#and their worldbuilding drives me up the fucking WALL

[snowstories]

The most annoying thing about the Gerudo in BOTW is the orientalism, racism and misogyny. The second most annoying thing about the Gerudo in BOTW is the way the orientalism, racism and misogyny directly tank their worldbuilding.

I'm not gonna talk about why the Gerudo are orientalist, people smarter and more informed than me have already done so extensively and I don't have anything to add to that discussion. I'm here to bitch about how it affects the worldbuilding to the extent where Gerudo society, as portrayed in BOTW, does not make much of any sense in-universe.

Let's be clear here: the worldbuilding would be trash even if it made complete in-universe sense because it's orientalist and misogynist. But it doesn't even make sense in-universe and it's pretty much entirely because of the orientalism and misogyny.

Two things are true about the Gerudo at once: 1) they do not allow men into Gerudo Town, and 2) they are absolutely obsessed with finding husbands. I don't want to guess at percentages, but a truly ridiculous portion of the dialogue the Gerudo get is somehow related to finding husbands, being in love with men, etc. It is baked into their culture, most obviously exemplified in the love lessons that occur in Gerudo Town. But, more important than lessons or whatever, is the fact that leaving Gerudo Town to find a husband is considered a coming of age rite of passage for young women. It is an integral part of Gerudo culture to leave on a journey to find a husband.

And let's be clear: the goal here is absolutely, unambiguously long-term marriage. Many Gerudo you meet lament the shallow nature of the men who try to pursue them, we see Gerudo who reference husbands they currently have, and just generally the way the Gerudo talk indicates that they are not looking for a one-night stand or a summer romance: they are looking for something permanent. They are looking for marriage, and a good portion of them succeed.

So. Uh. Where do their husbands live?

The only time see any Gerudo who permanently lives outside of Gerudo Town is in Tarrey Town, and you're the one who brought her there. All the other Gerudo you meet outside of Gerudo Town or Kara Kara Bazaar are travelling. There are no Gerudo residents in Kakariko, Hateno, or Lurelin, or mixed Gerudo children.

This is very, very weird when you consider that married Gerudo would not be able to live with their husbands in Gerudo Town. The 'no men allowed' rule has no exceptions, so if a newly wed couple wanted to live together - and they almost certainly would - they would have to do so outside of Gerudo Town. And yet, we do not see them, despite demonstrable evidence that married Gerudo do exist.

There is another option, of course: that Gerudo culture normalizes long distance relationships even for married couples, and that the husbands live outside of Gerudo Town whereas the wives live within it. This is theoretically possible, except we never get any real in-game hints indicating it. It's still the option that makes the most sense, but it's a fanmade band-aid solution, not a real element of the worldbuilding.

Either which way, the inherent conflict between 'men are not allowed in Gerudo Town' and 'a big part of the Gerudo Town culture is to get married to men' should logically be causing tension. While the guards take the rule very seriously, most of the people you meet inside Gerudo Town don't really care that you're a man, and we know there's a thriving black market supplying men's clothes. This indicates that, already, in canon, most Gerudo play fast and loose with this rule to begin with, and don't have much special attachment to it.

Which makes it even more glaring that nobody seems to be arguing against it. Logically, there should be conflict between the Gerudo who value the tradition of an all-women Gerudo Town, and the Gerudo who want to be able to live with their husbands in their hometown. With how incredibly centered the Gerudo's culture is on these two things, this should be a major political problem that's going to singlehandedly turn Riju grey before she even comes of age. There should be discontent and unrest from newlyweds and long devoted wives who don't want to leave their home behind to be with their husbands, and don't want to leave their husbands behind to be home. Who would want to, at the very least, be able to show their husbands their childhood home.

But even if there wasn't, there should be a larger Gerudo presence outside of Gerudo Town. Either Kara Kara Bazaar should be a lot larger and more populated than it currently is, or there should be one or more smaller towns around Gerudo Town where the married Gerudo live with their husbands, or where the husbands of the Gerudo who live in Gerudo Town reside. You cannot tell me every single Gerudo would be okay with abandoning their culture and moving in with their husbands; even if they could not bring their husbands back to Gerudo town, they would frequently like to live somewhere close by. And if we take the long-distance approach, there would be plenty of couples who wouldn't want to be separated too far, and therefore there'd be husbands moving closer to their wives, even if they could not live in the same town.

But say, for the sake of the argument, that this also didn't happen: then, at the very least, we ought to see Gerudo in other Hylian settlements. We ought to see Gerudo who live in Hateno, Kakariko, Lurelin, and maybe even at the stables. We ought to find populations of diaspora and mixed race Gerudo who have grown up outside of Gerudo Town, and have maybe even never visited it. We have circled back around to the first point of argument.

If the Gerudo are getting married, we should see evidence of their husbands, somehow, beyond dialogue references and quest objectives.

The reason we don't, of course, is obvious: orientalism. The Gerudo are an orientalist idea of a harem, exotic women out of reach yet practically begging to be conquered by Western men. They want to be with men, are searching for men, yet are very rarely shown to find one because doing so would pop the fantasy being sold to male players: that they could be the one to get them.

So to successfully sell this orientalist, misogynist fantasy, the worldbuilding becomes completely and utterly nonsensical.

[HAS NOT PLAYED TEARS OF THE KINGDOM DISCLAIMER]

[love-killed-the-superstar]

ugly crying i think i need to rewatch fast forward but take detailed notes this time

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Okay, I've Read Worm: A Retrospective Part 4: Let's Give Wildbow Some Fucking Well-Earned Praise

So, I've had a decent number of harsh words for Wildbow over the course of my liveblog, and also over on my main blog. Overall, most of them are about his WoGs or Ward, rather than Worm itself. I've also commented I don't think I'd enjoy talking to him (not that he's likely to ever reach out, but you know). But I've had some complaints about Worm too.

But the thing is, I did read Worm. I read the whole thing. A desire to write fanfic would not have kept me going through all 30 chapters if I hated it. Or even if I just thought it was like, mediocre. It's 1.6 Million words. I am not that kind of masochist.

Life is short, Worm is long, if I wasn't enjoying it, I'd have left a long time ago. So I did enjoy it.

And the thing is, even if I never pick up his other works (and I do intend to try some), I am no doubt going to have more harsh words for Wildbow in the future. And I have no doubt that even if I love say, Pact or Pale or Claw or Seek or... I dunno, his next Web Serial after Seek called *throws a dart at a wall* Iota, I'm sure I'll have harsh words. I can't think of a single creator of anything that I don't have at least some issues with something they put out.

And to be fair, even most people who fully like Worm and Ward tend to have some harsh words for him now and then, or at least negative ones.

BUT, I liked Worm. And so, I think it's fair to really sit down and give him some unalloyed, unambiguous praise.

The Pace of Output: This is probably low-hanging fruit, but it is genuinely impressive that Wildbow wrote Worm as quickly as he did, sticking to a schedule as consistently as he did. I am in awe. I think even if I didn't have to work at all, and was able to write all the time, I wouldn't even be able to match half of what he did in the same amount of time, in terms of output. Wildbow accomplished something that is genuinely amazing here.

The Shards, Entities and Powers: Shard mechanics are not my favorite thing about Worm. But the whole thing really does come together well. It's a pretty cohesive, pretty well directed power system to tell the story he wanted to tell. I don't consume much cape fiction, so I don't know what stuff beyond Marvel and DC are really like in terms of how powers work and how they all fit and service the story, but for Worm, the Shards work to tell the story he wants to tell, really well. I read and write mostly fantasy and sci-fi, and spend a lot of time in worldbuilding spaces dedicated to both, or have at least, and a lot of would be writers fall into the trap of trying to overdevelop the magic system or the rules for whatever crazy supertech their story has without really stopping to figure out how it fits for the story they want. That's generally not a great approach if the intent is to have a story, and not just a cool setting or a fun magic concept. Wildbow created a pretty cool system, and then managed to avoid the common trap of getting so attached to the power system and it's rules that it interfered with telling the story he wanted to tell. Instead, he built and bent the system with his story as the driving purpose, and kept it all cohesively working within that framework.

The Interludes: The Interludes are without a doubt some of the best shit in Worm, overall. The way he is able to convey so much about these characters in these cutaway scenes and expand the world and advance the story and develop ongoing themes and narratives? Nearly every Interlude is doing like, 4 things at once, I swear to got, and the way he juggles that all together is awesome, and the end result is great. I will never go back and reread all of Worm from start to finish. But I will sure as shit go back and read some of the interludes just for the sheer fun of it. The way these cutaways manage to get you inside the head of these people, see their perspective is really good, takes real skill to make you go 'I really kinda see Saint's POV here' for his Interlude, for instance. Really good.

Amy Dallon: So like, I think it's clear I love Amy. She's fascinating. I have big feelings about her, and she's a divisive as fuck character. But Amy Dallon is the most fascinating character in Worm for me personally and she's genuinely one of the most fascinating characters in anything I've read. I'll have more to say about Amy if I manage to get a version of that Amy retrospective I'm happy with written, but unironically? Wildbow, thank you for writing Amy Dallon. I bitch about how much she's taken over my brain, but Amy is such a fascinating, interesting, enjoyable and engrossing character that she has been a net positive for me. Reading Worm and reading about her has enriched my life. Thank you. You did a damn good job with her in Worm, Wildbow.

Taylor Hebert: As I said back in Part 1 of this retrospective, I was worried I'd find Taylor insufferable. Her capacity for self-rationalization should be an issue for me. It often can be in other characters. But Wildbow managed to write Taylor amazingly. He created a character who is multifaceted, multilayered, complex, nuanced and yet, pretty simple. She's intensely relatable, and yet, she is also deeply, deeply alien and abnormal. She does absolutely insane shit, and yet, when you're reading along with her POV, so much of what she does and thinks makes her seem like the only sane woman in the room. Even when you take a step back and realize what she does, she's very hard to not like. Even if you want to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her, you like her. She's great. She's an everywoman, she's no woman. She's clever and stupid and brilliant and unimaginative all at once. She is... She's Taylor Hebert. She's an antihero, a villain protagonist, a hero hero and... she's just some fucking girl.

Heroes/Villains: What I mean by this bulletpoint is - villain protagonists, making villainous characters sympathetic - that's easy enough to do. And making the 'official heroes' of a setting not really as great as they might seem is also fairly easy to do. But it is hard to pair the two together as well as Wildbow did. The Undersiders do a lot of bad things (I would disagree with people who say they're all *fundamentally* bad people - even Regent... ish, kinda sorta. He's so fucked up due to his background that calling him fundamentally bad is probably not really accurate. Though some people draw red lines around some of what he did, so that's more subjective. But like, the key thing is that he did that while *also* still making them pretty sympathetic without like... running protag-centered morality and still making them have done quite a bit of good (and a ton of bad) AND the handling of the heroes. Because it really does look a lot like he's doing a bit where the 'official heroes' are the real bad guys of the story between things like Armsmaster's shit and Interlude 2, but he also doesn't actually do that. And he executes it in a way that is really well done, without doing the thing where the narrative acts like someone is evil but like... the person isn't.

This isn't really an exhaustive list of 'everything Worm did well' or even 'Everything I liked about Worm', but it is stuff that Wildbow did really fucking well, that I really liked or am impressed with, and that he deserves unalloyed praise for.

There are reasons why I kept reading Worm, and those are some of the reasons.

(There could also be a point on how he manages the readers' information diet, but it's really hard to say for sure if it's something that I really liked because I came in so thoroughly spoiled. From what I can see, I think I would have liked it and given it the unalloyed praise normally, but it's impossible to say because I knew what 75% of these clues were ahead of time).

Mr. Bow - you did a lot of shit I don't like. But holy motherfucking shit, you did some goddamn amazing stuff too.

[icedsodapop]

The discourse over Reckoning of Roku is really driving me up the wall becos you really have fans (namely Zutara stans) saying that Gyatso was just as bad as Sozin for saying that the Air Nomads should spread their teachings around the world. Now, an argument can be made over how wanting to teach one's philosophy/religious beliefs can be seen as a form of religious supremacy and at its worst, could be a slippery slope to neocolonialism. And these ideas could honestly be interesting to explore within the world of ATLA given how idealised the Air Nomads have been depicted, seeing a less flattering side to the Air Nomads would add a layer of worldbuilding. However, the argument that Gyatso is just as bad as Sozin can be burned to fucking ashes when the show depicted Sozin orchestrating the genocide of the Air Nomads, Gyatso being one of the victims. So, no matter how bad the Air Nomads can be, at least they have never orchestrated fucking genocide??

And then there was one user who wrote about how it would have been cool to explore how the Air Nomads' negative side could be one of the key reasons to their downfall, and it really rubbed me the wrong way becos the wording kinda implies that the Air Nomads were complicit in their own genocide. Like it doesn't matter if the Air Nomads were wrong or whatever, the Fire Nation should never have committed genocide in the first place??

[mdhwrites]

if you've seen Steven universe how would you compare it to TOH? I've seen many takes that TOH is Steven Universe 'done correctly' which drives me up a wall, especially since TOH has a lot of the same flaws as SU (pretty much everyone has to be tied to steven in some way- the same way everyone's gotta tie into Luz, White Diamond pisses me off for the same reason the collector does and dear god both finales are messes and the worldbuilding is also kind of messy) but pretty much everyone can agree that Steven Universe's themes of restorative justice are good, its themes surrounding interpersonal relationships and intergenerational trauma is good- I've seen people justify how TOH handles its villains 2 ways "its doing steven universe's restorative justice but like correctly" or "its about killing your oppressors, which steven should have done" which is dumb. Idk this fandom has a huge hate-boner for SU and Amphibia in general though. I also saw someone have the take the collector and belos where foils which... Is weird I can see where they come from but they never are put together in a way that highlights their similarities and differences. So what are some actual comparisons that can made between the shows outside of LGBT characters and surface level stuff?

Sadly I have not seen Steven Universe so I can't really comment on much of it. I've seen the first episode (both halves), decided the gems were insufferable to me and Steven was okay and went on with my life because at the time, I was a full time college student and a part time Walmart employee. I do like some of the songs that have reached me but I never got an in with the show, especially since my early experience with it was much like Gravity Falls where I heard a lot of high concept stuff about it but not much about why I would actually enjoy a given episode, what was enjoyable about the characters, etc. like that. Honestly, the only criticism I know of for it is that people hate the ending.

BUT.

I have seen one other thing. I have seen about twenty minutes of the Steven Universe movie. With that I can say one thing definitively even if it's not clearing a high bar: The Diamond's turn to good is better than the Collector's because they have literally ANY reason to listen to the person preaching at them. The Collector doesn't. In fact, he has no reason to reform and it is drastically out of character for him to care about... Anyone?

Let me start on the Diamond's side because I don't have a lot to say about this but it is something I'm surprised I haven't heard anyone talk about: They were clearly traumatized by the loss of Pink Diamond. Whether or not you think this is a good part of the plot isn't what matters, the point is that this is a literal fact to the story. This grief has gone unresolved for literal decades (just going by Steven's lifespan, someone in my Discord provided the context that they blamed themselves for her DEATH, not just disappearance, for CENTURIES which only bolsters the point I'm making) and has festered in them a desperation for their old comrade? Friend? I don't 100% know but you get the point. So when her son arrives and can't be kept by force, they're going to be pretty amenable to listen to whatever demands means keeping him around. Is that great? No, I wouldn't say it is as the question of what happens when Steven dies is there but it works for forcing them to consider the consequences of their actions and how they may need to change to have the life they desire. It is a compelling force for the first step of change. It's not amazing but it is at least functional from a narrative standpoint, an emotional standpoint and from a character standpoint. Not that it's great but that it is functional. You can string together how this works without having to just invent bullshit.

The Collector has none of these three because he's the literal fucking worst.

I've talked about this before but the Collector isn't the child the fandom treats him as. Even if we try to disconnect the second season version of the Collector, who very much so knows what death is and the consequences of his actions, S3 Collector does have a foil to Belos: He's an actual colonizing piece of shit. Not in that he is literally colonizing places but in mindset. Everything to him is something to be used for his entertainment or enrichment or it is to be stripped of all rights and brutally oppressed until it fits the role he desires. This is what happens when you become a LITERAL. FUCKING. DOLL. And he even has enforcers like the armies colonies would use that have wildly more powerful magic, i.e. technology, in order to make that oppression more seamless. Remember: Hexside is actively hiding from roaming stars that he just has going around the Isles that hoover up people, making at least those who resist into dolls immediately without question, and then bringing them to him to be new play toys in his game. That is explicitly what he has been doing to the entire Isles for MONTHS once S3 episode 2 happens.

People do not matter to him and this even extends to King. When King steps out of line, The Collector cracks the whip. He's even willing to KILL KING for having the gall of caring about anyone other than him. Those death games would be just as lethal to King as it would be to Eda and Luz after all. And if you actually do divorce S2's "PLAY AMONGST THE BONES!" line (which is fucking awful because you have to remove literally all of the first appearances of a character which is usually considered, you know... Bad) and believe that he doesn't know what death is... He knows what pain is. He knows what torture is. He knows the despair of being trapped in a space where you can't move or act or do anything except watch as an observer on a world that could destroy you at any moment because your prison is all of your being.

And then he makes people into dolls, with consciousness, without a second thought. He is willing to BREAK people in order to make them play along. His literal plan was to shatter the bodies of the Owl House trio over and over and over again until they were subservient to his desires. That is WORSE than just wanting to kill them. And he only stops to throw a tantrum because he fails to succeed and starts whining about it like any selfish asshole not getting his way. Not like a child: Like a selfish asshole.

So with ALL of this, what does the show do to try to make him consider the consequences of his actions? Well... Nothing. It claims it's trying to do something but the tour with the trio is much more a circle jerk about how amazing the show was and how much could have happened if not for the shortening ("That sounds like something that could have been its own spin off!" Or whatever King says to Eda talking about her and Raine's time at Hexside) than it is about talking to the Collector. There's a couple lines here and there, talking to him about what works for making friends but does it stick?

No, the Collector learns nothing and in mocking Steven Universe, they make that clear. The Collector is told that people are complex and you must show compassion. Rather than actually believing this, he uses it like a blunt hammer, just like all of his other solutions, to make a problem of his go away. That's why he hugs Belos and assumes it will work. He is not considering the complexity of humanity or the person he is applying this to. It is just to solve a problem so he'll get praised and go back to playing his games. Nothing. More.

And then he fucks off instead of fixing the damage he'd done because why would he stay? Why would he help? He hasn't learned anything and he doesn't want to help these people. He has NO motivation for why he helps save the Archive except otherwise he loses his sweet crash pad. So afterwards? He's gonna go somewhere where he can be himself and not be scolded for it because this toy is no longer fun.

Edit: He does stay to change everyone back from dolls. That much more falls into the "It's the ending, we have to have the problem only he can fix be fixed by him" despite the fact that he is responsible for so much more destruction that would theoretically be pretty easy for him to fix as well. He only does what is demanded of him for the sake of a happy ending, not because of character motivation, not from how I see it at least.

The most condemning part of this is that it's all around Luz. All around someone he doesn't like. He sees Luz as trying to take away his only friend after all and, you know, he is correct about that. They don't even try to hide that fact during the tour. They're still clearly upset with him and not even trying to be his friend, they're just lecturing him. It doesn't work from a character perspective, a narrative perspective or an emotional one. King MIGHT have with better writing, there's a reason I always wanted the Collector redeemed by one of his games forcing him to have to kill King by the rules he made before breaking it and having to face how that's unfair and cruel to others since they wouldn't get that leniency, but that's not how the show plays it. King is an unwilling servant for one episode and then VERY against the Collector in the next until after the death games. When he first shows up, King isn't trying to mediate, he is ready to fight just like the other two. He's not the Collector's friend and he never was so why would the Collector bother listening to him?

That is why me saying the Diamonds, even with my limited knowledge, works better than the Collector is almost literally the worst you can do when it comes to something like this. All the setup is wrong, the catalyst requires explicit retcons and don't work with the character and the payoff is... Nothing. Literally nothing. The only way to have done it worse is to have had everyone praise the Collector before he then stabbed Amity and no one acted like that was a problem. It can only function because we are TOLD he's redeemed even if he never shows it.

Andrias standing alone as a farmer, accepting the punishment for his actions and trying to make better on them, is such better payoff to a redemption arc than anything the Collector gets and his redemption was in character and setup by his past. So then let's get to one of your last points: Why is it that the TOH fandom rags on SU and Amphibia so much, especially for their endings, when theirs is such shit?

Well... Because that's the reputation of TOH. That it is the 'good' one. That it is better than almost all other media. The show itself, with moments like the Collector mocking the SU ending by hugging Belos, reinforces this. As such, for you to criticize TOH as failing in a department that other shows are not rapturously praised for is to fall out of sync with the show itself. As such, all other works must be placed beneath it, especially if those are widely believed to have a flaw in an element to then raise TOH up with. This is part of why so many people want to say the Amphibia ending is wrong because the Amphibia ending is brave and controversial and saying something while the TOH ending?

I mean... Do you really think the Collector's the only part of it objectively flawed like this? Because if a major redemption for your big bad is botched this badly, you can bet other problems exist. I've talked about them at length. But there are probably people out there who would call me the Lily Orchard of TOH if I was better known.

See you next tale.

======+++++======

That last line isn't an endorsement of Lily Orchard btw, just that I have to imagine it's the label I would be given. What little exposure I've had to her works is... YIKES. Just fucking yikes. My Discord has really enjoyed every time I've live reacted to a video of hers they've posted there. sigh

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[wannab-urs]

The Spreadsheet Digest - Vol. 24

Howdy folks!

I love how I said I was never waiting two weeks to do a digest again and then almost immediately did it again. Anyway if you're new here, this is every new (to me) fic I read this week (and last week) and some of my silly little thoughts about them. I have 19 fics for you this week!

As always you can find all of my previous recs here and the original spreadsheet here (now updated with warnings, author summaries, and word counts + I'm checking for broken links).

Recs below the pedro!

Multiples/MMF/MMMF

Euclidean Geometry - Frankie/Jack/Pero one shot by @leslie-lyman

I’d never have thought to put these three together and even if i had, it would have been straight up PWP no feelings. But this is STUNNING. It’s only 1.4k words but there’s such a depth to it. The different dynamics each of the boys and reader brings to the relationship, the way they care for each other AHHH and then the little flash scenes of smut 🥵🥵

The Impaler - Tim Rockford/Max Phillips one shot by @kiwisbell

This is my first Tim Rockford fic EVER and I adored it. I’m a big fan of making Max into a more serious and scary vampire and this was… so fucking hot y’all. (kinda dubcon for Tim bc he seems to be under a bit of a trance). Guys this has like every MMF position you could ever want. DVP… Spitroast… It’s so hot. And reader is so hot. And I’m melting fr.

Joel

Attraction Spell - joel one shot by @jksprincess10

I love a vampire Joel, I really really do. And I love a witchy reader just as much if not more. TW for NonCon bc Joel like… stalks reader and then gets her to basically drug herself with an attraction spell and then he also like.. Is a vampire? So there’s that. I loved this so so much. Joel is hot and scary.

Made by Hand - Joel one shot by @tinycozycomfort

Reader is married and Joel is your lover. He doesn’t really have anything to offer you at all – I mean he can’t give you something that would get you caught and he doesn’t seem to have much to give anyway. But he hand sews you a pair of cuffs made from blue ribbon AHHHHH. This fic is heartbreaking and so beautifully written. Of course the smut is hot, but the peek into Joel’s mind is really what does it for me here. He is so sad. UGHGHGHGHGH. Gimme 800 chapters of this STAT.

Garden of Earthly Delights - Joel one shot by @thesimulationswarm

What’s Gin a slut for? That’s right. Sub!Joel. Reader is a little badass in this and Joel is honestly pathetic and it’s so hot. His general air of violence and like… being a terrifying man are still present, which just makes it better that reader reduces him to a pathetic whimpering mess. Submissive Apple Washing is my favorite tag ever, also. 

Balsam - Joel series by @thesimulationswarm

This one is great if you love characters. The author really takes the time to build up the characters in the town, really situating you in the lives of the people of Jackson. There’s no smut as of yet; this is a slow burn and Nina/Doc (the OC) is really just starting to connect with Joel at this point. I cannot say enough how much I love the worldbuilding in this. I adore the characters and their intricate and detailed relationships and the inner conflicts going on with each of them. This is gorgeous and I’m so excited for the next chapter.

@theywhowriteandknowthings Murder Daddy Kinktober

Neighbor's Gardener's Brother Joel, MDKT Sex Pollen - Joel, MDKT Day 17 - Din

Ok the neighbor’s gardener’s brother Joel is hotter than it has any right to be. He’s filthy, reader is filthy. It’s beautiful. 

The sex pollen fic… man I fucking love sex pollen. And you also get tentacles and mind fuck and all the other delicious monsterfucking things that drive me up a damn wall (dub con obvi…). 

And Day 17 - a bounty who keeps running from Din because she loves to be caught by him. She’s thrilled by the chase so much she…. Oops spoilers… Just read it. It’s being turned into a full series and I cannot wait to read it! 

Din

Good Taste - Din series by @charnelhouse

Pornstar!Din – the crack fic this came from is also great, but I really enjoyed this. Din is so fucking hot and like kind of a dick, which I love very much. I only read the crackfic and the main fic, but there’s a whole list of drabbles that I’m sure I’ll dig into later. 

Ezra

Long Fall into Oblivion - Ezra one shot by @oonajaeadira

As usual, Adira wrote something I love with my whole heart – who’s surprised? Not me. Anyway Ezra is training you to be a prospector and he is absolutely lovely. Reassuring, kind, protective. Adira does non-explicit smut so well she basically invented the concept. 

Shorn - Ezra one shot by @gasolinerainbowpuddles

Ezra really likes your body hair, but it is time for you to shave – I love a fucking weird ass fic and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say erotic shaving is weird. I also don’t normally love shaving scenes in fics/books because there can be an element of shaming the natural body? But this fic does the opposite. It celebrates the natural body through the lens of Ezra and is also just unreasonably fucking hot. I love that weird little man with all my heart. 

Dream Within a Dream - Ezra one shot by @gasolinerainbowpuddles

Incubus!Ezra – so yes, you die, because that’s what incubuses (incubi?) do. They rock your dream world and then they consume you. But listen… Ezra is ethereal and gorgeous, the dream world is absolutely stunning, the smut is hot, and honestly I’d beg him to eat my heart out too. I can’t say enough about this fic actually. I read it this morning and I’m still reeling. 

Javier Peña

you miss me? - Javi P one shot by @amanitacowboy

You tease Javi while he’s at work and he punishes you for it when he gets home… and it is so deliciously good. Dom!Javi has me in a chokehold (or I wish he did). 

The Raid - Javi P one shot by @toxicanonymity

Some dark!Javi from toxic! Your boyfriend or whatever gets his house raided by the DEA and Javi saves you from getting uhhh used… by his coworkers. But then he takes you for himself. Based loosely on her Raider!Joel series. Obviously non/dub con. Javi is so mean and hot pls. 

Pent Up - Javi P one shot by @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin

Javi hurt his ankle (which Ang did as a dig at me because I did the same) and can’t drive, so he hasn’t been able to get any… release… which leads to him jacking off at his desk after hours. It’s so hot. I was like laughing at him up til he actually touches himself and then I about fell over. What I wouldn’t give to be his lil stress reliever. Javi baby I would live under your desk if you asked me to. 

Frankie

You hired a cleaning lady, Mr. Morales? - Frankie one shot by @beskarandblasters

After the events of TF Frankie is in a bit of a depression (understandable), and his house gets more than a little messy. Santi hires a cleaning service (you) to help him out. Listen… I wish I was as bold as reader. After the sexual tension between you and Frankie gets too much to bear, you show up in a god damn sexy maid outfit to torture him into convince him to finally make a move on you. It’s so hot… reader is a sexy bad ass bitch and Frankie is adorable and so hot. 

snowball kiss - Frankie one shot by @beskarandblasters

The discord found this definition on urban dictionary and Kel ran with it. It’s filthy in the best way. Pussy eating king Frankie learned a new trick and honestly it’s devastating me emotionally that I can’t have him

Dieter

Dress me up and call me pretty - Dieter one shot by @morallyinept

Messy Messy Messy Dieter – my favorite type of Dieter. His drug addiction and overall patheticness are in full force here. He wants to make himself look pretty so he uses your makeup. You come home and make sure he feels loved and beautiful, and also ruin his makeup. Pegging/sub dieter/etc but also… this fic is really fucking sweet. It kind of broke my heart despite also being filthy and depraved and I love that in a Dieter fic. I love how reader is like "we'll try again" like??? How dare you make me cry when I'm reading sub!dieter. Dammit. 

-----------

My most recent work is Starving Season - a twisted little Dave York love as consumption three parter that I plan to add a fourth part to soon.

-----------

Happy Reading!

[gctchell]

what is one thing that makes you happy about writing any of your muses?

One is definitely feeling the affection that my characters hold for other characters here. Every feeling, while found in love, is unique and is built on that specific connection. It can be so sweet and warm, or it can be so bittersweet.

Niffty's blooming romance with Sir Pentious ( @fearedelight ) has been so cute to feel. It's warm, it's fuzzy, and it's real. She hasn't felt real love like that in a long time and she keeps whispering to me how genuine it feels and how happy it makes her, and she doesn't know what to do with that. She wants him, and she's telling me she's going to stop all these "he's marriage material" comments now because she doesn't want anyone (not played characters, npcs) to see that he's available. She's falling in love and she's really happy about it.

Lilith's fussing over Chava / Pomni ( @heavenslie ), the youngest of the Morningstar children, is something else. She's a mother who encourages independence in her children, she'll hold their hands and help them to walk and fly, but she wants them to experience the sensation of walking on their own and building themselves and their life. Chava is a unique case; she was a birth after the "death" of Carmi ( also by @heavenslie ) and ages ago, Lilucia.

The "brutal death" of Carmi fueled by the sudden infant death of Lilu has made Lilith very protective over Chava (Lucifer even moreso). While she still wants her to have freedom and encourages her to have fun, she gets very frantic without constant feedback when she is out there in the world. Fate laughs as Chava is the most exploratory of the daughters - she bounces around and gets more distance, does more traveling, and throws herself into a plethora of different lifestyles and businesses. She pushes herself pretty hard trying to forge an identity. It worries her mother deeply, the way she lives.

Lilith loves Chava, and she knows she is being too sheltering with the need for communication when she sends Asmodeus & Beelzebub (the eldest amongst the Morningstar children in L, Peggy, Peach and me's worldbuilding) to find her when she's partying out of Pride and not calling/texting back, but she can't help it.

Feeling Lilith's grief over "losing" Chava because she put on a funny headset is something else. :') The feeling of failure and regret, and the desperate need to get her back. It's so pungent.

Sliding from that, the bittersweet emotion that Lilith has going on with Asmodeus ( @jizzlords ). This is one of her oldest and fondest of connections, they branch back to the start of Hell, or just nearly. There is such a deep fondness for this man in Lilith's chest, she loves him dearly, but being so damned busy with Hell (and eventually a child) during one of the most corrosive times of his life really hurt. They love each other, and they're mending the damage of time. The love has not died.

Then, there's the Eves. Not to keep on Lilith (she is my LOUDEST muse I'm sorry), but Lilith's complicated relationship with Eve ( @damnedrainbows & @edenpoise ) is so gutwrenching. :D Lilith did wrong by these women in such a massive way and she knows she has earned however they feel about her, and she is trying to make it right. Even in different slices of lifetimes, one where she is a prisoner to Eve ( @edenpoise ) and one where she is about to go toe-to-fucking-toe with Eve ( @damnedrainbows ) while also having a thread where an attempt at peace is being made is so.. oo. Lotta stuff to unpack and play with, there. Can't wait.

That's a thing that I love, too. It's something that I think a lot of people love. You can interact with five to ten versions of the same character, and the relationship is going to be unique. Each friendship and romance is going to be personalized. I love to do that a lot.

.. THEN THERE'S WHAT CARMILLA HAS GOING ON WITH ZESTIAL ( @arachnaemboss ) THAT IS DRIVING BOTH JACK AND ME UP THE GODDAMN WALL. Old world pining KKASFKSAFKSAFKFSDKFSKF- I love them. I do. It is just so hard to feel all this powerful love Carmilla has for that man and she is going nowhere with it outside of a REALLY INTENSE FRIENDSHIP THAT HAS YET TO BREAK THE LINE. :D SHE MAKES THE MAN RINGS AND JEWELRY FROM HOLY WEAPONRY AND AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Okay.

Back to sanity.

It's really cool just to be able to feel the depth of care and/or feeling my muses have for other's characters. It's all different like I said, personalized. I love it and I am thankful to my roleplay partners for letting me write & build with them in these capacities. There's others I have not even touched here, others that I am very obsessed with, but I will just be writing into the sunset if I do that bc I can write for hours about my rp partners. I love every connection, every friendship, and every romance I am getting to write with others here and I am, again, so grateful for that.

Thank you for the question. :']

[chiarrara]

4, 9, 14 WIP ask game!!!

I'm literally so obsessed w you, thanks for the ask babesss 🥰 WIP Ask Game

4. WIP that is secretly rotting my brain

it's megumi fucking his sister. this has taken over my mind and body i am feverish. and it is truly secretly rotting my brain despite how much I've been talking about it the last couple days because.... well i am full of sexy sexy shame, i don't think y'all really know the extent of it, and without a LOT of abstraction I'm not telling you. so I think that's all I can say about that!

9. WIP I started because canon is driving me crazy / 14. WIP that is fueled with spite

lmaoooo okay so im combining these bc this is a rabbit hole. back when i was reading the manga I started getting sooooo fed up with the worldbuilding and the power system (because it makes no sense, I have a whole rant about this) and I started trying to make it all make sense in my own mind, like rebuild the power system and then also change some things that pissed me off about jujutsu society, and then ALSO, kind of do a fix-it for gojo and geto that truly hit a brick wall (after I tried studying deradicalization techniques). the crazy part is it all started out as a low stakes chat fic, that I was gonna write bc some of my mutuals were talking about how inumaki would text. but now I have truuuly miles of notes trying to construct this world, and a three volume fic world spanning from jjk 0, to canon but with a different history, to adult itafushikugi (platonic) that I'm probably never gonna write. Highlights:

absolutely ragging on the magic system and trying to apply math to it bc if gege can pretend to do that I can do it better (<- insane) BONUS:

getting way into the weeds about Black Flash

psychoanalyzing all my favorite characters, criticizing their decision-making and beating the shit out of jujutsu society & regulations

this is the one thing i fundamentally don't understand about gojo's character, like all the rest of it got worked out by the end but i still can't reconcile this...

ANYWAY if you ever want to talk to me about any of these insane ramblings I have so many thoughts, and I no longer think you can really "fix" satosugu without fundamentally breaking a part of the story or of one or both of their characters, but it still would be fun to explore. It's my second fic with someone chained up in a dungeon, so that's interesting (though technically it came first).

Also I'd love to talk about Part 3 which has almost nothing to do with all of this but Yuuji, Nobara, and Megumi have a training school they opened up as adults, it's really cute and I DO have OCs ☺️

[veliseraptor]

WIP meme: let the foxes fight ?

I have to ask about DoL fic but if I can do two I am 👀 beholding the "original fiction- ex villains project" also

i'll allow it (she said officiously and entirely non-seriously)

so let the foxes fight is one that I think I referenced relatively recently as one of my fics that's like...this feels relevant to only my interests, probably, and would not exactly be a Hit even if anything in doctrine of labyrinths fandom could be described as a Hit (considering its size). the premise is basically "mildmay finds himself back in time before felix gets picked up by malkar, and takes it upon himself to rescue a traumatized older-younger brother from the brothel he's stuck in, and then is like 'okay but what do i do with him now' because as much as mildmay i think likes kids and knows from trauma this is not exactly a situation he was/is prepared to deal with.

i also don't really know where this is going, which is part of why this one has been sitting unfinished on my hard drive for literal years. part of my policy of "oooh I have an idea, let me just start writing it and see what happens" and then a couple thousand words in I run into a wall.

I exhaled hard trying to think what to say and finally just said, “I ain’t mad.” He gave me that real careful sideways look. “You ain’t,” he said slowly. I shook my head and he unwound a little, maybe, so I guess he might be buying my story about being a long-lost relative. That was a kept-thief fairytale right there. Felix was a little old for those now but I guess you never really grew out of wanting. “Yeah,” I said. “Like I said. I just want to help.” He relaxed a little more, and nodded, barely. “Okay,” he said, and gave me this little nervous smile, and it looked like the ones he’d given me sometimes when he was crazy and scared but glad I was there just the same, and sure as fuck felt like someone had my heart in their fist and was squeezing.

and then there's the ex-villain story which is probably my main squeeze as far as original fiction goes right now even if I've been stalled for a while because Worldbuilding Is My Nemesis and I need to do kind of a lot of it. this one was born out of my redemption equals death bugbear and how I love stories about people who have done awful things who then have to try to live with them, especially when they don't really want to live with them but they're kind of stuck with it. so my main character (kazem, @portraitoftheoddity actually made art of him here) is basically the Dark Lord of his world (or, well, he was, up until the local hero managed to beat him/talk him into beating himself) and the story takes place three years later when he is in a depression pit with no idea what to do with himself. also featuring:

a very angry mess of a woman whose sister died as a result of kazem's bad stuff;

another very angry woman who's my main antagonist because of some stuff in the hero's past (because i'm obsessed with hero figures who create their own villains) but i'm going to have a really hard time not rehabilitating her (only my problem is that she would rather die than give up on revenge, so);

said hero character who is basically acting as kazem's sponsor but is more of a fuckup than he looks at first blush;

and I really like it in concept and what I have so far in execution (again, a couple thousand words) but Worldbuilding, My Nemesis keeps getting in my way.

anyway, a snippet:

On the third anniversary of his defeat, Kazem didn’t get out of bed. The first year he’d stayed out of the way of the celebrations out of a sense of propriety and because of the fact that he was still coughing up blood every time he tried standing for longer than thirty seconds at a time. The second year he tried attending, thinking that he should pay his respects, show some sort of regret or remorse or...something.  He’d nearly gotten himself hanged.  So the third year, he woke up in the morning and stared at the ceiling, and made the very deliberate decision that today he was just going to...not. The sound of the celebrations outside drifted through the window of his dismal current abode, and he tried to shut it out. He was vaguely aware that he was indulging in self pity, but could not quite bring himself to care.  He could stay here feeling sorry for himself for the next three days if he damn well wanted to. 

[snowstories]

also because everyone was clearly wondering (sarcasm), here's my loz opinions so far:

A Link to the Past: Very good, can definitely see why it got as popular and influential as it did. Really loved exploring the overworld and the dungeon designs were strong. Unfortunately I am bad at video games and this game made me use an invincibility cheat and also clown music (to avoid gamer rage) to get through it. Like it was a genuine hit to my self esteem. So yeah I could've enjoyed it more than I did.

Link's Awakening DX: Perfect 10/10 no notes (lie). OK I feel like this game in many respects feels kinda unpolished; maybe it's just bc I was emulating it but some of the controls were a goddamn nightmare and I didn't find most of the dungeons particularly memorable. That said, the VIBES in this game are immaculate. From the Mario/Kirby cameos to the setting and story this game is deeply charming. Though I have my issues with it, I find the story a lot more compelling than I have so far in the other games, though obviously that could change once I get to the entries that focus more on their story. Also Marin is my daughter and I am obsessed with her.

Oracle of Ages: The dungeon designs in this one were surprisingly strong imo; this game has my fave dungeons of the series so far, and some of the items (like the seed shooter and mermaid's tail) are really fun. Unfortunately I found the rest of it pretty mid. Like it's still good, don't get me wrong, but it lacks the pizzaz that A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening both had. The story is very generic and I don't find any of the NPCs particularly compelling. Labrynna as a setting just doesn't grab me. The time traveling gimmick isn't particularly interesting to me, especially since I have a sneaking suspicion Ocarina of Time is just gonna do it better. It's not bad but I can see why it's one of the more forgotten LOZ titles.

Oracle of Seasons (so far): I haven't even gotten to the second dungeon yet so grain of salt lmao but I'm enjoying it much more than Oracle of Ages. I find the changing seasons gimmick a lot more interesting, the setting, story, and NPCs so far more fun than in Ages, and (although this is not Ages fault in the slightest and works in its favour), the connecting games gimmick is really coming into play now and it's fun.

Breath of the Wild (so far): I'm pretty solidly in the mid game I think? I have thirteen hearts, two extra thingies of stamina, the entire map is unlocked, I've acquired the Master Sword, I have about half of the photo memories, I've killed the big metal lizard and am set to kill the big metal bird and big metal elephant at any point I'd like to. I've been playing it off and on in between the other games bc this one and its sequel are much longer than the others and have a different formula. Anyway. The world is very impressive and beautiful, I think some of the story elements (the ones playing with the typical destiny angle) and Zelda as a character are very interesting, and this game's addictive in the sense that I can easily play it for like eight hours on accident. That said I don't think the shrines and koroks are particularly fun to get, which is a problem because they're probably the most important progression mechanics in the game, and it made especially the early game feel like kind of a slog. This game also drives me up the fucking WALL with its storytelling and worldbuilding because both are just woefully inadequate and it's INSANE to me because at several points they show that they CAN do it well they just. Don't. Most of the time. I had to cut an entire rant about how much it annoys me where I actually source these claims bc it singlehandedly made this post twice as long as it is now, so source: just trust me bro. It drives me INSANE and it's a serious damper on my enjoyment of the game.

[devilishdescent]

f&h puts me in a weird position of trying to engage with it where i quite like miro's writing at a zoomed out level - scenario design, worldbuilding, even character arcs and sentiments expressed are quite strong. the stuff that happens around marina alone is really interestingly nuanced and even well told, subtle, smart. but the ground level of miro's writing, the actual dialogue and descriptions, drives me up the wall with its inconsistency. one of the first things termina hits you with after its (striking as hell) opening sequence is a fucking dead rising reference, in 2023. not just as a throaway, either; the dead rising joke and what is said in response serve to establish two major, playable, characters. miro if you follow me can i be your editor. big fan btw

[aceshigh10987666]

[Image ID: Screenshot of reddit post: r/DiscoElysium 1 yr. ago beamoon2016 Never thought I'd read a story that so effectively captures why life in a broken system is worth living Discussion

I grew up in Iraq. When people hear this in the US, where I now live, they usually say: "Wow…that must have been hard."

I mean? I guess? I've been a couple hundred meters from ISIS bombings. The government is spectacularly dysfunctional. You never know when the electricity might be on. Most summer days are 50 C. The tap water is salty.

And I also love the wonky little generators people wire everywhere. I love the weird shark statue with Saddam torn off the top. I love the guys fishing in the river despite the fact that it's greenish black. I love how excited everyone gets about the government building one tiny new overpass. I also love the random overpass sitting in the desert connected to zero roads. I love hearing our friend giggle as my dad ribs him for driving a Toyota Hilux, a favorite of terrorists transporting weapons. I love the stray cats that carefully pick their way over the barbed wire on our walls. I love the people that run towards a bombing instead of away because they want to help the survivors. I love the guy who fixed my glasses with a wrong-sized screw because he lived through sanctions and doesn't need dumb things like correctly-sized screws.

But it's almost impossible to explain this to most Americans. They picture a normal Iraqi life and think it would be their worst nightmare. So I'm used to just not sharing that part of my life, or ever seeing it in media.

So this game totally caught me off guard. We're in a setting in between apocalypses, starring an alcoholic fuckup from a corrupt occupier-aligned police force, who at best might keep a couple people from dying in a gang war. It's pretty bleak. It's also incredibly fucking joyful.

Just the prose alone is so sincere. You can't write stuff this goofy, flowery, beautiful, dumb, and moving ironically. The writers clearly love words far out of proportion to how much they might be able to actually change fundamentally broken systems.

And all the characters, the worldbuilding details, the interruptions from Shivers and Esprit de Corps, hell, all the bits and pieces of your brain. There's so much attention and thus so much love everywhere in this game for humans and what humans do. Doesn't matter if they might all get shot, blown up, or wiped clean by pale in a couple years. Doesn't matter if they brought it all on themselves. Right here, in this moment, they are human, and so they matter.

I feel like this game gets why my life in Iraq was worth living. Even if a lot of my fellow Americans think the world sure would be nicer and simpler if Iraqis just didn't exist.

I thought I had signed up for a fun 20-30 hour diversion, not the feeling of being loved?!/.End ID]

an Iraqi gamer's beautiful review of Disco Elysium

[spearxwind]

As someone who is in and enjoys the furry fandom as well as being an avid NON FURRY sci-fi and fantasy writer/worldbuilder, your post about Nerus not being furry and saying that protogens didn't invent screen faces gives me SUCH a vicious joy. Because there are so many people who get so wrapped around the axle that certain traits belong so entirely to ONLY certain popular characters/species that they get nearly violent about white-knight defending that single thing. Additionally not every anthro/monster/alien/vaguely humanoid creature, whether synthetic or organic is a furry! And Additionally, if someone like myself draws something I choose to tag as furry, that does not mean everything I draw is also furry! Apologies for the little ramble, and thank you for sharing your incredible world and characters with us! I freaking love whenever you post!

Goddd it really drives me up the fucking wall sometimes, honestly it's one of the biggest reasons why I stopped actually associating with furries like, at ALL. It's like they somehow make everything be about the fandom. Even completely unrelated things. I've seen the screen face thing happen several times already too, if it looks vaguely similar it gets lumped into everything else

And Nereus? It's decidedly not even an anthro in any capacity. Like they cannot even lift their whole body off the ground on four legs they have the actual anatomy of a lizard. I don't understand... like are we just tagging the most animal adjacent stuff as furry now? It wasnt even one of the doodles where you could maybe GUESS it was an anthro, it was my jellyfish one in which you can 100% plainly see that it's not

Honestly I'm a lil scared to start posting about my anthros again cause with my new headworld there ARE going to be some, specifically Caval and Hades (a new shark guy) and I just dont want them to be perceived or categorized as furries tbh

[wizardlyghost]

of all caster classes bards are the ones that really put a dragon in my dungeon because from a worldbuilding perspective their magic makes no goddamn sense. like, lemme run through a list of player character magic sources real quick:

- wizards & artificers are magic nerds, get their magic from study & brainpower (int)

- clerics & druids are wisdom based, insightful & perceptive & shit, good at connecting with their surroundings/their god(s) and being a channel of power. rangers fit in here too but divide their attention between this and martial skillz

- warlocks are magic sugar babies, i interpret their being charisma based and having the fewest spell slots as a batteries-not-included thing, patron gives them the knowhow but they have to fuel it with their own chutzpah

- sorcerers have an inherent magical spark above what's normal for their species, from their bloodline or being bitten by a magic radioactive spider or what have you

- paladins are kinda iffy, i kind of fudge as being something warlock-adjacent or as having sorcerer potential but being more interested in becoming batman, depending on circumstance

- bards... "untangle and reshape the fabric of reality with [their] wishes and music". which to me sounds like bullshit.

dont get me wrong i dont hate bards as a concept, its just that the source of their wish-level magical power drives me up the fucking wall trying to fit into my world. some sources say they "echo the music of creation" which sounds like it should be a wisdom based thing, trying to get themselves in tune with the song of the spheres or something. in this case it could work as idk a cleric or druid subclass if you count music as a deity/natural force. BUT theyre charisma based, which speaks to inherent power, which should make them a sorcerer/warlock/paladin subclass. but theyre kinda iconic enough that i dont really relegate them to subclass material, yknow?

idk im just very tired and feel like redesigning the bard as a half caster. end of ted talk youre all free to go now

[kimabutch]

[ID: screenshot of a text post in r/DiscoElysium by u/beamoon2016. The post title reads: "Never thought I'd read a story that so effectively captures why life in a broken system is worth living."

The post content reads: "I grew up in Iraq. When people hear this in the US, where I now live, they usually say: "Wow...that must have been hard."

I mean? I guess? I've been a couple hundred meters from ISIS bombings. The government is spectacularly dysfunctional. You never know when the electricity might be on. Most summer days are 50 C. The tap water is salty.

And I also love the wonky little generators people wire everywhere. I love the weird shark statue with Saddam torn off the top. I love the guys fishing in the river despite the fact that it's greenish black. I love how excited everyone gets about the government building one tiny new overpass. I also love the random overpass sitting in the desert connected to zero roads. I love hearing our friend giggle as my dad ribs him for driving a Toyota Hilux, a favorite of terrorists transporting weapons. I love the stray cats that carefully pick their way over the barbed wire on our walls. I love the people that run towards a bombing instead of away because they want to help the survivors. I love the guy who fixed my glasses with a wrong-sized screw because he lived through sanctions and doesn't need dumb things like correctly-sized screws.

But it's almost impossible to explain this to most Americans. They picture a normal Iraqi life and think it would be their worst nightmare. So I'm used to just not sharing that part of my life, or ever seeing it in media.

So this game totally caught me off guard. We're in a setting in between apocalypses, starring an alcoholic fuckup from a corrupt occupier-aligned police force, who at best might keep a couple people from dying in a gang war. It's pretty bleak. It's also incredibly fucking joyful.

Just the prose alone is so sincere. You can't write stuff this goofy, flowery, beautiful, dumb, and moving ironically. The writers clearly love words far out of proportion to how much they might be able to actually change fundamentally broken systems.

And all the characters, the worldbuilding details, the interruptions from Shivers and Esprit de Corps, hell, all the bits and pieces of your brain. There's so much attention and thus so much love everywhere in this game for humans and what humans do. Doesn't matter if they might all get shot, blown up, or wiped clean by pale in a couple years. Doesn't matter if they brought it all on themselves. Right here, in this moment, they are human, and so they matter.

I feel like this game gets why my life in Iraq was worth living. Even if a lot of my fellow Americans think the world sure would be nicer and simpler if Iraqis just didn't exist.

I thought I had signed up for a fun 20-30 hour diversion, not the feeling of being loved?!" End ID.]

:~)

[riathedreamer]

You asked for it: live thoughts from Ria and @creatrixanimi​ watching RvB Zero.

So, after having a movie night the day before (third movie night in a week, actually, we are very productive) watching Neil Breen movies and “Cool Cat”, it was now time to touch upon Zero. Sadly, Zero does not belong in the “so bad it’s good” category, but alas, Ria had to spoil Haley’s innocence.

This is not a proper edited review, but just snippets of our live reaction while watching the thing together. We are not drunk, but this continued way past midnight for Ria, so maybe her brain isn’t fully functioning. Also, Ria is a potty mouth because cursing is easy when it’s not your native language. Enjoy.

Episode 1:

Ria: I can’t figure out if they were trying to do a Grif and Simmons parallel with those two random guards talking outside, the ones with the Wash retconning.

Haley: Their armor doesn’t cover their noses. 

Ria: That’s gotta be cold. Frostbitten noses.

...

Haley: There is no exposition. Like, it feels like the writers had their idea and know what is going on, but we don’t so it just feels weird and random. It feels like a Marvel movie.

Ria: Is that a compliment? I haven’t watched Marvel.

Haley: Not a good one.

 ...

Ria: This episode isn’t that bad in itself. But it’s just there to establish that the OG characters can’t beat this new villain, but the new guys can, and, urgh.

 ...

Episode 2:

[The shot focuses on One’s behind.]

Ria’s dirty mind: Ass.

 ...

Ria: STOP CALLING HIM DAVID.

...

Ria: I like this character, but I don’t remember his name.

Haley: Raymond.

Ria: This is why we need a name system like with the Freelancers and states. Should’ve just been numbers all the way through. Except Eleven, you fucking whore.

 ...

Haley at the sight of Raymond’s phone: It’s so big.

Ria: It’s the future. I can believe it.

 ...

Ria: Here’s the thing driving me crazy. Axel is a normal name in Denmark. But like, only old people use it. I know two Axels and they are both older than eighty. So that’s when I think of when I see Axel.

 ...

[After the whole training montage where we are introduced to the characters, we are still confused.]

Ria: I can’t remember their names.

Haley: Well, they didn’t show all of them. They didn’t show One.

Ria: They did!

Haley: They did?

Ria: Wow. So we got all that tell and no show, and we are still confused.

 ...

Haley: When it comes to genre, it’s actually not that bad with the narrated tell and don’t show. If it wanted to be a cheesy/bad action movie, that’s a trope that’s used relatively frequently in the genre. It’s a bad action movie. But it’s not RvB. It’s kinda like a particularly bad Marvel movie.

Ria: You’re really not selling me on the Marvel movies tonight.

 ...

Ria: I know I’m just a sucker for Joe, but I keep thinking of s15. Like, here they just use the files as a cheap way to introduce the characters. But like, in s15, Dylan just read out loud Grif’s file, and it was not to introduce him, but like, to show the complexity of the characters and go against the files? I don’t know, it just seems way cooler now.

 ...

[After the whole “what’s East’s deal” scene, we were so confused. Literally paused for five minutes trying to figure who was whose dad and why and what. How many daughters did Axel have? And where are they? We were just lost. Future Haley: Him waxing poetic about his daughters while watching the two girls in his team train confused me like I thought he was talking about East and One and couldn’t count sdfghjk. Future Ria: I’d even watched the show before and I was still confused.]

Ria: I can’t figure out if they’re too fast or if we’re just stupid.

Haley: It’s like I’m trying to remember the details but it all slips through my fingers.

Ria: The whole Zero experience is to feel too old for this shit.

 ...

Ria: STOP FUCKING CALLING HIM DAVID

 ...

One: This is how it’s done, grandma.

Ria: Fuck you.

 ...

Episode 3:

Haley: People would like it if they love dumb action shows. It works as a mindless action show.

 ...

Haley: So this is a temple?

Ria: I hate the worldbuilding. Is this the same planet as before? Like, Chorus had temples, but it also had lore about it. Is this the same sort of temples?

Haley: So shouldn’t this temple have its own key? Why do they need to include Tucker? It makes no sense for the temple to require a totally different sword from a different planet.

Ria: So they could beat him up ‘cause OG characters are weak now.

 ...

Haley: I don’t like the training scenes. They are so long and boring.

Ria: This is like the third episode where they are training. Holy shit.

 ...

Haley: It’s not that bad. But if you like Red vs. Blue, it’s not something for you. They aren’t really comparable.

Ria: I just don’t understand what they wanted to continue for Red vs. Blue. Like, it’s not the worldbuilding or the plot or the characters. I just don’t get it.

 ...

Haley: Raymond is the best character.

Ria: I like Raymond.

Haley: He’s RvB. He should be the main character.

 ...

Ria: Did East just use the “I’m not like the other (girls)” line?

Haley: I don’t like her. She’s a brat. Why did Carolina have to apologize? They were just training, this is something she’s gonna have to deal with on a daily basis lmao.

Ria: Didn’t Carolina have a cast on her arm? It’s gone now. I can’t keep up with the timeline. So, she’s healed, but how long was Wash gone? They are so vague about everything. Worldbuilding, timeline, motivations.

 ...

Ria: …Did Carolina just say she’d suit up? While wearing a full armor suit?

 ...

[And this is where the cursed part takes place. To talk, we’d often pause the thing. Here, I randomly paused during the introduction for Starlight Laboratories. There’s a desk in the shot. With a fucking marker on it.]

Haley: That’s a Crayola marker. That’s a Crayola marker on the table.

Ria: Glad we can appreciate the details by pausing.

[Haley then missed the entire Axel flashback scene because she was too busy looking up pictures of Crayola markers. When this is revealed, Ria lost it for like, three minutes]

Haley: I had that marker as a kid. 

Ria: So 4/5 stars for the marker?

Haley: They were supposed to smell like blueberries or something but they just smelled like chemicals.

Ria: This is the most excited we’ve been about Zero so far.

[Future Haley: I was literally laugh-crying you dont understand. This was the best part of the show.]

...

Episode 4:

Ria: They all have super powers. It’s so weird.

Haley: I keep thinking they are gonna explain stuff. But they don’t. So I’m just confused.

 ...

[Haley has now brought forth all the markers in her room to find a Crayola one. She drops them all on the floor. Ria loses it again.] [Future Haley update: I found a yellow one it smells like lemons :)]

 ...

Ria: They are all glowing and have super powers. It’s weird. Like, I know we had super powered armor before but that was all connected to AIs. I don’t get how all of this works. They don’t have AIs.

 ...

[We both agree that we enjoy Raymond and Tiny. Bless them.]

 ...

Ria: It’s weird. The dialogue is so oblivious, it comments on its own mistakes. Like, Carolina just acknowledged Wash has had a computer in his head before. But they don’t acknowledge the whole canonical lore about his trauma regarding computers in his head and why he’d hate this. Same with the name David. They just noticed that it’s his first name and that’s how they’d show how close Carolina is with him, but they didn’t acknowledge the canon lore that Wash dislikes people using his first name.

 ...

Episode 5:

Haley: Why didn’t they use Locus’ sword instead. It’d make more sense. He’s the one travelling around planets and wanting to help people?? 

Ria: What’s the worldbuilding here? Is Tucker on the same planet? Is this Earth? Chorus?

 ...

Haley: Gotta love it when they make Tucker hit on teenagers.

Ria: Oh god why did they make East 18.

 ...

Haley: They should have done something with the Warthog song, even if that’s a Red Team thing.

Ria: I miss Red Team.

 ...

Ria: Wait, so if these three swords are connected, why can the two first ones move by themselves and they have like super powers connected to them? When Tucker’s sword is just boring? They didn’t even make a joke about how the two new swords are longer than Tucker’s.

 ...

Tucker: I’m fine, I have my sword.

Ria: That line is so tragic in hindsight.

 ...

One: It’s Tucker. He is dead.

Carolina: Oh my god.

Haley: *laughs her ass off*

 ...

Haley: I don’t understand why anyone is doing anything.

Ria: Your brain is still thinking about that fucking marker.

 ...

Episode 6:

Ria: The dialogue did it again! Wash just said “amazing medical tech”. Like, he points out a plot hole. Because that amazing tech can heal brain injuries and bring people back from death, but East had to be tortured for years to heal her vague illness? Like, why couldn’t their amazing tech fix that.

 ...

[While watching the design of the temple.]

Ria: It looks like those are just plates glued to the wall. Dinner is served.

 ...

Haley: There is no logical reason why they brought in Tucker. His sword isn’t even from this planet.

Ria: To lure in fans.

 ...

Haley in a very sad voice: The speech wasn’t good.

 ...

Episode 7:

Ria: Is all of this happening on the same planet? They keep driving. The worldbuilding is so weird. At least earlier RvB made a joke about how they could just drive everywhere. This is like a big desert, a training base, laboratory, city and temples and Tucker’s workplace, and I don’t know if it’s even on the same planet.

 ...

Ria: Diesel is just standing there waiting while they outfit Carolina.

Haley: It’s like a video game.

 ...

Ria: The temple’s walls are filled with runes.

Haley: It feels like a free/bought asset. It doesn’t even look like the temples on Chorus. It looks like something in WoW or something like that.

Ria: It’s driving me mad. I can read runes! Imagine a big boss fight and the freaking alphabet is plastered on the walls. That’s what I’m looking at.

 ...

Haley: Zero is such a boring villain. It’s not interesting when we don’t know what this “power” actually is or what he wants to do with it.

 ...

Ria: That’s the helmet Spencer wore.

Haley: Oh god I forgot about him.

Ria: So did the writers.

Haley: Spencer should have been the real villain.

 ...

Haley: *sees the random model of the temple guardian alien* I miss Santa.

 ...

Episode 8:

Ria: The aliens are just dancing in the background while Carolina is fighting Diesel.

Haley laughing: Oh my god, they are. They are just jumping up and down.

 ...

Ria: So, the villain just turned overpowered, and the solution is that Raymond just flicks a switch we haven’t heard about and now the heroes are overpowered too?

Haley: It just makes them shiny. And like... they don’t even use the “power”, they don’t fight him with their powers which only some of them have, they just shoot their ordinary guns at him while doing unnecessary flips.

Ria: I just remembered Church’s dick switch. That had more dramatic buildup.

 ...

Axel: You’re too cocky for that.

Ria’s dirty brain: Cock.

 ...

Post Zero thoughts:

[Ria returns from bathroom break and Haley is proudly showing off her marker over video cam.]

Haley: There was too much going on so I just focused on the marker.

Ria: So how many stars would you give it?

Haley: It’s really bad.

Ria: How many stars for marker representation?

Haley: Three out of five. It was only there for a second.

 ...

Haley: In the beginning, it wasn’t that bad. It was dumb, but also fun and sorta cool. But then it just went on for too long and they didn’t explain anything properly and it stopped being fun really fast. But I can see why some people might enjoy it. Like, you’d love it for its action but only that. Not for plot and/or the character writing.

Ria: I think my biggest problem is the worldbuilding. They kept everything so vague because they didn’t want to connect, not really. Like, where is this happening? When? Why are Carolina and Wash there? Like, the motivations for all the characters were so vague as well.

 ...

Haley: Raymond was great. He had personality and some good lines. And he felt like RvB. Like, he used his brain and actually got shit done, but he also wasn’t over-powered. He followed a similar character arc to what the Reds and Blues had. He sucks at fighting but he’s efficient and smart in a practical way with his rocket launcher. He does the most and he doesn’t stop being a goofball! Even Zero was focused on stopping him the most at the end. And he didn’t need to do any stupid flips.

 ...

Haley: The borrowed assets annoyed me. It ended up looking stupid, like, the temple felt more like fantasy than science fiction. And nothing like Chorus. And normally, RvB doesn’t have to worry about being cohesive because all of the designs are from Halo so it all makes sense and it’s connected. But this is just so random it feels distracting, I feel like this is a big reason people felt that Zero was so jarring… but on a subconscious level. It just felt off and there was no cohesive design. Also everything looked like it was made for video games and not modified at all for the show.

 ...

Haley: Honestly I was optimistic at first but then I got confused really fast and it kept getting worse because it was so fast. They didn’t explain stuff properly or at all. Like, they made it too big. Should have been smaller. I thought going with the “Starlight Labs is evil and needs to go down” plot would have been A LOT better and would have tied together multiple aspects of the story that the temple plot didn’t.

Ria: If I had the power which I don’t, I dunno, but I if the main point was to introduce new characters, I’d keep them tied to lore and worldbuilding we already know. So we don’t get so confused and it doesn’t feel so disconnected. Like, I’m still in love with the idea that it should have been Carolina on Chorus dealing with these soldiers who have been fighting all their lives and now don’t have to do that anymore. But maybe Chorus still needing an army, and that’s why she is training it. I don’t know, but like, familiar, build on what we know. And then they wouldn’t be superpowered, but like, just competent-ish but normal soldiers and we’d get to know them better, but I just think Zero just wanted them to be these super cool soldiers even better than Carolina so they could pull off all the fight scenes. ‘Cause it’s all Zero has going for it. The fight scenes. It’s its strength and weakness ‘cause they sacrificed everything else to look cool. And it does. But it’s boring and there is nothing else going on.

 ...

Ria: I’m still so annoyed about the temples. Why are they there? Like, on Chorus it was a big thing, also plotwise, but it had lore connected to it and the worldbuilding explained it. So, where are these temples? A different planet, right? Is it the same aliens? Are people just cool with the temples? Why haven’t they been explored before. Chorus made sure to explain all of that.

 ...

Haley: The West and East scene-

Ria: Feast.

Haley: Confused me. ‘cause West didn’t really regret anything. He just said why he did it. And then all of the sudden East forgave him and rejoined the team. It was so weird. He doubled down on the thing she hated him for so much I was like “Wow he’s kinda an asshole” and then all of a sudden she was on his side? What?

 ...

Haley: Zero does its job if you want action and nothing else. And it’s not RvB. Don’t watch it if you like RvB. And I just want to acknowledge that we are nitpicking. Quite a bit. I’ll admit that. But, I wouldn’t nitpick the other RvB seasons the same way because the old RvB never took itself seriously the way Zero did.

Ria: I agree. We are nitpicking. But like, that’s why we have the movie nights.

Haley: But we are also allowed to criticize it. You can do that with any season. And with the other seasons, you could nitpick it and you can find stuff you don’t like, but there are always stuff you do like or that other people like. I just can’t find anything about Zero that I like. Besides Raymond.

Ria: Yeah. Like, I really love 15. And it had so many flaws people pointed out. And when it comes to criticism and Zero, I just don’t see many points about why people like it. They are allowed to do that though. But, like, we could have a movie night where we watch the Chorus seasons and we’d nitpick so much because we both have issues with it, but there is still so much stuff we’d still like.

Haley: I like Raymond though. He’s like Grimmons lovechild.

Ria: No. Fuck you. Don’t put that in my brain.

 ...

Haley: Raymond being in this… I want to say it feels like the Freelancers seasons but if Grif was part of the team or something. But that’s just “Hit and Run”. *laughs*

Ria: NO! That’s cursed. Shut up. Also, the Freelancers were way better written.

Haley: And those seasons made better sense.

Ria: And like, the Freelancer seasons did the thing with change of tone and have these new and super cool characters and fight scenes. But they kept half of the seasons to be around the Reds and Blues so we still had the humor and the dumbasses, and Zero just, it didn’t connect.

 ...

Haley: So, I have some thoughts on Zero.

Ria: I know, you fuck, I had to write them all down by hand.

Haley: I like bad movies, actually, but Zero didn’t stay fun, so no, I didn’t enjoy it.

 ...

Ria: Do you forgive me for making you watch Zero?

Haley: Yeah.

Ria: What should we watch next?

...

Also, Haley dressed up her dog for the event and you all deserve to see her: