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phoenixtakaramono · 4 years ago

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Hi! :) I was reading your post about SQH in TUT and it got me thinking. Since this version also wrote SVSSS, when he transmigrates does he realize his "dream" was real? Also, you hinted that he recognizes SY as the same person who transmigrated into SQQ, so now I'm wondering if he tells SY that, and how SY would react to learning he's the protagonist of SVSSS in another universe. I just love thinking about how meta this could potentially get, haha.

Can't wait to find out more! Keep up the good work!

(Follow-Up Post to: Part I, Part II)

@the-legend-of-chel 👏👏👏 Luv, good to see you in my Asks! I’m glad to hear that you’re looking forward to finding out more in The Untold Tale! And thanks for your support and encouragement. 💖

(TUT ch1 - Excerpt)

You’re right. There is a lot of meta potential with older!Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky being the MXTX equivalent in this AU—or, rather, I like to imagine him growing up to be the Stephen King equivalent of modern day China with a prolific portfolio of written works (novels and short stories, and extras). In canon, he churned out a great number of words per chapter and in a speedy amount of time! Do you guys know how miraculous that is, as a writer? I envy him so much! To be able to churn out that much content in a short amount of time, and in a scheduled regimen, is amazing! That’s basically my angle having written this into the prologue of TUT. That’s partially the reason why I wrote ch1. I liked the idea of paying homage to SVSSS and saying that it’s an actual book series in TUT universe that Airplane wrote (as funny as the idea would be, I wasn’t about to let SY be the one to write it, lol, for intellectual property reasons since the PIDW characters belong to Airplane, which would necessitate SY changing names and character appearances if he published what we know as irl SVSSS, so the best I can give SY is saying he wrote his own PIDW fanfic which basically launched his novelist career because he’d realized, hey, I actually have a knack for writing and the ever so spiteful I feel like practically every writer has had this thought before: fine, if I don’t see what I want to read, then I’ll write it myself!)

(TUT ch1 - Excerpt)

We’re approaching TUT spoiler territory so skip below if you don’t wish to be spoiled.

TUT (Meta) Spoilers

I personally love meta. If I’m to be writing a lovestory to SVSSS, there will be attempts at meta thrown into TUT. And this is one of them:

Airplane did “dream” about canon SVSSS. He basically “dreamt” about his favorite black powder fan, Peerless Cucumber

changing events of Airplane’s biggest regret Proud Immortal Demon Way. (As a writer, it embarrasses me to read my old writing. So I imagine it could be the same for Airplane.) As an author, Airplane recognized what he dreamt had potential to be a commercial success as a danmei transmigration story so basically every time he woke up, he would write pieces of what he remembers in a dream journal when the memory was fresh in his brain. It also allowed Airplane the opportunity to show his readers through the perspective of SY! Shen Qingqiu what Airplane had originally wanted to write, but integrated in a way that blends seamlessly into the reading experience. He would’ve thought it was a bit weird and strange that his brain dreamt about his past critic—whom he’d considered a small celebrity in the PIDW forums back then—aka his anti-fan-turned-accomplished-novelist in the writing industry, so he felt embarrassed that his unconscious brain must have thought very highly of the man.

So Airplane omitted any mention of Peerless Cucumber from the final draft of SVSSS (if he mentioned both “Shen Yuan” and “Peerless Cucumber,” then even SY would be like, Hey, wait one moment....). This detail will be included in a later chapter, but did you know the name “Shen Yuan” has come up in other works? Let’s ignore the variations on the Chinese written characters for the name “Shen Yuan.” There was the evil older brother character Shen Yuan from The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage, a side character named Shen Yuan from a C-drama (I think he was an old minister?), and there’s even an irl visual artist named Shen Yuan. Shen Yuan (Shen Garden) is also a famous romantic garden in Shaoxing, known for the love story between Lu You and Tang Wan.

(Shen Yuan Garden - Trip Advisor Review)

Basically “Shen Yuan” in itself is not a particularly uncommon name in China (imo I would not say it’s super popular either). So when SY saw his name mentioned once or twice in Airplane’s SVSSS—aka rebooted PIDW—during his read-through, he was like, Huh, what a strange coincidence. And then dismissed it as circumstantial and thought nothing of seeing his name come up in a cutsleeve novel as the new protagonist, haha. It’s like a book written by Anne Rice; one of the titles coincidentally has the same name as mine. Now, obviously the book and main character is not based or inspired by me; I just coincidentally share the same name. If I see books which have characters with my same first name, generally I like to read them and sometimes even collect them for my bookshelves. Because there’s something just so fun and interesting about seeing your own name in a fictional piece of work.

There’s also meta joke potential about Airplane dreaming of himself being transmigrated into the cannon fodder Shang Qinghua and seeing the romantic miscommunications between the younger version of himself (his self-insert essentially) and the fictional Mobei jūn character. I can certainly say seeing such dreams would make Airplane question his sexuality and awaken something dormant in him, haha. He’d realize he might not be not as straight as he thought he was, if his brain was capable of dreaming of SY!SQQ being crushed on by LBH, and SQH being crushed on by MBJ and essentially following MBJ around calling him “my king” this and “my king” that. He’ll be sweating bullets when he meets this world’s version of MBJ, because Airplane will definitely remember how the younger Self-Insert version of himself acted toward MBJ in the SVSSS world. (It’s the classic “Just because I dreamed about it happening doesn’t mean it’ll happen here, right? ...Right? Cucumber brother, you’re a fortuneteller! Please check our eight characters for me! I have to know my marriage compatibility with Mobei jūn!”)

In a later chapter, there will be the reveal where Airplane tells Shen Yuan that he “dreamt” of a universe where a younger version of Shen Yuan—having choked on mantou (馒头) (paying homage to the donghua) or just being transmigrated in general after raging at a younger ASTTS’s writing (paying homage to the books)—transmigrated into the Shen Qingqiu we know from SVSSS who married Bing mèi. Because I think it will be hilarious when TUT’s SY finds out about the true source of Airplane’s inspiration, and he’ll naturally freak out over the fact that this is the very same Bing gē from Airplane’s Bing-gē vs Bing-mèi extra and that he’s essentially somehow stumbled on the same path as the alternative younger SY!SQQ “from Airplane’s imagination.” I will leave this open to interpretation if this does show up (it’s just an idea I’m playing with) but I might hint that there might be a higher power at play which allowed Airplane a peek into another universe—which manifested as his dreams.

I very much like this dynamic (we might see this exchange, verbatim, in a future chapter in TUT):

SY/ LBH —> He gave him a disdainful gaze.

Airplane cried inwardly at the oppression and the feeling of being wronged.

Haha, none of this is really Airplane’s fault^ though. It’s a fun parallel and if I’m still motivated when we get to the wedding and consummation chapter, we might see an epilogue where SY and Bing gē from TUT meets SY!SQQ and Bing mèi maybe. Because I think it’ll be funny with the two LBHs getting into a shouting/ fighting match about who has the “superior Shen Yuan” while the two SYs just shake their heads at their silly husbands (and potentially TUT’s SY, as the older party, can impart his fortunetelling wisdom and advice to SY!SQQ).

Personally I can’t wait when we get to those chapters, because I know it’ll be entertaining to write, haha. Personally TUT is a fun project because there’s just so much meta potential that can be incorporated and I have a lot of fun imagining the scenarios.

*Note: like always, keep in mind that these are just my current thoughts. Details are subject to change; things aren’t considered official until they show up in the final draft on AO3. :)

The Novelists’ First Impressions

The first impression SY and Airplane will have of each other will be fun. Because in their perspective, written in my notes it’s essentially like:

(Airplane seeing SY):

His first reaction was shock. Shock because the mere mortal he used to be could not conceive so much charisma being emitted by this guy.

This is definitely a man who had put all of his stats into CHARISMA.

(SY seeing Airplane):

He's suspiciously good looking in ways that normal people are not.

Ah, the Cucumberplane friendship in TUT is going to be so much fun. Not only are these two older souls who transmigrated (both are mid-aged in this universe), they’re both accomplished novelists in their own right in the writing industry. Which means with these two being celestial beings, there’s so many clichés we can playfully poke fun at.

It also makes me laugh because imagine being SY, and seeing a guy (mortal!Airplane) who exudes the same energy as these two imperial princes GIFs:

#svsss #人渣反派自救系统 #shang qinghua #moshang #shen yuan #bingyuan #binggeyuan #the untold tale #phoenixtakaramono #ask #the-legend-of-chel #phoenix talks #reply #replied #answered #I’m almost done photobashing older SY #so there’s gonna be additional visual context #for how he appears in TUT (my headcanon at least)

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lilydalexf · 4 years ago

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa has 8 stories at Gossamer, but there are even more X-Files fics at AO3 and her website. She writes Mulder and Scully in a very lovely way. I've recced 3 of my favorites of her fics here before: Bird in Snow, Fall: East on M St, and Skuamorph. Big thanks to Tabula Rasa for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I'm always extremely pleasantly surprised to get kudos (or, very rarely, a comment) on my old fic, but I'm always happy to see it! I did post them all (I think) to AO3. I'm not surprised people are still reading fic, though. It's an iconic show and now with streaming, it's really easy to watch older shows and natural to want fic about them!

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

XF was my first fandom, definitely my first online fandom, and so it will always have a special place in my heart. Also... I had a great time! I stumbled upon and joined the Scullyfic email list by accident, but it was the best thing I could have done. I learned a lot about how to be a writer and how to be in fandom, and those lessons are still important to me. Foundational. Also, in terms of modern fandom drama, XF was more low-key on the drama (although it didn't seem like it at the time!). But I learned something that's always served me well: find like-minded people, and hang out with them. Don't worry about the rest.

Also... you can't control the show, but you kind of can control the canon.

Because of Scully, I ended up taking a forensic anthropology class in university-- and now I have a Master's in a forensic science! Part of the Scully Effect, and proud of it!

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Definitely mostly email list! I never really got the hang of message boards. Posting fic was exhausting, and tbh I never figured out how to work Ephemeral. I checked it every day, though! I loved, after a new episode, everyone sending in their thoughts and reading everyone's experiences together. Fandom was a lot more work back then, tbh!

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

That fic can be just as good, or better, than traditionally published works. There are works of XF fic that have stuck with me for years now, far more than some books I've read. That fan writers can know the characters better than the show writers. The fandom in general was really smart, and mostly more adult than me (I joined fandom when I went away to college, so I always felt at the younger end of the scale. That was good though!).

Also, my first time reading and writing porn. Not gonna lie, I was shocked the first time I accidentally read smut. But I adjusted fast. lol

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I was still a kid (now we would say preteen) when the show premiered- I think in middle school. But I was already into ghosts, aliens, monsters, solving mysteries, and I'd already imprinted on the dynamic thanks to Square One (really)! I was also just old enough to start developing celebrity crushes. Hilariously, I did not twig to the fact that I'm bisexual the entire time I was in XF fandom, despite having enormous crushes on BOTH Mulder and Scully. Ahhhh!

Also, my whole family was into the show, but I was definitely the one with the hyperfixation. I used to take notes and record the episodes as I watched. It just had the right stuff and hit at the right time. And I've always been obsessive.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

As a kid I also really liked Star Trek, and someone had given my dad a book about the history of Star Trek, which I read. This included mentions of fandom and fanfic. As soon as I had a private-- and perhaps more importantly fast-- internet connection (in college), I went looking for XF fanfic, and that was that. Hooked immediately. Also I shipped them A LOT so that's what I went looking for.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I tend to not go back to a fandom once I have a new fandom, so I wouldn't say I'm in it. I did hang around the edges for the revival, of course, because I wanted to experience that with the same people, but since the revival was mostly not that great (with a few exceptions), I didn't get pulled back into it. But I still think of the people I knew in the fandom a lot, and always hope they're doing well.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I've never left fandom, and I've been in a BUNCH: Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Bandom, Supernatural, now CQL/The Untamed and other Chinese-media fandoms, with many smaller ones in between or on the side. I feel like at their core fandoms tend to be similar, although where you host the fandom makes a big difference: Livejournal, tumblr, twitter. I think that because fandoms now tend to be bigger and more diverse (which is good) there tends to be more wank (which is bad). In some of them I was close to a group of people, some of them not. Honestly the best thing is when someone you know from an old fandom is in your new fandom. It's so much fun. I have really good friends thanks to fandom, and I've had them for YEARS. Like. 15 years.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I tend to focus more on ships than characters, but some of my all-time favs: Scully, Hermione, Sirius Black, Castiel, Lan Wangji, Xie Lian. That's just fandom-oriented ones, otherwise we'd be here all day. :D

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I don't often rewatch episodes any more, although if I come across an ep on tv I might. I definitely still think about them though! For example, I'm a teacher now, and just a couple weeks ago one of my colleagues mentioned he'd heard the students saying they shipped two of their classmates, and he was like "Ship? I don't get it" and I was like "HOO BOY, do I have a story for you!" And I explained how shipping came from XF fandom, and why. That was fun. I definitely still think about Mulder and Scully too-- I mean, they're cultural touchstones, so they do come up sometimes in greater pop culture. Also, I was in Hannibal fandom for a while, and Gillian Anderson is still The Best.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I haven't read XF fic in years, even the ones I remember as being really significant/important to me. I still have my all-time favs saved on an external HD though! Fic in another fandom- every day lol.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Blinded by White Light by DashaK has stuck with me. Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the Ruby-Throated Warbler by I forget I'm so sorry -- that's lasted as my ideal post-canon MSR and as an interesting and different way to tell a story. [Lilydale note: It’s by rah.] I was always thrilled to see fic by Brandon, JET, MaybeAmanda, Syntax6... and, frankly, everyone on the Scullyfic/ Emuse list. So many talented people in that fandom!

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Things Outside, which is the only thing I've ever written based on a dream, and I'm really satisfied with it. It was hard to write but so much fun to revel in the weirdness. I always kind of wanted to write more because I know a lot more about the situation, but otoh, I like the open, ambiguous ending (usually I am very HEA).

In other fandoms, King & Country in bandom (MCR) and in Supernatural I'm very proud of Hope and Clay. I struggle to write casefics even though I love to read them, but that one really worked out.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I don't think I'll ever write something new. There is an old fic that may be done but it was smut so I was too shy to post it at the time. In theory if I find it and it's decent, I could post it!

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I do! I write fic very slowly, but I do write still! I have a million ideas for stories, but I'm so slow at the actual writing part.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

I usually take a jumping-off point from canon, or of course, something I need to fix or expand on. Or sometimes I start telling myself a story as I fall asleep and the idea grabs me long enough I can manage to write it.

What's the story behind your pen name?

I was getting into fandom and realized people didn't use their real names. I flipped through my history book looking for inspiration, and decided tabula rasa was a great name for a writer. I tend to add an X because it's rare to get "tabularasa" as a username, and the X is indeed for X-Files (so I'm something like tabulaxrasa most places). I usually go by Tabula Rasa or Tab, though. And I still use it because 1) it IS a great name for a writer; and 2) it's not fandom-specific so I can keep it in every fandom.

I identify with it so much I have answered to this name in class (oops). I have a "Tab" t-shirt (as in the soda, but I have worn it to Comic-Con for ease of ID-- better than a nametag!). And my mom got me a necklace with a "tab" typewriter key as a charm, which I adore. Yes, I have accidental merch of myself.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

As you can tell from the above, my family knows (my family being my parents and sister). They are supportive! I think my mom read a couple stories? But obviously she has to know the fandom to get it... I got my sister into fic, and we even wrote a couple fics together (in Gundam Wing). She's a lot more selective about fandoms, but she's joined fandoms on her own, too. She's just not in one constantly, like me. :p

I tend not to tell not-online friends unless I have felt them out and know they're super fannish, or they bring it up first.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Most of my old fic is now on AO3 and I hang out on twitter a lot, @tabula_x_rasa

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

I'm really glad people are still in this fandom! It will always be so important to me. Thank you Lilydale, for this nostalgia trip!

(Posted by Lilydale on March 30, 2021)

#old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #tabula rosa

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sarkywoman · 3 years ago

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Writing Asks

Tagged by @under-the-shady-tree, thanks!

20 questions, writer’s edition, let’s go!!

How many works do you have on AO3? 85

What’s your total AO3 word count? 712708

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? Oof, uh... since like, 1999? Um, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Andromeda, Supernatural, Heroes, NCIS, DC, Marvel, The Umbrella Academy, Kingsmen, ASoIaF/Game of Thrones, Borderlands, Community, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Doctor Who/Torchwood, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, Misfits, I think I’ve forgotten some...

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Noble Blood (Game of Thrones, ASoIaF - GRRM) A Song of Bastards and Wards (ASoIaF - GRRM, Game of Thrones) Young God (Borderlands) Story and Sorcery (Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel) My Shame is True (The Umbrella Academy (TV))

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I try to! Comments are so important in the fanfic community and I know how hard it is to think of something to say about a story, even when you’ve loved it to bits, so I don’t want people to feel ignored. Especially because I appreciate comments so, so much! I will say though, I have lapses, often when my mental health isn’t good, where I simply don’t know how to respond to people and then months go by and I feel weird about replying... so sorry if you’ve ever commented on one of my stories and got silence - it was me not you!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? The Aimless One (Misfits (TV 2009)) Straight up the saddest story I’ve written, no question. Normally writing sad stuff doesn’t make me sad but I had to take a break in the middle of this to just try and grapple with the idea I’d had because it tapped into a lot of depressing thoughts I have about life and death in general. The comments were all complimentary but so upset that at first I was like ‘hooray, it had the desired impact’, then after a while I started to think ‘why did I want to hurt people like this?’

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? Probably Realising All You Ever Wanted, a Hobbs/Dirk fic for the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency fandom. There’s such minor conflict in that one that the sugary sweet ending isn’t out of place.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written? Well. I have some fandoms that are sort of crossovers already, things like Marvel where you have comic versions and movie versions and it doesn’t really feel like a crossover to be picking and choosing. Same with a Dirk Gently/Thor fic I did, because Thor cameos in the DG canon, but not this Thor. I think the most ambitious crossover I’ve worked on was a collaborative chatfic with @freshgratednutmeg that we’re never likely to post, where the need for more background characters in an Umbrella Academy A/o fic led to it being crossed over with Marvel and Brooklyn 99. (Leading to such amusements as Diego sparring with Rosa, and Five competing with Shuri in class.)

Have you ever received hate on a fic? Yeah, but it’s never been very well-reasoned so it’s been fairly easy to dismiss. Some people expect everyone to share their own perspective of the characters and it’s weird.

Do you write smut? If so what kind? Not really. I can go there and have done on occasion, but it doesn’t interest me very much. I think I did it more when I was younger because I felt like it was a necessary aspect of grown-up fanfic writing (when I started I was a teenager amongst mostly adults... or other people lying about their age too lol). These days I’m more likely to fade to black or allude to the acts. But I’m not averse to writing it or anything, but it’s never the focus of my story.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Only in the sense that I see them on other sites I didn’t upload to, sometimes in other languages, sometimes not. They normally say my name somewhere on them so they’re not stolen as such, but it’s still uncomfortable to see my work circulated to other sites without my permission.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Not with my permission, but yeah. I don’t know how to feel about translations. Obviously I want people of other languages to be able to read my work, but at the same time I’m not fluent enough to be able to check the translator’s work, so I won’t know if they’ve done any better than google. Word choice is pretty important in fiction. A bad translation can totally warp a text.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not for posting or sharing, but me and @freshgratednutmeg cowrite all the time.

What’s your all time favorite ship? All time?! That’s impossible to answer. I’m a multi-shipper for starters, in pretty much every fandom I’ve been in. When I find a ship I love, I love it intensely above all others for the duration of the fixation. Then eventually it gets set aside when I find a new fandom. I’m also indecisive enough to not really have an all-time favourite anything.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? A Song of Bastards and Wards (ASoIaF - GRRM, Game of Thrones). I can’t begin to describe the pages of notes I have for this beast. Unless I threw them out, which... scanning my room... is a distinct possibility. Ouch. I’d hoped to parallel the books for a long time with this one, but the amount of work for a project like that is too much when you’re no longer as passionate about the source fandom. I suspect what I might do is scenes with interconnecting notes, just so people get some sense of closure.

What are your writing strengths? Dialogue, baybee! Kinda makes me want to be a scriptwriter. People are always telling me that the characters ‘sound like’ them. I think it’s from reading voraciously from when I was young and being quite a social child, that moving speech patterns and quirks into writing is something that comes very naturally to me. Too natural, in fact, because IRL I write how I speak and that’s not always suited to the situation.

What are your writing weaknesses? Most things other than dialogue. Even thought processes are an internal dialogue, so they’re okay, but then like... a fight scene? A sex scene? Just even... what are their hands doing while they’re talking? How are these people physically present? Where are they? Are they inside, outside, is the building on fire? My descriptive skills are lacking, to say the least. It’s something I’m working on.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? I’m not quite sure what’s meant by this. I’m not fluent in anything other than English so I don’t see that would work well for me. I know a few phrases in German/French/Welsh/Latin/Spanish but nothing useful for conversation. Dropping in words can work, if it’s the same way the speaker would use them amidst their English. Most of the time the characters I’m writing wouldn’t be speaking in another language anyway. We can blame the tag-team of English colonialism and American media for that one I think. I think that sometimes authors utilise a character’s language in a way that just exposes how little the author actually knows of the language and that’s a bit cringe for me.

What was the first fandom you wrote for? Buffy the Vampire Slayer. None of those are online atm because they’re so so bad XD I should post them just so people can see improvement but... I can’t even read them, they’re hilarious. The most gratuitous self-inserts, the most ludicrous arguments, the most out-of-character romantic declarations.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? Hmm, that’s a quandary. I think I’ll differentiate between favourite to write, and favourite end product. Favourite to write was probably Noble Blood (Game of Thrones, ASoIaF - GRRM) because it was just a romp through my favourite themes. Given it’s one of my most popular stories, I’d say that just proves you should write what you want! I was going to quickly say Young God (Borderlands) is my favourite fic for quality of the finished product, because I pretty much just sat down one evening and spilled it into a word doc then reread it back and thought ‘huh, did I write that? Awesome’. But I’m happy with a couple of more recent things I’ve done for The Umbrella Academy fandom, notably The Price of Parenthood, which is very different to what I usually write and is a look at the life of one of the mothers who gave up her child to Reginald. Also The Water Calls, which was the only thing I managed to write for the recent MerMay event. It took me a little while to puzzle out how it all fit together, then once I had it worked out it came together wonderfully and I was very happy with the tone of it.

Tagging anyone who fancies doing it.

#long post #this was fun #like being interviewed lol

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whirlybotart · 4 years ago

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Blurr for the character ask thing? (btw i rlly like reading ur thoughts on em!! real cool stuff)

op come off of Anon so I can give u big kissy I’m begging u/j seriously tho oh my god that’s like the best compliment u could ever give me ever I love talking about my interests and when other people enjoy it, it just makes it even better! I’ll gladly do Velocity for ya!!! I simp for this man tho be warned.

First impression

okay so back when I was watching Prime, funnily enough, I found a TFA Sh*ckblurr fanfic and read it, but I had no idea who tf Blurr was so technically my first impression was that he was some oc/self insert.

But I doubt that’s the answer u want so I will say right off the bat I loved him and hated it because I very much knew he would die. I also was hardcore into the idea of Bee falling in love with this fucking,,, blue car the first time it saved him not knowing it was a person because that’d be fucking hilarious.

Impression now

I love him so fucking much he is an absolute fave of mine. I love how strict n angry he is when Bee fucking disrespects him and I feel like he would look him in the eye and call him a dumb fucking bottom.

he’s probably one of the only sensible bots in the elite guard and I love that he’s smart and also talks so fucking weird at the same time. The fucking way that he says “Which while technically accurate lacks a certain creativity.” And the noise he makes when Shockwave attacks him ugh I Want to Marry Him.

Favorite moment

WHEN HE RAN ACROSS THE GALAXY TO GET TO CYBERTRON? I FELL IN L O VE. Seeing that scene unironically makes me Simp hard for Blurr. seeing his drive and determination and How fucking Cool he is. It’s so so good, just the perfect way to show off his entire character. Getting irritated at the Starscream clones and scolding them angrily and then being an absolute badass as he gets away? Not to be gay but dkfljcwhmlfiunw34hf89nhe98rghecufcyg8edffadsf I love Him,

When I think of Blurr I think of that sequence and I wish more people did tbh.

Idea for a story

KINDA ENEMIES TO LOVERS BLURRBEE FANFIC WHEN? Okay I love the fluff there is of these two but the idea of an au where Blurr stays with the crew sounds amazing because I think Bee would absolutely Hate it. How Dare Blurr be a faster twink than he is Bee is constantly back talking Blurr n being rude n sassy to him while Blurr is getting tired of this short ass twink He is trying to do important Elite Guard stuff and does Not need this sass!

But eventually, Blurr does smth kickass and Bee is like ‘oh no I’m in love’ But now that he has,,, been being an ass to Blurr for so long he had no idea how to deal with this change in events, and when he starts being more of his usual self and being nice to Blurr, Blurr is like ‘oh no I’m in love’ but still thinks Bee does not like him that much so he doesn’t know how to deal with this change in events.

Unpopular opinion

I Will never understand why 80% of the fandom portrays him they way they do. Blurr may not be super graceful or talk in a normal way but he is pretty fucking clever, he was the one who figured out how to get out of mixmaster’s concrete.

To me he is a strict but caring mech who really does want to do the best for Cybertron and will stop at nothing to do it. He ran across the galaxy for the people he wants to protect and fought till the end he is anything but nervous baby UwU. And no amount of that weird-ass brainwashing or manipulating Shockwave does in any of those fanfics would stop him.

When Longarm attacked him out of nowhere Blurr made a point of not freezing up, he may have freaked out who wouldn’t but he didn’t let himself get caught even in the midst of figuring out what was going on. This mech knows what he’s doing.

Also, Sh*ckblurr makes no sense to me,,, unless Shockwave renounced being a con or proved he didn’t want to hurt people and wasn’t a threat to Cybertron I’m pretty sure Blurr would obliterate him instantly given the chance.

He can be kind of an ass too and like, that’s okay ur faves can,,, not always be super nice soft boys I like Blurr being a bit of an ass. That’s just a fun character flaw y’all.

Favorite relationship

Him and Bee’s bickering was really cute and funny to see and the thing in the manga where they take down Lugnut and Blitzwing is amazing I cannot express how cute it is to see them merrily whistling away <3

Wish we had seen more of it but oh well... It gives me all the fuel I need to think about them on a daily basis so really where’s the loss?

Favorite headcanon

Blurr’s handwriting is fucking chicken scratch, Longarm and Cliff have just resorted to forcing him to let other people write out his reports for him even though Blurr insists he can read it just fine...

Also he was a cadet around the same time Longarm Bee Wasp n Ironhide were and he was an absolute show off, so the other cadets all hated him. Bc of that for a while he was just an errand bot in the Elite guard mostly delivering stuff from place to place which humbled him and mellowed him out a bit to be the Intel Agent we know now, and now he is super embarrassed by his younger self’s behavior. <3

#tfa blurr #tfa #transformers animated #blurr #transformers #maccadam #whirly speaks #whirlyspeaks #blurrbee #Anon #WhirlySpeaks #I warned u I simp for this man #also know I am super bias bc I do simp for him this is just My thoughts Im not trying to shit over anyone else's #Character analysis is simply my passion <3 #my thoughts

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ironxkid · 4 years ago

Note

👴: Which OC is your oldest, creation wise? 😍: Which OC is your favorite? Unexpected favorite? 🤑: Do you mostly fandom OCs or purely original ones? If original, do you have any plans for them in terms of producing a short film, book? 🗣: Historically, the internet has never been too kind to OCs. What's one thing you wish people realized about OCs?

Character Questions for Creators

👴: Which OC is your oldest, creation wise?

oh god dfjgfsdghj - I don’t even know x’D probably an oc for Warriors if I’m being honest, but I can’t remember for the life of me

actually, no, it was definitely a fandomless oc - uhhh, man, I honestly can’t remember dsfgjhsfdjh

😍: Which OC is your favorite? Unexpected favorite?

oh, hands down, Carter’s my favorite DSJFGHDSFJ

my unexpected favorite, however, would probably be Arthfael! He’s an og oc, and honestly there’s only like. three or four friends that know about him, but I actually really like him! Which is hilarious, because he’s an absolute jackass, and I specifically made him as a character to hate fdgjhsfdghj - but, hey! that’s what happens when you go back to develop ocs further! Plus I changed the world quite a bit... which I’ll get into in the next question!

🤑: Do you mostly fandom OCs or purely original ones? If original, do you have any plans for them in terms of producing a short film, book?

oh, absolutely mostly fandom ocs - I mean, y’all, I’ve created numerous characters for Warriors, which means I’ve created fanclans and I’ve filled out the canon Clans with nothing but ocs, so, yeah, I have a lot of fandom ocs x’D

but!! I do have multiple original ones as well! Arthfael is one of them, but I also have Greer, Circe, Draven, Digger, Ethan, and Lilith, and plenty of others in the same universe, and I do plan on writing a book with them! Actually, it’s either going to be a duology with a prequel, or a trilogy with a prequel - it depends on how I want the plot to go, because I don’t want to drag things on forever, but I’ve always envisioned it to be a trilogy. But, oh boy, it’s... definitely a work in progress!

I keep changing everything about the overall plot and I’m still figuring out the world, because it takes place on a moon, essentially - I mean, the technically term is a satellite, since the planet it orbits is actually a gas giant, but... eh, I’ll spare details right now sdfgjhdsf

anyway, I have a few spotify playlists and pinterest boards for the characters and stories, I had a sideblog for the trilogy (which I called the Bloodline Trilogy, though honestly that name may end up changing given how much has changed since I first penned it) though I took it down when I restarted my personal blog that I’ve been neglecting whoops, but I do have a few concept pieces I posted to deviantart! I... don’t particularly want to share them tbh? bc I don’t care for them that much anymore and, again, I’ve changed the world, but if any of y’all are curious I don’t mind sharing xD

anyway, uhhh - yeah! I’ve honestly considered making an rp blog for some of my og ocs, in particular for Circe, since she’s actually taken quite a bit of focus surprisingly, considering she wasn’t created to be a main character, but... just with how all over the place my information with everything is, and the fact I’d really need to break things down for everyone to understand the lore surrounding any of them and all that jazz, I... really haven’t taken the thought seriously

maybe one day if I can nail something more solid down!

🗣: Historically, the internet has never been too kind to OCs. What's one thing you wish people realized about OCs?

holy fuck, people need to realize all canon characters are ocs that have just been shoved into media that’s consumed by many - even if the story the characters are connected to is small... they’re still ocs

this has been said a lot by numerous people, but it’s honestly my biggest issue. That, and people are so quick to brush ocs off as mary/gary-sues, and I hate that - I can’t even begin to explain how badly that fucked up my confidence when I was younger, because I was working on a fanfic that I loved and had someone jump into the comments and say something along the lines of: “oh my god, this character is such a mary-su it’s awful *grabs friend and jumps off a cliff*” - and I really wish I was exaggerating. I was 14, I had enough insecurity issues I was dealing with, and to have someone say that (and, to top it off, the person was a beta editor, since it was on fanfiction net) really just... did nothing to help me

also, who cares? Honestly, if an oc is perfect in everyway and you don’t like it, just move on. Just leave the creator to do their own thing - it could be a troll, or it could be someone just having fun, and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as they’re not hurting themselves or anyone else.

#ooc #asks #((I can't even begin to explain how much I hate the term Mary-Sue/Gary-Sue oh my god #and the comment that I roughly quoted was a bit longer and it might still be up? I don't think I took the fic down but I'm not positive #and tbh I don't feel like looking for it dsjhsdfjh #and now that I think about it I'd actually probably make an rp blog for Greer instead bc she's absolutely chaotic #she's the absolute /worst/ and I love her sfdgjhsdfg #that's just her thing! she causes problems on purposes and can /really/ fuck things up if she wanted to!#it's great fdsgjhsgfd))

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honeymoonjin · 5 years ago

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day 11 & 12

With Festa in full swing last week, I feel like I didn’t have a chance to breathe let alone sit down long enough to articulate a review worthy of Day 11. I shall endeavor to do my very best to make up for that here. And, upon reading the start of Day 12, I am actually kinda glad I waited because I think that it gave me time to put both chapters into perspective.

Day 11 was a very emotional one for Jungkook and I feel like we got to see those emotions coming to a head in this chapter. On the whole, Day 11 was such a fun, lowkey entry that I wasn’t really sure if I would have anything coherent to offer beyond high pitched squealing accompanied by the occasional swoon and cooing. But after seeing the tension and subsequent squabble that transpired at the breakfast table on Day 12, I see that perhaps there was more to ruminate concerning the feelings that Jungkook had experienced in the confessional booth. It’s so interesting from a writers perspective that you chose Jungkook to be the one to reiterate the whole point of the show; he’s younger, thus perhaps conventionally he’s a bit more emotionally immature than the rest of the guys. And yet, from the beginning, none of these guys have ever been portrayed as stereotypical or conventional; you have always expertly reminded the audience that each of the contestants (including our lady!) is more much complex than what meets the eye. It’s one of the things that I love so much about this series; none of the characters are ever “too perfect” and it’s those candid moments of vulnerability or weakness that truly makes this story stand out from a lot of other stories that I read. So to choose Jungkook as the person to make those “bold” comments and to have Namjoon be the one to call him out for being insensitive makes me feel like Jungkook’s response was much more complex than what it seems at glance. Like, it’s pretty obvious that Jungkook likes and respects our lady and perhaps he realized his indiscretion just a little to late but now he’s put on the spot, he’s been called out in front of everyone, and beyond the fact that he probably feels like shit for saying what he said and inadvertently hurting our lady in the process. He’s probably also hella embarrassed. I wonder too if maybe Jungkook is also ashamed that the person who called him out was Namjoon, someone who I want to believe, he respects and perhaps maybe admires a little. And despite the fact that I chuckled a little bit when our lady noticed that Jungkook was “staring at his pancakes like he’s trying to make them burst into flames”, I realized that he might also be both angry and disappointed in himself for his behavior. *sigh* Boy, you were so right all those weeks ago when you said “emotions are messy”. Anyway, that’s my roundabout way of saying, I liked the breakfast scene. Haha! Drama is inevitable; I love that you don’t shy away from presenting conflict for them to overcome. It offers opportunities for character growth and character exploration and I really appreciate that!

Speaking of character growth, Namjoon got a chance to really flex those skills he acquired from “Hoseok’s School of Sexual Prowess”. That scene left me melting! Melting, I say! I’m not sure if you noticed but I make it a point to not reveal who my actual bias is in these reviews because I feel like I want to give all of the guys a chance to win me over for fan favorite. What I will say though is that you kind of hit on a lot of my personal preferences with Namjoon’s scene. Beyond the fact that the scene was really, really hawt, it fulfilled me on an emotionally intimate level, so it made the scene extra special. Bravo!

And I suppose Jimin also deserves a standing ovation for that amazing show he put on. Holy smokes that was so hot. From the light banter and quips at the beginning of that scene to Jimin actually owning that entire lounge! And as amazing as the show (plus subsequent private scene with our lady afterwards) was, my favorite bit might be the exchange between Jimin and Hoseok, another scene that filled with tension and new revelations! It might actually be the most fascinating scene because it gave a glimpse at something rather unexpected; something has transpired between Hoseok and Jimin. I might be reading too much into the exchange but it feels as though something has happened away from the cameras between them. Because it feels like there has been a shift from blatant hostility between these two to something more akin to a genuine understanding that this is now a battle for power and control. I could be reaching but I feel like, at the very least, there have been words exchanged between them! It made the scene all the more intriguing! I loved every moment of it. Oh! Speaking of which, what is up with Jin?! When Yoongi asked Jin to speak to Kookie about what had happened that morning, it seemed he was a bit apprehensive to take up the task. I know that there might not be anything more there than just the fact that Jin might not want to be the one to have to broach the subject with Kookie but I feel like there’s more there than what meets the eye as well… my theory is in it’s fetus stage though, so I feel like I’ll hold back on my thoughts concerning Jin for now. And Yoongi, for that matter! I feel like there is something more there as well. AH! Too many theories to juggle! I will let you know what my thoughts are about it once I have gathered more adequate information.

I still feel guilty for not being able to give you a full length review of Day 11. It really was such a great, light day. Jungkook’s scene left me all hot and bothered to the point where I spent the entirety of the week, searching up Jungkook smut fics to fulfill my Jungkook fix that that chapter evoked in me! Not to mention that the boys getting up to antics for a whiteboard that in the end they didn’t really need just made me all the more baffled by their behavior. It was fun, hilarious and just what I would expect from the guys.

To make up for not having anything for last week, I would like to take the opportunity to tell you about me loving this amazing story so much I nearly force-fed my best friend to read it with me so that I would have someone to fangirl with. Let me tell you a little bit about her. See, she doesn’t consume fanfics with as much verocity as I do. She is a very casual fanfic reader and if she does (which is rare in it of itself) she only ever reads MxM. Period. So when I told her the premises of “The Gentlemen” she was curious enough to read the contestant profiles. But I must say, from Day 1, you had her HOOKED! She would text me screenshots and emoji filled fangirlings in the wee hours of the morning (the only time she had to read at all) every single thing she loved about each chapter and it brings me so much joy that she was really dissecting and appreciating all the little things that I too loved about your story! We would have long, deep discussions about her prompt theories, her favorite members, tiny details that you’ve so expertly woven into the story (like Jimin’s tattoo for example, which is something she is obsessed with, btw) all of her favorite traits that our lady of the house has. It’s been so blissfully fun having this to share with her especially since I have her to thank for getting me into BTS in the first place. So, please know that you have a secret fan of “The Gentlemen” who would like you to know that she has been enjoying herself thoroughly and that she looks forward to your updates just as much as I do now!

Anyhoo, I think I’ve prattled on long enough. Thank you so much for your continued hard work and dedication to this series! This was such an amazing chapter I cannot wait to see how everything unfolds; it feel as though these last 2 chapters have planted some major seeds (no pun intended!!); I look forward to see what it sows in the coming days. 💜 Jan

Oh my gosh! In all of my ramblings, I forgot to say "shout out to Lady Mango! You go get that stake, girly!" Also, YAY Grandma Park!! Heck, that entire exchange in the bathtub made me uwu so hard my heart is just a pile of mush rn! Also, also!! Jin x Tae is lowkey underrated, so thank you for that! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*✲ﾟ*｡⋆ I lub u so much!! kthnxbye

---

i’m not ashamed (okay, maybe a little) to admit that i kinda teared up and did a happy lil dance when i saw the email that you’d sent in a submission fksdjfkds i figured you’d probably been busy with life or with the mountainloads of content bighit is giving us these days so i was content to wait patiently, and it just made it that much more exciting when i saw this come in !

thank you, as always, for being so sweet and articulate and thoughtful in your reviews of the chapters. often you point out things that make so much sense that perhaps i hadn’t even noticed when writing. other times you hit an idea that i’d slipped in right on the nose.

jungkook definitely is having a pretty tumultuous time on the show. for him, i imagine he feels like he’s the only one having a difficult time ironing out his feelings, or that if anyone else is struggling too, that they’re acting like nothing’s up. i also feel like jungkook’s competitive streak comes through in unexpected ways. of course he feels proud of his sexual prowess and kinda wants to showboat a little bit, but i think there’s an aspect too where he needs to be the one that’s always bolder than the others to assert his position. writing the namkook scene i kind of drew on that feeling where you’re fighting with someone you care about or think highly of, and even as you realise you’re wrong, you don’t want them to think badly of you and so you desperately scramble for a way to come out on top or prove you’re in the right. there’s also def a degree of him trying to convince himself the show is just about sex and that the rest doesn’t matter. he certainly doesn’t feel that way inside, but we see him vouching from that position so fiercely in d12.

i’m glad you liked the namjoon scene !! one day i’ll figure out your bias fkdsjfksdjk you do such a good job at analysing and discussing everyone equally that it’s difficult >.<

it’s so fascinating to hear your jihope theory that they’ve spoken before. i must keep my silence on the details BUT there will be a very important scene between them coming up in the next few days of the show that i think will really change things between them and also how the readers see them. i’m super excited to write it !

beyond that, i’m happy you noticed something about jin in this chapter.... yn and jin still haven’t resolved their issues yet, plus here we are having jin not respond that well to being asked to counsel one of the members, something he always stated he was happy to do,,,,, hmmmm 0.0

i love hearing your theories so much !!! i eagerly await getting new content out so i can see how they shift and change from release to release

and also you really don’t need to feel bad ! there’s never any obligation to write out a long review for every chapter, but you do so anyway and that means a lot to me xx if you’re busy one week you don’t have to force yourself to make time for it. we have over 50 chapters, so we’re in for the long haul ! there’s really no rush

ahhhh that’s so cool to hear about your friend! it always warms my heart hearing stories of people that got their friends to begin reading and stuff, honestly even the thought that people think about tgm outside of reading it blows me away, it feels so special that it’s something y’all wanna share and discuss w your loved ones xx

YES LADY MANGOOO i love adding little slips of her in the chapters, i know she doesn’t factor into the main story that much but everyone can rest assured that all of the members of the house (okay, and probably our three on-site producers too) spend a lot of time with her, walking her and cuddling her and playing with her. tae is probably currently trying to teach her some commands, but of course the only one she’s got the hang of is lie down jskfjsd

(finally YES taejin is such an underrated duo i love them)

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ograndebatata · 5 years ago

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Thoughts on ‘The Lightning Warrior’

Well... I’m well aware that I don’t usually do these episode reviews of sorts... but I’ve been looking forward to this episode for an awfully long time, and ultimately enjoyed it enough that I felt I should share my thoughts here.

Disclaimer: Any thoughts presented below are purely my own opinion. Some of those opinions will be drawn from scenes that take place in series, or my own personal interpretations on what may or may not have gone on behind the scenes, but they are still only my opinions.

Also, one part of this review will delve into VERY DARK elements and implications, so if you’d rather not see them, please, DO NOT click the read more.

I apologize about it, but... well... it’s just related to a conclusion I came to regarding the episode, and I didn’t want to lie about my thoughts on this matter.

I’m sorry.

With that said, here they come.

First of all, in general terms, I just simply loved the episode. Seriously, it was great. I simply loved seeing Victor and Carla again, and I found that the whole plot point of them needing to help Elena was a logical path to take, and was executed really well. There were funny moments, Victor and Carla recognized their own wrongs, we got more fun characters to add to the EverRealm’s universe, and we got to see believable positive developments in their dynamics with Elena.

Granted, some might say that Elena went a bit too far with her aggressiveness towards them, but as much as I am a fan of Victor and Carla, I don’t fault her for being so suspicious, given everything they did to her in the past. And Elena herself admitted that she was wrong, so that’s a plus.

Also, their song? Absolutely precious.

And the squad pose in the ending scene? Looks epic.

Now... breaking things down a bit more into some specific subcategories...

THE GREAT

- The partial return to way back when

Well... as I said earlier on, I simply loved seeing Victor and Carla return. I will admit, they didn’t exactly become my favorite characters from their first appearance, but I slowly grew to care more for them as time went on. Then Snow Place Like Home came out with that wonderful display of their bond and my feels for them suddenly got a huge boost, which only grew in the following episodes with them both. They all came to a head in The Magic Within, where Victor was petrified and Carla was left completely alone for the first time in her life and, I won’t lie, I genuinely got afraid they would be leaving the series that way, Victor petrified and forgotten, and Carla left to rot in the dungeon.

I understand that they both were villains for a long time, but they just never seemed cruel enough to deserve such a fate, and even if they had been... well... some things are too bad to happen to anyone.

Fortunately, this wasn’t the case here. We got to see them return. We got to see them be together again. We got to see more of their bond, which is just beyond pure and precious, We got to see them singing a wonderful song together about better times. We got to see them actually showcasing the change in their ways. And we got to see them receive a second chance and making good use of it.

The stand-out elements would have to be Victor’s reminsicing about the past and the way he and Carla were willing to help with Ash... but really, every last bit of it was wonderful.

- Close parallels and steps to a new chance

While I went on about Victor and Carla’s development, I liked how we got to see more of this from Elena’s end. As harsh as she may have been at points (not unjustifiably so) and how it took her time to accept that Victor and Carla were being sincere in their attempt at changing, she still shows her empathy when joining into Victor and Carla’s song, and conveys how she can relate to them by longing for a time when things were simpler.

Yes, she still took time to fully give it, but given what they did to her, it’s understandable she’d be resistant to it. I do think there’s one point where she went too far, which I’ll further discuss down below, but at least she showed once more she’s willing to realize the error of her own ways. Which is one of the great things about her.

- A hero and former villains duet

I’m not kidding here. Way Back When seriously already made its way into my top favorites. Like, between the sweet music and lyrics, the sheer longing for the simpler times that Victor and Carla - and later Elena - all share, getting to see younger!Victor with child!Carla in those flashbacks... seriously, I just found it great.

- A shockingly hilarious title character.

Ixlan was priceless. That’s all I can say.

That over-the-top deadpan and stoic personality, that brutal honesty, the way she thinks with her fists... well, it just makes for a combination that I found hilarious.

That said, beyond the humor, I liked how she has actual depth to her, most notably when she can see past first impressions and comes to admit Elena is a good leader, and her dedication to protecting the place where her home used to be.

- Monstro’s Maruvian counterpart

The Moyaku was yet another great. I liked her design - while seemingly being a shout-out to Monstro, she was distinctive enough in her own right, and had a really interesting design. I liked the way it and the general adventure with her reminded me of Pinocchio and the escape he and Geppetto made from Monstro (down to the sneezing) while still being its own thing, and it certainly was a relief to see that the Moyaku seems to have much less of a temper and can admit defeat.

I also liked the way escaping her insides involved both a throwback to the cooking scene and Elena putting her trust in Victor and Carla.

- Naomi’s character development

It was a subtle thing, but I liked how Naomi, like Elena, actually proved she can change her mindset and actually learn to give people a chance.

Also, she was hilarious in that scene involving the dish Victor and Carla cooked.

That’s all.

THE TROUBLESOME

- The pseudo-corpse that stayed there

Well... to give another disclaimer here, I’m NOT one of those people who believes Elena is a heartless monster, or that she’s somehow on the path to becoming evil.

That said, I did find it problematic how she moved Victor to the dungeon, and to top it off, how she seemed to have no intention of ever depetrifying him until Quita Moz said it would take malvagos to break the spell entrapping Ixlan.

I’m not trying to deny that Victor was a villain, and I’m not trying to deny that he endangered Elena. It’s just... there are limits, and leaving Victor petrified and in the dungeon crosses two.

For one, the fact that Carla basically had to deal with seeing what might as well be her father’s corpse every day for who knew how long. Granted, it’s not actually a corpse, but still, when you think about it, it’s beyond disturbing. The only way I could accept her having done that is if Carla somehow asked for him to be there. Because otherwise, even if Elena wanted to move him out of the garden to keep the statue safer, she looks like she has a big enough palace to put him somewhere else. I mean, we even see she even had spare dungeon cells. Honestly, this is just... well, problematic. Especially because Elena said she’d deal with Carla later way back in The Magic Within... and yet, if this episode is anything to go by, she wouldn’t have done anything about this whole situation if she hadn’t needed Victor and Carla.

It just... It just doesn’t look good, I feel.

For another... well... at the risk of sounding dark... there’s the fact that, in this universe, petrification can be seen as potentially worse than death.

If this sounds like it doesn’t make sense, let me explain why I have this opinon. We know that an afterlife exists in this universe. We know that people move on there when they die. And we know that people who get petrified have no awareness of anything until they get depetrified, which was visible with Fiero in Rise of the Sorceress and Victor in this very episode. So, if Victor had stayed petrified, he would have been separated from Carla for all eternity. At least Elena will get to reunite with her parents when she dies, if not before then. If Victor hadn’t been depetrified, Carla would never have seen him again.

Again, I’m not saying Elena is a monster who was deliberately torturing Carla with that. She possibly - even likely - may not have thought this through. But still.. I just can’t help but see it as problematic.

- Isolation is not a joke

Well... this one is something may just resonate too personally a bit too much, but I will confess I didn’t like the way Elena just automatically sent Victor and Carla off to Soledad Island, and how Carla just joked about it, on two fronts.

First, after the overwhelming isolation she appears to have endured, I’m not sure it’s in-character for her to make that kind of joke.

Second, after what happened in recent months, and to a degree is still going on today, I got to experience first-hand what even much less severe social isolation can do.

I will cut this one quite a lot of slack, because the episode was made before the Coronavirus Pandemic became a thing, and this is still a show for children, but still... it feels genuinely off to see isolation played for laughs so much when I know from personal experience how even less severe one can be damaging. And it similarly feels the same way when looking back at certain characters’ previous fates, like the Chiki-Chiki in The Last Laugh.

Hopefully later shows will learn from this. I do understand why they would want to keep a measure of ‘downplayed realistic elements’ for the sake of storytelling, but still, I hope they learn this lesson from this era.

THE DIVISIVE

- Changes in magic brand

Well... again, I will partially admit I may be biased here, especially given the path I took in my fanfic AU... but honestly, looking at actual canon, I think that Victor and Carla ceasing to be malvagos was not a good idea.

First of all, the episode just showed how useful it was to have malvagos on the good side. Without that, Ixlan would presumably have stayed imprisoned for eternity. It doesn’t make sense to throw that way, especially because now there will be no one to undo Ash’s evil spells if she uses something comparable to what trapped Ixlan.

Second... we never actually get to see a proper reason that would justify them wanting to learn good magic. Despite there being a few differences, malvago and wizard magic seem to largely overlap. And there was no in-universe reference or explanation that being a malvago by itself is somehow psychologically damaging. Victor and Carla had their personalities stay the same even though they were malvagos for around a year, so there’s no sign of it ‘bringing about issues’.

Third... well... this is just my general opinion, but I confess I’m one of those who just thinks it would be more ‘narratively interesting’ and would ‘further set them apart’ if Victor and Carla had stayed malvagos (whether they wanted to change back or not) and ended up learning to use dark magic for better purposes - which well, this very episode proved it can be done, even if only in rare circunstances. And again, for the most part, dark and light magic seems to overalp.

But this is just me.

THE CONCLUSION

A great episode. It had a few ‘iffier’ spots, but overall, it was still a great episode. If all the episodes that will still come are as good as this one, the series will have a great ending indeed.

#elena of avalor #spoilers #the lightning warrior #tw: darkness #tw: disturbing content

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best-enemies · 4 years ago

Note

For the fandom ask meme thing can I request the whole damn alphabet or is that not very cash money of me? I’m nosy lmao I wanna know all of them!

AHDKAJSDKJAHSKDA JACK YOU’RE THE BEST

A - Your current OTP(s)/OT3(s)/OTX(s)

I’ve had my current OTP for like almost 8 years and it’s, obviously, Thoschei (Doctor/Master). My other current obsession is the Gallifrey OT4 hehehe

B - A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind

It’s funny because I didn’t ship Hannigram at first... I’d thought the idea of a cannibal having a relationship was terrifying because what if they had sex and Hannibal got hungry in the middle of the act? Lmaoooo

But yeah they’re my endgame now. I watched the show when it first aired and I was about 14/15 years old so now you see why I thought that. Although I’m still afraid I’m gonna be reading a fic and Hannibal will suddendly bite Will’s dick off or smth AKJHSAKJSAHSASKAJ

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will (be nice)

Uhhh Doctor/Clara. Mainly because I don’t like to ship the Doctor with companions (there may be one or two exceptions but I don’t ship them enough to actually say I ship them lol) and I don’t know I just never vibed with it

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t (again: be nice)

Doctor/River. I mean, I did like it for a while years ago but now it’s just... eh. I think she has a waaay better chemistry with the 12th Doctor, but still don’t ship it. I might give it a try once I listen to the River audios but so far meh. I’m not much of a multishipper anyway.

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what

God. I’ve written a couple of Academy Era (focused on the Deca) crack fanfics and I still have to translate them to English. They’re pure garbage but I love them. I have a lot of fun writing crack fics because they’re easier and I can ignore whatever piece of canon I want just for the laughs

F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom

Guess it’s Doctor Who, been here (in and out of the fandom) for over 8/9 years

G - Do you remember your first OTP, if so who was in it

Uhhhh I think it was Han Solo and Leia, since I was a kid really. I wanted to marry both of them lol

H - What is your favorite source text for fandom stuff (e.g., tv shows, movies, books, anime, Western animation, etc.)

I had to google what a source text is and still don’t know

I - Has tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why

I don’t think so, but Twitter definitively has. I remember a couple years ago I was curious to see what voltron was about and watched a few episodes, it was ok, fun and cute but the fandom was so annoying I stopped watching it for good and don’t care about it enough to pick it up again

J - Name a fandom you didn’t care/think about until you saw it all over tumblr

I had definitively forgotten about supernatural until I saw it all over my dashboard in the year of our lord 2020 lmao like in my wholock days I tried to watch the show because everyone on my dash (is it still called dashboard?) was talking about it and I watched about 8 episodes before dropping it. But seeing it again on the dash was actually a happy surprise because the memes are too funny hahaha

K -Say something nice about someone in any of your fandoms

I’m extremely shy irl and on the internet as well but I wanna say that @janeturenne is one of the best authors ever and her fanfics are a blessing in my life; also @thebraxiatelcollection who brings awesome content to my dash and is also one of the best authors. And of course, you, Jack, also one of the best authors god I’m so BLESSED

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves (chars you’re neutral on are fair game, as are chars you dislike)

Uhhh I guess I’m neutral about the current companions. They’re not my favorites but I don’t really dislike them - they had a lot of potential and chibs came up with some good storylines but did not develop them well in my opinion. I think Graham is a fun grandpa whom I’m going to miss when he leaves; Ryan is cool and could’ve done a lot more if the writers had kept a few things, it’d be awesome if he vlogged all of their adventures. He’s like the one I was curious to see more but sadly didn’t feel a connection; and Yaz, I hope she’ll keep growing and that her friendship with the Doctor will finally be developed to a level we can connect to her.

It sounds weird because with the fam it’s always ‘what I wish could have been’ because I never felt really connected to them :(

M - Say something genuinely nice about a ship that you don’t ship (or its shippers, or anything related to you)

Ok... I don’t really ship Rey/Finn but I think it’s one of the sweetest ships ever, and if they ended up together I’d be happy. They love each other and are there for each other always so, yeah :D

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

I don’t know if I got the question right but it’s three things I wish I saw more in my main fandom? Well, if it’s that, then, 3 things about the Doctor Who fandom: 1) people having more civilized or light-hearted discussions about things. Like, I genuinely disliked an 8th doctor audio I listened once that my friends loved, and they made fun of me and we joked about it. Also once we were in a live twitch video playing among us and discussing doctor who, and then we got into a ship “discourse” as a joke and nobody really cared and just laughed because everyone knew it’s fictional shit so why get mad over it? 2) Doctor Who has a titanic amount of content, it’s all canon but at the same time it’s not, so who cares? If you want to listen to Big Finish audios and if you can afford it, then lisiten; if you can’t, it’s okay, no one has the right to tell you you’re less of a fan. Just tell them to fuck off; 3) The best way to keep fandom alive is by creating content. Here in my local fandom we have several podcasts dedicated to all areas of the whoniverse (the show, the expanded universe, the audios, etc), those old fandom websites who do serious work to bring news to the fans, people who make subtitles for the classic series (we don’t have it available here so they do their best to make it accessible to other fans), accounts dedicated to promoting dr who fans who create content, and we even have people making their own audiodramas with dw characters and writing book-lenght fanfiction to help explain the show to people who’ve never watched it, and a great variety of things. I’ve seen a few of these things in the international fandom, mostly by older fans, so I wish younger fans about my age who have the means to make this kind of stuff would make it too. Maybe there’d be less twitter drama out there lol

O - Choose a song at random, which ship or character does it remind you of

“the killing moon” by echo & the bunnymen reminds me of thoschei. yep it was totally random

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

The fact that we don’t have a pride and prejudice AU for brax/romana yet is driving me insane

Q - A ship you’ve abandoned and why

I’ve mentioned it before but doctor/river, don’t really remember why idk I just don’t vibe with it anymore. But also because thoschei has so many different pairings in 1 ship that I don’t really feel the need to ship them with anyone else lol

R - A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships

GOD I NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT BECAUSE IT’S SO SPECIFIC ok fellow academy era stans gather around if you have read Divided Loyalties there’s a scene where it SHOWS that Magnus had a crush on Ushas. And NO ONE HAS EVER TALKED ABOUT THEM and the power couple they would’ve made. I write them into all my fanfics in hopes of making other people ship them but I’ve had no success so far

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

The Master is a big fan of musicals and in the 77 years he spent on earth he watched every single one ever. I’m gonna be bold and say that when he was young, still Koschei, he was an artist, and thought about dropping everything to become an actor on Gallifrey. Time Lords do appreciate art, and have their own plays, but it’s just the same old and boring ones the young people don’t care about. The Master then created a shocking performance that was way ahead of its time and the older Time Lords were so appalled they banned him from writing and presenting plays and that’s his villain origin story

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending, about anything at all (gender identity, sexual or romantic orientation, extended family, sexual preferences like top/bottom/switch, relationship with poetry, seriously anything)

1) The Doctor and the Master married on Gallifrey and the entire show is just them having the most litigious divorce in the universe (still isn’t final because the Master has killed all the judges); 2) Ushas/The Rani is ace; 3) The Deca was a 10 people polyamorous relationship; 4) Romana and Livia were girlfriends at the Academy and they hate each other now because the break up was baad; 5) Romana writes fanfiction; 6) Romana/Leela had a thing in Davidia I KNOW it; 7) Leela pegs Narvin; 8) Brax has a life-size painting of Romana at his collection or a statue or smth; 9) Brax’s dream in Reborn is actually REAL and he’s married to Romana, Leela and Narvin all at the same time

U - 5 favorite characters from 5 different fandoms

I don’t even think I’m in 5 fandoms but

Doctor Who: The Master, The Doctor, Romana, Leela, Sarah Jane, Bill (this was the hardest thing ever)

The X-Files: Mulder, Scully, Monica, and can I add The Lone Gunmen too?

Star Wars: Leia, Obi-Wan, Finn, Poe Dameron and honorable mention to Din Djarin and Grogu

Hannibal: Hannibal, Will, Bev, Alana, Chiyoh

V - 3 OTPs from 3 different fandoms

That’s hard

Doctor Who: thoschei ofc, gallifrey ot4.......... uuhh as you can see i don’t ship many pairings in the show

The X-Files: Mulder and Scully. And whatever Scully and Monica had going on because they definitively flirted

Star Wars: Poe/Finn, Han/Leia, whatever Han/Lando had going on too

W - 5 favorite ships and 5 kinks you like best for said ships

WHATVASHAJSKAJSA ok this is a little embarassing but I don’t have a lot of kinks for many ships... I guess I have some for thoschei like, choking, whipping, blindfolds/gagging, bondage, begging, biting, sem-public, phone sex, dirty talk, body worship, praise kink, etc. Alright alright I know it’s a lot but in my defense they've shown half of these on the show

X - top 5-10 characters who are yoUR PRECIOUS BABIES AND YOU WILL DIE DEFENDING THEM

The Master, Romana, Leela, Brax, Narvin, Bill Potts, Martha Jones, Sarah Jane, Donna Noble, Lucie Miller. No particular order for most of them but the Master is my precious baby and I will die for this mf

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)

Not many, usually the people I follow are in the same fandoms as I am but I’ve seen some mutuals reblog some Hadestown stuff which is a play that I’ve never seen but definitively would because the protagonists look hot

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go (prompts optional but encouraged)

I DON’T KNOW WHAT DOES IT MEAN

it took me three hours to do this but it was fun!! thank you bb <3

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kuriboo · 5 years ago

Text

so here we are, y’all. i’ve finally reached the end of the zexal anime, and, uh, it sure was a ride. a ride from start to finish. i’m gonna write out some final thoughts, if i end up forgetting something i might make another post of this, but, don’t count on it. but, before anything, i do intend to read the zexal manga at some point as well, and when i do, you might see me post some funny or interesting screenshots in this tag too? probably not a lot, i don’t know, i’ve never read the zexal manga either. just be aware that the zexal liveblog might not actually be over.

i know people like to talk in terms of zexal i and zexal ii, but hulu doesn’t split up zexal like that, it’s actually in three seasons? i think i generally know what people are referring to with zexal i and zexal ii(?), but i’m genuinely not sure and the terms feel super weird to me anyway, but just to be safe, i’ll refer to things as the first half and the second half. the first half ends with the duel against dr faker and yuma vs kite, part 2 picks up with...whatever the hell happened after the yuma vs kite duel, which certainly wasn’t a continuation of kite’s character arc, but we won’t worry about that.

with that, uh, let’s go high-five the sky

before starting zexal: i’d pretty much watched all the other yugioh series, and was keeping up with vrains as much as i could as it aired. i saw one episode once, before i started watching the whole thing, that aired on some channel we normally don’t get but got a like free preview weekend of it or something. the episode i saw was the episode where yuma meets the guy who makes the statues, i think. whatever it was, the impression i got from what i saw was: this yugioh protagonist is really bad at card games, whines a lot, and his voice kinda grates on me, and also this protagonist is younger than i was at the time, which tended to lead to more annoying behavior. this kid didn’t want to shut up, man. couldn’t sit through the whole thing

so, this was how i rated zexal against the other yugioh series, keeping in mind that this is a rating of series, and not yugioh protagonists, and noting that the members of the A tier are not in any sort of order and all members have equal ratings:

(sevens is unrated because it’s just barely started.)

(there’s not really much of anything that could top gx, tbh, because gx got me through the hardest time, the hardest year, of my life, and i don’t know where i’d be without it. gx helped save 17 year old me from myself)

now, i’ve finished zexal. i’ve watched every single episode of zexal. it’s important to note that i watched the dub of duel monsters, the dubs of gx and 5ds along with the sub of their non-dubbed final seasons, the dub of zexal, the sub of arc v alongside a stretch of dubbed episodes towards the end, and the sub of vrains along with the dub of the first 20 episodes. i’m aware zexal’s sub was better than the dub, but i generally prefer dubs when possible and also i’m largely comparing it against every other yugioh dub. it’s not an unfair comparison.

so, here is how i now rate zexal against the other yugioh series, keeping in mind the members of the A tier aren’t in any sort of order:

you may have noticed this is the same as the previous rating. that’s correct. zexal was my least favorite yugioh series before i began watching it, and now that i’ve finished, it’s still my least favorite yugioh series. i know for a lot of people, zexal was their favorite yugioh series, but i simply can’t vibe with that. i’m sorry. i’m also aware the dub of zexal is a lot worse than the original. that doesn’t change the fact that i’m mostly rating dubs against each other here (haven’t seen enough of the arc v dub to account for that, but every other series i’m strongly thinking about the dubs). also, i’ll still give zexal credit for that. i’ll excuse some of its bad points as bad dub writing. some.

this chart, though, doesn’t paint a complete picture of how my opinion of zexal has changed. because it has. i like zexal a lot more now than i did before i started really watching it.

we’ll address good points first, so if anyone wants to bail for the bad points to avoid any sort of hurt feelings or anything like that, they can while still reading good stuff. again, i know a lot of yugioh fans’ favorite yugioh series is zexal, and my opinions are directly opposed to that, and again, i’m sorry.

there was some pretty cool new cards in this one, particularly in the numbers side of things. shark drake was cool. i liked all of the arclights’ numbers; honestly, how could i not love dyson sphere or number 69? i’ve forgotten a lot of it by now but there was some cool stuff especially in the first part.

the two best characters in this series, in terms of both writing and personality, were easily astral and shark. astral’s probably my number one, shark’s probably my number two.

astral was definitely great. his observations he kept making about humanity based on yuma was definitely one of the funnier things in the series, and the last duel of the series ending with astral’s last observation was poetic. he talked smack about yuma a lot, and a lot of the time it was pretty well deserved, and that was very cathartic and very good humor. his whole arc where he learns to trust yuma in part 1 and they truly become partners, then yuma meets vector who convinces yuma to keep pretty big secrets from astral, then astral realizes yuma’s been keeping these big secrets from him which is something astral never thought would happen by that point, and astral almost loses himself in that darkness of feeling betrayed and angry and sad, that was all really really good. yuma and astral not not immediately going back to loyal trusting partners and needing time before astral could truly trust yuma again also felt natural and real and i enjoyed it a lot. i like astral’s hairstyle, i like his dub censored ass, i like his whole ghost-like vibe. i don’t appreciate that astral is a nudist, even among the other residents of astral world who all wear actual clothes. i kind of wish astral would wear clothes but i would still want his ass to be censored because it’s hilarious. there is a lot i like about astral. i also just think he’s neat. my easy favorite. cannot go wrong with snarky glowy alien boy.

shark surprised me. i didn’t like him for a fair amount of part 1. he hurt yuma’s feelings a lot and i hated that. but when he started accepting yuma’s repeated attempts at friendship and turned around, i liked him a lot. he’s got purple hair, he plays a guitar (i think electric guitar? might’ve been electric bass), and his development was super interesting. i figured he had some kind of shitty home life that yuma would help him cope with using the power of friendship, but it was quite a bit more than that. he got disqualified from a tournament he desperately wanted to win because of a trick his opponent pulled, eventually evened out and became a pretty cool chill dude, and then it turned out he was like the head emperor of an alien planet that astral had set out to destroy?? he was the leader of a group of people and then blamed himself for their destruction?? he felt torn between his guilt/duty to his people and the new friendships he’d made with yuma and astral?? and he ended up deciding to go back to his alien emperor ways even though it pitted him against his friends which was hard but he had to make it up for the people he’d lost before?? but then he learned don thousand had been manipulating for a long long time and then faced against don thousand at yuma’s side een though he chose to turn his back on that friendship?? he didn’t let some fanfic choose his life for him??? he had shark drake??? there’s a lot of cool shit about shark and he’s got a lot of interesting shit going for him. i love a character that gets me to analyze what’s going on in their mind as they do certain things or make certain choices. i also love me a character who ends up getting/remembering magical powers. sorry shark astral’s in first but i still think shark’s neat too.

byron arclight!!! byron arclight! he’s not on the same level as astral and shark, but mAN i love byron arclight. he was constantly roasting everyone when he appeared and had some of the funniest dialogue in the entire series. anyone he looked at he’d be like “look aliens made me physically look like a child, my sons are taller and look older than me now, i couldn’t possibly give a shit about whatever your deal is.” he got super strong magic powers and used them to kidnap a small child. he became evil and told his sons to be evil with him because he was mad at dr faker, but they all kinda sucked at being evil and decided to be good guys instead by part 2. it’s honestly a shame the arclights didn’t appear in the series, especially part 2 (and especially byron, i’m p sure he appeared the least of the arclights) because i like them all actually. that episode where trey erased yuma’s like most important memories... dyson sphere... quattro telling off shark for dueling poorly while shark was sufferering the effects of POISON... what absolute legends. also byron had number 69.

yuma’s pretty cool, ended up being a more compelling character than i thought he would be. he’s a sweet kid, he’s annoyed initially by astral’s presence but he still helps astral with his quest to gather all the numbers anyway and he likes astral the more they hang out. that episode where yuma loses his memories because of trey really showed yuma’s pre-series development pretty well. yuma talks a lot and shouts the same few catchphrases a lot and it can get annoying, but there’s a lot more to yuma then that. at his core, he’s actually a pretty scared and lonely kid who doesn’t believe in himself, he looks at his current situation and goes “there’s no way i can win this duel there’s no point i might as well quit”. he’s not inherently upbeat and positive and self-confident like he usually appears. “feel the flow” is his source of strength, it’s what gets him going, gets him to believe in himself and inspires bravery in him. he’s actually one of the strongest people in the show for it, to be honest. his friends are so important to him, he cares about them so much and would do anything for them, even when his friends aren’t acting so friendly to him. even when his friends want conflicting things he tries his best to appease both sides. he becomes a voice of reason a lot in part 2, honestly. he kept voicing my thoughts and things i said throughout the season, which at times was really cathartic honestly. he kept challenging the status quo. why do we HAVE to do this, why can’t we find a compromise for THAT. he’s a good kid. i’m adopting him.

kite in part 1 is a cool Strong Opposition To The Number Hunt guy. he needs a glasses prescription but refuses to do anything about it and dies on the moon for it apparently, which i think is pretty funny of him. since he’s not astral he has to number hunt differently and the way he does it hurts people, but he’s only doing it because if he has all the numbers, then there might be a way to help his little brother who is suffering some big shit. his life literally revolves around his little brother who wants kite to just live his life for himself and be happy and have fun, to which kite replies “i don’t know how to do any of that”. relatable. eventually he realizes his dad is a dick. and beats him up until his dad says okay i’ll be good now. i won’t throw trash at astral world anymore i promise. kite’s hear to kick ass and take names and he runs out of names before he runs out of ass. but he gets new names by the time he runs out of ass so it’s okay. kite does some pretty fun stuff in part 1 and actually gives astral a run for his money which doesn’t happen often in part 1 so that’s pretty fun. also. his name is kite and his brother’s name is heart. dr faker is the worst at names but i’d expect that from someone who’s name is faker. it’s pretty funny, honestly

dumon is great. he’s a nice guy who is always trying to help out his friends. him first meeting shark and them pretty much despising each other and then realizing hmm maybe that other guy isn’t as obnoxious as i thought all before shark even realizes he’s nasch and nasch and dumon are like best friends? top-tier, def funny. after like that first meeting though dumon always came off as a nice guy. i like dumon. also, his dub voice actor voices dub yusaku and i was assigned yusaku by the government so i really appreciate that. he does a good job as yusaku. and honestly a good job at dumon, too. dumon is one of the best voices in the whole show. he’s great. i just think he’s neat

rio!!!! once rio wakes up, she’s great. you can tell like within an episode that she and shark are the kind of siblings that constantly snark at each other but would do literall anything for each other. shark tried to do anything he could to help her before she woke up, and rio stuck by his side no matter what in the barians vs astral conflict. the foreshadowing in that episode where she pretended she was knocked out like the rest of yuma’s friends but she really wasn’t!! within like a week of waking up she reveals shark can’t sleep in the dark and i think that he hates onions. she’s the picture of confidence, and it seems to come more naturally to her than yuma’s forced and learned confidence. she believes in herself for sure, she’s a great duelist and she knows it, she’s got that ice aesthetic that i love, she’s cute... i’m gonna go adopt shark and rio right now. she’s also fiercely protective of her friends. but she’s not afraid to tease them either! and she will do it! she’s unrepentantly herself and i love it.

vector is funny. vector had some great lines in part 2. “ray shadows” was always predictably not what he seemed at first glance but that’s not a bad thing. just because i knew “ray shadows” was bad didn’t make the reveal of him being vector any less satisfying, honestly. that whole sequence of what happened when vector revealed himself was one of my favorite parts of the second half. vector constantly leading yuma into “the ray way” (usually a poor way), then after reealing himself talking about doing things the ray way, absolutely poetic. that reveal causing a huge shift in yuma and astral’s relationship, beautiful. did you just say the b word??? he also had funny lines. most major villains in zexal (byron and vector) were pretty funny honestly. neither of them were the ultimate antagonist which is fine, but probably the best humor in the series to me came from the major villains. it made them less intimidating, maybe, but it made them a lot more enjoyable to watch.

number 96 looked like a dark version of astral, which is essentially what he was, but like, he literally looked like astral. but you know what? while astral’s ass was censored, number 96′s wasn’t censored in the slightest. to this day i don’t understand why but this is so funny to me. 4k media really said astral wasn’t valid but number 96 was.

there’s a lot of good stuff in zexal. and i enjoyed it! at the end of the day, that’s what i care about the most. doesn’t matter as much if something’s good or bad as much as if i’m enjoying it. and i enjoyed quite a bit of zexal.

i did say it was my least favorite yugioh anime currently, however. which means there must be parts of this anime i didn’t like. so let’s get into the aspects of zexal i didn’t like. feel free to bail now if you’re not interested in that. i’m not interested in hurting any feelings or tarnishing anyone’s love for zexal.

yikes

for what it’s worth, i like the first half a lot more than the second half. most of the problems i have with the first half are also present within the second half, but the second half has a lot of unique things i don’t like.

i know i said something doesn’t have to be good to be enjoyable. anyone can enjoy bad things. i enjoy plenty of bad things! look, i watch sword art online!! i’m no stranger to the concept. but a lot of things i didn’t like about zexal were just...too glaring for me to enjoy anway.

let’s start with cards.

i think xyz summoning should’ve been pronounced as x-y-z and not x-eez. i hated it from episode one and i am still holding to that.

i don’t like tori’s whole fairy cheerleader archetype. i don’t like the way they all look. these things were in arc v, too, and given to a slightly better character but i didn’t like these things in arc v and i don’t like these now. arc v gave me something to look forward to when i needed it most, i don’t say many bad things about it. but i hate these things in both series they were featured in. i think that says a lot. it’s the combo of the hair and the eyes. their hair is way too big. their eyes tend to look bad. it’s just not a great look.

the series started off with a very simple set of rules for number cards: number cards come from astral, and there are 100 of them (and only number cards can only destroy other number cards, which is less important here). the first half of zexal stuck to that prett well. the second half of zexal just laughed at the idea of rules and said i’mma break them. characters are suddenly given number cards that go over the number 100. all these characters are barians. and these cards didn’t come from astral. what the heck! you’re breaking rules left and right! and then don thousand comes out with his stupid imaginary number, and then two duels later yuma comes out with his own new number, future number zero. you’re breaking all the rules. you’re breaking all my trust in everything. you’ve stopped pretending there’s any sense of rules entirely and you’ve started making things up as you go. i don’t like that!! especially imaginary number and future number zero had basically no explanation as to where these things come from, how do these characters have these cards? it’s one thing when yuma comes out with a new gagaga card or something, that’s acceptable and makes plenty of sense, but the new number cards don’t. also, don thousand, yuma doesn’t know enough math to know what an imaginary number even is.

astral’s whole deck angers me. astral is one of the most important characters of the series, and you couldn’t bother to give him any non-xyz monsters. his whole deck is spells and traps. you gave tori, who only duels once and isn’t very good at it, her own whole archetype, but you couldn’t bother to think of a single monster to give astral. and even then, the only xyz monsters astral uses are utopia forms, (not including shark drake and galaxy-eyes, who were only brought out to serve as material for a utopia monster. this is the laziest deck in the whole series, and you gave it to a major protagonist. like, the second most important protagonist in the whole series. i get he only duels without yuma once, but dude. i hate this.

i also really don’t like that the only number yuma and astral use most of the time is utopia. i know utopia was the first one they had together and it’s popular and shit. but there are other numbers! other numbers yuma gains! that i would like to see him use! but instead the show just...keeps giving him new forms for utopia? for some reason? at least on one occasion one of yuma’s new forms has like the same exact ability as another number yuma has at the time. it’s infuriating. to me, at least. plenty of other characters only really use one number most of the time the duel, but most other characters only really have that one number and maybe another form of it or maybe two other forms. yuma doesn’t have that excuse. i’m not saying i never want him to use utopia ever. i just like variety. if you’re introducing the idea of collecting a lot of things, i wanna see those things used.

i hate don thousand’s dueling gimmicks most of all. he gets access to the numeron code and uses it to cheat in his duels, even though kite has it and zexal really gave the impression before this point that you needed to obtain the numeron code to use it, but don thousand’s just like, i fused earth and barian world and somehow i can use the numeron code now. ??????? no fucking sense. on top of that, his cards are super unbalanced. i could not stand watching this duel.

i don’t like the literally no excuse given of other characters besides yuma, the arclights maybe, and the barians maybe, the literally no excuse given for other characters suddenly being able to see astral. being able to see astral required either special powers or special circumstances but then at the end of part 1 going in to part 2 characters were just like “i can see astral now!!!” and that was the end of this and this was the stupidest laziest thing ever. dunno if this was a dub-only thing, maybe the sub explained it, but it really bothered me and still does.

i don’t think chaos was explained very well, at least in the dub, and i looked it up later on and know pretty much what it is now but when you introduce new concepts and ideas, please explain them to me or else i feel like there’s literally no rules to the universe and characters are just making things up as they go.

a lot of the time in the second half, astral is written really weirdly and, not as good. especially post-vector reveal. i’m not talking about any stubbornness on astral’s part because that’s who he is. part 2 starts going in and after a while of it already going, astral just comes in and explains things to yuma that astral definitely didn’t know before. i know astral starts out with almost no memories and regains them all throughout the series but i don’t think any of this like came right after astral regained some memory. the numeron code seems to come out of nowhere, and oh, by the way, this thing can rewrite the entire rules of the universe. it’s a race to see who gets the numeron code first! except, uh, kite ends up winning it i think but that ends up literally not mattering because don thousand and astral both finds ways to use it without even having it. so there wasn’t much of a point of a lot of the duels before the don thousand duel, huh. that’s a lot of time wasted. and apparently astral can use the numeron code after regaining all 100 numbers, but. i don’t remember when astral first introduced that fact and when he got all 100 numbers. but it only is relevant after the duel against nasch and astral only makes any attempt to use the numeron code then. i don’t even know how he got the numeron code after that duel anyway. kite had it and he died on the moon. don thousand could use it without actually having it but then he was defeated. was astral always able to use it without actually having it like don thousand? why didn’t he does this before, then? everything related to the numeron code is vague and explained poorly and every time the numeron code comes up someone makes up some new bullshit thing related to the numeron code and i hate it. i hate the stupid numeron code.

back on track with astral. there’s other stuff besides the numeron code he seemed to know about without any real explanation. i do not remember a lot of them. besides the numeron code. i think i repressed the rest of out of annoyance. i think the worst astral was written was right before his duel with yuma. i get that astral intended to use the duel to help yuma and not hurt him. but he could’ve accomplished this without being an entire jackass. yuma’s mourning the loss of friends that he’s also blaming himself for. and then astral decides to resolve that by telling yuma that astral’s gonna go kill a bunch more people and yuma can’t stop him? that’s uh, not helping anything astral. you had other options to get yuma to duel (while yuma was in a state of not wanting to duel ever again) rather than telling yuma more people are about to die. the point of the whole duel was to remind yuma how to have fun in duels. but uh. when you put a bunch of lives at risk like that after a bunch of people just died, that’s not a great way to introduce fun. yuma promised astral to duel against him before astral left earlier on in the series! you had other options! astral acts like he doesn’t have other options but he literally does! there’s stupid stuff like this astral does earlier in the second half but i have forgotten the details. i get astral’s an alien who’s pretty socially awkward and doesn’t get earth people super well, but b the end of the series he certainly should understand them a little better, or at least, he should understand yuma pretty well, after hanging out with yuma literally all the time. it’s stupid! astral’s better than all this! there’s no way this is the fault of dub writing! unless 4k media made entirely new animation for multiple episodes. like. of the entire episode.

there were multiple times in the second half i didn’t understand character motivations in certain events at all and had to really come up with my own weird headcanons to make sense of it. this is probably largely a result of dub writing.

i wish the arclights were more relevant in the second half. most of all they did was watch things happen. they’re cool and powerful give them something to do.

kite felt extremely pointless in the second half of zexal. he was given a clear character direction to go after the first half and basically abandoned it the second the second half started. he had this pointless rivalry with mizar that only ever felt relevant when they dueled each other on the moon to get the numeron code. kite realizes he needs glasses. he wins the duel. and then he fucking dies somehow. and everyone else gets access to the numeron code. it’s all really stupid and makes no sense. i wouldn’t care about him not being as narratively important as yuma, shark and astral. kite’s not from astral world, kite’s not from barian world, and he doesn’t have any partnership with anyone from either world. at most, he thinks astral’s neat now. but they keep dragging along this stupid rivalry between mizar and kite that literally amounted to “my galaxy-eyes dragon is better than your galaxy-eyes dragon”, these two idiots dueled about it multiple times, and it was just pointless. it ate up too much time. i could feel myself aging. the second half of zexal had enough filler episodes that made me want to tear my hair out without this stuff.

i hate mizar so much. he’s probably my second least favorite character in the series. all mizar EVER does is duel kite over who has a cooler galaxy-eyes dragon, which isn’t even a question because kite’s is cooler and he had it long before mizar ever showed up which at most makes mizar a copier idiot. the most relevant thing mizar does is duel kite on the moon for the numeron code, but i’ve been over that. you could take mizar out without changing much. he’s by far the least interesting barian emperor. mizar is more annoying than kite ever was, and is more annoying than the other barian emperors ever were. and yet mizar lives longer than pretty much every barian emperor except nasch. he got the honor of being written out of existence by don thousand himself. radical. cool. get him out of my sight. i can’t stand him.

there’s a point where there’s a number shown on baby vector. i really wanted to know what was up with that and how it was relevant. this was never explained at all. i’m gonna assume this was don thousand altering vector’s memories or something and move on and never address it again because this show just did and said so many things without explaining any of it whatsoever. this stuff needs established rules and explanations. otherwise it just feels like everythings made up on the fly, it’s all completely random shit with not much planning behind it, that the writers don’t care...it feels insulting. i had this same issue with the infinity stones in the marvel cinematic universe. this is not something i just don’t like because it happened in zexal. i like knowing things.

so if mizar’s my second least favorite, who’s my least favorite character overall? i’ll tell you who

tori fucking meadows.

tori. geez. has there ever been a worse character? yes, mineta from my hero academia exists. but what exactly is tori’s crime? what has she done to make me dislike her so much. well, nothing. ‘nothing?’ yes. she didn’t do anything. but at the same time, she didn’t do anything. my problem with her is she literally does nothing, she barely has any sort of relevance to anything, and she’s annoying. i’m very serious. there’s only two things she’s ever done: she got possessed by a barian emperor to duel against yuma once, and there was that time she challenged yuma to a fashion contest, which was a little entertaining. those are the only things she’s ever done. and yet, somehow, she finds her way into every single episode. it is rare for an episode to go by without her. well, if she’s in so many episodes, surely she must be doing something of importance? nah. her only purpose is to cheer yuma on when he’s discouraged and to get distressed when yuma looks like he’s in a bad spot. this is not a joke. this is not an exaggeration. there are entire episodes where her only dialogue is “(sad voice) Yuma...! Astral...!” i constantly forget she’s there and then the show reminds me she’s there and i get mad because she doesn’t do anything. it’s either be sad about duel going well for yuma, or tori going “yuma you can do it” and yuma going “YEAH YOU’RE RIGHT THANKS TORI”. yeah, she doesn’t even give good motivational speeches, she just says the laziest most generic thing possible, and yuma just cheers himself up anyway because that’s usually what he does anyway. there’s not point to her being there. oh, and she got to be the damsel of distress once to convince yuma to duel. that’s great. lovely. that’s definitely not shady/shifty as hell. all girls are only good for fueling boys’ pain and suffering, right.

but lemme ask this. let’s replace tori with a very pretty lamp for the entire series. how much of the show would change? and honestly? it’d mostly be just like, bits and pieces of three episodes. she’s literally just taking up space. she doesn’t need to duel to be relevant and do meaningful things. maybe she could do more to help yuma convince astral that blowing up barian world is a bad idea, maybe she’s able to come up with the right words where yuma isn’t. maybe she catches on that something’s wrong with shark before shark switches sides, she doesn’t have to convince him not to and i’d rather she didn’t but she can be an uninvolved person to listen and tell shark it’s not an easy choice for sure but she supports him whatever he does and she’s sure whatever he chooses will be the right choice for him. maybe she could get astral some fashionable clothes. i don’t know! she could actually do something! i’m not asking much here i just want her to be something besides a generic love interest (gross) or a generic supporter with generic advice (annoying).

a lot of yuma’s friend group have similar similar issues, but at least they have parts to play. bronk’s probably the best written of the bunch in part 1 before he dissolves into randomly in love with rio taking over his entire life (gross). cathy honestly is better than average too. rio is exempt from this paragraph because she doesn’t spend too much time in the friend group before bailing to her past life which is valid. yuma starts out with only bronk and tori for friends but he gains a lot of friends during the number hunt. most of these friends were possessed by numbers and yuma befriended them afterwards because ultimately his goal is to have fun and make friends by dueling. but they all stick around and don’t not hang out with him and don’t do much after yuma helps them. yuma has way too many friends that he drags around with him everywhere, and then some combination of the arclights, shark, kite, vector, and rio is often there as well. It’s way too many people and no wonder most of them never do anything because often all the things that could be done are taken. Most of these kids need to stop following Yuma everywhere. For the most part, they’re all annoying, too. I really only care for Bronk and Cathy.

i get it. the protagonist always has friends that are ride or die and help them out no matter what. i get it. but there was never this many constantly around, often times they’d switch around each other if anything, and they always all were either relevant to the plot or played good important roles in helping the protagonist, and they always had development. i think the most development any of yuma’s friend group (ignoring brinks negative development) had was cathy’s hatred of dogs getting a bit less intense. flip’s literally a shitty dude who cheats and yuma told him “hey maybe be less shitty next time” a couple of times and flip said “sure” each time but then never put any effort into being better and just kept being shitty towards other people. caswell just...reiterates what’s happening half the time ans starts literally every sentence with “in the end”. all they’re good for is filler and zexal has really bad filler. they’re not good for anything. they should’ve showed up less at least after the heartland tournament arc if not sooner. i get that the whole thing is to show that yuma wants to make friends through duels but this is unnecesasary and eats up time that could be better spent on other characters who actually do things and who actually are relevant and develop and stuff. the protagonist’s friend group was never this annoying before zexal and it never was after zexal either. when they all got sent to barian world and stopped showing up for like ten episodes i almost finally new peace if those ten episodes weren’t like some of the worst content zexal had to offer.

there’s a lot of pointless boring uneventful unnecessary hetero shit all over the show, too. obviously, the whole deal with yuma and tori, while yuma really has no interest in romance at all and tori can’t take a fucking hint and then somehow the last episode decides to make them start dating for some reason. bronk falls for rio (understandable) and then in a filler episode asks for shark’s permission to date her (gross), shark misunderstands what bronk’s asking and is like “if you wanna deal with me or rio you gotta beat yuma in a duel first”, bronk gets it in his head that means yuma likes rio and duels yuma over rio (gross) and this is all supposed to be a funny whole series of events but it’s not funny and it’s kinda gross actually. orbital and lillybot!! yikes!! i don’t like orbital anyway. lillybot is amazing and great. the show decides to assign lillybot female (tori just says lillybot’s a girl and we’re supposed to take tori’s word for it i guess) so obviously the assigned male robot and the assigned female robot have to date, right! they MUST like each other because he was a boy robot, she was a girl robot, can i make it any more obvious. it’s annoying and stupid. they have kids!!! they have kids for some reason!!! why do they have kids!!!!! zexal never interact with me about romance again.

the girls in this show really get the shit end of the stick, huh. i feel really bad for them. obviously we have tori. who was there the whole time but really didn’t do anything except be generically sad or generically positive. cathy’s a little better than that. she has a bit more personality going for her. she likes cats, she makes cat puns, she duels a dog, she did get possessed by a number... she’s got a few things going for her, but she doesn’t do much either. she doesn’t do anything worth noting in the tournament in heartland, she barely does anything of note related to the barian emperors or don thousand. so that’s not much better. rio probably got the best treatment of any of the girls in zexal. she is a major player in the second half of zexal, being one of the barian emperors. she’s got a very strong personality and did plenty of important things. she helped her and her brother deal with the barian emperors before realizing she was one herself, she reclaimed her title of barian emperor and tried to kick vector’s ass. rio and shark brought a lot of life to each other. she revealed her brother’s need to sleep with a nightlight and she was allowed to be good at dueling! but also, she spend the entire first half of the show in a coma. she wasn’t allowed to have any part in the show before astral and the barian emperors did their thing. so in a way, rio also got the worst treatment, too. discounting rio, though, i think the girl who got the worst of it was actually kari.

i know, i know. kari’s an investigator, a journalist! she’s always after a scoop, she’s always looking after yuma, and she deals with old friends/enemies. she’s not just some generic friend like tori, she’s not in a coma like rio! kari’s great! and i love her! but this isn’t just about girls not getting to do things that matter or girls not getting to have personalities. this goes in a bit different direction than that. she wanted to go out and explore with her dad, just like yuma did, but her parents always brushed her aside and made her do more “girly” things because “girls can’t do what yuma and your dad are doing”! she didn’t get a wole lot of agency in her own life. her parents all but told her that yuma was more important than her, that he had this big destiny related to dueling and that all she was good for was watching out for yuma and making sure he was okay because she’s his older sister. and then both her parents disappeared! and she was just left with that! she grew to hate dueling, to push yuma away from it because their parents basically told her yuma would be in danger because of dueling. which is a totally understandable reaction to your parents telling you that out of seemingly nowhere! except the show doesn’t treat it that way. the show puts her in the wrong for not liking dueling! because everyone has to like dueling kari!! how dare you not like card games. how dare you have any interest in anything else. i’m surprised she’s not more bitter towards her parents for this whole fiasco. she just gets slammed into a caretaker role because girls can only be love interests or caretakers! (tori, cathy, and rio were all set up as love interests at least one time or another, while yuma would rather eat another hot dog than deal with that) but honestly, she does her best to do what her parents told her: take care of yuma during his big dangerous dueling destiny. she watches out for him, she tries to steer him clear of the thing that’s supposed to be dangerous for him. and as a journalist she has to be constantly up to date on current events and happenings, so if something happens that might endanger yuma with his big dangerous dueling destiny, kari’ll probably be on of the first people to know about it in all of heartland. that’s not to say that’s not the only reason she took up the profession. she definitely seems passionate about what she does, she takes it seriously, i’m sure she does actually like being a journalist, but it does help with yuma, too. her parents basically forced her life to go exactly one way. and that’s not shown in a bad light against her parents! if anything, the show basically acts like it’s kari’s fault for not being happy about it every second. all this while yuma gets to be whoever he wants to be and do what he wants to do their whole childhood, he gets a lot more freedom than kari for sure. yuma got the childhood kari wanted and she’s not allowed to grieve what she could’ve had. because it’s not just “kari’s parents forced her into a very specific role for her life and gave her no choice in any of it”. that can actually be a really cool thing to explore. i love chazz princeton! kari has plenty in common with chazz! but i don’t like this setup like this. chazz got to be right about being bitter about what his brothers did to him, about breaking away from them and living life the way he wanted to. but making kari’s parents the right ones in this whole situation is just kinda gross and disgusting. if you’re gonna frame it like that don’t bother. cannot stand the “your parents are always right” sort of shit.

speaking of? goddamn i hate kazuma. i hate yuma and kari’s dad. i would say he’s the worst dad in all of yugioh, but he didn’t start an interdimensional war, so we’ll say he’s the second worst dad in all of yugioh. ...if i tie dr kogami with leo, but either way, leo, dr kogami, and kazuma are the top 3.

how can kazuma be in the top 3?? with leo and dr kogami?? leo and dr kogami are evil villains!! kazuma’s not a bad guy! he helped give yuma more self-confidence! he wanted peace between astral world and barian world!

first of all, if you skipped the paragraph related to kari, go back and read it. it’s required reading for the “why kazuma sucks” portion of our program tonight. okay good, you read it. here’s more reasons why kazuma’s a pretty sucky dad.

this here is a bullshit man.

kazuma had good intentions, i think. he wanted to be a good dad but intentions don’t really mean a damn thing when you look at the results.

pre-zexal, kazuma tsukumo knew about yuma’s destiny and told kari about it. how did he know this? how did he figure this out? that’s a good question. i have no idea why he knows about yuma’s destiny, or how he knows about it. the wiki just says he “showed great intelligence and foresight”, whatever that means. my best guess is that honestly? once kazuma saw what was happening in astral world, he created yuma’s destiny himself. he gave the key to yuma, and then he fucked with astral’s shit so that astral would meet yuma. yeah, kazuma looked at everything going on and was like “i’ll put it on my 12 year old son to save three worlds at the same time! what could go wrong”, and told kari about it beforehand and was like “lol kari can’t do it she’s a girl so i’ll just decide her entire life for her a different way”

uh, clearly yuma was not emotionally capable of dealing with the shit kazuma pulled him into. yuma was ready to never duel again because dueling killed his friends. and then kazuma talks to astral about the whole thing and is weirdly smug about the whole thing related to yuma’s lost friends and lost love for dueling. so like...was that part of your plan or not? do you give a shit about your son’s feelings regarding your whole plan for his life or not?

after yuma falls into a portal in the hell dimension he ends up being a prisoner on astral world. which was definitely not explained well in the dub. but he and his wife just hang out freely and openly in remote parts of astral world so he sure as shit doesn’t look like a prisoner. and while he’s there he certainly looks like there’s no place he’d rather be. wait, his wife? how did she get in astral world? that’s a good fucking question and i sure would love to know. i guess she’s not allowed to exist outside her relationship with kazuma.

after kazuma is stuck in astral world, everyone thinks he’s dead for a while, but then when everyone finds out he was alive, he’s treated as this all-knowing projection/recorded hologram who is always right about everything. he always has all the answers and if we don’t know what to do about something then kazuma definitely knows! and after he appears to die he can sometimes appear to people somehow, how he can do that is never explained well at least in the dub, and there are arbitrary conditions to it also never explained in the dub. he can appear in the emperor’s key. he only really seems to do this once to have a weird conversation with astral, and then he also...was able to help vetrix make a barrier during yuma and nasch’s duel, somehow? i mean, i get tron’s whole thing, but kazuma, not so much? if he can appear to astral and vetrix why does he never try to connect with yuma? i’m guessing he probably can’t appear to yuma directly but he never tries to leave a message with astral either. he has these arbitrary weird abilities never explained well (in the dub, at least) and it feels like he’s playing calvinball to make himself seem like a hero or something.

honestly, everthing about yuma’s dad being seemingl dead but still alive, creating his son’s destiny and being this vague benevolent being who is always right and is never allowed to be seen in a bad light related to the consequences to his kids for his meddling, it all seems familiar....

that’s right! it all comes back to sonic!! once again i am literally unable to talk about anything without bringing up sonic, i always bring everything back to sonic!!!

i explained this all a lot better a year ago so i will let myself speak i guess

obviously kazuma isn’t as bad of a person as locke the echidna, not nearly as bad, but there’s parallels, anyway.

so if you agree that yuma is the old comics knuckles of yugioh, if you look at the bad dads section of this article (in case you think i wrote it for some reason, which i didn’t, thankskenpenders did) you can understand why locke is a horrible dad, and looking at the similarties pointed out between locke and kazuma (again, locke is a much worse father than kazuma) you can understand more why i hate kazuma.

so, yeah. i can go on and on about all the things i don’t like zexal. the writing is sometimes sexist and lazy, there’s way too many characters hanging out with the protagonist and most of them have nothing to offer. sometimes things just don’t get explained, or are barely explained. it’s a big ol’ game of calvinball sometimes. and i am aware and accept that some of this is the fault of the dub writers. but there’s also a lot of good things i like about zexal! astral, shark, and yuma were all written really well! there were some really cool monsters in this show! there were some moments of good jokes! the show had good messages and a lot of characters had complex motivations you can sympathize with even if you don’t agree with what they’re doing. this show was very good at being yugioh. and it’s a pretty good show in my book. i enjoyed watching it! it just doesn’t happen to be my favorite yugioh. or like. anything but my least faorite yugioh. but that’s okay. really, the most important thing with watching a show isn’t how well it’s written, how good the visuals are, or anything like that, the most important thing is whether you enjoyed it. and i enjoyed it!

i enjoyed watching yugioh zexal.

if you followed me through my journey watching the anime, thank you. i appreciate it.

this isn’t the end of my journey through zexal. i intend to read the manga too, so when i do get to that, if i end up wanting to post any screenshots or anthing i’ll be using the same tag. that’s sure to be an interesting journey as well.

but anyway. if you read this entire post, thank you. this is over 8,000 words long, damn.

#zexal liveblog #long post 235

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dyde21 · 5 years ago

Text

Rick Thoughts

My feed for like a week now has been super heavy on Rick Riordan crit from multiple people. I’m adding my thoughts, but it’s going under the cut so people can ignore it if they want. TL;DR Relatively neutral on it, but I hate how half the crit is done towards him. Probably not popular opinions FWIW. Got a little worked up towards the end so fair warning.

Okay, so. A lot of crit towards him seems super valid. I’ve seen a lot of discussions on some poor choices he made when it comes to representing different groups of people. Which is fine. A lot of great points have been made that change how I will write/describe the characters moving forward.

Yes, some of his responses have been a bit immature, do seem a bit harsh towards fans. But on that note, as with any content creator, it’s not like he’s just receiving simple, polite suggestions or critiques. There are TONS of fans out there, as with all major series, some will be toxic, rude, immature etc. Just go to any panel at a con, people have no filter when it comes to asking creators about stuff. Is it wrong when he lashes out? Yes. Period. But like with the Reyna comment, I literally can’t imagine how many comments he’s gotten from people, online, etc asking him about it, critiquing him for how he handled her relationships, the fanart, the fanfics etc. Tumblr makes up a tiny fraction of his audience so yeah, I have a little sympathy for anyone who has to deal with that many fans, especially when a lot of fans are younger and don’t know better/are emotional/impressionable. That’s a volatile age group too. I.E. The craze around any boyband or twilight back then. So yeah, that comment seemed a little passive aggressive, but heavy shippers have always been... intense for any fandom. Not excusing it, but I understand it.

I’m not really in any position to comment on how he handles minorities, I’m a while christian male, and my only leg to stand on is I’m bummed he hasn’t really shown many christian characters but given the context of his books I know it’s not too likely. So yeah, I’m not going to defend or critique how he writes minorities. I do know though, that, obviously, people see things differently. groups of people aren’t uniform thinkers. Just because there is one part of a community saying this thing is wrong/bad, doesn’t mean everyone in that community agrees with that. So when people shit on Rick for writing something some way, you can’t ignore the fact that a lot of time there are plenty of people in said community that agree with/love the idea. He’s literally in a damned if I do/damned if I don’t situation a lot of time. For a personal example as I grew up Mormon. The book of mormon play. A Lot of Latter Day Saints really hate that play because they feel it mocks their faith. A lot of people also love it and find it in good fun and hilarious within the church. Neither side is more “right” than the other, so depending on where you stand it’s either a horrible or funny thing. Same with people who dress as Jesus on tiktok to make funny videos.

Don’t get me wrong, it is very possible there are some things that are just plain harmful that he could have written. That’s absolutely a possibility, and not my call to make. I’m just trying to say just because someone offered a critique doesn’t mean they were “Right” or he has to agree with them. Listening to one critique can mean ignoring another, and still ends with him being called out for ignoring his fans.

In the end, the real thing that pisses me off I guess is people who are putting thoughts and meanings him his mind for him. Saying he doesn’t care about the fans, the books, the characters etc really gets under my skin. We have the right all day to critique the content in his books, disagree with his choices, think that they could have written better/differently. (I hate some of Annabeth’s actions towards Percy, like the flip, myself so I get it.) But we have NO RIGHT to say how he thinks or acts. I don’t care how worked up we get over the series, or the frustration we feel when we feel like we’ve been misrepresented. We’ve all had situations where people make assumptions about us and it hurt. When you said something that was misunderstood and people looked down on you, or when something you did was taken out of context and you were wrong condemned for it. So yeah, rick doesn’t seem to respond to criticism the best, and some of his choices may have been poor when writing the character, but stop assuming what he is thinking/meaning with his writing. Stop assuming how much/little he cares. Stop assuming you know HOW he made the choices he made, what research he did or didn’t do. He’s a human being who deserves the same respect as everyone else. I can’t even imagine how much it’d hurt if I made a series, over years of work, writing, and research to hear fans just say “oh he doesn’t care about the series” or he has a “ghost writer” just beause they disagreed with my choices. Imagine if people said that about the favorite thing you’ve made, it’s incredibly rude to me.

Also, since I’m already worked up I’ll just throw this out there. Just as good things he wrote/included don’t erase the mistakes, mistakes don’t erase the positive choices he made too. The actual good implementation or characters or traits that we take for granted. The fact that for a lot of people, myself included, our perception of kids with ADHD or dyslexia was changed when we were young, or the utter destruction fo the dumb blonde troppe by Annabeth, etc. It’s easy to get frustrated when we feel slighted but shit, stop saying entire books or series are complete trash when there are plenty of positive aspects in them too that deserve praise as well. If it was easy or even possible to write a perfect book, don’t you think it would have been done by now? Then again the Prodigal Son is my favorite parable so maybe that’s why I think that way.

#PJO Rant #Not tagging this with a crit tag cause I feel like that'd be asking for a fight #Dunno how well this will go over #so I might delete it later #But I really wanted to get my thoughts out #cause I got tired of the sort of echo chamber I kept seeing circling around #Got a bit worked up towards the end

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stopforamoment · 5 years ago

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Pernicious Passion: Part Five

Please check out the Pernicious Passion MASTERLIST for the complete list of writers and artists who inspired this series! Bastien Lykel belongs to Pixelberry, and Kara is a real-life talented PB writer. Events in this fic are purely fictional because this is just a fun spoof!

Author’s Note and Summary: Thank you to @strangerofbraidwood for the crack fic edit that she created for my birthday! In this chapter Bastien and Kara get into a fight, and she doesn’t fight fair. Some of the Tumblr fan fic writers get thrown under the bus . . . Shameless plug for @strangerofbraidwood who is a talented wlw fanfic writer. She is in the process of writing fan fics that include EVERY female LI in the Choices universe (and female characters who should have been LI!). Please check out her MASTERLIST. You won’t regret it! 💕

Cordonians Gone Wild is the creation of @ao719 @cocomaxley @leelee10898 and @speedyoperarascalparty

There are links to other artists and their works within this chapter. Thank you everyone for being a part of this!

Part Five (1,270 Words)

Bastien was naked when she walked into the room.

Edit created by the hilarious and talented @strangerofbraidwood

No one had ever seen a pixelated character without underwear before, and the bright light blinded her. She heard rumors from fan fics like @jovialyouthmusic Protect and Serve series and @bobasheebaby NSFW ABC list that Bastien was well-endowed. Dammit! Why do the fan fic writers have control over the size of his penis and I can’t even see it? Go figure @strangerofbraidwood a wlw writer, would have the guts to create this edit. She doesn’t even like dicks, yet she did this for other members of the fandom. My god, how many other readers have I ignored and offended? “Apple Cobbler, my eyes are up here.” Kara’s face was already flushed, but her cheeks grew even warmer when she realized Bas caught her staring. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you’re so . . . amazing.” “But Kara. That’s just it. I’m not amazing. At least not the way Pixelberry portrays me. It’s the fandom who made me amazing. I owe it all to them, and I owe it to them to make sure I’m in more scenes. Even if it’s just to give them a little backstory of Jackson training me. A flashback to me eating dinner with the Walker family. Hell, @stopforamoment made it clear that she would pay over 100 diamonds just for a brief flashback of me eating chocolate chip cookies with Drake and Savannah while they watch TV.” “But Bas, demographics show that our younger readers aren’t interested in older men.” “Really, Kara? Tell that to @mfackenthal. She’s president of my fan club. And believe me. In the Tumblr world, she has clout. In fact, I think I’m going to DM her now to request an interview on the Mfackenthal Show.” Kara lunged for the phone. “Bas, no! Please! Give me time to fix this! You’re right. You are developing a strong following. More people are coming around. But it’s not enough.” Bastien sighed. “Kara, you’ve been using me. Controlling me. Keeping me tucked away for yourself. But that isn’t fair to the fandom. Even if people aren’t romantically interested in me, they want to know more about how things were like at the palace when Drake, Liam, and Olivia were growing up there. They want to know more about Queen Eleanor. If it’s true I had a crush on her . . . or even more.” “But Bas, where will you go if Pixelberry doesn’t want you anymore? Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe. I’m the only one who truly loves you.” Bastien shook his head. “No, Kara. This isn’t love. It’s infatuation. As crazy as the Tumblr fans get with their in-fighting over pixelated characters, and the glitches with suspended accounts and tags not working, it’s the only place where my character can truly grow. You’ve stunted me, Kara. And I think it’s time I work with @mfackental to get the best exposure for my character. I’m so sorry Kara. I wish it didn’t have to end like this.” “Bas, the Tumblr world isn’t sunshine and roses. There’s anon hate and pornbots. Legit accounts that get suspended while the writer waits MONTHS for resolution from the Tumblr team. It’s brutal--even for your character. Do you know that @cordoniansgonewild have you chasing after four strong, amazing women? No one can outsmart them, Bas. Not you. Not even their husbands. Queen Anitah has stolen the royal jet from right under your nose. They’ve drugged you and drawn penises on your face while you were unconscious. They’re ruthless, Bas. Please.” Bastien shook his head. “It’s all in good fun, and the focus is on the women. I’m fine with that because I love strong women.” Kara caught the faraway look in his eyes and she felt her stomach clench. “You’re thinking of Oliva, aren’t you?” Dammit @bobasheebaby and @stopforamoment for starting the whole Baslivia movement! The bright light between Bastien’s legs was getting noticeably brighter as he thought about his favorite Baslivia fan fic moments. @tornbetween2loves for giving him those steamy scenes with Olivia in her Shifting Focus series. When they were playing pool and she distracted him by slipping off her red thong, purposely bending over to give him a show. And then she used the thong to pull back her hair. The scent was intoxicating. And that time when she showed up wearing a trench coat and fedora. Fuck. @stopforamoment still can’t get that picture out of her head, it was so hot. And those fucking backseam stockings Olivia was wearing. He thought the bright light between his legs would explode with a show of fireworks. Kara’s eyes narrowed. “What about @emceesynonymroll and her Finding Riley series? You had a sex dream about your Queen right in front of her, and you had to play it off as a nightmare. Then you quickly rolled over, hoping you wouldn’t need a manual release.” The light between Bastien’s legs started to dim. “Kara, you aren’t fighting fair.” But Kara was only getting started. “And @stopforamoment and that slow burn from hell with over 96 chapters before you even got a real kiss on the lips? How many times did you have to masturbate because Rinda was so clueless about your feelings for her, or how sexually attracted you were to her.” Bastien’s jaw twitched. “Tria was worth it.” “What about @bobasheebaby?” Now a warm smile played across his lips. “Yes. She’s one of my favorites. She has so many series about me, and I’m allowed to explore my full potential with her. My sexual orientation. Multiple partners. My kinks. And I am more than just a guard with her. I can also be a mobster. A father. She understands me better than anyone else, and she’s sacrificed so much for me as she argues with her evil muse.”

Kara scoffed. “Really, Bas? Do you know what her Mistress of Evil muse has been up to?”

Bastien shook his head slowly. The ending of When Fairytales Break almost broke him. “No, Kara. It’s how that story needed to end. But I have so many other happy moments with Olivia. Olivia and Caleb. Harlow. Beth. Liza. Even Christy. And that Bastien NSFW ABC list she created with some help from @stopforamoment? They went through so many pairs of panties as they wrote it for me and the fandom.” The light between his legs began flashing uncontrollably as he thought of those panties.

It was a blinding strobe light, and Kara knew she needed to control it before she had an epileptic seizure. “But what about her latest Evil Liam series Be Careful What You Wish For?”

Bastien’s face paled and his strobe muted to weak flare ups. “That fic focuses on MC Rebecca’s love for Drake, and how Liam is getting in the way of their happiness.”

“Yes, but . . .” Kara’s voice lowered as she prepared to deliver the fatal blow.

“No! No plot spoilers, Kara! I haven’t finished the most recent chapter yet!”

CHAPTER SIX

#pernicious passion #wacky drabble #wacky drabbles challenge #do not open that box #bastien lykel #kara loves bastien #trr choices

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lilydalexf · 4 years ago

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Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Circe Invidiosa

Circe Invidiosa has 11 stories at Gossamer, but there are even more X-Files stories at her website. Some of my favs I’ve recced here before, like Make It Worse and Slap a Goatee On Me and Call Me Evil. She also made a bunch of X-Files collage art, including some cover art for fics (hers and others), which you probably saw if you were reading fic back when authors posted fics on their own websites where art could be shared. Big thanks to Circe Invidiosa for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Well, it would surprise me if people did read my fic. As it happens, I don't hear much feedback from my fic these days. Probably because the bulk of it is on Gossamer and my own site rather than AO3. Also, I was never a BNA. I worked a lot behind the scenes – hosting other authors' sites and making fanart and dustjackets. I think that's what I'd be remembered for, if anything.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience?

I miss the collective excitement and discussions we had as groups. When you got in with a group in the XF fandom, you felt like you knew everybody there. Now the fandom feels a little faceless except for the people I still follow from my old groups.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Most of my experience was on Yahoo Groups. I joined Scullyfic while it was still there and then E-muse when it became an e-mail list, which I'm still a part of. I was part of several Yahoo Groups (can't remember all of them now), where I'd post my fic, RealPlayer slideshows (remember those?!), and collages. I never really took part in discourse because I'm shy and don't think anyone cares about my opinions (still don't!). The e-mail address I used for those groups was purged a couple of years ago, so I've lost all those messages.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

My take away is that fanfic made me a better writer, thanks to having some great betas, and it made me a better professional writer for it (my real-life work is writing but not fun writing) because I learned to take criticism.

I also used to make a lot of fanart, collages and dustjackets for fic mostly. My big take away from that was that I really got into graphics and I got super proficient at Photoshop, which helped my own artistic endeavours and photography. I didn't realize how much skill I had developed until I've had to help someone with their graphics or photo editing.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

My mother was watching X-Files before I was and she was raving about it. I don't have a great relationship with my mom, but one thing she was usually right about was TV shows. It's where I got my love of Sci-Fi.

I think the first episode I watched was Ice, which definitely hooked me. As for when the shipping started, I remember we were watching Lazarus, and when Mulder was yelling at Lula (I had to look that up) about hurting the hostage Scully, my mom said, "Oh, he's so in love with her." And I was all, "What?! Pfff." But then I could not stop thinking about it. And then I thought about it way, way too much.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I was in my late 20s, and it was around the end of S7 and I kept thinking about what if these two dumb idiots actually talked one day. And I kept thinking about dialogue in my head about what they'd actually say. The internet was still in its infancy back then, but I'd seen fan sites here and there. So I decided to search around to see if other people were talking about it and thinking about it like I was. I was such a noob I'd never even heard of fanfic. Imagine my delight when I discovered it. I found a few stories and thought, 'Well, I can do that.' And I wrote up my first story, found a place to post it (wasn't Ephemeral the best?), got some kind feedback, found a really nice person (not sure she wants to be named since she used her real name in the fandom back in the day) who encouraged me a lot and directed me to all the e-mail lists and Yahoo Groups that I needed to be on, and then, Bob's your uncle, I wrote more and more.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Periphery. Most of my experience in any fandom is now on Tumblr because that's where my attention span is. Show me pretty pictures and funny stuff. I am old now and don't want to think hard.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Veronica Mars was my next fandom experience. A number of my XF friends got me hooked on VM. The VM fandom was a LOT younger compared to the XF fandom. When I joined the XF fandom, I was the kid compared to most of the other fans who were all goddesses and royalty in my eyes. But in the VM fandom, I was in my 30s and the rest of the fandom were all in their early 20s if not younger. It often showed, so I stayed out of discussions and just posted my fic once I started writing it. I took a new handle (invida) when I started writing VM fic. Just in case these kids felt like my writing sucked, I didn't want it getting back to the XF fandom that I’d branched out and failed spectacularly.

By then fandom experiences had moved over to LiveJournal. I never really got involved in the discourse or the fandom fights. I knew what people were saying and where the schisms were, but I was all about the fanfic and the pretty pictures. Most of my LJ friends just discussed the episodes and posted their fic and that was good with me.

What got me writing fic for VM was Anjou's brilliant VM fic Into the Blue. Seriously, if you love VM S1, read her fic. Just so beautiful.

VM was also where started writing a WIP, which was a wild trip. I wrote a much-loved WIP called Damn, Damn the Circumstance which people still ask me about finishing to this day. Someday…*wistful sighs*

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Scully. She was everything! Lapsed Catholic, degrees in science, skeptic, always trying to work within the rules but still not taking crap. Yeah, she was the best.

Veronica Mars was great until she wasn't. I have a lot of issues with her beyond S2. And don't even talk to me about S4. For me, S1 was the best, I enjoyed the movie, the books were okay, but nothing else happened after that. NOTHING.

And the first character I ever loved was Princess Leia. She was also everything to me growing up. I wanted to be her. I still do.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Now and then. Not as much as I used to. I sometimes have it on in the background when I'm doing other things. Back before the pandemic, my BFF and I would have get togethers where we would play Scrabble, eat a lot of candy, and binge several XF episodes. I miss doing that. Hopefully, we will get back to that soon.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I am not an active XF fanfic reader right now. I will read any stories my friends put out. Otherwise, I only occasionally read some I come across on Tumblr in my feed, but I am not seeking them out. I will beta for any XF author who asks me as well.

I am reading fic in other fandoms though – Endeavour, Broadchurch, Sherlock…huh, I'm just realizing that's a lot of British stuff. I have been really into British detective series for the last few years.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I used to run an XF fic recommendation site called How Will It End usually with at least one other person (I went through at least 4 partners on that project because I'm a control freak). We'd compile our recs and then I'd post them on my site. We'd also feature authors we really liked and interview them. Not unlike these interviews!

I'm terrible at giving feedback/comments. So I solved that problem by making a rec site. That way I could tell authors I loved their fics by recommending them. I didn't have to comment, I'd just say, 'I'd like to rec your fic'. And then they'd get promotion. Win-win. Back in those days, the fandom would absolutely roast you for promoting your own fic, so to get on a rec site was a big deal. Not that I had a popular rec site or anything. But I think authors really enjoyed being asked.

All that to say I've liked a lot of fics. I can pull up the archives of HWIE and show you all the faves I liked. :)

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Back in the day, E-muse would hold Improv Challenges, where other members would give you a prompt that you had to include in your fic. I was always really proud of the stories I created from those challenges (No Earthly Means and Elephant in the Room if you want to read them).

I enjoyed writing Dead to Rights which is an XF/Dead Like Me crossover because I loved the challenge of writing a crossover. It was the first crossover I ever tried writing even though I only recently published it.

Otherwise, I like re-reading In a Graveyard, Importuning Life for Life, and Some By Virtue Fall. Of my more recent fic, I like Slap a Goatee on Me and Call Me Evil because the premise was ridiculous and I think it's funny as all get out.

Probably my favourite of my VM fic was Stay Outta Riverdale. Because: 1. The title is a Simpsons reference who doesn't love a Simpsons reference? And 2. I think I was hilarious throughout it.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I'm always open to writing more fic (and, of course, I don't mean my WIPs…don't look at me like that). Lately, my only motivation has been from writing prompts on Tumblr. I haven't had anyone give me a prompt in over a year, so here we are. I have snippets of dialogue in journals and word documents that have never found their way into stories. I'd be happy to dust off any of those and shoehorn them into a new story.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

The last fanfic I wrote was a mini-fic over a year ago (with a prompt from Lilydale!). I've written a bit of original fiction but I haven't been able to finish it. Otherwise, I do have a number of real life hobbies which are where my creative outlets lie now.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

Lately, challenges and prompts. It used to be from wanting to see more from a scene. I really had a thing for fill-in-the-blanks or scene continuations. And sometimes my motivation is just plain old spite. :)

What's the story behind your pen name?

Circe Invidiosa is the title of a painting by John William Waterhouse. Love the colours and the absolute malice on the face of the subject. It felt like a good pen name – the envious witch. That's me!

I chose it when I posted my first XF fic (which I cringe to read now, ugh so terrible) without knowing there was already a Circe in the fandom. Whoops. I tried to go by the full Circe Invidiosa or Invidiosa as much as possible after realizing that (invidiosa is my url and my username on a lot of sites, etc.). Now I think that I've been around long enough that it doesn't matter as much but I still like it.

As I said, I took the name Invida for the VM fandom which is just a shortening of Invidiosa.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My significant other knows and that was quite a reveal (oh how awkward). However, the SO has been very supportive and has read all my stories since the reveal and sometimes betas them. The SO also wants us to collaborate on writing some original fiction but we haven't found a project that works for both of us creatively or timewise.

My BFF knows because I dragged her into the online fandom. We've known each other since we were 14, but our love of XF really solidified our bond in our 20s. She wrote some short but sweet fics under the penname Helen Quilley which I bullied her into posting, and we wrote Of Ladies Most Deject and Wretched together. She is mostly embarrassed that she wrote fanfic now but we still fangirl together.

No one else really knows other than fandom folks I've met in real life. And some friends know I've written 'short stories' but I don't elaborate. I work in a stodgy, uptight industry where anything fun or actually having a life is frowned upon.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Over the first lockdown, I got my shit together and got my fic site, invidiosa.com, up and running again. My site houses fic by Rain (now @doctorhelena on Tumblr and AO3), Helen Quilley, ML (who I miss so much), Folieadeux, Shelba, TLynn, Oracle, Piper Sargasso, Diehard, and me. And I made all their dustjackets (except Folie's). The site got hacked a few years back and it was so much work to get running again that I put it off for years and years. I still feel terrible that I did not get the site back up before ML passed away, especially when ML had asked me about it a few months before she passed.

Anyway, all my XF fic is here: circe.invidiosa.com. I have 3 of my newer XF stories on AO3. And my fic-LJ also has some of my stories. Some of the newer stories are on Tumblr but the tagging is so erratic that I'd have to list several tags before you'd find them all. I don't know why I haven't moved everything over to AO3. Probably laziness.

I'm @invidiosa on Tumblr. I'm still on E-muse. I'm still on LJ. I'm always reachable by e-mail (invidiosa at gmail).

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Thanks for reading, writing, and commenting. It is always appreciated.

(Posted by Lilydale on January 5, 2021)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #circe invidiosa

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