#and some actual logical deduction

[ask-artsy-oncie]

I was reminded of the time that tumblr tried to make "monster high but with tumblr sexymen", and one of the characters was (obviously) the daughter of the once-ler.

And the funny thing to me about that is that in the canon of the illumination lorax movie, the once-ler is heavily implied to have an estranged daughter. I don't know all the sexymen off the top of my head but I think he might've been one of the only ones referenced in that trend who actually had a daughter in his own canon.

[elizabethrobertajones]

summer scions!! I absolutely love the new portraits for all their smug happy expressions. Except Y'shtola, who is not going to deign to give a camera a proper saucy look because that's silly. Urianger is smirking twice as hard on her behalf.

Glam review under the cut!

I unlocked Alphinaud first of the twins and didn't know Alisaie had a little necktie yet, so I'm deducting a point from my first impression because the sheer delight that he had a silly little necktie of some sort no matter the situation delighted me so thoroughly. Since they're still engaging in matchy twin dressing to some degree, I have to assume they either like it and won't admit it after digging in so hard, or Ameliance sent them off with cute outfits and matching backpacks, and they still don't really shop for themselves.

He's got the practical watch/compass gloves which are good for a technically proficient Sage and probably the most practical gear he's ever worn except for when he was poncho Alphy, but wearing ankle-length jeans seem like the least weather-appropriate choice of the Scions if we assume their average skin coverage is a good weathervane for the temperature in Tural. I chalk it up to teenage awkwardness.

8/10 unless he and Alisaie chose their outfits themselves, in which case it's a 9/10

I think Alisaie is the only Scion to keep a single piece of their default gear, and those are her usual gloves. She's colour-matched around it.

Because of the gloves and boots, she looks the most ready for hardcore hiking, somehow, and her matching Alphinaud with a cute button down shirt with rolled up sleeves along with that particular choice of baggier shorts (when she normally wears more form fitting shorts) do give me the closest to butch vibes it's probably likely to get for main characters. So I'm giving her an extra point I stole from Alphinaud for the lesbian vibes.

9/10 or 10/10 if she made these choices all by herself.

Everything about this cracks me up, from his portrait above to the image of him tanking open shirted once he pulls mobs.

Believe it or not, he's getting an additional point for those shoes simply because the competition in practicality in tanking is G'raha.

I had a moment of excitement when I thought the necklace was pink because that's always a cute Ryne/Minfillia thing fanartists give him with ribbons and such, but once I got zoomed in on him it was red, so I guess he's just been shopping. Although, the turquoise shorts are her eye colour and the actual large diamond shapes are secretly Mothercrystal coded in those colours, which just cracks me up that you can pick out one of the worse days of his life (Urianger's grand Warrior of Darkness plan) in his Chill Summer Beach Vibes look.

Douchebag beach bro shell bracelet as well, which really makes me double down on him and Urianger spending way too much on tourist bait along the stalls in the Famous Turali Market. The hat and sunglasses are giving him one of the Most tourist-y looks thematically reflecting how a lot of the Scion guys were just here to hang out, narratively or literally. Maybe he's trying not to get such an intense tan again, which is the only reason he's not entirely topless.

11/10 I could not stop laughing when I got him and Urianger to 100 and Beheld The Brilliance in the same moment.

Please note the raised sunglasses in Urianger's portrait, which are not the model his character uses.

I am delighted that I had been incorporating that island watch into my healer glams on both the logic you need to know your clock positionals but also they're largely the smarty pants jobs (WHM being vibes only aside - it gets its own glams :P). And here's Urianger and Alphinaud both using watches.

Now, I had a moment of being vaguely disappointed he had trousers not a skirt or something else swishy and androgynous, but then I did realise that I, a nonbinary weirdo who relates to Urianger since he made me nonbinary, have actually gone to a couple of garden parties dressed in some variation of this exact outfit of light trousers and a nice button up. Plus, the earrings are in both ears, so no "Google, which ear is the gay one?", these are just straight up cute femme dangly earrings with his favourite little dudes on.

More importantly, the colours he's repping are those of Lopporit Radio. He probably tunes in every night for his broadcasts :')

Mirrored sunglasses for the guy notorious for keeping thoughts and plans close to his chest and choosing deliberately to be enigmatic even when it serves zero purpose except for I guess gender affirming care. (The gender is Weird Bitch.)

I can't tell how I feel about those dad sandals. I suppose it depends if he's wearing them like a fashion model (brand new and clean with perfect pedicured feet) or if those are REALLY dad at the beach-like and, since I'm not a foot person, this for me is only a choice between "not off-putting" and "AURGH".

9/10 the proximity to Thancred hauls him up several points of misgivings I had, and the lopporit shout outs are killing me :')

I unlocked Y'shtola last and holy fuck I am a lesbian. I don't even recognise where those boots come from, so either a really expensive glam or something I just have not stumbled on. She has toe rings I think? And painted nails? I have no idea if the garter (?) is part of the boots glam or a custom thing as result of not recognising the boots and how much of them is normal. I feel like they customised a lot on her anyway - the back of her top has purple beads that match her staff (not dyable on the real piece)

and I think the necklace has to be part of the top instead of a separate necklace piece with the way it hangs, AND the bracelets are a glove piece with the original summer glam, but I assume they're layered with the false nails, also in the glove slot. All in all it's giving the sort of effort which is starting to creep up to what I'd expect from the modding community not the game. I mean, not THAT good but getting close. Baby steps towards what fandom can make :P

She really is god's favourite meow meow.

Anyway I can't really judge this fairly because it's really hot and I love her so I'm just going to give it 100/10 and move on. :)

how did I get a picture where Estinien looks like he's stooping to get in the frame...

The fact he has Azure Dragoon Blue Top and then Violently Nidhogg Fuchsia shorts is the colour theory that absolutely killed me. When he lights up during his burst and starts glowing pink all over his shorts are like. Taking him over like the eye once did I think.

love a guy who can embrace his past trauma and dress to match all that has passed before and all that he intends to do now (kill something large and tasty, grill it on the beach, fall asleep with a beer in hand until the waves come in and wake him up).

I gave him that wooden bracelet in the glam he has on my desktop screen so once again I'm feeling weirdly vindicated.

Other details: no ponytail despite the warm weather because he's got enough ventilation. The fact there's cactaurs on his shirt when he's on record for eating them is amazing. We should imagine he's wearing his jobstone like that pendant (since he's one of the only guys with a confirmed jobstone despite being the Guy Without A Job notoriously that one time.)

Unlike Thancred's hat and sunglasses combo, which seems fun and boisterous somehow, he seems the most walled off of all the sunglasses wearers even though he's not the most mysterious. The visor really helps make it a sort of wall. Maybe just because his terse upfront personality and somehow despite his clothes horse habits THIS amount of whimsy seems the most out of character at first glance, but he DOES look uncomfortable to me.

Somehow I find everything about this outfit excellent for his character but also like maybe he was forced into it, everyone cornering him and telling him the Scion Beach Party was a mandatory work event and he was not allowed to beg off of it and he did put some work in expressing himself but also is going to go find a much quieter corner to lurk in for the day, when not competing with Thancred (can't grill, loves it) for the barbeque (Estinien can grill, would only do it because the threat of Thancred doing it wrong is too high).

confused 7/10 mostly because I think Krile is blackmailing him and not because I don't love everything about this.

Here's how G'reenha Tia can still win -

Anyway here's the deducted point for tanking in flip flops (PERFECTLY acceptable BLM gear btw but he's Mr Versatile.)

(I joke but the main character of my novels is a flip-flop wearing menace who could and would tank in them)

Between the padlock and key necklace and the woven bracelet right after we all went feral over the Thavnarian bracelets for couples thing so recently (and Corvos is just across the water!) he's absolutely dripping cutie pie love interest coding yet again.

(Also yes I know the lock and key thing is very funny because we were introduced to him learning he was a fancy key to a big door.)

Gains a point back because the other green g'raha thing is I'm pretty sure people use this shirt glam because it kinda looks like it has weed on it.

Don't quote me on that, vibes only.

Anyway he came colour coordinated (with his original eye colour and hair colour not the bright Allagan dalamud red dye that goes with his normal outfit) so so precise and neat, like he's going to some sort of formal event, and even with flip flops he really does seem incredibly put together like the twins or Y'shtola, just for full outfit cohesiveness.

As someone who would hold G'raha's hand on the romantic gondola vibe, 10/10.

3 out of 10 and a huge cringe if you would not. He's got to stop Striving.

Hey it's the star of the show!! Adorable hairstyle out, cute plot-important earring on, and wearing her exact character colours but adorable beach wear :)

I love that she looks kind of like she went to the girls for advice and got the top from Y'shtola and the shorts from Alisaie, and she probably was very serious and stressed about getting this right even though there's no rules and no one's judging her -

oops.

Anyway the ballet shoes are adorable and go with all the cute picto spins and twirls :)

I think the strict colour scheme does speak to the slight lack of fleshing out she got so far in the story (we don't really have any real character reason that picto in particular spoke to her and this glam isn't one of the many fun takes people had on how to dress to meet that brief ). I don't think DT did more than just repeat that she's serious and sweet and trying really hard to get out of her shell and be more fun and creative and also she's been practicing dodging really hard she shouts mid-Trust combat (bless her). But ALSO getting out of the shell is really hard and she only found out everything and got some closure in the final level 100 quests so there wasn't really much to do with her after that.

This is like her First Non-Plot-Critical Whimsy Moment and losing the hood or any cat ears entirely (and there are perfectly functional cat ears to wear in game) is a good step considering we know she wears it precisely because she needed a sort of advance PR campaign to make her look cute and approachable before she opened her mouth and started bringing down the vibe (serious scary children are SO funny though and i love that for her). Having the same top as Y'shtola is a good thing for trying to make her less childish and have her trying to show that now as she takes this huge step out from the background. I mean, it still has a slight sense of her costuming herself and pushing herself out of comfort zones as she always does, but it's 100% in character so I adore it.

1000/10 because Krile is great and there's so much going on here and it's so fun when a character's whole personality is a costume and then they're like aurgh wait do I even want that??

[erose-this-name]

Kabru is such a brilliantly written character, one of the best in Dungeon Meshi (which is a high bar as it is, most of the main cast are similarly genius). 

His thing is that he is very friendly and nice confident and maxed out his charisma stat, but is also kinda ambitious and manipulative. But not in an overtly malicious way. Which kinda scares me.

The most impressive thing about him, writing wise, is that it’s all show-don’t-tell. He very frequently uses his charm and empathy and understanding of how people think in really clever ways.

We’re often walked through his thought process of how he does these social deductions. We’re never told he’s scarily charismatic, besides other characters reacting to him being scarily charismatic.

Kabru is a natural-born leader and social engineer with superlative skills in both, which makes him the perfect foil for Laios, who’s too autistic and unambitious that he’s not even the de facto leader of his own party that he’s the official leader of. He’s so bad at leadership that his party just, sort of, doesn’t have a leader. They just kinda argue and do stuff.

What’s also neat, and perfectly inline with Meshi’s general theme of clever and logical subversions of fantasy tropes, is that Kabru’s character design in no way clues us in on this fundamental character trait of his.

He’s sort of a human fighter / knight archetype, which in the language of fantasy RPGs is a class most would associate with being a white bread jock, chivalrousness optional.

(Laios subverts the same trope in the same way. It’s really funny that the walking exposition dump of the group looks like the character creator default preset spec’d as the most generic class available.)

If Kabru was a bard or noble and Laios a wizard, their character traits would be far less interesting

Even better is that we would expect someone who looks like Laios to have Kabru’s personality, and vice versa. Their character designs are flipped; the confident super charismatic leader is a short wide-eyed twink, while the slightly naive and very autistic monster enthusiast is a tall conventionally attractive Aryan lookin’ mf.

(see what I mean by Kabru being such a good foil for Laios?? No wonder everyone ships them, they’re perfect for each other!)

Yet, their designs also work for them. Kabru just has a face that’s easy to talk to, his piercing blue eyes and curly hair gives him a false sense of naïveté, while his iconic 👁️👁️ expression hints that there’s actually quite a bit going on inside his head. Meanwhile, Laios believably looks like someone who doesn’t know what hair conditioner is. His armor’s collar gorget thing is also pretty dorky.

You can’t trust people like that (I mean overly charismatic people with a manipulative streak, not blue-eyed twinks) because you can’t know what their real motives are. You can’t know they aren’t pretending, you can’t know they aren’t trying to or haven’t already manipulated you. How could you? When he has so much more social intelligence than you do, average socially awkward Tumblr user? He’s touched all the grass!

In episode 16 (spoilers, btw) Kabru finally meets Laios’s party, who he’s been trying to find and fight for the better part of the season, and he just decides that no confrontation is necessary. Like, immediately upon meeting the guy. Just from how Laios looked at him. He figures that since Laios didn’t seem to recognize him, they either have never met meaning he has the wrong guy, or Laios forgot meaning he didn’t think it’d be a big deal, meaning the treasure was a trap or something. Which is pretty in line with Kabru’s established ability to always roll nat 20s for every charisma and deductive reasoning check, so cool.

But he doesn’t even seem curious about which of those cases is true. (He might be interested to find out some of the treasure wasn’t dangerous, but accidentally got thrown off a bridge). Much to Rin’s dismay, he’d rather just not bring it up because that could upset the leader of the party he might be working with for the foreseeable future.

Actions speak louder than words. So, all we really learn in this scene is that Kabru’s goals and M.O. can change on a dime, and that he values reputation and political capital more than money and vengeance. More than his own party’s desire for those things. Not only is he someone with a silver tongue, but he knows its value and is determined to use it at every opportunity.

Kabru and his party might not be very good at fighting or surviving in the dungeon, in fact their frequent TPKs are a running gag. But, he also doesn’t need to be when he can just manipulate Laios’ and Shuro’s much more proficient parties into helping him.

So far, Kabru seems like the most likely one to become king of the dungeon or whatever the mcguffin is. He is the only protagonist so far who has said that’s an actual goal of his. He’s said that he doesn’t think someone like Laios who isn’t a born leader should get it.

In fact, Kabru seems to have very strong opinions on what kinds of people should be allowed to adventure in the dungeon, evidenced by the fact that he murdered an entire party over it, justified or not. Kabru seems to think that Kabru is such a leader, and he’s probably right about that, but what kind of leader? 

What would Kabru do with that kind of power if he gets it? Because I’m not sure. All I know is that he is the kind of person with the ability to use real political power to its full potential. For good, or for very, very bad.

I’m not saying that Kabru is evil or that he’s secretly gonna be the surprise villain. I dunno, I haven’t read the manga. He could just be a nice guy that’s just, like, is like that. Everything he’s done could be justified by the explanations he’s given. He actually reminds me a lot of one of my IRL friends, and I’d trust him with my life.

But, I can’t help but feel a distinct sense of unease whenever he’s on-screen. I try not to trust confident natural-born leaders like him right out of the gate. I don’t like that our instinct as humans is to blindly follow them without thinking about it.

Tyrants and psychopaths also use confidence and charm and a friendly demeanor to make people think they’re a good guy, while manipulating everyone into thinking their self-serving actions are altruistic. Benevolent, confident, skilled leaders do exist. But there exists many more snakes wearing their skin. Wolves rarely bother with sheep’s clothing, they dress as shepherds and sheepdogs.

Anyway, my point is that I think it’s kinda neat that it’s possible to overthink this much about a character whose probably just a nice guy that is the mirror opposite of an autistic person. Writing that kind of ambiguity is hard, and employing it in this way is inspired.

[homunculus-argument]

I know everyone's already sick of the Reading Comprehension Website -discourse, but sometimes I wonder whether some folks here have basic deduction skills or comprehension about how anything works. Like any rudimentary ability to see something that doesn't seem to make sense and think "well that can't be right - what alternative interpretation could there be that would be more compatible with my understanding of the world?"

And I don't even mean the ones who are clearly going out of their way to misinterpret other people in order to call them idiots and to pick a pointless fight. I can understand the logic of that. I mean the ones who are peaceful, who clearly aren't doing this as a deliberate thing. Like when you see a post on Tumblr going "the average bus around here has about 40 feet in frame" and there's someone in the tags quietly commenting like

#wow that's really interesting actually :0 #where I'm from buses don't have feet at all #they all have wheels!

[thankskenpenders]

Amy's fortune cards

The Sonic fandom has long been the kind of fandom that takes minor details very seriously, for better or worse. On the one hand, this means fans will really dig for the diamonds in the rough, latching onto fun character interactions, animations, bits of background worldbuilding, and more in pieces of Sonic media that many would write off as "the bad ones." But it also feels like every week another needlessly hostile debate over Sonic minutia erupts on Twitter, whether it's over individual lines of dialogue, fanart that makes Tails' shoes blue, or the ideal length and volume for Sonic's quills.

So it was probably inevitable that a fandom-wide debate would erupt upon seeing Amy's new gameplay style in the DLC for Sonic Frontiers, which takes the once-obscure fact that she enjoys reading tarot and shines a spotlight on it like never before.

I mean:

The thing is, while I basically always try to tune out Sonic fandom bickering... for once, I kind of sympathize with the detractors? Don't get me wrong, I like Amy's tarot stuff, and people on all sides of the discussion are being overly nasty about their opinions, as usual. (Sonic Twitter remains my personal hell.) But when I set aside the hyperbole and zoom out, I do think I understand why some fans are put off by the sudden shift in focus for the character, even if I think it's cool.

It's complicated. Let me attempt to present the cases for and against Amy's fortune cards

For years, I was always one of those fans who thought it could be fun if they played with Amy's tarot reading, or even leaned into some kind of magic with her. Part of that is my own biases showing, but there's just something that makes sense there, especially when you look at Sonic, Tails, and Amy as a trio. (I would argue that's the real "Team Sonic" these days, especially in the comics where Knuckles is more likely to be stuck on Angel Island or otherwise doing his own thing.)

You could argue that Tails is all about logic, relying on science and technology and deductive reasoning to solve problems. But Amy is all about emotion. She wears her heart on her sleeve, is extremely empathetic, and is very prone to magical thinking - both figuratively and sometimes literally. Her origin story has always been that her tarot cards told her it was her destiny to meet Sonic on Little Planet. She's claimed to be able to "sense" peoples' presences - particularly Sonic's. She's the type to believe that The Power of Love is a literal magical force. So, on some level, it makes sense to mirror Tails's science by having Sonic's other best friend believe in magic. And then Sonic is somewhere in the middle, primarily following his own gut instincts but taking advice from both of them as needed. This isn't totally accurate to how their dynamics actually function in canon stories, but I think it's a mode that could work for them.

Going off of that, it's fun to lean all the way into Amy being a magical girl, or even a witch, using her fortune telling as a foundation. Take, for example, this version of Amy from Diana Skelly's old Sonic cast redesigns from before she freelanced for Archie and IDW. This is one of MANY such redesigns for Amy.

Fast forward to the 2020s, and Amy's tarot cards are, in fact, finally getting brought up again in canon. Which is fun! I like seeing that. I like all of the individual stories involving Amy's fortune cards. This is a fun character trait for Amy, a fun nod to old lore, AND a fun storytelling device, all in one. It's really cool that the Sonic universe has its own thematically appropriate arcana, and that the cards are getting made as physical merch. And sure enough, the official card backs and borders were designed by none other than Diana Skelly, in yet another cool example of an ascendant fan leaving their mark on the series.

BUT... when you step back and look at the big picture, I get why some fans find this shift in focus jarring. At the moment, it's starting to feel like every new story about Amy involves her fortune cards to some degree.

The most recent mainline comic arc to feature Amy as the lead character, 2021's Trial by Fire arc, prominently features a sequence where she reads fortunes while camping with the girls. The Origins version of Sonic CD now bookends the game with scenes of Amy and her tarot cards. Sonic randomly mentioned it in a scene in Frontiers. And now, just this week, we got the (very cute, gorgeously illustrated) Amy's 30th Anniversary comic with a story revolving around Amy's tarot cards, followed the very next day by the Frontiers DLC in which she gets a brand new tarot-based moveset. Even her base melee attack now has her throwing tarot cards instead of swinging her hammer. Again, I like all of these individual things, but after years of it almost never coming up at all, it's VERY noticeable that Amy's tarot cards are suddenly everywhere.

To be fair, I'm looking at this from the perspective of a superfan who's actively following ALL Sonic media. Casual fans - especially kids - aren't necessarily going to be reading the comics every month, buying the thousandth rerelease of the Genesis games, or playing the ultra-hard new alternate ending DLC for a game that came out last year. Each of these stories is going to be someone's introduction to the idea that Amy can read tarot, and that's probably part of the idea behind this unified push.

But to play devil's advocate, for my fellow superfans, I understand why it feels like a very minor footnote of Amy's character is suddenly becoming the entire focus of her personality. While Amy has always been said to enjoy fortune telling, that wasn't really a character trait in and of itself, but rather an example of her being a typical girl who hopes she'll be able to find true love one day. It's less that Amy can literally predict the future and more like her using a cootie catcher or going "he loves me, he loves me not" while picking the petals off of a flower. So I get not vibing with this stuff, or feeling like it's being pushed very hard out of nowhere.

What I don't agree with are comparisons like "it's like if they made Knuckles' moveset revolve around him liking grapes." Like, I get it. Ian Flynn loves shoehorning in his little winking references for us nerds, and mentions of Amy's tarot cards were previously on the same level as other random bullet points from old Japanese manuals. But a multifaceted hobby like fortune telling that opens up so many narrative and aesthetic possibilities is obviously very different from having a favorite food. It's ALWAYS been a part of her story, not just a random fact, and there's no reason why the fortune telling can't be elevated to something more.

And, hell, even if it wasn't an established character trait, there's nothing inherently wrong with injecting new ideas into a character. One of the best Amy stories in recent years, the Free Comic Book Day special "Amy's New Hobby" written by Gale Galligan, came up with the idea that Amy's secretly been drawing little comics about her and her friends. Is this based on Lore? No. But it's cute, and helps tell the story of a younger Amy who's still coming out of her shell as both a hero and a friend.

Certain fans are also looking at Amy's Frontiers moveset and using it as evidence that once again the Vile American Contributors like Ian are CORRUPTING Sonic Team's perfect vision of Sonic with their misinterpretations. And like. Come on. Ian does not control the gameplay. He's a freelance writer. The tarot stuff is clearly something that Sonic Team likes if they made it the basis of Amy's new moveset - and, you know, if they keep approving comics and animations about Amy's fortune telling. None of this gets made without their blessing, and lord knows how much they can micromanage shit and shoot down ideas over the most minor of details.

Like, yeah, Amy's fortune telling was probably conceived less as a sign that she Knows Magic and more as a pretty mundane hobby for a lovesick young Japanese girl to have. But you're gonna sit there and tell me that using Amy's tarot cards for more than that could only be the result of a cultural misunderstanding? That nobody in Japan uses tarot card theming and aesthetics (or the general idea of magical cards) for the cool factor? Stardust Crusaders? Persona? The Astrologian class in FFXIV? Cardcaptor Sakura?? Hello??? Do you think Capcom put Gambit in Marvel vs. Capcom ironically because they thought using magic to throw cards at people was stupid? There's tons of precedent for this! It's nothing like Knuckles throwing grapes at people, be for real.

Giving Amy a very magical girl-esque moveset also just makes a lot of sense. For decades her hammer attacks have literally made sparkly heart shapes appear around her. Leaning into both that and her tarot cards in her new moveset makes a lot of sense to me.

But, admittedly... I do think it's very odd that her hammer is treated as a secondary element here, rather than having her primarily use her hammer and adding the cards for extra flair. If hitting the attack button made her swing her hammer instead of throwing cards, I'm not sure we'd even be having this discussion right now.

But the tarot-cycle and Amy riding her hammer like a witch's broom are fucking SICK and I will not concede on this point

The thing is, this whole fortune card discourse is but a small piece of a bigger problem. Amy's been a character who needed some work for ages, but there's basically nothing you can do with her without pissing SOMEONE off.

Years of stories where Amy's crush was her primary motivator and Sonic went "Ew, cooties!" have lead many casual fans to believe that being Sonic's obsessive fangirl is Amy's entire personality. At best people might call her Sonic's Minnie Mouse. This isn't just a matter of Amy having haters within the fandom - venture outside of that bubble and you'll realize that this is how MOST video game playing people seem to see her to this day. I don't feel like this is a fair assessment of the character, but this idea didn't come from nowhere. No matter how much good deeply entrenched Sonic fans may see in their old dynamic where Amy perpetually chases Sonic, this is a very real problem that Sonic Team has to contend with for their leading girl. Of course all those games where the way-past-cool protagonist thought Amy was annoyingly clingy and tried to get away from her made people think less of her.

If new stories were to go back to emphasizing Amy's crush on Sonic a little more, they'd probably be taken as confirmation that Amy's just the girl with a crush on Sonic and that this is her entire personality. Conversely, when the crush is played down, you piss off the hardcore SonAmy fans who don't seem to understand that they're Charlie Brown and Sega is Lucy holding the football. You can't win.

And so here we are. In the absence of what was once her defining trait, now reduced to an occasional blush or wink in Sonic's direction, new stories are trying to mine Amy's past for additional material to work with. Having been a thing fans wanted to see for years, right now we're getting a lot of tarot, but we're also getting reminders of her compassionate nature and her desire to go out of her way to help the little guy. This is an ongoing process. I continue to hope that her bubbly, exuberant demeanor can shine more in future stories. Now, I also hope that the tarot stuff gets balanced out a little better with other traits of hers. But I don't want it to go away. I think it's fun.

This course correcting is far from exclusive to Amy. Knuckles is getting stories that remind us that he's a competent fighter, an experienced treasure hunter, and even a self-taught archaeologist after years of him being perceived as either the dumb one or just the guy who stands in front of the Master Emerald all day. And Tails has been getting some stories reminding folks that he's a capable hero in his own right and not just Sonic's timid kid sidekick.

But no supporting character will ever compete with the sheer number of new ideas Sega has tried with Sonic himself. Like Amy, his Frontiers moveset has also given him half a dozen new superpowers that he never had before, from the Cyloop to air-slicing projectile attacks to his own take on Shadow Clone Jutsu and beyond. He's also been a hoverboarder, a swordsman, a time traveler, an Olympic athlete, a racecar driver, cursed with a Flame of Judgment, imbued with alien power, a fucking Werehog with stretchy powers, and on and on and on.

If Sonic can do all that, Amy can try out using a tarot-cycle.

Anyway TL;DR the REAL problem with Amy's current characterization... is where the FUCK is Amy's bestie, Honey the Cat???????

[copperbadge]

Hi Sam! I wanted to ask if you feel lately like you've been getting anything positive out of your therapy, because a lot of your initial thoughts about it kind of mirror mine. I'm very logical (except when I'm upset at myself) and very skeptical, so I feel like a therapist either isn't going to tell me anything new, or that I'm going to just disregard it because I can't trick myself into believing things that I just plain don't believe.

But I'm also starting to come to a realization, two years after my ADHD diagnosis and letting go (without therapy!) of most of the executive dysfunction-fueled self worth issues I was having, that I'm kind of Not Okay in other ways. I'm safe —going to work every day and doing my job so I won't lose my livelihood and have never had a self harm urge in my life— But I'm not really okay. I'm having major self esteem issues related to my personality separate from the executive dysfunction that are putting me in a bad place. I don't want to take antidepressants for reasons I won't go into but that means my other option is therapy and... I don't know if I'm a person that therapy will actually work on. I found a lot of validation in some of your perspectives, about affirmations being bullshit and "mindfulness" exercises feeling impossible and useless, about not having an inner monologue and how that might be causing issues with traditional methods. So I was just wondering, do you feel like therapy is working now that you've been in it longer?

I've wasted a lot of money on "elective" (and ultimately useless, back to square one) medical nonsense this year and I'm not eager to waste more, but I've also met my insurance deductible so it's the best time to try it if I'm going to.

I mean, it depends on the modality a little but I don't think trying basic talk therapy can hurt, as long as you find a decent therapist. And it's better to try it now when you're feeling Mostly Okay than waiting until you are Really Not Okay. But this entire paragraph comes with a lot of context so....

A lot of what I talked about in terms of struggling with mindfulness, etc. was less related to the therapy I am still in than it was to the DBT class I took at Therapist's suggestion. We were both aware that she was basically throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck, and while it was an interesting class I don't think for me it was helpful. As you mention, I struggled with affirmations and visualization since neurologically I'm not really set up for those; I don't think they're objectively bullshit but I do think there's an assumption within the mental health industry that they will have function for everyone and that's simply untrue, and the expectation that it will is very damaging. I also struggled with the physical-intervention aspects (called TIPP usually) which didn't work at all for me and felt frankly like doctor-approved self harm. DBT can get very culty, which set off a ton of red flags for me -- possibly false flags, but they still waved real big.

And that's because I also have a lot of trust issues surrounding therapy. To the point where, the minute one of the people running the DBT class made actually quite gentle fun of me for asking a question he couldn't answer, I checked out on anything he said. We were learning about a DBT concept called Wise Mind and I asked, "If wise mind is an identifiable mental state, how do we know if we're in it?" and when he couldn't quite answer beyond "It's different for everyone" I said, "But if we know it's real there must be some kind of common denominator, a measurable data point," and he said "Well, Sam, you're not going to levitate" and the rest of the class laughed. Sorry bud, this is almost certainly an over-reaction, but I'm me and you lost me when you came at me instead of just admitting you didn't know. (Also it turns out I just live in Wise Mind like 80% of the time which is one reason I couldn't tell.)

But basic talk therapy outside of DBT is just...you talk at someone about your problems and come up with ways to try and solve them, which is a lot more straightforward and way less frustrating. You have to be an active participant, you have to both have a goal and be willing to discuss reaching it, but that goal can be as simple as just "figure out what my mental health goals should be" at first. You don't have to learn like, vocabulary for it.

The thing is, while I have seen some improvement in regulation issues, I also struggle with basic talk therapy. Most people, and this blew my mind, see measurable improvement in nine to eighteen therapy sessions. A lot of people don't go long-term, they just are having a moment and get help getting through the moment and then can disengage, with their therapist's approval.

I was in therapy consistently from the age of nine to eighteen and only stopped because I reached legal majority and physically refused to go.

Not one minute of those nine years did I want to be there. And, because none of the three therapists I saw across those years actually explained to me why I was there or how therapy worked, for me it felt like "Your punishment for having feelings is to speedrun every feeling you had this week in an hour, to a stranger." There was also what my current therapist believes to be some extremely unethical behavior going on, which didn't help.

So it has taken actually a lot of time to get to a place where I would even allow her to understand what help I need. I've been in therapy for about a year (generally weekly but there have been some gaps) and it has only recently gotten deeper than very basic interpersonal problem-solving.

Like, two weeks ago I told her, "I had a thought this week that I couldn't tell you about something I was doing because then you'd have material on me" (meaning blackmail material) "and that's a fucked-up thing to think." And once I'd actually identified it as fucked up I had zero issue telling her about it, wasn't even nervous as I did so. Who's she going to tell? She's literally legally constrained from telling.

I think well over half of what she does is either validate that whatever emotion I'm having is normal, affirm my reactions so I don't keep believing I behaved weirdly, or praise something I've done that was a positive act. Does this work? Not always, because I'm unfortunately very aware that it's part of her job to do those things. But yeah, sometimes. Even if you don't fully believe it, "Hey that was a really smart move" is nice to hear. Sometimes she helps me come up with a plan for stressful future events or (rarely) behavior modification, and sometimes she either provides me with research or points me towards research I can do on my own. We don't do meditation or affirmations or stuff like that.

Like, last week I brought up the fact that I hadn't really ever thought about how if I have a disability that causes emotional dysregulation and I got it from my parents, they also likely had undiagnosed emotional dysregulation when raising me. So she said I should look into research on children with emotionally dysregulated parents. I was pretty annoyed by what I found (the ONE TIME adults are the focus instead of the kids is the ONE TIME I needed to learn about the kids, really?) but it led to something that was both informative and upsetting, so we discussed that. And when I was stumped about how to move forward with the information, she suggested that my general coping mechanism of writing about it was probably a good plan.

(At which point I just silently advanced my powerpoint presentation to the next slide, where I had a series of quotes from the Shivadh novels where Michaelis, acting as a parent, repeatedly does the exact opposite of the upsetting thing, because I realized even before the meeting that it's an ongoing theme in my work whenever I deal with people being parents. It's a good thing she has a sense of humor and also that I do.)

So yeah. Going into therapy you have to be ready to reject a therapist if you don't like them or if they get weird and pushy, you have to be ready to be a self-advocate, but you are the client; it shouldn't be super difficult to find someone who can at least walk you through what you want from it and agree not to do the stuff you don't want, and if you want to stop going you just...stop going.

Good luck, in any case! I hope you get what you need, whether or not that ends up being therapy.

[kanmom51]

https://twitter.com/parkjmwins/status/1782358915939774874

Idk whether you will even answer this ask or will block me but this is exactly why JK had similar concept pics like Jimin. Jikookers made it to be romantic while Fandom made it to a joke 'JK always copy Jimin' (ofcourse). I've seen you making multiple posts about Jikook concept pics being match is a proof of them being a couple when in reality Hybe don't even take permission of original artist before using their ideas for another. One hybe label just got into trouble for copying newjeans and according to CEO min heejin it was BANG SHIHYUK who wanted to copy newjeans to create a second version of them through illit. And guess what he made sure illit gets 10x more success than newjeans, a 2 day song was already charting in different charts including hot 100. The same bang shihyuk who ignored every bit of Jimin's success but shamelessly copied his ideas and visions of concept pics for another favorite member. He shamelessly asks staffs to copy original ideas of artists who created them and use them for a cheap version of the said artist, Newjeans and Jimin are just examples.

Was it JK's fault ? Not necessarily but unlike rookie Illit he had power and capability to make his own decisions and use his own visions instead of doing what he was asked to do by the staff (his words) but he didn't and sat comfortably while using another person's hardwork. If you still think those similarities were because they were couple then idk what to say because in that logic Newjeans girls and Illit girls are dating.

Talk about TikTok generation ask.

Linking me to a tweet that has zero actual information and/or proper discussion, just stating a fact that isn't necessarily even a fact. Ignoring the full picture (like y'all do when it comes to Jikook as well, btw).

And I also find it so so funny how you are basically hanging your all on something that a very problematic figure within the Kpop industry is claiming, all to try and deflect from despicable behaviour she's being accused of, including using and revealing private info of Hybe idols obtained in illegal and despicable manors, perhaps including having to do with certain private info leaking of certain BTS members (including the one person that you so vehemently claim to love and stand in defense of).

You think that by sending me this link you are proving something?

You say that you read through my posts. Well, obviously you've missed those many posts I've written explaining how JM and JK being a couple can be deducted not from one action or one behaviour alone, but the combination of many many actions or behaviours. A puzzle built of not 10 or 50 or 100 pieces, but one built of so many many more.

I find it funny how with everything that has been going on with JM and JK you guys are still at this.

We're back to JK copying JM.

Like seriously.

Like even if the whole NJ Illit thing was true there was some kind of a comparison to be made with these two men.

Like JK, who's album concept is 180 degrees different than JM's doesn't have stylists at his beck and call to create a concept that isn't a full on copy of JM's. Right down to the studs and colours and minutiae details of some of the outfits.

Like if he did copy JM, that same scorned poor JM (that's how you guys love to portray him, as a damsel in distress awaiting you to swoop in and save him) CHOSE to fly to NY to be with JK and spend Silver day there with him, travel with him multiple times and spend his entire 18 months in the army with that awful copy cat JK.

Your ask tells me that you have zero understanding in human interactions and relationships. JM saying time and time again, JOKING time and time again, about JK copying him, it's a tease but also something that he LOVES. How he inspires JK, how JK perceives him as his catalyst.

But this here, the photo concepts and the whole of JK's wardrobe while promoting, claiming it's all about copying JM is just bull crap. This was planned. And it was planned by the two of them. It's not a coincidence that JM happens to wear the bottom part of a two piece outfit months before JK wears the top part of the same exact outfit.

And if we are talking about copying, is it the concept he's copying or is he so far gone that he's literally copying down to the smallest of details?

Like seriously. You think that's about copying JM?

Or because it worked for JM so he thinks it will work for him? Literally same hairstyle rocking as JM had in Face? Cause why not use a concept that works? Seriously? JK's all "I should do this cause it worked for JM so it will work for me"?

Was that what he was thinking when he rocked a highlight of JM's hair colour over the years? That the colour works for JM so I should have a strand of that colour in my hair as well, copying his success? Is that the theory you're working with?

Or when JK wore the same jacket as JM on Valentines day, you know, in a clip that JM himself records and uploads, that JK also copying JM?

Babe, this isn't just about the concept pics either. And it's not just about Face and Seven or Golden. Wearing the actual same black leather or leather-like pants just because he couldn't find any other pants? That level of copying? Or perhaps it wasn't about copying and more about mirroring.

About "You are me I am you", which they have been screaming at the top of their lungs for years now!!!

It amazes me how you have zero issue in taking an over decade long complex super close relationship (no matter how you perceive it they are super close) and simplifying it into "JK copied JM's concept because JM's concept worked for him", or to even compare whatever went on with JK and JM and those similarities to a claim made (by a disgruntled and caught red handed employee of Hybe) about one new GG copying concepts and whatever from a GG that's been around for 2 years now. No connection between them. No long term relationships between the groups. One group supposedly copying from another. Yeah, definitely the comparison needed to be made between that and Jikook's behaviours or decision making.

How infantile of you.

Oh and that paragraph of yours at the end. Laughable really.

Like I already said, go compare 2 GGs in two different companies to 2 men that have been close for over 10 years now. And let's also disregard the long history of those two doing the similar and same outfit (during official shoots, performances etc, or during their free time) thing and look at this one single concept.

Probably styled (funny how the styling seems to be similar for years now on many occasions, and just with the two of them)

Not styled.

These are just examples of MANY MORE instances.

Oh, and I suggest you go read this post too. Not mine, but recently written and oh so relevant to the conversation.

I can't help but wonder how different your pov would have been if one of those two young men was a female. Just thought I would throw that in here too.

But I gotta give you an A for persistence. You guys, you never give up, do you? No matter what JK and JM will throw at you, you will find a way to twist it around to fit your narratives. I guess you also think that JM was forced into enlistment with JK, ah? And their trips together and the content that will drop, also forced on him? I guess him saying otherwise isn't enough to convince you guys either, right? I love the way how you guys are so intrenched in your belief of victimhood that you don't even listen to what JM himself tells you. You love him so much that basically call him a liar. Good for yous I guess.

So, to clarify my answer to you, just in case it wasn't as clear as day already...

You do you, cause nothing I tell you, or show you, or you know what? Nothing that even JM himself will tell you or show you will satisfy you. Because you are living in a self built fantasy of what and who JM is and what and who those that surround him are, all to fit that narrative of yours in which he needs you guys as his saviours and knights in shining armour to swoop in and save him from the big bad JK.

One more thing.

JM's Face was a masterpiece.

We all agree on that. JK included.

He adores JM, he's his no. 1 fan and he's been showing us this throughout 2023.

JK is not a person that would callously copy a concept used by a bandmate just because it succeeded for his bandmate and might work for him too.

Let alone from JM.

His person.

Not even if, as you put it, he was told to do so by the powers at be (which yeah, he'd tell to go shove it up their asses if they ever did 'tell' him to do that btw, and they wouldn't do it anyway seeing that they know that would be his exact reaction).

So, no.

That is my answer to you.

Just a whole big fat NOPE.

No to copying. And surprisingly no to blocking you.

Yet.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

You seem like an incredibly well read person, plus someone with a lot of insight into intimacy because of your work. So, in light of your romance book reviews, which are an absolute highlight on your patreon, do you have any insight into what is needed/suggested for a good romance novel?

g o d this is so fucking hard and also really fun to chew on. I want to preface this by saying this is ENTIRELY subjective and based completely on what I *PERSONALLY* find that I enjoy in a romance. this isn't, like, an objective guide on how to write a romance that doesn't suck. that doesn't exist because people like different things, and I'm speaking from one perspective.

also I should say that my preferred flavor of romance novel is solidly contemporary. I haven't read many historicals, certainly not enough to opine well on them, I don't do those mafia dark romances or whatever the fuck, and I've barely dabbled at all in any kind of fantasy romance, whether they're full high fantasy or witchy urban fantasy stories. (although I'm about to do one of the latter next month, you can vote for a book on my patreon rn!)

having gotten all of those caveats out of the way, here's some shit I like and dislike:

there are exceptions to this but broadly, I prefer a POV for everyone involved in the relationship. to me a romance where we're only seeing events from the POV of one member of the relationship automatically makes it seem like one person matters more in a dynamic where everyone should be of equal importance. also, god, if the plot's really going to hinge on not knowing what's going on in one partner's head suggests that miscommunication is going to be a pretty critical part of the plot, and I hate that shit. TALK TO EACH OTHER. I'LL KILL YOU.

on that note, there needs to be an actual compelling reason why the characters can't be together, okay? the #1 driving tension of every romance is "why the fuck can't they be together yet" and you BETTER have a good answer. whether it's interpersonal or external forces, if there's a very easy solution to what's keeping them apart then your characters look dumb and I'm bored. one of the most frustrating romances I've ever read involved two characters who were mutually attracted to each from the JUMP, who refused to act on it because they were coworkers (neither of them in any position of authority of the other, nothing unprofessional or inappropriate about it) and they were "only" living in the same state for A YEAR. A FULL YEAR !!! shut up. get a grip and kiss each other.

now, having said that: whatever your bullshit reason is for these two characters to be interacting with each other, you need to COMMIT to that shit so hard that I, the reader, will feel silly for even questioning the logic. the worst offender I've ever seen on this front is D'Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding, which pulls its protagonists together via a reality TV competition and then just... promptly loses any interest in really dealing with the actual realities of being filmed 24/7? it's insanely distracting how little the book engages with its central hook, and was a huge point deduction for me. whereas you have, like, The Bride Test, a book with a premise that skirts dangerously close to a little bit of human trafficking but embraces the whole premise so wholeheartedly that you completely forget about the potentially horrific elements in there. who cares that Esme was bribed here with the promise of a green card if she seduces a man she's never met? there's whimsy happening! we've moved on! it's literally fine and she's in no danger except the danger of a BROKEN HEART.

this one is going to seem SO obvious but like. I need them to be actually like each other. I'm not saying they can't be mutually bitchy while they grow to like each other or anything, they don't have to always be NICE to each other, but there are so many M/F romances where the dude is just flat out fucking MEAN and condescending to the girl until he decides he wants to fuck her. and sometimes even after that! stop it! after a certain point I don't want her to fuck him I want her to run him over a car!!!! there's suuuuch a line between "guy I butt heads and exchange banter with but could fuck if we just got to know each other" and "man who hates me and is for real fucking bullying me."

"kisses only," "doors closed," whatever term they use for a romance novel without any sex scenes on page, I don't like it. listen: I know that they're not everybody's cup of tea, and I FULLY recognize that a lot of romance novel sex scenes are unfathomably cringe. and yet, I need them. partly because they're funny, but also because if this book wants me to be invested in the developing relationship between two adults who are supposed to be WILDLY sexually attracted to each other, then I want to see the damn sex. no matter how many bad similes or unfortunate adjectives it entails. and if you're not going to show me the sex, don't you dare have the characters gushing about how great it is. I'll be the judge of that, thank you very much. (I'm looking at you, Sorry, Bro.)

related: there's this thing that I call "Horny Wolf Syndrome," which is derived from this tweet:

initially I used it to refer to when previously sweet-tempered male romance protags inexplicably started talking like horny wovles during sex scenes - "LET ME SEE YOUR PRETTY CUNT ON MY COCK" and the like - but now I more generally use it to refer to scenarios in which characters of any gender completely dispense with their established personality while they fuck in order to fulfill a more broadly appealing, one-size-fits-all sexual fantasy. I hate that shit; if your characters act like completely unrecognizable people during sex, you didn't write very strong characters. one of my favorite things about writing sex scenes is that it's so SO interesting to see how their the characters' personal quirks translate into a setting that's very different from most other contexts, and it's deeply disappointing when authors take the easy route in favor of some pornhub dialogue.

one of the things that actually won my most recent read, Raiders of the Lost Heart, a HUGE amount of points with me was how frank the female lead was about initiating sex for the first time. it was completely in character for her and felt really different than any other book I've read, and honestly? it was a breath of fresh air.

[miloformula123fan]

Could you do fic for James Vowles with wife author!reader? ( He's at Williams ) He always goes to her events even though he's busy but he still makes time just to support her. And vice versa. Just something fluff and cute. Thanks!! :))

this is definitely not amazing, but im secretly quite happy with it

(also updates are gonna slow the fuck down because i have assessments and exams this term yay /s)

Please keep requesting - y'all have awesome ideas we agree on a lot of stuff :) - my guidelines are here, and if you want some prompts, they are here.

also feel free to come in and start chatting to me in my asks, would love to get to know y'all better

and if you want to be added to my taglist lmk :)

james vowles x wife!author!reader

---

book talk:

Y/N watched as a teenage girl walked up to the microphone. She clearly looked nervous, as had many other people coming up, but Y/N tried to make her feel as at ease as possible.

“Um…hey Y/N, my name is Elodie, and I just wanted to say how much I love your writing…” - Elodie

James quietly shut the door, once Logan and Alex were through, and didn’t try and push through the crowded room, they instead settled for a spot near the back where they could still see Y/N. They were sure that if people recognised them, they would be shunted towards the front or ushered backstage. They didn’t want that, they just wanted to stay inconspicuous at the back.

“Aww thank you Elodie, what was your question?” Y/N smiled reassuringly

“Um…well, for your book, ‘a sweet sting of salt’, I was just wondering if you had any inspiration for the character Tobias. While he isn’t the best character in the story, you said he was one of your favourite characters to write, and I was just wondering why?” Eloise asked

“Oh, that is a good question, thank you Elodie. Um… while the actions are obviously not based on him, a lot of Tobias’ so-called ‘good’ elements are actually based on my husband. So…okay I’m gonna hope that everyone has read the book, so I don’t spoil it,” she smiled “Um, so for those of you who are unaware, my husband is James Vowles, and he is the Team Principal of Williams, which is a motorsport for those who are very out of the loop. So I guess the main words I would use to describe both Tobias and James, other than loving because Tobias is definitely not, are logical, quiet, grounded, organised and productive.”

James smiles, watching his wife talk about something she was so passionate about.

“So for example, for logical qualities for Tobias and James in chapter 10, Tobias uses deductive reasoning, which I would like to say is James’ strong suit, however he sometimes misuses it, like deducing who ate the chocolate, the wife or the dog. Tobias uses it for more evil, using it for working out how to do the things he does. Maybe they are more evil and similar and similar.” Y/N pondered, garnering a small laugh from the audience

James stopped smiling, as he listened to his wife compare him to a literal murderer in her book. Logan and Alex were standing next to him, trying to avoid their laughs.

“Then for quiet, in chapter 16, James likes sneaking around and scaring the shit out of me when he gets back from the factory and from races to scare the shit out of me, and Tobias uses it for murder. Huh, maybe these 2 characters are closer together than I thought.” Y/N pondered, laughing as she saw her husband’s face

“Darling, I’m not a thief and a murderer. I honestly don’t know why you based Tobias off of me.” James tried to mediate.

However it was enough for Alex and Logan to burst out laughing, joining in with the rest of the crowd, who had discovered that James was there and found it very funny.

“I’m just saying you share similar qualities, more than I initially insisted. Are you sure you didn’t secretly murder someone?” Y/N tilted her head, as if genuinely thinking about the question

“Darling…” James tried to plead again

“ANYWAY - Then for grounded, in chapter 18…” - Y/N, moved on, continuing with her ideas.

---

garage:

“And during this safety car period, Alex, our camera man has gone for a wander and he has gone down to the Williams garage, and while we’re normally looking at the team principal or other important people, we have instead zoomed in on Y/N Vowles. Now for those who don’t know, she is a writer, and she seems pretty hard at work at this book on her laptop. Now that will be good news for anyone who reads her books, including me, she writes very good books, available at all the awesome book stores, and no she hasn’t paid us for that, we just think her books are amazing. Oh and she waved at us. Hi Y/N!” - Jolyon said from the commentary box

James smiled at the sight of Y/N on his screen. While this weekend had been very stressful, it was very nice having his wife be there for him in the garage and then back at the hotel rooms, even after all the late meetings. He watched as she smiled and waved at the screen, and he was unable to resist the temptation as he smiled at the picture and waved back, earning another laugh from the commentators.

---

book talk part 2:

“Sorry Y/N, my name is Leo, this is a bit of a personal question…” a teenage boy asked

“...as long as it’s not when I’m having a baby, or where I live, it should be okay, hit me!”  Y/N tried to put him at ease.

“Your schedule for this book tour is a little all over the place, if you don’t mind me saying, it was basically like the first 2 months of the year, and now there’s just kinda weeks off or even months off, and I was just wondering if there was any sense to the schedule.” Leo shuffled awkwardly, unsure of how she would react to the question.

“Ah, well there actually is. First off, I cannot tour every week of the year, because I think I would just simply die. But the reason I picked those weeks off is because if my husband again. Are you guys sensing a pattern here? I love James, and I really want to support him at all the f1 races. So those are the weeks I took off, basically. And second, Baby Vowles is due in 6 months, thanks guys!” Y/N laughed as she put down the microphone and walked off stage, laughing as the cheers from the crowd grew louder.

---

taglist: @leosxrealm, @tallrock35, @wolf-knights, @janeholt3, @pear-1206

[queerholmcs]

the mind of moriarty 👑🧑🏻‍💻♟️

I had the absolute pleasure of doing the original "the game is now" escape room experience immediately followed by the new moriarty-centric escape room (as though the first one wasn't moriarty-centric enough?) with @victorianpining and @647763 back at the end of July, and I did promise a full write-up when I came back to my senses at the end of it!

First off, I could not have been more pleased with the experience; I do absolutely recommend giving it a go yourself if you have the chance. Now, if you're in the mood for spoilers, I'll be detailing some thoughts and recollections below the cut. 💙

Just in case the first escape room experience didn't quite convince you, Moriarty is dead. It's very important that you know that going into this. He's the most dead anyone has ever been. He's so dead he "wishes he could die twice!", after all! They have to keep saying it because otherwise you might forget it, you see. Especially after Sherlock had a whole drug trip on a plane to prove how someone might have faked their death in such a manner only to conclusively decide that dear old Jimmy boy is in fact dead.

I'm assuming everyone reading this is already relatively familiar with the first escape room, and the whole bit where the Network is operating under the guise of "Doyle's Opticians," so I won't spend any time discussing that, except to say that we did get a few confused looks from the various Stamfords when we reappeared (after finishing the first escape room and making the choice to stick to non-alcoholic beverages at the Mind Palace prior to the second) to say, "Oh, no, we didn't get turned around or anything. We've just got a second appointment." (You mean to tell me that most people who go do one experience and then just... leave? Without doing the second one the very same day? What an absolutely unfathomable concept.)

The opening puzzles before the "John Watson held at gunpoint" briefing video (which was the same as that used for the first escape room) were particularly fun: you're shown a series of four images, and you have to figure out the pattern of what's changing (being mirrored, one might say?) between each one to choose the fifth of the sequence from a selection. (Ref. 1: Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them, John Yorke.)

And then you go on to 221B Baker Street for photos and a brief moment of shenanigans, and I must add a note here that the Stamford who was working with us on this round was brilliant, you could tell she was absolutely loving her job, and there was a bit of a spiel about observation and logic and deduction that turned out to actually be helpful in solving the puzzles in the first room. (Shocking, that she wasn't just harping on about those concepts for fun!)

Anyway, Mycroft shows up via video feed, per usual, and introduces the premise of this game: James Moriarty (who is most assuredly dead, by the way, it's very important that you remember that) programmed an AI before he died—"an archive of maniacal data"—and your job, as new (read: expendable) recruits in the Network, is to go into a virtual-reality space called the Nexus, where you need to hack into the AI and replace Moriarty's mind with—well, not yours, obviously, you're "far too, as they say, basic"—but with Sherlock's. But why not use Mycroft's mind? you may be asking. Especially if he's the smart one.—because, dear reader, "One Mycroft Holmes is already too great a gift for this world. Two would be an indulgence." And that's verbatim from Mycroft Holmes as protrayed by Mark Gatiss himself. I am going to haunt him in whatever comes after this life. Still can't believe that you give them money and in exchange they insult you for approximately ninety minutes and at the end you say 'thanks, this was so much fun, I will definitely be doing this again!'

Right before you go into the first room, you are helpfully reminded by Mycroft one last time that "despite what video games suggest, you absolutely can die in the virtual world." Bit of a theme they seem to be harping on! It's almost like they're trying to get you to really believe that Jim is actually dead or something!

(Photos are all from the official 221b social media accounts.)

The first room is a sort of fusion of the pool from TGG with a chemistry lab and a hospital corridor, and also a miniature version of Jim's prison cell from THOB is there. There's a mannequin of John Watson decked out in a Semtex vest in the corner, and you get the usual experience of solving lots of intellectually- and tactilely-satisfying puzzles, which included opening a bordering-on-comical number of lockers. The John mannequin has a key in his hand labelled "007" (classic!) and a phone in his pocket so you can text Mycroft. Moriarty reminds you that he's the good old-fashioned villain in this fairy tale, and that Sherlock needs him or he's nothing, and that John is Sherlock's "live-in ordinary person."

I also particularly enjoyed the little chemistry puzzle in this room—they do give you a periodic table on the wall, so you have all you need to solve it without any prior knowledge, but who goes to a Sherlock escape room without a graduate chemist in hand?

(We also decided after the fact that the gift shop definitely should have been selling packs of the stickers seen on the lockers in this room, one of which was notably a pixel-art TV with a rainbow screen and the phrase "brainwashed".)

The highlight here, however, was definitely the prison cell. There's a letter on the chair that's on Pentonville Prison letterhead and signed by Mycroft and otherwise consists of a paragraph or two of fully redacted text. The walls have a number of fun phrases scratched into them, like "THREE SIGNS IS NOT ENOUGH" and "TOO MANY THATCHERS", which continue to live in my mind rent-free. (Some of the other phrases were helpful hints for the puzzles you had to solve, but those two weren't even relevant for the puzzles, as I recall. They were just bonuses. Specifically designed to haunt me, personally.)

At some point in here, Moriarty—no, sorry; his recorded voice, because he's dead, remember! We're just poking around in his virtual mind! ("Jim recorded lots of little messages for me before he died," anyone?)—insults you over the speakers, saying, "Goldfish, goldfish, goldfish have better recall than you!" (Mycroft Holmes in TEH, "I'm living in a world of goldfish," anyone?)

Anyway, you solve all the puzzles and put the phone you were using to text Mycroft in Jim's prison cell and continue on your way, going further into the mind of Moriarty, in the direction of the "Watson Ward" and "No Sherlock beyond this point" arrows. (Big moment for "there's definitely a reason that every other character in the canon has the initials J(H)W or its respectable inversion JM" girlies!)

Also there's an audio clip of Jim saying "choo choo!" as you leave the room. (Big moment for TFP girlies! I think my exact words were "I am going to kill myself.")

Onto room two! Green lasers everywhere! (They definitely intended you to do a fun little acrobatics situation here but we were content to hit the floor and crawl to find the buttons to disable them.)

After you disable the lasers, you get to focus on the primary puzzle of the room: a wall covered with sketches of people and copies of incriminating evidence, and you have to connect the scarlet thread red strings between each member of the jury and the evidence that Jim was blackmailing them with—you know, from way back in TRF? When the key code wasn't important at all, it was just about knowing someone's pressure points? (There's a Mary who's having an affair and is a lesbian, btw. Just like our mystery corpse in the original escape room, we should never assume someone is straight when there's room for them to be gay.) This puzzle as a whole was really satisfying, I will say, though it did make us wish for either a notepad or a massive whiteboard to make notes on while we solved the little logic puzzles to match the people to their blackmail material. (They could give you little branded notepads and pens to take with you through the rooms, and to keep as a souvenir, like the ones hotels give you! It would be so fun!) This was definitely the puzzle we spent the majority of our time on.

And then you get to the highlight of this room: opening the safe to reveal Jim Moriarty himself—well, a mannequin version—decked out in the Crown Jewels, happy as could be. There's a reminder that nothing in the Tower of London is as valuable as a few tiny lines of computer code that can open any door. And Jim's written a silly little poem of sorts and draws far too much attention to both "the rod of power in his right hand's grasp" and "the Orb" between his legs (and then we were at the Tower of London two days later and found out that that's not just a euphemism, it's literally called the Orb? Unhinged behaviour. And I don't even know who to blame for it now. The "rod of power" bit was all him, though. Could have been normal and called it a scepter!) and you have to figure out a code and (spoilers!) the code is 7437. Which is fine and perfectly normal and I'm sure the vast majority of people who complete that room think nothing of it, but unfortunately, we were not a group of "the vast majority" and so our experience was not what you might call "fine and normal", because Mia input the code and there was a little beep of success of and then she, without missing a beat, went on to say, "Oh, that's so funny! That's the numbers for S-H-E-R," at which point Rebs and I immediately sank to the floor to stare into the abyss while waiting for the next door to open.

So, just to recap: the point of TRF was definitely that there was no code, there was never any code, it was just about knowing people's pressure points and getting them to do what you wanted, but now that we're inside Moriarty's mind it's definitely all about codes and there's a silly poem to draw attention to various things including, but not limited to, the Orb between his legs, and the code that you need from him so that you can go deeper into his mind is S-H-E-R. Yeah. Sure. Why not. This is Fine! What really haunts me is knowing how many people will do that escape room and will never know that that's what those numbers mean. Because why on earth would you?

(Just to prove how normal I am about this, I won't even say anything about a potential parallel between Moriarty's "Orb" situation and the globe on Mycroft's desk under Whitehall. See? I'm not even mentioning it, why would you bring up something like that? No M-theory here, no sir! Not a single trace of it!)

Congratulations, you've made it to the rooftop, where Sherlock jumped off a roof and James Moriarty met his end, and I swear Jim has a line somewhere in there complaining about how hard it is to plan this sort of thing. (Whatever that means!)

We've got screens playing clips from all thirteen episodes of the show—okay, that might be an exaggeration; I didn't actually check to see if there were clips from every single episode. But there were definitely clips from series four, which is very funny considering how the universe that these rooms seem to be set makes exactly zero mention of John's wife at any point in time. (Hey, hello, hi, it's me who's writing this. Obviously I noticed when there were shots from TFP on those screens.)—and there are computer-code-esque symbols on the walls and Jim is lying dead on the floor and Sherlock is standing on the edge of the rooftop.

Here are some fun facts for you: the gun is still in Jim's pocket. (He's definitely dead, though! You know how you shoot yourself in the head and then return your gun to its rightful place before you politely lay down and die?) And Sherlock's mannequin is wearing the purple shirt of sex a purple shirt, which is a detail that might not be noticed unless you're thoroughly ransacking his every pocket (twice) to check for a missing key, and I was going to say something about how of course he is, because what else would you expect him to be wearing when we're three levels deep in Moriarty's mind and the code to get this far was S-H-E-R, but then I went back and checked and Sherlock is, in fact, wearing a purple shirt at the end of TRF. (Which somehow still doesn't actually negate any of the above, imo.)

Anyway, the first puzzle in this room involves finding a bunch of physical puzzle pieces to solve a puzzle, and figuring out how to unlock doors to obtain all of the pieces, and some of the padlocks use code words that they give you by putting phrases from their "sophisticated and cerebral" merch on the screen and highlighting letters, and some use numbers that you get by solving other riddles, but one of them is a padlock with a physical key and (spoiler!) it turns out that you don't even need to get the key for that one, because there's another way to get the puzzle piece out without unlocking the door at all! (Was his grand daylight robbery scheme a matter of keys and codes, or was it just about knowing people's pressure points and blackmailing them? You decide!)

And then it's time to manage the final task of uploading Sherlock's brain to the AI, which is accomplished by running around hitting buttons while music plays over the speakers to instil a sense of great urgency. You definitely would not want to do this with fewer than three members in your party. This is where they use Jim's line of "Surprise! You didn't think I'd just disappear, did you?" as seen in one of the teaser trailers, and they also plaster every screen with the classic "Did you miss me?" footage that mysteriously appeared on every screen in the country at the end of HLV.

But when you do manage to complete the task, Mycroft's voice comes back to congratulate you, and to sort of threaten you (though that's par for the course when it's Mycroft Holmes we're talking about, I'll admit), and to leave open the possibility of your returning for another job someday. I, for one, cannot wait to see what they're going to do for round three. (Personally, I think it would be very funny if they put one of the rooms on the Demeter for the next one. No rebranding necessary, no discussion of Dracula at any point whatsoever, but for some reason you find yourself on a boat, in cabin number 9, playing chess with the Devil himself Moriarty! What a shocking and unforeseen turn of events that would be!)

(The only real downside of them doing a third room would be that I would then have to make time to do three of these in one day. And that might be a bit excessive. I mean, three eye exams in one day? Someone's definitely going to say something.)

We had a very lovely time at the Mind Palace bar after that, to debrief a bit, and there was a logic puzzle that I still need to sit down and crack at some point when I have a moment. I was personally very pleased to find drinks called "The Diogenes Club" and "The Lying Detective" (both of which I was contractually obligated to order, naturally), and did you know you can rent out the bar for private events? I'm sure I would be very normal about such a situation. (Good job I'm not local to the area, truly!)

This has already gone longer than I think I intended, and I'm sure I could keep going, given the opportunity, but I'll close things out here, and say again that I do absolutely recommend doing the escape room(s) if you have the opportunity; I could not have been more pleased with the experience. My sole complaint is that they don't let you wander back through the rooms after solving the puzzles to have a moment to appreciate all the small details when you're not working against the clock. And also they should send me the scripts, as a treat. Along with any remaining unused video or audio footage. (Moftiss, my DMs are open, feel free to drop the links at your earliest convenience!)

[corviiids]

hello ⭐star⭐ for that one post about fanfic director’s commentary, hope you’re having a lovely day

thank u so much!!! i hope ur having a wonderful day too :3 ok hmm let's go with death note this time. let's talk about they both die at the end

(obviously death cw and suicidal ideation cw as well and also it's long again.)

so this one is kind of an undignified wrestle with mortality and legacy. no big dramatic strides made in that struggle, because i think getting satisfying closure about the acceptance of your own death is sort of gauche. i prefer a running stream of consciousness where you kinda flop around in the ring and kind of come to terms with things but in a really damp and hollow and itchy way.

throughout this fic i tried to use L's narration to contrast the source of his panic with the source of light's. both of them are acting sort of out of character in the sense that neither's behaviour is really aligned with the way they act in canon, and the reason i did that is sort of as a response to their own impending deaths. nobody's going to act like themselves in that circumstance. i even have them say it outright:

“I’m not really a nihilist,” says Light. “I wonder what you’d think of me if you’d met me on a normal day.” ... [L:] “I’m not ordinarily apathetic, either, by the way.”

one very simple detail showing that contrast is this:

L closes the door without locking it. He picks a direction at random and starts walking.

...

And it’d turned out they were nearby, so now they’re at Light’s apartment. “I didn’t think I’d be back here today,” he tells L, sticking his key in the lock. “Sorry if it’s messy.”

basically, light is in flight and L is in freeze. L doesn't bother locking his door when he leaves the house in the morning, but light does. L knows/accepts/has resolved that he won't be returning home that day. part of light still refuses to accept that, even though he leaves the house with the intention of ending his life.

i don't think it's fair to say that L's acceptance is more mature or that he's more at peace with his fate. it's more like...

so, L approaches situations with the perspective of looking at what is. he's truth-oriented. he accepts the facts of a given matter and then uses them to extrapolate what comes next. that extrapolation is really key to his character so it honestly bugs me a lot when people try to say that L is a purely logical character. he's not! he's running on intuition like 99% of the time and a lot of his extrapolations are wild and not evidence-based at all, but the reason for that is that he has an incredibly strong intuition based on how effectively he processes information. so L understands based on the phone call that he's going to die today, and there's really no point arguing around that fact. however, he can't actually figure out what his next steps are, because there are no next steps. he's going to die today.

throughout the story he struggles immensely with the fact that there is a piece of information he can't attain using the information he already has: he doesn't know when he's going to die, only that it's going to happen before midnight, and so he is completely unable to plan what he should do next, because he can't see any course of action through to its conclusion:

Two. Three. Two. Three. Four. Three. Two. L shakes his head. Can’t count up. Can’t count down. The numbers keep changing, but he can’t find zero. “No,” he says. Deductive reasoning, by its nature, requires premises—in order to find a fact, you must have a fact to begin with. You cannot begin with a baseline of nothing. With no reference, there can be no inference. L keeps counting, but there is no zero, or rather, there is a zero and he doesn’t know where it is. The next second could be his last, or the next, or the next, and all he can know is that at some point the ticking will stop and there is no way to orient himself to it because that point keeps moving .

this drives L crazy. that uncertainty is being represented by this incessant ticking in L's head which won't fade. ok so have you ever used a metronome? say you're counting in 4/4, so the click would play like ONE two three four ONE two three four. the rhythm is steady, but there's one emphasised beat to orient you to where you are in the measure. or, say, a ticking clock, where you can glance at it to see where you are in the 60 seconds that make up a minute. you can count down to when the next minute begins. or a timer, where you can see it counting down to zero. in L's head, he knows the ticking is counting down to the moment of his death, but he doesn't know what it's counting down to because he can't see it. he doesn't know where zero is, there's no emphasis to orient him, and he doesn't know which second he's at in the minute. he could start doing something and then die in the next three seconds, and it would be abrupt and jarring and unsatisfying, like the feeling you get when you take a breath and get winded. so he's in freeze. L accepts that he's going to die today, but he doesn't know when, and the whole time he's thinking about all the things he's never gotten to experience in his life because he's always sort of taken the concept of existence for granted. but he can't figure out how to take steps to try and check things off, because he's never actually made that list. and why make it now? because he might not get to finish them, and that's really unsatisfying. and how do you prioritise when you know you're not going to get to the end of your list and your list is infinity items long? he can't plan. he can't move. he's stuck. he panics, frozen.

light on the other hand has always had a plan for his future, and he's just watched that timeline rapidly shrink and cut all the opportunities off that he'd always been counting down towards. suddenly everything he's done up until now feels like a huge waste, because it was all a run-up to something that now doesn't exist. and he can't bear the fact that the control he'd always taken care to maintain over his life has suddenly been wrested away from him. that's why he starts the story out trying to kill himself - at the very least, he can control the when and cut the fear off.

Light swallows his mouthful of tuna and says, “If I can’t control my fate, I can at least bring it about myself.” “Does controlling your fate matter to you?” “That’s a stupid question,” says Light. “If you asked me yesterday I’d have had a hundred thousand things to say that mattered more to me than choosing how I’d die. My options have just kind of narrowed today, that’s all.”

L's right, though - light never would have done it. light wants to live more than he ever realised. i think light's had this moment of looking down the tunnel (hehe) and staring down his own impending death and realised he's not finished yet, but that's been taken out of his hands. he's realised that the mark he's left on the world has been so small and insignificant, and that if he dies now, that'll be all that's left of him. he's not willing to accept that. but that's the way things are. so he's in flight: run towards his own death so at least he can control the pace at which he dies? try to outrun the inevitable? try to speedrun a meaningful life to see if he can make some kind of mark before he stops existing for good?

“I don't know what we're walking to,” says Light. “I feel like I'm walking closer to my—to my own—” “We can stop.” “That just means it'll happen here instead. I don't want to die here, either.” “Where do you want to die?” “I don't,” Light says. His face crumples. “I just don’t. I'm not ready to be done.”

this is my favourite part of the fic tbh. it's based on a nightmare i had once that ended up changing my entire worldview. wahoo!

not to be a wanker but to an extent this is kind of what everyone's doing, technically, walking towards what will inevitably be your death, since time only moves in one direction and all that. but unlike everyone in the real world, light can see it. he wants to walk in the other direction, but it's all around him. he can see it growing closer the more he keeps moving, and all he wants to do is stop.

“What do I say?” Light asks desperately. “Hi, Dad. Hi, Mum.” Break. “Sorry I'll never give you grandchildren. Sorry I didn't get to graduate. Sorry you'll have to bury my dreams with me. Sorry for nineteen years that came to nothing in the end. It came to nothing.”

re: light refusing to speak to his family: i think he explains himself in the fic enough, but there's also another level where i think talking to his family about it means he'd have to formulate this fact into words which is difficult when he's not really accepted it himself, and on top of that, he would need to carry his family's grief and he's just not ready to do that. there's like a weird thing about talking to people who are already grieving you. i always felt really weird about that when talking to [friends/relations] who were terminally ill. light's relationship with his mother is kind of unexplored in canon but i wanted to go into it i think because your mother is someone who holds a unique spot in your life, i think, assuming you have a good relationship with her, and there is that reported phenomenon where people who are about to die tend to call out for their mothers. i guess this might be controversial but i think it's textually supported that light really cares about his family. i dont think light is ready to look at them and see them looking at him like he's someone who's already gone, and see all the things he never got to do with/for them. i honestly dont think hed survive it

ultimately it was really important to me that light died for no reason and that he didn't really have any material impact on anything. he dies trying to save a child, but someone else saves the kid first. light didn't have to take action at all. but of course, he did

As L stares, reaching hands scoop the toddler off the street from the other side.

i think in a sense it's up to personal opinion whether light had an impact or whether his friendship with L mattered at all before he died. after all, L died like an hour later, and it's not like he had anyone to pass those memories on to. he didn't even know light's surname. the memories of their last day together only exist with each other, and now they're both gone, so did it really matter? what does it mean to matter anyway? do you have to leave a legacy? is it enough that light managed to be L's only friend in the hours before L stopped existing? probably?

It's dark now. Properly dark. It's a new moon tonight, and though the stars do their best, there's little that can cut through the blackness in its absence.

...

L stares up at the moonless sky.

...

It might have been nice to die with the moon.

ofc light's name is written with the kanji for moon. just a silly joke lol.

L's death is something that's more likely to happen when you're alone, by the way. he gets mugged because he's an easy target sitting alone on a park floor. too bad he didn't have more friends and his only friend is dead.

also, the fact that he's a detective who gets murdered in a random act of crime was sort of another nod to the futility of the whole thing that light struggles with in canon. like, work your ass off, solve crime after crime, bring people to justice, but it never ends. crime continues. so is there a point? (yes, obviously.) but that's just a return to the struggle for legacy and meaning, where it's hard not to wonder whether the thing you're doing matters if it's not permanent / if you didn't solve something for good / if you didn't leave a mark that will never fade. i dunno. i think L did enough good in his lifetime. it wasn't enough to save him, but everyone dies eventually, so maybe it doesn't really matter?

i didn't want to give either of them the dignity of a full final thought. light definitely doesn't realise what's happening in the moment before he dies because he didn't see the truck, so i think he didn't have a chance to formulate one.

L watches a look of relief cross Light's face in the split second before the truck horn blares.

L of course gets cut off mid-sentence, just like he'd implicitly feared he might - trying to check things off the list, tie things off, before he's done:

What might a good final thought be? A final sight? He wonders if he could possibly find a star before

hopefully if you read the fic you got something out of it! it is, i think, intentionally pretty hollow and futile feeling, but not in a way that's supposed to make you feel hopeless or nihilistic. well, i hope not. i think there's something really cathartic that comes with the kind of closure you get specifically from accepting that sometimes there's no closure. that's how i felt writing it, so hopefully reading it is something similar. i dunno!

[seat-safety-switch]

Nothing is worse than the ninth or tenth weekend of a really grody rebuild, getting ready for that first crank, and not even getting spark. It’s in times like these that I turn to prayer, and “prayer” is my little nickname for the 36-inch pipe wrench that I use to smash things when I get pissed off.

When you ask experienced, professional mechanics about the techniques they use, everyone says they use logic and deduction. For most jobs, sure. You walk the problem, figure out which of the requirements is missing, and you walk that problem in turn. It’s easy when it’s someone else’s car, and you don’t really have that much invested in the car.

Emotionally, a project car is different. You’ve sacrificed a lot of money, weekends, and potentially even relationships to make this stupid thing run. You’re at the top of your game in terms of skills: simple mistakes are accounted for with rigorous checks, and you’ve been through enough dumb failures in the past to know what to look out for. Plus, you told all your buddies that you were gonna get this thing to crank over sometime before Hell freezes over.

When things go wrong, it’s easy to get super angry about it. Although it’s childish, my favourite technique in this situation is to chuck tools at the garage door. It’ll take a beating, and the dents don’t show that bad on the outside, so people visiting still think you’re sane. Most tools are highly resistant to being thrown (most of my favourite tools are found on the side of the road after other, better mechanics left them in the engine bay before taking a drive.) Once you’ve let the baby rage out, you can then have a focused head to consider the actual problem.

You guessed it: it’s some simple, dumb-ass mistake. You forgot to plug something in, or there’s a micron of dirt on a contact surface that’s keeping the thing from working. Now that everything is running fine, you can immediately discard any lessons from this embarrassing struggle-fest and crow to all your friends, including any of them who just saw you hurl a 3/8″ box-end wrench at a lawn gnome, that you are the best mechanic on the planet. Until it stumbles and dies when you put it in gear.

[ogsherlockholmes]

The Hound of Watson's Grief

I made a post a few weeks ago about how all of the Holmes stories could be interpreted as Watson's imagination in order to compensate for his loneliness (sorry for putting that idea in your heads) and I wanted to expand on that by focusing on The Hound of the Baskervilles. So, prepare for some inarticulate rambling which I hope will make sense.

One of the things that has always struck me about this particular story is ultimately how different it is from the rest of the canon: not just Holmes' noticeable absence in the mid-section, but the emphasis on Watson's description and the supernatural features. Although these can still be seen in the other stories, The Hounds of the Baskervilles still seems to exist separately from them, and I have a an idea why this is.

The Hounds of the Baskervilles, as a story, was never meant to be. Holmes was dead- ACD was proud to announce that. He had rid himself of the so called 'great detective', and could focus on more historical serious novels. But, alas, he thought of an interesting story line, and could think of no other way of conceiving it without help from Holmes. So, Holmes was prematurely resurrected, without any form of indication that he was actually alive, or if this was D Watson writing up his notes, or if the audience should just suspend their disbelief and read the story as an undefined prequel.

Realistically, that is about all there is to say about the premise of The Hound of the Baskervilles: the story just is, and we have to accept that. But what of THotB is purely a work of fiction, including within the realms of the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes? In some ways, THotB could be read as Watson finding an outlet for his grief for Holmes.

Firstly, Holmes' absence: not just in the story, but in Watson's life and in the public's life. Holmes was dead, with no chance of return... supposedly. He had died offstage, with no witnesses, apart from the man who died with him, so no one could check with him if Holmes was actually dead. For Watson, the only proof he had of Holmes' death was a letter, with no body to bury; for a man who had spent so much time with someone so furtively based on facts, I can't imagine that that would have felt right to him. Holmes was dead, but where did he die? It's reasonable to suppose that Watson went through a stage of denial, believing that Holmes was still alive. Of course, he couldn't admit that to the public (like so many other things... the unreliable narrator that he is) so he would need another outlet. So, why not write a story involving Holmes? Maybe Watson began writing, including all the quintessential characteristics of Holmes (his quick deductions, sarcastic quips and his effortlessness in complimenting Watson), but then the realisation of his friend's death dawned on him. Watson looks back on his work, and remembers that he now must solve mysteries by himself. Holmes is busy elsewhere, and Watson is alone.

Watson begins a tirade of long, flowery descriptions (in the words of Holmes "cut out the poetry, Watson") which are usually skipped over in the shorter stories. We are fully immersed in the gloomy Dartmoor with its "tinge of melancholy", and the introduction of an escaped prisoner: Selden, the Notting Hill murderer. This feels like compensation for Watson forcing Holmes' logic in the earlier chapters, almost as though he's trying to build another story for himself. The addition of the Baskerville legend also seems more alligned with Watson's interests than Holmes: overall, THofB becomes more of Watson indulging himself in a fairy tale than reporting facts, as Holmes would prefer.

Still, Watson is just as dutiful as ever, writing letters to Holmes, but receiving little response. Again, this might be a parallel for Watson's life: he wishes to communicate with his late friend, but hears nothing back. Here, Watson might be doubting himself again: he's obsessing over Holmes' death, so much so that he can't be sure he's even dead. A glimmer of hope: maybe Holmes is alive, and he's out there, waiting to come back. Watson mentions "the figure of a man upon the tor", the "tall, thin man" which is undeniably Holmes: he allows himself this fantasy, to the point where he explicitly states this idea when he reveals that Holmes has been with him in Dartmoor all along, but hiding away from him. But, he can't be too certain, so Selden (who could be seen as a mirror to Holmes as he is confused with Holmes as being the figure on the Moor) is killed off as soon as Watson finds Holmes. Again, Selden is killed offstage and by falling off an edge, which sounds familiar...

Now, Watson has his Holmes back, in theory. He ends the story by describing Holmes being involved in other matters which he doesn't provide too much detail on, as per usual. The story was quickly and almost effortlessly resolved, with the antagonist, Stapleton, seemingly dead but the protagonist, Henry Baskerville, saved. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that Stapleton and Baskerville are Moriarty and Holmes substitutes, respectively (Stapleton's academic backgrounds and unusual characters; Baskerville's assertiveness, Watson's detailed descriptions of his movements and appearance, the implication that Selden's death was originally confused as his). So, here is another instance of Watson applying the narrative he wants, almost as though he's manifesting Holmes' resurrection.

I've thrown many ideas together which can probably be easily disregarded, but I tried rereading the story with this perspective, and I think it helped me make sense of certain aspects of the story which never sat comfortably with me. Although I'm not claiming to know the true reason why ACD wrote THotB, I do hope that you can understand the point I'm trying to make.

[rekino2114]

Confessing to fem. Herlock sholmes

A/n:One of the first characters I wanted to do a genderbent post about without being requested to was herlock sholmes cause he's one of my favorite characters ever. Credit to mi_zu_no on Twitter for the art, and sorry if it's cropped weird since originally it was of all of the main cast genderbent

I'll change herlock's name to Harley

Being the great detective's partner was....an experience, while you certainly didn't expect her to be so...eccentric to say the least, you couldn't deny that those quirks of her didn't make her fun to be around. you also noticed that you two made a pretty great team when it came to solving cases. Overall living with her was a great experience, and maybe you had started seeing her in a way different than just a friend.

Little did you know that Harley had started seeing you in that way too but too scared to confess never acted out on her feelings, something that iris didn't fail to notice

"Harley, we need to talk"

"What is it, dear iris?"

"Do you like y/n....romantically?"

The detective fell down in surprise before quickly getting up

"Whatever makes you say that?"

"I mean, it's pretty obvious. You're always ranting about how amazing he is and how handsome he looks, to be honest I'm surprised he didn't notice"

"I see my detective skills must have rubbed off on you, my dear girl. You are indeed correct. He has taken my heart"

"Then why don't you just tell him?"

"And there lies the issue! you see telling him would be very risky, what If he doesn't feel the same, I couldn't look at him again if he rejected me"

"I'm sure he does too. Have you seen how he looks at you when you're together?"

"I actually didn't pay particular attention to where his eyes looked, probably because I was too lost in them ahahaha"

"......You're hopeless sometimes Harley"

"Why yes, hopelessly in love"

"Hey girls, what are you talking about?"

"Oh hi n/n, Harley here was saying-"

"Nothing you should take note of, my dear fellow. More importantly, I could sense my great detective's instinct tingle when you walked in here do you have something to tell me perhaps?"

"I see you're as observant as ever, indeed I came here to tell you-"

"Hush! I thought you'd learned by now, my good friend, that once the train of reasoning has started, it cannot be stopped. Now sit back for you will have the pleasure to witness Harley sholmes logic and reasoning spectacular"

".....really?"

"Don't we usually do this together?"

"Indeed but today you will be the victim of the great detective's deduction, so shall we start?"

Harley started to dance around you as usual

"First of all, we must notice you have quite the red complexion on your face, and I don't think it's something coincidental either. It's clearly something coming from deep in your body"

"W-well-"

"Secondly, I see that on your face. Not only is a red hue but also some water dripping down your forehead, do you mind explaining why you're sweating on a London winter evening, my dear fellow?"

"Alright I guess I should tell you i-"

"There is no need for words, for I have already deduced everything...... you have come here to tell me you were sick and had a fever"

"............"

"............"

"I see you two are too stunned to speak"

"That's....one way to put it"

"*sighs* You're just as great as always, Harley, but you're wrong. I'm fine but I did want to tell you something"

"Go ahead then, I trust no one else but my great partner to correct me"

"Well, the reason why I was so red and sweaty was because I was very nervous it's not the first time I feel like this around you, but today especially I really needed to tell you why: .......Harley I think I love you

"Ah I see, that was my second id-.....WAIT WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

The blonde woman fell in a comical way much like before, but got up quickly and looked at you with her usual smile and a slight blush on her face

"Pardon my yelling but that was a very surprising revelation you had there"

"Yeah, sorry if you don't feel the same but you're just so beautiful and smart not to meet incredibly fun to be around, you always put a smile on my face. I just needed to get that off my chest sorry"

"No need to apologize y/n for I think.....I may feel the same"

"Really?"

"Why yes, you're handsome, kind and can match my intelligence and.... admittedly hard to deal with personality, I would be a fool not to accept your confession"

"Oh, thanks so much, I suppose now I'm the great detective's partner in more ways than one"

"I couldn't have said better myself my dear now how about making our relationship official with a kiss"

She wrapped her arms around you and pulled you into a deep and passionate kiss

"That was great"

"I couldn't agree more"

"Oh, that was wonderful. I'm so happy for you two. I must start writing the manuscript for next month's issue, the readers are gonna love a romance plot"

"And this calls for celebration, I'll get my violin and play a sweet melody for our love"

"I'm sure it will be great I love you Harley"

"I love you too my dearest"

[just-a-gamer-daydeamer-girl]

Ok more about my PL vs PW rewrite fic (still thinking of a name) I definitely will have to play though the game before I start but I do have some ideas on what to put in (a whole doc full of plot points in order). I won’t tell everything as this is still a mystery and some of the main points will be rewritten. But I will put some bullet points out there of what may be in the story.

Laywright slow burn

Luke and Maya siblings friendship slow burn

It will mostly fallow the Professor and Luke in the beginning. Investagating this odd town.

More supernatural elements and threats besides witches in Labyrinthia.

Phoenix and Maya are a mystery and are going by new names. Nicolas and Mia.

New case 1 replacing the English turnabout in game. It will be similar to the great witch trial in case 2 in game but there will be new twists. I kinda think it was weird to have Phoenix relearn everything twice. Just have one tutorial case.

Zacharias having a proper character arc. Yes he is the case 1 ‘prosecutor’ I know breaking tradition here (sorta) but it kinda counts as he has no idea how to use logic and gets absolutely served. He then goes on a self improvement journey, learning from Phoenix to better judge witches. And we see his growth in later cases.

The storytellers tower is a place visited multiple times during the investigation.

Evidence and hints added sprinkled throughout leading to the grand finale

Tears, assumptions, betrayal, discord, words not being heard, murders and near death encounters.

But also comfort, redemption, healing, family, memories, love and understanding.

New characters

The Dance of Deduction!

New twists!

Magic spells of course!

Spirit chanleing

The professor’s ’is you!’ Dramatic finger point.

Side B staring Miles Edgworth, Larry Butz, and other Professor Layton characters (maybe Flora! I don’t know if she was adopted during this time however)

Puzzles, namely ones people can actually do themselves! Might be extra work but it seems to be fun!

Let me know some of your ideas.

[au-wannabe-the-very-best]

An AU that I admittedly daydream about from time to time, and I'm only now deciding to write down.

Akari and Ingo, both still without their memories, return to the present. They think that the more they interact with the world, the more memories will come through. And in Ingo's case, it does! He begins to remember his life, trains, his family and friends... He's eventually reunited with them, and it's a wonderful and happy reunion.

But Akari doesn't remember anything. Things are familiar every so often, but there's no memories to accompany that familiarity. Eventually Ingo helps her with contacting the police, hoping they can sort through some missing persons files and get a lead on where Akari is from.

No one in Unova fits Akari's description. They try Sinnoh, and no one fits her description there either.

They keep trying, of course. Ingo and his brother take Akari out to see the station, to the amusement park, to different restaurants. They watch TV shows together, some Unovan ones and Sinnohan ones, but nothing seems to click. They go through popular children's movies, things Akari is sure to have seen at least once in her life— But she's watching it like it's the first time. She doesn't remember any of it. She can't predict how any of the stories go, outside of logical deduction.

She's beginning to panic. Is she even a real person? Thinking about it, all she's ever known is her name, and the arc phone. And her "phone" isn't much of a phone, it's just a map and a journal. An indestructible one, granted, but still not a phone. Because she's seen phones now, and they're not... She doesn't know how to work it. She doesn't know what "apps" are. She didn't know calling people was a thing.

She assumed she was from the future like Ingo because of the amnesia, and the fact that he eventually recognized her phone. It had made sense to her. Now nothing makes sense to her.

She's scared. She doesn't belong here, and she doesn't know what to do about it. Ingo is starting to see just how panicked she is, and his reassurances don't seem to actually be getting through to her. He's worried.

Eventually, her DNA has a match. An identical match. To a miss Dawn Berlitz, the current champion of Sinnoh, who isn't, in fact, missing. Nor does she have a sister.

Akari is right, she realizes. She isn't a real person. She's just some clone of one. She doesn't have childhood memories, she doesn't have a family who raised her, she has no one who was waiting for her. Because she didn't exist.

She has a mental breakdown.