#bc now the storys cohesion

[angelsaxis]

"why get mad at authors and writers for not giving you what you want? Just write a fanfiction" why get mad at someone you commissioned not drawing and delivering the art they promised when you can just draw your own art?

[vigilskeep]

some decisions from veilguard are actually only emotionally hitting me days afterwards

[waitineedaname]

thought I should collect my vague fma/mp100 thoughts here to make it easier to have them all in one place !

basic plot/character stuff

ed and al are both talented young psychics who got their powers when they were pretty young. ed got his powers around the time their dad (a CRAZY powerful psychic) left, and al got his shortly after their mom died :(

they thought they could use their powers to bring their mom back as a spirit, but it went. very bad. instead, an evil spirit took advantage of them and started fucking Eating Their Life Forces. al freaked out and astral projected out of panic, but his entire body was consumed so now he's. stuck like that. ed managed to exorcise the spirit, but not until after his arm and leg are devoured too

their motivation is to get rid of evil spirits that take advantage of people and hurt them like this, which is what takes them to roy mustang's door

roy mustang is a fake psychic pretending to have pyrokinesis (he just has a flamethrower behind his desk) because I think that's funny. he's running an exorcism business like spirits and such, except he has a larger crew -- mostly his friends he can call up to do odd jobs for him, like fixing the leaky pipes that make noises that make people think their house is haunted or whatever. he's also the only exorcism business that's willing to hire a teenager, so that's how the elrics end up working for him

in addition to mustang's crew of non-psychics, he also has hughes, who is tragically a ghost. there is definitely some tragic back story here that I'm still working on hashing out, but they've kind of come to terms about it now. he still haunts his family, who know he's there, and he agrees to help out mustang with Actual Spirit Issues when the elrics are unavailable

the elrics' quest to deal with manipulative evil spirits leads them to encounter the sins, who are all very powerful evil spirits. one of the first ones they deal with is greed, who they mostly exorcise, but he manages to just barely survive, dimple style. he's looking for ways to bring himself back up to full power

enter: ling yao, recently awakened psychic who is also looking for ways to become more powerful. he keeps over-exerting his psychic powers and exhausting himself, which is how the elrics come across him mostly unconscious. he's very excited to meet another esper, but he makes the mistake of asking why al doesn't possess ed, since he knows that can enhance someone's psychic powers. the elrics are both Very Sensitive about that kind of topic and tell him to fuck Right Off

bad idea, because then he goes and finds a spirit of his own. both he and greed approach their mutually beneficial consensual possession situation for self-serving reasons. both of them look at each other and think "yeah I can definitely manipulate this guy into making me more powerful" [fast forward a couple months to when they've become Extremely attached to each other] oopsies

lan fan is a telepath. ling did not know this, so he tried to act soooo normal about being possessed around her. that didn't work for long, jackass! she got so fucking angry with him when she heard a literal devil on his shoulder, and even though ling stopped her from destroying greed, that evil spirit is on THIN ICE.

scar's family was killed in a psychic terrorist incident (think kimblee if he was part of claw). he's one of those really late bloomer espers -- it wasn't until this traumatic event that his psychic powers awoke, and he hates them because of the link to the event. now he's on his vengeance based quest, going after psychics that abuse their powers

things I'm still working out the details for

mustang was involved in some high profile fuck-up. kind of like separation arc reigen except uhhh people Died. hughes was likely one of those people. no one has enough proof to outright prove he did it, but he is definitely linked to the event, especially because he was a pretty public psychic figure at the time. in reality, it was the fault of the sins, but it's harder to find evidence when it was evil spirits doing it

olivier + the rest of briggs are an anti-psychic terrorism government agency (kinda like joseph) and initially scar is one of their targets, but they end up recruiting him bc they have a common goal

eventually scar starts working at spirits and such (olivier's assignment so he can keep an eye on mustang) but he fucking hates it. oh my god I cannot emphasize how much he hates it. imagine reigen serizawa and mob at spirits and such except none of them can stand each other. that's mustang, scar, and ed having to work together.

mei is also a psychic! she kind of latches onto both scar and alphonse (separately) because she needs some help killing someone. they have very different reactions to this.

the someone she's trying to kill is father, a super powerful psychic who's been orchestrating much of the psychic terrorism, as well as directing the sins. he's like if toichiro had a specialty for spirit wrangling like matsuo

miscellaneous au details

ed and al's auras (and al's spirit form) are mostly gold, ed's leaning more coppery and al's more of a green-gold. ed's kind of has the look of fire crackling around him. ling's aura is a blend of red and purple and has a kind of watercolor/bruise look. it's more vibrant and has more purple when greed is possessing him. mei's is mostly pink with some red.

mob psycho spirits range from completely abstract to mostly humanoid and frequently have multiple forms in between. hughes looks mostly humanoid most of the time, but can go simplified and silly when gushing about his family. al has a more powerful form that looks like the full suit of armor but he doesn't like using it very often, so most of the time he's a long blob that's just kind of armor shaped (like when the armor is simplified for silly moments). greed at full power looked like the ultimate shield, after being weakened he looks more like a dimple-like blob that resembles the face in ling's mindscape. when possessing ling and both of them are using their powers, ling gets lines on his face like on the ultimate shield (like dimple's cheek spots!)

other spirits: pride looks how you'd expect. horrible shadow spirit. envy bodysnatches a lot. wrath has been possessing a politician for Literal Decades. it's no good. I'm not sure about the other sins

people's feelings on possession range from the elrics (Fuck No), to hughes and mustang (if necessary to get a job done), to greedling (they like it like this actually)

the rockbells aren't psychics but they live kinda adjacent to the psychic world bc theyre family friends with the elrics + hohenheim, so they know more than most about psychic powers

[thenon-fictiondays]

See, that's where he's wrong. I think it's actually.... just as difficult to be the one who's being pulled as it is to be the one trying to pull. It's actually really, really tough to be the object of your friend's affection. It's hard enough being pursued by someone you don't care about, but to be wanted by someone you do care about? To be put in a position where you either have to force yourself to have feelings you don't or hurt someone you care about? To feel like you have no choice but to either betray your own feelings or your friend's? It sucks. It sucks and it can ruin friendships. I would actually prefer to be the person trying to convince someone to fall for me than the person who someone else is trying to convince to fall for them tbh

[hpandthegobletofsass]

have been gripped by the concept of history of magic teacher!regulus the past 12 or so hours, might fuck around and put aside the two other hp fics i've been working on in favor of writing a little one shot of my headcanons related to this

[akkivee]

KR!!!!!!!!!!!!! NELKE!!!!!!!!!!! WHOMST TF EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LET ME IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LET ME IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ford-ye-fiji]

don’t get me wrong I love ghibli movies but what on earth is happening in tales of earthsea????

[kaikamahine]

Now that I have a desktop instead of a mid-2000s laptop that would take 20min to load every map, even a fast travel (not an exaggeration,) I decided now was a great time to ...... completely redo all of my Inquisitors from scratch.

on one hand. fuck that prologue demon. fuck the entirety of the exalted plains. "sEe ReASoN, lYseTTe." PLEASE WILL THE BEARS JUST LEAVE ME ALONE.

on the other!!! not to get goopy on 9yr old computer graphics, but have you PLAYED DA:I on ultra mesh settings?? OH MY GOD.

it's SO DIFFERENT when you're not on super low resolution and don't take 20min to change maps!!!! is this how y'all were living THE WHOLE TIME????

mods 😎

From top to bottom we have:

Jem, my child-soldier templar

Persefene, my widowed Avvar Adaar

Chenelo, Edgelord™

Maia, my Kirkwall throatcutter turned mom

Emmory, the hearthkeeper

Aodhán, the agoraphobe

and Steven

NOT pictured, because they're perfect the way they are and I felt no need to tinker with them: Dain Cadash, the least qualified person here, and Esperantha Lavellan, the unfortunate heterosexual.

[doyouknowthemossinman]

and here's how my favorite white boy fails to handle college! (he's fine, just kind of sad <3)

[queen-scribbles]

Running full bore into my normal MEBB problem: hit the minimum word count but scrambling to finish the story by the deadline and things WILL be getting cut.

[fangirld]

i should go to sleep

Helping a friend sort out feelings and the anger over issues in the D&D group and the reason why like one person left a while ago and the other person running a different game cancelled his game for a bit, and the group is falling apart, and we resolved some of the reasons at the end of 2 sessions ago but last session he hadn't gone and i gave a oh work excuse for him bc like... he kind of ghosted on all of us. Just no explanation to anyone.

And just like... I get his anger and it is justified. But also not talking to anyone involved or the person who set it off isn't good either. Like he got a message about not dampening thenkood after a good session, which it was. But also it was important to bring up the issues when everyone involved was there? like sorry bringing it up after a session was inconvenient but like... life isn't convenient?

It's not a good idea to let resentment and anger grow in silence??

Like ngl I'm all for avoiding difficult issues and emotions but also it's not healthy and not saying anything at all either way is not good. Either the resentment grows or hopefully things can change.

anyway that convo lasted until like 2 hours ago and i was sleepy then but I'm so awake now and filled with my own anxiety even tho I have things to do later. it's 3:30am and that is ridiculous.

it's my issue but also like... i swear if the one guy hadn't left a kind of dismissive message after the first discussion about not dampening the mood they would've probably at least discussed the issue before now. idek if they're going to doscuss it soon but it's been a month at this point.

🫠 Like I knew it hadn't ended well that discussion but it did need to be discussed and that was infact the best time bc we're all avoidant of issues until it becomes a real problem

[galpalaven]

I can see people think I’m being too harsh but as a writer with a degree in this shit they did not have to write that game the way they did. They did not have to do any of that. They could have written differently within the constraints they’ve laid out and made a much better and more cohesive story. They made their bed and now they have to lie in it and put up with the valid critique people have of the writing decisions they made. Taking critique is a major part of writing. They are all adults who have worked in this industry before. They should be able to look at criticism and understand where it’s coming from and take it as not a personal attack bc not all of it is.

I’m also a professional in an adjacent industry. They’re big boys and girls and people. If they can’t handle the criticism they should find somewhere else to work.

[daisyswift3]

Oh my god so this is what the cardigan music video was depicting. This whole time she’s been writing abt her future plans. These songs and music videos were only supposed to make sense in retrospect after the fact but we’re getting a sneak peak. Messages 7-8 describe her leaving the safety of her cabin and her rubies behind (kaylor public separation) to save her lover after someone threatens to expose them and being tossed out on waves (evermore/DBATC/august/Peter losing Wendy). Message 9 is abt the folkmore era when she starts heavily using allegories and metaphors to describe the past, present, and future. She has repeatedly said in her speeches before betty that this is the motif of folklore: A Victorian woman/ghost who wanders the woods collecting feathers, holding a candle, and writing poetry w/ a quill pen on parchment. Taylor’s made it clear SHE’S the ghost (or apparition, 6th message) telling us her story through metaphors and quite literally through folklore—like sending a message in a bottle after being shipwrecked (gold rush). Message 10 is abt her wandering through the folklorian woods and finally finding a way out. She steps into the daylight, shatters her glass closet, and her lover is waiting on the other side (exile/end of willow mv). Message 11 takes place after midnight. She has finally returned home to her cabin where she’s reunited w her lover, her cardigan (new year’s day/end of betty, cardigan, and evermore). “Candle wax and polaroids on the hardwood floor. You and me forevermore.” This is the final chapter of the story.

Is this what her film is going to be abt??

🎃 Imagine this. It is 3 am and Halloween is over. Costumes have been taken off and packed away in boxes, perhaps to be taken out again next year if they haven't been outgrown. Empty candy bowls sit on entryway tables. Toilet paper hangs strung across wilted lawns and barren tree branches. Sheep have removed their wolf’s clothing with relief. Masqueraders with masks removed, mermaids who have traded tails for sweatpants. A woman walks down the center of an empty suburban street, shaking from the cold. She peers around with wilde, curious eyes as if she's seeing the world for the first time. She is drenched in salt water, as if she had just crawled from the ocean. She wears an odd combination of tattered clothing - remnants of a fantastical gown and a comfortable sweatshirt - that doesn't quite make sense. There is something very odd about her. Nevertheless, she simply walks down the street. Finally, she reaches a house that looks like all the others. But it is not like the others. Because it is hers. There are figures in the window, anxiously awaiting her return home. With a warm smile cracking the shell-shocked exterior of her face, she ascends the porch stairs. There is a Jack-O-Lantern perched by the front door. There is a tealight candle at its center, the dancing glow casting shadows from deep within the carved, jagged-toothed smile. And as she watches, the flame🕯️ finally🕯️flickers🌬️OUT 🎃

[can-i-use-wisky-please]

As someone who became absolutely obsessed with parkciv and felt inclined to explore Evbo's other content, I feel like it needs to be properly mentioned just how crazy his storytelling skills are.

Getting into Parkciv you'd think its just the most cliche Youtube bait trash for like Gen Alpha but then you watch a clip of it and it's really addicting but not in a brain-rotting way, instead it's more of like a getting-into-a-series way. So what I mean about this is that the story is all cohesive and perfectly simple while the execution is perfectly adapted to the media used which is Minecraft RP cut into shorts.

Staring with Parkciv's story specifically, I think that the premise is so perfectly simple and authetic to the style of a Minecraft Youtuber. I mean when you think about the 3 things players can get good at in Minecraft its obviously gonna be: pvp, parkour, or builds. Anything else I feel is just like a subset of those 3. Conceptualizing a series based on parkour and a what-if style of plot is such a clean formula for a hit MC series. Now for autheticity, I have to get into what I realized about Evbo as a content creator. Bcause as I was like getting into his channel, I noticed that he kind of just sticks to what he's more familiar with about Minecraft, and Youtube, and all that. It's very pure. His style of content reminds me of the golden days of Minecraft and personally, very refreshing. Now because of this, he can turn like ridiculous premises into incredible stories that just unfold so naturally while having enough passion to back up these stories and provide layers to them.

Now that I mentioned the natural progression of his stories I have to say that his execution definitley help these ridiculous plots to not become so over saturated. Just for context, I watched a video analysis on Techno's style of content and how he became so viral from it and one of the reasons is due to his like chill tone and demeanor and I think Evbo has like this perfect balance of chillness and Youtuber-content-creator attitude. I mean he's narrating the entirety of Parkciv, he can't be irritating to the audience so he puts on this content creator "accent" but excludes the over the top scream and jokes and has this straight forward, natural script with naturally timed, genuinley funny jokes. All his decisions to the story of Parkciv is so intentional and made with the utmost respect to the story. What I mean by this is his decisions are for the sake of the story, nothing is done to like farm clout, or audiences, or anything else like that.

TLDR; just a long way of saying Evbo is a great story teller and I hope he keeps up this passion for making genuine MC stories and does not become problematic.

P.s. idk why PVPciv is getting so much hate bcs its so enjoyable and I kind of like how it's the antithesis to Parkciv.

[project-sekai-facts]

do u think prsk writing is good?

it's inconsistent. sometimes it's pretty good, sometimes it's not so good. this is something i would like to go way more indepth on but i don't think i'll have the time for a while, but i'll outline a few things here.

honestly early events are much stronger than some more recent ones. partially this is preference on my part due to preferring more character driven stuff which most early events were, but also in general the writing was much higher quality.

most year one events had a very strong sense of flow between them that has been lost over time. while events usually revolved around one character's issues, they would introduce aspects of the other characters and their issues which would be focused on later. if you read wonder halloween you'll notice there's foreshadowing for emu's arc across smile of dreamer and wonder magical showtime. this is partially because of the fact the events were so early on. we weren't as familiar with the characters as we are now and we were also new to the plots. you can also see how much more cohesive stories were back then as well because of there being way more mixed events marked as key story, like twilight parade and sakura for ln and picnic for n25. while most events still pick up from where the previous left off the sense of flow for most units just isn't felt as strongly as it was going through, say, l/n arc 1.

it also in some ways feels like the writers had a much stronger vision for early events than they do now, though distribution meta may come into play a bit. first arcs were the ones planned from the getgo. this is what they had already planned ahead for by launch. pretty much everything past year 1 was written after the game launched. we know they have a clear end, and it's evident they also had a clear start. we're currently filling in the middle and some events really feel like there's a slight lack of vision for the middle. vbs is a good aversion what with rad weekend having happened (aside from arata and souma's arcs lmfao), but other units and characters feel shafted.

to add to that last point as well as distribution meta. tsukasa5 is arguably one of the hardest hit. what seems to have happened is that they needed a second wxs event to focus on daigo's troupe, and tsukasa is the character who is most fitting for that troupe's speciality. unfortunately in order to come up with the actual plot, they had to retcon elements of tsukasa's character. tsukasa5 overall is probably one of the worst written of the recent events. it's really rough and doesn't make sense in some parts. it truly just exists bc they needed a wxs event with daigo and a wxs event in that slot.

kanade is another character who got hit hard. while she had the white day event in 2024, she was heavily shafted in terms of n25's story due to the focus being on mizuki and ena for half the year. mafuyu and ena's events were also very focused on them as individuals, leading to kanade getting like no character development for a year.

for non-2024 examples the 2nd arc enders were a mixed bag. step by step is very clearly a shoe-in because they needed to pad for time. retie functions perfectly well as an arc ender and reads like one in a few places, especially near the end. while minori had some good moments in this event it honestly feels like a mixed event. hell look at the banner card. shizuku and airi are also only in this event for a few lines of dialogue it's really rough.

oyf is incredibly rushed and tries to wrap up way too many loose ends from lutf. it feels like this arc was cut short, and you can really feel it in arc 3 when all the loose ends that still existed after oyf get their proper conclusion. side characters barring kotaro excluded, tatsuya and gurney flap had the shittest resolutions ever (tatsuya is also. barely a character lol). kohane had some good moments here, but other than that it was a really weak event.

same can be said for ohe they really needed more time and it's painfully obvious considering how much foreshadowing they did with rui only for... him to get one chapter in an emu event. there's some other things that really make this feel like it was meant to be rui or be two events one rui one emu, like the travelling troupe show. remember when rui wrote that show about his life and wxs rewrote it to show him he had a place with them. clpl doesn't. obviously it's always been important to all of them but it's significance to rui specifically has always been highlighted for obvious reasons. hell it was even mentioned in wxs first live like a couple weeks before this event dropped. while again this has good emu moments and good wxs moments it's painfully obvious at points that this was either a rui focus at one point or they combined two events. i wonder if part of the reason for that is because they realised that rui graduates at the end of the next arc so "wxs disbandment arc 2" (tentative name) will probably be more centered around him, especially with asahi's return looming over the story, and they didn't wanna make it seem like they did the same character arc with him twice.

sayonara persona and starry song are fine.

clpl really fucked themselves over with wles and the event schedule lol.

another issue with the writing from a technical standpoint is that recent events have really obnoxious exposition. listen i know we all make fun of people who only read chapter 1 and 8 of an event but did you know that actually works. you can sometimes even just read chapter 8. there's this need to constantly remind the player of stuff that happened earlier on in the event, sometimes in gratuitous detail, and i can understand why this might be necessary for the really long events like lutf or curtain call, but most events since 3rd anni have been under 1hr 30, in most cases just over an hour. the player can retain significant events that happened in the previous chapter. we don't need it constantly explained and it can actually make the audience less engaged if you constantly treat them like they don't understand what's going on. even for a game aimed at the tween/teen demographic you don't need to handhold them through the story. while yes younger audiences won't have the same literacy as an adult you should also trust that they can follow the basic story and read into basic subtext (honestly prsk is usually fine with subtext this is just an example).

"outline a few things" my ass this is pretty much everything i wanted to say. i do games writing next year and i think we cover VNs so maybe i can provide more insight then if the blog isn't dead.

(obligatory i'm not saying you can't like the events i outlined here i'm just saying that from an objective standpoint they're not the best. doesn't mean you can't find enjoyment in them. like whatever you want i'm not here to dictate your opinions)

[schrodingersachillesheel]

The MCU didn't need to use time travel and their decision to do so directly led to their downfall

If they hadn't done that time skip they could've used that time to slowly rebuild the team and set up for a huge collaboration that solves the issue phase 4 started. (that issue being the fact that it no longer feels like one cohesive mcu)

"but what about the infinity stones?" "how are they going to undo the snap??"

the fuckin power of friendshi- LET ME EXPLAIN

if the time between the snap and endgame was spent introducing the characters and storylines we now have in phase 5, you can correlate many of them to the abilities of infinity stones.

Wanda (reality) and Loki (time) are obvious ones but it doesn't stop there;

with a little work space (America Chavez), mind (Professor X), power (Starlord/Peter Quill), and soul (Jean Grey/Phoenix), can be slowly established. then, endgame can be the realization of these connections.

this would clear up the common misconception that infinity stones are this all-powerful, vague, items w abilities beyond anything else in the galaxy because if masters in each ability working together could very easily have the same result as wielding all six infinity stones then, it's a whole lot easier to continue the steady rise in stakes without ppl saying stuff like "wow so all those heroes died for nothing" when they watch the first episode of Loki.

the reason thanos needed to collect all infinity stones was bc he, alone, would be a master in all forms of power in the universe.

you can still retire original characters in this storyline, as well as explore a much wider universe. everything could still work and you wouldn't have been accidentally concluding your story.

**the actual heroes are totally subject to change i was just looking for examples that are already members of the mcu