#and it was a lot about where the camera is aimed and who the focus was

[elegyofthemoon]

damn wait actually remembering chronicle made me remember how much i miss reading scripts i used to do it so often in high school bc i liked seeing the thought process in the writing for movies -- or like certain things that dont make the cut or why the camera work is the way it is i should do it again some time

[deadsetobsessions]

Gothic mushroom shaped candles. Danny picked one up, grinning. Sam would have love these on her alters. Very Sam, very Gotham.

It a bit bittersweet, now that he could think of her without being paralyzed by crushing grief. Her and Tucker both. Danny turned, keeping an eye on Tim as he glared into the case of used cameras.

Danny walked over and tried not to feel guilty about practically mooching off of a child. Even if the money he was using was actually the Drakes’.

“Like anything you see?”

Tim shook his head. Danny pondered over what little he knew of photography- all of which he learned from documentaries that were more focused on nature.

“I think there might be a camera store a couple of blocks down. We could get the ones that takes photos of animals, like the really big ones that takes photos of wildlife?”

“I guess. I mean, I don’t need it since we can…” Tim glanced around suspiciously. Danny willed his mouth to not smile at Tim’s antics. “Fly close,” the kid finished in a whisper.

“Okay, but what about when I’m not there?”

Tim hunched up on himself and Danny despaired inwardly. Uh oh, what did he say now?”

“Are you going somewhere?” Tim quietly asked, sounding hurt and upset.

“No,” Danny soothed, patting Tim on the head. I mean, what if I’m busy with stuff but you want to go take pictures without me?”

“You said to go get you whenever I wanna go out to take pictures.”

“Okay, yeah, I- well, we might as well get you a quality camera, right? To take really really good pictures of the… local wildlife. Like… the birds and the bats, and all that.” Danny winked exaggeratedly.

Tim blinked and giggled when he got the joke. “Okay, as long as you’re staying!”

Danny grinned, fangs and all. “Of course.”

——

At the end of their shopping spree, generously provided and sponsored by the Drake family and their heavy black card, Danny got a phone and Tim got a wild life camera that was a whopping $4,000 but was compact enough to not look absolutely ridiculous.

“It’s heavy!” Tim whined, as he grinned like a loon.

“It’s quality,” Danny plopped the shopping bags on the island in one of the giant kitchens Drake manor had. “I’ll make dinner. You figure out those settings and you can tell me about it when we eat.”

“Okay!” Tim hummed excited, quick fingers and laser focus already aimed at his new device.

Danny picked up his new phone and dialed a number he knew by heart. As it rung, Danny held it up to his ear and began prepping the ingredients. At least

“Hello?” His sister’s cautious voice came through the phone. Danny’s shoulders relaxed.

“Heya, Jazz.” He could see Tim’s ears all but perk up in order to eavesdrop. His mouth quirked up in amusement and Danny turned away. He probably shouldn’t be encouraging that kind of behavior… but it was funny.

“Danny! Are you okay? I- I heard that they chased after you and I was worried sick! Are you safe? Any injuries? Do I need to pick you up?”

“I’m good. Promise. Not bleeding out or dying. It’s actually pretty nice right now,” Danny paused before turning back a little more so he could watch Tim’s reaction peripherally. “Hey, listen, can I adopt a little brother?”

He watched Tim sit up straighter eyed flickering up to him and back down again, a secretly pleased look on his face as he figured out that Danny was in fact talking about him.

“Danny, what the hell?” Jazz huffed, audibly relieved to know that Danny wasn’t on his merry way to becoming a full on ghost. “Who, why, and what kind of trouble did you get into now?”

“Hey, this was me getting out of trouble. Those people don’t even know where I escaped to. Tim helped me out a lot,” Danny said in the tone that meant ‘and there’s more to it but I can’t tell you right now.’

“His name’s Tim?”

“Yeah, you wanna say hi?”

Tim looked terrified as he heard Danny’s side of the conversation. Danny could relate.

“Alright. But you’re explaining everything later, got it?”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Danny turned to Tim, abandoning the peas he was shelling and rinsing off his hand to hold the phone.

“Tim, my sister, Jazz, wants to say hi. Are you cool with that?”

“Uhm! Yeah! Yeah, sure.” Tim, honest to ancients, squeaked. Danny’s enhanced hearing could pick up Jazz’s already melting heart. He taped a button.

“Jazz, you’re on speaker.”

“Hey, Tim. I’m Jazz. Thanks for taking care of my little brother!”

“Uh, hi, Jazz! I’m Timothy Drake! And, uh, you’re welcome! Anytime!”

Tim glanced at Danny for reassurance, relaxing a bit when the halfa threw him a double thumbs up.

Jazz went quiet.

“Jazz, you good?” Danny asked.

“We’re adopting him. Danny, you better make sure knows about everyone. Hi, Tim, I’m Jazz, your new big sister.”

“Uh- I have parents.”

“That can be fixed,” Jazz casually brushed off. Tim looked like a deer in headlights, so Danny took his sister off speaker and went back to cooking. He made sure to smile at Tim.

“Don’t worry, we won’t adopt you if you don’t want to. But it wasn’t a joke, we’re very serious.”

“I’ll think about it?”

Danny shrugged. “Good enough for me.”

“So, where are you?” Jazz asked him, rustling coming through on the phone.

“Gotham.”

“You are so fucking lucky I love you, dumbass. I’ll be there tomorrow at noon.”

“Playing hooky, are you?”

“Fuck off, little brother, before I show Tim your toddler pictures.”

“Thanks, Jazz.”

“Bye, Danny. Don’t get killed again when I’m not there, got it?”

“Sure, sure.”

Danny smiled and returned to his agenda of stuffing as many vegetables into one meal as he can. At least the food isn’t trying to tear out his face.

——

Robin hasn’t heard the eerie giggles around lately, but he’s been practicing his own. It’s weird though, because there’s always a glint of something in the corner of his eyes.

“Robin, muggers.”

“On it, B. Shall we, Batgirl?”

“Let’s go, Boy Wonder.”

[pseudophan]

PHANNIE COOKBOOK SIGN-UPS!!

Do you have a really good recipe you think Dan and Phil would enjoy? Consider submitting it to this collaborative phannie cookbook that will be given to DnP at a meet & greet! It will also be available to everyone to download as a PDF.

Family recipes or your favourite dish from your country/culture is a bonus, but it doesn’t have to be that personal. All I ask is that you don’t go rip something random off the Internet right now just to be in the book, I want food you genuinely enjoy!

I’ve decided the most efficient way of doing this is to let you submit up to 3 different options, that way if there are any repeats (and I’m certain there will be) I won’t have to message everyone it concerns to ask if you have any alternatives. Besides, that way I can choose which version gets in based on your other options rather than which one “sounds better” to me, cause I think that would be a little unfair. I also have no idea how many people will actually participate in this yet, which is currently the biggest hurdle in terms of planning. If only a few sign up there is a chance we’ll end up using multiple recipes by some, and if somehow we get too many I’ll have to pick and choose. I do really want to include as many people as possible, but until I actually see the recipes it’s hard to tell what will end up happening.

The main focus of this will be actual food, but we obviously need to include a few desserts, so feel free to submit those as well just be aware the chances of those getting picked might be lower. The same goes for soups, I assume a lot of people have soup recipes and we might include a couple, but for obvious reasons it's a low priority.

Some key things to keep in mind:

Phil is a bit picky and has some dietary restrictions! He shouldn’t have dairy or chocolate and he doesn’t like cheese or mushrooms, among other things. That doesn’t mean you have to avoid these things entirely, but maybe your grandma’s mac and cheese recipe isn’t the best choice

While neither of them is vegan they do eat a lot of vegan food, so we definitely need some vegan dishes. I also think it would be really great if you suggested vegetarian and/or vegan substitutions you know work well with your recipe! That isn’t a must for every dish, but it’s a nice addition where possible

Tragically, Dan and Phil are British, meaning they won’t necessarily have access to all the same ingredients as you. Luckily they are also rich and live in a major city with a lot of options so they aren’t limited to what they can find at their local Tesco, but since the aim of this book is to encourage them to cook we probably shouldn’t be sending them on a scavenger hunt either. I don’t think this will be a huge issue, but if your recipe calls for something you think might be very niche or local to you it might be worth googling it or asking around

The final book will be using UK measurements, but if your recipe doesn’t then don’t even worry about it for now. We’ll get to that later. You also don’t have to worry about typing out the whole step-by-step in detail in the sign-up form, I just need a list of the ingredients and roughly how to prepare it to gauge whether it’s a good fit.

I promise I’m almost done yapping but lastly, about some of the questions on the form - you don’t need to know exactly how long the dish takes to prepare, that will depend on the person or people making it anyway, but we do need a rough estimate. The difficulty level is obviously quite subjective, but I just want to hear how you personally would rank it, and if there is a specific part of the process you think someone who doesn’t cook a lot might struggle with. As for the last question about photos, I’m asking both if you have the time and opportunity to make the food and if you are able to take a good photo of it. Obviously it doesn’t have to be anything professional, a phone camera is fine, it just needs to be well lit and decent quality.

Okay, I think that’s everything-

Here's the sign-up form

The deadline is in a week, at midnight Thursday to Friday CET :)

(I also made a blog for this @phookbook for information and updates! A lot of it will probably still be on this blog, but I'll try to post/reblog the most important things on there for those who want to keep up with everything but who may not want to deal with all the chaos of pseudophan)

[redflagshipwriter]

Red Hot Ghouls Chapter 13 part 1/2

masterpost

The next patrol night, Jason’s shoulder was still a little sore from how hard Jack Fenton had pumped it to say goodbye after they’d gone ‘ghost chasing- not hunting!’ in the family van. The van and the family were both growing on him. He was going to really hate it if he had to arrest either of the Fenton kids. It might damage his relationship with Jack and Maddie.

“How was your trip?”

“Might have gotten adopted but I’m not sure why,” Jason said. He shot his grapple and aimed to get a good view of the neighborhood. He winced as it reeled him up. It was a quiet night and cool air buffeted him hard from the side. He didn’t expect trouble. He’d been seen, which was the main deterrent Crime Alley needed at this point. “Did a bit of journalism. Had an impromptu refresher on tactical driving.” He hit boots-first with relief and immediately rolled his shoulder.

“...You’re doing that shitty thing where you make it sound like you’re blowing me off with lies, but then later I find out it was all true and you make some jackass comment about being an honest guy,” Tim diagnosed. He sounded cranky about it, too.

Jason just shrugged. “Did Gotham miss me?” Horns honked in the distance. He looked in that direction on reflex; but no explosion or crash followed. He relaxed again.

“Not even a little bit. But something happened while you were in the air, actually, that might be relevant. Have time to watch?” A little red cursor appeared on the feed inside his helmet.

Jason retracted his grapple and settled in on the ledge like a gargoyle. “Go for it.” He rested his elbows on his knees and crouched. Then he redirected his focus from the real world around him to the little screen that Tim was hijacking.

“Yeah, you’ll like this,” Tim said under his breath. “Just a sec. No theory yet, but check this shit out.”

Jason grimaced preemptively.

The shared screen switched to an Arkham security camera, complete with logo in the bottom right hand corner. It showed a single occupancy low-security cell at night. A man was sleeping in the bed. The quality was crappy enough that Jason doubted he’d be able to identify the prisoner if they looked directly at the camera.

“That Waters?” he checked.

“Sure is.” A button clicked. “Here we go.”

It was hard to tell that the video was playing, aside from the seconds ticking by on the display. Jason resisted the urge to fidget. Tim had selected this part for a reason. Maybe that reason was to be a dick, but probably he was serious.

The screen went black. Then static. Then the feed started wavering across the screen in lines.

“Huh.” Jason lifted his eyebrows. “Not great quality.”

“Reminds me of the quality of Jasmine Fenton’s phone calls,” Tim muttered. “But hold on. It’s hard to see, but-”

Waters was sitting up in one frame. In the next, he was scrambling out of bed and to the floor to prostrate face down in front of absolutely nobody.

He had to make a dry comment. “Wonder why he’s in Arkham.”

Granted, Jason knew the guy was kinda right about the afterworld. But he really wasn’t conveying ‘I am a stable member of society who won’t try any more human sacrifices in a community center rental room.’

Jason squinted. “Does it look like he’s talking to you?”

“Sure does.” Tim sounded frustrated. “No sound, and there’s no chance of reading lips on this even if the angle was better.”

Jason checked the full view of the camera angle again with a sharp eye for any anomalies. Lots of people had special powers that let them go unseen. There was usually some kind of sign, though. A shadow? Something small on the floor that was disturbed? An indication that something moved because someone touched it?

If there was anyone in that room, they didn’t touch anything, and they didn’t stay long. Waters wrenched himself up and threw a fit, hitting the floor and pulling at his hair. Jason watched impassively, waiting to see how long it took for something to happen.

“Response time isn’t too bad,” he remarked. Two orderlies appeared outside of the cell and began trying to talk Waters down.

“Over two minutes,” Tim said judgmentally.

Jason rolled his eyes, because he lived in the real fucking world where that was a short amount of time to notice and reach a cell at night. On the screen, Waters started to respond to whatever was being said. He uncurled from his ball on the floor. He gradually got up. He nodded a few times. The rest of the clip seemed utterly unremarkable and Jason had to assume they were only watching it to be certain they were thorough.

When it was finally over Jason leaned back and contemplated the night sky. “You think that Jasmine Fenton is connected?” he had to ask.

“She did look up when his cell transfer would be and this happened half a day later, the last night before he got moved. I can’t think of how she’d be connected, unless you believe- well.” Tim cleared his throat. “I looked up the Fentons. They say they’re, uh.” He sounded embarrassed just to say it.

Jason could have cut in at any time with ‘ectobiologists?’ Instead, he sat back and enjoyed how uncomfortable his shitty little foster brother was about mad science. Bit rich, coming from the mental breakdown cloning guy. But hey, free schadenfreude source.

Tim sighed so hard it sent static across the feed. Jason turned on the recording function just in time to capture Tim say, “They’re ghost hunters. Ecobiologists. Hey, you sack of-”

Jason ended the recording. “Imma trim that,” he muttered to himself, and saved the file where Tim couldn’t access it. “Gonna be my ringtone for you,” he lied cheerfully. He could think of much better uses for ‘they’re ghost hunters.’

But in the interest of fairness-

“They’re not ghost hunters,” Jason clarified. “They’re ghost chasers, now. Like storm chasers.”

“Wow,” Tim muttered. “I’ll take that note down for my diary.

Jason stood up and ignored the sarcasm. “You’re theorizing that there might have been a ghost in that cell?”

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

the girl next door 23

Warnings: this fic will include elements, some dark, such as age gap, manipulation, chronic illness, noncon/dubcon, coercion, and other untagged triggers. Please take this into account before proceeding. It is up to curate your online consumption safely.

Summary: A new neighbour moves in and upends your already disarrayed life.

Author’s Note: Please feel free to leave some feedback, reblog, and jump into my asks. I’m always happy to discuss with you and riff on idea. As always, you are cherished and adored! Stay safe, be kind, and treat yourself.

This lewk but silverfox

You can barely eat. You’re strung up in shock and shame, your stomach mulching as your nerves curdle. You only really have the toast, unable to stomach the omelet or hash that came with it. No one else seems discouraged by the day’s events.

As you wait for the cue to leave, Bucky signals to the server; a different one than before. They return with a container that Bucky offers to you. You take it, at first confused, then scrape your leftovers into it. You thank him as you close up the lid and rest it in your lap.

Finally, Steve pays the bill and you’re free to stand up. The jacket hangs heavily from your shoulders as you follow behind them through the restaurant. You watch your feet, too afraid to face the other diners. Are they judging you? Was it one of them who said something to the server?

You emerge into the sunlight and Steve’s voice buzzes in your ears. Most of the conversation at the table was nothing more than garbling to you. You just can’t make sense of any of this. You don’t know how but you know everything is going to change and that’s scary. You’ve only ever been with your mom. Now, he’s attached to her. Maybe, it means you’ll have to go.

“Over there...” Steve points, “nice spot.”

You follow the length of his arm to the little patch of grass on the other side of the lot. There’s a tree and a large stone surrounded by colourful petals. It’s a cute little space with a picnic table on the green blades.

“Just a few pictures,” Steve takes out his phone and hands it to Bucky, “this is a day we don’t wanna forget, huh, honey?”

Your mom grabs onto Steve’s hand and he almost winces. He squeezes and brings her with him across the lined tarmac. You shuffle behind them as Bucky holds the phone awkwardly. You cross the expanse of the lot and Steve brings your mother beside him to pose for a picture. You suppose they would need wedding photos even if it’s all a bit odd.

Bucky aims the lens and you hear the shuttering noise of the frames. Your mom is smiling again. It’s such a strange sight. You hug your leftovers and watch silently.

“How about we get both my girls in here?” Steve beckons to you, “a family picture.”

You blanch and furrow your brow. You look one way then the other and shrug. Bucky offers to take the leftovers, balancing it in one hand as he keeps the phone in his other. You reluctantly trod across the grass.

As you near, another waft of Steve’s cologne tickles your nose. You look down and slowly slip off his jacket and offer it up. He takes it and swiftly pulls it back on.

“Thanks, kiddo,” he says and pulls you against his side, your mother against his other, his arms spread wide around you both. “Say cheese.”

You face the camera and you know the first picture is bad. You must look startled. Your vision comes into focus and you see Bucky and the phone. You make yourself smile as Steve’s hand slides down your arm and instead grips your side, just where it’s smallest.

You stand for a few more as his fingertips curl into your flesh. Finally, he’s happy with it and Bucky drops his arm. Steve drags his hand away, brushing over your skirt in a way that makes you quiver. His touch leaves a hot tingling along your side.

You take your food back from Bucky and he hands the phone to Steve. He gives you a long look after.

“You wanna ride back with me?” He asks.

You nod. You just want to go home.

“Stevie,” your mom’s hand shakes as she latches onto Steve’s arm, “how about we... drive around for a while?”

“Uh, sure,” he answers, “sounds good. You okay with getting her home?”

“Yep,” Bucky frowns, as if annoyed at the redundant question. “I think I can handle it.”

“Don’t give him a hard time,” your mom snips at you. “Just go home.”

“Come on,” Bucky’s already turning away, “let the newlyweds enjoy their marital bliss.”

You nod and quickly spin to follow him. You almost admire his indifference to it all. The way he dismisses them both. It does make you wonder though, if he’s friends with Steve, why does he seem so agitated? Maybe he’s just as confused as you.

You go to his car and he opens the door for you. You thank him as you get in. It’s a nice gesture.

You stare through the windshield as he gets in. He’s quiet as the music comes back on. He leaves it and backs out of the spot. He drives by your mom and her husband. Your parents? Your eyes meet Steve’s as he stares, his hand running down his lapel. He doesn’t look as happy any more.

You shrink back into the seat, keeping the container just off your bare legs. When you get home, you’re throwing this dress out. You doubt you’ll ever have a reason to wear it again.

🏠

Bucky drops you off at the house. Walking up, knowing it's empty, you feel eerie. Everything is out of sorts. The world has tilted on its axis overnight.

You put your leftovers in the fridge and change, stuffing the dress into the bottom of the bin. You wander through the small house. You don't know what to do with yourself. Without your mom to tell you what to do, or what you're doing wrong, you're listless.

Finally, you sit down with your table and notebook, trying to center your energy on a page. As you touch the pencil to the paper, the tip snaps. You sigh and place the pencil down in the middle crease. You stretch your fingers and close them.

You just can't be still. You sharpen the pencil and tuck it into the book, hugging it under your arm. You put your shoes in and head off without destination. You just can't be in that house alone. Not right now.

You're uneasy at first as you stroll through the streets. You watch over your shoulder for the HOA as you go around corners. You come to the little bridge behind the house with the archway wrapped in ivy.

You stop at the peak of the bridge and bend back the cover of your sketchbook. You take the pencil and eye the small pond beneath. You mimic the ripples in graphite, etching on the moss and the leaves floating, and a few tadpoles beneath the surface. You don't often do still lifes, you never much leave your room, but it's calming to be out in the world and have a focal point.

A pebble drops into the water with a plop, sending an echo of circles through it. You step back, barely saving your book from slipping over the edge. You turn to face the figure at the end of the bridge. It's a boy. Well, he's probably your age so... a man?

He's strangely familiar. Reddish brown hair, warm dark eyes, and a crooked grin. You nearly gasp as he says your name like a question.

"How..." you close up your book and back up.

"Hey, I didn't know you were still around."

"Who?"

"Peter," he smiles, "how's your grandma?"

"My..." you shake your head. "She's dead."

"I mowed her lawn?" He offers as your confusion remains sewn into your forehead.

"Oh."

"You always had your colouring books."

"Yeah," you sniff. "Am I in your way?" You flatten yourself against the railing.

"Nope," he comes up the bridge, "so... you draw?"

"Uh, yeah," you glance towards the water.

"Nice, I'm more into photography," he raises hisbhand and shows a camera in his hand, "was coming to try to catch the frog that hangs out. You seen him?"

"Mm, no," you murmur, "I should go."

"I don't mind," he says, "if you stick around."

You hesitate, the bridge creaking under your feet. You think of the empty house, of the morning wedding and the restaurant. You're in no hurry to go back to any of it. You nod and turn around, "okay." You ppen your sketch book as he comes up beside you, a foot away as he fiddles with his camera.

"Living with my Aunt May now so... maybe we'll see each other around," he says as he switches the lens, "it won't feel so lonely around here.”

[mediocre-shark-tales]

Azerbajian GP Weekend

Masterlist

Thursday had arrived, and so had the media frenzy. It was the traditional pre-race press day, and the interview room was buzzing with journalists and cameras ready to capture every word and reaction. I was scheduled for a multi-driver interview, paired with Franco, Carlos, Max, and Oscar—a mix of veterans and rookies, all bringing their own energy to the room. I was feeling confident, prepared to answer whatever questions were thrown my way, until I noticed a few familiar faces among the journalists—faces I remembered from whispers in the paddock.

After a few light-hearted questions aimed at Carlos and Max, the interview shifted gears when a well-known journalist turned to me with a sharp look in his eyes.

“So, Y/N,” he began, voice dripping with a tone that already felt accusatory, “there’s been a lot of talk about your rapid rise to F1, especially after missing significant time in F2. Some might say that… connections or publicity stunts might be part of the story here rather than pure skill.” He leaned back, a smug smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “What do you say to people who think you’re here for PR reasons, rather than merit?”

My stomach clenched, but I kept my face calm. This was it—the subtle way they were calling me out, questioning if I was here because of talent or if I was just a “diversity hire” in a sport still catching up with the times. I could feel the tension in the room rise as Carlos and Max glanced at me, both of them experienced enough to know what it was like to be grilled by the press.

I took a deep breath, feeling Franco’s reassuring presence beside me. He shot me a quick nod, like he was silently encouraging me to respond.

“Well,” I began, keeping my voice calm and steady, “I think every driver here has something to prove. Racing is about results, and I’m fully prepared to show what I’m capable of on the track. I know there’s a lot of speculation, and it’s natural—every driver faces it at some point. I’m here because I’ve earned this seat. And I’ll keep proving that every weekend.”

The journalist wasn’t done. He leaned forward, raising an eyebrow. “Still, disappearing for months mid-season in F2 and then suddenly being ready to jump into F1… it does raise some eyebrows. Care to elaborate on where you were?”

My heart raced. Memories flooded in—of the sleepless nights by my mother’s side, of the last few precious moments we shared. I felt the urge to defend myself, to tell the whole story right there, but I knew better. I took another breath, holding my smile steady.

“As my former team and I have always said, I was undergoing extensive training to prepare for the reserve role I’d committed to with Aston Martin. My team has full confidence in me, and that’s all the focus I’m giving it,” I replied, keeping my tone professional. I felt proud of my answer, but I could tell the journalist was disappointed by my restraint.

Max jumped in, breaking the tension with his classic cool-headedness. “You know, there are always rumors about all of us. It’s all just noise until we’re on track, isn’t it?”

The journalist backed off slightly, though I could tell he wasn’t convinced. Franco shot me a supportive look, mouthing a quick “Nice one” as the attention moved to another driver. I took a deep breath, reminding myself to stay composed. My mother’s voice echoed in my mind, reminding me of all the reasons I was here.

After the interview wrapped up, Franco walked over and gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Forget him. That was out of line. You handled it well.”

“Thanks,” I replied, my voice a bit shaky. “I just didn’t expect that to hit so hard, you know?”

He nodded, his eyes kind. “I know. But you showed them that you belong here. Keep doing that, and everyone else will see it too.”

As we left the interview room, Franco nudged me, a curious look in his eyes. "Did you notice how quickly Max jumped in? It’s like he was standing up for you."

I shrugged, glancing back at the room we’d just left. "I don’t know if it was for me specifically," I replied. "Max just seems to hate when journalists get too personal. He probably saw the question as crossing a line. He’s always been a no-nonsense guy."

Franco didn’t seem convinced. "Maybe, but... he didn’t have to say anything at all. A lot of other drivers wouldn’t." He paused, as if carefully choosing his next words. "Look, I’ve been around these drivers a while now, and I know how they talk. I think Max might be one of the few drivers who’s actually looking at what you do on track, not paying attention to those rumors.”

I hesitated, not sure how to process that. “Maybe,” I conceded. “But why would he? He doesn’t know me.”

“Maybe he’s seen the work you’re putting in,” Franco said thoughtfully. “He knows what it’s like to face doubt—he started young too. Besides,” he added, “Max respects hard work. He wouldn’t have stood up for you if he didn’t think you’ve earned your place.”

I wanted to believe Franco, but I couldn’t help being skeptical. “You might be giving him too much credit,” I said. “Honestly, I still think it was more about hating the question than defending me.”

Franco laughed. “Maybe you’re right. Max isn’t exactly Mr. Empathy. But I think he respects that you’ve been keeping your head down and just focusing on racing. People who’ve been on the grid longer can spot real talent, and he wouldn’t bother standing up for you if he didn’t see something there.”

I looked down, smiling to myself. The thought that Max might see past all the gossip and actually believe in my abilities was… a little surreal. But if Franco was right, it meant something. "You know," I said quietly, "maybe that’s enough for now. If I can prove myself to someone like Max, maybe that’s all I need to do for the rest to start paying attention."

Franco nodded. “Exactly. Let them talk. Just keep showing up on track and doing what you do best. You’re already turning heads, whether they admit it or not.”

We walked on in comfortable silence after that, both of us aware that this race weekend would be another chance. Another shot to show everyone—including myself—that I had a place here, no matter who questioned it. 

We parted ways minutes later, Franco being asked to return to his garage for a filming session between him and Alex. I decided to walk around the paddock a bit more —given that most if not every interviewer was in the interview room right now— I had a chance to relax by myself with a nice little undisrupted wandering walk. It didn’t last long however before I was seemingly cornered by the same man who had stood up for me before. Max Verstappen had spotted me from across the paddock and beelined his way right towards me. 

I froze for a moment, a bit caught off guard. Max was one of the last people I expected to seek me out, especially after that brief encounter in the interview room. He was known for being straightforward, but also for keeping to himself, so seeing him walk toward me like this felt... unexpected.

As he approached, I straightened up, unsure of what to say. Max had that usual intense focus in his eyes, but his expression didn’t seem as cold as it often did. He came to a stop in front of me, his hands tucked in his jacket pockets.

“Hey,” he said, his tone casual but direct. "How are you holding up?"

I blinked, momentarily surprised by the question. "I’m good," I replied quickly, forcing a small smile. “Why do you ask?”

Max looked around the paddock, as if checking to make sure no one else was nearby. When he turned back to me, he spoke a little lower. “Just wanted to make sure you’re not letting the stuff they’re saying get to you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What stuff?”

He shrugged, his expression softening a little. “The gossip. The rumors. People are always going to talk, especially when there’s something new, or something they don’t understand.” He paused for a second, looking at me seriously. “But you’ve been doing well. I can see it.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It was... unexpected, to say the least. Max wasn’t exactly the type to give out compliments, let alone stand up for someone in public, especially someone like me. The fact that he was acknowledging it so openly made me second-guess a lot of my assumptions about him.

"Thanks," I said, my voice more tentative than I intended. "I appreciate it."

Max nodded. "I know how it feels to be judged before you even get the chance to show what you can do. It’s not easy." He paused again, and then, almost like an afterthought, added, "If you need someone to talk to or whatever, don’t hesitate."

I was caught off guard once more. Max Verstappen, offering to talk?

"Uh, thanks," I replied, this time more confidently. "I think I’ll be alright, but it’s good to know."

He gave me a small nod, a glimmer of respect in his eyes. “Good. Keep your head up, alright? They’ll respect you, eventually. Just keep showing up.”

With that, he turned and walked off, leaving me standing there a little dumbfounded. The last thing I expected was for Max Verstappen to go out of his way to check on me, but now I was left wondering if there was more to him than just the hard-as-nails racer everyone saw on TV. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t as bad as the rumors made him out to be either.

BIG TIME SKIP 

After Qualifying, I couldn’t help but smile—P10! I’d made it into the top 10, just behind Franco who had secured P9. We were both on cloud nine and decided to grab dinner together to celebrate. We were walking out of the paddock, laughing and joking, when I suddenly heard someone shout Franco’s name.

“Franco! Where are you going?” Lando’s voice rang out across the busy paddock.

Both Franco and I turned, surprised. We saw Lando and Oscar jogging toward us, the latter giving me a fleeting glance. Lando, on the other hand, didn’t spare me a single glance. His eyes were locked on Franco, his tone sharp.

Franco, clearly still riding the high of a great qualifying result, gave him a friendly wave. “Hey, just heading out to grab some dinner. Want to join us?”

Oscar’s eyes lingered on me for a brief moment, and I could swear I saw something akin to pity flicker across his face, but it disappeared so quickly that I couldn’t be sure. Lando, however, didn’t acknowledge me at all, his gaze still glued to Franco.

“I’m good,” Lando replied curtly, his tone flat. “We’ll catch up later. But I’ve heard... you two are quite the topic today.”

Franco shot me a quick glance, clearly uncomfortable, but said nothing as Lando’s words hung in the air. I could feel his eyes shift between me and Franco, clearly sizing up the situation. The tension was palpable, and I knew exactly what he was referring to. The rumors.

“So, uh, what’s it like?” Lando continued, his voice now almost too casual, his gaze flicking over to me. “Being the new face around here, with all the... stories going around?”

Oscar, standing silently at Lando’s side, seemed content to watch the exchange, though his eyes flicked to me, then back to Lando. I could tell he wasn’t quite sure where this conversation was headed.

I wasn’t sure if Lando was looking for confirmation or if he was trying to provoke a reaction, but either way, I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. The judgment in his tone wasn’t subtle, and I wasn’t about to let it slide.

“Stories?” I repeated, raising an eyebrow as I turned toward him. “What kind of stories?”

Lando shifted uncomfortably, clearly caught off guard by my question, but he quickly recovered. “You know,” he said with a shrug, trying to sound nonchalant. “The whole... why you suddenly disappeared from F2, then came in and replaced Stroll and all that. Guess people are curious and there are a lot of people willing to tell their stories to fill that gap in.”

Oscar’s eyes darted between us, a slight frown tugging at his lips, but he said nothing. I could see the judgment in Lando’s face now, and I couldn’t ignore it any longer.

“I’m not here to entertain gossip,” I replied, my voice steady but firm. “I don’t know where these ‘stories’ came from, but you’re feeding into them just like everyone else. How about you let me speak for myself? Maybe then you’ll get the real story.”

Franco opened his mouth to speak, likely trying to defuse the situation, but I held up a hand to stop him. I wasn’t going to let Lando get away with it.

“If you really think that just because of my background in this sport, you’re going to judge me on rumors instead of what I can do on track,” I said, my tone cutting through the air, “then maybe you should reconsider how much you actually know from sources that don’t include bias perspectives.”

Lando’s face twitched, and for a moment, I could see the flicker of realization in his eyes. He wasn’t used to being called out so directly. But he wasn’t backing down either.

“Look, I didn’t mean—” he started, but I cut him off sharply, my tone colder than before.

“No, you didn’t mean it,” I snapped, my eyes narrowing. “But you’re still doing it. So maybe before you speak about things you clearly know nothing about, you should think twice. Because I’m not here to be the subject of your gossip.”

The air between us grew tense, and the silence stretched on. Oscar, who had been quietly observing, exchanged a glance with Lando but stayed silent. I could feel the weight of Lando’s eyes on me, but I refused to back down.

“Is that really how it’s going to be?” I asked, my voice hard. “You think you can just judge me based on some rumor mill nonsense without even knowing me? Maybe you should consider that there’s more to me than whatever the hell people want to say about my past. What happens on track is all that should matter. But if you’re still buying into that crap, then maybe you’re not the person I thought you were.”

Lando’s jaw tightened, and I could tell that I had struck a nerve. He didn’t immediately respond, instead glancing at Oscar, who now had a slightly concerned look on his face. Lando shifted on his feet, clearly unsure of how to respond to someone calling him out so forcefully.

“I get it, alright?” Lando muttered, but there was no real sincerity in his voice. “But you’ve got to admit, there’s a lot of speculation.”

I rolled my eyes, the frustration bubbling up inside me. “Speculation is exactly what it is. And it’s none of your business, Lando. What matters is that I’m here, racing, and proving myself every time I get behind the wheel. Maybe if you focused more on that, you’d see it for what it is, instead of judging me based on some stupid rumors.”

I paused for a moment, letting the silence linger between us before I spoke again, my voice sharpening. “And honestly, with all the rumors floating around that you’re a big fan of Trump after some of the things you’ve said in Miami? I’m not surprised you’re so quick to jump on the bandwagon and believe whatever fits the narrative. It’s easier to go along with what the media says, right? But I don’t listen to that stuff. I judge people by their actions, not by what the tabloids want to spin. You don’t know me, Lando, so stop acting like you do.”

I could see him bristle at my words, and for a moment, I could tell that what I said hit harder than he expected. It wasn’t about defending myself anymore—it was about standing up for the idea that I wouldn’t let others define me, especially when they hadn’t bothered to get to know the real me.

Lando’s expression flickered, a mix of frustration and something else—something I couldn’t quite place—passing across his face. For a moment, he was silent, clearly trying to process what I had just said. But I could tell I had made him think, even if just for a brief second.

He didn’t immediately apologize, which told me everything I needed to know. He wasn’t ready to back down yet. But I wasn’t done.

“Just stop hiding behind your assumptions, Lando,” I added, my voice firm. “It’s not a good look. You can’t just brush off people based on things you hear when there’s no real truth to it. It’s lazy, and frankly, it’s disappointing.”

Lando stood there, looking caught off guard by my directness. He wasn’t apologizing, not really. But I could see that I had planted a seed. Maybe it would take a while for him to truly get it, but at least for now, I had made my point. And I wasn’t about to let anyone walk over me—especially not when I knew I was capable of so much more than the rumors said.

“I... didn’t realize it was that big of a deal,” he said, his voice a little quieter now. “I’m just trying to keep up with everything going on around here.” “Well, try harder,” I shot back, my tone biting. “Because if you can’t see past the rumors, you’re just as bad as the rest of them.”

With that, I turned away, my heart still racing with anger. I didn’t want his apology, not really. I wasn’t looking for anyone’s approval. But I wasn’t going to let anyone make me feel small just because they couldn’t look beyond what they heard. I walked away, leaving Lando and Oscar to whatever thoughts they were processing, knowing that I had made myself clear.

Franco, who had been watching from the sidelines, gave me an approving smile as I returned to his side. I didn’t need to look back to know that the tension between Lando and me wasn’t going to disappear anytime soon. But that was fine by me. It was time for me to prove myself on the track, and if Lando and the others had to learn the hard way, so be it.

[canofwyrmz]

My Tourette's recently came back from "remission" (unsure if that's the right term in context, but alas) and i am so pissed off thinking about fake claiming again.

To anyone out there discrediting me off the bat, yes, I have been officially diagnosed by medical professionals. I meet as many of your bullshit little criteria as your heart could desire for who "really" has Tourette's.

The truth of the matter is that you will never conclusively know if someone is "faking" any disability, but Tourette's is a good example here. There are so many things about Tourette's that make it a perfect disorder for fake claimers to sink their little teeth into. I've been perusing the fakedisordercringe subreddit, kinda trying to bait myself into getting angry, and I've been particularly looking at the traits they claim are telltale signs of a faker.

The catch: almost all of these traits are normal parts of the spectrum disorder that is Tourette's, or very easily explained in context.

For instance:

"In this video they're ticcing every few seconds, but in their old videos they never tic."

1. Tics vary from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, etc. I had a year and a half where my Tourette's was almost non-existent. I very occasionally had minor facial tics, but that was it! Waxing and waning of symptoms is incredibly normal for tic disorders, in face, tic disorders very often go away with age, or at least get better. Some people's tics get worse with age though.

This isn't even to mention medication! Some people take medication for Tourette's, and this may heavily impact the severity/frequency of tics. It's rude asf to ask a stranger their medication status, but personally, I was prescribed Guanfacine for my tics. It made me sleep so much that it was a worse experience than having my full force tics. I went off the medication, and started ticcing more! It's also true that other medications not specifically prescribed in the aim of reducing tics can also have an impact on them. I have a hunch that the Abilify I was taking the last couple years is what might've put my Tourette's nigh fully into remission during that period. How medication intersects with someone's experience is very complicated and individual. You know what they say about assuming.

Another piece worth mentioning is the fact that Tourette's is a syndrome, as opposed to a disease. A disease has a known, single root cause for the condition, i.e. a bacterium, a virus, a known mutation. Syndromes are names for clusters of symptoms that occur together often enough to be recognized as their own things, but without a shared or known root cause. People have Tourette's (or any tic disorder really) for many different reasons! This is why no two people who tic do so in the same way, there are many root neurological/biological causes that are all producing the same general symptoms.

2. Tic disorders can have a very rapid onset, and they can appear at any age (although before late teens is most common). Mine started over a few days, from absolutely no tics, to uncontrollable and severe attacks.

3. Tics can be very dependent on environmental triggers. Stress, excitement, level of focus, repetitive noises (including other people ticcing!), energy level, et cetera are all common triggers for tics. One person's trigger might be another person's tic relaxant. It varies for each individual; I personally tic much more frequently at work as of late, because the environment is very stressful, loud, and repetitive.

4. If you're watching a video, you're seeing someone's curated public image. They might suppress tics for the camera. They might film on mild tic days. They might edit out tics. They might be ticcing just as often, but invisibly (e.g. right now I have several tics that involve my tongue, totally invisible to everyone else!).

"Their tics look forced though."

Lots of tics do look forced, especially complex tics (tics involving multiple muscle groups), but they are still unvoluntary or involuntary. You have absolutely zero ways to tell apart a tic that looks forced from a tic that is forced. "They tic too much."

Discussing tics is a very, very common trigger for said tics. Filming yourself talking about your tics is likely to trigger them. Some people tic a lot, or very violently, all the time! Some people only tic severely occasionally! See above for the variability of tics, even within a single person.

"They don't tic enough."

Focusing on something, i.e. speaking to the camera, will reduce tic frequency or severity for some people. For some it makes it worse. Again, see above for the variability of tics!

"They have too many common/cute tics."

You can catch tics. If someone's involved with a lot of disability spaces or spends time around other people with a tic disorder, they'll likely pick up some of those common tics. Not everyone gets contagious tics, but most people seem to.

"Their tics are too convenient."

Many people with tics are able to redirect the premonitory urge toward a different, sometimes milder tic (e.g. one of my current tics is clenching my face, and shutting my eyes hard for several seconds. Driving seems to let me focus enough to not be too encumbered by tics, but when I do feel like I'm going to do an eye-shutting tic, I'll usually redirect it to a different body part, or sometimes just one eye instead of both). Not all people w/ tics are able to redirect tics and have absolutely no control over them. For those who can, though, this may cause their tics to look "convenient" in that they're keeping the reigns on the more inconvenient tics. See above for why someone might (or might not!) tic more on camera.

(Assuming they're faking already): "If they really understood Tourette's they wouldn't fake it because it's just so awful and horrible and impossible to live with, it's a curse that ruins people's lives!"

Most disabled people don't want your half-hearted pity. For the love of GOD, do not use the severity of some people's tic disorders as a weapon against that same community. Yes, some people are significantly impaired by their tic disorder; it's a disability. That doesn't mean you should treat the few disabled people you believe like sick little wet kittens with terminal cancer, and the rest of us like we're attention seeking fakers who are an acceptable target for absolutely vile harassment and dehumanization.

And some broader ones that are often used against many other disabled people:

"They're not diagnosed."

You do not become disabled upon diagnosis. Diagnosis is descriptive, not prescriptive; your disability is no more or less real due to dx status.

"They already have sooo many disabilities though."

Disabilities are more common than you think, and tend to occur together. For example, Tourette's is heavily associated with Autism, ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, and especially OCD. Please don't give me your amateur statistics work that assumes occurrence of disability is an entirely isolated variable.

"They have blue hair and pronouns."

Queer people are more likely to be disabled, disabled people are more likely to be Queer. For instance, Queer people are especially prone to Autism, among other disabilities, which puts one at a significantly higher predisposition to tic disorders.

"They talk about their disability/disabilities too much."

Disabilities affect people's daily lives, and if they want to talk about how that impacts them, stfu and listen! If someone wants to spread awareness or acceptance of their disability, stfu and listen! If you don't want to listen, stfu and go away.

There's more. There's a lot more. I could continue writing this for the rest of the afternoon, and I'd still have more to talk about. I've been thinking about Tourette's a lot more since mine came back just recently, and I think a well organized post like this is a good thing to put out there. The takeaway is really that you can never look inside someone else's head. The convolutions of others' minds are a lockbox to which they themselves are the lone key-owners.

I feel like the least we can do for each other is give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

Yes, I'm aware that some people do in fact fake disabilities. My point is not to refute the mere existence of people faking their disability, but to say we cannot know who they are. We must treat everyone as though they are being honest, because everyone is deserving of that kind of dignity by default. This paranoia about who is and is not "really disabled" does us absolutely no good, it hurts innocent people in the process, likely many, many more than any "actual" fakers (by whatever standard you even truly measure that).

As an aside, even if someone is honest to god faking, they're probably not doing just peachy. Someone desperate for that kind of attention probably needs that attention. Something is wrong, and this is their way to express their need for help. When has it ever done any good to shame and mock people who are unwell? Some people really truly do just want to feel justified in mistreating the most vulnerable members of society.

[blueskittlesart]

Hey it's the anon who wants to play BOTW but is egregious bad at video games again. I took your advice and I've shocked myself at how much progress i've made, I got to the goron village, korok forest, and rito village. One current issue is that I am still. SO bad at the combat. Like SO bad. I panic immediately and lose all coordination (which I already had very little of). I managed to get myself killed before I could even get to the point where Sidon GIVES YOU the quest to get to Zora's domain. I completely fumbled through a minor test of strength.

Any tips for improving general combat capabilities. HELP

hi! first of all, i'm gonna go over the basics of combat and how/when you should use them. the game does technically tell you these things, but they come up early game and are pretty easy to miss imo. you might know some of them already tho!

the first thing that's probably going to be really helpful to you if you don't already know about it is enemy targeting. this locks the camera in place on a specific enemy, even within a horde of them, giving you free reign to abandon the right stick and focus on button pressing. to target an enemy, get close and press the left trigger (ZL.) this will also equip your shield if you're using a one-handed weapon, but the targeting is the most important. Once you're locked in on one enemy, so long as you keep the trigger pressed, the camera will auto-lock into a straight line from link's back to the enemy, so there's no need for you to worry about camera controls. if you DO touch the right stick while targeting, the target camera will jump to the next closest enemy to link and auto-lock again. in general, when fighting, your left pointer should be pressing the trigger to target at all times, your left thumb should be on the stick moving link around, and your right thumb should be pressing Y and shouldn't move from that button. that's the basic combat configuration and there aren't a lot of scenarios where you're going to have to do much more than that (except maybe the right trigger for your bow.)

next is weapon classes. there are 3 different melee weapon classes in botw--swords, greatswords, and polearms. each weapon class has a different attack pattern and speed, and each class has its own strengths and weaknesses.

swords are any weapon link swings one-handed. (examples include the master sword, broadswords, tree branches, boomerangs, small boko clubs, etc.) they have a decently fast attack pattern and when they're equipped link can also use a shield in his left hand with ZL. this is my favorite weapon class, as it's pretty middle-of-the road, usually they have mid-range attack points, as previously mentioned their attack speed isn't too slow, and they come with the added bonus of being able to use a shield. if you're fighting something like a guardian where shielding is necessary, you should always aim to be using a sword-class weapon as it's the only weapon class that link can also hold a shield with.

greatswords are heavy two-handed weapons (examples include claymores and bigger boko clubs.) they usually have very large attack stats, often in the 50s or above, which makes them tempting, especially early game. however, they have several noticeable drawbacks that make them my least favorite weapon class. because of their weight, their attack speed is very low, and because they're two-handed link can't shield when he has one equipped. I personally stay away from this weapon class early-game--imo they're only worth it if you have both hearts and stamina to spare. I only ever use them for hard-hitting charged attacks after stunning an enemy, and will almost always switch back to a sword-class weapon for regular combat.

polearms are long, light two-handed weapons that link holds like a spear (examples include spears, halberds, and tridents.) these have the fastest attack speed in the game, but because they're two-handed link still can't shield with one equipped. these weapons also usually have a longer reach than swords and greatswords, so they can be useful if you don't want to get too close to what you're fighting (however you forfeit the more reliable protection of a shield in order to get that benefit.) these are useful in a pinch, and personally i won't actively discard them like i tend to do with greatswords, but they definitely don't have the same versatility and ease of use as a sword-class weapon.

for early-game, i'd try to stick to sword-class weapons as much as possible, and ALWAYS have your shield up with the left trigger/ZL when you're in combat. this alone will make you harder to hit and let you last a lot longer. with the limited weapon slots you have early-game, i'd focus on collecting weapons that are easy for you to use rather than the ones with the highest attack stats, especially since they're going to break anyway. be willing to sacrifice a high-attack greatsword for a lower-attack one-handed sword in a pinch.

as for the actual mechanics of combat, there are plenty of fancy things you CAN do, but very few of them are actually necessary to beat the game. you can get through 90% of all combat in botw by just targeting with ZL and mashing Y, maybe occasionally sprinting with B to avoid enemy attacks. there are shrines and npcs that will teach you fancy things like backflips and perfect-dodges, which are useful if you can reliably perform them, but if you're someone who gets easily confused when you have to perform a lot of button presses in quick succession, it'll probably be more useful for you to just stick to Y attacks.

the one special combo attack you ARE going to need to learn in order to get through the game is a perfect shield parry, which is going to sound scary and difficult when i explain it but i promise it becomes like second nature after a while. this combo is the easiest way to combat anything that has a laser-beam attack, like guardians and certain late-game bosses. you hold your shield up with ZL, (this combo can ONLY be performed if you're holding a one-handed weapon, and make sure you're targeting the enemy attacking you and not just holding your shield up at nothing) wait for the laser to lock onto you, (the target line will blink rapidly and then disappear just before the laser fires) and then, right when the laser hits your shield, hit the A button to redirect the beam back towards the enemy. there is some level of danger here, because if you press A too early the beam may hit you, but most of the time if you fail to perform a perfect parry the beam will still just bounce off your shield and not do any damage to you. there are plenty of stationary guardians on the map you can use to practice this skill until the timing is ingrained into you, and i would highly recommend practicing it as it's super useful late-game.

as a final note, remember that botw is a game designed for versatility. it seems like you're doing everything very by-the-book--fighting whenever the game tells you to fight, regardless of whether you really WANT to fight. and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's also by no means the only way to get through the game. if you find yourself struggling with melee combat, there's nothing stopping you from buying a bunch of bomb arrows and just firing them off at enemies from afar, or even just eating a shit ton of stealth food and sneaking around them. certain combat scenarios are going to be unavoidable, but botw is a game that prioritizes player innovation, meaning that very rarely is there going to only be one way out of a situation. if you're struggling with melee combat, try something else! try your bow, or a rune, or avoiding combat altogether, until you find something that sticks and makes the game fun for you. there's no wrong way to play!

[vasito-de-leche]

hello!! your writing is so good i am perceiving it /pos. i'm not sure if you do familial/platonic requests so ignore this if you don't but may i request click with a reader who he sees as an older sibling? it can be headcanons or like general thoughts i don't rlly care. thank you!! <3

;R1999 CLICK - Familial Headcanons

Compilation of headcanons and analysis about Click and an older sibling figure.

ty for the ask, nonnie <3 and yes, I do write for familial/platonic stuff too, not just romance! check the rules if you have any questions!

As far as I know, there's no information about Click's family nor their dynamics, and he doesn't seem to fit any of the stereotypical youngest/middle/eldest child labels. So, going by personality alone, I'd say that for Click to consider someone as his very own older sibling figure, they'd have to be somewhat similar to him!

Not necessarily a carbon copy of him, mind you - they don't have to share his passion for photography nor agree with him 24/7! Just someone who he can relate to and who brings him a sense of security. Perhaps someone like Zima! Insightful, with a strong core and sense of self, aiming to broaden his horizons.

Someone who has also seen the darker aspects of life, lived through tragedies and come out stronger - Click is proud of his job, but he knows that talking about heavy subjects isn't everyone's cup of tea. So he'd like to know that his older sibling figure can understand or is trying to understand where he comes from, that he doesn't mean to bring the mood down whenever he happens to bring up the subject of war. It's part of his life and his experiences, and pretending that it didn't happen would be a disservice to all the things he's witnessed.

Alternatively, Click would gravitate towards anyone who shows extreme passion for their craft, regardless of what it might be - creative people who are dedicated and who experience the world through different artistic mediums are a big inspiration for him. Someone who drags him into all sorts of situations, allowing Click to capture many different points of view that he would've otherwise missed. Someone like Regulus or Diggers!

Click tends to wander and disappear a lot. It's always up to you to find him.

Younger siblings tend to either follow after their older siblings all the time like puppies, or disappear off the face of the Earth and mind their business (I'm the youngest of 6 siblings, I can vouch for this). Click fits the latter!

It's common for him to just wander around and disappear for days on end to focus on taking the best pictures across the Wilderness, with nothing but his camera and his thoughts. Somehow, he always seems to know whenever you call out to him - he'll manifest beside you right away, hoping he's not gotten into trouble. It's a weird feeling, knowing people expect him to keep in touch and come back safe and sound, that no matter where he goes, he'll still hear your voice calling out to him because he's going to miss dinner (not that he even needs to eat). But it's a very nice, warm feeling, so he doesn't mind.

I like to think Click - and pretty much any ghost within the universe of R1999 - can just become invisible to the human eye at will, with arcanists (especially those of Spirit and Intelligence afflatus) being able to sense their presence. During particularly bad days, where PTSD might be giving Click a hard time, he'll just fade away so that no one can see him. And then, he'll pick a spot to sit and wait for it to blow over.

Sometimes, you find him anyway, no matter how much he tries to hide. Sometimes, he lets you know where he is. Either way, he lets you know that he'd like for you to stay and keep him company - I imagine there's a system you two come up with, should he feel too overwhelmed to talk. Knock once for yes, two for no. Tug on your shirt if he wants to lead you somewhere quieter, pat your hand to sit down with him, etc etc.

Everyone begins to see you as Click's guardian.

On a less sad note, whenever someone needs Click for anything, they always go to you first and foremost! Either because you're the only one who can figure out where he may be, or because they want to run their plans through you first.

Vertin specifically makes sure to know if you'd like to accompany him during missions that require his presence, or if you'd like to know the details of his next solo mission. It's something she does out of politeness and as a a formality - and because Click just seems to perk up just a tiny bit if she tells him that you expect him to do a proper job. Whenever Lilya is planning to give Click a ride to take better pictures, she always jokes around, saying that she'll bring your precious brother back in one piece. Pavia always jokingly threatens Click to snitch on him and tell his "big scary sibling" that he's been taking pictures of people when they sleep.

From an outsider's point of view - those who do not belong to this group - it feels like everyone is infantilizing Click. He's 19 and a war photographer! But one has to remember that everyone in this suitcase has lost family and friends to the "Storm".

Aside from being displaced and forced into unfamiliar waters, everyone is dealing with so many things on their own, like losing their lives and all the people they once knew and cared for. So knowing that Click was able to form such a strong bond with you, to trust and see you as family, despite everything? It really brings them hope for a brighter future - Vertin's goal to create a place for those who have nowhere else to go starts to make sense for them. And hey, most of them are willing to stop with their little jokes and such should they bother you or Click!

This specific point comes from me seeing Vertin's group as one huge found family - there's no way everyone will get along, but at the end of the day, everyone trusts and relies and takes care of each other. The dynamics within this found family are much too complex for me to get into right now and for people outside of it to even understand, just know that it's a thing!

Click picks up on your mannerisms and speech pattern unconsciously.

Click isn't very talkative outside of the usual photography or artistic talk, he's more of a listener. And while he does become a little more talkative around you, opening up and whatnot, you tend to do most of the talking. And that's how he ends up picking up your mannerisms!

It's especially funny for everyone if you happen to have a very different and contrasting way of speech- the way Click just casually drops an F bomb in that soft-spoken voice whenever he fails to get the perfect shot will NEVER stop funny.

I like to think that, because of how observant he is, he also ends up picking up on your unique gestures. It's all an unconscious thing he does - if someone points it out Click won't even know what they're talking about, entirely oblivious to the fact that he now emotes and makes the same facial expressions as you do, the same gestures (at least when his hands are free, instead of clinging to that camera of his) and using the same phrases and whatnot.

[secretsnowclub]

I found a weird old Gamecube survival horror game??? Can you help??

I’ve recently started collecting older video games, specifically all the survival horror games that I was too afraid to play as a kid. Now that I’m older and have a salaried job, it’s nice to be able to court that younger version of me and buy all the stuff my family couldn’t afford. Plus the games are fun. Everything from Resident Evil to Rule of Rose, Fatal Frame to Parasite Eve. I love being scared and these games work their hardest to do it and sometimes succeed.

Before I play them, I like to go on youtube and watch retrospectives, reviews, and old ads for them, so I can sort of get settled into the headspace and learn about the creation of them. But there’s one that I’ve stumbled on that I’m unable to find anything about. Almost like it came out of nowhere.

I found this game at a used game, movie, and music store just off the red line in Chicago. It’s called Soul Cemetery for the Gamecube. A survival horror game about a detective returning to their hometown to investigate the mysterious death of her father. It’s very obviously inspired by Resident Evil, featuring the tank controls, fixed camera angles, and similar graphics, not to mention the focus on zombies which wander the town. There’s also some Silent Hill influence with a heavy use of snow (instead of fog) and ambient music throughout. 

It seemed like a very generic sort of game after the opening cinematic and wandering around the opening area, but then it started to reveal itself as something more. The controls were straight forward but also had some interesting things about them. You aim and shoot like in RE, but there’s also a button to “hum,” which makes the detective slow her run to a walk and hum a tune, which changes with each area and sometimes changes within each area depending on exactly where you stand. 

There’s also a dedicated “smoke” button, which plays a unique (albeit short) cutscene where the detective smokes a cigarette and says a little something about the area, or what just happened. It almost feels like the journal mechanic that games like Life is Strange have, where the character recaps the last chapter in their own words, only you get to control when it happens and how often. 

Both of these things kinda took me off guard and drew me into the game in a way I didn’t expect. There are no save rooms or safe rooms like in a lot of survival horror games, so these two things were like getting a break for the spooky scary stuff whenever I needed it, while also getting to hear the thoughts of the character. 

This got kinda freaky when the detective started saying things about me during these moments. The game must read your memory card and system data or something because the further I got into the game, whenever she’d smoke she’d say stuff to me about how late I was up, or about the weather (possibly reading the month??? Idk if Gamecubes have location data). In the light of day these things aren’t that scary ig, but after getting killed by zombies after playing till 4 a.m. it was definitely giving me goosebumps.

It was extra creepy when the detective would do these things without being prompted. The further I got into the game, the more she would indulge in humming or smoking without me pressing the buttons. At first I thought maybe my hand slipped, but no, it’s almost like she has a mind of her own. And these self-indulgent moments were often the scariest.

I played through the entire thing in one sitting, it was maybe 5-6 hours. There were some obvious levels included in a lot of survival horror games, like a spooky motel with zombies, a dark forest with this weird moon spirit creature who is like the main bad guy of the game, and an empty town center where there’s a boss battle. About halfway through, the detective finds herself at her childhood home and that’s when shit really started to freak me out. I don’t know how to explain it other than her house had the same layout as mine? Maybe it’s just a coincidence because the game takes place in an unnamed midwest town, and maybe the houses here are just copy-pasted anyways. But it was spooky. Her living room was my living room, her bedroom was mine, the kitchen was mine. Even the spooky stairway into the basement was in the same place. 

Back in her parents room, her mom is a zombie. There’s no music. Just the looped MP3 of the zombie groans. Whenever you press the button to aim, the detective would hesitate and tell me not to do it. It was only after the mom had attacked and killed me once that I could actually return to the room and shoot the zombie. Immediately after, the detective took control and started humming this really broken, solemn tune. It felt so recognizable but I can’t figure it out. I did my best to record it here:

It’s been stuck in my head ever since.

After the run in with the mom zombie, the detective continues humming that tune, allowing me to walk slowly through the house. I returned to her bedroom and was able to “interact” with her childhood bed. The detective climbs in, the humming breaking up more and more until she falls asleep.

There’s a few esoteric and surreal images that flash on the screen. I didn’t expect them, so I couldn’t take pictures, and when I went and played through the game again, this entire section didn’t happen. Idk if it’s just like the order of events was different, or if it was how I killed the mom or how I explore after? Idk. But the images were these brutal close-ups of the mom zombie. Like, real photos, not just rendered. There were startling, and even if I can’t get them to pop up again, I feel like they’re still fresh in my mind.

The detective wakes up in her childhood bedroom after a second and is different. She’s a child. Her character model is smaller, she doesn't have her gun, and her entire control scheme is different. Most of the buttons are replaced with the “hum” thing, which has her doing that same haunting hum from before. As a child, she can still wander around the rest of the town, and it’s still overrun with zombies, now there’s just noway for her to defend herself.

I felt kind of stuck and frustrated with this as the zombies kept killing me and I didn’t like hearing the MP3 child scream over and over again, so eventually I turned the Gamecube off and on, and when the game loaded up, the detective woke up in her childhood bed as an adult, like none of that stuff happened. I was able to continue the game but was unable to beat the final boss. I think there was something I had to do as a child to be able to? But I don’t know. The game was very confusing at that point and, like I said, when I tried to replay it, the child-thing didn’t even happen. 

I think if the game has a guide or even just, like, any information online I could have made sense of it. It’s a weird take on survival horror that really did get under my skin, I just wish I could finish it, or at least figure out what some of the weird stuff in it was doing or trying to do. If you played this game when you were younger, were there any guides you followed? Or do you remember anything? The only thing I was able to find was a shitty scan of the game manual, but even that I’m having a hard time deciphering…

Any help is appreciated!

[whomst-art-thou-whomst-whomst]

The Artist and the Fan: Further Meta of Tiny Moments in Oh No! Here Comes Trouble

So it’s possible I did a third rewatch just because I’m convinced my favorite character is queer-coded. And that’s fine. I’ve written about Guangyan as queer-coded before. But what if it’s not just him?

Behold the first scene where Guangyan gets hit by a ball during gym class:

Before the first hit, the camera focuses on him subtly watching something as he runs around the track. What is to his left? The field where Yiyong is. Guangyan is surreptitiously eyeing Yiyong as he runs.

Right after Yiyong smacks the ball at him, the camera chooses to focus on Yiyong’s face. No comment on the expression here...EXCEPT we know later in the series that Yiyong didn’t push him down the stairs, is very gentle inside and wasn’t actually sure whether it had been Guangyan scoffing about his dreams the first time they met, so this is probably not revenge. When some kid brushes past Guangyan in the hall, he automatically thinks it’s Yiyong, meaning Yiyong pushes past him a lot. So given the comedic twists of this show, my queer little brain jumped to, eithrr he has the worst pattern of aim and walking in history, OR he is trying to get Guangyan’s attention in the dumbest “doesn’t know his own strength but maybe third times the charm” kind of way. Think about the dumb shit kids do on the playground to get someone’s attention. We’ve talked about Guangyan nursing a quintessential “of course I don’t like him, I absolutely hate him and his beautiful eyes” crush on Yiyong since high school, but a specific aspect of the rewatch made me think…maybe Yiyong, master of hiding his feelings and desires, master of expressing himself in writing and drawing, wasn’t entirely immune to Guangyan in high school either.

AND I HAVE EVIDENCE *jams tin hat on head* (although I respect that this could also just be a really solid non-romantic bond, see my note at the bottom)

Yiyong’s comic:

Literally two seconds after Yiyong (post coma 1) shuts down his comic, Guangyan (who is, as we later discover, the only reader of the comic) is frantically trying to get him to continue it.

Because it’s a cute little subplot that we know Guangyan is a fan, I got curious about what Yiyong’s art is all about, so I paused on his comic when he clicked on it shortly after waking up from coma 1; we surmise that the last time he worked on it was back when he was in high school, right before the accident.

A thank you to a translation by @betty5271 for explaining what Yiyong’s comic is supposedly about, according to the title and summary he has written for it on his page. The title is King of Flashfire, with the summary “What kind of bloody storm will a gifted high school student unleash on the campus?"

(Genres listed are battle, school life, and comedy)

Hmmmmmm. So it’s a story Yiyong wrote as a student…about a gifted student who gets into “battles”….

Now look at his two characters that are the figures from his comic. Remind you of any two people’s hairstyles and clothes?

*adjusts tin hat*

Guangyan is the only reader of the comic Yiyong has written about a stormy bond between two high school boys. A comic Yiyong wrote before ever having an actual conversation with Guangyan.

It makes this moment even more precious:

Now, to be clear: I do see this as a coded pre-romantic relationship, BUT this could also be an incredibly sweet friendship, too. Just as amazing. I would love a second season where they get their shit together, if that’s where the story is meant to go. Even if it never heads in that direction, I would still love this show so much and I can’t wait for their relationship to grow as they do. Our boys are soulmates, this comic subplot shows their coming together on the monster squad was meant to be.

(Chuying’s main meta is next if anyone has requests or thoughts on areas to cover with her)

[chefboyar-zeee]

A Star Is Born - Born That Way

Opening Thoughts/ Remarks

How is the film related to the social context of the country during the film’s production? 

The film takes place in post war America. Employment was shifting a lot post World war II, and a lot more money was being allocated to film and the world of Hollywood to hopefully allow people to escape their realities. Women were being made to be stars, so the plot of this film is a reflection of that, although the original was made almost 20 years prior. Although it is not a large plot point, segregation was being challenged and eventually destroyed during the mid 1950s during the release. There are Black characters, but only on camera when performing as part of an ensemble. There was also an emphasis on the nuclear family, encouraging people to conform to standards set by the American government. 

In what ways are the performance spaces separated from the narrative spaces in the film? 

They’re interconnected. Like discussed in the reading, Patullo talks about the integrated narrative and spectacle. Something that relates and drives the narrative and plot, but does not explicitly draw on the character’s film experiences.

“You gotta have me. Go with you. All the time” is the line Esther sings when escorting Norman off stage. I think this is very indicative of the relationship between the two throughout the film.

Esther sings this after meeting Norman and him offering her dinner to which she declined. The song isn’t from Esther to Norman but it seems rather fitting for their circumstances, especially after admitting that he is a nice man, drunk or sober - her being the only one who views him that way at this point in the film.

How is spectacle integrated into the film’s narrative? 

I think disorderly conduct is the film’s first use of spectacle in the way that it distracts from what audiences should be experiencing as a pleasant, entertainment. Instead of focusing on the performers, the audience in the film and of the film now shift their focus to a drunk man. This is that integration into the narrative. Esther as a character is definitely the most spectacle aspect of the narrative. Her life and career because something for audiences in the film and watching the film to gawk at, judge, and form opinions on. The choices she makes career wise and personality are intended to be analyzed and publicized to push her narrative and character development. The film relies on it. 

With the exception of the opening dance, Esther performs a lot in red, either symbolically showcasing her relationship with success or failure. Her signature lip is also red. Like in the film preview, she runs around pleading with producers, agents, and managers in a grey dress with red linings and runs into several rooms where she is turned away, wearing red and some neutral colors.

What is the role of dance and movement in relation to the film’s narrative and spectacle?  

Dance is less of a narrative for this film, but there is a lot of significance in the movement. When they are dancing, it usually is a matter of spectacle or to distract from what the characters are saying. This makes sense because although the dancing is the subject of that scene, the dancers aren’t the spectacle, the story in the song is.��

Pattulo says in the reading that the second type of musical attempts to bridge the gap between narrative and number, aiming for integration of spectacle into the film’s primary narrative structure. I believe, at times, this is the intention with the use of performances to demonstrate narrative. 

The first mention of dance and there’s a public performance, seems to be spectacle as there are women in pinked out traditional Native American regalia and feathered outfits. There is somewhat of a rodeo happening where people are riding, standing on, jumping around horses, along with dancers doing ballet, modern. The women are wearing red feathers and intense red makeup and cowboy hats. The chaos of the scene seems to be a proper introduction to Norman’s character and his restless and relentless energy and “do anything i want attitude” he is drunk and ensues chaos on stage for all the performers. Because he is a spoiled celebrity, he constantly gets enabled in excuse of him being that star. 

Large dance numbers with huge productions are used in this film as a spectacle to either project the mood of the scene or to distract, and somewhat, project the feelings of the characters at the moment.

In what ways does impossibility within the film ensure the audience escapes from reality?    

There is a segment of scenes where the director uses audio over literal film pictures. It occurs during moments between between when Esther and Norman meet. Upon researching, I think now it was because of the scenes being cut from the original film after re releasing in theaters a shorter version, by 30 minutes.

They use it very interestingly, and I am still uncertain about the intention here. For weeks, Esther finds another job while Norman leaves the set of his film in efforts to find her. I am gathering that time has stopped for these two. Although Esther feels this new fire under her ass, she’s without the man that put it there. Norman can not be satisfied until he has seen what’s become of her. 

Contradictory to the question, the film ensures the audiences in immersed into the reality of the movie/Hollywood industry. The film is strategic about showing the trials and tribulations of Hollywood as Esther is transitioning into her new role. She visibly struggles to adjust and acclimate to the speed of “the business.” they show a lot of set designing, and behind the scenes rehearsals. I suppose this shows the impossibility of their public lives and their relationship with their celebrity. As people, we tend to put celebrities in a box that they live in in our brains.

Discussion Questions

Does it feel backstage for this musical to use predominantly song over dance/movement to push the narrative?

Consider the film's portrayal of fame and celebrity culture in the 1950s. How does it reflect the societal attitudes towards stardom during that time? Are there parallels or differences with contemporary views on fame and spectacle?

Do the musical numbers serve as spectacle alone, or do they deepen our understanding of the characters and their emotional journeys?

Thank you for listening!!!

#oxyfilmmusical @theuncannyprofessoro

[rootvegetableboy]

cm dev log #10 - august 2024

happy september, everyone! i burned the shit out of my dominant hand this month, so, things weren’t necessarily as productive as i would’ve liked… but progress was still made for sure :)

here are a few things i worked on in august!

player death:

i did this at the very beginning of the month, as it was one of a few things necessary to release my first playtest. (more on that later!) like a lot of things i put off for months because i thought they’d be way difficult, this was a lot simpler than i’d thought it would be.

there are not a lot of moving parts to this! when your hp reaches zero, your player object is destroyed, and the death screen fades in. pressing enter at the death screen will reload your most recent save.

cutscenes and dialogue:

previously, conversations and dialogue in the game were pretty static, so i introduced an object called “obj_camerashift”. when called, this object can move both the camera & which direction the player is facing, giving the effect of the player “looking” at certain things mid-conversation.

i made a few other small changes to some dialogue-handling objects, as well. the aiming/shooting cursor now disappears when a textbox is on screen—i found being able to move the mouse around during conversations a little distracting, and i think it looks a lot more seamless this way. i also implemented an object that keeps track of plot/story related variables! surely i will not use intimate knowledge of the player’s actions against them :)

arson?

you can now set fires

fun for the whole family!

playtest one?!?!

do you guys remember last month when i said “i would love for people to playtest within the next couple months”

well… i actually moved way quicker than i was expecting and released playtest one at the beginning of august! i put out some feelers for who all would be interested back in july and was able to get a bunch of people to participate and share their feedback with me. i’ve been hearing a lot from fellow game devs about how important early and frequent playtesting is, and now i can finally say, with pride:

oh my god i get it. i am WAYYY to close to the trees. and i am so, so unbelievably grateful to everyone who took the time to test, because it really opened my eyes and gave me a much clearer picture of where things are at. let’s take a look at what people thought, and most importantly, what i learned! :)

standard enemies:

i chose to go with a goldilocks-style rating scale for the post-playtest survey. i felt like this would help me focus on the individual player’s perception and experience, because i had a lot of different ranges of skill level in playtesters. (my partner defeated the miniboss on their first try, but to my knowledge almost no other player was able to do this!)

this is a summary of responses about the difficulty of the small-scale enemies. i found it helpful to switch back and forth between the summary of all responses and individual responses when analyzing data, as often people would explain what occurence led to what choice. for example, i had one person rate Bug entirely “just right” for every category, and they explained in their written response that they enjoyed the threat level that the speed of the bug posed. i had another person rate Bug’s overall power & movement speed as “too difficult” for the same reason cited: the enemy’s speed! however, the person who found it too difficult also expressed that they don’t have much practice on keyboard&mouse games. you can start see where dev decisions start to get both more simple and more complex with access to all this info…

the summary of all responses is very helpful for analysis of overall player trends, though. i was pleasantly surprised that people tended towards finding the snake a little too easy overall (i <3 making things more difficult). i wasn’t expecting people to be so divided on the bug’s damage, so that’s one of the categories where teasing out individual responses is a little more helpful.

miniboss:

this is the most beautiful graph in the entire world to me right now.

the clear overall trend towards “just right” is so exciting for a first playtest!! it’s also a huge relief to know that the core gameplay is legitmately enjoyable. i had several people express that the miniboss fight felt rewarding because they were able to watch themselves get better at it. that feeling is exactly what i’m going for in terms of difficulty, because it’s one of my favorite feelings to have: knowing that it’s not any special levelling or number getting me through the fight, it’s just me and my skill.

though it’s really exciting to read about the aspects people enjoyed, i got a lot of insight from those that found this too easy or difficult as well. one person who found the fight too difficult suggested a small wait (”a breath or two”, they said!) between attack patterns, as they were getting very quickly overwhelmed. (i think this is a great idea!) i had another person who found the fight a little too easy in every category, and mentioned that they were able to complete the entire fight without using the player dodge mechanic at all. this is interesting to me because a lot of the people who seemed to struggle with the combat struggled with using the dodge mechanic specifically. actually, this is a pretty good segue…

player:

testers were rating the relative strength/weakness of each category offered here as opposed to “difficulty”. though, it’s sort of the same thing in this case…

anyway, as you can see, the dodge was pretty divisive.

i believe there’s multiple issues here that are compounding each other. the first is the dodge animation: it was very quickly drawn and i don’t think it gives anything in the way of juice or satisfaction to use. it’s also not even really an animation, i just change the player sprite to a static image depending on what direction they’re facing. because of this, there isn’t a clear “beginning of dodge → end of dodge” visual progression, so i think players get confused on when they’re actually invulnerable.

the second issue is the timed length of the dodge itself. playtesters only got 15 frames (or a quarter of a second) of invulnerability, which is just really difficult to consistently execute. this is especially affected by another issue about the player i had several people point out: the player hitbox was much taller than it was wide, so dodging attacks that were coming at you vertically became especially hard to pull off.

rest assured, playtesters, i have heard your cries! i have already changed the length of the dodge to 22 frames (a little more than a third of a second) and squashed the player hitbox significantly shorter. a full dodge animation is on the list of things to draw as well—hopefully these changes will help.

so it was less of a “work on actual game content” month and more of a “pace back and forth across my apartment thinking very hard about survey results” month. i’m glad it went this way though! it gave my hand some time to heal and gave me a lot to think about. i’m excited to tackle september. i don’t think i’ll do another playtest for at least a few more months, though… it was a lot of work to set up…

as a final note, in two months project cm will be one year in development… i’m thinking i will reveal the name of the game at that point. it could be nice to know what “cm” stands for…

that’s all for the august log. see you in a month!

[ciaossu-imagines]

From day 16 of the event, I used prompt 16 and the word camera for Soul Evans from Soul Eater. It’s been a long time since I wrote for this fandom, so taking baby steps here. I really hope that everyone enjoys the headcanons 😊

Film/TV

Soul’s taste in films and television are rather eclectic. He genre-hops frequently and watches a little bit of a lot of things. There are some things that he’ll be watching and people will learn about it and go ‘oh, yeah, that makes complete sense’ but there’s also things he watches that, if people knew about them, would make them do both a mental and physical double-take.

Though he’s pretty open about what he watches, if the conversation turns to it, there are a couple things that Soul does keep to himself when it comes to what he enjoys watching, either because he doesn’t think it’s proper to share and also because it’s embarrassing for him to share certain shows or movies he loves but considers guilty pleasures.

The not proper, of course, does refer to the fact that, like a lot of people his age, he’s definitely watched porn. However, what is odd is his porn preferences. He tends to actually enjoy it more when there’s actual storylines to the pornography or, barring that, he tends to go for things aimed more towards women or produced by women-led companies.

I do think that both Soul and Black Star are both shounen trash. They would both love shounen anime, even the tropiest, most cliché of it. They often watch it together or, at the very least, they have a series or two that they’re both actively watching that they like to sit and talk about. In terms of shows actively airing, they’d be huge into My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, One Piece, and Black Clover.

The boys are also huge action movie fanatics. Both huge Marvel cinematic universe fans, they go to each new movie release together.

Soul’s always had a deep appreciation for music and because of that, I do see him enjoying watching concerts online or concert movies. He’s also pretty okay with recordings of operas he enjoys or ballets he knows of.

He’s a bit of a history buff. He enjoys learning new things and he definitely has a Discovery+ account so that he can watch various documentaries. He would follow a couple YouTube channels dedicated to history.

Onto his guilty pleasures – I think he enjoys a good rom-com every now and again. It really needs to have a lot of the ‘com’ in it though, to really get him going. Anything Adam Sandler where a romance is a big thing, like 50 First Dates, would actually really appeal to him.

He’s also a sucker for home shows. Things like ‘Fixing up the Manor’, ‘Who’s Afraid of a Cheap Old Home’ and other things that focus on architecture and the history of houses are things that compel him to watch them. He really does find the different styles of architecture interesting, especially the more old-fashioned ones and he enjoys learning more about it and the work that is needed to restore houses back to their historical roots.

[ruleofbirds]

𝚍𝚎𝚟𝚕𝚘𝚐_𝟶𝟸.𝟷

Moa's Ark & Zealandia

https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/moas-ark-1990/series

Moa's Ark (1990s TV series) opening animation. It was during the 90's that scientists formulated the "Zealandia" protocontinent theory and complexity of how species migrated over time, putting the last nail in the coffin of the idea that everyone got a free ride over on a piece of Australia. Going through Aotearoa's natural history doco archives has been a lot of fun.

Hello again! I took a bit of a break in posting long- form updates, but I think there's enough on my mind for a second batch of posts this week. After that there will again just be small updates on the Instagram until May - when I may have some sort of concept media for the sim to show off. For now I'll aim for a focused peek into a couple of aspects of it as usual.

This post is going to be all about the Moa, the species that got me hooked on this project. It's also going to be about species variation, and the tension between scientific accuracy and visual accessibility.

Moa skeletal reconstitutions at Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand.

A couple of interesting facts about the moa;

-We currently classify them as nine species. Here is a full catalog of every time someone thought they'd found a new one:

-Within many species, female moa can be more than twice the size of males (yes, this is one reason so many moa "species" were identified)

-Moa are unique in that they had no wings (not even the kiwi's tiny t-rex stubs) and, thank goodness because so many NZ species can be traced back to evolving from Australian fauna, their closest past relatives are South American tinamous rather than the emu.

-They also got a bad wrap for their past perception as tall, emu- like, big dumb grass grazers. Actually, while they're nowhere near as smart as multi-sense-foraging kiwi, they could identify and feast on a whole variety of twigs, herbs, leaves and berries - most of which were found in the more common forest than grassland.

This is why they have a bulky build and head-forward posture (until kinda recently, museum curators tended to give them that tall, emu/giraffe like posture, even adding extra vertebrae for show.)

Whanganui Regional Museum (This isn't close to the worst examples)

So; how do I even begin to approach the scope, as well as potential uncertainty, of data we have on the Moa?

Here's one way: Oversimplification!

Screenshots from Godot editor & runtime previews for compatibility (web) mode and forward+ (basically more shaders) renderer. The camera is RTS- style; getting the runtime shots was a bit finnicky.

I've started to build low-poly models in Blender for the fauna, which in the future I'd love to rig for animation and get super technical with appearance variation. For now I'll focus on the system for placing them in the right biome and basic pathing behaviour, and the Moa will be a North Island giant moa based vaguely off this model for an AR national park exhibit: https://moaparkotorohanga.wordpress.com/2014/07/08/a-collection-of-moa-feedback-from-trevor-worthy-and-lizzy-perrett/

While I'm not working directly on the simulator for the next while, I am building this 2D tool to represent the moa's species variation; it is *incredibly* helpful to have just set up a system where I can add and edit instances of a broader Moa "class", and I'm looking forward to giving each species its visual character (the main creative liberty I'll be taking is colour coding from grey to brown to communicate which of New Zealand's islands each species populated, as well as their preferred biome (there's 3 main ones: subalpine mountain, wet podocarp forest, dry forest/ lowland)

Moa "collection" project at time of writing.

If this exercise has highlighted anything though, it's just how difficult it is to reduce life's complexities to a single shape that represents a single numeric value. Those who read my last posts may remember that any given moa species' size may have varied over time and with temperature, (generally bigger during ice ages and smaller out of them) along altitude, (generally bigger and bulkier higher up) and just within species based on how they adapted to any given place. Not to mention the relatively massive lady moa.

And since we're only working with what's left of them all - the only intact gizzard samples proving that whole diet theory, and most of the remains we have to work with, are those found in Pyramid Valley in Canterbury (a swamp with surrounding mosaic of vegetation and forest) - who knows how to truly depict what life was like tens of thousands of years ago.

From the Moa book by Quinn Berentson

A very cursed JavaScript "spreadsheet".

So, very long-winded post. I hope you found something interesting within! Something that made you think about nature's craziness maybe. I meant to get across just how much there is to scientific communication, and I barely touched on how I aim to keep the overall narrative in focus (or basically be aware of it.)

I can't wait to work on this more collaboratively, with folks who really know their stuff about ecology and the cultural aspects of Aotearoa - I think the potential for collaboration and education is what's keeping me going with this project.

Until next time ! - here's some of my highlights from a trip to the Zealandia ecosanctuary.

Kia hora te marino

Kia whakapapa pounamu te moana

Hei huarahi mā tātou i te rangi nei

Aroha atu, aroha mai

Tātou i a tātou katoa

Hui e! Tāiki e!

May peace be widespread

May the sea be like greenstone

A pathway for us all this day

Let us show respect for each other

For one another

Bind us all together!

[variousqueerthings]

Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never ever eat pears!

WE DID IT! WE WATCHED ALL OF M*FFAT WHO (twice)! WE RATED ALL OF IT! WE FOUND SOME OF ITS VERY BRIGHT SPOTS! WE HAD FUN KVETCHING WHEN IT WAS BAD!

had a good time, yeah. I'll probably do a wrap-up post that takes a look at all the ratings and how they developed through the seasons, but overall woo! fun

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 2/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored, or given agency to her emotional interiority): 2/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 4/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 8/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 2/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 7/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 3/10

isn’t trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 9/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 6/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 5/10

FULL RATING: 48/100 (if I can count….)

Oh m*ffat. here at the end of all things (wrong reference) we return to tried and true standard, and by that I mean... a mess

OBJECTIFICATION: *sobs* I'M SORRY WILLIAM HARTNELL I'M SORRY HE'D DO YOU DIRTY LIKE THAT! I listed all the hamfisted casually sexist comments One says over the course of the episode, let's look at them

comment about how it'd be weird for the Twelfth Doctor to be a nurse, because he's a man

joke about how he misses Polly because she was good at dusting

another joke about women spring cleaning, aimed at Bill

"aren't all women made of glass in a way"

comment about having some experience with the "fairer sex" again aimed at Bill

also at Bill: "any more language like that you’re in for a smacked bottom"

a throwaway comment that Bill should be the person acting as caregiver to the random WWI soldier

a throwaway comment about not wanting to repeat himself about the smacked bottom

so that's a solid eight that run through a good part of the episode. lot of people have written about why this was bad, so I'll just say for this rating, honestly the gall specifically of m*ffat to talk about sexism of the past, when his era was taken to fucking task for that exact issue

PLOT-POINT: Bill is definitely Bill, because she has all of Bill's memories you see, and what are people but an amalgamation of memories, don't ask questions about where the Bill-with-Heather went... so Bill is dead I guess? (fuck off, she's with Heather, or maybe they had a dyke-drama falling out for a bit and they're travelling separately whatever floats your boat -- according to the giggle, her consciousness is alive and out there so!)

I note how much this episode functions for very similar purposes to Heaven Sent, but we'll get to thaaaaaat. but for one the companion is (basically) dead and functions solely for the Doctor's development in a way that feels like it wants to give a shoutout to the companion, but instead reads to me as the companion only matters for the sake of the doctor's development and not for their own story

COMPLEXITY: I like that this episode is fundamentally not about some terrible evil coming for the Doctor. there is no evil plan. I find it misses the mark on what the plan is, because it's a rehash of the idea of a big database, which m*ffat has done several time, and doesn't in any way interact with that in a way that recontextualises this idea, so clearly it wasn't an intentional callback to idk. do anything interesting with any of m*ffat's own ideas

I'm also (and yes yes I know I'm probably an outlier here) not a fan of the use of the Armistice for this plot -- which I go into down in politics, but the tl;dr is that the Armistice isn't plot so much as backdrop and politically suspect for the British tendency to completely erase why we still talk about WWI, but I shan't rehash (yes I do write these points out of order, as was probably obvious before)

and then, shocker, I also don't enjoy what this story did to Bill. I mean WEAT + Doctor Falls were messy benches in terms of Bill, but she was cool in them, and she was a character, and she did have a happy end, but this story is... hmmm

you know what this story is? basically Heaven Sent Pt.2 but less interesting or experimental, and the thing I disliked about Heaven Sent -- (gorgeous episode, beautifully acted, set, shot, Rachel Talalay who also directed this one is a fantastic director and this one looks good too, it's just... a not-very-good-script so what can she do?)

(sidenote: best artistic newness to come out of this era of who is Rachel Talalay, so happy she also directed for the specials, hope she continues on!) --

BUT the thing I disliked about Heaven Sent was that Clara was a non-entity. the idea of grief as a character just there to ask you questions, the sort of... retro-DW where companions suffered sometimes for not getting to do things other than prop up the Doctor (RIP Sarah-Jane's journalism career in her original run)... for an episode ostensibly going "ohhh look how sexist DW used to be," it sure did accidentally recreate one of the core issues with classic!who and undo m*ffat's own lore for Bill... one episode later???

ignore ignore ignoreeee.

the Doctor is once more talking with themself (and rusty and testimony) about themself, and fake!Bill is just there to help that monologue without saying anything about who Bill was

but yeah, this episode feels like a mix of m*ffat episode reduxes to me in construction, with Mark Gatiss thrown in there for... idk. something. he's not a bad actor in this, but it goes back to some feelings I have about the Armistice "plot" (see below)

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: the Doctor regenerates! pretty big one. the other big thing is that the Doctor gets their memories of Clara back. (I've gotta be honest I was confused about the not remembering Clara stuff from the 9th season, but I'll rewatch it at some point and know a bit more about where it's going. m*ffat was never very good at clarity imo)

and that! is in fact it. actually, wait, kay, a little unfair, because I kind of like the idea of an era ending on a quieter character analysis and this episode is that in terms of the Time War and the War Doctor and all those titles that the Doctor gets (several of them... during m*ffat era + did anyone use "the imp of the pandorica" in that actual season??? but they mention the Valeyard and the Oncoming Storm too), I like that this episode parks all of that and says "and actually the point is that the Doctor tries to help everyone no matter how bad things get, including in war"

so a big lore Thing is that these ideas that have haunted this era of who are at their end. a new set of ideas are coming. I think that is quite good: "The universe generally fails to be a fairytale. But that’s where we come in"

also I've been bad at acknowledging the music of this era, but did they just fuckn bring back doomsday and the tenth doctor's final song, sung by the ood into this episode???!!! HALP!!!! it does make an explicit connection between the tenth doctor's story all the way through to this point!

COMPANIONS MATTER: lol nope. gooosh I hated the wait, hold on finding my notes: "A life is just memories, I am all her memories, so I’m her." M*FFAT SHE'S ALLEGEDLY NOT EVEN DEAD WHY IS SHE SUDDENLY DEAD???!!!!! THIS NONSENSE! peak "I can still hear her voice" nonsense

non

sense

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: I mean, I can forgive a finale episode for being all about the Doctor, especially an era finale episode, but I do draw the line at the first doctor just existing to make m*ffat-era look good. I draw it! I am drawing it! gosh this has affected so many of the points lol

but yeah, the line about the fairytale again. I like that. I like Bill hugging the first doctor (out of the context of how the first doctor was written). there's a few lines here and there that go a tad too hard on "you're the only thing keeping all the universe in check" but it's not egregious like, say, s6 and s7 were about that

the Doctor deserves a monologue whilst regenerating. as a Treat

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: I have a sneaking suspicion that this episode is one of the Main Reasons I made this exact point, because of course this is the episode where we've already mentioned that the first doctor gets SLANDERED!!!! ooh I'd be tempted to rate this one even lower for this, because it not only is terrible from a "what is this saying from a meta perspective and how does it let audience members and modern British society (and m*ffat) off the hook for the very real issues with misogyny we face today"

but in terms of this particular Point on the rating system, the general use of first doctor in this story attempts to have the first doctor interact with what is going on with the twelfth doctor and how the character has developed. while I like the idea of the first doctor briefly getting an insight into their future (and then, presumably, forgetting as is general doctor who canon), the main reason for the first doctor being there is soooo self-indulgent in a bad way

(I say, the things I like are ofc self-indulgent in a good way, but argh, m*ffat should never have been allowed to get his sticky fingers on this show, or indeed, any show)

I dislike the first doctor being rewritten to fear regeneration, because it just seems like an excuse to talk about how the twelfth doctor has mixed feelings about their regeneration. it's the same reason there's a bill potts type character, that clara shows up, heck it's the same reason they depict the armistice (we'll get to that down in politics), it's weak writing of characters who aren't the twelfth doctor in order to prop up how interesting the twelfth doctor is

why bring in the first doctor like that if you weren't going to do anything interesting with him, and for that matter, if you weren't, and it was just to have a bit of fun (fair okay, that is fair, see self-indulgent point above) then why was your take on the first doctor -- the character you're bringing in for this extra special appearance -- written so disrespectfully of the character??

how many times has m*ffat brought a popular character back just to fuck with what made them likeable in the first place and flatten them into the most surface-level version of their traits (when not just wholesale inventing terrible new ones): three times?

we do get some fun moments calling back to previous doctors but the big Thing just shows once and for all that m*ffat fundamentally didn't get a lot of the show he was supposedly such a big fan of. he liked the fanfare and the big plots, but the in-depth affection for the ethos of it just wasn't there for the most part

“SEXINESS”: I marked this down a point because I do not see any reason why Bill would bring up professor/student dynamics -- it does get immediately joked away, so it's not egregious in the way it might have been back in s5 or s6. but we do have a System, so it gets mentioned

I mention here that this point definitely got better after s7a, pretty consistently so

INTERNAL WORLD: okidoki, locations locations. Antarctica, no qualms there, that is icy. second location Testimony's ship... is a rehash of Gomez!Master back in s8 which itself was a rehash of the Library in s4. What is the greatest datebase m*ffat!!??? third location is Villengard, callback! um... is it another database, wait. I genuinely am unclear about some of this. I think Rusty just happens to have access to Testimony. but also the Doctor says that the Daleks have the greatest database. so what is the truth m*ffat why so many databases!!!???

Rusty's just vibing, I guess that's fine. fourth location Armistice day WWI. I have opinions on this down in politics, but I guess yeah, there's trenches, there's... no wait does this fit here who knows but those were definitely not Germans. I'm not rating it down for that, I just think it's funny. no germans in the trenches, just british guys with bad accents

not mentioning Tardis because always perfect in every iteration *MWUAH!* to all the Tardis

I guess the question is... do all these locations connect thematically? narratively? I guess? I know hbomberguy didn't like the plottwist that there was no evil plot, but actually I'm fine with that. it's... very loosy-goosy in construction but listen I've been rating m*ffat for a few months now, and a DW fan for a lot longer than that... loosy-goosy is not a dealbreaker for me. sure they're on Villengard now, Rusty the Dalek is there. why not? although it does show how m*ffat runs soooo hard on nostalgia and easter eggs, rather than doing something new a lot of the time... peak this episode

I do agree with his general points that this era (the m*ffat era) keeps throwing in weighty speeches and big Reveals with absolutely no proper build-up or ongoing context, and that is true, but I don't think this episode is the worst for that, it's just very noticeable because it's the last one

BUT... I can see the thread from s8 to here, I can see it. from not knowing why that face to now, I can see it. sometimes it is very difficult to find, but there's something there, and Rusty to me exemplifies that. I get it, I get what you're doing here (I think you should have been more than a cameo perhaps, but I can see it and while it's a larger m*ffat writing Problem I'm strangely more chill about it right now idk. it's the end. feeling chill)

"You are a good Dalek" never sat right with me though, if I'm being honest, but again... I can see what it's trying to do

POLITICS: IT'S WWI! and we're about to have the Christmas Armistice, a famous moment in time when the soldiers put down their arms on both sides and played football on Christmas eve. it's a moment in time that evokes a lot of understandable emotion and I understand it being used here

SO NOW I'M ABOUT TO BE A FILTHY NAYSAYER:

am I being a buzzkill if I say I wasn't sold on it being used here? it's guaranteed to evoke emotions, and so it doesn't need to actually be about anything in a narrative sense. yes it saves Lethbridge-Stewart sr's life, but what I mean is that the armistice itself isn't the story and I think it should have been if it were being used, and not just function as metaphor/backdrop for something else

so what is it doing here? two things, I'd argue:

another excuse to give the Doctor a Great Big Speech, and I wasn't a fan of it: "Never happened again. Any war. Anywhere." really? the factors that went into this particular war, where the soldiers involved were at least partly aware that they were being used as political pawns fed into a meat grinder never came up again in history? nobody ever refused for a second, sat down with people they'd been told to consider enemies, never in some small way objected to the fighting and the propaganda and the violence? not once, Doctor Who? It's just kind of a poor understanding to me of why the Armistice matters as a piece of history that could be a beautiful story in the world of Who, but instead feels akin to how England fetishises the red poppies. war becomes a sort of poetic necessity, and the Armistice was beautiful and then the war continued. Family of Blood did this better when it just out and out said that it was all bullshit and people died for nothing. the Christmas Armistice wasn't important because people learnt to get along for a second, it was important because it highlighted how stupid and pointless the whole thing was

there as a backdrop to the Doctor's development as The War Doctor and wanting to not be defined by that as they move into the next era of the tale, and that is technically fine, I liked that as its own story, but again, not so much about the Armistice itself. this could have been done with another story, why the Armistice, beyond the fact it's a Christmas episode and this happened at Christmas -- all this aside, there is also a general thing with especially m*ffat-era and soldiers. I'd have to track it, but it feels like there's a lot of stories about soldiers, about the Doctor as a soldier, that aren't necessarily about why war is... bad. why the culture that breeds and celebrates war is bad. some of them I think do actually do this (especially, interestingly, in s8 which I felt was very hit or miss), again, I'd have to check, but many of them just use soldiers as random characters because it seems to be a character Type that m*ffat era enjoys

that being said, I like the idea of the Doctor wanting to redefine themself as not the War Doctor or specifically the War Doctor meaning wanting to help just one person live if possible, no matter how bad the situation. I like that as a central thesis for Twelve's era, rounding out the narrative about the Time War

next up is the sexism... sigh, okay we covered it, but it's a mark down, because of how it lets m*ffat (and by extension the viewers) off the hook of examining everything that happens today, including on the show. bastard behaviour

FULL RATING: 48/100 (if I can count….)

gosh where to begin?

m*ffat you and I are not friends, do not pass go, head to jail for six years of messing up my favourite show. that being said, some of this story was good. a lot of the artists involved in making it gave it traits that mean that on this watch, free from the need for things to work, I could focus in on what did work without nostalgia keeping me down

I do feel like this episode is like m*ffat doing a last big "fck you" at people who thought there was real potential in this last season, like all the genderbending regeneration, having a black lesbian as our co-lead who actually feels very involved in individual plots, couldn't quite get rid of all the reasons m*ffat just... kind of sucks as a creator

is that our final statement on six seasons of doctor who? hmmm, doesn't feel so satisfying to me. I'll write out a proper thing about where I left it after all this I think, to get my feelings out properly

to narrow it in on capaldi: you were a great doctor, truly put in the work to elevate the show

gomez is iconic as the master (genuinely I think my favourite next to delgado), pearl mackie stole the show in the one season she was in and I desperately want some bill potts audio adventures, rachel talalay is a great director, and I enjoyed myself

the end

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