#because for some reason that is a priority in my made up post apocalyptic scenario

[imm0rtal-idi0t]

The Adventures of Merlin | s1e5 'A Remedy to Cure All Ills'

I'm a book binder, and currently working on the momentous task of binding the entire Merlin BBC script (transcripts). I'm using the transcripts from the Merlin fandom website, and going through each scene, writing out all the stage directions, as well as correcting spells and translating them in the footnotes.

It's taking ages and I'm only up to episode 6, but it'll be so worth it. It'll be bound in 5 volumes, one season per book.

[catelyngrant]

💖🤩⛔ for the fic writer asks!

💖 What made you start writing? Answered here!

🤩 Who is your favorite character to write? Oh God, I've written a lot of fic for a lot of fandoms - this is hard. Just looking at my AO3 stats I've written Cat Grant and Laura Roslin the most, with Kara Danvers, Sarah Jane Smith, and Catelyn Stark as runners-up, and I have definitely loved writing all of them. Common themes there are prickly but ultimately soft-hearted women that are reluctant to let people get close to them but blossom when they let their walls down, and women who have tremendous responsibility placed upon them without a choice and must navigate that the best they can. They're all characters that grapple with darkness in different ways and all have very, very strong moral centers and priorities, though those don't always equal being good people or doing good things. They're all also characters with an element of "still waters run deep", which is definitely something I love to explore.

I adored writing Laura but it's been nearly ten years since I have! That's special to me because I was 15 when I first started writing her (fifteen years ago next month, insane) and when I look back on BSG fic that I wrote in my teens I'm actually still pretty proud of how it holds up and the grasp I had of Laura's character. I'm getting ready to start a rewatch so I'm really curious to see how I feel about the show and Laura after so many years - what hits me differently, what feels the same, etc. - and I'll be curious to look back on those fics again after that.

Overall, though, I do think if I had to choose just one at this point I'd say Cat - both because she's the one that I've written the most of most recently (new fic dropping this weekend, actually!) and because there's a lot of room to play when writing her. Her voice is a challenge for sure, but Calista played her so specifically that it's really fun and easy to imagine exactly how she'd say something or what expression or movement she might make in a given moment - she's so expressive, which lends well to writing.

Overall writing in the Supergirl universe and for Supercat allows very easily for exploration of pretty much anything, which is nice. Writing something silly and fluffy is very doable without the backdrop of, like, post-apocalyptic genocide survivors on the run or "oh this is a cute moment, what a shame that they'll both be brutally murdered a few years later!", but there's also so much room to explore trauma and hurt/comfort and anger and grief, and there are so many different iterations of the Supercat dynamic that are all great to mine. I also really love exploring AU scenarios but prefer canon-divergent AUs, not entirely separate universes, and Supergirl is a fandom that really inspired me with a ton of "what if?" scenarios.

⛔ Do you have a fic you started, but scrapped? Literally hundreds. Some never actually had a word count but existed - or still exist - fully formed in my head; others are just a few paragraphs, and still others are thousands of words. Some of them I still want to finish, and others I will stumble upon and be like..."this is 6000 words and I have literally no memory of it but damn, I wish that author would update!"

The two that haunt me, though, are two that exist in fragments and outlines and old notebooks and that I was really invested in that just never came together for a number of reasons and that at this point I've accepted that they will live only in my headcanons.

One of them was a Doctor Who AU where at the end of School Reunion, Sarah Jane joined the Doctor and Rose in the TARDIS. It would have explored the relationship dynamics between all three and would have covered most of season two, with Doomsday playing out differently and with a happier ending, though overall the tone was going to be very bittersweet (partly because I envisioned it being mostly if not entirely through Sarah's POV). The biggest themes would have been acceptance - Sarah understanding and accepting why the Doctor left her, and traveling with him again would really hit at those "you can't go home again" vibes; Rose accepting that there's no forever for her and the Doctor, and that she's going to age the way Sarah has and that he'll have to move on when they're both gone; the Doctor coming face to face with his past choices and the consequences thereof and accepting that the pain of knowing he'll lose them doesn't mean that he should just try to run from it. It would have had a pretty open ending with the three of them still traveling together and knowing that it won't last forever, or even for very much longer necessarily, but there being some bittersweet hope in Rose and Sarah knowing that they'll have each other, and that when one or both of them are no longer able or wanting to travel with the Doctor, that doesn't have to mean him flying off and them never seeing him again. And for the Doctor, he's such a bittersweet character anyway, but the idea would have been that he might be more willing to have more lasting relationships with his companions in the future and that that would be a hard but good thing for him.

The other was my version of Cat Grant's backstory. It was framed through "Ten People Cat Grant Has Loved", and each section would have given more pieces to the puzzle (it would have been non-linear). I had a pretty elaborate backstory for both of her parents, for her experience and decisions around Adam, her relationship with Lois, and for her first husband/Carter's father. A few of the other people (mostly OCs) that Cat had loved would have been less about the relationship and more about snapshotting where Cat was at that moment in her life. Kara would have obviously been one of them (the second to last - I was going to bookend everyone between Cat's dad and Katherine at the end) but I wasn't ever sure about how explicitly romantic that section was going to get.

I had - and have - a lot of scenes sketched or written and a pretty comprehensive outline, but then season two happened and a) fucked up some of my backstory and b) made me way less excited to work on this. While I've continued to write Supercat, this was going to be quite a labor of love and it just didn't feel like something that was going to be as fun or worthwhile as it might have been if I'd gotten it out back in the joyful heyday of the season one fandom. There was a moment for this, and it passed.

ask me writing questions!

[lilsunshiny]

Thoughts on The Last Of Us Part II

WRITING (creative process)

the game’s storyline is straight to the point, you can see from the trailer that it’s going to be a timeline about revenge. the whole game happens around joel’s death in the beginning and I guess that’s the whole reason why people are upset. but guess what? neil druckmann’s goal was to make you upset, angry and nostalgic. he accomplished his goal and that’s why you’re feeling the way you are.

you not liking the the way things went down does not mean the game’s writing is awful, it just means you were expecting something and got another. not liking something isn’t a crime and it’s totally ok as long as you respect the creators and don’t use your hate to put others down, it’s a valid opinion and that’s it.

what makes a story good is the writing and the thought put into it to make the player/reader/viewer feel a certain way, and the developers did an incredible job to do that. we feel frustrated, anxious and weird the entire gameplay and that’s exactly what they wanted from us, which means they won. I’ll talk more about my opinion on the storyline far ahead.

the graphic visuals of this game are RIDICULOUS, they’re perfect. every detail is insane to look at, they worked so hard to get it right and it was so worth it. every time I entered a new scenario I would just go into photo mode and appreciate the art because that’s what makes the game unforgettable and groundbreaking. the red lighting scenes were so perfectly made and so badass, the sky when ellie goes outside the farm with JJ is breathtaking just like every other view in the game. by far the most beautiful game I’ve ever had the honor to play.

STORYLINE (joel’s death)

the first game gave us a story about love and hope, making us guide joel into taking ellie to the fireflies looking for a cure based on ellie’s immunity. we spend the whole game thinking we’d get to the fireflies, make a cure and live happily ever after but that never happened in those terms. the gameplay made us slowly fall in love with joel and ellie as characters, joel for his tough personality that would fade under the influence of a little girl and ellie for her nativity and innocence as a young teenager who really wants to help other people by making a cure. that’s the whole situation of it, joel getting attached to ellie while she developed a paternal affection for him but in the end joel ends up doing an unforgivable thing, basically destroying the hope for a cure and ruining all hope for the world to heal from the outbreak, so he decides to lie to ellie blaming the fireflies for everything so he doesn’t lose her trust and love.

I do understand liking and loving joel as a character, myself included, because they made the game thinking about it and they knew the audience would develop a major caring for him and ellie as daughter and father, that’s how it was supposed to go and it worked it.

now let’s talk about joel’s death. I think we were all surprised to watch him die so early in the game but considering the game time and storyline, it would have never happened differently. his death was brutal, violent, merciless and inhuman, abby and her crew tortured him until he couldn’t take it anymore and he obviously suffered with ellie being held to the ground begging them to stop. I agree that it was a horrible death but we can’t just pretend joel was a sweet innocent hero because he wasn’t, the audience portrays him as a hero when he literally stopped the human race from being saved, killing the fireflies and acting out of pure selfishness. joel isn’t the angel some people paint him as, he’s not a good person and if ellie herself could never forgive him for what he did, who are we to do so? she said she would try but she never got the chance to and it took her years to even come to terms with it.

most importantly, it’s obvious that people forget these characters are human beings, not real people but they’re real in that universe and technically speaking, they run and feel the same way we would feel if we were in their shoes. they’re people, every character in the game is a person, with feelings, a background, a past, a personality and thoughts. they’re no different than us except for them living in a post apocalyptic world were morality and ethics aren’t taken into consideration since there is no law or living lifestyle.

for us to understand this storyline, we need to step away from our society’s view of morality and wrong or right, because that does not apply to them, everyone in the game has killed people and/or have done something morally questionable in their life since it’s the apocalypse and there is no wrong or right, there’s only how the characters feel about certain situations and how they act on them, which is basically what guides the entire game to happening the way it did: human feelings.

joel obviously changed after the first game, since he starts living in jackson and having to raise ellie as a daughter in a relatively normal town with other people, he’s not the same person as he was in part I, now he turned into a father and a friend, not a merciless mercenary who doesn’t care about others. we see that when he and tommy decide to help abby, a complete stranger who was about to die in the hands of infected, and maybe that’s what led people into hating abby with their heart. but ending this topic, joel’s death was bound to happen, you can’t just expect someone to destroy the world’s hope for a cure and leave with no people being angry at him and wanting revenge, that cure could’ve saved many people’s loved ones but he chose to save his loved one. if joel is indeed a terrible person or not, that’s up to you to decide, that’s more of an internal turmoil within yourself that is different for everyone depending on their experience from part I and how they view joel in the end. it’s kind of messed up if you think about it, would you let the only person you care about die for a not confirmed chance of a cure in a world that is already doomed? that’s a question for yourself.

joel’s death happened so you could see things from multiple perspectives, which is the whole fucking point of the game. there are multiple sides to every story, it’s the same world we live in except in different circumstances. your actions affect others, people have feelings and if you hurt them they might act a certain way, those characters are no different than us because they were based on genuine human thoughts and actions.

ELLIE (growth and development)

ellie is one of the most well written characters I’ve ever seen in my life. she’s the symbol of badass but fragile woman and that’s so amazing to me. as the game goes by we start seeing many sides of ellie, she slowly starts to turn into a completely different person after joel’s death and her urge for revenge. killing abby becomes her main priority the second she leaves jackson and that’s clear in the way she acts and treats others. I’ll have to play the game again to pay more attention to ellie and abby’s behavior throughout the timeline. ellie is the reflection of how the excessive amount of effort you put into a negative thought, the more it will bring you and your loved ones down. watching ellie during the story is such a nice experience, there are times where you love her to death, others you get annoyed with her or don’t agree with how she acts, and that’s exactly how the creators wanted you to feel. revenge takes ellie’s soul from the inside out, from her not being able to forgive herself for letting joel die to her going after abby for nothing but hate for herself in the end.

ellie’s journey is exciting to play and to witness as her relationship with other people (specially dina) starts to fade away and being consumed by hate and regret. we were manipulated into loving ellie since part I and I don’t think she’s a bad person, she lost everything in the hands of other people and went through a lot, losing joel was a deal breaker for her but she just didn’t realize soon enough that killing abby wasn’t going to make things better. ellie’s gameplay was meant to make you reflect on losing a loved one, grief, mourning and revenge, she’s not the lost kid from part I anymore, she’s a grown woman who just lost her dad and she doesn’t even know exactly why. the funny thing for me, which is what makes the story realistic, is that ellie didn’t fully forgive joel yet she still suffered from losing him and went after abby for revenge, when not even herself could forgive him, that’s pretty realistic in my opinion. it’s the human uncontrollable instinct of still missing someone you’re mad at and not being able to say goodbye.

for me, ellie is the perfect and most detailed reflection of revenge and what it can do to you. the game is much more than “revenge is bad don’t do it”, we all obviously know it’s bad but we still have an urge to fight back against it and make the person who hurt us suffer too because it’s not fair for us and it wasn’t fair for ellie until the very last moment.

ABBY (point of view and perspective)

by far the most controversial character of the game. I’ll star off saying I actually like abby and I think the people who hate her so deeply just didn’t understand how things go. hating abby is no different than hating ellie, they’re in the same situation for almost the entire game. abby lost her father in joel’s hands, she was still a teenager and seeing her own dad die for trying to save humanity isn’t easy, just like ellie watching joel being tortured and killed wasn’t easy. being fully honest ellie would’ve done the same thing abby did if joel was the doctor and we can’t deny that.

on the other hand, I do think the ellie and abby gameplays could’ve been distributed better, maybe switching from ellie to abby and back and forth so it wouldn’t get too tiring or confusing since we don’t know the exact timeline when we first play it. that’s the only slightly negative thing I have to say about the game.

I do think abby is a great character, they built her perfectly to make the audience hate her in the begging, painting her as a sadistic monster only to show her side of the story later on in the game and make you realize that you have been wrong all this time, making you see the bigger picture and understand that ellie isn’t the only person in the world, she isn’t loved by everyone, she’s just a girl in the world and so is abby. they both have fucked up pasts and they both lost a lot, and in terms of personality, they’re actually quite similar. we love ellie because we got to see her grow up and WE know that deep down she’s not a bad person, the first impression we had of abby was of her recklessly killing joel with a golf club when ellie was begging her to stop, since that we tend to think abby is a horrible person and that ellie is an angel, but it’s not like that at all. obviously ellie didn’t do anything wrong up to that moment to justify that happening to her, but ellie isn’t the best person in the world either.

the duality in this game was created on purpose and with a deeper meaning, ellie is ellie, abby is abby and the cycle of revenge goes on until both parts understand that it’s useless to keep going. abby let go before ellie could and let her and dina live because of lev, killing joel didn’t change abby to the better, lev changed her. tommy couldn’t change ellie, jesse couldn’t change ellie and not even dina could do it, ellie had to change and forgive herself alone. the point I’m trying to make is that abby is no better than ellie and ellie is no better than abby, they’re both emotionally drained women who are not wrong or right in the end of things.

DINA (support and reflection)

dina is the only character I will 100% defend because she’s flawless and did absolutely nothing wrong during the whole game. in my head she represents ellie’s good side, dina is the constant reminder that ellie hasn’t lost her humanity and hasn’t completely changed into someone else because of revenge, even when she has her downs (example: calling her a burden when dina says she’s pregnant). dina is the most forgiving and loyal character, she loves ellie more than anything and it shows. the sad part of it is that even with dina’s huge amount of love and affection, that doesn’t stop ellie from going in the wrong direction, which brings us to another life lesson: loving someone is a choice you make everyday and nobody can control your choices when you’re determined to do something.

ellie decided to go after abby, dina followed and supported her the whole way through, then she took that for granted and left dina and JJ behind to go after abby again (after abby let her and dina live) officially breaking dina’s heart. that was a choice, dina obviously cared so much about ellie, loved her so much but she couldn’t change ellie’s mind. but the point here is that dina is a reflection of ellie’s bright side, she keeps ellie sane until the very last moment, saving her life multiple times, going with her in a revenge journey, “you go, I go, end of story”, telling the wolves to fuck off and staying by ellie’s side, constantly putting her life at risk while being pregnant, she has loves ellie for such a long time even before getting with jesse (you can read ellie’s journal where she says cat told her dina is jealous of their relationship) and she probably took ellie back when she came back from santa barbara (a theory that I believe in because it makes sense).

dina is one of the few positive ends in the universe of the last of us, highly optimistic, funny, beautiful and an amazing support system for ellie. if it weren’t for dina, ellie would’ve become a monster.

LGBTQ+ REPRESENTATION (ellie x dina and lev)

it’s 2020 and people are still talking shit about the game just because of queer characters. that’s why I say people who hate the game are people who either didn’t capture the story or just didn’t even try to pay attention because of a closed mindset bigot sandwiches. representation is the best path to general acceptance, making people see different stories and realize that someone’s gender or sexuality does not influence on the quality of art.

ellie is a lesbian, that’s clear in the game when she says she’s “not into jessie’s type” (such a nice dialogue by the way), she talks about her ex girlfriend and clearly has had a crush on dina for the longest time (probably the reason why she broke up with cat).

dina is bisexual, in my opinion she always had a crush on ellie but maybe she lost motivation to to after her when she started to get close to cat and started talking to jessie because of that and it ended up working.

now dina and ellie’s relationship is probably the only thing that keeps us sane throughout the game, when we sit down to think “thank god ellie has dina, that means she’s not alone”, which is basically the whole concept of it, ellie not being alone because dina is there to hold her to the ground and stop her from becoming someone she doesn’t want to be.

lev being trans is something I can‘t have an opinion on, I have seen both sides: people saying it was a good approach and others saying it wasn’t an accurate representation. I’m not trans so my opinion isn’t valid and I can definitely see why many people think it was a bad reach but I also can see the other side, so I won’t comment on that.

the nice thing about representation in this game is that they brought it up as a normal thing, the only moment the focus is sexuality is when seth was being a dick and called dina the d-word, ellie got defensive but dina stopped her from getting into a fight. even then the main focus of that situation was how ellie dealt with joel saying she didn’t need his help. the point was never ellie’s sexuality, never, not even in a single moment, because it was never an issue. in a post apocalyptic society people don’t pay much attention to being homophobes (unless they’re in a fanatic religious cult or just assholes like seth).

the game approached the subject very bluntly but in a normal way, not making it that huge of a deal but it is a big deal for those who seek comfort and/or are dealing with their sexuality in a way. if a character they admire ends up being part of a minority group, they can relate to that and feel more comfortable in their own skin. we’re here, we’re real and we exist even in a fucked up infected world.

ENDING + THOUGHTS (moving on)

the last of us part II is a story about revenge, being completely different than part I which is a story about love and surviving. what happens in the second game are the consequences of the first, the choices joel made reflected upon himself, saving ellie costed everything; the cure, people’s lives and maybe a brighter future. people who are bashing the game for it’s storyline and how things went down need to understand that it’s not because we love joel that his actions didn’t matter to others. joel is a human being, so is abby and those who got harmed by joel’s choice to save ellie. joel killed abby’s dad, abby went after him for revenge, a predictable and reasonable thing to do if you just try to see it from her point of view, keep in mind that ellie would do the same exact thing.

if you can’t get yourself to see things from other people’s point of view, you missed the whole point of the game. the storyline isn’t summed up in “revenge is bad don’t do it kids”, it’s just based on the fact that death can never and will never bring you any sort of relief.

the game is the reflection of the cycle of revenge. abby going after joel for killing her dad, ellie going after abby and killing all of her friends in the process, abby finally breaks the cycle letting ellie and dina live but ellie couldn’t get over the guilt and went after abby again, yet she ended up letting her ago and officially breaking the chain for good.

the whole concept of the game is how seeking someone else’s suffering can lead to full destruction of someone’s character and values.

if ellie had killed abby she would’ve turned into the monster she was fighting against and she would lose literally everything she hadn’t already lost: her humanity. I don’t actually know the exact reason that compelled ellie to let abby go, maybe it was losing her fingers and realizing that she’ll never be able to play guitar again, which was her very last memory of joel and what he taught her. it could also be thinking of lev and how he’s the only thing abby has and vice versa, which is what she had with joel and what was taken from her, therefore she didn’t want to turn into the person who put someone through the same pain she was going through. technically if she killed abby she would have to kill lev to avoid him coming after her and continuing the cycle and doing that would kill ellie even more.

to make this shorter, abby moved on earlier than ellie. mostly because abby actually got her revenge killing joel but you gotta look through things before you put all the blame on her. ellie lost everyone in her life, her parents, riley, tess, sam and then joel, going after abby was a defense mechanism since she couldn’t have done anything to save those she lost before, but losing the one who took care and raised her was something she couldn’t bare, specially when she thought joel was the only person she had even though they weren’t in good terms and she and dina weren’t a thing yet.

ellie needed to revenge joel at all costs because that’s what she thought he would want, but in the end she realizes he would want her to move on and be happy, because that’s what he always tried to give her: the best shot in life that he couldn’t give sarah. ellie thought that by killing abby she would be able to let go, when in reality she would just feel more guilty for leaving lev alone like she was having no emotional relief concerning her PTSD. ellie got to that beach fully aware that killing abby wasn’t going to solve any of her problems, but a single memory of joel made her make the decision that she wasn’t going to let her go without a fight. their final fight was silent, in the middle of nowhere, they had absolutely nothing to say to each other because they were both fighting for nothing but excessive mental emptiness. they both knew that nothing would bring their loved ones back and they were ready to move on.

what the game wants to teach you is that nothing good comes from searching revenge and other’s suffering. ellie gets consumed by her own view of justice and ends up losing herself both inside and outside, when she comes to terms with the fact that killing abby won’t bring joel back from the dead, it’s already too late. she lost jessie, her friendship with tommy, her good memories with joel, her fingers which results in her not being able to play guitar anymore, the love of her life and her son.

in the last of us part one ellie says that her biggest fear is to end up alone, and the saddest part of all is that her actions led her to making that fear come true. the ending is ambiguous, it can mean something different to different people depending on what you choose to interpret things and how you view the characters. for some, ellie could just end up alone looking for a life purpose that doesn’t involve anyone from her past. to others, ellie returned to jackson and proved dina that she loved her and that now she’s ready to fully commit because she let go of her anger and is at peace with herself and her inner struggles. but that’s all up to you to decide what you want to believe in.

at the end of the day, this storyline is beautiful, heartbreaking, breathtaking and emotionally draining. it makes you think and open your mind to new perspectives, which is honestly one of the best things art is able to do, create a new universe for you to deep your thoughts in and take your own conclusions. the last of us didn’t have a bad or good ending, it had a realistic ending. just because they didn’t make this the way you wanted it doesn’t mean the writing is bad, it means you’re probably disappointed and that’s fine, but hating on it isn’t the way to make a point.

I can only thank everyone involved for creating this world and making me so invested in it, connecting me with these amazing characters and emotions that I never experienced playing a game before. there is nothing more to say except: endure and survive.