#color's ever-revolving interests | fandom stuff

[crayolacolor]

can you BELIEVE the thing that's putting infinity train back on people's radars is an animated AMONG US SHOW

[dani-luminae]

For Lia and Ayesha!

What fan-material would exist for your character in fandom?

What is the quote between your character and their love interest/whoever they might be shipped with that their fans would latch onto?

Be honest. What song is playing over an AMV/tiktok of scenes between your character and their love interest?

What headcanons/theories do you believe fandom would invent about your character

What corners of fandom would consider your character blorbo material?

HEY sorry it took me like a week to get to this!!! I legitimately forgot about it until you answered my ask and I was like "hey didn't I have something to answer???" anyways -

FOR LIA: assuming this is main canon Lia,

What fan-material would exist for your character in fandom?

Fanfics, fanart (they better not lightwash/whitewash her though), just like general fandom stuff properly.

What is the quote between your character and their love interest/whoever they might be shipped with that their fans would latch onto?

Well there's the Big Reveal part of Chapter 68 in RTS:

"Of course I am [in love with Lia]! How could I not be? I'm madly in love with her, because she's one of the most compassionate and kind people I've ever met!  She's been nothing but supportive, to me, to everyone! She doesn't jump at a chance to fight people or brag about how much more powerful she is. [...] Are you happy now? I'm in love with Lia Hawkins!"

And just. Tell me you can't imagine all the ficlets and gifsets revolving about Lia's boundless love for everyone around her, and this love that makes Ben love her so deeply so quickly. Just look at it!

(And maybe just Mal's betrayed face at the end of it for good measure)

Be honest. What song is playing over an AMV/tiktok of scenes between your character and their love interest?

"Rewrite the Stars", duh. And probably "Never Enough", too. Heck, we can add "A Million Dreams" to that. Yes I was totally in a Greatest Showman phase, why do you ask

What headcanons/theories do you believe fandom would invent about your character

Honestly they can take it away with theories about Lia's upbringing as it took place on Montressor, because I realize in hindsight I've really lacked fleshing that out... along with a lot of Lia's backstory.

What corners of fandom would consider your character blorbo material?

I'm not sure. I mean I would hope a majority of the fandom, but Lia is also dark-skinned and sadly fandoms don't have a good track with dark-skinned characters and especially dark-skinned women. I would hope that fans of color would really like her and appreciate her! I've tried to do my research and put a lot of respectful thought into her character, really trying to avoid the negative tropes about WOC (there were some missteps earlier in her portrayal, but I'm always learning.)

~~~

FOR AYESHA: again, assuming main canon

What fan-material would exist for your character in fandom?

Treading carefully to avoid grand spoilers for the prequel: the fandom is welcome to piece together the fateful final voyage of Captain Sigalu, and what exactly went down there. I'm sure there'd be a fanfic or two about that.

What is the quote between your character and their love interest/whoever they might be shipped with that their fans would latch onto?

"Jim spent so much effort trying to impress everyone, and it was to no avail.

Ayesha saw him as he truly was, and she had from the start."

Be honest. What song is playing over an AMV/tiktok of scenes between your character and their love interest?

Okay, frankly I have no clue for these two. I have yet to find a song that encompasses them.

What headcanons/theories do you believe fandom would invent about your character

Well I've left the identity/fate of Ayesha's father very very... well, nonexistent in her stories. I'm sure some of the fandom would be all over that, trying to figure him out and ideas about Ayesha as a result.

What corners of fandom would consider your character blorbo material?

Genuinely the same answer as Lia, above.

.

Thanks for the ask!

[goddamnwebcomics]

Steven Universe: The Story of Black Pearl

It’s a Steven Universe fan comic by Minsu Mason Seo (AKA Revolver-D). 

Out of all the Pearls given to her, Rosa was not only one of Pink Diamond’s Personal Pearls, but also the first Personal Pearl she’s ever had. Completely devoted to Pink, Rosa helped her find a planet to colonize that the other Diamonds wouldn’t, Earth, but couldn’t join her due to being called back for some tasks. Something that proves terribly once she later learns about Pink Diamond’s “demise” on the planet, leaving Rosa in the full “care” of the Diamond Authority. 

Years later, Rosa is experimented on and put through so many torturous trials that she’s grown sociopathic and demented and has become so infamous with the lower gems that she’s made a name for herself on Homeworld. Giving herself the name Black Pearl, she’s become driven to work under Yellow Diamond in order to find out the truth about Pink Diamond’s assassination and finally answer her years of questions and end her passionless loyalty to the Gem Empire. A truth that will be far too much for her to handle.

It’s your typical dark and tragic fanfic story, but with Steven Universe attached to it, so you’ll pretty much know where it’s going. It’s an average alternate universe story that takes place after the wedding of Sapphire and Ruby, where instead of Blue and Yellow Diamond showing up to Beach City, it’s Black Pearl herself. 

The art stands between show accurate and the artist’s own style from the looks of it, with the one interesting usage of colors being when it switches between black & white and full color depending on whether the story is being viewed from Black Pearl’s perspective or not. It’s kind of basic, but who knows? Someone might find that creative.

Oh yeah I’ve heard this is one of the bigger webcomics in the SU fandom. At least it’s one focusing on world building because there’s a lot of interesting stuff about Gem Empire we don’t know.

This might go in the Dolmistaska pool of “Stuff I need as palette cleanser between really bad webcomics”

[crayolacolor]

Thankfully Infinity Train isn’t actually gone from all official platforms.

In the US, you can find it on:

- ITunes / Apple TV+ - YouTube / YouTube TV - Amazon Prime Video - Google Play - Vudu

The book 1 and book 2 DVDs are back on Amazon. They go out of stock sometimes and the price has been fluctuating, but they’re there.

In the UK, it’s recently been added to a network called Sky. I don’t know very much about it because I live in the US, but people in the UK seemed very stoked about that.

It was also supposed to be put on Teletoon+ in Canada, and it’s already on Stan in Australia.

Also, the soundtrack is back on Spotify and ITunes / Apple Music.

So!! There’s definitely still official ways to support the show, they’re just not quite as easy to access as HBO Max was.

We can’t let shows like infinity train be forgotten like writers and animators didn’t put their blood sweat and tears into it! I always thought at least younger generations would be able discover it and maybe it would have a resurgence one day like atla did. We can’t just let it disappear. It’s too good and it doesn’t deserve that.

[cornflowercanine]

man i think the fact the first ever actual online community i’ve 833n in was the furry fandom very much impacted how i interact with fandoms, period

[scarlet--wiccan]

Hey, since the maximoffs are generally white-passing (though not always and “passing” is a complicated thing) in the comics, do you think it’s rude/unnecessary to confront someone for making very pale art of them? If I did it I’d try to be nicer about it than I would if they were just blatantly whitewashing a visibly brown or black character, but I see a lot of artist who I feel like might not know and I really wonder if it’s worth it. Do you have any thoughts?

That's complicated. It's not a misrepresentation of the characters in the way that, for instance, a blonde Wanda or a tall, muscular Billy would be.

I can't reasonably fault anybody, fanartist or canon illustrator, for drawing characters on-model.

That said, in the last few years there has been an ongoing conversation in this fandom, at least here on tumblr, about who the Maximoffs are, and the ways in which their general representation is lacking. It's become more common to draw the characters with darker skin or more apparently ethnic features. If you're a fan of Wanda, or Pietro, or any iteration of Young Avengers, it's pretty hard to avoid that conversation, so it's easy to point fingers at anybody who seems to be ignorant to, or is intentionally ignoring, that trend. If I'm reading your message correctly, you seem to be asking if that trend represents a truer, more valid version of the characters that we should all adhere to, and if it is necessarily problematic to do otherwise.

I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I believe that disrupting the representation of all Roma people as white-passing, or even interchangeable with white Europeans, is crucial. Setting aside the fact that the diaspora intersects with just about every racial group, not just white people, the broad whitewashing of Roma communities in media erases our origins and occludes the fact that the mistreatment of Roma people is a race issue. On a wider scale, I believe that this manufactured ignorance contributes to systemic antiromanyism, but within the sphere of pop culture, specifically, it allows people to get away with obviously racist art and writing, and it's why Romani history and identity are viewed as disposable whenever people adapt these comics for the screen.

On the other hand, I'm deeply frustrated by the tokenization and co-opting of Roma identity that this fandom performs. This may sound hypocritical, considering how much of my blog revolves around my edits, but I see a lot of folks on tumblr who draw brown Wandas, make fancasts with Romani actors, and, like me, photoshop comic book panels, but not a lot of people who demonstrate any understanding of antiromanyism, or better yet, material allyship. In everybody's haste to earn diversity points, they've produced a lot of unintentionally racist content. I've seen a lot of cultural tourism, inappropriately co-opted activist work, and even virtual brownfacing in the form of RP accounts. No one, myself included, should feel entitled to dictate what a true or valid image of Wanda looks like, but especially not a community of people who think that having a folder of Hiba Abouk gifs and a Wikipedia list of common chib phrases makes it okay to racefake for your MCU roleplay.

Anyways, when it comes to fanart, you're going to have to rely on your own subjective judgement, and try to think about more specific issues than "whitewashing" because these characters just don't fit into that idea. Content that's derived from the movies is complicit in erasure. Content that is derived from the comics, but which applies lighter and straighter hair to Billy or Wanda is complicit in eurocentric standards, and the trend of gradually lightwashing characters of color, and even white Jewish characters. Content which employs racist stereotypes is not better than canon "white-passing" depictions. Cultural appropriation is still cultural appropriation, even if the character you're drawing is a member of that culture. Many popular writers and artists have a history of ignoring or shutting down dialogues about representation, even harassing people like me.

Hopefully, thinking about that stuff gives you a more clear idea of what to look out for, what's worthy of confrontation, and how to articulate your problems with a specific person or their content.

I know this ran longer than was strictly necessary, but I wanted to roll your message together with a similar question about whitewashing:

The Maximoffs weren't conceived, written, or designed in such a way as to be intentionally whitewashed, at least not originally-- their background was established via a retcon, at least a decade after their first appearance. Up until that point, they were generic, apparently white, Central Europeans. The fact that they are treated as interchangeably white and Roma is both product and perpetuation of the broad whitewashing of European Romani that I described earlier. Nobody's going out of their way to make sure the twins always have at least one white ancestor in order to justify "whitewashing" them, rather, nobody has ever truly envisioned them as people of color in the first place.

People will perform all kinds of mental gymnastics in order to minimize the Maximoffs' ancestry, or come up with reasons why it makes the most sense for them to look white-- invoking Erik as the father; dredging up the short-lived Robert Frank retcon; or, for Billy and Tommy, claiming that their resurrection somehow erased their genetic and ancestral ties to Wanda, even though the text implies the very opposite. I'll let you in on a secret, though-- these characters aren't real people, and their stories aren't immutable truths. If anybody, fans, writers, or artists, is making leaps of logic to avoid making comics more inclusive, it's not because their hands are tied by the unbreakable chains of canon, it's because they don't want comics to be more inclusive.

Also, I could be off the mark here, but I don't think I am-- Sinti people are Roma. Different parts of the diaspora have different names for themselves, but are all part of the same larger population. It's mostly a regional thing, as I understand. If you want my opinion, it doesn't matter what version of the story you go with-- whether Magda, Marya or Natalya is their birthmother, Marya and Django raised them. They have direct Roma ancestry either way, and they were raised by a Roma family. It's hard to say exactly where in the world the Maximoffs lived, or what specific label they might have identified with, but the twins would likely identify with the community they were raised in, be that Sinti or Servitka or Kalerash or whatever else. If I'm being honest I don't think that distinction is relevant for non-Roma to make.

I've said this before, but I don't really care what the characters look like, and I'm not interested in playing identity politics with fictional stories that were created by and for American gadje. Obviously, I love these characters as a fan, and I do have my own vision, no pun intended, of who they are and how I'd like to see them represented, but I worry that these conversations are unproductive. I hope you guys understand that I'm not out here trying to canonize an arbitrary idea of what Jewish Romani people look like. American superhero media has a long history of exploiting, misrepresenting, and erasing Romani history. I want more people to understand that, and understand the material consequences it has, and think about how comics, American culture, and art in general can deconstruct this specific mechanism of racism. It's not about any one character's identity, and it's not about my creative vision.

[bigskydreaming]

Continuing on that observation because I forgot to add this part, as a gen z I'm glad you understand that we or young people don't invent new ways to be evil, but it's not completely true. You aren't seeing new forms of online abuse in every platform, I doubt second hand information is going into details as well. Also the fact that you are a white man, there are things being said and done to poc in various online communities that I don't expect you to be privy to. Harassing fans of color and poc media has become a lot more common and normalized which parts of the fandom at large will never see. I don't know if anon did all of the thinking before saying "gen z bad" but they're not completely wrong looking at the kind of mass bullying behavior literal kids are exhibiting. They are learning from or being encouraged by older people but that shouldn't take the focus away from them to blame only the older people.

And my ask regarding Barbara, you assumed I hadn't thought about if my disdain for the character could have come from ableism. I had tho, granted you couldn't have known that and it was surely a possibility, so I'm not saying I'm mad about it, I was at that time a little bit. But you could perhaps give your anons a little more credit sometimes. Sometimes people know what they're talking about, you don't need to explain other possibilities to them each time.

Once again, sorry if this came off as very rude I just needed to share that observation and among many other instances these two were really highlights and kept bothering me. My issue with Barbara goes in a different direction than anything to do with her appearance and I've personally faced online abuse from people younger than me in ways that technologically, even politically, wasn't possible or as easy a few years ago, so you can maybe see why...

Please keep in mind that whatever context you have for yourself or your ask when you come into my inbox on anon......I have none of that. You have an awareness of yourself relative to whatever you asked me. I literally only know an anon by the words they put into my inbox and nothing else.

Also please keep in mind that every anon I answer, I do so in the larger context of my own interactions with tumblr overall. I have a lot of precedent with things I say being taken out of context, misrepresented or even just me not conveying myself as well as I like.

So the combination of those two things is that a) I literally just don't KNOW what any anon does or doesn't know and b) If I'm going to answer an anon, I tend to want to answer as fully and clearly as possible.

I can understand it coming across as being talked down to, so I'll work on that, but I would ask people to remember the above and keep that in context too when weighing my responses.....am I actually being condescending in every case, or does it simply feel that way because I'm including stuff you already know in my response? And if its the latter, is THAT something I COULD know about you without knowing who you are or you as a person and not just a paragraph sent in anonymously?

I'd rather be safe than sorry, and so from my POV since there's no harm in somebody seeing someone cover information they already know as PART of their overall answer or response, like, there's no reason for me not to include whatever I think is relevant and just expect readers to decide for themselves what about my response, if anything, is helpful, and like....just ignore the rest, y'know?

Also, just for the record, I am ADHD and I save my medication for when I'm working or writing or have stuff I absolutely need to get done, which doesn't include my usual blogging. So I'm usually posting while not on my ADHD meds at all, hence the rambling tendencies and the length. Another aspect of ADHD that doesn't get talked about much ime is we tend to over-explain, part out of just excitement/interest in whatever it is that has our attention, and also in part because we're used to people not necessarily following the leaps our minds take when jumping around rather than proceeding in an orderly thought pattern.....so, part of why I break things down so incrementally is I literally just don't know where my way of looking at things diverges from the way neurotypical thinking views things, so I want to draw as detailed a map as possible in order to ensure the most people possible can follow my thought process, just in case.

(And again see, this is something you might already know, and hell, you could have ADHD yourself, I just literally have no way of knowing that so rather than just mention it and be like "oh and also I have ADHD and so that's something to keep in mind" I'd rather explain WHY I feel that's particularly relevant to your question, since I'm kinda like, why not answer as fully as I have the spoons for? People can stop reading at any time if I go on too long. Its fine).

As for the specific asks you're referencing - my response to the gen z anon was not meant to convey that the sort of things you're describing don't occur among gen z, so sorry for giving that impression. Its actually the opposite of my point, which was simply that I don't think its a generational thing, or that anything is gained by treating it as a generational thing. This kind of behavior exists in gen z, yes, but it also existed before gen z. Its not gen z SPECIFIC, or limited to just that generation. That's all.

And the other ask, the one you made about Barbara - to be honest, I don't have anyway of knowing for sure which one you meant, and there are a couple it could have been, but if its the one I THINK you're referencing, I believe you asked how to stop people from assuming you dislike Barbara for reasons rooted in ableism when its because of other things? If that's the one, then I mean, the thing is....I DID answer your question, in as much as anyone could. I addressed the perceptions other people might have of your stance there, but basically - there IS no way to ever ensure people take you at your word or any kind of guarantee you can present your POV in a way that won't be misrepresented or misunderstood. So ultimately, I just had no real useful advice for that?

And so I expanded into the only thing I think anyone CAN control, aka their own thoughts and words, and suggested that you just double check to be sure of your own possible biases that others might read into your words without you being aware you were putting them in there. That wasn't meant as an insult or to suggest you hadn't already examined yourself for possible ableism - it was simply saying it never hurts to check again, y'know? We don't always catch everything every time we do a self-review, and internal biases are inherently tricky to pick up on ourselves. And it just loops back into the fact that I really had no way to know what you had and hadn't already considered, you're essentially a blank cipher to me....and in my experience, a lot of people are a lot more ableist than they realize.

And this isn't an insult either! It applies to me and I'M physically disabled! I'm constantly to this day unpacking new realizations about how I still have more ableist views and opinions than even I realize, even after about five years of living with chronic pain, vertigo, nerve issues and associated problems stemming from only half a working mouth lol. I'm not trying to insult people by asking them to just do what I do every day and just like....make sure I'm not the problem when other people have a problem with me. Because sometimes, even after reflecting as fully and genuinely as I can, I think they're still wrong! I don't have to agree with their conclusions! But that doesn't mean that they're never right.

And for the record, I do think its still worth examining on your end, because I don't love that you said your issues with Barbara have nothing to do with her appearance, when we're talking about ableism specifically. It very well could be just a poor word choice on your part and not a reflection of your actual views, but it could also be a suggestion that you tend to think of physical disability as something that's limited to there being a visual sign of, and there's a lot of invisible symptoms and changes to the ways a disabled person interacts with society and society with them that don't alter a disabled person's appearance in anyway...and many of these things are the exact stuff a lot of unacknowledged ableism revolves around.

So I'd like to give you and other anons more credit and the benefit of the doubt and assume you know what you're talking about and don't need things broken down as much as I tend to break them down to - but keep in mind I don't OWE you that, and its a lot to ask someone to take you on faith when you've already made the conscious choice to present yourself to them anonymously, and deliberately limit how much a person even CAN know about you before answering, when you have an equal opportunity to present yourself by name, allowing someone the full context afforded by your blog, that they can use to familiarize themselves with you and what you likely do or don't know before answering. I don't think its entirely reasonable to anonymize YOURSELF and then expect people to still give you the benefit of the doubt.

Especially when not giving you the benefit of the doubt only really results in me over-explaining something you don't think you need explained in certain ways or in as much depth. Its not hurting anyone, and you're not going to be the only one reading this response and maybe that over-explanation ISN'T something other people know and it could still be of use to someone else, y'know?

But lastly, please keep in mind that you came to me, and I just answered in the way that made the most sense to me. If that didn't work for you or wasn't what you're looking for, that's fine, but like. You knew way more about me going into this interaction than I could possibly know about you, and assuming good faith of you and your interest in my response and giving you as much of a response as I did in the first place, let alone now, IS giving you the benefit of the doubt in the sense that I'm assuming you can find some way in which these responses are of use to you.

And if not, like....just don't send me more asks? LOL. I kinda feel like you just didn't expect the answer you got, and that's sitting weirdly with you. Which I get, to be honest, but I don't particularly think that's a me problem, because that has nothing to do with anything I can control.

I can only give the answer that occurs to me when I read and think about an ask. I can't guarantee it'll ever be the answer the asker actually WANTS.

[crayolacolor]

in related news, the infinity train book 2 dvd is back up on amazon!! you can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Infinity-Train-Book-Two-DVD/dp/B08XFP69RD/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3TVOIITQ9XZ7P&keywords=infinity+train+dvd&qid=1662256613&sprefix=infinity+train+%2Caps%2C512&sr=8-3

PLEASE start buying physical media again if you stopped. Corps wants everything to be service based so you can just pay for things based on their whims. Don't get the discless consoles, get usb dvd drives for your laptops. Fuck digital only.

[lol-jackles]

I hope you don't mind, but I need to vent a little. I've been binge watching spn for a few months now (this is my first time watching the show btw) and I love the show so far. I'm on season 12 right now, and I'm a sam leaning bibro you could say: I love Sam and I love the brother codependency and I'm guilty of enjoying how much Dean's world revolves around his darling Sammy lol I'm also part of the fandom, but sometimes I feel like the fandom exaggerates just how "bad" the show has gotten? (1/?)

There was a well known quote about superfans: Nobody hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans do!  (Today it’s Nobody hates Marvel more than Marval fans!)

Basically this means that fans are so passionate about Star Wars that they scrutinize every minute detail because they want it so desperately to be perfect, or to at least evoke the same emotions when they first saw the original movie in theaters.  It boils down to looking at the past through rose colored glasses.

Superfans of [insert bands/series/fanchise] are always the ones who care the most, so they're also the ones who will be really critical of new material.  Most causal fans of [insert bands/series/fanchise] are “it was pretty enjoyable, some issues, some great stuff but overall pretty good”.  But to the superfans it’s a wide range of "I loved it, best one ever" to "Good but a lot of issues" to "Worst one ever & ruined [insert bands/series/fanchise] forever!".

Go ahead and totally skip 13x10 “Claire and the Failed Pilot” episode, it does adds nothing to the series and entirely unimportant.  Save yourself 45 minutes of your life.

Bitter Sam girls are just typical stans with blindspots to number 1 rule of story telling - “Protagonist Must Suffer to be Interesting” because of the number 2 rule of story telling - “Stories are about Things that Matters Happening to the Protagonist”.   

Stans get so caught up in their protagonist’s sufferings that they misinterpret the lack of appreciation or acknowledgement for said suffering by other characters to mean the protagonist is somehow not actually the protagonist.  I know, it’s weird but I’ve seen it happen all the time, just look at bitter Sam girls, they actually think SPN is equally about Sam and Dean.  Stans like these forget that The Protagonist are not supposed to be fawned over, they’re supposed to be challenged, abandoned, insulted, and regularly see their girl/boyfriends die in front of them. Hercules: The Legendary Journeys’ Hercules gets called “Jerkules” and had to watch two wives die.  iZombie Liv Moore gets called selfish and had to watch two boyfriends die.  Comic books Tony Stark gets called every name in the book and had to watch three girlfriends die.

As for your other observation, I think the bitter Sam girls may be “returning the favor”.   For well over a decade, the Sam girls had two sets of very vocal fandoms (Ackles Army and their protege Destiel minions) relentlessly going at them, because the Sam girls have what they very badly wanted, The Protagonist’s Story.  By calling any Dean and Cas screentime as “pandering”, it makes the character of Cas AND Dean invalid because they don’t actually contribute to The Story.  

[thatoneitaliangirl]

Interesting Dreams

I really think I have an issue with otome games- Ikemen in particular. Like, I had the weirdest dream last night, and I mostly blame otome games. It was one of those dreams that are dramatic and feel like your watching a movie, but they also are so fucking random and are jumping all over the place- at one point there was a boy dressed in a cape and I called him out for being suss and he said in a fake posh British accent, whilst swooshing his cape mind you,

“I’m sorry, you see, I have stage 4 ADHD.” And I was just so confused, I was like,

“Did you just compare your ADHD to cancer?” 

The main part of my dream is why I’m here today to tell you this fanciful story. 

Basically, I was some beautiful vampiric woman with a dramatic backstory. I don’t remember everything, but I was living in a mansion with some other people, and I had been turned into a vampire. What does that sound like, hmm? Unfortunately, the people I was living with were not great historical figures, or even vampires, we were just all misfits with no where to go, living together in this large creepy mansion in the middle of nowhere. And when I say creepy, I mean this place was like something out of Scooby Doo. Dark, gloomy, and it even had a freaking cemetery in the back. In my tragic back story, I was married to some noble or something. I remember that our clothes looked fancy and that we were probably rich, and it was like late 1700′s early 1800′s or so. We had a son who was maybe about 6 or 7, and in the beginning I had thought that both of them were murdered and I was left alive, and afterwards was turned to a vampire for some reason, I don’t know. The thing with being turned into a vampire though was that it came with a curse of sorts. Once turned into a vampire, no one could recognize you, or at least, wasn’t supposed to. I guess that’s a pretty good defense after turning, so you couldn’t be caught, but I don’t know. So, my husband shows up, and it’s like present time at this point, and for some reason I can recognize him, but he can’t recognize me. I’m freaking out, cause one, he’s supposed to be dead, two, I know that it’s him and I’m not supposed to, and three he believes I’m the reason our son died and he recently received news that I’m alive and has been hunting me down to kill me. Now, he has suspicions that I am in fact me, and his time at the manor is spent trying to prove that I am me and wanting to kill me. I don’t know why, but at one point I find myself in the cemetery out back being followed by my husband and the two men he’s traveling with. I’m surrounded by gravestones and its foggy as fuck, and I remember looking back and seeing them. With some quick thinking, I use magic of some sorts and change the name on a random gravestone to my name, which, btw, isn’t my real full name. It’s my real first name, Jenna, with the last name Clemence. Shocker. Though, the man that’s my husband is neither Luka, nor Jonah. I don’t remember my dream ever giving him a first name, but he didn’t look anything like Jonah or Luka. If anything he looked like a mixture of Zen from Mystic Messenger, and Prussia from Hetalia. He had long white hair that was put back in a low ponytail, and it had one of those bows in it you see in men from like the 1700′s. But, after he was turned into a vampire, his hair changed into a dark maroon color and his bangs were a bit more perfect and nice if that makes sense. So, I put my name on this gravestone, and he comes over to me and I point it out to him. I’m like, 

“Oh, I know I have the same first name as your late wife, but look! This appears to be her gravesite! It would seem she has passed after all!” And he’s like super suspicious of me, but he can’t out right prove that I’m his wife, and so he chooses to drop it. Weirdly enough, this is where my dream kind of jumps, because it goes from us being in the cemetery, to me and two other guys from the manor searching the house in which my husband and son had ‘died’ to find out how my husband survived and how he was turned, but that’s where it stops. I remember bits and pieces of the house, that it was really weird and falling apart. Thinking about that house actually gives me weird vibes, I don’t know why. Like just imagining myself being there is creepy I guess. Anyway, my dream jumps from that act to another with an entirely different plot. We’re in the same mansion, but for some reason I’m now an Inhuman with electricity powers, and I’m apart of the Avengers . . . I did binge watch the new Avengers game, so that could be why-

But we’re stuck in the mansion, and for some reason can’t get out. Like it’s not explained or mentioned, I just know that we’re stuck and can’t even set foot outside the mansion. Tony Stark’s arc reactor in his chest starts to malfunction, and the only way to keep it going is to take it out and for me to ‘charge’ it with my powers by putting it in my mouth . . . But not just in my mouth, no, it has to be touching my teeth- I don’t know why, and I never claimed that my dreams make sense- but holding it in my teeth hurts like a bitch, and I remember actually feeling the vibrations in my teeth and how badly it hurt. Like, I find it insane that my dream was so vivid that I can still remember the exact pain I was feeling in my teeth. (Low key, I think this might prove my suspicion that I’m grinding my teeth in my sleep, but I digress) It was really weird. But, to remedy this, Tony creates this blue jelly like stuff to put over my teeth, kind of like a whitening strip, that puts a buffer between my teeth and the vibrations and it stops the pain. A couple of times during this act of my dream, I had to fight things- they were like entities that were in this mansion, and again, while it was never specifically mentioned, I knew in my dream that these things where what was keeping us stuck in there, and that we were trying to hide from them. Kind of like Hetaoni if your apart of the Hetalia fandom. If not, it’s a game (Based on another game) featuring the characters from the anime Hetalia that get stuck in a mansion and can’t leave due to an entity messing with time and keeping them stuck there. And while the mansion gave me weird, creepy vibes, nothing about time was ever mentioned, and the only thing I remember about fighting them was that I was drooling a lot because of the stupid blue shit I had to keep on my teeth and the constant vibrations from charging. My dream had briefly jumped from that to another act where we were still in the mansion, but this time I was a doctor. My doctor name wasn’t my real name, I can only remember that it was long and started with a D. And I literally remember nothing of that part of the dream, but I remember I was a doctor, because at one point I had actually woken up in real life to move, and I heard a voice from behind me whisper ‘Dr. ______’ whatever my name was, and I remember thinking to myself,

“Oh shit, something just said my name. That was creepy, but I’m going to choose to ignore it and go back to sleep.” And after that, I remember nothing. Do I think there was some being whispering in my ear? No, obviously not. What it probably was, was that even though I was awake and had opened my eyes for a couple of seconds, I wasn’t fully awake and was still kind of dreaming. I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but sometimes when I’m falling asleep and I’m in that space where I’m not awake, but I’m still aware of my surroundings and I’m not fully asleep, sometimes I’ll start to hear voices and noises. I’ve always just kind of explained this to myself as my dreams starting to form, but I don’t know if that’s really what it is. What I’m trying to say is that this is what I think the voice was. It was a really freaky dream, and I just find it odd that no matter how much my dream changed it’s story line, it all revolved around that one mansion-

[crayolacolor]

by the way guys, I saw somebody say the DVD listings for the first two seasons of infinity train were gone, but i checked last night and they're actually still on amazon for about $9.00 a piece.

i've posted things like this before, but please get them if you're at all able!

if you already have them, another good idea would be to buy them and donate them to your local library. or even put them in a little free library if you have those where you are. anything to make sure people are still being introduced to this show.

[crayolacolor]

Yeahyeah he’s confirmed this before!!

I really like that he does this actually. Basically telling the fans to keep their own headcanons instead of taking everything he says as gospel. I honestly think that’s the best way to go about stuff like that.

Owen Dennis confirming that Tulip died (in like? A horrific drowning?) after the events of book one has done so much damage to me

[universal-imagines]

☾ a peculiar science

fandom: tangled (tv series) pairing: varian x reader word count: 900 synopsis: rumors lead to a happy encounter

a/n: a friend of mine got me into this show cause of Varian so I found it fitting to write something for him as a thank you. 

please do not use any of my works, in any shape or form, without permission.

Rumors of a wizard in the neighboring village spread through your small town faster than the water from the nearby river. They bounced from one pair of lips to another, painting a bad image of this mysterious individual. Every murmur warned of the peculiar magic he works with, the constant mishaps he causes, and of how dangerous he is. None were ever favorable, and yet it all piqued your interest.

Perhaps the reason for your curiosity was the fact that his sorcery didn’t sound like magic at all, but something much more volatile and attainable. Similar to a category of science you had stumbled upon in a book not so long ago. It described in length the branches of science that could be viewed as magic by the masses. One, in particular, had stood out to you and reminded you of this so-called sorcery—alchemy. While it wasn’t entirely partial to science, it wasn’t disconnected from magic either.

Eager to learn more about it from an apparent expert, you set off to meet him. Not even a week had passed since the whispers first landed on your meddlesome ears, and you were already knocking on his large wooden doors. It wasn’t until after the sound of the last knock died out, that you were able to hear the beat of your heart going crazy. With all the talk revolving around his name, you were intimidated just by the thought of him. He must be someone big and daunting, someone who demanded all that recognition... or so you presumed.

Instead, the person who swung open the doors was a cheerful and energetic fellow. A bit smaller than you’d expected as well. And cute. The difference between reality and expectation had you stupefied for a couple of seconds.

“Hi! What brings you here?” The enthusiasm in his voice suited the smile with which he greeted you.

It made your heart skip a beat, that in all honesty wasn’t good considering how fast it was going a couple of minutes ago.

“Oh- um... h-hi” for some reason you couldn’t form a coherent sentence, or even remember why you were there in the first place. Your brain was still processing the image you had versus the actual person in front of you, and it was struggling to catch up to the current conversation.

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, the alchemist watched you, a strange glint in his eye. “Yes?”

“I came here because I heard of a somewhat troublesome wizard and-”

“Ah-ah, let me stop you there! If you’re here because of what happened last week with the birds, it wasn’t me.”

“What? No. I have no idea what you’re talking about... Besides, I would have believed you if you didn’t shift your eyes away when you said that. Or fidgeted so much.” You chuckled as some color lit up his cheeks. “Anyway, I’m here purely out of curiosity. I heard of a wizard that worked with strange magic, and the next thing I knew, I was at your door.”

“I don’t-”

Before he finished, you quickly added, “But not because of the magic! I actually had a question regarding that... Is it alchemy?”

The bright smile he’d greeted you with didn’t compare to the one he gave you in that precise moment. Even his eyes sparkled with excitement.

“Yes, yes it is.” You thought he might get dizzy with how fast he was nodding.

“I thought so. I read about it in a book a few weeks ago and have been dying to learn more about it. I hope I’m not intruding by being so bold in asking you to show me some stuff.”

“Not at all! I’d be happy to, please come in.” He beamed, ushering you inside.

You couldn’t help but look around in awe, every flask and machine drew your eye. “You did all this? It’s amazing!”

“You think so?” In such a short amount of time, you were able to see his cheeks colored with some pink again. This time his eyes didn’t meet yours though, they concentrated on some flasks. Though they did steal a few glances your way.

“Yes! Are you kidding?” You pointed at a table filled with different colored flasks, or at least the liquids in them were. “I’m sure these have an amazing purpose, and they took more effort than a simple incantation or spell. These took knowledge to make, knowledge not everyone has, so it makes them that much better.”

He forced a chuckled. “You’re the only one that thinks so. To everyone else, I’m just the guy who causes endless problems with his inventions.”

“That’s because they don’t understand it. Once they do, you’ll be admired, believe me.”

It seemed your encouragement helped, he was genuinely smiling again.

“Want to know a secret?”

“Of course I do! I don’t think I know anyone who’d say no.” You laughed. “But how about a name first?”

“Varian,” he grinned.

“Well then, Varian, what is this secret?” You scanned the room to see if you could find it before he showed you, but nothing stood out.

To your surprise, he stretched out a hand. “Come with me.”

All you knew about the boy was his name, which you’d just asked for a second ago, and the rumors about him, but you took his hand without thinking.

“I’ll show you my newest invention!”

please do not use any of my works, in any shape or form, without permission.

[ask-the-guiding-light-cast]

Guiding Light turns two years old today!

It’s crazy to think this all began only a couple of years back... and also hilarious it falls on the same day as “International Mystery Dungeon Day” over on Twitter. More after the cut. This is gonna be a long one, so I appreciate anyone willing to read this. ^^

For a long time, I had been a casual consumer of fan fics. It started in the late 2000s when I was in a Spyro craze thanks to the more story-driven Legend of Spyro trilogy. I had an itch that I needed scratched and FFN fulfilled that to some extent. I also looked at some Mario fics, including Paper Mario: The Temple of the Sun, which I greatly enjoyed and thought did a good job adapting the formula that made Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door so beloved and putting a unique spin on things.

But it was until the early 2010s that I actually started getting back into Pokémon games with Gen V. After Emerald, I fell out of touch with Pokémon for a time. When Gen VI came around, I dipped my toe into the fandom through Twitch livestreams, but also through reading a few anime-based fics that are very long and still going, even now. 

At the same time, I ended up buying PMD: Explorers of Sky... and damaged my cartridge before I could properly finish the game with my Vulpix/Riolu team. So, I watched cutscenes for what I missed on YouTube, then got Gates to Infinity and, later, Super Mystery Dungeon and had fun with both of them... though more for the stories and characters than the actual gameplay. Truth be told, I don’t care much for roguelikes at all.

It was during the gap in time between Super’s release and the first official footage of Sun & Moon in mid-2016 that I found myself hit with a recurring thought: “What if someone made a PMD story where the hero and the partner are forced to fight one another with the fate of the world at stake?” I wound up (loosely) brainstorming an idea for a PMD story revolving around an antagonistic Hoopa character who would use its ring portals to collect entire communities, including the Pokémon living in them... all so that he would never be bored. This would lead him to “collect” the partner to add to his “toys,” so when the hero shows up, he’d sic the partner on them.

But that was as far as I got with the idea. I ended up graduating college and took a job with late evening hours. It left me pretty tired and exhausted and unmotivated to do much of anything. I withdrew from the parts of the Pokémon community I was involved in.

Then the Generation VII games came out and, while divisive in the fandom, I found myself really liking some of the concepts. There were so many times when I thought, “Gee, I wonder what this would be like if it were in a PMD game?” For example, one of the ideas I had was a sort of edgy rival rescue team akin to Gladion, which would have a Midnight Lycanroc, a Zoroark, and a Type: Null character in it.

So, toward the end of 2016 and early 2017, I started creating an idea for a Choose Your Own Adventure story with the intent of putting it on this really small forum I was a part of. It would be a Gen VII-themed PMD story, but because I didn’t think that sounded interesting enough, I decided that, not only would the human keep their memories, but they would be from the real world and be a major Pokémon nerd. The idea was that the choices the readers made would affect the relationship between the human and partner. I even came up with a point system. The more points the readers earned for their choices, the “closer” the relationship the hero and partner would have and the happier an ending the story would get. If the hero and partner couldn’t stand each other, one of them would likely end up working with the bad guy and winning. If they became steadfast friends, they’d work together to save the world.

Unfortunately, the forum shut down before I got too far into planning it, so I shelved the idea and continued focusing on my job. And things stayed that way for several months, until I ended up getting into med school and scrambling to move.

During the downtime I had when I wasn’t doing moving related stuff, I decided to look at FFN again and found Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Defenders of Warmth. I wound up reading through the entirety of the story quite quickly. I guess you could say it sparked something in my head. The fic itself focuses on what, at the time, was the newest Gen (Gen V). It also has multiple humans and is set on a continent separate from the canon locations (which were just the Air and Grass Continents, since Gates and Super didn’t exist when the fic was written). In short, it renewed my desire to pursue my idea of a Gen VII-flavored PMD story.

So, I set about creating my story outline. It is so... so much different from the actual story, though I’ve gone into that in previous posts (search for #amby answers). Originally, I used Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time as the framework for the fic: an alien invasion in a colorful, comedic world. I took more specific cues, too. Zero was meant to be a (mostly) silent antagonist a la Princess Shroob, for example.

The problem was, I really didn’t have much confidence in myself or my abilities. I’d like to say I was writing for myself, but I really did want validation, too. I think any author is lying to themselves if they say they don’t feel this way at some point. Because of this, I figured if I put the fic on FFN, it would get ignored. The site’s huge! There were, at the time, around 85k fics in the Pokémon section alone. (That number’s since gone up to over 90k!)

Given I had experience with forums, I decided to post it to Serebii, because the fic community seemed much smaller and more open to giving feedback to one another. In an effort to try and, y’know, establish some connections, I actually read other pieces and reviewed them before posting any stories. This also helped me build up a backlog of chapters and prove to myself I enjoyed writing this enough to keep going.

When I finally did post the fic, it was a bumpy start, for sure. I do think I made a lot of mistakes out of the gate, including uploading chapters way too quickly for readers on Serebii to (reasonably) try to keep pace. That probably cost me a few potential readers... or made them silent readers who I never ended up hearing from. Which is why I’m especially thankful to @girl-like-substance (who I can seem to tag, drat) for all of the well-thought-out feedback given throughout the fic’s run. I don’t think I would’ve made such significant strides in my writing otherwise... and there are plenty of long-running fics where the quality tends to stagnate.

In any case... it was thanks to a request from @deliriousabsol to put the fic somewhere more mobile-friendly that I chose to mirror Guiding Light on FFN starting in October 2017. I would’ve kept going on Serebii had she not asked so nicely, so she’s the one you can thank for it showing up there! (She’s a fellow author who does cyberpunk-themed fics and art and her characters have cameoed in the fic.)

And, honestly, I’m just... beyond shocked at what wound up happening to the fic once it hit FFN. Well, actually, for the first several months I was lucky if I even got a comment when I put up a chapter. I’m not sure any of the people who first commented on FFN still follow the fic anymore. I haven’t seen/heard from them at all, so I assumed they moved on with their lives.

In any case, around March of 2018, the word count on FFN passed 300k and... somehow, the fic starting getting more attention. Like, a lot more attention. This was... not really something I was even remotely prepared for.

(Yes, this means there’s gonna be a giveaway. More on that later.) I never would’ve thought I’d reach a number like this. I never imagined I’d meet another PMD author who’d be willing to do a fun collab (thanks @virgil134, Spiteful Murkrow, and Namohysip). I really did not imagine that I’d ever get fanart of characters that I wrote (huge thanks @thebreak-ofdawn, @ask-nicky-and-others, and @cresselia92). I mean, above everything, I not expect the fic or characters to resonate with anybody the way it wound up.

A part of me feels like I don’t really deserve it. I’ve made a lot of serious gaffes with writing this. When initial Serebii feedback had people intrigued by Shane’s jerkass attitude (when I didn’t actually intend for him to come off as a jerk), I dialed things up in the hopes I’d keep their attention. It probably cost me readers. Then there’s the slow pacing of the early episodes and the mistake of making Special Episode 3 as long as it was... which my speaks to my (bad) tendency to give into some of my strongest impulses even though I had an outline I was trying to stick to.

And, I mean, there’s also some of the “shamlessly shameful” stuff I’ve done with the fic. I’m not fooling myself. Guiding Light has grown progressively more furry and, uh, probably fanservicey, too. All the big furbait (and some scalebait) ‘mons are accounted for. There’s a lot more sexual humor when I initially promised myself I would stay away from romance and keep everything platonic. I practically turned Xerneas into waifu bait, if some of these asks are anything to go by. This blog certainly didn’t help in that regard. Maybe I’m just being my usual nervous self? 

I am worried that this fic’s performance has, somehow, affected my thoughts and behavior. There are very popular fic authors who let their popularity get to their head... or chose to open up Patreons (something that makes me uncomfortable) or start doing things like taking commissions for written pieces, which is understandable... though I think it’s an easy way to lose your passion for writing. I guess some of that worry stems from a debacle I learned about on a Discord server I’m in, but that’s not something I’m comfortable discussing publicly. 

And I haven’t even talked much about the blog itself. Like, it somehow passed 100 followers? Where? When? How? I don’t actually draw stuff like many other Pokéasks. And, like, for a lot of folks, I have no idea if they’ve actually read the fic or just check in on the blog. It’s the same with the fic, I suppose. If you’re a silent reader/follower, I would really love to hear from you! I promise... I don’t bite or anything. I’d love to know what (if anything) you’re thinking. And if you’re a blog that’s following this one and we haven’t interacted, please feel free to reach out! It’s honestly hard to tell if people like what I’m doing, so any feedback is always appreciated.

In any case, if I haven’t lost you by now, I guess all I can say is... thank you. Thank you all so much for all of the support... whether it’s on the fic, the blog, or both of them. I really do hope this final episode can meet your expectations. I’ll try my very best to make this an ending to remember. Nothing would make me happier than to hear you guys enjoy it and feel it does justice to the PMD series.

Sorry for all the rambling. The inbox is open again if you’d like to send any messages for the ficaversary. Again, thank you all so much! You’re the best!

[sailorsanghelios]

HALO FOR BEGINNERS PART 1: A NOT SO BRIEF INTRO TO HALO

So Microsoft has recently announced that The Master Chief Collection for Halo, is coming to Steam, opening up the Halo universe to many new players who haven’t been able to play before thanks to not owning an Xbox.

So in celebration of this, I’ve decided to put together a little series thats basically a Beginner’s Guide to Halo, for people who only know it for its stereotypes involving its multiplayer play.

This series is mostly aimed at popular video game fandoms on Tumblr, so you might catch me making some comparisons (especially to series like Mass Effect that actually have some tropes in common with Halo)

However a couple of things before I get started for real

1.This guide will only be talking about the original trilogy of games, Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3. There are three other games in this game bundle, Halo 3: ODST, Halo Reach and Halo 4. However I haven’t actually finished ODST, and I haven’t played the latter two in over half a decade, so I really don’t feel equipped to talk about them in length.

2. Halo deals with a lot of heavy content. Along with the obvious blood and gore, there’s a lot of body horror involving the Flood (though if you can stomach say… Telltale’s TWD, its probably about at that level of squick). Heavy themes that are core themes of Halo include genocide, religious based trauma and abuse, child soldiers and medical experimentation on humans. I don’t believe Halo CE has much in the way of individual triggers to look out for, but Halo 2 has an extended torture scene that includes stripping someone naked to humiliate them and Halo 3 has several sequences involving a female character being violated mentally. So if anything these things are extreme triggers you can’t engage with, then I say you should listen to your gut.

3.I will not talk about the multiplayer aspects of Halo much (except to discuss stuff involving co-op maybe) as this series is meant to kind of explain more outside of multiplayer stereotypes.

4. Halo 2 and 3 are pretty hard to talk about without mentioning spoilers for the games that come before it. If you’d like a totally spoiler free experience, I’d recommend skipping anything where I mention these games. Also for the sake of my own sanity, I am not treating the Flood as a spoiler, because ...well it hasn’t been for almost 20 years, and Halo has since reached a point where you can’t really talk about it without mentioning them.

----

So I guess I should start at the very beginning?

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE HALO MASTER CHIEF COLLECTION?

The Halo Master Chief Collection is a collection of the first four Halo games, and ODST, and soon Reach will be added too! Its sold at the equivalent price of one retail game, so you’re basically getting six games for the price of one.

It was released for Xbox One in 2014, to coincide with Halo 2’s tenth anniversary. It was infamously buggy at the time, (probably because it was rushed for the aforementioned anniversary) but most of these bugs have been fixed, and they even added in ODST as an apology gift! The PC version should not contain these bugs. (though there’s a decent chance it might contain bugs related to PC porting, especially for Halo 3 and beyond which have never been ported before, but that’s just speculation).

If the PC version is identical to the Xbox version, the Master Chief Collection is essentially a download pass for these games. You download and pick and choose which ones you want! For example on my Xbox I don’t have the ODST from MCC loaded on because I already have the vanilla Xbox 360 version loaded to emulate (which I still haven’t finished but YOU KNOW). This allows you to play the games you want and not waste space and download time on the ones you don’t.

Halo Combat Evolved is ported based on the 2011 10th anniversary version that updated the graphics. Halo 2 received a brand new (and absolutely STUNNING) graphics update specifically for this release. Halo 3 and beyond are straight up ports with the original graphics, though with a much better frame rate.

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS HALO?

OH…. umm I guess maybe I should talk about that too.

Halo is as most people know, a sci-fi first person shooter. From 2001-2010 the games were released by Bungie. When Bungie left Microsoft to make the Destiny series, Microsoft kept some employees behind and hired some new ones to create 343 Industries which is their in house team to make Halo. The first game released by 343 Industries is Halo CE: Anniversary in 2011, and the first game released based on original content is Halo 4 in 2012.  This post series though will mostly focus on Bungie content.

So Halo: Combat Evolved came out in 2001 and its...basically the reason the Xbox is a THING. If it weren’t for Halo, or even if Halo had been a multiplatform release, the Xbox probably would have gone the way of the Sega Dreamcast. Halo: CE had many innovations for the first person shooter genre at the time, including a two gun limit where you have to strategize your choice in weapons, a very complex AI system for the time, and basically revolutionized multiplayer for FPS games as we know it.

Halo would have been the best selling game for the original Xbox if it weren’t for Halo 2’s release in 2004, and Halo 3 basically was THE title for the Xbox 360, when it came out in 2007. The later games haven’t been AS successful, but still have a very loyal fanbase.

           ENOUGH WITH THIS HISTORY LESSON, WHY IS HALO ANY DIFFERENT FROM CALL OF DUTY?

First things first.. I know there’s a lot of posts going around rn, talking about how well….overly militaristic many FPS games are. I will say I DON’T believe Halo is on the same level of some of these games. I’ve never heard of it having any military involvement in production, and I’d say its about as militaristic as Mass Effect is, as in the protagonists are in the space military, and the plot revolves around that..  The backstory of Halo if anything, paints the military in a very gray morality light AT BEST. So if you’re worried about this being a game that over-glorifies military stuff, if you’re okay with Mass Effect’s portrayal of a human space military, you’ll probably be fine with Halo.

SO I have not actually played Call of Duty or games like that as surprisingly I actually really don’t like the FPS genre, and Halo is the only FPS game I like. I will say though, Halo is definitely not a totally generic shooter, the way Call of Duty is stereotyped as. It has a very interesting plot with a lot of layers, and very unique lore, that still plays on familiar tropes. (and I’ll get into some of that later.)

At least one selling point I’ll say, is that unlike many modern shooters, Halo is STUNNING. It uses color very well, and has many beautiful maps, and especially in the remastered games you could just look at the environment for days. So the fact it has a color palette outside of gray and brown is definitely enough to set it apart.

I will say if you like Mass Effect for its alien lore and world building, there’s a very good chance you’ll like Halo too. The fandoms have a lot of overlap, and actually have a decent amount in common despite the fact one’s a shooter where you kill aliens and the other is an RPG where you…. you know with the aliens.

SO WHAT IS THIS PLOT YOU SPEAK OF?

I plan to go more in depth into this in my next post, but I figured for this intro post I might as well tell the basic gist of it. There will be some loose spoilers for the sake of the summaries making sense.

Halo Combat Evolved, is about a lone human ship that has escaped the destruction of the planet Reach, which was the last thing between Earth and the Covenant, a race of aliens hell bent on wiping out humanity for religious reasons. The ship makes a “random” jump to what they think would be the middle of nowhere, but in fact brings them to a ringworld that is worshipped as the foundation of the Covenant religion. Both human and Covenant land on this ring and a fierce battle assumes as they try to take control of it. Halfway through you learn that there’s...surprise! Zombies! Called the Flood, a spore like species that turns people into zombies and their only drive is to consume everything in their path. It turns out Halo, is a weapon to destroy them but…. It also destroys every living thing in the galaxy, so it turns into a mad dash to make sure that a) no one activates it and b) the Flood are able to be stopped without it before they leave the ringworld.

Halo 2 takes place about a month later, and is a split campaign between the Master Chief and the Arbiter, who is the disgraced commander of that fleet you were fighting in the first game. The Master Chief side of the story involves the Covenant finally making it to Earth, and the discovery of a second Halo ring, and the fallout of both of those things. The Arbiter side of the story involves him trying to restore his honor within the Covenant, by becoming a suicide soldier fighting for their faith, but as he does missions for his prophets, he learns the amount of lies and hatred his religion and society are built on.

And Halo 3 is basically...the convergence of all these stories. Its very hard to talk about without mentioning spoilers, and without going in depth about world building related stuff, which is the focus of my next post.

The final thing for this intro is….

WHAT IS HALO’S GAMEPLAY LIKE?

Okay so… I’m not going to talk about the controls, because I imagine they’ll be very different from mine, as an Xbox player. And I’m very biased because Halo is the first game I ever played on a controller as a kid, so I don’t really have an objective way of describing them. But the fact the controls were easy for me as a seven year old, probably makes them pretty easy to learn in general.

Because Halo is a linear story, the game is split up into levels. In the vanilla releases of the game, you need to play them in order to unlock them all, but in MCC that is NOT the case, and you can skip levels. I really do not recommend doing this though the first time around for obvious reasons, but once you’ve completed the game, you can just play the segments you like! And trust me there are certain levels you’ll hate (like the Library… I will tell you right now you will hate that level.)

There’s four difficulty levels, Easy, Normal, Heroic and Legendary. Easy is well..super easy. This is the mode I used as a little kid. However I don’t think there’s any shame in playing at this level, in fact I usually use this difficulty for my first playthrough so I can get through the story with no difficulty. Normal is well...normal. This is the difficulty I usually play at, its probably the most realistic in terms of enemy strength vs player strength. Heroic is basically pretty hard but not like...obscenely hard, but enough to be a big frustrating unless you know the game really well. And Legendary is… well super extra hard. Play Legendary if you enjoy having everything murder you, with no mercy. Also Halo 2 has a significantly harder campaign then Halo CE and Halo 3.

In the vanilla releases of the games, starting with Halo 2, there are items called Skulls you can collect that add difficulty or some extra fun to the game, but you have to collect them in the Legendary difficulties of the levels. This is NOT the case for MCC, and they’re all available for you from the getgo. I really don’t recommend using them for your first playthrough unless you really want a challenge, with the exception of the silly ones like Grunt Birthday Party (which spits confetti for headshots to Grunts) that don’t actually affect gameplay.

A lot of other gameplay stuff is really hard to generalize since Halo is a series where the gameplay tends to be pretty different between games, such as with HUD features and such.  But those are some general miscellaneous game things they all have in common.

So yeah, thats it for my intro to my...intro to Halo. I’ll get started on the next one talking more indepth about the factions and what not, when I recover from...writing this.

[the-cookie-of-doom]

Lmfao look @ this embarrassing display of pathological jealousy & butthurt right here https://liliaeth.tumblr.com/post/185660274761/i-will-never-get-over-how-the-teen-wolf-fandom

https://russianspacegeckosexparty.tumblr.com/post/185660318562/i-will-never-get-over-how-the-teen-wolf-fandom

https://princeescaluswords.tumblr.com/post/185660625460/i-will-never-get-over-how-the-teen-wolf-fandom

DELUSIONAL #1: I will never get over how the Teen Wolf fandom treated Scott McCall. He is the literal protagonist of the show (he’s the teen wolf!!) but the fandom looked at him and went : “you know what would be even better? His boring white best friend. We’re gonna make him the main character”.

If you knew nothing about Teen Wolf except for what you would find on Tumblr, you would assume that Stiles is the protagonist. He gets the metas, the thousands of fics dedicated to him and his family and his angst. He gets the most popular ship, he gets all the people defending him and actions.

Meanwhile, Scott gets treated like dirt. He’s villainized, he’s dumbed down, he gets ignored.

Scott McCall deserves better 2kforever, and if any Stiles fans try to argue you’re getting blocked.

DELUSIONAL #2: I never knew how much I hated the color taupe (lbr, I didn’t even KNOW what the color taupe was) until every fucking where you turned in fandom was an ode to Stiles’ whiskey-taupe colored eyes.

DELUSIONAL #3: Let’s be completely fair here, Jeff Davis said multiple times both in interviews and in Dir. Commentary that he liked Stiles the most, identified with him the most, and poured the most into that character. The Fandom got bored with Scott because well, Jeff kind of wanted us to. /he/ was bored with Scott.

It’s only on my most recent re-watch that I’m falling in love with Scott. His heart I used to chalk up to “boring Lawful Good”, his loyalty as well. And to be fair, Tumblr was going through kind of a “Sherlock” phase where being super smart and talking fast and making doe eyes at another boy made you automatically the most likeable no matter how uninteresting you are.

None of this excuses treating Scott poorly. He’s the definition of “best boy”, he’s the soft gooey center that pulls this overly dramatic teen drama together! But it might at least explain it.

DELUSIONAL #2: Yeah, except that doesn’t track for a number of reasons. Firstly, the show itself WAS focused around Scott the first two and a half seasons. Sure, Stiles still had his ‘scene stealing moments’ or whatever, but the plot, the character arcs, the themes - they were very clearly focused around Scott and his story up through the end of 3A.

That never stopped fandom from being shitty as hell to Scott from like, the very first episodes. So Davis’ investment or lack thereof in Scott is not connected to how much or how little shit fandom shoveled Scott’s way.

Secondly, fandom is extremely vocal about hating Davis and his choices like….across the board. Even when he poured EVERYTHING into Stiles’ character and story to the exclusion and detriment of the main character, it still wasn’t enough for fandom as it wasn’t HOW they wanted everything focused on Stiles, he wasn’t with the right love interest, he wasn’t kicking ass in the right way, he wasn’t a spark, etc, etc. Fandom never ever took their lead from Davis and his story and character directions, and they were never shy about saying so.

I have a lot of criticisms for and of Davis, like a looooooooot, but there’s no spreading the blame around here.

Fandom’s treatment of Scott is on fandom and no one else. They never wanted the quiet kind-hearted Latino boy as the lead, they wanted him supporting their two white faves instead of ‘stealing focus’, and no amount of focus and nothing Scott actually did or didn’t do was ever going to change that!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wow. Looks like Tyler Posey is not the only one who’s unhealthily obsessed with Dylan O’Brien (and with Stiles Stilinski, too, since TP feels the need to bring Stiles up in every single fucking interview and keeps whining about how Sciles should have been the most popular ship of Teen Wolf, or about how he wants to see more Scott/Stiles stuff like a whiny, entitled manchild) https://poseysprostate.tumblr.com/post/183385569523/i-think-the-stiles-and-scott-shippers-or-anyone

https://blamscilesswanqueenforever.tumblr.com/post/183424757827/hobrien-will-teen-wolf-fans-like-now

Also, nah. Scott McCall is a bland, boring, uninteresting, shitty excuse of a badly written and portrayed fictional character with no development whatsoever, therefore no one owes him nor Tyler ”shipping non canon ships is incredibly offensive and disrespectful towards the writers, producers, and everyone involved in *MY* show unless said non canon ships involve *MY* character Scott McCall” Posey anything.

No one’s fault even Peter Hale’s Shelby Cobras are canonically more complex, relevant and interesting than true petty dictator wannabe with delusions of grandeur Scoot McBelowAverageIdiot could ever hope to be, delusionals! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cookie: Shit like this makes me very glad I was not involved with the fandom in its heyday. I remember when I joined tumblr in like 2013? 2014?? Everyone kept going off and ranting about how the fandom was so racist and horrible and abusive to main character and blah blah blah, so I wisely chose to just stay away from Teen Wolf. (Literally didn’t even watch it until the show ended two years ago and I started seeing promos for Maze Runner: TDC and realized I never saw Scorch Trials and was like ‘oh hey! I recognize that dude!) I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the fandom as a whole is actually pretty great. 

As for all of that mess up there, whoo, I hope they stretched before all that reaching! Literally the only people that concerned with race in this fandom are the delusionals. Sorry babes, but an ethnically ambiguous (and proud of it!) actor playing a character who alludes to being Latino one time like 3 seaons into the show does not representation make! What’s more, no one is required to like a character purely based on your head canon of their race, and disliking that character based on many factors (that don’t even touch what Scott McCall’s race may or may not be) does not make any of us racist. Funny enough, Most of us actually adored Boyd, and Danny, and Kira, and Mason, and everyone else on this show who’s race wasn’t ambiguous. Why? Because those characters were actually fun and interesting. Scott McCall? Not so much. 

And I have no idea what part of fandom they are in that Scott is the most poor abuse puppy ever and everyone hates him like, what? I love fanon Scott, and I mean that unironically. In fandom I often see him written exactly as the kind of character they wish he was; kind, empathetic, a good friend, and a good boyfriend. When they rant and rave about how Scott is portrayed as dumbed down or villainized, I can’t help but wonder... are they talking about, *gasp* canon Scott? Because I’m sorry, but canon does not support their idealized view of him. Which is okay! That’s what fandom is for! 

A few weeks ago i got a really shitty comment on a fic I wrote like a year ago, and this person complained (for an exhaustive amount of paragraphs) that I didn’t write the characters to their specific tastes, and that I had to be sympathetic with their predicament because you see, they cannot write. Therefore I must do it for them, or pay the consequences. 

That is the same time I am getting from this, about Stiles getting all the meta and such. Like, do they understand why Stiles gets the meta? Because people write it! No one is stopping the delusionals from writing meta about Scott, in fact I would encourage it. Be the change you want to see in the world. (Although fair warning, I have read their metas and they seem to somehow always end up revolving around Stiles in some way. Who is it that’s obsessed with him, again?) Instead of spending all their time complaining, they could be writing all they physically could about Scott, creating content that portrays him in the way they want to see him portrayed. But they don’t. Because then what would they complain about?