#because you have to do a lot of inferring and extrapolating

[omenarchive]

Braius Doomseed Analysis

Sam Riegel is back, and he’s brought with him—forgive us—a real beefy boy!

How many levels does Braius have in Bard vs. Paladin? What are his subclasses? Exactly how big a punch does this minotaur pack?

While we wait to learn more, there's a lot we're able to infer from Episode 98.

Braius Doomseed is a minotaur Bard/Paladin multiclass, wielding a drippy black double flail. We have not yet been made aware explicitly how his 14 levels are distributed between the two classes. We can, however, extrapolate a fair bit of information about his build from the gameplay in his debut, Episode 98: The Nox Engine.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. We know that he is at least a 3rd level College of Tragedy Bard, as Braius used the Sorrowful Fate feature to change the save Dominox had to make against Dorian’s Otto’s Irresistible Dance spell to a Charisma save (03:09:43) (confirmed by Sam to be this feature at 03:11:57).

Sorrowful Fate does the following:

When you or an ally you can see forces a creature to make a saving throw, you can expend one use of your Bardic Inspiration to change the type of saving throw to a Charisma save instead.

Sam did, however, forget to use the secondary part of that feature, which would allow him to do psychic damage equal to the value of a Bardic Inspiration die roll when a creature fails the associated save. Also, if Dominox had reached 0 hit points within 1 minute of failing the save, he would have been magically compelled to “utter darkly poetic words before succumbing to their injuries.”

Level 3 in College of Tragedy also confers the following feature, called Poetry in Misery:

Whenever you or an ally within 30 feet of you rolls a 1 on the d20 for an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can use your reaction to soliloquize and regain one expended use of your Bardic Inspiration feature.

Information on this subclass can be found on page 167 of Tal’Dorei Reborn. This particular subclass does not confer any additional spells beyond the standard Bard fare, so cannot account for any spells Braius has that fall outside of the Bard or Paladin spell lists.

That brings us to the next thing we can suss out: Braius’ possible Paladin Oaths. We know that Braius has both the Misty Step (03:12:47) and Moonbeam (03:13:07) spells. There are only two known Paladin Oaths that give access to Moonbeam: Oath of the Ancients and Oath of the Watchers. Oath of the Ancients seems like a likely option, as it also gives access to Misty Step at paladin level 5; however, that on its own cannot act as definitive proof as to Braius’ Paladin subclass, as we don’t yet know what feats Braius may have on board and—as Imogen , Chetney, and Orym know well—Misty Step can also come from the Fey Touched feat. Another point in favor of Oath of the Ancients is the fact that Braius did not make use of the Aura of the Sentinel initiative bonus conferred by Oath of the Watchers at paladin level 7. However, since this is a new character with quite a lot of features to juggle, it is entirely possible that Sam simply forgot this feature. We know, however, that he must have whatever features are associated with level 7 in his Oath because of his use of Blinding Smite (02:37:12), a 3rd level Paladin spell. Paladins do not get access to 3rd level spells until they reach level 9 in the class.

All of this points to Braius having at least three levels in Bard and at least nine levels in Paladin, which leaves two levels unaccounted for (as Braius, unlike the rest of the party, is already at level 14). This is where things get a little tricky.

Unfortunately, Sam did not give out any Inspiration during Episode 98, so we can’t use his Bardic Inspiration die as an indicator. This moves from a d6 to a d8 at Bard level 5, so if in future episodes Braius’ inspiration die is revealed to be a d8, we’ll know he is a level 5 Bard. For now, though, we’ll instead take a look at his use of Lay on Hands to inform our speculation.

Braius used this Paladin class feature twice during Episode 98: once on himself, and once on Orym. A Paladin has points in their Lay on Hands pool equal to 5 times their Paladin level. Based on our previous analysis that he is at least Paladin level 9 and Bard level 3, that means Braius has a minimum of 45 and a maximum of 55 points in his pool. Orym’s healing was stated outright to be 30 points (03:40:10), leaving Braius between 15 and 25 points to have used on himself previously. In another bit of poor luck for our analysis, however, Sam did not state the exact amount of healing Braius did to himself. Since he said that Dorian’s 24 points of Cure Wounds healing got him “halfway” (01:05:07), it seems reasonable to assume that it was more than 15 points, since calling 24 and 15 approximately equivalent halves seems like a bit of a stretch. 20 and 25, indicating Paladin levels 10 and 11, are much closer. If we were to take Braius’ comment about Dorian getting him halfway completely literally, then we could definitively call him a level 11 Paladin. However, there’s one more wrinkle.

When Braius used his Blinding Smite spell on his melee weapon attack, he rolled 4d8 (02:38:11). The base damage for a flail is 1d8, and Blinding Smite adds 3d8 radiant damage. However, a level 11 Paladin has the feature Improved Divine Smite, which means that all melee weapon attacks gain an additional 1d8 radiant damage. That means that if Braius were a level 11 Paladin, he should have rolled 5d8 damage on the attack (02:37:46), as initially stated before Matt let Sam know that Dominox would be immune to the additional poison damage granted by Braius’ weapon (02:37:59).

This leaves us with two possible options: either Braius is a level 4 Bard/level 10 Paladin and Sam rounded up when saying 24 damage got him halfway there, with Braius healing himself for 20 points of Lay on Hands, or Braius is a level 3 Bard/level 11 Paladin and Sam either misunderstood Matt’s reminder not to add Poison Pen’s extra poison damage or forgot about the level 11 Improved Divine Smite. Either mistake would make quite a bit of sense with a new character in a high stakes situation! However, because of the uncertainty here, we cannot say definitively which it may be. We also do not yet know what Braius’s Paladin Fighting Style is. We’re looking forward to seeing more of him and finding out for sure.

All told, here is what we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, barring any homebrew changes:

Braius’s race is Minotaur, which (assuming the class is drawn from its most recent iteration in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse) conveys the following racial traits and bonuses:

His walking speed is 30 feet

Using his horns to make an unarmed strike does 1d6 + 5 piercing damage

Goring Rush: After taking the Dash action and moving at least 20 feet, he can make an unarmed strike with his horns as a bonus action

Hammering Horns: After hitting a creature with an attack, he can use his bonus action to attempt to push the target 10 feet; the target must make a DC 18 strength check

Labyrinthine Recall: He always knows what direction is north, and has advantage on any Survival check he makes to navigate or track

It’s hard to imagine Sam won’t use this internal compass to poke fun at Liam for Caleb’s Keen Mind feat at least once

He is a paladin of Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine Hells

He is at least a level 3 College of Tragedy Bard, which grants him at least the following:

Two Bard cantrips and six Bard spells, with four level 1 slots and two level 2 slots

Bardic Inspiration using 1d6, with a total of 4 uses per long rest

Jack of All Trades, which adds half his proficiency bonus, rounded down, to any ability check he makes that doesn’t already include his proficiency bonus

Song of Rest, conferring an additional 1d6 of healing to the party on a short rest

Expertise in two skill proficiencies

The Sorrowful Fate feature, which can be used once per short/long rest

The Poetry in Misery Feature, which can be used any number of times as a reaction

He is at least a level 9 Paladin, of either the Oath of the Ancients, Oath of the Watchers, or a homebrew Oath subclass, which grants him:

Divine Sense, which allows him to sense any celestial, fiend, or undead within 60 feet of him that is not behind total cover, a total of 5 times per long rest

At least 45 points in his Lay on Hands healing pool

Divine Smite, allowing him to expend a spell slot to pump up to an additional 4d8 damage (circumstantially 5d8) into a melee attack—that is, 2d8 for a 1st-level spell slot, plus 1d8 for each spell level higher than 1st, to a maximum of 4d8 given that his highest spell slots are 3rd level. The damage increases by 1d8 if the target is an undead or a fiend.

An unknown Fighting Style

Immunity to disease due to Divine Health

Two attacks per round

Aura of Protection, granting any ally within 10 feet of him a +4 bonus on saving throws

Sacred Oath features from levels 3 and 7 in either the Oath of the Ancients, Oath of the Watchers, or a custom Oath subclass

He has a Battering Shield, which confers a +3 bonus to AC (an additional +1 over the base shield bonus of +2), and has 3 charges that can be expended when a target is pushed 5 feet to push that creature an additional 10 feet, knock it prone, or both. It regains 1d3 charges at dawn (03:16:16, with details from page 266 in Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount)

His signature weapon, the dual flail “Poison Pen,” confers additional poison damage when it strikes a target (02:37:59)

He really, really wants to date somebody and he’s not real choosy about who

[cerastes]

This is absolutely the Lack Of Reading Comprehension Website, but there's another issue I've noticed that I never see brought up, and it doesn't exist completely excised from lacking reading comprehension, but it's definitely it's own topic.

Tumblr's a Bad Faith Website as well. Like the above, it's not something exclusive to Tumblr, but it definitely defines it in my opinion. A lot of people want to be Right, and disagreements are seen by a bunch of people as something to "win" rather than something to "have". You'll have randos that frame their entire argument against you based on latching onto technicalities to try to prove why you are wrong rather than actually engage with your argument to try and propose something else or turn it around. As someone who was in a debate club during university, I call it "debate-poisoned people" who see arguments and conversations as a sport more than an interaction or, well, an actual conversation to be had, or in other words, that consider every argument as a debate to be had, when a lot of the time, it's not that deep fam, and also the other person never really agreed to play under your rules, because, here's the thing, a debate is a very specific kind of interaction. In a debate, bad faith interaction and trying to erase the very floor the other party is standing on is a valid tactic, it's part of the game. In a conversation or an argument, bad faith interaction and trying to erase the floor the other party is standing on gets you rightfully called a moron who cannot use inference or extrapolation to actually engage with the topic at hand. I had one such weirdo like a week or so ago, even, who used so many words to say absolutely nothing, that I thought I accidentally performed a digital necromantic ritual and had actually found myself face to face with the spirit of Jacques Lacan.

Even in more innocuous, non-hostile scenarios, this still applies: A lot of people are so, so eager to Be Correct On The Internet, that they'll reblog something with a correction or an opinion seemingly so hastily that they did not in fact read the entire post or comprehend it. This feeds into the lack of reading comprehension, but in my opinion, it does also have to do with seeing something that they believe they can correct, and immediately chomping at the bit to correct it without stopping for a second to ask themselves, "Did I read this right? Does this need correction?", and a lot of the time, it turns out, yes, you did not in fact need to correct it, you just had to read it a bit slower without letting your quickdraw hand get the best of you, cowboy. The way I consider this to be Bad Faith, even if it's not really hostile or confrontational, is the long-held belief that The Internet Is Inhabited By People Stupid Enough To Actually Think Or Say Something This Stupid.

I'll be real with you: Yeah, you've seen wild stories on the internet, plenty of them true, about how stupid people can be. No, they do not define the majority of people that aren't you. A wild, flabbergasting story about idiocy gets traction because it's funny and wild. We don't hear stories about how User A made a compelling argument that seemed stupid at first but then turned out that their rationale was incredibly sound as much, because that's not funny and wild and doesn't make us feel good about ourselves, because we'd never make such a stupid mistake. You aren't a sage wearing the floatie of wisdom in an ocean of idiots, no matter what your echo chamber and/or carefully curated internet space makes you think. You are not exempt from having to think about things, and you are not exempt from having to acknowledge people that know things you don't, people wiser than you are out there. This isn't "you are dumb as shit, actually", because I personally believe most people are smart, this is "you are being superficial and too eager to be Correct, which only works to your detriment in the long run and makes you a rather unlikable person".

It's as simple as engaging in good faith, even when you disagree or dislike the other party. Rip apart their arguments properly, instead of trying to disqualify them with cheap gotchas from the get go just because you want to own someone. Yes, sometimes people don't make sense, period, but that's absolutely not as common as people like to claim it happens. Inevitably, you'll run into someone that will actually call out your bullshit and there goes your entire argument. And in less intense settings, really, no one likes a pedant who really wants to be Correct on fucking Tumblr of all places.

[skaruresonic]

The common rebuttal to "this reads like fanfic (derogatory)" is "read better fanfic," which is true in certain cases, but on the other hand, there is some grain of truth to the idea that you can tell when someone's primary mode of literary analysis is fanfic instead of... well... literally anything else. It's okay to like or even prefer fanfic, but if you want to take your craft seriously you also need to read books, dude. Published books will teach you a lot of stuff fanfic doesn't, like proper dialogue formatting and how to introduce your reader to unfamiliar characters. Even the crappiest book (well, if it's not After or 50 Shades, which started off as fanfic to begin with lol) will have been subjected to some sort of editing process to ensure at least the appearance of proper grammar. That's not a guarantee with your average fanfic, and hence why you can't always take all your writing cues from fanfic because it's "so much better" than commercially published original fiction or whatever. Frankly, fic writers tend to peddle some absolutist and downright bad takes sometimes. "Said is dead" is a terrible rule, though not because said is invisible and a perfectly serviceable tag; that's just part of it. Dialogue tags are a garnish, not a main dish that can be swapped out for more ostentatious words. If your characters murmur and mutter instead of simply saying stuff, your readers are going to wonder why nobody speaks up. "'I'm explaining some very plot-important shit right now lol,' she elaborated," likewise, is a form of telling. Instead of letting the reader extrapolate that "she elaborated" via the contents of the dialogue itself, you're telling them what to think about it. And that's why it's distracting: your authorial hand is showing. Writing is an act of camouflage. You, as the writer, need to make your presence as invisible as possible so as to not intrude on the reader's suspension of disbelief. That's the driving reason behind "show, don't tell." And overall, everyone could stand to cut down on the frequency of their dialogue tags anyway. Not every exchange needs "he said" or "she whispered" attached as long as you establish who is doing the talking before the exchange. Some people will complain of confusion if you go on for too long without a dialogue tag, and that definitely is a risk, but at some point you also need to resist the temptation of holding the reader's hand. If they can't follow a conversation between two people, chances are they weren't meeting you halfway and paying that much attention in the first place. In fact, you don't even necessarily need action beats in between every piece of dialogue, as Tumblr writing advice posts will often suggest as a fix. Pruning things often cleans them up just fine.

Another fanfic-influenced trend in writing is, I guess, beige prose? A heavy focus on internal narration with lots of telling. It's not a style I can concretely describe, but every time I click on a non-mutual's writing, I feel like it always has, like. This "samey" voice to it. There's no real attempt to experiment and use unique or provocative language, or even imagery half the time. It's almost a dry recital of narration that doesn't leave much room for subtext. I see this style most often in fanfic where you can meander and wax poetic about how the characters feel without ever really getting around to the plot. And it's like. DO something.

Other tells that the author is taking their cues from fanfic mores rather than books: >>too much minute description of eyes, especially their color and their movement >>doesn't leave much room for subtext (has a character speak their every thought aloud instead of letting the reader infer what they're thinking via action or implication) >>too much stage action ("X looked at Y. Y moved to push their seat in. X took a deep breath and stepped toward Y with a determined look on his face. 'We need to talk,' he said.") >>tells instead of shows, even when the example is about showing instead of telling ("he clenched his teeth in agony" instead of just "he clenched his teeth") >>has improper dialogue tag formatting, especially with putting full stops where there should be commas ("'Lol and lmao.' she said" instead of "'Lol and lmao,' she said." This one drives me up a wall) >>uses too many dialogue tags >>"em dashes, semi-colons and commas, my beloved" - I get the appeal but full stops are your friends. Too much alternate punctuation makes your writing seem stilted and choppy. >>"he's all tousled brown hair and hard muscle" and "she's all smiles and long legs." This turn of phrase is so cliche, it drives me up a wall. Find less trite ways of describing your characters pls. >>"X released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding" >>every fucking Hot Guy ever is described as lean and sinewy >>sobbing. why is everyone sobbing. some restraint, pls >>Tumblr in general tends to think a truism counts as good writing if you make the most melodramatic statement possible (bonus: if it's written in a faux-archaic way), garnish it with a hint of egotism, and toss in allusions to the Christian God, afterlife, or death. ("I will stare God in the face and walk backwards into hell," "What is a god to a nonbeliever?") It's indicative of emotional immaturity imo, that every emotional truth need be expressed That Intensely in order to resonate with people. >>pushes the "Oh." moment as the pinnacle of Romantic Epiphany >>Therapy Speak dialogue. why is this emotionally constipated forty-something man who drinks himself stupid every morning to escape gruesome war memories speaking about his trauma like a clinical psychologist >>"this well-established kuudere should Show More Emoshun. I want him to break down crying on his love interest's shoulder from all his repressed trauma" - I am begging u. stop >>"why don't the characters just talk to each other?" "why can't we have healthy relationships?" I don't know, maybe because fiction is not supposed to be a model for reality and perfect communication makes for boring drama?

>>improperly using actions as dialogue tags ("'Looks like we're going hunting,' he grinned") >>why is everyone muttering and murmuring. speak up >>too many adverbs, especially "weakly" and "shakily." use stronger verbs. ("trembled" instead of "shook weakly") >>too many epithets ("the younger man" or "the brunette detective") >>too many filter words ("he felt," "she thought," "I remembered")

>>no, Tumblr, first-person POV is not the devil; you're just using way too many filter words (see above) and not enough sentence variation to make it flow well enough. First-person POV is an actually pretty good POV (not just for unreliable and self-aware narrators) if you know what you're doing and a lot of fun crafting an engaging character voice. Tumblr's hatred of first-person baffles me, and all I can think is you would only hate it if your only frame of reference was, like, My Immortal. Have you tried reading A Book? First-person POV is just another tool in your toolbox, and like all tools, it can be used properly or improperly. But it's not inherently a marker of bad writing. The disdain surrounding it strikes me as about as sensical as making fun of the concept of characters. Oh, your work has characters in it? Ew, I automatically click off a fic if it has characters in it. like what.

[corviiids]

hello ⭐star⭐ for that one post about fanfic director’s commentary, hope you’re having a lovely day

thank u so much!!! i hope ur having a wonderful day too :3 ok hmm let's go with death note this time. let's talk about they both die at the end

(obviously death cw and suicidal ideation cw as well and also it's long again.)

so this one is kind of an undignified wrestle with mortality and legacy. no big dramatic strides made in that struggle, because i think getting satisfying closure about the acceptance of your own death is sort of gauche. i prefer a running stream of consciousness where you kinda flop around in the ring and kind of come to terms with things but in a really damp and hollow and itchy way.

throughout this fic i tried to use L's narration to contrast the source of his panic with the source of light's. both of them are acting sort of out of character in the sense that neither's behaviour is really aligned with the way they act in canon, and the reason i did that is sort of as a response to their own impending deaths. nobody's going to act like themselves in that circumstance. i even have them say it outright:

“I’m not really a nihilist,” says Light. “I wonder what you’d think of me if you’d met me on a normal day.” ... [L:] “I’m not ordinarily apathetic, either, by the way.”

one very simple detail showing that contrast is this:

L closes the door without locking it. He picks a direction at random and starts walking.

...

And it’d turned out they were nearby, so now they’re at Light’s apartment. “I didn’t think I’d be back here today,” he tells L, sticking his key in the lock. “Sorry if it’s messy.”

basically, light is in flight and L is in freeze. L doesn't bother locking his door when he leaves the house in the morning, but light does. L knows/accepts/has resolved that he won't be returning home that day. part of light still refuses to accept that, even though he leaves the house with the intention of ending his life.

i don't think it's fair to say that L's acceptance is more mature or that he's more at peace with his fate. it's more like...

so, L approaches situations with the perspective of looking at what is. he's truth-oriented. he accepts the facts of a given matter and then uses them to extrapolate what comes next. that extrapolation is really key to his character so it honestly bugs me a lot when people try to say that L is a purely logical character. he's not! he's running on intuition like 99% of the time and a lot of his extrapolations are wild and not evidence-based at all, but the reason for that is that he has an incredibly strong intuition based on how effectively he processes information. so L understands based on the phone call that he's going to die today, and there's really no point arguing around that fact. however, he can't actually figure out what his next steps are, because there are no next steps. he's going to die today.

throughout the story he struggles immensely with the fact that there is a piece of information he can't attain using the information he already has: he doesn't know when he's going to die, only that it's going to happen before midnight, and so he is completely unable to plan what he should do next, because he can't see any course of action through to its conclusion:

Two. Three. Two. Three. Four. Three. Two. L shakes his head. Can’t count up. Can’t count down. The numbers keep changing, but he can’t find zero. “No,” he says. Deductive reasoning, by its nature, requires premises—in order to find a fact, you must have a fact to begin with. You cannot begin with a baseline of nothing. With no reference, there can be no inference. L keeps counting, but there is no zero, or rather, there is a zero and he doesn’t know where it is. The next second could be his last, or the next, or the next, and all he can know is that at some point the ticking will stop and there is no way to orient himself to it because that point keeps moving .

this drives L crazy. that uncertainty is being represented by this incessant ticking in L's head which won't fade. ok so have you ever used a metronome? say you're counting in 4/4, so the click would play like ONE two three four ONE two three four. the rhythm is steady, but there's one emphasised beat to orient you to where you are in the measure. or, say, a ticking clock, where you can glance at it to see where you are in the 60 seconds that make up a minute. you can count down to when the next minute begins. or a timer, where you can see it counting down to zero. in L's head, he knows the ticking is counting down to the moment of his death, but he doesn't know what it's counting down to because he can't see it. he doesn't know where zero is, there's no emphasis to orient him, and he doesn't know which second he's at in the minute. he could start doing something and then die in the next three seconds, and it would be abrupt and jarring and unsatisfying, like the feeling you get when you take a breath and get winded. so he's in freeze. L accepts that he's going to die today, but he doesn't know when, and the whole time he's thinking about all the things he's never gotten to experience in his life because he's always sort of taken the concept of existence for granted. but he can't figure out how to take steps to try and check things off, because he's never actually made that list. and why make it now? because he might not get to finish them, and that's really unsatisfying. and how do you prioritise when you know you're not going to get to the end of your list and your list is infinity items long? he can't plan. he can't move. he's stuck. he panics, frozen.

light on the other hand has always had a plan for his future, and he's just watched that timeline rapidly shrink and cut all the opportunities off that he'd always been counting down towards. suddenly everything he's done up until now feels like a huge waste, because it was all a run-up to something that now doesn't exist. and he can't bear the fact that the control he'd always taken care to maintain over his life has suddenly been wrested away from him. that's why he starts the story out trying to kill himself - at the very least, he can control the when and cut the fear off.

Light swallows his mouthful of tuna and says, “If I can’t control my fate, I can at least bring it about myself.” “Does controlling your fate matter to you?” “That’s a stupid question,” says Light. “If you asked me yesterday I’d have had a hundred thousand things to say that mattered more to me than choosing how I’d die. My options have just kind of narrowed today, that’s all.”

L's right, though - light never would have done it. light wants to live more than he ever realised. i think light's had this moment of looking down the tunnel (hehe) and staring down his own impending death and realised he's not finished yet, but that's been taken out of his hands. he's realised that the mark he's left on the world has been so small and insignificant, and that if he dies now, that'll be all that's left of him. he's not willing to accept that. but that's the way things are. so he's in flight: run towards his own death so at least he can control the pace at which he dies? try to outrun the inevitable? try to speedrun a meaningful life to see if he can make some kind of mark before he stops existing for good?

“I don't know what we're walking to,” says Light. “I feel like I'm walking closer to my—to my own—” “We can stop.” “That just means it'll happen here instead. I don't want to die here, either.” “Where do you want to die?” “I don't,” Light says. His face crumples. “I just don’t. I'm not ready to be done.”

this is my favourite part of the fic tbh. it's based on a nightmare i had once that ended up changing my entire worldview. wahoo!

not to be a wanker but to an extent this is kind of what everyone's doing, technically, walking towards what will inevitably be your death, since time only moves in one direction and all that. but unlike everyone in the real world, light can see it. he wants to walk in the other direction, but it's all around him. he can see it growing closer the more he keeps moving, and all he wants to do is stop.

“What do I say?” Light asks desperately. “Hi, Dad. Hi, Mum.” Break. “Sorry I'll never give you grandchildren. Sorry I didn't get to graduate. Sorry you'll have to bury my dreams with me. Sorry for nineteen years that came to nothing in the end. It came to nothing.”

re: light refusing to speak to his family: i think he explains himself in the fic enough, but there's also another level where i think talking to his family about it means he'd have to formulate this fact into words which is difficult when he's not really accepted it himself, and on top of that, he would need to carry his family's grief and he's just not ready to do that. there's like a weird thing about talking to people who are already grieving you. i always felt really weird about that when talking to [friends/relations] who were terminally ill. light's relationship with his mother is kind of unexplored in canon but i wanted to go into it i think because your mother is someone who holds a unique spot in your life, i think, assuming you have a good relationship with her, and there is that reported phenomenon where people who are about to die tend to call out for their mothers. i guess this might be controversial but i think it's textually supported that light really cares about his family. i dont think light is ready to look at them and see them looking at him like he's someone who's already gone, and see all the things he never got to do with/for them. i honestly dont think hed survive it

ultimately it was really important to me that light died for no reason and that he didn't really have any material impact on anything. he dies trying to save a child, but someone else saves the kid first. light didn't have to take action at all. but of course, he did

As L stares, reaching hands scoop the toddler off the street from the other side.

i think in a sense it's up to personal opinion whether light had an impact or whether his friendship with L mattered at all before he died. after all, L died like an hour later, and it's not like he had anyone to pass those memories on to. he didn't even know light's surname. the memories of their last day together only exist with each other, and now they're both gone, so did it really matter? what does it mean to matter anyway? do you have to leave a legacy? is it enough that light managed to be L's only friend in the hours before L stopped existing? probably?

It's dark now. Properly dark. It's a new moon tonight, and though the stars do their best, there's little that can cut through the blackness in its absence.

...

L stares up at the moonless sky.

...

It might have been nice to die with the moon.

ofc light's name is written with the kanji for moon. just a silly joke lol.

L's death is something that's more likely to happen when you're alone, by the way. he gets mugged because he's an easy target sitting alone on a park floor. too bad he didn't have more friends and his only friend is dead.

also, the fact that he's a detective who gets murdered in a random act of crime was sort of another nod to the futility of the whole thing that light struggles with in canon. like, work your ass off, solve crime after crime, bring people to justice, but it never ends. crime continues. so is there a point? (yes, obviously.) but that's just a return to the struggle for legacy and meaning, where it's hard not to wonder whether the thing you're doing matters if it's not permanent / if you didn't solve something for good / if you didn't leave a mark that will never fade. i dunno. i think L did enough good in his lifetime. it wasn't enough to save him, but everyone dies eventually, so maybe it doesn't really matter?

i didn't want to give either of them the dignity of a full final thought. light definitely doesn't realise what's happening in the moment before he dies because he didn't see the truck, so i think he didn't have a chance to formulate one.

L watches a look of relief cross Light's face in the split second before the truck horn blares.

L of course gets cut off mid-sentence, just like he'd implicitly feared he might - trying to check things off the list, tie things off, before he's done:

What might a good final thought be? A final sight? He wonders if he could possibly find a star before

hopefully if you read the fic you got something out of it! it is, i think, intentionally pretty hollow and futile feeling, but not in a way that's supposed to make you feel hopeless or nihilistic. well, i hope not. i think there's something really cathartic that comes with the kind of closure you get specifically from accepting that sometimes there's no closure. that's how i felt writing it, so hopefully reading it is something similar. i dunno!

[steelbluehome]

Warning!

Extremely negative take on The Thunderbolts* footage below.

Dead Dove. Do not eat!

Hi sweeties! Just in case you thought you would just peek down here and maybe bring some optimism to the gremlins in cellar, thank you, sweet summer child, but you really should go back up to the rest of the internet where you have lots of beautiful people to play with. Thanks anyway! Bye!

Okay.

First things first, this had to happen on Sebastian's fucking birthday?!?!?!?

I have seen the Thunderbolts* footage. 5 times. Pausing at specific moments.

And, Bucky is not the in the scene where they "all" get trapped in the room, nor in the scene where they are "all" in a vehicle and Red Guardian is driving.

I don't blame the people who described the footage previously. They cannot be expected to look for Bucky like a dying person searches for a drop of water in the vast desert. That is my job.

Nevertheless, this is our first glimpse of Thunderbolts (sick of the fucking asterisk) and there is barely any Bucky in it. So what the fuck am I even waiting for?

I'm sorry if I inferred incorrectly that Thunderbolts would be Bucky's movie, since he is the character that has been in the MCU the longest and most consistently of all the characters in the movie, but what the fuck was I supposed to think?

I'm sorry if I incorrectly assumed from reports that Bucky would be the "leader" of the Thunderbolts, that this would be his time to shine.

And ex-fucking-cuse me if I extrapolated incorrectly that the reason Marvel split up the amazing team of Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes was to give them each their own movie, therefore since Sam is absolutely the lead character in Cap4, Bucky would be the lead character in Thunderbolts!

But fuck me, Marvel, what the fuck are you doing?

Yes, looking back, I see that most MCU movies have the superhero name of the lead in the title. Again, I thought they did not do that because Bucky is no longer the Winter Soldier, as emphasized in TFATWS, and has no other code name, and that Bucky Barnes and the Thunderbolts would sounds like a bad name for a band. I thought it would at least be like the Avengers where he would have an equal part.

As far as Sebastian Stan, I think this is fucking disrespectful! He had to clear his schedule for this movie anyway, they could at least give him something to do!

Now, yes, maybe there is more of Bucky in the movie. Maybe these scenes are mostly from the beginning, and Bucky comes into it more in the middle and the end. Well he'd fucking better!

I will watch the next teasers and trailers, and if I see more of Bucky, I will be thrilled and very pleased.

But what is obvious to me is that they have actually made a movie about Yelena Belova, and for some reason stuck Bucky in there as a supporting character. (Or less?)

If I turn out to be wrong I will happily stand corrected.

But whenever this footage is officially released I intend to flood the internet with #Where'sBucky? And I hope anyone who feels the same, will do the same.

Thanks for listening to me rant. If you have a rant that agrees with mine, please add it. If you have read this far and disagree with me as far as how large a part Bucky will have in the movie, please put that in the tags.

Thunderbolts footage more centered

Bit bigger, maybe?

[tozettastone]

Hm, let me reword; are there characters from the series you love to write but have a comparatively different level of interest in how they're actually portrayed in the source material? I.e. the akatuski who were both introduced and killed early tend to be more of an echo of a character than something that reads as a person

Oh yeah, I see! Thank you for rephrasing this. Okay.

Well, characters like Kakuzu and Hidan (and actually a lot of the cast) are very flat¹ characters in canon. They are also very often flat characters in fanfiction, even when they are major characters — Kakuzu is the money guy, Hidan is the religion weirdo (often referred to as "the miser" and "the zealot," haha) and rarely is this expanded upon.

I write a bit about characters who are like this, and one of the things I like about it is the process of extrapolating a rounder character from the few characteristics of a one-dimensional villain, without just losing all of their villainy. They should still be bad guys. I like to write bad guys.

But, it's also hard for a character to be only a terrible horrible villain when you think a bit more about what they're like in their interpersonal relationships, what they care about, what their preferences are, and just... in regular situations. That's why my Kakuzu and Hidan tags on this blog (...and my kakuhida and hidakaku tags, too, which are interchangeable but somehow never consistent) are full of random comments about this kind of characterisation exercise.

I usually do this extrapolation by looking at characters' attitudes and behaviours in canon, inferring their motives, and then thinking about how those motives might be expanded on so they can be expressed in the broader setting! I have mixed success — sometimes people don't like my characterisation and, much more importantly, sometimes I look back on my characterisation and don't like it either (as one of my recent Deidara posts attests 💀).

In that vein, sometimes I do make villain characters like these seem a lot nicer than they are in canon, just by virtue of writing scenes where they, like, have to have a normal conversation...? But if you're trying to take a flat canon character and reverse engineer it into a rounder one, you have to kinda accept that they will be less, like, unalloyed one-note violence and evil, I guess. Like, at some point they are just going to have to eat lunch without having a little massacre first.

So... That's the comments I have about that process.

I think there are a lot of characters like this in Naruto because a lot of the broad cast can have pretty flat characters. I feel this way about everyone from Orochimaru to Tobirama to Hidan, hahaha. So I wouldn't necessarily single anyone out. I guess the least flat characters I write about would include characters like Sakura, who exhibit a more complex mix of personality traits, motives, desires, preferences, feelings, etc., in canon.

---

One footnote:

1. A quick comment on flatness vs roundness, for anyone who hasn't heard those terms used like this before. Characters, settings, "plot" events, and so on, are all elements of a story. A character is the element that delivers the impression of a "person" to the reader/viewer. They are usually successful to a greater or lesser degree.

One way of thinking about characters is that they can fall on a spectrum between "flat" and "round." When one calls a character "flat," it means that they don't have the depth of personality that makes them very good at being a "person." They are usually one-note and simple. "Round," characters, by contrast, are usually a bit deeper. They usually have complex motives and desires and give a more complete impression of personhood to the audience.

This doesn't mean flat characters are bad characters, it just means that they serve a purpose that doesn't require lingering over the complex mix of characteristics that depicting personhood might otherwise require.

[nadekofannumber1]

I wonder how much the audience of each arc’s story (an implicit existence) affects how each story is told in monogatari. Mostly in regards to Koyomi as he’s the character who tends to tell these stories to specific people the most.

Ougi is a not insignificant recipient of Araragi’s second season and owari stories: mayoi jiangshi, shinobu time, shinobu mail, and yotsugi doll. Whilst being present for other arcs in other ways in a consistent manner. Though you could take Ougi formula as a more direct extrapolation of stories and traumas from Koyomi, just in arc form.

Regardless, while it’s hard to pick an audience for owari 1 or owari 3, but I could try and infer that zokuowari is told to senjougahara as it could line up with how monster season is told to her (especially with some internal monologue bits that would imply the recipient knows about zokuowari, like araragi making a comment about how “he’ll never cross dress again” in the novel version of shinobumonogatari, we all know how that went).

But also one could take the odd almost fanservicey moments directed at araragi in monster being for hitagi, like how at times Koyomi internally thinks about the kink sex he has with his GF occasionally when he’s talking with some women.

Of course some of this narration would be for himself, like kizu in most circumstances. Koyomimonogatari is a recount of information before Koyomi dies, so the audience while occasionally for another (like meme), is mainly himself as he dies.

After thinking a bit more on it I’d say that maybe tsubasa family and owari 1’s audience is Koyomi in the way Ougi exists. What I mean is that the narration of both is excessively negative in a self reflective manner, and Koyomi lying in the narrative is also much easier to see than usual as it’s pointed out directly. Though I could see an argument for Shinobu being the audience as a sort of mutuality of the story told by kizu. Or of course scroll to the idea at the end of the earlier Ougi section.

It’s hard to say who the audience of bake and nise are, if I gave a guess it could be senjougahara (as someone actively being told this info while Koyomi and her have study sessions), shinobu (in post as a form of personal recollection), or hanekawa (he talks to hanekawa a lot in bake, enough to get tsubasa cat to happen, however decides to do it less by nise, Koyomi likely told Hanekawa about the events of tsubasa cat after all so you could just say that hanekawa’s the blanket recipient of bakemono’s story).

I personally view musibimono as another one of those reflective stories, but it’s possible that after meeting up with Hitagi he told her after the engagement.

Ikusamono is of course a story told to Koyomi’s bosses.

Though Araragi is the master of his own actions I think it’s interesting some of Koyomi’s most controversial novels are told specifically to Ougi, I’d need to certainly read the novel versions more to see how I can extrapolate this info cohesively, if there’s something to extrapolate at all. Koyomi isn’t a good person obviously and literally does several questionable things but there’s a lot of white noise surrounding some discussion as some see every action he takes in said arcs as done with absolutely zero irony. This is legit where half of all monogatari discourse lies. People even try to pin intents on the guy that aren’t even his doing or his narrative intent, even scenes that don’t physically happen are treated as physical. This isn’t even a defense of why the character is secretly a good person I just think that people should hate Koyomi for what he’s actually done.

However because of the way the narrative is structured, it’s hard to extrapolate reality. I just think that a story told to Ougi by Koyomi, while likely fairly honest, would probably make him look bad. I say this especially with how owari 1 is especially reflective on Koyomi’s failures in the story.

I feel like I’ve lost the plot a bit but I’d love feedback about this idea or at least some discussion.

[lord-squiggletits]

On my Pharma apologism bullshit again

So like, I've made posts in the past about how Pharma's trauma at the hands of Tarn/the DJD and his refusal to call for help makes sense given what we later learned about Tarn/the DJD's capabilities for isolating and brutally murdering targets. Basically, I said that it makes sense that Pharma is largely treated as a villain by the narrative because the present-day of the story takes place entirely during Pharma's madness/villain arc and that's the only function he has in the story: as a super tertiary villain that's not meant to be Super Deep. Since a lot of Pharma's character is stuff that you can only infer via retroactive lore scattered throughout future series, and the narrative never brings it up so you have to put the lore together yourself, it makes sense that Pharma's first/present-day characterization as a "mad doctor" is how he's primarily remembered.

But honestly, I still have to call bullshit on Ratchet immediately assuming Pharma was evil and working for the DJD. You don't have to sympathize/apologize for Pharma based on later lore that only we as the reader are subject to; you can find signs of it literally throughout MTMTE 5-6, the same issues that introduce Pharma and treat him as if he's simply a mad doctor/evil Autobot.

We establish that the facility of Delphi is on "the edges of DJD territory"

As characters introduce more details about the DJD, we find out a lot of "fun" facts about them:

They specialize in "extreme punishment" aka torture, as wee see a mech who looks like they've been completely stripped of armor and literally has their guts hanging out

They punish Decepticons who defect or turn traitor

Just witnessing the aftermath of what they do is enough to traumatize people (the Swerve line is played as a joke of how he was upset he couldn't talk, but the root cause of him not being able to talk was being traumatized by seeing the DJD's work)

Multiple Decepticons, including Drift who just earlier in MTMTE 5, tried to play off his fear of the DJD, say that they would rather be killed or euthanized than face the DJD

And, most importantly in regards to Pharma... the DJD were literally going to kill everyone at Delphi and destroy the whole facility if Pharma didn't comply with Tarn's demands.

And also: Delphi is harboring an ex-Decepticon who defected to the Autobots, aka one of the very people who the DJD are employed to track down and kill in the most gruesome of ways.

So in other words, not only would the DJD have wanted to kill everyone at Delphi simply for being Autobots, it also stands to reason that they would have inevitably come to Delphi at some point in time because they would've come for Ambulon and, presumably, Pharma's deal with Tarn was the only thing keeping Ambulon safe (as we can extrapolate since his t-cog deal was keeping everyone at Delphi safe).

Though of course, the characters in the story (I'll focus on Ratchet for now) aren't privy to all of this. But I still find it rather callous of Ratchet to react the way he does

Considering that before this conversation, he already knew the points mentioned above (including having the personal experience of Decepticons/Drift telling him they'd rather die than meet the DJD)

And what rubs salt in the wound is that later on Ratchet acknowledges that

For most of his life, Pharma was a fantastic doctor.

Later on in certain flashbacks we also find out that Pharma and Ratchet worked together at the DMF before the war even started and continued to work with each other throughout the war (such as when they saw all the dead Wreckers cadets), dating their friendship as having lasted at least 4 million years long. So basically, Ratchet has an intimate knowledge of Pharma from them being friends virtually their entire lives.

Then Ratchet sees Pharma go from "a fantastic doctor" to a raving lunatic killing his patients and just....... doesn't notice anything amiss with this? The ONE PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE who was closer to Pharma than anyone else just didn't question this sudden, radical change in Pharma's demeanor? Even after knowing about the DJD being on Messatine? Even after being personally told that people would rather die than face the DJD? And Ratchet's first reaction to the whole situation is to say angrily to Pharma "You harvested organs on behalf of the DJD?!" as if it was some sort of choice Pharma did willingly.

It's not so much Ratchet being mad about Pharma killing people that gets to me, it's the aspect of how Ratchet was Pharma's best friend for 4+ million years, used to be inseparable from him at one point, and should therefore have known Pharma well enough to understand when he was acting out of character, both in regards to betraying his medical ethics and in regards to behaving erratically and acting stark raving mad.

Like really, this is just a personal thing, but as someone who HAS a best friend that I've been friends with for almost half my life at this point (and soon we'll have been friends for longer time than we didn't know each other), I can't fathom treating her the way Ratchet treated Pharma here. Anger and a feeling of betrayal, sure, but assuming the absolute worst of Pharma and not giving a single lick of care towards the circumstances all pointing flaming arrows to a sign that says "PHARMA WENT INSANE FROM BEING BLACKMAILED BY THE DJD"? That's just low, man.

TLDR: I thought that the sympathetic Pharma lore wrt his fear of/paranoia about the DJD was only established retrospectively, but it turns out the signs of Pharma being forced/driven mad by the DJD were there literally from the start of the Delphi arc and Ratchet just didn't give a shit about it I guess.

[homebody-nobody]

Ditto on needing your fics like I need air! I am vibrating with excitement about the next chapter of home and your internal monologue colab sounds freaking amazing too! The understanding you have of these characters is so great and you do them justice every single time! The fact that you write some of the best smut I’ve ever read anywhere, fanfiction or otherwise is just a cherry on top of a delicious cake that’s your writing!

Y'all got me BLUSHIN and shit!!!

thank you so much for the kind words, nonnie <3. The thing I love the most about outer banks is that they listened to their fans regarding characterization. We got infinitesimal shreds from the first season and we were like 'okay thank you, here's who these people are.' and the writers said 'Dope! we think so too!'

So many of the issues I've had with past fandoms (*cough cough the 100 cough*) involved the writers(showrunner) literally hating the fanbase and spending time actively undermining characterization and motivations the fans latched onto. The thing is, it's not just fanon -- we extrapolate from what we are shown, inferring depth from provided info. The Outer Banks team recognizes that the fans are the ones that spend the most time with the characters, and everything we saw in season 3 made so much sense. I appreciate you saying I understand them so, so deeply, because the writers agreed, too! I was so happy that we got so much of what we've already written for jiara -- JJ falling first/loving her for a long time, him pushing her away due to self-hatred/insecurity, Kiara *demanding* that he fight for them, Kiara being his safe haven, Kiara being assertive and persistent in showing up for him. It was all so excellent because we were cheering 'YES YES WE THOUGHT SO TOO!!' and it was v v beautiful to witness and be a part of.

Also, thank u, thank u very much (re the smut comment lol). I've read a *lot* of smut, fanfiction AND otherwise, and I found that fanfiction was more specific with details/realistic situations, but often lacked the depth of emotional connection you get from romance novels, so I do my best to combine the two. I so very much appreciate you recognizing the work that goes into all the smut I write!!

Anyway, sorry for writing so much, I just LOVE this show and LOVE writing/talking about it and interacting with fellow fans!! I appreciate you so much, nonnie, and all your kind, wonderful words <3

[sorcererslittledragon]

The silly weaknesses vampires have arent arbitrary but based on some fairly significant underlying logic. Now, a lot of this hasnt really been well explored in modern vampire media, and it also ignores a truly massive textual body of lore, primarily drawing from Bram Stoker's Dracula. So lets examine some of that here and figure out how modern day changes some things.

Note. There are many versions of vampire myths across the planet. I am most familiar with the european variants and while i am not a true expert. I am the next best thing. Autistic with a special interest in vampires.

Vampires have no reflection. Historically this is because mirrors were often made of silver which was considered a "pure" metal (also, something to do with that purity interacting with the soulless nature of vampires but ill get into that later), as such we can infer that (at least) one of three possibilities is true.

First. That the "purity" being refered to is theological. This is supported by vampires being unable to enter hallowed ground and their aversion to crucifixes.

Second. That the "purity" being refered to is chemical. There isn't anywhere near as much support for this (i cant actually recall any), but it does have some very fun implications that i'll get to later.

Third. Both are true.

Now for where the fun begins.

If it is theological purity then all religious centers, cemetaries, and ritual spaces innately keep them out. So to will religious and ritual objects. Icons, holy symbols, consecrated tools. Of significance is that there are way more religions than just christianity so we can absolutely explore the imteractions there.

Many pagan beliefs holds that not only are their shrines holy places, many natural locations are held as equally holy. How will your vampires cope with seemingly innocuous locations being effectively hallow. Do they still keep them out? Or do your vampires simply avoid such places out of fear or to avoid harm? Do they keep a mental catalogue of all such sites to ensure they dont accidentally destroy themselves? Or do they keep to cities in an effort to avoid having to worry about it?

Judaism will probably some very fascinating interactions here. Now. Let me preface that i am not Jewish and as such i cannot speak in depth here. Jewblr, please pipe in here with what you know would be relevant. I really want to hear from you.

Theres also a lot of fun to be had with christian theology. Did you know that theologically speaking, in an emergency, any christian can perform the rite of consecration (for rpg nerds this is the spell Bless)? This is strongly advised not to do even in an emergency, but i think vampires would constitute being granted a dispensation for having done that. So in otherwords you can turn any object into a vampire repellant or bane if you are christian.

Bear in mind that according to lore it is the strength of the faith in such things that grant them this power so a particularly faithful person will be able to use these to incredible effect, possibly allowing even the simple presentation of a holy symbol to destory one. While a sufficiently faithless individual might theoretically strip such things of that power with their mere presence. Have fun with that.

If it is chemical purity? Well to start. They shouldnt be visible via any sort of tech. Our ability to chemically purify matter so greatly outstrips that of the pre-industrial world that i doubt there is a single material we do not have the ability to purify entire orders of magnitudes above what we were able to do previously. This means that vampires should be completely invisible to tech.

Anyway im tired now. Thank you so much ADHD (sarcasm). Thats all food for thought. Please, explore the historic roots of vampirism across the globe and extrapolate how those interact with modern society. Its fun and an excellent exercise in critical reading and critical thinking skills.

Wouldn't it be entirely possible, even likely, that with all the silly weaknesses vampires and stuff were supposed to have, they'd also turn out to be weak to any number of things that have only been invented more recently? Like who's to say vampires aren't also repelled by the smell of play-doh or driven insane by MIDI music? We've invented so much shit in just the last century there'd be NO predicting this. For all we know they burn to ash if they look at Luigi.

[blackteacreates]

The hardest thing I have been struggling with these past few days, and I’m yapping about here because my therapist ghosted me this week.

I don’t know how to process the fact that my mother doesn’t seem to genuinely hear anything I say or be self aware in any capacity.

It’s always been tricky for me because she’s not really a narcissistic parent. She’s not a parent who refuses to apologize or even actively guilt trips. But she is an incredibly emotionally immature parent. And probably neuro divergent but reluctant to ever acknowledge or cope in any healthy way.

She self sacrifices and doesn’t exactly guilt me for it. She says a lot of the “right” things but her actions don’t add up. She hates herself and can’t even recognize it and thus will be in denial about the reality of that self hatred in a way that makes repair impossible.

But at the end of the day, she still can’t see me. She still can’t actually grasp the impact of her behavior, the way she doesn’t see me. The way she lashes out and parentifies me. She cannot understand cause and effect. Even if she can understand how behavior in the past has deeply hurt me and apologizes it’s like she cannot take that knowledge extrapolate and infer how that presents today.

It’s like each incident of behavior is a new one. And she will fully have gaps in memory. At times I will ask her what did I just say, and not only will she not remember, say the wrong thing, but then she will deny that it happened. She will forget whole conversations and then act like it’s such a big deal to ask her to remember “every little detail”.

And when I bring up to her the aspect that oh she’s a pessimistic person, she complains all the time, and how her negative skew of things makes her completely oblivious to any progress I make or any thing that I contribute she’s all surprise Pikachu face.

But she never asks why is there discrepancy between my self perception and how I am read in the world. She never asks questions about herself. And you gotta fight her to get her to recognize. If she acknowledges shes co-dependent after years of telling her and giving her resources she never checks out. And I mention it later she’ll be like “you think I’m still codependent?” As a genuine question.

LIKE GIRL. AT WHAT POINT DID YOU DO THE WORK TO FIX IT OR LEARN ABOUT IT. Like what was your thought process to get from point A to B. And it’s like she HAS no thought process. She lives in a world of magical thinking 24/7 and any attempt to bring it ups results in a shame shutdown where she’ll show remorse. And she doesn’t say it aloud unless backed in a corner but she will internalize it as “wow I’m fucked up”.

Then it’s like none of that happens it gets suppressed until the next incident. And I just…I can’t. She will never understand how much heartbreak exists in keeping trying over and over to meet her where she’s at, and not only to go unrecognized, but be actively fought on it, then blamed or treated like I’m rude and uncaring when I’m burnt out. To be treated like I’m asking for too much.

When I have to put up more boundaries etc. she acts like she’s doing it for me. Like no bitch I’m protecting myself from you because you choose ignorance over and over again. And she has too much pride and self preservation I guess to admit her limitations. The denial about her own limitations coupled with the chronic lack of action means heartbreak over and over.

And her inability to connect the dots means she will never see conflict as a continuation or consequence of prolonged behavior. She will never internalize it in a constructive way. If you bring anything up you just demotivate her and trigger the shut down and forget. If you don’t say anything you’re either betraying yourself or getting blamed.

And it hurts. It fucking hurts. Because I don’t know how to stop trying to fix things. I don’t know how to not be impacted by her comments and behavior. I don’t know how to not be bothered when I’m angry and want nothing to do with her. I can get so angry even her presence makes me want to break something.

And to her it’s out of nowhere, for no reason. It’s “I don’t treat you like that” you’re right you don’t because you just do the silent kind of disrespect. You do the neglectful kind of disrespect. The one that silently kills. And I feel crazy or like an abuser when I want to say something like: every problem you have between us is your fault before it is mine.

Because it’s like you can’t be nuanced with her. Any form of nuance is a way for her to delude herself into thinking something doesn’t apply to her. Because it’s like some way or another it is her fault. That the reason I am snappy, don’t want to hear her run her mouth, am short with her etc. is because she has repeatedly refused to get help. That she has continued to break my heart over and over. That she has continued to neglect me. And blame me. Continued to take me for granted and the invisible emotional labor I put into keeping us even functional while also trying to heal while also trying to move forward in my life.

And when I do try to be nicer because my inner child is sad and misses their mom, she takes that to mean everything is okay. She has no concern for how heart breaking it is to have to cut that part of yourself off. To guard it. She only thinks about how that cold behavior hurts her. She so self involved even if she’s outwardly selfless to a fault. And she will never see how much pain that causes.

I don’t know how to untangle from that. How do I accept help or kindness from her that I may need to survive and not pull myself into this dynamic. I hate it so much. I hate that she will never see me. And I hate getting nuggets of hope. I hate broken promises. I hate that the most.

Maybe I’m jaded but it feels so selfish to keep making broken promises because all it does is soothe her shame. I don’t care how genuine she may be in the moment. It’s its own twisted kind of cruelty. Theres a unique (not worse) kind of pain in harm done from neglect and lack of thought.

Sometimes a part of me may think I almost wish you’d intentionally hurt me. At least I could feel justified in my anger. It’s the back and forth. The lack of thought. The lack of action coupled with the self hate she exhibited but refuses to see. What am I supposed to do with that. How am I supposed to react to that. I *wish* she’d grow a back bone. I wish she’d take her own healing seriously. Because she puts that responsibility on me.

I’m so angry and bitter. And it’s destroying my life. This anger and bitterness is poisoning me from the inside. I don’t even want to feel justified in it anymore I just want it to be done.

[pazodetrasalba]

ἰδέα

Dear Caroline:

This was very illuminating, but as you say, not that surprising. My naive Venn Diagram for EA sees it as the intersection of Behavioral Economics and Utilitarian Philosophy (alternatively, it could also be portrayed as the friendly, charity-focused front of the Rationalist movement), so your economics background would clearly predispose you to it at least partially. Beyond that, I get the feel that Consequentialism is the philosophy of choice amongst economists: it goes well with a positive evaluation of capitalism, expected value calculations and 'the most good for the biggest number'.

More intriguing is what you say about 'taking ideas seriously', which requires a certain type of mentality - very intellectual, very logical, a bit self-centered, and not too pragmatic or accommodating. I suspected, probably wrongly and extrapolating badly from myself, that teenagers would go along this a lot, the context being them still retaining black-and-white mind frames while having lost their religious beliefs. It definitely did with me, and the danger here is that any reasonably good and plausible memeplex that you pick up has the power to latch on to you like barnacles to a rock; you are very unlikely to go and read other visions and counterarguments, and it will take you ages to purge yourself of dogmatic beliefs.

But by taking ideas seriously I think you mean not only questions of belief and acting out, but of exploring the logical consequences and paths they lead to. I see this making a lot of sentence when you're talking of logic and mathematics, where you can follow the thread of theorems derived from the axioms, and check for contradiction or unlikeable results. I kind of don't see it working that well in real life, though, because of the massive degree of uncertainty, and the way in which a lot of what you'd call Bayesian inference just feels like cooking up bs numbers without sufficient evidence, or even the perspective of having it. The AI risks debate has flared up quite a lot since you wrote this post. I will be reading a couple of books on the topic next year, but it is difficult not to feel two vibes about it which lead to -in cases of doubt- to some degree of flippancy:

AGI doom scenarios look such a distillation of sci-fi uber-nerd cultish, dystopian fantasies that it feels difficult to even start to take them seriously

Then again, lots of people I consider really smart do take them seriously, including some that seem to have started from the opposite side of the fence. But heck, they can all still be nerd-biased one kind or another. And it is all ultimately a castle built on speculations and what ifs.

Quote:

To take ideas seriously means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true.

Ayn Rand

[medicinemane]

I mean lets be honest here, there's plenty of times when you look at a study and the people conducting it inferred things that weren't actually shown (and this isn't meant as an anti science stance, this is meant as a "scientists are human" point of view)

There was this study where this guy showed that when people think there's spirit activity a certain part of the brain is being stimulated, and he goes "I've proven their aren't ghosts"

And it's like... what? You've proven that a part of the brain is responsible for making people feel like there's ghosts nearby. That's it, that's all you've proven. Anything you do with that information is just speculation. You really should understand that

You might have found our ghost detecting part of the brain, or you might have figured out that it's all electromagnetic stimulation making people think there's ghosts... but we need further testing to actually say anything

I actually really love that study, purely cause it gives me the perfect example. You don't just get to extrapolate and call it a fact. You can certainly say "I think this points to this", but you can't say it with the same weight as what you actually showed in your study

And I mean... how often are the studies themselves flawed? You know what I mean?

Once again, this isn't to be anti science, it's to say that researchers aren't divine authorities, they're people just like any of us, and they can make all kinds of assumptions or mistakes, and that's not even touching the situations where they're being paid by corn syrup manufactures to research corn syrup (and I wonder if that would have an impact)

You have a lot of people deciding all science that disagrees with them is fake, and I don't mean to be promoting that thinking. It's just how many times do we hear how "eggs are terrible for you" only to find out oh... they're actually not

It's hard, because I more mean "don't take everything as fact just cause there's a study", and "let's maybe understand the whole vaccines cause autism was super debunked as soon as it came out"... but people will believe what they want to believe regardless, and what I'm saying very much can be used to support the idea that actually vaccines do cause autism and it's all the other science that was wrong

We can't verify everything for ourselves, we require placing a degree of trust in others... it just comes down to who we choose to trust and why I suppose

Though I think I've gotten off topic, since my real point was sometimes scientists are very silly people who infer things that aren't actually shown. They skip the step of actually proving it, and jump right to knowing it's a fact

Which really we all do, which I suppose is kind of the point of all this

[e1ectrostatic]

30 Day Fictionkin Challenge - Day 8

Q: Are you similar to your fictotype in personality? How so?

A: Possibly.

Beyond a small list of their likes and dislikes + any possible personality traits written in their backstory introductions, my source doesn’t paint a clear-cut or reliable picture of characters’ personalities. For the large part, it requires inference and extrapolation based on the things they do and the events that take place in the stories they’re involved in. So, a lot of how characters are perceived and portrayed is based on fan interpretation.

Am I close in personality to the popular fan interpretation of my fictotype? No, not really at all. I’m a lot more reserved and quieter. Maybe I am a bit goofy sometimes, but overall I think I’m a lot more underwhelming or boring in personality than the fictional concept the fanbase engages with. That’s not what this question is about though, so I won’t get too into it right now.

Am I close in personality to how I interpret my own fictotype? Well...yeah, but I take it with a grain of salt because I’m not immune to bias. Still, I always feel really satisfied when hunches and interpretations I have turn out to be true (or alluded towards being true). Anyway I’m going to actually answer the question now.

Going off of my interpretation, I think overall we’re pretty similar. For one, I’m very persistent. I have more hubris than is probably healthy and sincerely believe I can do or learn literally anything as long as I set my mind to it. Because of this, I’m prone to biting off more than I can chew.

I also love learning and like to think I learn fast if I’m motivated. When something interests me or when I get caught up in something I’m working on, I tend to get obsessive and let it consume me until I’m done. It really helps me get stuff done, but also makes me forget anything else exists, including myself.

I’m an idealist. When I think about the world, a big part of it is thinking about what I want the world to be like. This makes me prone to seeing things through rose-tinted glasses and getting too invested in what “ought to be”, even if it’s unrealistic.

There’s more, but those are the first things off the top of my head. I don’t want to write a whole essay, and don’t want to get into traits that have baggage attached LMFAO so I’ll leave it there for now. But this is fun to think about, so I might write more about it in the future.

[revasserium]

rain, I’m absolutely obsessed with your writing. do you have any more writing tips or tricks, to make a short story like your prompts flow easily? and some dialogue advice would be amazing too ? 💕

hi sweetums! i actually just created a writing advice tag ! so feel free to browse through that if you’d like too! 

but in terms of specifically short stories, i think it’s important to keep in mind that you don’t have to give the readers everything. have a little faith that they’ll understand the subtext and nuance. that’s why i like almost doing tiny little snippets and skipping around in time, because you can afford to do that. you have a vaguely limited amount of space (depending on what you consider to be long, like for me, anything over 1k words is like LONG LOL) to tell a small story. or a big story. and i like both! 

i think the beauty of short stories is that you can pick totally mundane moments, but it’s those moments that make the overall story amazing. i like to think of short stories as like.... macrophotography. you get to focus in on one thing, super super focused on it, or a series of tiny little things, that don’t necessarily make a full picture, but give enough bits of it that the reader can imagine what the full picture might look like. and it’s that that makes it so much fun, because you’re not giving them the full story, the imagined parts will always be a little different. 

another little trick i like is to think of short stories as a circle. you start with a concept, and you end on the same concept, in essence coming back to it, but only after you’ve expanded upon it.  

so, just to give an example of how i do this. in my recent tsukki “hate” fic, i started with the “i hate you” line. and i know i want to come back to this by the end of the fic. idk how, yet, but i know that i always want to come back to something. 

now you’ve got your baseline concept established. you can go onto give context to the concept -- all the stuff in the middle of the fic, the chat with akiteru with the interspersed flashbacks that provide a bit more of “the big picture”. but notice that i don’t talk about what happened before, like i don’t go over details on why tsukki’s actually pissy or how either of them reacted during the conversation. you can focus on just the words, which feeds into your question about dialogue. i’ll touch upon this again later. 

so now you’ve developed your concept a bit more, and the fic is getting to a place where now, something like a resolution would be nice. note that i don’t always give proper resolutions, and that coming back to a concept doesn’t always mean resolving it. i think more often than not, its more interesting to leave a few things unresolved. but for the sake of cleanliness, i was like. i want this to be fluffy at the end. 

so at the end, you see tsukki giving his shirt to the reader, and this again, is another subconcept i mentioned in the beginning of the fic. like drawing circles! u__u but it ends on him saying “i hate you”, but it’s not at all the same kind of “i hate you” as the reader said in the beginning. this tells us two things, that the reader has forgiven him (via her reference/teasing to his shirt and going somewhere this weekend blah blah blah), and that tsukki knows he’s been forgiven, hence the “i hate you”. but both of them know that he doesn’t mean it, in the same way that he’s signaling to her that he knows she didn’t mean it either. 

that’s the big circle for that fic. there were two smaller ones -- one for the shirt, the other for “lets go somewhere this weekend”. i like to have multiple “circles”, as i like to call them. but really they’re just motifs/concepts whatever you’d like to call them. threads you can trace through the fic. now in a proper novel, there would be like..... 20, or more. that’s why when u like sparknotes something, there’s always a “motifs” or “themes” section where it’ll show u all the major thematic things to track throughout the novel. 

haikyuu itself does this SUPER fucking well. like the whole concept of kageyama as “king” -- it’s established, and then expounded upon, and then again, and again, and again, like -- there are so many different moments at which the concept evolves throughout the length of the story. and that’s what makes each mention so fucking satisfying. 

in terms of dialogue -- i think the biggest piece of advice i have is read that shit out loud. if it sounds weird when you say it, then don’t write it like that LOL. dialogue is supposed to be what people say, so if you’ve written something that would be awkward for a person to actually say, then change it! 

manga is a pretty great example, cause a lot of it is dialogue based. so esp when you’re watching/reading the animanga, pay attention to what the characters say and how they say them. if they talk in short sentences or long ones. if they’re likely to stutter or pause instead. 

also just pay attention to when people talk around you. the kinds of words they use. what does it sound like when someone wants to say something but can’t so they say something else instead? often when im writing dialogue, i can physically hear the characters saying those words in my head. 

another exercise i like to do sometimes, which has really helped my dialogue is writing only dialogue between two characters without speech tags like ‘he said, she said’. or any kind of marker as to who is speaking. 

for kagehina it's pretty easy: “quit spacing out, boke.” “aaah, what? i’m not spacig out, i’m thinking.” “ha? didn’t know you could do that.” “what? what? bakayama you wanna go? huh? you wanna fight?!” “idiot, i’d beat you in a second. nah, less than a second.” “uohhhhhhhh -- nnnnnn -- fine! lets go! loser has to buy the winner gun-gun yogurt for a week!” “tch. fine. let’s go.” 

like i didn’t put any kind of indicator as to who was saying which line, but it becomes pretty obvious straight off the bat. of course, using words that the characters use like “boke” and “bakayama” are good lil “cheats” but in basic concept remains the same. 

this forces you to be really good at writing in that character's voice, so that it becomes obvious who is speaking. 

there’s a lot of other stuff, but these are the big things u__u i don't want this get too, too long lol. 

but i quite like dissecting pieces of writing (im the kinda person who writes essays for fun LOLOL), so let me know if you guys would be interested in seeing more of this stuff, or if you’d want me to like. dissect any of the fics i’ve written for thematic consistency and context and stuff. 

it’s a good exercise for me too, to look back at my own writing, and if it’s helpful/enjoyable to you guys, then all the better u_u -- it’ll be like, rain’s mini-lecture series on fictional writing LOL 

and if that’s the case, if there are specific fics that i’ve posted you guys would like me to go into depth on, let me know which ones <3 

[sofipitch]

Some people need to understand this is Interview with The Vampire S1 and not "The Armand and Daniel Show"

Lmao YUP. Like I just said in the previous ask, a lot of ppl have this conpletely made up version of VC in their heads, and apparently that involves a whole backstory for Daniel which I will emphasize: he doesn't have in the books, it isn't there, ppl took breadcrumbs and are mad when the imagary bakery they made out of that isn't in the show

A lot of ppl are saying Daniel was at the center if the gay rights movement and I would like the kindly ask where is says that in the book. Because it's not there. And if you are extrapolating that from him living in San Fran in 70s, why do you feel comfortable inferring that but assume the show must be 100% face value about supposedly making Daniel straight?