#and the only info i can find on what happened are a bunch of context-less docs on the wiki page!!!!

[kittylordinfinity]

*screaming crying slamming doors etc etc* guys what in the everloving fuck happened to the voidkin asylum while i was gone???

[egg-emperor]

people will say it's gatekeeping but I honestly do think you're always more likely to understand a story in a game and be more knowledgeable about it if you've actually played said game

I don't think it's impossible if you haven't but you're definitely much more likely to misunderstand if you don't. binging all the scenes to a game by watching a compilation of all scenes often isn't going to help you understand absolutely everything, especially if you only watch it through exactly once, all in a row

there's a few reasons why- there might be in game story based dialogue that the cutscenes might not cover but will still add more important details and context. plus seeing, or rather experiencing, the gameplay for yourself to see what's actually been happening within the game can also add more context

and one I find most important is that, when you're actually playing the game, the time in between the cutscenes gives you time to process and think about the scene you just saw. if you're being fed all this info back to back binging all the scenes in a row, you're just less likely to take it all in and make sense of it as well

I've played all the games I analyze, replayed multiple times, and rewatched the Eggman scenes through my own compilations multiple times, and memorize and analyze them all down to the smallest details. I'm constantly reanalyzing things I already have to develop my thoughts even further too

meanwhile, a lot of people who have disagreed with me the most haven't played the games they debate me on and only watched all the scenes all in a row once and didn't get to fully take in and analyze it and when I find out I'm baffled. latest example is with Frontiers on the subject of Eggman and Sage

now don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean I'm trying to say I'm automatically right because I have and those who haven't are automatically wrong but it naturally logically makes me more likely to be more knowledgeable on it just because I've looked at it, thought about it, and analyzed it and mulled it over longer

I personally wouldn't be debating people who have played, watched, and analyzed certain games, scenes, and characters more than me if my Switch profile said I've only played the game I'm debating someone on "for a little while" or not at all- but that's been the case with a bunch of those who argued lol

it seems there's a pattern and it shouldn't be considered gatekeeping to point it out. if you can't access or beat the games, I recommend not just watching all scenes in a row but a playthrough instead, or at least spacing out watching them to think them over and process each in between, and revisiting a few times after

make sure to check out plot related in game dialogue too because they're not always included in "all cutscene videos" despite also being plot based and providing important details and context that can help you understand further. for example, the in game dialogue conversations between Sonic and the other characters in Frontiers

I'm saying this because it's something I've noticed and I genuinely just want to help, so this is my personal advice and I'm not saying you should take it or you're not really a fan or something, I just think it helps a lot, especially if you want to interpret and debate the story and characters, so you're best equipped

[etherealnoir]

Found Ep. 7 Thoughts

Spoiler Warning!

So this wasn't my favorite episode. While I did like the show bringing attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (sort of...it would've been nice for them to add an info card or something at the end of the episode, but ok), the episode itself left a lot to be desired.

TL;DR: The highlight of this episode was learning more about Hugh's abandonment triggers, because I feel like it added a ton of context to his behavior in the past and in this episode. Everything else was a chop. I feel like they spent too much time on some things (Trent), not enough on others (Lacey), and overlooked a lot of things as well (Gabi being held accountable).

I wrote a lot, but please feel free to skip to whatever part you care the most about lol

1. The Story

It felt weirdly disjointed and all over the place. The natal doctor being the culprit at the end, despite there being NO previous indicators, kind of annoyed me. It was lazy to have it be this random man we barely saw, with a motivation we learned about in the last 5 minutes. They could've EASILY introduced that he worked with many indigenous/marginalized people early in the episode and also mentioned that he lost his own child.

It would've made more sense if he was a part of a ring of people taking babies of color and putting them up for adoption--because that's a thing that actually happens. I feel like they were originally going to have the culprit be the neighbor whose brother lost his baby and blamed it on Aida. As sort of like an eye-for-an-eye thing. But then they realized it'd probably look bad if a bunch of Non-Indigenous people demonized an Indigenous woman like that, so they changed it at the last minute.

2. Lacey

Lacey is always severely underutilized, but this time it felt just sadly egregious. They emphasized that Lacey was uncomfortable with being in the area because of the kidnapping, but...that was about it. It would've been a good opportunity to show a flashback of Lacey and Gabi together as children, or even a great chance to show Gabi and Lacey connecting over their shared experience in adulthood. Better yet, it would've been the perfect time to explore how the kidnapping has affected Lacey in adulthood, because it's clear it presents as a fear more intense than Gabi's.

Also her randomly kicking in the door and rushing into the house was odd, no matter how much they said in-show that it was ooc. Sometimes it feels like scenes are cut out that would add clarity to the scenes they leave in.

3. Trent x Gabi

As much as I love them together, I get really REALLY tired of watching Gabi use Trent and his network without any repercussions or hard pushback. I know that Gabi agreed to work closely with the police to make sure the people who committed the crimes face punishment, but I can only suspend disbelief BUT SO MUCH. Like what do you mean Gabi and Dhan can threaten a potential suspect into confessing? What do you mean they can just find things about people in less than a day, whenever they ask for it? WHY are they able to break rules with impunity, when doing so would absolutely cause the case to get thrown out in court????

As much as I know that Trent cares about Gabi and is willing to risk his job for her, I'm failing to understand why. What has she done for him that has made him want to give up his job for her? Because, from what we've seen so far, she hasn't really...done...much? We know they slept together at least once, that he has feelings for her, and that she relies on him a lot. But I feel like this show is constantly telling us that Gabi is worth sacrifice without illustrating why.

If this show is going to improve, they REALLY need to stop trying to make us believe that Gabi can do whatever she wants because reasons. It's starting to feel very Mary Sue-ish, and I don't want that to happen to her.

I at least hope that she takes accountability for taking the thumbdrive.

4. Hughbert "Sir" Evans

The one thing I did like about this episode is that we learned a lot about who Hugh is, and what his triggers are. If they choose to stay consistent anyway. Because they said in one episode that one of his triggers was mess/dirt, and then it was never brought up again lol.

In this episode, we learned that Hugh has abandonment issues. I believe that Hugh suffered from Parental Neglect as a child, which ties into this quest he had to "save" Gabi from her own perceived neglect. Hugh illustrates all the traits of someone who grew up not feeling heard or paid attention to: forcing Gabi to debate with him, him lecturing at her when she's eating, him having a meltdown when she ignores him or walks away. He threw a temper tantrum when he suspected that someone else might be taking attention away from him, because he finds comfort in knowing that it's always just him and Gabi in that house, and that she's consciously aware that he's there.

Obviously his traumatic past doesn't excuse the shit he's done. But it does add a ton of context.

These are a lot of thoughts, sorry lol This episode just bugged me. I feel like the writers room doesn't have their shit together. Maybe in S2 (if they get one), they'll find a rhythm that works. They need to. Because I shouldn't be able to tell a better story than these people who were PAID to do so.

[psychic-waffles]

wrote a whole thing out for the dmbj discord yesterday but thought it might be useful here as well

tldr: according to the dmbj books there's probably two different things affecting hei xiazi's eyesight

1. his miscellaneous eye disease that may or may not be related to his immortality that causes him to be able to see better in the dark (he needs a tiny speck of light for it to work, it doesn't work in pitch black) and for him to be able to see other weird details in low light (the best description i’ve seen of this is in  moving forward through the flowery night aka the heihua extra) this may or may not be getting worse (i'm sort of assuming he's gradually able to see less in bright light but his ""darkvision"" remains the same but that’s speculation on my part)

2. what i’m really here to talk about: there’s something making his vision fully black/fade out intermittently (regardless of external light levels) which started probably shortly before the main dmbj story, and has got significantly worse during reboot

more below the cut (contains spoilers for all of reunion book 2, and minor spoilers for the reunion drama)

caveat 1. i haven’t double checked the timeline because ~gestures at dmbj~ so some timings might be vague

caveat 2. *i can’t read chinese and any terms i’ve used are whatever terms were used in merebear’s translations, so please correct me if anything is wrong!

i’m also gonna preface all of this real quick with a couple things. Most of this info is taken from two retellings of "the strange case of the burning corpse" which you can read in full in sha hai chapter 112-115 and reboot book 2. Both times the story is told by xiao hua (mostly), and the when we first hear it in sha hai it's sort of 50/50 whether the story is true or not. When we hear it again in reboot it's a bit more substantial and is atleast probably true. (as always take any of this with a pinch of salt).

***

so the version we hear in sha hai is as follows and talks about the first time xiao hua met hei xiazi: when xiao hua was younger (either teenager or early 20s probably) and staying will granny huo there was an incident nearby where a building burnt down and 14 corpses were pulled out, 13 had drowned before being burned and were laid out in the shape of a fish, and one had burnt standing upright on the roof. The 13 drowned corpses were also found to have a strange eye disease. hei xiazi is called in by chen pi to investigate and after looking round the scene he says there should be a 15th body and proceeds to find a well with an ancient corpse in it under the building with a mirror stuck in it's chest. That night after hei xiazi had gone down into the well he starts experiencing eye problems, every time he opened his eyes he felt something pushing his neck down so he could only look at the floor (xiao hua then says that hei xaizi then blindfolded himself and lived for 6 months without his sight, but then backtracks on this so 🤷‍♂️). meanwhile granny huo finds out the 13 drowned men were loggers who dug up the ancient corpse, they all developed a weird eye disease and found a priestess* to help them, who turned out to be the corpse standing on top of the building burnt up. wu xie (who had been listening to xiao hua tell the story) then falls asleep so we don't get any more context for any of that.

***

all in all pretty weird and possibly mostly made up, however then the story gets revisited in reboot with a bunch more detail and making a bit more sense generally.

context for if you have seen the drama version of reunion: this is all tied to hei xiazi's visit to the mute village, which in the books is a stand alone story set just prior to reboot, only hei xiazi goes there and ershu etc don't follow later.

context for if you haven’t seen or read reunion: hei xiazi goes to ‘mute village’ to investigate some strange happenings related to thunder and an underground river, but while he's there he meets a mute woman called chuchu who is making a documentary about the village.

Hei Xiazi realises he knows chuchu, and figures out he saved her from a fire when she was a child, in connection to the burning corpse case.

***

so back to continue the burning corpse story where it starts up being told again in reboot: hei xiazi tracks down the priestesses daughter. he realises (due to his weird eyesight) he can see something strange on her back, maybe the same thing that was on his back before. the girl says she can do a ritual to help him with this whole case and takes him to a school where they set up an array etc. hei xiazi isn't sure if the ritual is legit or not but the info he gets from this girl is that there's an "immortal thing*" that wants to go back "below" (none of this is elaborate on). Once hei xaizi leaves the school a fire was started and he rushed back in to save some kids one of whom is chuchu (whose vocal cords were presumably damaged in the fire). when they get outside they see a burnt up corpse standing on the roof who turns out to be the priestesses daughter.

now to jump back to approximately the present where hei xiazi is running around mute village: he realises that the "immortal thing" that he'd encountered all those years ago is wrapped around chuchu's neck, over her vocal cords, and realises she was the girl from the fire and it must have latched onto her then. (note: it seems like the ""immortal thing"" goes for weak points? like the vibe i got was it went for chuchu's vocal cords cos there was already a problem there and/or they were damage from the fire?) so he decides he needs to deal with this thing once and for all. him and chuchu go into the underground river and hei xiazi tricks the "immortal thing" into leaving chuchu and going back to being on his back. his eyesight starts to black out, closing in from the edges, and he throws himself into the underground river. to make a long story short; hei xaizi is pretty fucked, mostly blind, and being attacked by evil crabs. luckily 1. whenever thunder rings out through this underground river hei xiazi’s eyesight returns briefly, and 2. xiaoge shows up out of nowhere and helps him use a mirror they find (like the one originally stuck in the ancient corpse) to potentially kill the creature on the back of hei xiazi's neck, or at the very least drive it away into the depths of the underground river.

***

so that's all context i guess, the sort of important bit is the following: after hei xiazi had the "immortal thing" on his neck last time it took 19 days for his sight to return at all, and since then his sight faded in and out on the daily (like that moment in the heihua movie). at the point of xiaoge rescuing him this time around he didn't know if his sight would return but at the point they escape the underground river he is fully 100% blind.

once again npss i would love it if you could concisely explain any of this 🙏🙏🙏 and/or atleast confirm if the story being told here is true and hei xiazi isn’t just making up some bullshit

[dylanndr]

Izzy and Edward: did they or didn't they?

I'm assuming we'll find out more about their history in S2, and I'm sure the writers will have some surprises in store for us on that front, but based on the info we have now my read is that they probably did not, or not much.

The title of episode 4, "Discomfort in a Married State," is based on a quote from Stede regarding his arranged heterosexual marriage, but it also applies to Izzy and Edward. I could easily do a whole entire post about the parallels between the two relationships, how this episode structures them as foils, but for this I'll focus on the kind of emotional and sexual dynamic Izzy and Edward have going on.

They aren't literal mates in the "if you know what I mean" sense (and same-sex marriages did happen at sea; I think if they'd had that level of formal arrangement Izzy wouldn't shut up about it), but it's also not an accident that Izzy is the only one with a title besides Captains Blackbeard and Stede. Who's the bosun? Who knows! Is there a coxswain? A quartermaster? Ehn. But there is absolutely a First Mate, and he's not about to let you forget that fact. Given that the language he uses to describe their relationship is entirely framed in professional terms, his job functions as a proxy for marriage.

In that context, Izzy's "my fucking resignation" speech is basically him saying "I want a divorce." Izzy and Edward are completely out of sync, making each other miserable, unable to communicate despite having worked closely together for years. There's little reason to think they've ever been happy around each other, and Edward confirms that later when it slowly dawns on him that Stede makes him happy, like it's something he's never experienced before.

Izzy berates Edward for being "unpleasant," an oddly soft choice of invective given how vicious Izzy can be. Beyond being a li'l bit pot/kettle, it does imply that there was a past where Izzy DID find Edward to be pleasant company. They had fun together of some sort, but it seems like if that fun were of a physically intimate nature, Izzy might have reached for a different adjective there, even if it doesn't fully admit to the sexual undertones. "Cold" or "distant" might have worked in that capacity. But "unpleasant"? Since when is a notorious pirate captain supposed to be pleasant?

In a homosocial environment where you have a bunch of men hooking up with each other for sexual gratification, but where the spectre of internalized homophobia still haunts the proceedings, there's a short list of acceptable ways to get off without it meaning that you're, you know, THAT WAY. Typically, the Approved List includes acts like frottage and mutual masturbation, where the deed can be done without going face to face, and the power dynamic is more or less equal. Anal or oral sex both imply (in this context) that one man is subservient to the other, and as such those acts are typically not approved UNLESS there is an actual power imbalance to back it up: higher ranking older man/lower ranking younger man. Kissing is pretty much never okay because it's perceived to be about romance rather than sex, and romance makes you a namby-pamby ponce. I have a longer post about that dynamic here, but for this post let's consider what we know for a fact about Edward and how it fits into this worldview.

He's unequivocally had sex with other men, including Calico Jack on more than one occasion ("dalliances" plural). Jack and Blackie served together under Hornigold, which suggests they were of more or less equal status, and therefore almost certainly stuck to the frottage/mutual masturbation menu. Not a chance in hell they kissed. In fact, the awkwardness of Edward's kiss with Stede suggests to me he has also been holding in some of that same internalized homophobia that Izzy struggles with: he fucks, but kissing is not something Edward's done enough to be suave about it.

Izzy, meanwhile, is so desperate to kiss someone he almost makes out with Lucius in front of other people before he checks himself. (I'm just going to keep posting this screenshot forever.) Izzy is even more invested in the prescribed homosocial order than Edward is, but if Edward had EVER tried to smooch him, Izzy would fall back on "it's fine because he outranks me" in a motivated reasoning heartbeat. I think it's safe to say they have not had makeouts.

I'm a little agnostic over whether they've ever had sexual contact of any kind, but their dynamic is not one of regular physical intimacy. If they ever did anything, it was most likely a one-off, probably with alcohol involved, very possibly extremely awkward (bonus points for cringe if it was a threesome with Jack), and got relegated to "and then we never spoke of it again" status.

I do think Edward is aware of Izzy's attraction and uses it as leverage to control Izzy without ever fully giving him what he actually wants. We learn later in the series that, when Edward made Izzy First Mate, he demanded loyalty to the Captain above all else, and this professional stipulation functions as a parallel to the obligatory monogamy of a relationship like Stede and Mary's (the difference being, Izzy entered into it by choice and could leave whenever he wants, but elects not to).

Izzy doesn't touch Edward casually ever (I'll get to the cheek caress in a second). His form of familiar intimacy is calling Blackbeard by his real name, an act we know had special meaning once upon a time because Jack also scoffs at other people calling Blackbeard "Ed." And Izzy is clearly not used to being touched casually by Edward, given how he lets out a little gasp at a pat on the back through several layers of clothing. That very minor touch, plus a small bit of praise ("I need you here") is enough to complete Izzy's 180 degree turnabout from "I want a divorce" to "I am so completely in love with you right now I am going to bust out the most heartfelt, genuine smile you're ever going to see on my face." [side note: It was not lost on me that "I said some things I regret last night" is a stereotypical next-day apology for a couple who had a big fight the night before.]

As for the choke scene? Edward releases the hold once it becomes clear Izzy is getting off on it. I won't say Edward would have known about Izzy's masochistic preferences if ever they'd had a regular sexual relationship, because nothing of what we know about their life together up to this point suggests they are particularly good at responding to what the other person genuinely enjoys. But they'd both have been steeped in a culture where fighting is foreplay, so Izzy's reaction also shouldn't come as a huge surprise (and, in fact, Edward doesn't seem especially surprised).

"You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men," to quote Barbara Kruger.

Of the people Edward has canonically gotten it on with or wants to, there's a lot of rough but lighthearted physical contact. Mutual roughhousing with Jack, getting Stede to stab him with a sword for funsies. Bad news for Izzy that Edward doesn't appear to engage in that same behavior with him, only resorting to physical violence out of anger.

That one attempt at a caress on the cheek is the only time Izzy escalates physical contact with Edward, and it's probably fair to say he pushed as hard as he did leading up to it because he wanted Edward to start a physical fight (check how Izzy's face falls when Edward backs off). The fact that they don't otherwise fight each other casually (no sparring, no bro-style shoulder punches, no coconuts chucked at each other's heads), suggests to me this isn't a regular part of their lives or an understood intimate dynamic between them.

The way Izzy reacts to Blackbeard going full dom on him also seems to imply this hasn't happened before, especially taken in context with the choke. If Blackbeard had made a habit of these sorts of scenes with Izzy, it seems even less likely he'd punch or choke Izzy to punish him. But it has finally dawned on Blackbeard that he can manipulate Izzy with the promise of intimate pain, a tool he likely would have used before now if they'd already had that kind of relationship.

So yeah, I'm not really seeing a strong case for prior sexual intimacy to any meaningful extent, and while I do think Edward loves Izzy after a fashion, it's not romantic and has its own toxic possessive components.

[beardedhandstoadshark]

Heyy please tell me about your ocs!!! they caught my eye and now I'm interested. Give me the summary or the full dump, either works :3

(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*) I- yea sure gladly!! Though I‘m still a bit new to this whole making characters (with actual character traits) thing so it‘s probably all over the place and not the best, hope that’s not too disappointing

Also prepare for a big info-dump. I tried making it short but it didn’t work. I‘m sorry.

For context, the setting‘s pretty much "standard fantasy rpg but technology is a thing“ (which mostly just means they’re all based on rpg classes lol, it’s why the outfits are so weird), and a bunch of info on all five is spread throughout posts in the "original character do not steal [tm]“ tag

But anyways

There‘s Mage, first oc of this group who kinda started this whole concept, unofficial official main oc and thus the most fleshed out one, and also the only one I actively posted about before which you can find here. In short, he‘s a (usually traveling) merchant with dark magic, lots of secrets, kinda shady but also happy-go-lucky, (so more or less true neutral if we‘re going by alignment charts?),a sad backstory the length of 2 sentences, addicted to knowledge, and really likes to poke jabs at Yel.

Yel is a permanently tired postman with constant :| face who only became one because he lost his Hunter class due to being short-sighted, and this was the next best thing to still roam around the woods freely while being undisturbed. Kept and uses his survivalist skills from that time though, which made him the group medic and also the one bringing back Red others when they get lost. Stickler to rules most of the time, pretty much the only thing that‘ll ever make him disregard them is his loyalty towards people he cares about. And even then it’s quite the internal battle (though he knows which side will always win). Hasn’t actually ever told the others his real name, and isn’t even sure if they’ve realized it yet. As far as he‘s aware, they think Yel is his real name and not a nickname slapped onto him by Mage, and can’t be bothered correcting them. Also doesn’t wanna admit it at all, but secretly enjoys bickering with him because Yel‘s sassy too, he just doesn’t show it.

Red is what happens when you complete a videogame and just keep chillin at the fishing area or building a third house for your twenty Minecraft dogs. Once the picture-perfect hero main character, now she‘s just. Relaxing. World‘s saved, after all! The hero-ing never vanished though, and they don’t bother hiding it, still helping whoever needs it, exploring new places found while getting lost, and pretty much enjoying her time until someone inadvertently ropes them into another great quest because she just can’t say no. Incredibly protective, pretty friendly and chill most of the time, but can’t deal with situations where she can’t be 100% in control. Also, you do. Not. Want. To be a traitor. If you’re standing on the other side, you are an enemy, and enemies get cut down, twice so for daring to lead the people around them on with their lies. Will forgive people who betrayed her though, if they decide to change their mind. But otherwise, Red’s alignment is chaotic good I think? Finds it funny when someone realizes The Hero hasn’t mysteriously vanished or epically sacrificed themselves in the last grand battle like everyone thinks, but is currently hanging upside down from a tree taking photos to fill up their dex.

Deniz kinda started out as an NPC-style character so there’s not much to him, he lives near the sea, flight over fight but will fight with everything he’s got when the first isn’t an option, really good at dealing + commanding people though sudden situations at reflex due to sailing, teaming up with Yel as the navigators of the group, and the first-aid person for serious situations. Not part of the Red-Retrieval club due to being just as prone to exploration, though. They kinda enable each other. Doesn’t care about rules unless he sets them up himself, because unlike other rules, he knows his own are there for survival, and you better listen to him. If something happens because you didn’t, that’s on you, and only you. But if something happens because you did listen to him, that’s equally on him, and he will carry that guilt alone. (So more of a neutral good, but a different flavor than Red, if that makes sense?)

Violet - your princess isn’t in another castle, she broke out after getting kidnapped to escape fulfilling [insert evil goal of every endboss here]. Literally. That’s her backstory. A very "the end justifies the means“ person, but more prone to stick to the rules while doing so, and only disregards them if necessary, but very willing. Has no problem with half-truths and playing mind chess against others. Pretty good at formulating plans beforehand, but can’t do it on a whim, quick to read the room, and kind of a history nerd. Also quite the cold judge. Unlike Red, Violet will never forgive you, no matter what you do, since there’s always a chance everything just repeats again. Also, pretty good at light magic, and thinks Mage is a bit shady because of his secrets (and not just because of his standard shadiness). She really doesn’t like when she‘s not getting information. But neither does Mage, so they found a common ground there, ironically. Either lawful or true neutral…? Not sure which one fits better.

Aaaand that’s them! Hope it’s not too different from what you expected? Tbh a lot of this is probably gonna chance anyways, I enjoy collecting and changing things gradually over time instead of sticking to a bunch of set notes. I mean, some info on them only exists because another anon‘s ask made me think about it, but doing it that way is pretty fun!

So yeah, feel free to ask more, completely ignore and/or criticize them, (dump some info on your own oc‘s if you’ve got them and want to? 👀) whatever you vibe with

[niles-rainbow-room]

Freemod Context! (Long!!)

This is Gordon Freemod! He’s my own little AU Gordon, and I love him!

I made him based around the way I play Garry’s Mod

Cause, in Gmod, my player model is Gordon, and I literally cannot change it because whenever I go to change my model he just

He looks at me. He judges me. He’s just refusing to let me change it.

Here’s just. A bunch of things about Freemod that aren’t related.

Btw, this whole thing is me going-

*projects rapidly*

These were all taken from various moments of me info dumping to my discord friends about him, so, that’s why there’s so many that are barely related.

-

So

To get some characterization down, Freemod can go from Excited Sweet Voice at Everything to This Man is in God Mode and He is Staring You Down as You Attack Him

They’re also

very scared of Gman

It’s not even funny

-

ANYWAYS something else about Freemod, he likes starting all out fights between people, but he’s very polite too so like

Someone says hi to him and he gives this big ol smile, next thing you know, he’s spawning headcrabs that could wipe out an army

-

He also has no idea what to do with bodies like sometimes he just Sweet Voice cocoons them, and other times he just beats them rapidly if it was a combine or something

-

Another thing! He doesn’t like making eye contact 100% of the time! If he gets too excited as well, he’ll despawn whatever was making him excited until he calms down.

-

He’s also really fast when it comes to no-clipping.

He’ll shoot up into the air and fling himself from place to place, just absolutely soaring and loving that feeling of flying through the air

-

He definitely makes Catboy Calhoun jokes but like

He’s also really nervous around Calhoun sometimes like he’s constantly checking in on them after making them fight a ton of headcrabs.

-

He doesn’t really like using the majority of the guns. He just typically uses the quieter/less frantic weapons like the magnum or the crossbow.

-

He’s like

Magnetically drawn to mirrors. He likes watching himself do the Sweet Voice and will do it for hours when he’s in the right mood if someone doesn’t stop him

-

He’s very giggly and smiley when it comes to hearing other characters talk. But he also can be very mean and cutting to the people he doesn’t like. Especially combine.

-

Freemod really likes Houndeyes.

*Really* likes them.

He spawned in a group of 8 and just watched them for a while, and then he spawns a MP Combine. It proceeds to stun stick every one of them. And they all die in one hit. They don’t even fight back.

What Freemod does next is basically the equivalent of “die a very painful death” and just beats the shit out of them while alive and dead.

They have to erase everything because they can’t stand the sight of the bodies of Houndeyes.

-

Hi! Sorry to take you out of the immersion of reading my brain goo, or the annoyed scrolling of “Oh my god will she just shut up already” but!

Another thing I decided to do with him, I gave him a little plot. A hint of his own character rather than just being me but an AU Gordon.

So here that is!

-

I feel like the only true way to contain Freemod and keep him from destroying the world is by keeping him in gm_construct

He likes it there sure, but like

If someone let him into Black Mesa let’s just say that the Resonance Cascade would’ve been way sooner and way more intense.

All he really does is fly around in there. Just. That’s it.

It’s his own personal Bug Bucket.

I don’t even think he realizes he’s trapped to be fair?

-

Another thing with Freemod, I’m not exactly sure how he’d react to... say, the HLVRAI characters showing up in gm_construct one day, idk Benrey takes the gang on a trip to there out of nowhere and they find Freemod just vibing by himself, flying through the air on a capture point from TF2. I don’t know if he’d:

A: Summon a bunch of things to attack the HLVRAI crew for the fun of it

B: Immediately try to befriend all of them desperately

C: Possess a creature and disregard them

D: All of the above

Cause with all this “He’s trapped/alone” sorta thing, I don’t know if I’m making him into a villain or am I just making him very touch starved and sad?

Cause like, earlier I did say that if he was let out of gm_construct, the resonance cascade would’ve been sooner and more intense

Basically what I was thinking is that he doesn’t really limit how crazy his thoughts experiments can be that often, so like, he spawns a bunch of things all at once to see what would happen.

But he’s not like that all the time, like I said, he’s also very polite, he’s just got a thin coating of God Mode on and he’s very lonely.

-

I was trying to figure out the thing with Freemod’s voice actually. I’m trying to think what they’d be like on the Gordon Scale.™️

I’d say he’s able to speak, but he doesn’t do it often. Because typically he’s only around NPCs and they can’t respond to him the way he wants, so why actually talk to them?

But he definitely talks to enemies as sort of a “I am the last thing you’ll ever hear” kind of thing.

But if he were to meet a different Gordon or someone with sentience he can talk to, he’d speak. Totally.

He talks to some of the alien/animal NPCs, cause like!!! Come on!!! That Houndeye over there needs to know that he’s a good boy!!!

-

So, maybe when Freemod is upset or something, he spawns the biggest thing he can possibly think of and posses it, and goes on an absolute rampage until he’s better

So I can just imagine.

Freemod, not feeling great and tense:

Feetman: Mod, hey. Don’t do it...

Freemod: *spawns and possesses a Gene Worm, and roars*

Feetman: FREEMOD NO GET OUT OF THE GIANT MONSTER-

Or like. He just possesses something and just. Flies away.

He just has moments where he’s too out of his head and he needs to just escape.

Something he’s been doing recently is possessing a Stukabat and flying up on top of a roof of a really high building and just. Viewing everything.

This man is SAD please hug him :((

-

Ooh, another thing,

He doesn’t like that dark room at all. In gm_construct? He will not go in there for more than a minute. That place scares him so much. Not even the fact that it’s dark, he just hates that he can’t see anything and while he knows he’s alone in the world he’s in, and he controls what can exist there or not, but, he just refuses to go there, even with a flashlight.

-

Aaaaaand that’s all the content I’ve made for them so far! Now that y’all know the context for him, I’ll post the comic of him meeting the HLVRAI characters, as well as some other drawings!

[bitchapalooza]

More hetalia highschool AU, 🌟magic team🌟 edition :)

Under the cut bc it is long ❤️

Vladimir is that one kid obsessed with Twilight but only for the vampires; it was his first ever exposure to vampires thanks to his dad thinking Twilight was an appropriate book for a 11 year old. Team Edward going strong for five years, he'd proudly declare like it actually mattered. He tries his best to dress goth at school even though his uniform gets in the way. Fake ear piercings(his parents won't let him pierce them yet), over the top makeup, he's dyed the top half of his shoes black because his parents were concerned about his obsession with black and wouldn't buy him the black tennies he wanted— "mom look, these are marked down for back to school! Can I pleeeease get them???" "....may I know why the black ones specifically?" "They match the ever nothingness of my soul." "Yep! The white ones it is then!" "Mooooooooooom!"— Vladimir has been dubbed the cringy vampire kid of course.

Lukas is into pretty much anything concerning cryptids and magical creatures because they can't be proven to be fake or real, which intrigues him. He carries a book about mushrooms at all times and info dumps on pretty much anyone about identifying poisonous mushrooms and which mushrooms are safe to eat. His backpack is covered in buttons and pins to show off his interests. He keeps an amethyst in the front pocket of his backpack, reason unknown other than to just randomly pull it out and let Mikkel look at it. He's that kid that always wears his hoodie no matter the season, he never takes it off. Under his hoodie is always a crude worded t-shirt that the school would not approve of, much less his parents. He's relatively quiet and because he's quiet he's considered a weird kid.

Arthur can't decide if punk is his style or if goth is. Either way, his way of self expression at school in addition to the uniform is horrible. Checkered black/red shoes his grandma got him with his older brother's hand me down worn out greying socks—"can I PLEASE just have my own clothes???" "we have perfectly good clothes for you in the garage! I can fix them up to fit you better and everything!" "but I want cool NEW clothes!" "those are cool clothes and as far as the other kids know, they're also new. Now get your transformer backpack and get to the car. I put a new patch on it last night so that should hold it for the rest of the year."— Old Pierce the veil shirt, with holes chewed into the collar from his older brother Dillan, peeking out from under his white polo. A black and red choker to match his black and red slowly tearing apart too big flannel on top of a black pull over. A deep blue beanie, the hoodie of his pull over almost constantly on top when outside the school. He dyes a part of his hair a different color every month. He spikes his hair using too much gel and is convinced he looks good. He talks too much about bands and always gets Vlad and Lukas going on and on about fictional creatures he does not FULLY believe in himself. He does, however, believe in magic and loves Harry Potter, more specifically the Weaselys, to bits.

Natalya is a sophomore, a year behind the boys, and she just kinda pushed her way into the friend group until they eventually accepted her into it. They were the only three she knew who liked occult related topics. She's on the baseball team because she wanted an excuse to hit things with another thing and NOT get detention because of it. She wears the khaki uniform skirt and takes full advantage over being able to wear any kind of tights underneath; skull pattern, plain black, blood splatter pattern, fire pattern. Anything that makes her feel like a badass. She's always talking about antiques and forging weapons, more specifically knives. She has a whole collection of fidget toys but her favorite is this pea pod keychain her father gave her. She's always talking about how she'd like to be a medical examiner and to just prove that she's serious, she'll bring up a picture of a human model and point out the difference between a self inflicted fatal wound and a homicide. She puts up a charade of being able to see and talk to ghosts to freak out Alfred, her extended friend first met through Tolys.

They collectively believe they're cool and that other people know this. They're genuinely blind to the obvious snickers sent their way, being called losers and nerds. They're really knowm for like really pathetic things like; Natalya is Ivan's, tallest and most intimidating member of the wrestling team, weird younger sister by a year. Lukas is just the weird quiet kid that reads by the courtyard garden during lunch. Vladimir is not only the vampire goth kid but the kid who's parents believe the teachers are giving his son low grades on purpose and will yell at them for it. And Arthur is just. He's another Kirkland, immediately assumed to be a massive trouble maker because of his now graduated brother Alistair and one grade above him brother Dillan. Everyone loved his eldest brother Darick and sometimes compare him to Darick.

Compared to what others THINK they do, such as witch craft for some odd reason, the four of them do pretty typical teen activities. Like hang out at the mall. Do their honework together. Play video games and D&D when they have the chance. The boys do have sleepovers still as they have since meeting each other in middle school, Nat not really being a fan of sleeping where she doesn't live but comfortable enough to go to their houses and just chill for the day. They have become friends because of their related interests but thats not what they're ALL ABOUT.

Fun facts/stories about these losers I thought about while bored as fuck:

• Lukas, in his freshman year, went on a nature hike field trip with his lit class after reading Into The Wild. And he brought his mushroom book of course. They walked around, looking at the sights, talked about the book. Lukas just stops at one point, falling behind the class. He picks up a mushroom, goes to the teacher and is like "You see this? Its not poisonous." And straight up fucking eats it without warning. The teacher called an ambulance even though Lukas kept telling him he was fine and that that mushroom was 100% okay to eat raw, but for sure better off cooked. Lukas calmly shows the paramedics his book and they're like "yeah that actually was safe to eat, we don't need the book to confirm that, but um. Please don't ever pick something off the ground and eat it again. Just. Please don't do that, son." .....he did it again before leaving to go back to school but this time he didn't tell anyone.

• In elementary school, Natalya brought in a model of the human brain she asked her dad to borrow. He had to say yes because she was his only child genuinely interested, not bored of, his medical profession and he found it very cute and honoring. So she's at show and tell, its her turn right, and she silently goes up to the front of the class and pulls out the model brain. Teacher tries to step in because, hey, these are 6 year olds—AND WHY DOES THIS 6 YEAR OLD HAVE A PLASTIC BRAIN??? But Nat just shooshes her. In surprised shock, the teacher is just quiet as Nat begins to explain parts of the brain and their function— which was all wrong actually. She knew the words and everything but she didn't get the locations right. She sounded confident and smart and she was telling this to a bunch of 6 year olds so they believed her of course. End of the school day, her dad is having a hilarious conference with his youngest's teacher about the brain incident.

• Vladimir loves reading. He's loved it since he began to learn how, even if his dyslexia gives him grief along the way. So since he loves to read he'll always get excited and read ahead in class or in the public library reading club. One summer, the reading club was reading The Giver and it was getting really good. Vlad was loving the story, so much so that Vlad began to read ahead in his own time when he really wasn't supposed to be, the club was reading it together out loud and discussing it. Now he's read enough and worked hard enough to figure out how to help himself focus better and understand each word and sentence without having to reread it all multiple times over or get stuck. But sometimes the meaning and context to what he's reading doesn't ALWAYS process with the words as he's too focused on reading the words right and it passes right over his head. So Vlad is reading ahead and he's getting to the part where The Giver has given Jonas the memory of the sled again. And Vlad just sits there after reading that paragraph. He rereads it. And rereads it again. And then he leaves his book on his bed, goes to the the hall closet and takes out the ironing board. He grabs a plastic container to use as an ill attempt of a helmet and he just. Rockets down the staircase and hits the wall. He screams and cries and his parents rush in from the livingroom. When asked what happened he just says "I wanted to understand the sled scene better! Now I do and I feel really bad for Jonas!" He just couldn't quite grasp WHY the sled accident hurt, never had a broken bone nor sled afterall, and needed to find out. And that's how Vlad got his first broken arm at the age of 12.

• When Alfred and Matthew moved in with Arthur's family, Arthur didn't like it. He was a moody young teen but he was also just tired of the full house. His cousins were loud and nosey. He had to share a room with his four older brothers already and now with Matthew while Kathleen and Alfred got a room to themselves. Arthur thought this was so unfair. So his solution was to run away. He was 13, he needed a place to have some peace and quiet for once. So he texts Francis and Lukas, the only two of his friends living in his neighnorhood. Francis is not on board with helping him run away at first but then Lukas brings literally all his camping gear for Arthur's use and then Francis is on board because he had the feeling Arthur was going to get himself killed somehow. So as the elder one of the group he accompanied Arthur and Lukas out to the short stretch of woods behind the last street of their neighborhood, intending to go to the big clearing before hitting the roads leading to the airport and whatever else buildings. They're out there setting everything up together and they're done by like 4 pm. They sit down and talk, munch on oreos and other snacks Arthur deemed as essential survival foods. Then Francis looks at his cell and remarks "wow its already 6! Ah, Lukas, we should get home. Afterall, neither of us ran away so we still have supper to eat. Come on Lukas, let's go before our parents come looking for us." They exchange goodbyes, Francis trying his best to hide his cocky smirk. So Lukas and Francis start walking off, Arthur crawls into the tent and eats half a cookie before frowning and feeling too alone. He didn't expect to feel alone because all he wanted was to BE ALONE. Before he knows it, he's running out of the tent yelling after his friends to stop and wait up. "Oh whats wrong, Arthur? I thought you wanted to run away." "I— I forgot I hadn't fed my rabbit is all! I'll run away tomorrow! I'm not... Feeling lonely if.. If that's what you think...." Arthur did not run away the next day. Buuuuuut the three plus Vlad made a tree house together in the Kirkland backyard that they still use today!

[evilvarric666-archive]

This is gonna be long, so sorry in advance, but as someone who enjoys long fics here are my two cents:

I get why some ppl may not want 75 tags in fics, but this is gonna hurt long fic writers. On a long fic there are probably gonna be more relationships that are central to the plot that aren't the main ship. And side pairings that may be a squick to some ppl. Not to mention trigger warnings and tone tags.

For example: a long fic with the pairing Y x Z. Z had an abusive relationship, and that's gonna be explored. So the author tags abusive relationship, bc that's a trigger, but an explanation next tag saying "not current ship" or smth.

Then Y has very important friendships with some of the cast. These are central to the plot so they're tagged too.

Turns out, character W is controversial in the fandom, but they're central to the fic too. The author is gonna tag after the character tag W positive/negative; so ppl who don't wanna see positive/negative things about W can skip this.

And guess what? Ship A x B appears in this fic too. Maybe it's not that central, but this ship is also disliked by some people, so the author will tag it, so ppl can filter through.

Another problem is with media that has different mediums, like, the media Y, Z, etc are from has movies, and books, and games and a tv show. All these things actually have different stories, different enough at least that ppl may only want to see fics written for the movies! But the author wants to take plot from the movies and the books. So instead of just tagging the all media tag for that media, they also tag media (movies) and media (books)

These tags end up accumulating. And especially in long fics. The author could make the first chapter a list of tws and stuff that they keep updating, but that destroys the purpose of ao3 tags: you can't filter content like that, you can only filter tags.

I honestly think they should just find a way to delete the fics with the trolling tags, or make a readmore thing so it doesn't hurt the browsing. At the very least make the tag limit longer.

sorry in advance that this is going to be rambly and weird. I have a lot of thoughts.

I get where you're coming from but I also still disagree. Like it's definitely going to change the way longfic writers tag, but I really don't think it's going to hurt them. I think it's going to encourage more effective tagging and that that's going to be better for everybody in the long run. If anything, I think that overtagging is what's hurting longfic writers, it makes their works look unappealing, and actually important information gets buried in a wall of text.

i will admit though that I do understand better now why less room for trigger tagging is going to be an issue. My preferred tagging style is "General/umbrella warnings in the tags, with whatever elaboration/specifics the author deems necessary in an author's note/author's notes at the beginning of each chapter" (example: "animal death" in the tags, so that the filters catch it + people who can't handle the subject At All know to keep scrolling, and then the author's note specifying that its in the context of game hunting & not a pet death, so that people who were uncertain and needed more info could click in and get the specifics.) and I thought that preference was pretty universal? But apparently a lot of people use the tags as an exhaustive list of warnings, which I didn't know because when I see a work with more than, well with more than 75 tags, I just start scrolling until it's gone.

(this is a tangent and I get that my experiences are not universal. but I genuinely dislike full warning lists in the tags because, for me at least, it makes it harder for me to figure out if the story is something I can/want to read. The things I Really Do Not Want To Read about are rare, and rarely tagged the same way twice, so the exclusion filter isn't really helpful for me. I have to actually read the full list of warnings and if the things I'm looking for are sandwiched inbetween a bunch of trope/character tags in a big wall o text I am going to miss it. This has happened to me multiple times.)

I think that that's an ineffective tagging style, basically. Lots of tags is kind of the opposite of useful tags, imo. Short, to the point and consistently worded warnings are better and I think having less space will encourage people to do that. I understand why people do this other style, though, and also why it would frustrate them that they can no longer do that. I think it really sucks that ao3 let everyone wild west their website for so long that it managed to spawn like three distinct groups of people who all use the website in completely incompatible ways, and now it's at the point where any new rule implemented is going to screw a lot of people over no matter what. But I digress.

Anyways, as long as someone isn't putting Revolutionary Girl Utena levels of warnings in their tags (and if your fic needs that much... maybe you should just put yur top 10 biggest warnings on there and slap a Dead Dove Do Not Eat on the end there, yknow?), I think that 75 tags will fully accommodate them. I get that tags start adding up, but also I think a lot of people are underestimating how many tags 75 tags is.

Like to just add up how many tags are used in your example: three / pairing tags, lets go crazy and say three more & pairing tags, tag every character tag in those pairings that's twelve, #abusive relationship + #not main pairing tags, three fandom tags bc multiple source mediums, a #[controversial character] positive tag... that's 24 tags. Like all the necessary character & pairing tags are handled in less than a third of the space given (and personally I consider this slightly over tagged. I think the only character tags you should put on a fic are the very mainest/pov characters, but yknow) and honestly if you can't then figure out a way to communicate the rest of the necessary information about your fic in 51 tags and a 1250 character summary then I really don't know how to help you. I personally would have to really push myself to figure out how to put more than 75 tags on one fic, regardless of the length of the fic. And I can't help but notice that a lot of the fics I could find with over 75 tags while searching last night had a lot of... unnecessary duplicate tags, often for information that could've been easily otherwise intuited (tagging #mandolorian #mandolore #mandolorian character and #mandolorian culture on a Jango Fett pre-series fic, for example)

I do have some criticisms about the current change though. I think it would've been better to have individual tag number limits for each individual field (x number of fandom tags, x number of character tags, etc.) instead of a 75 tags over all limit (or make a "warning tags" field that's separate from "additional tags" but that's a separate essay and would... probably mean overhauling the whole site. so not very practical.) A readmore option would be good too, and I'm not sure why they didn't go for that? I also think that this change will be most effective if done in combination with other changes. Like posting very loosely or not at all enforced official tagging/style guides for the site. I really think that even a tepid attempt at standardization will increase the site's usability like, A Lot.

I'm not sure how cohesive that was. TL;DR I appreciate hearing your thoughts, mine are that I still think this is a step in the right direction. And that cutting back on overtagging will lead to more concise, effective tagging which will make browsing and filtering easier in the long run.

[still-a-morosexual-help]

OBEY ME! LESSON 46 DETAILED SUMMARY + THEORIES

This lesson’s got two locked chapters that I can’t unlock :’)

D takes them to the casino where they meet Mammon in the Lamp event outfit. When he laughs and tells them that they must have forgotten who he is if they think they can take the money MC ignores all of this to ask him wtf he’s wearing. Mammon blushes and tells them that they have no right to criticize what he’s wearing considering what they’re wearing. Then he says also Lucifer wtf happened to you!? He laughs and teases Lucifer about getting shrunk and how he could accidentally step on him and kill him rn or how Beel might eat him as a snack. I saw someone say that Mammon was a little shit who was also BabyTM and like Yess!??? I love when we get to see more of the asshole side of him specially when we already know how soft he is. Man’s an onion :’) Beel says he wouldn’t do that unless Lucifer hid inside a piece of cake and Beel swallowed him whole without realising. Lucifer, off screen: “You’d better realise I was there!” And Like??? That’s the point Lucifer wants to argue? Not the fact that he wouldn’t hide inside a cake? Mammon says whatever and that he’ll take Lucifer from them so he can have fun with his new toy anyway RIP to Mammon who dies after this lesson. “Mammon, Avatar of Greed, Appears”- gonna have Pokemon Battles from now on, I can’t believe this what this dating sim has evolved into :D Mammon uses wind to lift Lucifer up and bring him towards him. MC has a flashback to the previous night and commands Beel who transforms into a demon and whose body starts moving on its own, Beel then cancels out Mammon’s spell and uses a wind spell to send Mammon flying. Beel transforms back to his human form and is shocked by what happened. Solomon says MC did a good job commanding Beel though they weren’t able to draw out all his powers. They get the armour, which Beel thinks is too flashy but MC tells him it looks great which he is happy about. D tells them about a rumour of Satan attacking a town up north.

As they walk through the woods Lucifer talks about how much he’s gonna love beating the shit outta Mammon when he’s back to normal and waves MC off when they ask him to go easy on Mammon. Beel says that Lucifer used to be a lot nicer to Mammon in the celestial realm and how the two of them would team up to go argue with Raphael. Solomon asks if it was Diavolo who got Lucifer to change and what exactly Lucifer had to do to reach the status they now enjoy in the Devildom. Beel seems shocked at this and ask Lucifer if it’s true. He says he doesn’t remember. There’s growling & they’re suddenly surrounded by ghosts. Solomon: Oh yeah lol this is called the Black Phantom Forest. Everyone else: WHY the FUCK didn’t you say so before!? They run from the ghosts and set up camp beside a lake, MC & Beel talk. Beel says how they’ve all changed from their time in the Celestial Realm and he can’t remember when he stopped resisting the urge to constantly eat. But how somethings are still the same and how the brothers have always been together and how they always will be. He brings up the three things the butcher said to maintain a long relationship and how even though they may sometimes falter at the “respect each other” part when it comes down to it the brothers have all three things with each other (Not me sobbing like a baby. It’s the found family trope for me guys). Beel says how he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to fight Belphie if they meet him in the game and how he has so many people who he loves that he doesn’t know who to put first and that he knows many people would kill to have that kinda problem and that as both an angel and a demon he’s being lucky to have the people he loves. MC gets to hold his hand, lean on his shoulder or say nothing and guys I love Beel so much he’s just so pure god. Okay so theory part: I 100% believe (& it’s implied in canon and in the chats too) and the main reason Lucifer is so mean to Mammon now is because he’s scared if he doesn’t discipline him then Diavolo will and he’ll end up with another Lilith situation. That being said I NEED to know how Lucifer came across Mammon in the celestial realm and what he said to make Mammon so loyal to him. PLS om! Give me the boys backstory? I like to think Lucifer raised Mammon the same way Simeon is raising Luke and that’s why you can see some of Lucifer’s traits in Mammon whenever he becomes serious about something and why Mammon sometimes slips up and calls Lucifer “Dad” and why Lucifer becomes so happy about it. I also think the others would have been older than Mammon was when he first met Lucifer, when they eventually joined the family which is why they share far less traits with Lucifer and why (as far as we know) none of them have called Lucifer ‘dad”. If this is true it also brings up a real interesting dynamic between Satan and Mammon that would be useful when writing fics. You know a little deeply buried resentment and envy about Lucifer having been more of a father figure to Mammon than to the person who is technically his actual son, and since we know for a fact that right after arriving in the Devildom Lucifer starts going through an existential crisis and Mammon’s the one who steps up to look after the others I 100% believe Mammon’s the one who did most of the work in raising a newly created Satan and who taught him how to control his anger so well (cause lets be real it definitely couldn’t be any of the others) which also gives backstory to Satan’s “do you think Mammon’s actually the most decent of us” homescreen comment and more importantly adds spice to the relationship dynamic you can work with in fics.

When they wake up Beel is thankful that they didn’t get eaten. Solomon: not like you would have noticed with all the fun you had *wink wink* Lucifer: wtf Solomon:*WINK WINK* Me: bro they were just talking…  they find out game time and real world time pass differently and come across a treasure chest in the middle of their path. Solomon: Lets open it! :D Lucifer: Expect that’s definitely a trap… Solomon: Exactly! Which is why we should open it! :D MC: Lets open it! :D Lucifer: Why is the entire human species so fucking stupid!? Why were you created without any self preservation!? Who approved this!?  They find medicine, a warding bottle and cat ears. …They put Lucifer into the bottle and Lucifer’s really going through it in this huh. But opening the chest pulls up an inescapable battle with the final boss, and Satan pops up fully immersed in the villain role with an evil laugh and everything. Luci asks MC to use something from the chest and they use the cat ears and Lucifer’s disappointed when they actually work. But it only deals 222 damage to Satan’s 870k HP. Satan paralyses them all and steals bottled lucifer and calls Belphie to finish the others off. I can’t remember if I mentioned this before but how did the brothers know that Lucifer was gonna be mini before they even got home, it would’ve had to be quite a bit in advance for them to so perfectly set up everything… And you know Solomon was really determined to open that chest (I mean so was MC but the whole of season 1 was establishing that their curiosity was gonna get them killed) so…

MC tells Belphie they don’t want to fight him and Belphie says he doesn’t want to fight either but at the same time Satan agreed to give him mine lucifer for a whole day if he defeats them. Beel’s still reluctant and Belphie says Beel doesn’t have to worry cause Belphie isn’t the same small/weak person that Beel always had to protect (and holy shit I need more info on this too?). Beel eventually agrees and says that Belphie’s strong, he tells MC that they weren’t able to use his entire power against Mammon cause he was holding himself back unconsciously but that he was ready now. MC makes Beel do a bunch of wind attacks and they defeat Belphie who’s impressed. Beel says that the magic was actually MC doing it not him (even though he was the one that executed it). Belphie says he’ll join their party if MC promises him that he’ll be allowed to poke at mini luci. MC tells him there’s a damned line and he’ll have to wait his turn. Solomon wonders if MC should be going around giving the right to annoy lucifer to others but also he wants that right too. Even though Lucifer was kidnapped since he’s still in the bottle he’ll be protected so MC’s test is still ongoing. Odd that there was a bottle that would protect Lucifer should he get kidnapped in the chest that was a trap… look we all know Solomon is shady enough that he’s probably behind this right?

During dinner at a tavern the twins are sickeningly soft with each other and Solomon watches them with a smile. For the night the twins end up sharing a room with each other, with Mc and Solomon alone together. In the middle of the night MC wakes up to Solomon still up and looking sad. They ask him what’s up. He says despite how much they walked he still isn’t tired and that seeing the twins together made him lonely. Seeing how much they love and care and understand each other and how they were always together made him wish he had something similar but how when you didn’t age it was difficult to from lasting bonds like that in the human world. MC tells him that all of them care about him and he says he hopes so. Solomon: Lol just the two of us in a room in a game, wouldn’t it be crazy if we made out? MC can either kiss him or kinda stare awkwardly. If they choose the second he apologises for suddenly putting them on the spot and says he won’t try anything else. So this might be kinda an unpopular opinion and I’m genuinely really happy that the side characters are getting more screen time and development because I desperately needed that but I’m not really onboard the romancing option with them? I’m happy they’ve got their own cards now and I love the devilgram stories and romance options in them but I don’t think it makes sense in the context of the main storyline? Barbatos has almost no interaction with MC and though they haven’t shown it yet it’d be weird if he was suddenly into MC. Diavolo spent 2 whole seasons simping over Lucifer why is MC suddenly an option? Besides Diavolo always seems so lonely and I really want him and MC to be really good friends, I want Diavolo to have a friendship where there isn’t some condition that hangs over it like there is with his relationship with Barbatos and Lucifer. The same goes with Solomon. I just want him to have a good solid friendship where there isn’t expectations or power between them. He also initially only seems interested in MC for their power and as a way to train them and eventually genuinely softens up to them, Just the request to kiss seemed outta nowhere? I don’t know why but with Simeon he seems above crushes? I always imagine him seeing MC as another cute kid Lucifer picked up (despite MC being an adult) and having a sort of soft indulgent attitude towards them. I don’t know I think I just want MC to have some friends who aren’t trying to sleep with them.

Solomon is extremely chipper the next morning and Belphie grumpily makes a comment about him having fun and sdfjdvnsjdokd they just talked. Belphie uses his magic to teleport them to Satan’s castle and Beel asked why he couldn’t do that the previous night, Belphie says grumpily cause then Solomon would have missed out on the fun and Solomon agrees and THEY JUST TALKED!? Satan has managed to transform Lucifer into wolf Lucifer and is shaking his bottle hard enough to make Luci wanna puke while Lucifer asks him to stop. MC tells satan to stop and he tells them they won’t be able to defeat him cause they skipped right to the boss battle without taking the long route and levelling up. MC says they’re not gonna fight him cause this whole thing is fucking stupid. Satan says it’s not cause he’s having fun. MC gives him one of their free therapy sessions about how important the bonds between he and his brothers are and how they don’t care more about helping the brothers all get along than some stupid star. Beel comes out spitting facts, saying they all know that Satan actually cares about Lucifer and how that embarrasses him and how he needs to stop hiding it by lashing out. And how Lucifer needs to get his shit together and be honest with satan. That he needs to tell Satan that Lucifer knows he’s his own demon and a really good demon at that. Lucifer says FYI but I never said you weren’t your own great person and Satan blushes and says that unless he wants to look childish he has no option but to accept the olive branch. He tosses Luci to MC. Belphie complains about having stupid older brothers and Solomon says he’s disappointed in Satan and reveals himself as the true secret final boss and FUCK YEAH! I CALLED THAT SHIT! Kinda – I thought he might have just given them a heads up about Luci’s condition. On a different note, Satan needs serious therapy. They all do tbh.

Solomon congratulates MC on what they’ve done so far but says they still haven’t accessed Beel’s full potential and that he’ll give his ‘adorable apprentice’ one more shit at it. Solomon summons Asmo who complains about how long he was made to wait and how he nearly gave up and went to the spa and that no one likes a selfish man. Solomon tells Asmo that he can tell him all this after they get back to the real world and I genuinely want the backstory of how they met and just more about their relationship. At Solomon’s command Asmo uses charm and paralyses Beel and at MC’s Beel uses another wind attack. Asmo says he’s never seen beel do something of this calibre before and he seems more powerful, even more than he was in the celestial realm, Asmo yells at Solomon for just standing and seeming impressed instead of helping him. There’s a bright white light.

Back home with everything back to normal Beel, Lucifer and MC are hanging out by the pool. Lucifer is in an unexpectedly good mood and MC has earned a star, which glows slightly from its place on the symbol etched to the back of their hand. Inside Solomon is feeding the other brothers as punishment. Mammon is sobbing his heart out and Levi is out cold (possibly dead). Satan is given Levi’s remaining share of food and Asmo is in tears. Belphie had made a run for it the second they got home and is nowhere to be found. Solomon talks about how nice Lucifer actually is and how he really loves his brothers cause he just made Solomon make them dinner instead of punishing any of them…. Love that the canonical reason why none of these demons tell Solomon about his food and allow themselves to get tortured is cause they don’t wanna be rude and hurt his feelings. And he thought no one cared about him. If that isn’t love I dunno what is. Beel and MC take a walk while Lucifer sits by the pool and in his words basks in “their screams of agony” While blushing beel says he’s grateful for what happened and how that star is proof that they got closer. Mc can either thank him or say that the star belongs to him. I think they kiss after the second option? For the first Beel says MC’s the one who did the work of drawing out his power. Over the echoing screams from inside Beel asks if they feel like they forgot something and ndfjkfjkdjfefjkn THEY FORGOT DIAVOLO I’M!!!!???? poor baby

[bigassheart]

Updated TUA Timeline

A little over a year ago, Aidan posted a timeline for the events of the Umbrella Academy on his Instagram. I posted it on this blog at the time and promised I was going to update my TUA Timeline post with that info. Never did. But I am now! So, here it is. The updated TUA Timeline.

Also, there will obviously be spoilers, so don’t read this if you haven’t watched season 1.  

October 1st, 1989 - The Umbrella Academy kids are born.

1993 - Grace Joins the family. This is according to Aidan’s Timeline. Depending on the time of the year, the kids would be 3 or 4 when this happens. This may or may not be when the kids get names. 

1993/1994 - Vanya forgets about her powers. Vanya also trains with Reginald and is subsequently made to forget about her powers around this time. Though we don’t get a specific date or length of time that Vanya trains, the flashbacks don’t appear to show her training for a super long time. I think a good guess would be less than a year for this training, putting Vanya’s age at 4. (This also matches up with the casting for the young Vanya and young Allison roles, which I used previously to estimate this age/date)

1997/1998 - Klaus is locked in the mausoleum for the first time. I am basing this on the casting for the role of young Klaus, which has him at 8 years old.    However, it’s not quite that simple, because when Klaus is talking to his dad in episode 7, he says that his dad locked him in the mausoleum when he was 13. Complicating matters even further, there is a post somewhere out there that took a screen shot of Reginald’s journal with notes about locking Klaus in the mausoleum. (I have not been able to find that post again, so if anyone knows the one I’m talking about and has a link, I would love to put it in here). The date recorded on those notes is 2001. (I don’t remember the month, but I think it was summer) That would have made him 11 years old. It’s possible that this was just an inconsistency in the writing. Or it’s possible that Reginald locked Klaus in a mausoleum on at least 3 different occasions at age 8, 11, and 13. Possibly more. 

2001/2002 - The Umbrella Academy stops a Robbery  I’m basing this on the fact that all the same actors were used for these scenes as were used in the scene where Five leaves, so they can’t be much more than a year younger than that. 

November 10, 2002 - Five leaves the Academy  According to Pogo in episode 1, Five has been gone for 16 years, 4 months, and 14 days. The date in that episode is March 24th, 2019 (according to Vanya). That means that Five disappeared on November 10th, 2002, a little more than a month after the Umbrella Academy kids all turned 13. (This date is also confirmed on Aidan’s timeline)

(Side-note. Remember when Klaus mentions being locked in the mausoleum when he was 13? That means it probably happened not too long after Five disappeared. Holy Fuck Regi!)

2006(?) - Ben Dies OK, this is only a guess, BUT it’s a good one and if you scroll down to the additional notes at the bottom, you’ll see why. 

2014 - Vanya publishes her book In episode 3, we learn that Vanya wrote her book 5 years earlier. (when they were 24) At this point, Ben is already dead and Luthor has not had his accident yet.

2014/2015 - Luther has his accident We’re not sure how long it takes Regi to send Luther to the moon after his accident (days? weeks? months?) so all we really know is that the accident happens sometime between Vanya publishing her book and the moon trip.

2015 - Luther goes to the moon In episode 6, Luther says that he was on the moon for 4 years, making him about 25 years old when he left. Aidan’s timeline also confirms that Luther went to the moon in 2015. 

March 24th, 2019 - Reginald’s Funeral We know this because they tell Five the exact date. 

April 1st, 2019 - Apocalypse (Dear Commission: Worst April Fools joke ever). 

This Brings us to the present. The members of the Umbrella Academy are all 29, except for Five, who is 58, and Klaus, who spent 10 months in Vietnam and is therefore 30 now. 

Additional Notes on the Timeline: 

Five in the Future Five finds Delores pretty soon after the apocalypse (again, same actor, so I’m figuring a year leeway at most). He tells Klaus that he was with Delores for 30 years. That would make him about 43 when The Handler shows up. When Five gets back to the present, he gives a very specific amount of time he has been gone: 45 years. This means he spent 15 years working for the Comission, making him 58 at this point. Five also traveled through history extensively while working for the commission. His last mission had something to do with the Kennedy assassination, which would put him in 1963.  (Quick note on this one - Someone commented on this post a while back with a correction and I was going to go back and do more research so I could correct these numbers, but now I can’t find the post and it’s been so long that I can’t remember what the correction was. So, if these numbers look off, let me know and I will fix it)

1968 - Klaus travels back in time to the Vietnam War Historical Context: This is 3 years after the first American troops arrived in Vietnam and 5 years after Kennedy was assassinated. Nixon was elected in 1968. This was also the year of the Tet Offensive, a massive campaign by the North Vietnamese Army to push the US troops out of the country and ferment rebellion among the South Vietnamese people. This was the big turning point in the war and marked the beginning of the US troops’ defeat. This was also the year of the My Lai Massacre, where the US Army murdered more than 500 civilians in the city of My Lai. This incident was covered up for a year before the American press found out about it.  

Finally, the reasoning behind my guess that 2006 is the year Ben died: 

Klaus mentions that Ben died “young and tragic”

Everyone left the house after Ben died, according to Vanya.

In episode 3, Alison says that they left their mom alone for 13 years. (13 years ago, they would have been 16) We don’t know how quickly everyone left, if it took days, weeks, or even years, so it’s possible that 13 years ago was when Alison left specifically. It could be that everyone was gone by that date. Or it could be that this is when everyone started leaving. 

Diego mentions moving out at 17. Again, everyone left after Ben died, so it would have happened before that. 

Ben’s statue does not have a date on it, but obviously he would have had to be at least the same age as he is depicted there.

We also have the following portraits sequence in episode 1 that was used to show Five’s disappearance and Ben’s death. Here are all 4 portraits.

Portrait 1 is done when they are all 12 or 13 years old. Everyone looks about the same age in portrait 2, so I’m assuming it Reginald had it commissioned right after Five disappeared. It would therefore make sense that portrait 4 was done right after Ben died. There are clearly several years age difference between portraits 2 and 3. It also looks like there may be another year or so age difference between portraits 3 and 4. Because of this, I would argue that the children are at least 15 years old in the final portrait. Therefore, Ben dies at age 15 or 16.

Last bit of evidence is Aidan’s timeline. Now, the year for Ben’s death is blacked out, BUT we can see the general shape of the numbers. The first number is clearly a 2, so we know that it’s not just a bunch of 0′s as a place holder. The last two numbers are rounded at the top and the bottom. In the font they are using, that gives us these possible years: 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009. 

The placement between 2002 and 2015 is just a little past the middle point, so at first I figured that would mean the year was 2009. HOWEVER, that would mean he died at age 20. The other kids definitely don’t look 20 in the portrait after Ben dies and this doesn’t match up with the comments Allison and Diego make about leaving when they were still in their teens. Also, if you look at the timeline for earlier years, the same space between dates is used across the board, whether those dates are 4 years apart or 9 years apart. 

Conclusion: I think Ben died in early 2006 (making him 16). 

And that’s all I’ve got so far.

If anyone else has more clues for the timeline, please add them to this post. 

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

LITTLE KNOWN X-MEN VILLAINS--- THE RAVENS! A hidden race of psychic vampires that walks among humankind!

The Ravens are a group of vampire-like beings who appear in a story in X-Factor #54 and X-Factor #56-58. Their story stars Archangel, whom they try to make into one of their numbers. Like a lot of Marvel vampires, Ravens don’t drink blood (I think there was a Comics Code law against it for awhile or something, which is why so many Marvel vampires or vampire-like beings are energy-suckers instead?) but they do call themselves “vampires” as well as Ravens, as do others, and they have all the same other tropes---they live forever unless killed and the only means of death seems to be beheading or if they fail to keep their number at 24 through converting someone else if one is killed. They can’t be photographed, nor captured on film, and are weaker in sunlight. They can fly or levitate, and they can teleport by transforming into energy or mist (their true form) before reforming in their human shape elsewhere. They have super-strength that comes from the lives of all those that they have consumed, as the process adds the victims strength to their own. As for for they feed on instead of blood, they’re a very specific sort of energy vampire. They feed on the painful memories of human beings, seeking out people who are suffering great mental/emotional anguish from the bad things that happened in their lives, and sucking it out of them. Which would sound great if not for the fact that it KILLS the person and leaves nothing but a skeleton! They can do it partway, though---Azure, for instance, takes the memories from a businessman to get info on the stock market to fund his decadent lifestyle, which doesn’t kill the man but merely gives him a heart attack. The feeding process is traumatic; a mere touch from one was described by Beast as drawing up some of his worst memories as well as “like my soul was burning, like it was draining away into her hands” In order to find the best prey, Ravens can sense pain in others, sensing both a person’s suffering and their strength in their aura. It’s for this reason that Crimson, one of their number, is attracted to Archangel---she wanted a meal of horrible suffering, as well as seeking a warrior’s soul, for she had tired of feeding on the homeless and destitute. Archangel, who was going mad due to hallucinogens he had been exposed to, was reliving the memories of his torment at Apocalypse’s hand as well as other traumas, and this is what made her want to feed on him. But Crimson’s plans go beyond merely devouring Archangel; she manipulates another Raven, Azure, into going after him as a competition. Archangel kills Azure, just as Crimson hoped, which means. . . .the circle is broken. Another way that Ravens differ from traditional vampires is that, as previously mentioned, only 24 of them exist at any time. No more, no less. They spread out over the globe, but concentrate in major cities. There are six in New York alone, and they’re the named ones who star in this story. If one Raven is killed, as mentioned, they’ve got 24 hours to make a new one. And Crimson argues successfully to the others that Archangel should be the new one, that he proved his power and worth by killing Azure. In reality, her plan is that once Archangel is a Raven too, she’s going to use him to kill the others, and then drain him for herself, believing that his pain energy would give her the power to survive despite all the other Ravens dying. Naturally, this did NOT go as planned. Archangel beheaded her with his wings just as he had Azure, and when Cobalt’s head was crushed in the fight with X-Factor, the rest of the Ravens went up in literal smoke due to the circle being shattered beyond repair from too many members dying: “Ravens,-- creatures seemingly of flesh and blood-- implode, dissolve into their true form of shrieking, noxious mist” that shoots up out of the theatre roof en masse and dissipates on the wind. As a note, the ones in this tale are all named after colors (Crimson, Cerise, Cobalt,  Azure) or gems (Ruby, Beryl, Coral). The names are apparently unisex; Cerise and Beryl are used as names for women by humans, but the Ravens who bear those names are male. They also all hate each other, and are extremely petty, jealous, and competitive with one another. And yet, their hatred binds them together, and they will hang out in little packs to hunt with each other, as well as engage in little challenges with each other, such as pursuing the same prey, to pass the ennui of eternity. And killing each other isn’t an option, for previously mentioned reasons. As is common in vampire media, there’s an air of pseudo-bisexuality/homoeroticism/etc in the way that they talk about their prey, because the male Ravens will say things like “he’s not my type at all” or talk about how they wish they could “have” Archangel right now and things like that, and like. . . obviously they are talking about feeding on his energy, but the phrasing out of context sounds sexual if you don’t know that. The “Lesbian Vampire” trope actually does get averted for the female Ravens, but that’s probably just because this story happens to focus on a male target. And Crimson herself, despite her appearance of being the “seducer” type vampire lady, doesn’t really do that with Archangel---she never flirts with him or rubs on him or anything, nor ever seems like she’s actually attracted to anything but Archangel’s power and energy, and I like that. That said, her dialogue is fantastically campy AND vampy, saying/thinking things like  “I will use his fascination for things dark and deadly to bind him to me” But what I like most of all about them is, like so many vampires, they are DRAMATIC AS FUCK. They kidnap Archangel to make him one of them in a dark ritual and they do it in an abandoned, decaying theatre and STRAP HIM TO AN UPSIDE-DOWN ANKH while they chant in ancient long-dead languages and they drag Charlotte Jones towards him to be a human sacrifice as his first victim AN UPSIDE DOWN ANKH IN A DECAYING THEATRE Like. How Goth can you get? I love it. I love them. Ridiculous. I think the Ravens are really cool, and I like to think that the ones NOT involved in this story are still out there, despite the implication that the deaths of this bunch caused the circle to “shatter beyond repair” and that the others around the globe went up in literal smoke too. I like to think they didn’t though, that they made new Ravens, and twenty-four of them are out there still. I’ve also got a wild headcanon that they might be an offshoot of mutantkind descended from Selene. They’re not just energy vampires like her, they specifically take the memories of their prey, and part of Selene’s energy vampirism was that she too had the remember the entire life of those she absorbed. It doesn’t seem too wild to me to think that the first Ravens might have been her children or descendants, ancient as they are implied to be, and evolved into these completely new creatures over the long centuries who could convert others into their kind. We’ve actually seen that before---Bishop once stated that in his future there were a group called the Emplates, who resembled Emplate (another vampire-like mutant) and preyed on mutants. Since later it was discovered that Emplate can "infect" another individual with his powers, it makes sense that Emplate would be the progenitor of the group from Bishop's timeline. So, maybe it’s the same deal with Selene and the Ravens. To be clear, no connection in canon is ever made between the two, and the Ravens are NOT portrayed as being mutants or related to mutants in any way, but a race unto themselves, I just couldn’t help being reminded of Selene by them, both in how they feed and a lot of the things they say, the cruel and petty personalities they all have, the way they look at mankind, their ancient nature, etc. And like...I think it would make sense! Also:

Bobby: hey girlfriend, what is my type again? of woman? that I like? Opal: It’s me, that’s why we are together, see how that makes sense? Bobby: yes it does that is why I am with you, a woman, who I like I am starting to see why Bendis picked him to be The Gay One

[bellaslilpapercut]

in ref to your post I think that’s part of what people mean with those posts, like that she jumped right to the jacob/ the wolves despite the fact that she knew laurent & possibly other vamps were in the area. also because she literally says that it’s ‘only natural’ that edward would have killed people and drags jacob and also she didn’t KNOW that edward hadn’t recently killed people, and he actually tells her that he planned to kill her and she doesn’t care at all lol and just in general for the most part she acts like the pack is unreasonable for hating the cullens and tries to convince jacob how good they are and could care less about what happens to anyone at the hands of the cullens. so i get why that rubs people the wrong way but if i totally misunderstood your post i apologize!!!

This got long so I'm adding a cut!

I get that! I'm sure at least some of the various posts I've seen along those lines have had the unspoken intention of "why did she even assume the wolves? also why is she repeatedly okay with vampires needing to kill to eat?" but since most of them are paraphrased versions of "why was she mad at Jake but not Edward" (like I've seen at least four separate posts that are just that sentence in different words with no other context lol) I was just talking about what has been explicitly written a bunch of times.

I definitely agree that she makes too many excuses for the Cullen's and even given the narrative opportunity to understand the wolves' resentment (when Jake tells her Sam thought she understood him) she just doesn't fucking care! I just don't think her "Jake why are you killing people" moment is the best example of that hypocrisy because if we assume her jump from the given info (big bears are killing people) to her assumption (it's probably the wolves) is marginally sensible given what she knows (since she still hasn't heard about Taha Aki) then like, I totally get saying "hey that's fucked up!" while accepting that her boyfriend murdered people a very long time ago. That doesn't feel cognitively dissonant to me. And while she can't know for sure that he hasn't killed anyone since, I also understand why her vampire fangirl mind would trust him enough to believe he hadn't killed since and wouldn't hurt her now (also very realistic for an inexperienced person to fall for "babe I've changed!" lol)

In the specific context of twilight where all vampires are white and have to kill to feed, Bella's easy acceptance of their human diet is fucked up to say the least. It is standard of vampire romance for the vampire lover to be weirdly okay with the human eating thing so I can see that as a slim excuse for Bella's laissez faire attitude but since it's padded with smeyers bigotry, it comes across less as "I'm infatuated with a monster" and more "I think it's okay when white people are murderers." In sum, I find that Bella's acceptance that vampires kill humans for sustenance is not by itself a red flag so the repetitive conversation around that acceptance alone does little to shine a light on what actually makes that a hypocritical stance and there are better examples throughout the saga of bella and smeyers fucked up treatment of the fictional and real life Quileute tribe.

[hellshores]

starting your story

this is a list of advice for effectively starting your story, including what will and will not hook your readers right from the start. remember, there are always some exceptions - but for the most part, follow these guidelines for the best results:)

start with action !

the most hooking stories begin with an exciting scene that have the readers both breathless and compelled to read more. don’t start with a sluggish description of how the main character got out of bed that morning, or their long train of thought about how pretty the clouds look in the sky.

that being said, don’t start with a confusing action scene : if you immediately shove the readers into some intense, rapidly-moving scene where the main character is being coughed out of a giant fairy-lizard monster who actually used to be their old love interest before they were cursed and transformed by a gay herbal witch because they ate too many vegan cupcakes as a child, they’ll be as lost and confused as you are now just from reading that description alone, and will quickly lose interest.

the bottom line is, make sure the action scene is exciting but understandable without much context, since you haven’t had a chance to give much context - it’s the very beginning of your story, after all.

do not start your story as a flashback.

this will quickly lose your audience’s interest. readers want to be in the moment, not watching it from afar. it’s often disappointing to read an intriguing scene, only to later find out it happened ten years ago. if you must go into the past, scatter the flashbacks throughout the real-time plot of your story, rather than piling it all at the beginning.

effectively introduce 1-2 of your characters.

like i said, there are exceptions - but for the most part, introduce your readers to the main characters as early in the story possible. start out with action or dialogue that will successfully ( but not overbearingly ) characterize the MCs, and/or paint them in the way you want your audience to view them. the readers are going to be experiencing your entire story through these characters - connect them as soon as you can !

however, don’t introduce too many characters at once - 1-2, no more than 3, is usually the safest bet. i’ve made this mistake before, and my readers have expressed that they often mix characters up, or forget their backstories, or sometimes their role in the story at all. you might think that’s the reader’s fault, but the truth is, it’s almost always yours.

do not info-dump.

this is one of the easiest ways to lose readers from the start. if they’re confused just by the first paragraph, there’s a far less likely chance they’ll want to continue reading. 

gradually share hints of your character’s backstory, bits and pieces of worldbuilding, glimpses of your character’s family life - don’t immediately shove it all down your readers’ throats in six enormous, intimidating paragraphs.

speaking of, avoid enormous paragraphs altogether.

enormous paragraphs should be kept out of your story in general, but it’s especially important to avoid them in the beginning chapter(s). they can quickly scare readers off, and if they do continue reading at all, they’ll probably skim.

in general, it’s best if your paragraphs are no more than 3-5 sentences long.

don’t foreshadow too much.

before you protest, don’t get me wrong - i love foreshadowing, but there is such a thing as too much of it.

don’t start your story with some fancy, cryptic passage that has a ton of meaning and suggests half the book’s plot twists and character deaths if you really dig deep, but at first glance just seems like you’re word-vomiting a bunch of poetically aesthetic phrases. i’m sure it looks and sounds pretty, but it’s still word-vomiting.

remember, at the very beginning of a story, your readers have absolutely no clue what’s going on - they won’t be able to grasp the deeper meanings you’re hinting at.

if i think of anything else, i’ll add onto this post - feel free to add on as well:)

[pi-cat000]

MSA: Winged Arthur AU (part 13)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11 , Part 12

Note: Backing up a bit with a Lewis POV 

.

“I’m telling the truth!” Lewis reaches towards Vivi like he’ll be able to physically close the distance between them. He tries stamping down his flames, which are leaping about, mirroring his emotional distress. Maybe, if he looks human, she’ll be more sympathetic.

“Please.” All he needs is a chance to explain and make her understand that the Arthur she is protecting isn’t the person she thinks he is.

Her expression hardens into a glare. The front door to Kingsman Mechanics’ is slammed which such force that it rattles the frame. For a long moment, all Lewis can do is stand, stunned, with his arm outstretched. Flames run down its length, eating away at the human illusion, leaving black cloth and a skeletal vestige behind. Slowly, he clenches his hand into a fist, which alights a bright purple, letting off a frustrated yell. A column of fire shoots up into the air.

Conflicted, Lewis tries to follow Vivi but, as soon as he steps in close to the building, he is stopped by some unseen barrier. It smothers his flames and saps him of energy, leaving him weirdly exhausted. Accompanying this process is a sense that he is very unwelcome and should leave right now. A ward of some sort? Lewis has come across a few in his brief time as a ghost, and trying to force his way through had never ended well.

Upset, he steps back to stare longingly at the door. Around him, flames creep out over the ground, feeding on his frustration. The fire is halted by the same barrier. Why? Vivi acted like he was a monster. He’s not…Lewis glances around and realises he’s set the whole front driveway, and all the scattered debris, alight. Shame creeps up on him, settling in alongside the anger. It’s not the first time he’s lost control since awakening.

It is a deliberate effort, but he manages to cut his emotions off from the flames, leaving them to wither and die without fuel. Luckily, they don’t ‘burn’ inanimate objects, meaning the driveway is unscathed. The same protection is not extended to other living creatures. Lewis grimaces. He has almost burnt Vivi several times now. That wasn’t counting him running her off the road. Lewis glances over at Arthur’s van which is a twisted mess of steel. She could have died. 

What’s wrong with him?

Lewis circles the workshop, attempting to find an alternative entrance. He needs to explain himself. He needs Vivi to understand and remember who he is. Once she knew the context for his death and Arthur’s true nature, she’d understand…right?

“…I have is this feeling that I know him, the ghost that is, from somewhere...” 

The sound of Vivi’s voice drifts through one of the glassless windows. Lewis inches as close to the window as he dares, trying to see in. The barrier doesn’t let him get near enough for a good view, forcing him to crouch and listen instead.

“…Did we meet on a case or something?”

“Not quite….” Lance answers, voice less angry now he’s not aiming a gun at Lewis. The is no sound of Arthur, meaning the traitor is either not in the room or still unconscious.

“Yeh know that thing… The thing Arthur’s been searchin for this last few years.”

“Yeah…of course I do. I mean I should, I’ve been here for most of it.” Vivi responds, then pauses before adding, “Lewis is connected to my memory loss, isn’t he?”

It makes Lewis’s heart ache, to hear Vivi talk as if he is a stranger who’s motives needed to be dissected like he’s one of her mysteries.

“That thing… not really a thing at all. More of a person. A person who went missing the night yeh lost ya memories and Arthur lost his arm.”

“…and this person is Lewis,” Vivi finishes to which Lewis frowns.

“That’s the name.”

The are several seconds of long silence while Lewis waits anxiously for Vivi and Lance to continue talking. Why would Arthur search for him after murdering him? It would explain why no one came looking for him. Lewis had always suspected that something might have gone wrong when no one came to collect his body.

“That ghost…the one outside…is he the same Lewis?”

Yes! He is Lewis. He came back.

“No idea.”

Vivi continues, her tone sharp and angry, making Lewis wince. “Because he was pretty intent on hurting Arthur. Why would Arthur want to find someone who’d want to hurt him?”

“The three of ya were close friends for years. Did everything together. Don’t know nothin about wraiths, but if it wants ta hurt Arthur, then it’s not the Lewis Arthur is searching for.”

“Surely, I would remember someone that important? Or Arthur would have mentioned him.”

“The kid tried,” Lance answers, “Multiple times. Whatever got the memories, it targeted Lewis and stopped yeh from retainin any info about him.”

It was a ruse? It had to be a ruse. Arthur must be putting on the appearance of trying to find him to cover up his murder. Though, if Vivi ready had forgotten everything about him, like this conversation implied, then what would be the point of a that? Lewis massages the floating heart at his chest, trying to relieve some of the tension. If Vivi had been Arthur’s goal, then why bother to search for him? Unless Arthur is telling the truth about not remembering.

“I knew it.” Vivi comments, “There is a connection between all the missing memories. It’s not random. No wonder Arthur always got upset when I asked questions.”

If Arthur hadn’t been the one to erase him from Vivi’s memories then who? Why? Hadn’t he suffered enough? Wasn’t dying enough torture?

“…But I remember now. Well, I recognised the name at any rate…so that’s something. A wraith is an embodiment of anger and pain. When a person dies, and the circumstances surrounding the death are traumatic enough, their negative emotions trap them between here and wherever souls go. That’s what the books say.”

Lewis doesn’t want to listen anymore. He can’t bear to hear Vivi talk like he’s a monster. And yet he feels he can’t move. Not yet.

“You said Lewis disappeared the night Arthur…When Arthur lost his arm. What if, whatever happened back then, it killed this person…Lewis. I mean, we already know the event was bad enough to give us both blackouts, and god knows Arthur gets enough nightmares from the incident. Maybe it was bad enough to create a wraith. Of course, that still doesn’t explain why it wants to hurt Arthur. If you are right about us being friends and stuff, it shouldn’t be targeting us.”

“The Lewis I remember wouldn’t have hurt either of yeh…” Lance grunts. 

Lewis stumbles upright, wrenching himself away from the window. The fire is back, more subdued now it is fuelled by pain as opposed to anger. Instead of bright purple, the flames are dark, almost black. This is all wrong. This isn't how his revenge is supposed to play out. With Arthur not remembering his death and Vivi not remembering him at all. 

Hastily, Lewis makes his way to the opposite side of the crashed semi-trailer, so he has a view of the Tempo desert. It is empty, a flat plane of nothing stretching to the horizon. The perfect target for a long stream of fire which shoots out in a line. Lewis lets it grow and feed off his unstable emotions.

‘A wraith is an embodiment of anger and pain.’ During his time alive, Lewis had skimmed many of Vivi’s books on the supernatural. Hard not to when she carried them around everywhere. A wraith was a malevolent spirit that brought indiscriminate death and destruction on those around it. Described as evil, uncaring, unthinking, they thrived off the pain of their victims.

Lewis never planned on killing Arthur. All he wanted to do was force out the truth and get some closure. Maybe, scare the shit out of him in the process. Yet, in that moment, as he was chasing Arthur down, he hadn’t cared. Then he had thrown Arthur off the cliff, mimicking his own death. It hadn’t been satisfying. In fact, he had felt pretty bad afterwards. Really bad. Like he’d made a huge mistake.

He'd killed Arthur and regretted it. Or, he thought he had killed him…Arthur wasn’t dead after all.

Lewis summons his smaller companions, affectionately named Deadbeats. They are all a little shaken from having one of their compatriots severely injured by Vivi, so only two, the bolder of the bunch, answer his call.

“What’s wrong with me?” He asks. 

The two Deadbeats glance at each other, bobbing up and down, which is pretty much their standard response to most questions. Deadbeats were little more than a manifestation of his fire, made semi-sentient through bonding with weaker wisps and spirits. He still takes solace in their reaffirmation.

Letting his fire simmer down, Lewis recalls his memory of the cave…of Arthur pushing him and smiling. The single, blurred, frame of memory is all he has from that night.  He compares it to memories from his life before, which are equally hazy. Like half-forgotten dreams.

“I’m still Lewis.” He is just angrier. Rightfully angry. He’d been murdered! Anyone would be angry about that. Though, re-evaluating his motivation, the anger, while still destructive, is more directionless now. For the first time since dying, he doesn’t know what he wants.

Lewis is unsure how long he stands there, stewing in a mix of anger, confusion, pain and regret, but it must have been a while because the sun starts to lighten the sky. He is about to return to Kingsman Mechanics and maybe try and sort something out with Vivi and confront Arthur again when a strip of white appears on the horizon. The longer he watches it, the thicker the white band grows, heading in his direction. A wave of white, speeding across the desert. The ground under him shakes, and Lewis floats a few feet into the air, eyeing it with apprehension. It is a good thing he does because, without warning, several trees sprout from the dirt and rocket upward. With white bark and twisted limbs, the trees curl toward the sky, forcing him to dodge to avoid them.

Confused, Lewis stares at the forest growing around him.

.

Note: Kudos to an answrs who guessed the eavesdropping plot point back around part 9 XD. hope this lived up to any expectations. 

[isitandwonder]

Have been a charmie and at some point you stopped shipping them? I’m curious, why did it happen? If that’s the story actually... 😘

Hey nonnie, I’ve never called myself a charmie, I find this monicer rather ridiculous - but I did ship A/T and I still read a few authors who write for that ship... but I’m not super passionate about it or invested in it anymore, that’s true.

Why?

Because it stopped being fun and became a toxic cult.

You know, in the beginning (for me that was late summer 2017) T and A seemed rather cute together. They were goofy, had chemistry, they were kinda opposites (Tim lanky and dark and the newby, Armie tall, muscled, more experienced in the business), they were in this movie together that looked beautiful so... why not ship them?

Shipping, to me, means imagining two people being together and writing stories about it, chatting with friends, making stuff up, joking around and fantasize a little. It’s not real but something I imagine. And it’s being taken with a wink, with humor. Everyone involved knows it’s made up shit. And as long as it stays in fan spaces, I don’t see any harm done.

Well, that is not the case anymore.

So called fans or ‘shippers’ (they don’t ship, they KNOW, therefore the air quotes) harrass the real life partners and friends and associates and business partners of A and T. That is one thing I really don’t like. Keep stuff in fan spaces fgs!

But these people also harrass fellow fans who don’t agree with them. Like, wish them or their kids death, call them homophobes, call them all kinds of names, try to dox and mob them. Why should I be in a fandom that’s so full of hate and toxicity? I don’t have time for shit like that.

I still follow a few people on here who get it (you know who you are) but it becomes increasingly hard to find them.

That abyssmal state of the fandom shows esp in a field that’s really important to me and that I usually enjoy most: fan fic. I only still read about 5 authors. About half the people writing for the fandom are part of this toxic swamp I try to avoid like the plague (can we still say that?) on here and I wouldn’t touch their stories with a ten foot pole if you paid me money. Most of the other stories circle around things that simply don’t interest me or explore issues for the umpteenth time. I’m not saying that’s bad - write what the hell you like, create the 100th high school AU, whatever - but it just bores me (that is my problem. I also remeber a time when we had so much variety and creativity... go take a look at the older stories from 2017/2018, there are some true gems to be found!). It’s also a small fandom and maybe that’s the reason it becomes rather apparent that 80% of all WIPs get abandoned? Which is disappointing for a reader (I might be guilty of that as well, I don’t blame the writes, I blame the general atmosphere of this fandom that’s becoming less and less inspiring). I guess that only reflects the state of the fandom in general.

When ‘fans’ or ‘shippers’ are more into the private lives of the folks they stan (which might seem ‘natural’ for a real person ship but crosses a line when it’s carried into these peoples’ real lives), up to the point where it becomes harrassment, delusional, crazy, dangerous, rude, insulting, embarrassing and destructive, instead of supporting their faves - then it’s no wonder that this negativity creeps into other parts of fandom, driving writers and creators away.

(I recently came about a post re Tim where I had to read in the tags that he’s a great actor and that it’s sad that he has such a terrible fan base; that hurt.)

It has come to the point where I’m embarrassed to be associated with this ship - due to the very vocal delusional bunch of so-called ‘fans’ who are only interested in how much dick T gets from A. Like, for real REAL. In this fandom, a big chunk of people truly belief to KNOW that A and T are fucking like rabbits, that A will get a divorce soon (apparently since 2017; what are these people even hoping for???) and that T will only live for his daddy’s dick after that. And they go to ANY length to state and proof this and shout everyone down who might disagree. (Maybe they should masturbate a bit more to get these highly sexualized fantasies out of their systems? It also shows a lot about them, the way they view gender and sexuality, how they assign roles in this ship and what kind of behaviour/personality traits they depict over and over again. I could go on about the blatant, toxic heteronormativity that shows in this gay ‘ship’ that pretends to support LGB sexualities but this is already way too long lol).

I mean, if you want to rearrange your life around something like this - knock yourself out. It’s just not for me. There was a point I was really disappointed about these developments. Then I was angry for a few ‘bad apples’ destroying a place I loved. Now I only laugh about these people, though with some I really have pity because you can see in their posts how hard these mostly young, heterosexual women project  and that they truly have issues in their lives they should rather tackle instead of harrassing some other women on the internet who have the privilege to share the beds of the people they pretend to stan for real.

Oh, but it’s absolutely no use to talk to these so-called hardcore charmie ‘shippers’ - they are so deep down the rabbit whole they can’t and won’t come out of it or even listen. If you only say you don’t care who A or T are into for real you are a traitor, an anti, a homophobe, dumb as shit, dense, blind... That’s not a fun place in this fandom.

I mean, I was tempted to believe, too, for about 4 weeks late 2017. I was drawn intot hat dynamic of being privy to some insider info, feeling important, being in the know... But I’m so glad I was told that Liz was in Crema almost all the time during the filming - so the little stories A and T told were promo and nothing more. That was my moment of waking up. It took me like three days to come to terms with the fact that all I imagined was truly only a fantasy - but I’m so grateful I accepted that early on and was spared a lot of disappontment by that. I know a lot of people who weren’t so lucky and are now spending their days spinning more and more delusional theories to keep the world they built together...

Rn I see huge parts of the fandom trying to ‘disprove’ things they won’t belief or accept because it goes against their ‘knowledge’ of ‘what’s really going on’. So much energy goes into arguing that posts are fake and people lie etc etc. I can’t keep up with all this nonsense. And why should I? This is not fun. This is madness. This is negativity. This is destructive. Besides, most proofs are tarot readings and the analysis of pics and vids taken out of context (or are even manips). But I suppose these people find some kind of validation in their behavior? It just eludes me. I’ve deleted most of my fics, blocked and unfollowd almost everyone, and be warned, if you have charmie in your header that’s a sign for me to keep my distance...

But all of this is only my opinion, you are welcome to disagree, carve your own happy place out here, do as you please. I would never go on anyone’s blog to lecture them or police them but you asked so here’s what I have to say.