, words will fail you, but code never does. His coding worked and now she understands so rather than try and say it all and fail she just looks at him and smiles to show him that she finally gets it. She finally understands what he’s been trying to say to her all this time. And you can see the exact moment Keys realizes why she’s there. The moment where he goes from being confused as to what she wants to realizing that she saw the video and she knows how he feels and that she wouldn’t be standing there smiling at him like that if she didn’t feel the same way. When I watched the scene the first time around, I was anxiously clutching my nachos the entire time because when Keys ran towards her my immediate thought was, “Oh my god he’s gonna get hit by a car and they’re never gonna get to be together! Oh my god!” But then he didn’t get hit by a car and Millie ran out to meet him and for the first time in their relationship she met him halfway and they kissed and it was beautiful! I think because Free City had so much violence in it that’s where my mind went and I’m very glad they didn’t go that route. One of my only criticisms about the movie is that I wish they had stayed on Millie and Keys just a little bit longer. They kiss and embrace and then very quickly they cut to black. I wish they’d linger on that moment just a little bit longer because I love those characters so much and in the scene that follows where Guy and Buddy are reunited we see them hug and then walk away together to start their new lives and I wish we’d gotten just a bit more time with Millie and Keys. I also really loved the parallel between the different kinds of relationships within the movie and how platonic relationships are just as important as romantic ones. The reveal at the end about Guy being Keys’ creation and a love letter to Millie and her realizing she’s been loving Keys vicariously through Guy and them finally coming together and being on the same page is beautiful because from the very beginning the movie is full of clues, hints, and foreshadowing that all comes together at the end. Meanwhile, we see the friendship between Guy and Buddy and how important that friendship is to him because it’s something that he created on his own. His love for Millie is born out of the programming that Keys gave him, but his friendship with Buddy is something that Guy created all on his own of his own volition. Which is part of what makes Buddy’s death on the bridge so tragic. I cried when Buddy disappeared. Reynolds and Howery play their characters with such sincerity that his death pacts an emotional punch you don’t expect. I love that the security guards at Soonami are so moved by Buddy’s heroism and are so captivated by what’s happening with the live stream that Millie is able to sneak past them into the server room and stop Antwan from destroying what’s left of the game. Something else I noticed on rewatch is that during the final battle after Millie gets booted from the game and Guy has to fight Dude on his own the glasses he’s wearing are very similar to the ones Keys wears in the movie which I thought was a cool nod to Guy being Keys’ creation. This really is a movie in which you find something new every time you watch it. For instance, the second time around I noticed that the foreshadowing that Keys is in love with Millie, but she’s oblivious to it because she’s so focused on the game was really well done. In the video from the indie game conference that Millie plays for Keys at his apartment when asked by the interviewer about their chemistry Millie responds first and says that their friends, their relationship is completely platonic, and laughs off the idea that they have chemistry. In contrast Keys falters and is silent and then eventually says meekly that they’re just friends. Millie is looking ahead at the interviewer and to the side away from Keys as she’s laughing and so she doesn’t see Keys’ reaction. At the end of the apartment scene after Millie breaks in to ask Keys for his help, he tells Millie he cares about her and he almost says something else. It feels like he’s about to say, ‘I love you’ but then he catches himself and instead tells her that she needs to leave. When Keys visits Millie’s apartment to tell her that she was right and they’re sitting on the couch he reaches out and puts his hand on her knee and then snatches it back when he realizes he’s gotten too close. He wants so desperately to be closer to her and in his excitement, he gets closer than he normally would before realizing that putting his hand on her knee in that close proximity is not a platonic gesture. Millie is so caught up in the realization that Guy, the person she’s fallen in love with, is an AI and not a real person that she doesn’t notice. My heart broke for Keys in that scene as he realized that Millie had fallen for Guy and kissed him and was so upset about it and meanwhile, he was right in front of her desperate for her to see how much he cares. It must have just wrecked him to go home that night and realize that Guy was based on the lovelorn character he created and that Millie had fallen in love with his creation while at the same time being so oblivious to his real world affection for her. In the scene at Millie’s apartment after they’ve gotten the server from Antwan and Mouser encourages Keys to say something, I noticed on rewatch just how weak and meager Keys’ attempt to ask Millie out is. He stumbles his way through asking her to get a coffee and trails off at the end so it’s no wonder Millie doesn’t clue in that he’s trying to ask her out. And in Keys’ defence he sent her a whole video confessing his feelings for her and all of the little things he loves about her and then told her to watch it and he has no idea if she did or not. We the audience know that Millie only saw half of it, but Keys has no idea if she saw none of it, part of it, or all of it. He knows she got Guy to remember, but she’s also sending him mixed messages. One minute she’s saying he’s cute when he brags and the next, she’s turning him down for coffee to talk to Guy. From the outside it’s so obvious that Keys is in love with Millie, but she doesn’t see it because she’s always looking the other way, not paying attention, so caught up in the game, and too focused on their work to see what’s right in front of her. On rewatch one of the big things I noticed is that Keys is always on the edge of telling Millie how he really feels but he always stops himself because she brushes him or the idea off and because he’s scared of what will become of their work and their friendship if she doesn’t feel the same way. It’s a huge leap. If Millie doesn’t feel the same way it’s going to make their relationship incredibly awkward and could potentially destroy their partnership so Keys decides it’s better not to say anything or only hint at how he feels rather than run the risk of ruining everything. Something else I noticed on rewatch is that in the interview they give Keys says he thinks of himself as an author and that code is what gets him up in the morning and that he loves the ones and zeros of binary because words can fail you and let you down but code never does. At the end of the movie when Millie goes to talk to Guy in Free Life he tells her that he loves her and while he knows that’s his programming he’s realized that he’s a love letter to her and that somewhere out there in the real world is the author. Such a great callback. All in all, I can definitely say that Free Guy has been my favourite movie so far this year! Definitely my favourite movie of the summer. I went to see it twice in theatres and I’ve never done that for any other movie before. I’ll rewatch them at home sure, but I’ve never actually paid money to see something twice on my own. I’m very excited to see the sequel and my hope is that it will be just as good as the first.  Until next time.

[shihalyfie]

Some fun talking about and analyzing the tri. stage play, and its relationship to Kizuna

The tri. stage play (full title: "Super Evolution Stage! Digimon Adventure tri. August 1st Adventure") is honestly quite an unusual entry in this franchise, even within Adventure standards. Nearly everything about its production is unusual -- the entire genre it's in is unexpected, the choice of time period to release something like this is unusual, and moreover, now that Kizuna’s out, a lot of people have noticed a lot of suspiciously similar themes and even language, most notably the key “we’ll always be together” line (phrased even exactly the same way in Japanese). In fact, despite ostensibly being a tri.-branded product, other than a few vague token nods to the anime series in the play itself, said stage play has very little to do with the actual anime sharing its name, so the similarity to Kizuna is even more striking in retrospect.

Perhaps another interesting thing about this play is that it’s a very good example of a standout work in the Adventure universe that didn’t have any original creator involvement (other than some minor tips from Seki). I think there’s often a tendency for people to think that in order for a sequel or spinoff to be true to the original, it has to have some member of original staff on there, especially since the Adventure (and 02) characters tend to be a bit overly complex and it helps to have the reassurance that someone who knows them is behind the wheel -- Kizuna used the presence of Seki and Yamatoya as an outright advertising point -- but this stage play’s director and writer had no experience with the franchise beforehand, not even as a fan, yet still made a very respectful product that has generally been received well by Adventure (and 02) fans and even got the original director’s approval, too. If anything, that makes it all the more impressive!

(Note that the below text spoils the story content of the play, but not Kizuna’s to any substantial degree.)

Some production background

Anime and video game stage tie-ins are fairly common -- much like this one, they tend to have very short runs and are targeted at a limited audience -- but they’re usually stereotyped as being for the otome crowd (i.e. predominantly female otaku audience), so works like this are generally associated with it. As a result, when this play was announced and released between tri. Parts 4 and 5, quite a few people were surprised, because this franchise originally came from products associated with shounen anime. In practice, this was a period where it was becoming increasingly clear that there was, in fact, a huge female audience for Digimon (especially Adventure universe), on top of the fact that (as noted by the performers in the final show) the audience for this show ended up being unusually mixed-gender, because Digimon really is universal -- but it did lead to the announcement of the play being initially received with heavy skepticism, partially because of the usual misogyny (stigma around things associated with female audiences, etc.), and partially because this was during a time where...well, saying that a very huge percentage of the fanbase, especially the Japanese side, was really pissed off at anything tri.-branded at the time is kind of an understatement. Ultimately, the play ended up very well-received with a small but dedicated following, and it’s currently referred to as “dejisute” (short for “Digimon Stage”) in Japanese fan shorthand. Bringing it up generally elicits positive critical feedback, even among those who were initially skeptical.

Some interesting things also surround the circumstances of its production as well. As some might know already, the tri. anime series and Kizuna share only one key member of staff: Kinoshita Yousuke, who was involved in tri. Parts 5 and 6, and eventually went on to become the producer for Kizuna and the upcoming 02-based movie. tri. was a work that (for some reason) had a huge number of producers on it, of which Kinoshita was only one; he seemed to have been replacing Arai Shuuhei, who left the project after Part 4. However, while Arai was formerly one of the most visible of tri.’s producers (he was the only one regularly brought up in interviews), how much degree of influence Kinoshita had with tri. is unknown, other than the fact he had no involvement in its story. Given that the decision to make Kizuna also seemed to have been made around Part 5, it seems that Kinoshita may have been brought on specifically for the purpose of observing and prepping for Kizuna, because his role on tri. seems to have been so minimal that the moment he was put in charge of Kizuna, the production philosophy ended up becoming completely different under his management. (When you think about it, tri. and Kizuna have very little in common, other than the rough premises of involving the older Adventure cast.)

The thing is, though, Part 5 isn’t actually the first tri. work Kinoshita is credited for, but this stage play is -- which is interesting to consider when taking into account the heavy amount of thematic parallels between this and Kizuna three years later, and in general the very unusual creative decision to make a stage play that suddenly popped up at exactly this time, making heavier tributes to Adventure (and even 02) than the actual anime it was branded with. Making things even more interesting was that the stage play’s director and writer, Tani Kenichi, was allegedly recruited by an unnamed producer impressed with his work (by the way, did I mention Kinoshita used to work in live-action before joining Toei?). Given all that, perhaps this stage play coming off unnervingly like a sort of Kizuna prototype isn’t all that surprising...

Unfortunately, right now we’re still kind of in a time period where official will get barraged with violently angry comments for even so much as putting the series on streaming services, so it’ll probably be a few more years (if ever) before official will be willing to be more open about what went on behind tri. production, and it’s probably a bit much to get too speculative about things like this when real people are involved. Nevertheless, one thing is apparent: the director and writer, Tani, was a newcomer to Digimon -- not even someone who’d been a fan beforehand -- but watched all of Adventure and 02 in preparation for it and stated openly that he was very, very emotionally touched by it. The work itself is obviously made with a lot of love and respect for the series, and one really cool thing about it is that you can also tell that it came from the perspective of an adult with no preconceived notions about it, therefore meaning it comes from someone analyzing the series without necessarily caving to fanbase mantras, and making some very cogent observations about the characters. It’s also just a fabulous work production-wise in general -- the puppet work and making the Digimon look convincing on stage is very well-done, especially when you consider that this play had only ten showings -- and you really gotta appreciate the fact that, even before Seki gave him a few pointers, he was so passionate about the importance of Digimon partners that he pushed for all eight to be represented despite the expenses.

Taking a look at the play itself

Despite ostensibly tying into the tri. anime series it's branded with, the play only really seems to loosely refer to some of its key elements as taking place at approximately the same time, such as Koushirou’s server, infected Digimon, setpieces like KNIFE OF DAY, and an eventual “reveal” that this seems to take place ostensibly around the rough time period of tri.’s Part 4. Look closely, however, and you’ll notice that a lot of things in the characterization and plot arena actually don’t track much with tri. at all -- for instance, in a very non-comprehensive list of things:

It’s implied that Yamato himself is embarrassed about the KNIFE OF DAY band name and is desperately trying to get through it with passion, which doesn’t quite line up with his attitude about it in the anime.

The timeline just really doesn’t line up; Mochizuki Meiko, Meicoomon, and the infections obviously exist, but you can’t have a time period in Part 4 where the kids recognize Meicoomon as being related to the distortions or infections while also being separated from Meiko. Moreover, the “reboot” just doesn’t seem to have happened at all (and to be fair, if you’re planning on making a two-hour tribute to Adventure, not having the Digimon with memories of said adventure would seriously limit the scope of your plot, so this kind of “leeway” was probably downright necessary).

The tri. anime series portrayed Takeru as having a very sharp shift in language, presumably under the implication he’s putting up a front as a flirtatious, aggressive playboy, and so his first-person pronoun was turned into the aggressive ore and his way of referring to Yamato aniki. In Adventure and 02, Takeru had used the polite boku and childish/cutesy onii-chan, and the boku was prominently used as a plot point to hint at Takeru’s identity as the series narrator. (Yes, these kinds of things are actually kind of a big deal in fiction.) Since even longtime fans generally agree that at some point Takeru would be likely to stop using onii-chan once he became old enough, the stage play likewise also prefers aniki over onii-chan, but, notably, it doesn’t even bother with ore in the slightest nor any of the implications that surround it, and Takeru comfortably uses boku for the entirety of the play. Considering that the use of aniki is still a bit unusual (both Diablomon Strikes Back and Kizuna prominently favor the slightly more polite nii-san instead), it seems that the play was made with an awareness that both aspects of Takeru’s language had changed, but a conscious decision to hold over only one from the anime.

And so on and so forth.

In general, the way you could describe this play’s handling of Adventure universe lore and characterization elements is that it’s a bit selective about which tri.-related elements it makes use of, particularly in regards to ones that might be too difficult to reconcile with the original Adventure (and 02). (This is basically the same attitude Kizuna roughly takes in regards to handling of tri. elements, although it’s less noticeable there partially because of the five-year gap between tri. and Kizuna.) Obviously, being completely incongruous with the tri. anime would be a pretty crude thing to do for a play that’s actually branded with it (and especially when said anime was still ongoing at the time, regardless of public opinion), but, regardless, the end result is that its actual relationship with the tri. anime’s version of canon is a bit tenuous.

The main reason for this is probably that, on the flip side, the stage play's references to Adventure -- as in, the specific series that aired in 1999-2000 and took place in the in-universe August 1 and 3, 1999 -- are incredibly aggressive. In fact, it’s actually far more aggressive in this respect than Kizuna is. For all Kizuna is branded as an Adventure movie and puts the original Adventure cast first and foremost in all of the advertising, if you watch the actual movie, in practice, it’s more of something that lies in the gap between Adventure and 02 and the two series together as a whole. Adventure was a series that practically revolved around a "trapped in another world" story and the specific impact its events had on the kids involved, but Kizuna focuses more on the “larger world”, including real world society (very much 02 things), with a lot of themes with suspicious pertinence to 02 and references to its epilogue looming over the plot; the specific Adventure references and even the Digital World don’t come into play until the climax. (And that’s before we get into the fact that the 02 quartet gets more screentime than a good chunk of their seniors.) Really, you can see it just by the fact that a majority of the primary key visuals line the 02 quartet up with everyone else; it’s a movie about both, not just Adventure.

So in other words, Kizuna is really about mixing Adventure and 02 elements, serving as a sort of stopgap work, and recasting the Adventure group in a lot of 02′s context. (And that’s by no means a bad thing; since Adventure wasn’t about that, the differing juxtaposition is a fresh perspective in its own way.) But in terms of revisiting what the actual series called Digimon Adventure was and how those events might have an influence on its relevant cast years later, this play (which actually has longer runtime than Kizuna, being around two hours) is a good place to go to if that’s what you’re looking for. The entire premise of the play revolves around copiously referencing that specific adventure back in 1999, and, more importantly, what impact it’s still continuing to have in this particular group’s memories, to the point where they’re starting to romanticize it and wish they could return to it forever...

Ah, right, that’s what this play has in common with Kizuna: the overall theme of unhealthy fixation on rose-colored nostalgia, and the need to move forward from it. (And, driving it home, “unhealthy fixation on the events of Adventure” as a symbol of that rose-colored nostalgia, to boot.)

The premise of the play itself is that the kids decide to hold a camping trip as tribute to the adventure in 1999, as part of a desire to "go back to those times" (and, as is eventually revealed, it’s actually part of a pocket universe their subconscious wishes had dreamed up as a desire to recreate the past, thanks to the power of the Digital World). So all of the references to Adventure are concrete and fleshed out in specific detail, ranging from everyone referencing specific events and how they impacted them (Jou very explicitly refers to his experiences in Adventure episodes 46-47 in terms of why it fuels his current desire to become a doctor) to even the most minor of references (direct reference to bananas on File Island, from Adventure episode 3).

As a brief aside, a positive side effect of centering the plot on this specific adventure is that it justifies the reason for why these eight are working together (at least prior to the endgame reveal that they’re still involved in tri.’s events); the eight of them weren’t portrayed as liable to do so without good reason, and while certain aspects and events from 02 are alluded to when they’re relevant, the absence of the actual quartet passing without note is completely justifiable because they simply were not on that adventure anyway. (They weren’t initially planned to be at the event in 02 episode 17, and knowing them, it’s likely they wouldn’t want to be at this kind of outright commemorative camping event, because they’d feel like they’d be intrusive in something they had nothing to do with.) So within the scope of the play in two hours, the narrative can be very neatly condensed to be mostly about Adventure itself.

Although this play and Kizuna both share the common theme of the existential crisis that comes with getting older and the tendency to romanticize one’s childhood, the underlying reasons are a bit different; Kizuna’s is very close to 02 in that it’s largely to do with societal pressures and expectations, especially since the question of "what you want to do with your career" is a driving motivation in it. In other words, the existential crisis comes from living up to other people’s expectations, or trying to fit into an arbitrary societal mold of an “adult” without necessarily knowing if that’s what you really want. In the case of this stage play, being set in everyone’s high school years where everyone’s relationship to “the world at large” is a bit more tenuous, the reason for the existential crisis is somewhat closer to Adventure’s: everyone’s started to think they might have been better people back then. More confident, less hesitant, more honest with their feelings. Adventure was a series about self-improvement and one’s relationship with oneself, so it’s understandable that a work meant to look back on that specific adventure will ask the question “well, did they become better people after all?” as a result.

But there’s two problems with this line of thinking: one, this is a very rose-colored evaluation of their former selves, because just because they might have been “more confident” back then doesn’t mean they didn’t have other problems going on (Hikari calls her past self out for being arguably “more honest”, but also somewhat of a dependent child), and two, being more hesitant doesn’t make one a weaker person, just one who’s dealing with a lot more problems and awareness and things to worry about because of how much the scope of their lives has increased. As Agumon says at the end, the old Taichi and the current Taichi are still the same person; it’s just that he’s dealing with more, so he’ll naturally worry about more, and taking on those extra burdens is actually his own way of “evolving”.

Particularly interesting is the position of Jou, the not-so-unsung hero of this story, who is explicitly identified as the person most clearly aware of his future dreams and proceeding without hesitation towards them, to the point of being somewhat immune to the effects of the dream world. (Somewhat, mainly because the ending establishes that he wasn’t entirely.) It's consistent in line with the fact that we actually saw, directly, the train of thought that led to his decision to become a doctor back in Adventure, and he even states it directly in this play himself: he doesn’t consider himself someone who wants to solve things through fighting, but rather someone who can prevent casualties and heal the injured if he pursues this line of study, and thus is determined to make it happen. Even from the very early points of the play, there are several hints at him being able to see a metaphorical “future” that the others cannot, and while he remains unfailingly loyal to his friends (there’s a long sequence of him constantly claiming he’ll leave them as per Koushirou’s request but constantly coming back because he just can’t bring himself to abandon them), he also is the first one to depart the camping trip to attend to a test -- that is to say, he treasures his past, but he has a strong enough dream for his future that he’s willing to move on better than the others can.

Jou’s also the one to personally advise Yamato about the difference in nuance between doing things because you feel you must, versus doing it because you yourself truly want to, a difference in nuance that also becomes very pertinent in Kizuna. Also pertinent to both works in common is the discussion of nuances between “staying trapped in one’s memories” and “violently cutting them all away” (the consequences of the latter being more extensively discussed in Kizuna), versus the ideal situation of reflecting on those memories and experiences from the past in order to productively move forward.

And in the end, rose-colored nostalgia is, indeed, rose-colored nostalgia. Because, sure, that adventure back in the day was great, and they grew a lot, but they also grew a lot because they were overcoming some very harsh, difficult troubles; omitting those parts is losing the substance. The re-invocation of the fun “camping trip” also means re-invoking all of the other things that came along with it, including all of the dangerous threats they’d faced back then. It’s a package deal, and you can’t just filter those out, because it misses the point of what you gained out of it in the first place.

In general, the character writing for this play is also very good; there are some differences between the characters here and them back in 02, but they’re all within the believable scope of positive progression within three years and general adherence to core tenets of their character (Koushirou is certainly more assertive, but emphasis continues to be placed on his deference to others, penchant for spotting details, and capability for being an organizational leader in his own sense). Also notably, this play manages to verbalize a lot of the subtleties in Adventure and 02 that the mainstream tends to gloss over (and don’t tend to get put in official profiles) but are well-known to those deeply familiar with the series. This is the kind of attention to detail usually associated with those who have been studying the series for years, so it’s refreshing to see these come out in words -- for instance, Koushirou stating outright that he was one of the closest people to Taichi for a long time (very true!), Hikari and Takeru actually commenting on each other from back in Adventure (something we never really got in 02, despite “them having known each other for a while” being part of their character arcs), and Sora explicitly admitting that she goes out of her way for others because it’s easier to work for others than it is to even think about herself.

Actually, the attention to detail in general is fantastic; other than a minor slip-up (Sora refers to having met Koushirou during the summer camp at the beginning of the play when she’d actually known him prior from the soccer club, a detail that’s very easy to miss because it’s only mentioned once in Adventure episode 16 and clarified further in the novels), a lot of things from Adventure and 02 are made use of and framed in very clever context; the choice of Etemon as the enemy for this play is well-placed for both his entertainment value and the fact that, as an enemy personally defeated by MetalGreymon in Adventure episode 20, it makes perfect��sense that he would have a grudge against Taichi in particular. (It’s also explicitly mentioned that Hikari and Tailmon never met Etemon in person even once, and that Taichi never actually got to see MetalEtemon, so there’s a lot of attention paid to logistics like that.)

Also, while 02 is not really brought up within the scope of the story (and really shouldn’t be, not when this story so heavily centers around Adventure and its themes), its place in canon and its contributions to the worldbuilding are fully respected; a lot of the offhand references to family situations and background are elements that were originally introduced in 02, and many aspects of its Digital World lore are used to assist the plot premise (in particular, the idea of the Digital World being connected to something that can conjure up unconscious dreams wasn’t explicitly invoked until 02). Rather amusingly, at one point, Hikari uses the events of 02 episode 13 to tell a “scary story” to troll Mimi, and it’s interesting and rather refreshing to see the implication that Hikari’s been able to move past the incident enough to use it to troll someone else. There are also some latent epilogue references as well, with Hikari directly bringing up her goal of becoming a kindergarten teacher, Takeru making some really subtle references to wanting to be a novelist and chronicle their adventures (in true Takeru fashion, he never states it outright, but anyone familiar with the epilogue can figure it out), and Taichi alluding to an ultimate goal of humans coexisting alongside Digimon.

Finally, attention should be called to the play’s relationship writing in general. As stated before, the play does call attention to relationships between characters that often don’t get brought up by the mainstream but are somewhat more well-known to fans -- Koushirou and Taichi, Sora and Mimi, Jou and Yamato -- but even the well-known ones are treated with nuance endemic to that from Adventure and especially 02, given that Taichi and Yamato don’t actually have the stereotypical “cold rivals” atmosphere that shounen anime would usually suggest, and the two of them have an extended heart-to-heart in which Yamato actively tries to figure out what’s wrong with Taichi and treat him kindly. (Like in Adventure, the only time they break out in a fight is when Yamato gets emotionally compromised and starts worrying that Taichi isn’t doing enough for others’ welfare.) It’s also very consistent with how the two treat each other in Kizuna as well (the izakaya scene comes to mind, and has a lot of similarities to the awkward-but-ultimately-close conversation they have at night in this play).

And, of course, the centerpiece of the narrative overall: the human-partner relationship. Of course, a lot of this was probably helped by Seki lecturing Tani to not mess this part up, but it really is impressive to consider in light of the fact we’re working with a lot of puppets that have handlers clearly in plain view, so you have to have some massive suspension of disbelief to make this work. But not only are the movements well-done to make it convincing that you really are seeing these actors physically interacting with their partners on stage, the narrative also puts huge spotlights on them, making the Digimon outright be the ones to snap their partners out of their worst patterns of thinking (especially with Agumon and Taichi), and dedicating a long period of silence where literal stage spotlights are dedicated to each kid having some alone time with their partner. The intimacy is very convincing, and, truly, Tani’s insistence on making sure every single one of the main Digimon was represented in spite of the prohibitive budget paid off very well. The point is made: a Digimon partner has to be someone who knows you well and intimately and can call you out at your worst moments, and Taichi even spells it out: Agumon’s capable of seeing right through him.

Putting it next to Kizuna -- a movie dedicated entirely to examining the meaning of a partner relationship, what happens when it deteriorates, what that means for oneself, and what it takes to recover it again -- it’s perhaps unsurprising that this play ends on the same line that was used in all of Kizuna’s advertising and was central to its own plot: “We’ll always be together.”

[valaks]

Hey Valaks! I love your blog and your writing!

Please could you do 1, 10 and 18 for the writing asks?? 🌺

Thank you for the ask! I have added a cut to hopefully not be that person clogging up the feed XD

1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

I have a few collabs outstanding like Gemini and a Kabir/Alex sequel to Reunion (It’s rated T at the most so still kid friendly) with Lupin and Devil Went Down to Georgia with Galimau. My utter love for both of my collab partners for pulling me through at a time when I’ve been really struggling. I have a WIPs List but I’ll confess to not having touched most of them in quite sometime (partly from life, partly because I’m not sure how interesting they’d be to anyone else other than me which influences my writing more than I would like to admit):

Good Intentions: Smithers never thought he’d be anyone’s moral compass, he was no angel to sit in anyone’s shoulder but trying to keep Alex Rider from following in the ruthless footsteps of his father or worse his former handler, Alan Blunt is as close to hell as he can imagine. (Wherein Alex becomes head of MI6 we watch his morality slip away form the eyes of an increasingly frustrated and heartbroken Smithers - it all culminates when Alex uses a child “just as an informant, simple information gathering” but hidden behind the charming smile of John Rider and the brutal coldness of Alan Blunt’s words is Alex Rider dying as he says them (Smithers just hopes there’s still a part of the boy he once knew in there to mourn)

Walk the Line: Alex thought he was done with SCORPIA. But they kept creeping back into his life in the most unexpected of ways. He thought he could at least count on it being on the other side until he gets teamed up with Walker, his former classmate and current CIA spy. Unfortunately he still hasn’t been able to figure out whose side Walker is really on - attempted deep cover op like his dad, repatriated rogue spy back on the “good” side, or SCORPIA double agent? He doesn’t know but at least he’s nice....in that obnoxious American way.

Temperamental: (Sequel to Sentimental which isn’t all that popular and you would need to read it for the sequel but basically amnesiac Yassen whose memories stop pre John’s betrayal set during the Stormbreaker mission and features him trying to come to grips with the use of chemical weapons against children and how to handle Alex once he snaps back to reality which is where this starts) Yassen had promised Alex Rider that he would be safe from the world of spying but fate had other ideas. In the days after Sarov’s failed plan, Yassen scrambles to find where MI6 have hidden his wayward charge without drawing Rothman’s attention. A request from one of their existing clients to look into suspicious activity at his son’s former school prompts Yassen to investigate under the guise of offering security. He should have known where there was trouble there would be Alex.

10. How would you describe your writing process?

Lordy do I ever not have a good answer for this. Typically it involves an idea hitting me and then the determination: would this idea work better as a short to post on tumblr (because the set up would take away the tension or would require a multi chapter which is not really my strength), as a prompt to lob out into the ether for someone better and brighter to touch on, or a fic. Once fic is decided I determine whose perspective the fic would be the most interesting from either because it would create the most tension or their internal monologue/background knowledge would add the most to it. Then the summary is written and a title is chosen. If it’s something I’m really passionate about and I already have it in my head I tend to write it all in one go, if there’s more I need to chew on then it’s a series of dates with the Evil Writing App. The final determination is whether it’s good enough for Valaks or if it gets sent to an alt account.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

Allegedly. I’ll try to go in order of posting -

Ruthless has a sequel where Alex just goes *quiet* once the initial dust as settled it’s unnerving to everyone because they’re not used to having to wonder just what Alex is thinking, at least not behind closed doors but what happened isn’t exactly something that can be recovered from easily, not when Alex isn’t sure who all’s in on it no matter what they’ve told him. Failure is the AU where I considered what would happen to Alex to make him want to torture.

Alibi was originally going to have Yassen show up in the end but I found it far more fascinating if MI6 was just testing Alex so out went Yassen and in went Ben. The sequel to it was torn apart and turned into Warm Reception because I wanted to trope flip SCORPIA comes to Brooklands and decided that it was more logical to have a small fight in Mrs. Bedfordshire’s lobby than anywhere else and I wanted to explore some side characters instead of Ben.

Providence’s sequel thoughts ended up inspiring Gentleman’s Agreement but I did write a small short for it “Yassen and Alex encounter each other on mission. Surprisingly they are working to mostly the same goal - Yassen needs to kill the millionaire who Alex needs to get information from. “I suppose I could answer some questions for you, Sasha. /In Russian/“ “Is now really the time for a language lesson?” he ground out in frustration but the man pointedly ignored him “/Fine but I don’t know some of the words/“ “/Then there is no better way to learn/“

I mentioned the Sentimental sequel but changing Sarov to come first and probable for almost a month before Yassen figures out he’s missing made the most sense. It was also a bit of fun at the Yassen would absolutely take Alex away from MI6....just to throw him in a school and throw away the key. Almost had him send him to Point Blanc but decided that wouldn’t quite fit all that well and wouldn’t be as interesting as if Alex had already gotten his feet back under him with MI6 and now sees that Yassen was right that MI6 would just use him until he’s dead but that doesn’t mean Alex wants to be anywhere near Yassen. Julia Rothman might have other ideas when she finds out what her newest second in command is hiding.

Gentleman’s Agreement.....there’s a lot of thoughts on Sequels and AUs, a lot of them have been written by better people, but that fic was written in 45 minutes so there wasn’t much time to recharacterize or change scenes. It did get Turncoat aka the Alex saves Yassen fic I wanted so badly.

Blood Brothers is a fic I really worked hard on considering how John would feel about his son being thrown into SCORPIA assuming Alex was of age. A rocky marriage was characterization that didn’t quite fit what I imagined would have happened but did fit the story so it stayed in. It was a fic that was supposed to get expanded on - the competition between Hunter and Yassen and Nile and Alex who is desperate to beat his Dad and his “apprentice”. I think two teenagers thrown against each other with a bit of a bone to pick, especially Yassen and Alex who can both hold a grudge even if one runs hot and the other runs cold, would have been compelling and a little fun but the premise and specifically John’s characterization doesn’t quite work out to me.

Found and Legends both have their plotting done but it’ll never see the light of day

Little Moments and Sweetest Thing were my guilty pleasure writing pieces for a while and I have about 1000 DMs of scenes for both of them that are lost to the sands of time and an embarrassing amount of self indulgence

Mates has a follow up ending for those who needed resolution in the comments of it. I’m not sure I did a good job of showing that Tom was in a semi abusive relationship since a lot of people seemed to blame him for him and Alex’s breakup. Most of my headcanons for how their relationship goes have them splitting much sooner just because of Tom’s own home life and either being unable to relate/talk to Alex and drifting away because his Mom throwing a plate at his head isn’t being hung over crocodiles but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt or because Alex is just too dangerous/jumpy to be thrown back into a school environment and lashes out even unintentionally especially not under the pressure of being seen as a failure. School is also a barometer of just how much he’s lost of himself and his childhood, bonus points for Alex being completely upfront with Tom about everything he’s done

In My Sights has an AU where this is all post Christmas at Gunpoint and Yassen is there because he knows Ian is already at Sayle’s factory and will have to be...handled. So two weeks of just getting Alex trained for the protection he might need, connecting him to resources, etc. Ian finding out that Yassen had been there was part of a draft at one point which was included Alex wondering about an all too sincere goodbye from Ian “who never hugged him” but I can’t find the snippet anymore ;__;

A Warm Reception was an alternate version. Originally I wanted it to be Alex watching his last chance at normality slip from his fingers and then the crushing realization that it was something that was his own doing, not even MI6 but Skoda who he had picked a fight with and the accompanying breakdown but then decided that Mrs. Bedfordshire was the right way to go upon writing the summary. Because everyone loves some Outsider POV

Adopted was supposed to be a one chapter throw away trope flip of K Unit adopts Alex. I kept it pretty consistent with Amitai and Lil Lupin’s K Units, tried to add in some more characterization just in how they treated some of the details. It has an alt ending/chapter where they find out Alex is Cub when they pull him from Three’s tender mercies almost by accident. I was persuaded into light humored fluff via guilt trip.

The Truth and Other Deadly Weapons has Ben acting exactly like he think he would in front of everyone but my AU was that this interaction happened in the field and absolutely shattered Ben’s trust in him partly because he had worked for the other side and partly because even if it ‘wasn’t as bad as it looks’ it showed a severe lack of judgment. It also featured several chapters of Alex running into the glass ceiling that is having “Member Malogosto Class of 2004” on your resume. Was going to feature Alex running into Walker as well and into problems within MI6 and the CIA but that was eventually cut and it was kept to one chapter.

Guardian....Guardian holds a very special place in my heart. I was given the prompt of a Monster Fic and I wrote what I knew but the interesting parts were all the ones that come after the story but might come across to a general audience as Hogwarts School of Prayers and Miracles. The plotting done post this was going to feature baby Angel Alex reuniting with his parents but...they were strangers to him and so he stayed with Yassen more and more, followed him, learned from him....it encompassed everything from the dynamics of broken families to reflections on theology and references from the Good Book....which is why it’ll never see the fandom but has a very special place in my heart.

In another, more perfect world Glocking Around the Christmas Tree is the Die hard fic this fandom deserves but as Lupin and I untangled the plot of the movie more and more we just couldn’t make it into anything that would be coherent on paper so it was changed and changed and is now a half finished sad abomination that sits on my works list only because Lupin would kill me if I took it down.

Hot Shot was supposed to feature my current favorite character that is not Nile Abara, John Crawley but I wimped out and changed it at the end because I swore I would write the Crawley fic that we all need. Hear me out: John Crawley knew and worked with John and Ian Rider, was respected by both of them, was recruited by SCORPIA within one year in the field, is the Chief of Staff of MI6, the man who “no one gets a knife in the back without him signing off” and is also the man who walks his dog to check on Alex. There’s a mentorship waiting to happen there, preferably in a nice work study program during college where Alex finally gets to see the repercussions of his missions and Crawley helps try and pull him back from the black mark that SCORPIA would have put on him.

My personal fluffy favorite is the spinoff of Devil Went Down to Georgia where Joe Byrne did pull Alex out post Skeleton Key and brought him home. There’s a pretty extended one about where Tom ends up after Mates. There’s also an actual sequel but ask me no questions and all.

Skipping a few collabs and Febuwhump fics but Burning Questions was just supposed to be Branded - a fic where upon being captured by Razim he is brought in and forcibly branded to differentiate the appearances of Alex and Julius (since Razim has decided to have him killed after shooting the Secretary of State). As a result of the pain levels spiking when Alex actually sees that the SCORPIA logo is branded onto his cheek Razim considers that emotional pain might be something to investigate. There’s a couple thousand words on it, one day I might polish it up.

First Impressions is supposed to be a mirror verse of Alex working for MI6 which includes Three as Blunt, Rothman as Jones and of course Sagitta as K Unit while he’s up against his father as Yassen and Yassen as Crawley. But it was cut down significantly even if the ideas are pretty fun to consider.

Sorry this was probably more than you bargained for but it was fun to get everything out there so thank you for asking

[dalekofchaos]

My critique of the Sequel Trilogy Lightsaber duels

My biggest problems with the Sequel Trilogy are the blatant rip off and unoriginality, no clear plan at all, lore breaking bullshit, lack of worldbuilding and poor executions of great character concepts. In this post, one of my My biggest gripes with the Sequels is the terrible Lightsaber fights.

The only good duel in my opinion is Finn vs Kylo Ren. This feels raw and powerful. A hardened soldier who has just became familiar to Lightsaber combat vs a trained dark side warrior. Despite Ren's years on training, though, Finn puts up a good fight and is able to hold his own before having his back sliced up. But.....that's what kills the fight for me. Finn's injuries. If this were in the first 6 movies or anywhere in the EU, Finn would be in a wheelchair or in a bacta tank for life. And guess what? A movie later and Finn’s injuries are never brought up again or treated with any severity.

Like Finn’s injuries, Finn’s rivalry with Kylo Ren is dropped for no reason whatsoever and never mentioned again. Finn and Kylo Ren are narrative foils, yet after TFA it’s dropped??? From the start they have been prominent foils to each other: dark from light and light from dark, both in the First Order but in drastically different positions. And Kylo too obviously has strong feelings about his defection. I also believe that Finn is the awakening in the force that Kylo and Snoke felt. Perhaps that is why Kylo focused on Finn and is so angry about him. Finn is also the first person to use the legacy lightsaber and is the first to actually fight Kylo. TLJ could've focused on Finn and Kylo being  narrative foils having a force connection and Kylo wondering why Finn would switch to the Resistance while Finn wonders why Kylo joined The First Order and  Rey standing in the middle of it all wondering with the new realization that her family has a mixed past of good and evil and her questioning where exactly does she belong? The way at the height of tfa when Kylo Ren rejected Han Solo’s offer for redemption and killed him he looked over and noticed Finn. Like they both locked eyes and in that moment was a surge of emotions between them— shock (and some fear) on Finn’s end, and anger on Kylo’s as he shouts at Finn that he’s a traitor— and those circumstances set Finn and Kylo up to be the dynamic for the sequel trilogy. They were foils, and the trilogy had the potential to truly expand on that and see their development in a final standoff/rematch at the very end. But it was wasted, because why have good movies.

Rey vs Kylo Ren. This duel was bullshit from start to finish. Okay, I don't care how force sensitive she is. I don't care that she downloaded Kylo's abilities in the interrogation. ANd I don't give a fuck WHO she turned out to be related to. If you are thrown into a tree, you are gonna be out for at least an hour. I will hand it to them that it feels like a genuine fight, but it just feels cheap when Rey won. It also doesn't make it any better that Kylo's injuries doesn't force him to wear the helmet at all times, his facial wounds are non-consequential. Rey has no prior training. Never held a lightsaber. Rey fighting off thieves with her quarterstaff is not the same thing, it is understandable that Kylo was struggling because of his injuries, but Rey didn’t struggle against Kylo. Even Luke struggled with Vader and Anakin struggled with Dooku. What should have happened is as it looks like Kylo is about to win, Chewie from the Falcon fires his bowcaster to keep Ren at bay and both Rey and Finn make it to the Falcon. This way we can keep Kylo Ren strong and show Rey struggling to overcome Kylo. It will also show This is how powerful he is when injured, so imagine him at his peak. Instead we get a pointless fight instead of Rey and Finn just escaping Starkiller base while Ren collapses due to injuries and Rey beating Kylo served no purpose(the end goal to destroy Starkiller Base was already accomplished) and helped derail their villain of the trilogy.

The Throne Room Duel. Everyone knew that Rey and Kylo would kill the Praetorian Guards. This is a fight with absolutely zero stakes. It's one thing if Rey and Kylo dueled Snoke himself, that might be a good fight. But come on, did anyone REALLY think they would lose? There is no tension in the scene and it is pointless. Kylo Ren and Rey are fighting a faceless a group of guards that we know absolutely nothing about and have literally no purpose in the entire story except for this one fight. We know neither of the characters are going to die because these are just faceless red shirts and there is still like 30 to 40 minutes left of the movie. Terrible editing takes away any enjoyment one might have with the fight choreography, if you've got to literally photoshop out the bad guys weapons in post production to not look stupid you might need to recoreograph the shot. There are multiple times where Rey, Kylo and the guards are just doing motions and actions because they look cool but serve no purpose but to look cool. Kylo stabbing the ground? Pointless. Rey twirling her rave stick around while someone falls behind her, pointless. Not even once do we see them displaying their powers is what cheapens the fight. Kylo Ren is powerful enough to freeze a blaster and a person in place and Rey herself unlocked Kylo’s powers, so the two of them could have easily ended the fight sooner than it was dragged out. Kylo is powerful in the force but he SERIOUSLY could not stop a Praetorian Guard choke holding him and Rey struggled with a guard? Rey and Kylo were stronger in TFA and are just made weaker in the duel with the Praetorian Guards. Kylo could have frozen half of the guards and Rey could have mind tricked the other half into killing the frozen guards and Kylo and Rey could have finished them. They are masters of light and darkness, but they are made weaker. The throne room scene is a symbolization of everything wrong with the movie. It’s all flash, but no substance and the more you think about it, the worse it gets.

All this duel makes me believe is that Rey and Ben should’ve both switched sides in TLJ. Rey gives in to the dark side and Ben returns home. Rey is the most Sith like character if you obey the rules of George Lucas for Light and Dark sides of the force. Ben Solo is more Jedi like throughout the movie until the end. Let me explain. Rey throughout the sequel trilogy has given in to her passion and anger. In the end of TFA Rey gave in to anger and hate to defeat Kylo. and in TLJ she is shown to use anger and hate throughout the movie. She is shown to as Yoda put it “take the quick and easy path to the dark side” gives in to anger and hate in almost every scene before she boards the Supremacy and gave in to the temptations of the dark side water cave. Her dark side actions in TROS speak for itself. Ben is calm and clear minded like a Jedi, he even wants to cut all ties to attachments like a Jedi. Everything we were told of the Jedi and how disciplined they are, Ben displays that in TLJ until after the Throne room fight. Hell, EVEN THE THRONE ROOM FIGHT SUGGESTS THIS. Think about the fact that Ben really does not move or even engage. He just stands there and dodges and swings once when the guard rushes him. Contrast that to Rey, who is clearly being more aggressive with her lightsaber and attacking rather than just being passive. How again is Rey the Jedi and Kylo is the dark side force user in this movie? They’re fighting in the exact opposite way they should be. Rey fights for the kill while Kylo gets a glancing blow in the armor in the opening fight. Their style of fighting in the Throne Room with the Praetorian Guards really suggests that they should’ve switched sides. What they should have done is have Ben realize that Snoke was evil and shows regret for his actions and turn to the light. While Rey feeling betrayed by Luke and the revelation of her family turns to the dark. This would not only be unexpected but would even rival Vader’s “I am your father” twist. And it would logically follow what we’ve seen of these two characters leading up to this point. Rather than just out of the blue Kylo turns angry and irrational and Rey is calm when Ben was calm and rational throughout the movie and Rey was full of anger and hate throughout this movie. You have them follow an arc that makes sense for their individual personalities. Ben is always calm, but he felt betrayed by those on the light, but he comes to realize that betrayal was an incorrect perception and he desperately wants to make amends to Luke and Leia and therefore he should rejoin what he knows in his heart is good. While Rey is full of passion and anger and as that builds up and she realizes that even the great Jedi Luke Skywalker is a disappointment and her family abandoned her, she knows the only person who can live up to her own expectations is herself and that self-centered attitude leads her to the dark side. That would make sense and we would have something to fight for, save Rey from herself or stop her.

Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren. Originally, I thought they were gonna have Luke first send the Walkers’ turboblasts right back at them and use the force to bring down the transports, TIEs and the shuttle and then toy with his nephew like Vader did to him and leave Kylo Ren in defeat and his ruined fleet. In a way he did(minus the ruined fleet), but it took away any tension away by having Luke just be a force projection. He wasn't there. His moment with Leia and 3-PO doesn't feel genuine anymore. And the "duel" if you can call it that is just bad. Luke doesn't have his Green Lightsaber and their blades do not clash. A Jedi is all about defense. But a Jedi will also fight in self-defense to defend others. The argument that Luke did the "most Jedi thing ever" is bullshit. A Jedi will stand up for what's right and face the threat. Instead Luke pulled a practical joke and died pointlessly. I mean if he instead pulled the X-Wing out afterwords and told R2 "Come on R2, we've got work to do." I would forgive that and then we could've gotten a genuine master and apprentice relationship between Luke and Rey and a proper reunion between Luke and Leia. But no, he has to die of force exhaustion. If Palpatine, who uses the force like crack didn't die of force exhaustion, then why did Luke?

The duels in TROS are all equally terrible. Not once did I felt any excitement between Rey and Kylo's duels as I did with Finn and Kylo from TFA. Every Lightsaber duel is forgettable. The fight in Ren's Quarters is just bad. The fight on the Death Star Ruins is just terrible. It's like they both got high on deathsticks and could barley remember that they are both trained with a Lightsaber. Fighting in ruins surrounded by water SHOULD BE EXCITING! But they did everything in their power to make this duel boring, mediocre and lackluster. They act as if they are swinging bats, not Lightsabers. Lightsabers aren’t baseball bats, stop treating them like they are!  

The worst part is that THIS was the final Lightsaber duel of the Star Wars saga. A huge step down if compared to Obi Wan vs Anakin in Mustafar and Darth Vader vs Luke Skywalker in the Emperor’s Throne Room, which unlike the previous prequel, had awesome shooting and use of the soundtrack, also being very lengthy.

Then we get the Luke and Leia flashback. The ONLY well choreographed fight scene is a fucking flashback.

Then Ben Solo and the Knights Of Ren. Again, we know the Knights are gonna die. If JJ Abrams bothered to characterize the Knights, then yes they might've had a chance, but like the Praetorian Guards, they exist for background and die pointlessly.

Of Course we don't get to see Palpatine duel wielding his twin Sith Lightsabers and fighting Rey and Ben, cause JJ mr I hate the Prequels can't give the fans any decent Lightsaber fights. Instead of Palpatine facing Rey and Ben in an epic climatic final battle, we get Palpatine killed by his own lightning.

The fights in TFA is adequate at best. TLJ is meaningless. TROS is absolutely terrible and forgettable.

John, Daisy and Adam deserved better choreography than they were given. There's no excuse for the lackluster duels we see in the ST, whether from Rey, Finn or Kylo.

One of the biggest complaints for the Prequels is Lightsaber fights is "they are too choreographed" and anyone who believes this is an idiot. What? You wanted Jedi in their prime to slap sticks like old people? You wanted them to fight like drunken hobos? One of the best things in the prequels was finally getting to see the Jedi finally go all out in some awesome lightsaber duels. The Jedi should be masters at Lightsaber combat. Fight choreography is a good thing. Look at the duels in the prequels. You can like or hate them but the duel between Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon and Maul was great. As was Obi-Wan vs Jango, Yoda vs Dooku and every duel in ROTS. Even The Clone Wars had great fight choreography. There was more planning and choreography in The Clone Wars S7E10 than in the whole sequel trilogy.

Seriously, why wasn't Nick Gillard contacted? He is the main reason why the Lightsaber duels in the prequels were so good. I don't care if too many Lightsabers were a big complaint amongst the Prequel haters, the duels were good. So instead of great fight scenes, you traded great fight choreography for mediocre baseball bat fights?

The choreography is not the issue alone. There is no emotion. In TFA. Starkiller Base was already set to blow, so the fight was pointless. In TLJ there is no emotion at stake for the Throne Room fight and the Resistance already got away prior to Luke's pointless death. Rey vs Kylo doesn’t even matter because the characters HAVE THE SAME GOAL. Both want to get to Exegol via a wayfinder before the duel and both get to Exegol with a wayfinder (or memory of it) at the end of the duel. While Kylo gets redeemed, the duel wasn’t necessary for this part as Leia just needed to talk to him and then give him the force induced memory. The only thing this proves is that Rey is not a Jedi because she gives into anger and blind rage to start the duel.

The duels in the prequels and originals had themes, emotion and meaning. Not just that but they looked damn impressive and was the spectacle that helped made Star Wars, Star Wars.

There isn't any good musical scores for any of the Lightsaber fights either or at the very least, nothing memorable. Nothing as iconic as Duel Of Fates, Battle Of Heroes and the Throne Room fight in ROTJ. I don't remember any themes in the Sequels and that's a problem.

And it doesn’t help that these duels have no meaningful deaths either. A bunch of faceless guards and Luke (through indirect means) are the only deaths via a duel. But this is what happens when you hide the mentor archetype on an island and have the hero and villain go at it for three films.

The Lightsaber duel is no longer an emotional spectacle and a grand duel to the death. It's a bunch of idiots high on deathsticks fighting pointlessly and fighting for absolutely nothing. Rey fights like a Sith but she's a Jedi. Ben fights like a Jedi but is leading the First Order? They don't matter anymore and the duels in the sequels are the most forgettable thing about them.

[regrettablewritings]

How They Spend the Quarantine (Tadashi Hamada, Lucifer Morningstar, Dewey Finn, Wade Wilson, Harley Quinn, & Benoit Blanc)

Just a fun (?? is that even responsible to say?) little thing I’ve been thinking about while slogging through this neverending hellscape of an extended lockdown.

Tadashi Hamada

When San Fransokyo was ordered to go into a lockdown, there were mixed feelings.

At first, Tadashi had a hint of optimism that this would mean more time to work on his prospective projects . . . But then he quickly realized that his projects mostly required tools and space offered by the campus. He could technically make do at home, but it wouldn’t quite be the same considering the garage was considered Hiro’s space.

Somberly had to clean out his lab and take whatever he could home.

Cue the rest of the group (sans Fred and Hiro) griping that at least his style of science could travel well enough to be somewhat continued off of university grounds.

Helps do delivery for The Lucky Cat. It helps him get out the house, and it’s simply helpful altogether.

Uses Baymax frequently to make sure everyone down to Mochi is sanitized, and nobody’s running a fever.

Nearly as frequent a sanitizer as Aunt Cass.

He starts most days prepared to be productive, only to stop and poke fun at Hiro, who’s almost always got his eyes trained on a video game.

Tadashi realizes three hours later that he, too, has been playing the game as Player 2.

Learned how to make facial masks with Aunt Cass. He already knew how to sew a little but frankly, making the masks made him realize he could have a new hobby on his hands. He’s currently trying to figure out how to make Mochi a little vest . . .

Lucifer Morningstar

B o r e d. A s. F u c k.

At first, he thinks everyone being forced to go home would work in his favor -- surely some rule-breakers would sneak out and try to bunk up with the Devil, right?

Well . . . Kinda? Once Chloe found out and scolded him about it, the idea died real fast. Plus, he realized he wasn’t quite fond of the possibility of being around someone who could pop up with a disgusting human sickness at any point during their time with him. Smearing their snot all over, coughing into his Egyptian cotton sheets . . . Nope, never mind, he is perfectly content having the penthouse to himself, thank you very much!

Except he’s not.

The poor bastard is going crazy by himself -- he’s just not used to being without some kind of company!

“At least in Hell, you could tell there were people around you based on the screaming!” he’d whine at his phone during his hourly video chat with Chloe.

Oh yes: The video chats. He tries to make them hourly with anyone he can get a hold of (namely, his long-suffering detective) but this clearly never plays out as he would like for it to: If he had it his way, everyone would respond in an instant and let him bounce mainly one-sided conversations off of them -- basically, what he did before all this went down.

What usually winds up happening is he gets hung up on or nobody answers him at all out of sheer annoyance over his clinginess.

Ironically, he’s not exactly crazy about when Amenadiel initiates those “family calls”. He insists it’s healthy and normal for them to do this and even calls Luci out on the hypocrisy, but let’s face it: Lucifer finds it obnoxiously gushy and weird.

He works his way into Linda’s video appointment books to help him cope with his boredom and admitted need for interactions. She doesn’t mind offering him counsel, but once Lucifer starts attempting to butt in during others’ appointment calls, it becomes an issue.

Has, at some point, gotten buzzed down in Lux and streamed himself attempting to pole dance. It drew quite a bit of attention.

He’s managed to gain a bit of a following and some companionship by streaming himself playing piano and singing. It’s not the same thing as having an actual audience, in his opinion, but it will have to do for now.

He’s never been one to binge with regards to TV shows or movies, but after the first week, he decided to binge watch every work action star Wesley Cabot was ever in.

Makes sure his staff still gets paid well. After all, he’s pretty well-off; there’s no need to make an innocent bartender’s life a living hell just because some other rich bastard fucked up, yeah?

Going off this, should he need to order to-go or anything, we already know he tends to tip as handsomely as he looks.

Dewey Finn

Kids were being sent to Horace Green on tuitions worth more than what some people saw in half a year -- of course the school was going to continue classes online!

While technically an afterschool instructor, the program is popular enough for parents to expect it to continue, and for Dewey to be kept on payroll.

Initially, he was pretty smug: He’s one if, if not, the youngest teacher-figure at Horace Green, so surely that means he’s more tech savvy than his older, stiffer coworkers, right? For once, he’s ahead of the curve!

Wrong: Figuring out Zoom was a headache, and then there was the realization of just how dependent his classes were on actual physical presence.

Plus, let’s be real: Dewey’s Internet connection was decent on its own, but craptastic when compared to those of his wealthier students. The lag is strong with this one.

Has definitely accidentally messed up the background on his screen. Somehow wound up with the Beetlejuice background and got so frustrated, he wound up keeping it there for two whole sessions.

In spite of the slight issues regarding lag, they pull through and try to resume lessons as best they can.

Tries to keep optimism by pointing out how this is a new form of entertainment they could be pioneers in.

Some days, it’s just going so wack or everyone’s so bleh that Dewey just assigns for them to watch a music documentary or something.

“Okay, kids, Mr. Finn’s hungover and clearly Summer is the only one who went to bed before 3am. So what I’m gonna have you do is watch . . . Prrrbbbb . . . Amadeus.” “How is Amadeus rock-related?” “It had a rock single, shut up. Anyway, we meet back next class and talk about what we saw, m’kay? M’kay. Over and out.”

Next class, he’s filled with dread as Summer produces an in-depth analysis of the relationship or lack thereof between character and the presence of talent as evidenced by Mozart’s abilities juxtaposed with his immature presentation and -- Dewey just can’t keep up. Sure, Summer, why not?

When he’s not busy teaching, however, he’s using the lockdown to work on some new material. Or just screwing around.

Otherwise, let’s be real, Big Boy’s living the high life in a place of his own: Playing video games (Animal Crossing, recently got back into Team Fortress 2, is trying to finally finish Ocarina of Time); eating a not very great diet; staying up late, napping at weird times; all in the name of quarantine.

If he orders delivery or to-go, he tips the best he can.

Wade Wilson

On one hand, murking never goes on lockdown. But on the other . . . He’s already technically not well, why risk that even with his mutation?

Oh, fuck I just remembered he lives at the X Mansion, never mind turn back turn back oh god give us free --

The situation is tense to say the least. There’s Wade, who’s sensible enough to know why the quarantine is in place . . . and then there’s everyone else, who knows Wade’s full of shit.

And by everyone, I “coincidentally” mean Colossus, Nega Sonic, Yukio, Domino, Cable, and Russ because the already small world of the sequel just got smaller by the fact that everyone is bound to a large but nonetheless single estate whose size has probably decreased from that of the First Class timeline.

You know those videos of the usual Quarantine Characters? Wade is somehow yet still unsurprisingly all of them, save for the frequent sanitizer. He raids the pantry frequently, sleeps at all hours, considers scooting a swivel chair down the halls exercise for the thighs, blasts video games, and so on.

Going back to the sanitizer thing, it’s not that he’s just not exactly known for being tidy. Colossus occasionally does drag him out of bed at a decidedly decent time (read: any time before 11am) to try and get him excited about cleaning up around the mansion, but it rarely ends well. At this point, the safest option is to just remind Wade to wash his hands for 20 seconds as necessary.

Has acquired a Switch and visits everyone’s island, often to bonk them on the head with a net or gift them with weird crap they don’t necessarily want. For the “friends” from Sister Margaret’s, he has somehow acquired their Dodo Codes. Nobody knows how he did this. 

Facetimes Dopinder frequently.

“Precious, you’re the beacon of light in this cold, cruel world.” “I miss you, too, DP --” “Sshshsh! I’m having a moment . . .” *weeps*

On the many occasions he orders delivery, he tips by giving the delivery person something expensive from the mansion that they can sell. Prof. X is loaded, after all. Plus, he more or less isn’t even present in this universe, it’s not like he’s gonna miss anything he can’t see/probably doesn’t even know exists in his house. The problem is, Colossus does exist and does notice and does care when things go missing. Leading to many a delivery person getting caught up in shenanigans at that weird school in the boonies that they either don’t get paid enough to deal with or couldn’t pay to make up.

“Oh, pawn shops are closed?” asks the man who looks like a skinned avocado if avocados had human skin. “Don’t worry, lemme hook you up -- I know some guys --” “DEADPOOOOOLLL!!” roars a Russian accent from inside the house. “WHERE IS THE BRONZE BUST OF THE PROFESSOR!?” The poor delivery person’s eyes widen as they realize that the odd cargo they’ve been presented with apparently holds some value of some kind. But before they can flee, the avocado man blurts, “Shit! Leave the pizza in the bushes, look me up on my Youtube page, byyyeeee!!”

In his defense, Wade does hold up his end of the deal. Much like the Dodo Codes, nobody knows what strings he pulled. They just accept it and move on.

Harley Quinn

Surprisingly compliant.

She’s crazy, not stupid: Staying at home may suck, but what sucks more is making things harder on people who may not fair so well. Besides, she’s spent time in a maximum security prison -- she can handle staying cooped up in her own home. At least home has TV, books, and snacks.

When she hears people are still going out without masks or plotting to have a protest, she strongly considers firing up the old Fun Gun and popping the next sign-carrying Karen she sees with a tit full of cadmium yellow powder.

Seriously, stay the fuck home and fuck up your own hair; this is the perfect time to make mistakes with your looks, it ain’t like you got anywhere to be or anyone to impress.

“STAY THE FUCK HOME, BITCH!” P O W!!! “JUST GO GREY ALREADY, WE ALL KNOW YOUR HAIR AIN’T THAT COLOR ANYMORE, YOU’RE THREE YEARS FROM BEING IN THE GODDAMN AGE-BRACKET!!!” P O W!!!!

Only leaves her new apartment to grab groceries and to take Bruce on a walk. She actually refuses to steal or cause a scene during this shitshow because she may be a bad guy, but she sure ain’t evil.

So far, there haven’t been complaints about the fact that she’s walking a hyena down a public street. Maybe it’s because there’s hardly anyone out? Maybe it’s because Gothamites just can’t be bothered to be fazed by it . . . Or maybe it’s because she made him a little mask for his snout.

“In this house, we wash our hands for at least 20 seconds, kid.”

Lets the forest reclaim the earth, so to speak. She was never really shaving anything for anyone but herself before, but now it just seems especially pointless.

Spends almost every day in a kigurumi. To give her a semblance of routine, she has a pink bear one she calls her “Sunday Suit.” She doesn’t know it’s not Sunday because the days just blur but Cass just doesn’t have the heart to tell her; she seemed so proud of herself . . .

Like everyone else, she’s gotten Animal Crossing. She’s trying to create an all-preppy island with a few exceptions (Astrid = Aesthetic, m’kay?)

Tips nicely when ordering delivery.

Benoit Blanc

As young and spry in nature as the gentleman sleuth would like to think of himself, he would really rather not test the dangers of the situation and go about all foolhardy -- he’s staying home!

In theory, it’s only logical and therefore perfectly fine. But in practice . . . God, he wishes he’d invested more in things to occupy himself with when home.

It wasn’t that Benoit was never home, he just never felt too much of a need to invest in a fancy entertainment center -- the fanciest he ever got was an iHome.

The beginning of the quarantine served as the perfect time for him to read over case files, catch up on paperwork, even catch up on some reading he’d been putting on hold since God knows when due to cases popping up left and right. But that dried up quicker than he’d assumed, and that’s when he was faced with what a man of his mind dreads the most: Boredom.

Finally caved and decided to hook up Amazon Fire.

Expected to use the one-month free trial on Netflix and be just fine but once the lockdown in his area got extended and he realized he wasn’t going to be able to catch up with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend at this rate, he caves even further and buys a subscription.

Fully delights at the influx of platforms uploading Broadway recordings; when The Show Must Go On put on Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, followed by The Phantom of The Opera, it was a treat, I tell you!

Sanitizes often, despite hardly ever leaving his house besides to have a smoke or to go grab groceries. Honestly, it’s less about cleaning at this point so much as it is finding something to occupy his focus when he feels there’s nothing else to so.

Takes zinc after every meal to help lessen the intensity of any ailment that might hit him.

Definitely owns a facemask. There’s a good chance it’s from Marta or one of his relatives, and there’s another good chance the pattern is as flamboyant as his clothing. He’s delighted.

Benoit tries not to rely too much on delivery,  as he’d much rather just cook. On the rare occasion where tipping comes up, however, he gives as generously as he can.

Bonus: There’s a slight chance he might have acquired a companion to foster early on in the quarantine. Benoit hadn’t had a pet since childhood, a crime of which he was admittedly melancholic of his own involvement. However, his surprisingly busy lifestyle just wouldn’t suit a four-legged friend, now could it?

Well, now there’s time to. Besides, it would certainly ease the potential feeling of loneliness to have someone or something with whom he could interact with.

Admittedly, when shelters began encouraging people to invest time in taking home a companion, he’d been looking more for a comrade on the canine side of the spectrum -- but darn, if Duke wasn’t a handsome cat.

A lovely grey-and-white cat with eyes that matched his own, Duke has become the one Benoit monologues to (because in all honesty, the man is a performer at heart, in need of an audience to speak his mind to and portray a thought before). Plus, he doesn’t appear to mind it when Benoit finds himself belting out in tone-deaf notes to showtunes while washing the dishes: The mark of a true companion.

At this rate, he’s probably not going to keep fostering Duke when things calm down -- he’s probably going to just straight up adopt him.

Stay safe & healthy!

[reallybadfeeling]

A Very Smutty FanFic Rec List 2021 - 1st Trimester

So, I promised I would do this back in January and here we are, me exposing all of my kinks preferences... OH BOI! Fair warning: most of these fics have warnings that you should pay attention to (like I said, all of the kinks). I tried to put here the most important ones, but be sure to check out the complete list on each fic. Other than that, enjoy the smoking hot smut!

Star Wars Sequels

-caught in the headlights by jeeno2 Rey/Ben Solo - 7.501 words - Rating E - Workplace Sex, D/s undertones

I started January with a weird fixation with Rey and Ben having voyeuristic tendencies. I was actually searching for something different (you’ll get to that later), and I ended up on the “sex in the office” tag. If I had to mention what is good with this one, I would say Ben being slightly dominant and having a fixation with Rey’s tits (which, when does he not?). Also, the build up is just as good as the actual dirty part.

-you look good on your knees by mandosslut Rey/Kylo Ren - 6.476 words - Rating E - D/s undertones, voyeurism, exhibitionism, throne sex

I mentioned this with the previous fic, but originally I was searching for the tag throne sex. I’m a sucker for that kind of voyeuristic/exhibitionism tag. Not a lot of fic with the thrones sex specifically tho. It's just my luck that there were a couple of very good ones. Like, this fic. If you're searching something that isn’t too focused on the build up and just gets to the good bit, this is it.

-Wet and Wild by ladyofreylo Rey/Ben Solo - 5.221 words - Rating E - Sex Worker, Workplace Sex, Daddy Kink

What can I say, you guys? I spiraled into the office sex tag after failing to find thrones sex. The title truly says it all! This fic also leans into the "getting caught doing dirty stuff where you are not supposed to" and it's just *chef kiss*. A healthy dose of good old daddy kink just ties a pretty bow and makes this perfection.

-Lockdown by someonesbeenhere Rey/Ben Solo - 4.980 words - Rating E - Phone Sex, Voyeurism, Mutual Masturbation

Yet again, the title pretty much is a HUGE warning that there’s mentions of the pandemic (and no, I didn't read this when I was sick with the ‘rona; I actually wouldn't read this again after being sick myself, so you have been warned). ANYWAY, I think the build up is what I liked about this fic, and the ending is cute as fuck. Also, the smut in the middle is hot.

Star Wars Prequels

-The Red Right Hand by Himoskywalker Obi-Wan/Anakin - 5.679 words - Rating E - Sith AU, Public Sex, Humiliation, Exhibitionism, (TW: Unhealty Relationships/Possessive behavior)

SO. Remember how I was obsessed with throne sex? And voyeurism/exhibitionism? A month after I thought I was over it, while for something with both Anakin and Obi-Wan as Sith I landed on this. And this proved that throne sex is not something I am into only for Reylo fics! Let me tell you, this was so good that the only thing that might have made it better, was a sequel. Maybe with mentions of how Rex treated Anakin after THAT. (I did NOT start to ship Rex/Anakin because of this fic that doesn’t even mention said ship. NOT AT ALL!)

-Avarice and Innocence Series by LittleLynn Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan - 233.525 words - Rating E - Some gore and graphic violence, D/s, hint of dubious consent, and a bunch of other things

Seriously giving a complete disclaimer on tags with this one is kind of impossible. It’s just too long! (Like Qui-Gon’s dong! Too much? Okay, Imma stop there.) I mentioned those that might be big no-nos to be safe, but everything else is mentioned at the start of each chapter. The fic starts with a couple of chapters setting the mood and the universe, but after those, most of the story is focused on Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan banging anytime and anywhere. So even if it’s a long one, it can absolutely be read in bits and pieces when you are in the mood for some nasty stuff. I mean, it literally took me more than a month to finish the main story, and not because it isn't good. It's just that you can easily pick it back up each time you have that "not in the mood for that much banging" feeling that makes you want to take a pause from it. The plot isn’t complicated, you don't need to remember details, but you still want to know how things get from point A to point B, so it's not boring either. I know it's kind of strange to suggest a long for what is basically a list of PWPs, but I assure you that in this specific case, it makes perfect sense for this fic to be here. And if you are not that much into the idea of reading porn with plot (kinda), I would still suggest reading the one-shots related to the main fic! I have yet to read the last 2, but the ones I read are just as good and I honestly think knowing what happens in the main story is not necessary to enjoy them.