#do you wanna go on an adventure in the mass effect universe? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

scifrey · 5 years ago

Video

youtube

In February of 2017 I had the great pleasure of addressing the Grant MacEwan University English Department with a keynote speech titled “Your Voice is Valid.”

This speech was all about Mary Sues, fandom, and marginalized voices, and is a direct response to the negative reactions that media texts receive when they announce a protagonist that is deemed to be a "Mary Sue".

In the intervening years I think the message of my talk has become even more vital to creators, so I thought I’d record a new video of the speech to share with a wider audience.

If you liked this video, you can find more of my writing advice on my website.

Read the full speech on Wattpad, or below:

(Text may not match the video exactly as I did alter some of the phrasing.)

My friends, I have a declaration to make. A promise. A vow, if you will. And it is this:

If I hear one more basement-dwelling troll call the lead female protagonist of a genre film a ‘Mary Sue’ one more time, I’m going to scream.

I’m sure you’ve all seen this all before. A major science fiction, fantasy, video game, novel, or comic franchise or publisher announces a new title. Said new title features a lead protagonist who is female, or a person of color, or is not able-bodied, or is non-neurotypical, or is LGBTQA+.

It might be the new Iron Man or Spider-man, who are both young black teenagers in the comics now, or the Lt. Michael Burnham of Star Trek: Discovery, or the new Ms. Marvel, a Muslim girl. It could be Jyn Erso, the female lead of the latest Star Wars film or Chirrut, her blind companion. It could be the deaf FBI Director Gordon Cole from Twin Peaks or Clint Barton from Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye graphic novel series. It could be Sara, of Dragon Age fame or Samantha Traynor from Mass Effect, both lesbians, or Dorian also from Dragon Age, who is both a person of color and flamboyantly queer. Maybe it’s Lt. Stamets and Dr. Hugh Culber, played by Anthony Rapp of (best known for his time as Mark in Rent) and Wilson Cruz, both open out gay men playing openly out gay men in a romantic relationship in Star Trek Discovery. It could be Captain Christopher Pike, from both the original Star Trek series and the reboot film, who uses a wheelchair and assistive devices to communicate. Or maybe it’s Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, fights with a prosthetic arm in the comics, or Iron Man, whose suit serves as Tony Stark’s ego-tastic pacemaker.

And generally, the audience cheers at this announcement. Yay for diversity! Yay for representation! Yay for working to make the worlds we consume look more like the world we live in! Yay!

But there’s a certain segment of the fan population that does not celebrate.

I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about.

This certain brand of fan-person gets all up in arms on social media. They whine. They complain. They say that it’s not appropriate to change the gender, race, orientation, or physical abilities of a fictional creation, or just protest their inclusion to begin with. They decry the erosion of creativity in service of neo-liberalism, overreaching political-correctness, and femi-nazis. (Sorry, sorry – the femi-“alt-right”).

It’s not realistic. “Women can’t survive in space,” they say, “It’s just a fact.” (That is a direct quote, by the way.) “Superheroes can’t be black,” they say. “Video game characters shouldn’t have a sexual orientation,” unless – it seems - that sexual orientation is straight and the game serves to support a male gaze ogling at half-dressed pixilated prostitutes.

“And strong female characters have to wear boob armor. It’s just natural,” they say.

These fan persons predict the end of civilization because things are no longer being done the way they’ve always been done. “There’s nothing wrong with the system,” they say. “So don’t you dare change it.”

And to enforce this opinion, to ensure that it’s really, really clear just how much contempt this certain segment of the fan population holds for any lead protagonist that isn’t a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, cismale, they do everything they can to tear down them down.

They do this by calling that character a ‘Mary Sue.’

When fan fiction author Paula Smith first used the term ‘Mary Sue’ in her 1973 story A Trekkie’s Tale, she was making a commentary on the frequent appearance of original characters in Star Trek fan fiction. Now, I’m going to hazard that most of these characters existed as a masturbatory avatar – wanna bone Spock? (And, um, you know, let’s face it who didn’t?) They you write a story where a character representing you gets to bone Spock.

And if they weren’t a sexual fantasy, then they were an adventure fantasy. Wanna be an officer on the Enterprise? Well, it’s the flagship of the Starfleet, so you better be good enough to get there. Chekov was the youngest navigator in Starfleet history, Uhura is the most tonally sensitive officer in linguistics, and Jim Kirk’s genius burned like a magnesium flare – your self-representative character would have to keep up to earn thier place on that bridge. This led to a slew of hyper sexualized, physically idealized, and unrealistically competent author-based characters populating the fan fiction of the time.

But inserting a trumped-up version of yourself into a narrative wasn’t invented in the 1970s. Aeneas was totally Virgil’s Mary Sue in his Iliad knock off. Dante was such a fanboy of the The Bible that he wrote himself into an adventure exploring it. Robin Hood’s merry men and King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table kept growing in number and characteristics with each retelling. Even painters have inserted themselves into commissioned pictures for centuries.

This isn’t new. This is not a recent human impulse.

But what Paula Smith and the Mary Sue-writing fan ficcers didn’t know at the time was that they were crystallizing what it means to be an engaged consumer of media texts, instead of just a passive one. They had isolated and labelled what it means to be so affected by a story, to love it so much that this same love bubbles up out of you and you have to do something about it, either in play, or in art. For example: in pretending to be a ninja turtle on the play ground, or in trying to recreate the perfect version of a star fleet uniform to wear, or in creating art and making comics depicting your favorite moments or further adventures of the characters you love, or writing stories that encompass missing moments from the narratives.

‘Mary Sues’ are, at their center, a celebration of putting oneself and one’s own heart, and one’s own enjoyment of a media text, first.

Before I talk about why this certain segment of the fan population deploys the term ‘Mary Sue’ the way it does, let’s take a closer look at this impulse for participatory play.

Here’s the sixty four thousand dollar question: where do ‘Mary Sues’ come from?

I’d like you take a moment to think back at the sorts of games you enjoyed when you were about seven years old. Think back. Picture yourself outside, playing with your siblings, or the neighbour’s kids or you cousins. What are you doing? Playing ball games, chase games, and probably something with a narrative? Are you Power Rangers? Are you flying to Neverland with Peter Pan? Are you fighting Dementors and Death Eaters at Hogwarts? Are you the newest members of One Direction, are you Jem and the Holograms or the Misfits? Are you running around collecting Pokémon back before running around and collecting Pokémon IRL was a thing?

That, guys, gals and non-binary pals, is where Mary Sues come from. That’s it. It’s as easy as that.

As a child you didn’t know that modern literary tradition pooh-poohs self-analogous characters, or that realism was required for depth of character. All you knew was that you wanted to be a part of that story, right.  If you wanted to be a train with Thomas and Friends, then you were a train. If you wanted to be a magic pony from Equestria, you were a pony. Or, you know, if you were trying to appease two friends at once, then you were a pony-train.

Self-insert in childhood games teach kids the concept of elastic play, and this essential ability to imagine oneself in skins that are not one’s own, and to stretch and reshape narratives is what breeds creativity and storytelling. It shapes compassion.

Now, think of your early stories. As a child we all told and wrote stories about doing what, to us, were mundane everyday things - like getting ice cream with the fictional characters we know and love.

My friend’s three year old tells his father bed time stories about going on walks through Home Hardware with his friends, the anthropomorphized versions of the local taco food truck and the commuter train his dad takes to work every morning. He doesn’t recognize the difference between real and fictional people (or for him, in this case, the stand-ins that are the figures that loom large in his life right now as a three year old obsessed with massive machines). When you ask him to tell you a story, he talks about these fictions as if they’re real. And he does not hesitate to insert himself into the tale. “I did this. I did that. We went there and then had this for lunch.” He is present in all his own stories because, at this age, he understands the world only from his limited personal POV.

As we grow up, we do learn to differentiate between fantasy and reality. But, I posit that we never truly loose that “me too!” mentality. We see something amazing happening on the screen, or on the page, or on a playing field, and we want to be there, a part of it.

So we sort ourselves into Hogwarts Houses. We choose hockey teams to love, and we wear their jerseys.  We buy ball caps from our favorite breweries. We line up for hours to be the first to watch a new release or to buy a certain smartphone. We collect stamps and baseball cards and first editions of Jane Austen and Dan Brown. We want to be a part of it. Our capitalist, consumer society tells us to prove our love with our dollars, and we do it.

And for fan creators, we want to be a part of it so badly that we’re willing to make more of it. Not for profit, but for sheer love. And for the early writers, the newbies, the blossoming beginners, Mary Sues are where they generally start. Because those are the sorts of stories they’ve been telling yourselves for years already.

But as we get older, as we consume more media texts and find more things to adore, we begin to notice a dearth of representation – you’re not pony trains in our minds any more. We have a better idea of what we look like. And we don’t see it. The glorious fantasy diversity of our childhoods is stripped away, narratives are codified by the mainstream media texts we consume, and people stop looking like us.

I’m reminded of a story I read on Tumblr, of a young black author living in Africa – whose name, I’m afraid, I wasn’t able to find when I went back to look for it, so my apologies to her. The story is about the first time she tried to write a fairytale in elementary school. She made her protagonist a little white girl, and when she was asked why she hadn’t chosen to make the protagonist back, this author realized that it hadn’t even occurred to her that she was allowed make her lead black. Even though she was surrounded by people of color, the adventures, and romance, and magic in everything she consumed only happened to the white folks. She did not know she was allowed to make people like her the heroes because she had never seen it.

This is not natural. This is nurture, not nature. This is learned behavior. And this is hegemony.

No child grows up believing they don’t have place in the story. This is something were are taught. And this is something that we are taught by the media texts we consume.

I do want to pause and make a point here. There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with writing a narrative from the heterosexual, able bodied, neurotypical, white cismale POV in and of itself. I think we all have stories that we know and love that feature that particular flavor of protagonist. And people from that community deserve to tell their stories as much as folks from any other community.

The problem comes from a reality where when it’s the only narrative. The default narrative. The factory setting. When people who don’t see themselves reflected in the narrative nonetheless feel obligated to write such stories, instead of their own. When they are told and taught that it is the only story worth telling. ‎

There’s this really great essay by Ika Willis, and it’s called “. And I think it’s the one – one of the most important pieces of writing not only on Mary Sues, but on the dire need for representation in general.

In the essay, Willis talks about Mary Sues – beyond being masturbatory adventure avatars for young people just coming into their own sexuality, or avatars to go on adventures with – but as voice avatars. Mary Sues, when wielded with self-awareness, deliberateness, and precision, can force a wedge into the narrative, crack it open, and provide a space for marginalized identities and voices in a media-text that otherwise silences and ignores them.

This is done one of two ways. First: by jamming in a diverse Mary Sue, and making the characters and the world acknowledge and work with that diversity. Or, second: by co-opting a pre-existing character and overlaying a new identity on them while retaining their essential characterization. For example, by writing a story where Bilbo Baggins is non-binary, but still thinking that adventures are messy, dirty things. Or making Sherlock Holmes deaf, but still perfectly capable of solving all the crimes. Or making James Potter Indian, so that the Dursleys prejudiced against Harry not only for his magic, but also for his skin color. Or making Ariel the mermaid wrestle with severe body dysphoria, or Commander Sheppard suffer from severe PTSD.

I like to call this voice avatar Mary Sue a ‘Meta-Sue’, because when authors have evolved enough in their storytelling abilities to consciously deploy Mary Sues as a deliberate trope, they’re doing so on a self-aware, meta-textual level.

So that is where Mary Sues comes from.

But what is a Mary Sue? How can you point at a character and say, “Yes, that is – definitively – a Mary Sue”.

Mary Sues can generally be characterized as:

-Too perfect, or unrealistically skilled. They shouldn’t be able to do all the things they do, or know all the things they know, as easily as they do or know them. For reasons of the plot expedience, they learn too fast, and are able to perform feats that other characters in their world who have studied or trained longer and harder find difficult. For example, Neo in The Matrix.

-They are the black hole of every plot – every major quest or goal of the pre-existing characters warps to include or be about them; every character wants to befriend them, or romance them, or sleep with them, and every villain wants to possess them, or kill them, or sleep with them. This makes sense, as why write a character into the world if you’re not going to have something very important happen to them? So, for example, like Neo in The Matrix.

-A Mary Sue, because it’s usually written by a neophyte author who’s been taught that characters need flaws, has some sort of melodramatic, angsty tragic back-story that, while on the surface seems to motivate them into action, because of lack of experience in creating a follow-through of emotional motivation, doesn’t actually affect their mental health or ability to trust or be happy or in love. For example, like the emotional arc of Neo in The Matrix.

– A Mary Sue saves the day. This goes back to that impulse to be the center of the story. Like Neo in The Matrix.

-And lastly, Mary Sues come from outside the group. They’re from the ‘real world’, like you and I, or have somehow discovered the hero’s secret identity and must be folded into the team, or are a new recruit, or are a sort of previously undiscovered stand-alone Chosen One. Like, for example, Neo in The Matrix.

Now, as I’ve said, there’s actually nothing inherently wrong with writing a Mary Sue. Neo is a Mary Sue, but The Matrix is still a really engaging and well written film. And simply by virtue of the fact that an individual with ingrained cultural foundations is writing a story, that story is inherently rooted in that writer’s lived life and experiences. As much as a writer may try to either highlight or downplay it, each character and story they create has some of themselves in it. The first impulse of storytelling is to talk about oneself. We write about ourselves, only the more we write, the more skilled we become at disguising the sliver of us-ness in a character, folding it into something different and unique. We, as storytellers, as humans, empathize with protagonists and fictional characters constantly – we love putting our feet into other people’s shoes. It’s how we understand and engage with the world.

And we as writers tap into our own emotions in order to describe them on the page. We take slices of our lives – our experiences, our memories, our friend’s verbal tics or hand gestures, aunt Brenda’s way of making tea, Uncle Rudy’s way having a pipe after dinner, that time Grannie got lost at the zoo – and we weave them together into a golem that we call a character, which comes to life with a bit of literary magic. I mean, allow me to be sparklingly reductionist for a second, but in the most basic sense, every character is a Mary Sue.

It’s just a matter of whether the writer has evolved to the point  in their craft that they’ve learned to animate that golem with the sliver of self-ness hidden deep enough that it is unrecognizable as self-ness, but still recognizable as human-ness.

For years, mainstream western media has featured characters that were primarily heterosexual, able bodied, neurotypical, white cismales. And, regrettably, because of that, this flavor of human is now assumed to be the default for a character. When people from other communities speak up requesting other flavours, for characters for whom the imbedded sliver of humanity remains just as poignant and relatable, but the outer shell is of a different variety, this is when that certain segment of the fan population looses their cool.

That certain segment of the fan population has been telling us for years that if we don’t like what we see on TV or in video games, or in books, or comics, or on the stage, that we should just go make our own stuff. And now we are.

“Make your own stuff,” they say, and then follow it up with: “What’s with all this political correctness gone wild? Uhg. This stuff is all just Mary Sue garbage.”

Well, yes. Of course it is. That’s the point.

But why are they saying it like that?

Because they mean it in a derogatory sense.

They don’t mean it in the way that Paula Smith meant it – a little bit belittling but mostly fun; a bemused celebration of why we love putting ourselves into the stories and worlds we enjoy. They don’t mean it the way that Willis means it – a deliberate and knowing way to shove the previously marginalized into the center. They don’t even mean it the way that I mean it in my own work - as a tool for carefully deconstructing and discussing character and narrative with a character and from within a narrative.

When a certain segment of the fan population talks about ‘Mary Sue’, they mean to weaponize it. To make it a stand-in for the worse thing that a character can be: bland, predictable, and too-perfect. Which, granted, many Mary Sues are. But not all of them. And a character doesn’t have to be a Mary Sue to be done badly, either.

When this certain segment of the fan population says ‘Mary Sue’, they’re trying to shame the creators for deviating from the norm - the white, the heterosexual, the able bodied, the neurotypical, the straight cismale.

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “I don’t believe people like this are interesting enough to be the lead character in a story.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “I don’t think there’s any need to listen to that voice. They’re not interesting enough.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “This character is not what I am used to a.k.a. not like me, and I’m gonna whine about it.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “Even though kids from all over the world, from many different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds have had to grow up learning to identify with characters who don’t look or think like them, identifying with characters who don’t look or think like me is hard and I don’t wanna.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: ”Even though I’ve grown up in a position of privilege and power, and even though publishing and producing diverse stories with diverse casts doesn’t actually cut into the proportionate representation that I receive, and never will, I am nonetheless scared that I’ll never see people like me in media texts ever again.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “Considering my fellow human beings as fellow human beings worthy of having stories about them and their own experiences, in their own voices, is hard and I don’t wanna do it.”

When this certain segment of the population says ‘Mary Sue,’ what they’re really saying is: “I only want stories about me.”

They call leads ‘Mary Sues’ so people will stop writing them and instead write… well, their version of a ‘Mary Sue.’ The character that is representative of their lived experiences, their power and masturbatory fantasies, their physical appearance, their sexual awakenings, their cultural identity, their voice, their kind of narratives.

Missing, of course, that the point of revisionist and inclusive narratives aren’t to shove out previous incarnations, but to coexist alongside them. It’s not taking away one entrée and offering only another – it’s building a buffet.

Okay, so who actually cares if these trolls call these diverse characters Mary Sues?

Well, unfortunately, because this certain segment of the population have traditionally been the group most listened-to by the mainstream media creators and the big money, their opinions have power. (Never mind that they’re not actually the biggest group of consumers anymore, nor no longer the most vocal.)

So, this is where you come in.

You have the power to take the Mary Sue from the edge of the narrative and into the centre. And you do can do this by normalizing it. Think back to that author who didn’t think little black girls were allowed to be the heroes of fairy tales. Now imagine how much different her inner world, her imagination might have been at the stage when she was first learning to understand her own self-worth, if she had seen faces like hers on the television, in comics, in games, and on the written page every day of her life.

And not just one or two heroes, but a broad spectrum of characters that run the gamut from hero to villain, from fragile to powerful, from straight to gay, and every other kind of intersectional identity.

You have the power to give children the ability to see themselves.

Multi-faceted representation normalizes the marginalized.

And if you have the privilege to be part of the passing member of the mainstream, then weaponize your privilege. Refuse to work with publishers, or websites, or conventions that don’t also support diverse creators. Put diverse characters in your work, and do so thoughtfully and with the input of the people from the community you are portraying. And if you’re given the opportunity to submit or speak at an event, offer to share the microphone.

The first thing I did when actor Burn Gorman got a Twitter account was to Tweet him  my thanks for saving the world in Pacific Rim while on a cane. As someone who isn’t as mobile as the heroes I see in action films - who knows for a fact that when the zombie apocalypse comes I will not be a-able to outrun the monsters – it meant so much to me that his character was not only an integral and vital member of the team who cancelled the apocalypse, but also that not once in the film did someone call him a cripple, or tell him he couldn’t participate because of his disability, or leave him behind.

Diversity matters.

Not because it’s a trendy hashtag, or a way to sell media texts to a locked-down niche market, but because every single human being deserves to be told that they have a voice worth listening to; a life worth celebrating and showcasing in a narrative; a reality worth acknowledging and accepting and protecting; emotions that are worth exploring and validating; intelligence that is worth investing in and listening to; and a capacity to love that is worth adoring.

White, heterosexual, neurotypical, able-bodied cismales are not the only people on the planet who are human.

And you have a right to tell your story your way.

Calling something a ‘Mary Sue’ in order to dismiss it out of hand, as an excuse to hate something before even seeing it, is how the trolls bury your Narrative and your Identity.  We are storytellers, all of us. Every person in this room. Whether your wheel house is in fiction, or academia, or narrative non-fiction, we impart knowledge and offer experience through the written word, through the telling of tales, through leading a reader from one thought to another.

And we none of deserve to be shouted down, talked over, or dismissed. No one can tell you that your story isn’t worth telling. Of course it is. It’s yours.

And don’t let anyone call your characters, or your work, or you a ’Mary Sue’ in the derogatory sense ever again. Or I am going to scream.

#J.M. Frey #Words for Writers #Writing Advice #Writing Community #writer #am writing #voice #how to #writblr #writeblr

3 notes · View notes

new-world-hope · 6 years ago

Text

Some general housekeeping on where I’ve been/why I’ve been inactive:

I moved again! Not quite across the country this time, but instead, up to Seattle. I’ve been working full time at a shitty grocery store job downtown and spending a lot of my free time on various moving-related tasks. Due to a complicated string of unfortunate events involving my girlfriend breaking her arm over New Year’s (and me not having a license due to growing up in a city), most of our shit had to stay in California, and since we were already in Washington, we just… stayed here, pretty much, which we were already planning to do anyway, but I guess it made it easier.

But her parents just last weekend brought up all our shit, so our apartment is full of boxes we’re slowly going through. Other than that I’ve been trying to write more. I’ve got a thousand ideas for different stories I want to write and I’ve been writing bits and pieces of all of them with reckless abandon, stressing myself out, retreating into my hole, scrapping them, and then starting over again. I’ve been reading more, working more, and playing a hell of a lot of tabletop RPGs. I’m planning a Mass Effect campaign, have a D&D campaign on the back burner, etc., though I haven’t actually ran anything yet.

I like Seattle, but Ballard is my favorite part, and I’m glad I live here and hate that I work downtown. Fallout hasn’t been on my mind as much lately, mostly because… well. You probably know why, if you’re here. Obviously the direction of the series is not where any of us wanted it to be. Obsidian moving onto other projects is upsetting. I’ve been wanting to commit myself to Fallout fanfiction, but I’m shy and scatterbrained with my writing, so no matter how much I write, nothing ever gets done because I’ll end up with thousands of words worth of notes and a dozen versions of the same opening chapter.

I miss Fallout, but my laptop is slowly dying and can barely run things anymore. I’d play Fo4 on my PlayStation, but it can’t hold my attention anymore. New Vegas is, of course, where my heart lies. And I miss it. But I’m awkwardly tiptoeing around the complicated process of having to remove a mod I installed that I ended up hating (one of those revamped Lucky 38 mods that supposedly make it a lot nicer, but really ended up just making it buggier and more of a hassle), and dreading the thought that the game is going to crash one day and never work again.

Mostly I’ve been playing Red Dead, Borderlands, and Elite: Dangerous, when I have the free time with which to play anything, which isn’t so common anymore. I want to go back to school, but don’t have the money, and that’d be even more limited free time lost.

So I’m here, I guess, with a dwindling interest in Tumblr, but hoping to pull something back together on this blog, because I miss it, and I miss this community, and I miss what Fallout used to mean to me.

I’m also still holding strong over at Is TES VI Out Yet, for some reason I can’t quite explain. Part of me wants to give the blog away, but I’m worried whoever I give it to won’t do it right, so here I am, updating it every day, still, almost a year later.

Anyway. That’s me. Someday I hope to have actual fanfiction or something to post here; I like to write about original characters on their own adventures in locations adjacent to established Fallout fiction, and god, I hope that’s remotely interesting to people. I just love to continue fleshing out whatever worlds I already love with new places and people, and I think the wider net we cast, the more people’s love and interest we can capture. There’s a lot of storytelling potential in this universe still left unfulfilled, and, I don’t know, I’m getting to that point where I wonder if it’ll ever happen in a meaningful way.

I’m sure there’s a Fallout movie on the way. I can damn well guarantee it. But it’ll probably suck, and then that’ll be all the standalone narrative content we’ll ever see again, and that’s it! Just more… settlement mechanics, and MMO-lite, and bugs, and blech, I don’t wanna think about it.

I want to live back in that post-New Vegas bubble where the future was bright and the franchise could have gone anywhere.

Oh well. I’m still here. Let’s keep truckin’, shall we?

#hmmmm my theme is kind of an eyesore. i'm sorry about that #i forgot that it was uhhh. like that

9 notes · View notes

amynchan · 6 years ago

Text

Tag, I’m it! o.o

So @radiowrites tagged me in a lovely fic review tag, which sent me into a flurry of researching what exactly I’ve done for 2018. X’D Well... let’s hop into it.

I’m also counting original works that made it into my ‘AmyNChanstories’ tag, so there’s that.

Total number of stories (completed/WIPs):

Let’s see... I’ve completed (posted) 19 stories. Not as many as in the past, but that’s actually a higher number than I was expecting. 0.o

The Ocean is Beautiful, Heartbreak (CH 2), Would, Hotshot, Entertainment, Post-Mission, Renegade Paragon, Words, Life After, Crossover HTTYDxVoltron (with @unsung-knight), “I loved you”, Multiverse Theory, The Bear, Sacrifices, Friends to Lovers, Crossover, Rain, Cooking Adventure, and Playlist.

And it looks like I started 14 WIPs. X’D rip me

Total word count:

uhhhhh idk, at least 22k?

Fandoms written in:

Prince of Persia (the 2008 game), Miraculous Ladybug, Mass Effect, Soul Eater, Original stuff, Voltron and HTTYD (ONCE), and Fairy Tail (even though I’ve never watched the show)

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected?

More than what I’d expected. To me, fanfic is like baring of the soul, and my soul feels like it’s been under a lot of reconstruction lately. XD

What’s your own favorite story of the year?

Probably Post-Mission. It’s fluffy and cute and the banter is adorable. I like sleepy snuggles and taking care of each other and it’s just a really cute reflection of that. *^_^*

Did you take any writing risks this year?

um... probably with the original stuff. There are tidbits of my life in there that I wasn’t sure about expressing, but they turned out all right. Especially the Multiverse Theory one. XD

Do you have any fanfic or profit goals for the new year?

Not really. XD well... actually, untrue. My goal is to write what makes me happy and try really hard not to overthink what I do and don’t put on the page. I did that when I was younger and I had a blast with it.

Best story of the year?

Best?? Ummmm.... lol, I’ll just say ‘crackiest’, since that was a lot of fun to do. HTTYD and Voltron Crossover was really fun because I didn’t do it on my own. XD Had a friend to bounce back and forth with.

Most popular story of the year?

It’s actually Post-Mission at 858 hits, 5 bookmarks, 98 kudos, and 10 comments. *^_^*

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

Life After, I suppose. I don’t think anyone really saw that one, to be perfectly honest. XD

Most fun story to write:

Crossover, from the Grayza Week challenge. XD I loved figuring out what background I was going to give both Gray and Erza and figuring out how best to dispatch those Banshees and Mauraders. XD Like, sometimes I act out what I write and I could almost never get through a serious scene in Crossover without dissolving into giggles. XD

Story with the single sexiest moment:

I don’t really do sexy, but I guess Hotshot might count?? Shakarian has an intimate core, so you gotta recognize that if you wanna write that well. X’D

Most sweet story:

Post-Mission again. XD It was adorable, okay??

”Holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you!” story:

After a while, Renegade Paragon became that for me. I, unfortunately, let Garrus kill Sidonis. I regretted it. Renegade Paragon was my attempt to rationalize my decision to myself.

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters & most unintentionally telling story:

Life After, probably. Because it made me see that even though their connection would be tight forever, Black*Star and Tsubaki don’t necessarily have to be together. They could be fine either way. 0.o

Hardest story to write:

The Bear.

Biggest disappointment:

I dunno.. I wouldn’t say that I was necessarily disappointed with any of them. 0.o

Biggest surprise:

lol. Anything that gets written with @unsung-knight is bound to be a surprise. XD

Tagging:

I tag... @unsung-knight (ofc), @chaotic-cheshire, @pftones3482, @samuel-sadi, @thesilvertophat, @snavej, and @ladylynse!!

#tag #tagged #radiowrites #I wrote a lot more Soul Eater than I realized #huh #the more ya know #X'D #if any of you guys wanna do this then go for it

7 notes · View notes

tumblunni · 6 years ago

Text

Hhhh bunni legs pain accomplishment day

I HAVE FINISHED THE SHOPPING OF HELL

Tfw u only get paid 4 days before christmas and have to rush everything aaaa

It was bad enough today so i'm so glad i got it done before it got even more busy!

Misc boring essentials i bought for myself: new phone charger cos broken, new trousers cos i spilt hair bleach on my only two pairs, new shoes cos my left shoe literally snapped in half down the middle like wtf even happened there, cheap pink hair dye from a discount store cos i wanna try different colours but in a thrifty way

Now for EXCITING CHRISTMAS PRESENT TIME!!!!

First off SO MANY pc and xbox 360 games from Every Charity Shop In Cardiff, St Mellons, Rumney and Llanrumney. My sis has been trying to find some games to play but was like 'dont worry about it i can just wait til the charity shop gets something good'. So i thought i'd get some stocking stuffers via all the charity shops on my side of town. By our powers combined we will blitz the entire vale of glamorgan's discount gaming scene!!! I found SO MANY good stuff for £1/£2/£3 like holy shit i love when charity shops dont know the proper price for shit XD

speaking of which i also found a WEBCAM for £2! If its that cheap it probanly isnt great but itd still be fun to play around with! :D and the same store also had an old vintage G1 My Little Pony coffee mug in excellent condition. Oh god the nostalgia! My support worker gave me a lift to llanrumney so i had to awkwardly explain why i had an armful of weird 80s mugs and big teary eyes!

Speaking of vintage, i found this new vintage toys and games shop in cardiff called Galactic Attic! The name hooked me in and then they actually DID have pokemon inside! As well as all sorts of stuff ranging from 40s to 90s, wow! There was even a lil pile of old 90s gaming magazines in the corner, covered up by a bunch of boxes. I'm glad i noticed them! I got the announcemt issues for pokemon diamond pearl and platinum in a weird old pokemon fan magazine that i loved as a kid. Im kinda sad that nowadays we just have one official magazine fpr each console and not the wild madness of amateaur journalists failing horribly to get news from japan. Shame they didnt have Beckett Pokemon cos that one was infamous fot drawing its own terrible interpretations of pokemon sprites to avoid copyright. And speaking of terrible, they even had bootleg pokemon!! I talked to the cashier and he was like "you know those are fake right" and i was like "yeah its so nostalgic thats why i want em" and he was like "lol yeah they actually sell pretty well so i'm not mad my supplier ripped me off". It was a pretty good and awesomely terrible fake at the same time? There was this exact replica of some japanese display stand for the product and then the actual pokeball toys looked perfect BUT the mini pokemon inside were.. Really not. I am so damn happy with the surprise inside my one, surprise inside has never been more accurate! I can't take a picture now cos my phone is charging but REGICHEETO. Just..just imagine that, and whatever you're imagining it is probably worse. I love it so fuckin much. Also less hilariously there were some bootleg mini pika plushies with actually (as far as i can tell) their own unique design? They have cute lil winter scarves and an art style that reminds me of the Magical Pokemon Adventure manga. A really cute and good bootleg that i would have loved to see as a real product! The only way you can even tell its a bootleg is because there's no marking on the tail. I dunno, maybe if i still have some brown fabric in the cupboard i could fix it? Or maybe its unique tail makes it even more special! I mean there's Cosplay Pikachu with its double tail marking so maybe this is her cousin Accessory Pikachu with no markings? He just likes wearing scarfs and hats and stuff. OMG HE'S THE POKEMON GO EVENT PIKACHU!!!!!!

Along the miscness of finding a few things for myself, i also found: cute lil pokemon pencilcase, kingdom hearts blind bag, cheap copy of Fruits Basket volume 1 cos the new remake is coming out soon and i wanna Get Hype! The KH blind bag was really weird cos i didnt know they now have an entirely different set as well as the keychains i bought before. Its kind of a shame the art style doesnt match cos vexen is only in the keychains, alas! But i do really love these ones! Theyre apparantly made by funko pop but dont have the art style AT ALL, they just look like really accurate versions of the characters in mini form. Its kinda like the 'distance animation' style in steven universe? (Incidentally they also do SU ones but they missed the opportunitu to actually use the distance style, lol) I got a Sora in his kh2 outfit and i'm decently happy with that, its not one i really wanted but its not a bad one either. But i think now i've tried the fun of surprise once i'll just buy the actual ones i want off ebay later. They have roxas in his organization outfit! With a happy smile!!!

Oh oh and then EVEN MORE XBOX GAMES OF THE WILD THRIFT STORE VOID! i managed to find the whole fable series, two assassins creeds, saints row, gta, some misc shooter games and racers that she wanted but i dont know much about, mass effect 2 and ff13. I think maybe one or two others cos i cant fully remember right now. Theyre all in separate bags strewn across the room and my shoulders feel like death so i'll sort through them later.

Aaaand i wrote up like 14 paragraphs more but tumblr didnt save my draft fpr some fuckin reason and now im way too tired to do it again

Briefer summary:

* had a huge horrible panic attack getting stuck in a skyscraper shopping centre clothes place full of screaming and every perfume smell and WHY DO I HAVE TO NAVIGATE THIS HELL MAZE TO FIND THE ESCALATOR and seriously i was my most primal animalistic self and i went full fight or flight on this bitch

* had a lovely time visiting Cool Shop Grandma and rambled the story of how i met her and how we became friends but hhh too tired to rewrite. But anyway today i gave her a christmas pikachu plush as thanks for everything and cos her shop is moving on to its next location soon. She got really teary and gave me a big hug! She's gonna be at a comic con in march so i hope i'm able to go to that and see her again.

* went on a wild goose chase looking for harry potter merchandise and eventually found a gold plated replica of the movie prop version of the time turner and HELL YES my sis will love it!

* rambled about several market stalls that were cool but i can make a separate post about that in the morning when i find their contact details to advertise them

* got a plushie delibird and decided to take selfies with it everywhere to try and fight my social anxiety somehow. We went to a neat lil restaurant and had cheesy fries and a coke float!

* asked for a refund on an item for the first time ever and im proud of myself

* went off on a mystery bus trip to buy a preowned 3ds and pokemon games from a lady in an online preowned stuff facebook group and it didnt go horribly and i am glad! She was really nice and i witnessed A Good And Smart Parenting Moment and man it healed my heart and i wish i'd been raised that way. Again i'll probably ramble about the details later when im less tired, it really touched my heart seriously! And now i have MANY GIFTS FOR SIS!

* in total i was out present shopping from 9am to 8pm and i clicked my shoulder out of its socket for a split second from.all the heavy bags. Now im in a lot of aches and i need a sleeps

The End

6 notes · View notes

tuesdayinthedasarchive-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Tag Game

I was tagged by @apiegohome it was ages ago but I finally have time to do it!

Rules: Answer 30 questions. Tag blogs you want to get to know better

Nickname(s): Online I mainly go my Vani (based on my long Nickname Danila Vanilla), otherwise, Nila is the main, Dani or D

Gender: Non-binary

Sun Sign: Pisces

Height: 156 cm I’m a short arse

Time: 10:44pm

Fave band(s): There is like a million but - Nothing But Thieves, Dance Gavin Dance, Bring Me The Horizon, Nirvana, Queen, Holy Holy

Fave solo artist(s): The Weeknd, Tash Sultana, Flume, Ruby Fields

Song stuck in my head: You really want to Know right now?!?! Undertale’s Megalovania

Last movie I saw: Bohemian Rhapsody

Last show I watched: SheRa

When did I create my blog: This one 2015/16? cant remember its not my first blog

What do I post: My arts, mostly Kingdom Hearts and The Adventure Zone atm

Last thing I googled: How to 100% some Spyro levels

Do I have any other blogs: Lots, nah I have a reblog one (PunkrockAxel) and a personal but thats personal

Do I get asks: I did when I was less busy and more active! now not so much but thats on me

Why did I choose my url:Its my URL for most things and is homage to my love for Dragon Age

Following: 492, its kingdom hearts, TAZ and some random ones thrown in

Followed by: 268 how this keeps going up with my inactivity I love your guys

Average hours of sleep: Ive been getting my 7-8 hours finally but I get exhausted at work so I pass the fuck out

Lucky number: 9

Instruments: I play the spoons lol, i use to play guitar but i dont have one anymore

What I am wearing: Lion King shorts and a Pokemon shirt (not even joking)

Dream job: I’m kinda sorta doing it? Ive always just wanted to work with animals and currently I am an Animal Welfare Scientist

Dream trip: I need to go back to Italy, otherwise I’m going to New Zealand next year I want to see Hobbiton

Fave food: Pizza

Nationality: Aussie

Fav song: Impossible you can not restrain me. According to Spotify its The Divine Zero by Pierce The Veil

Last book I read: I’m currently reading Clay Bridge by Markus Zusak, last one I actually read was The Stolen Throne by David Gaider

Top 3 fictional universes I wanna join: I mean Thedas would be alright before all the shit went down, Mass Effect, Listen I want a real life Turian husband, Fullmetal Alchemist, Alchemy here I come (or Elder Scrolls cause mages and dragons woo)

Okay, I tag people that wanna the is a free invite

#about me #ask meme #tagged #i do love these

1 note · View note

davidmann95 · 7 years ago

Note

I read your post about why Batman is great and I love how thoughtful that is. Can you do one for Superman? Thanks ^_^

Unsurprisingly, I’ve touched on a lot of the basic aspects of it before, so for a couple parts of this I’ll keep it restrained (speaking entirely relatively), but given I think about Superman more than most people think about their best friends, I feel qualified to state that yes: Superman is great. As I said with Batman, the reasons why on a mass cultural basis are much broader than ‘he’s a really well-written character’ - hell, too often that isn’t even the case, even if plenty *have* stepped up over the years - so I’ll start with the lizard hindbrain stuff and work my way down to the finer details.

Superman has iconic power by default

What it really comes down to, at least in terms of keeping him afloat in the public eye when actual public opinion on him has been shot completely to hell over the last couple decades, is that Superman is a Big Deal. He’s the founder of his own genre: literally every surface-level aspect of his mythology is shorthand for the concept he created as well as for plenty beyond superheroes, from the suit (trunks included) to Lois Lane to Lex Luthor to Clark Kent to flying to Kryptonite to Bizarro and Brainiac to super-pets and x-ray vision. A red cape fluttering in the breeze is itself an evocative image entirely sans context, because people know that means him, by which it really means all superheroes. That means he takes the hits of getting all the complaints other characters duck even as others write thinkpieces on his place in culture and how he represents everything from America to Jesus to conservative values to the immigrant experience, all from people who may well have never picked up a comic or watched a cartoon of his in their lives. Even when most people don’t know much about him as a character, he as a symbolic figure is too massive to not grapple with one way or another, even via shorthand such as ‘he’s dumb’ or ‘he stands for us at our best’; while many of his recent woes can be traced back to people telling stories solely about or defined by that iconography, it still has power. Kids on the other side of the world from wherever you’re sitting right now know he can leap a tall building in a single bound. There’s maybe two or three other fictional characters in the world with that level of exposure and impact, and the unconscious emotional connection that comes baked right into it.

Superman is a protector

When kids talk about loving him because he can do anything, and adults talk about how he brings back those memories of joy and comfort, I think this is what it really comes down to a lot of the time. Superman’s the one who looks out for us, the guy who cares about you. Yeah, there’s gotta be the odd story about how NOT EVEN SUPERMAN CAN SAVE EVERYONE! to keep him honest, but by and large, yes he can. He wears a fun flashy uniform and he can wrap you up in his cape and fly you away from whatever bad’s happening, and even if something can catch up, no bullet or bomb in the world is going to get through him to you, or even hurt him enough to at least be scary. Nothing’s so hard or so big or so scary he can’t help, not really; he naps on clouds and swims in the sun. He’s polite, and never aggressive towards the innocent (not even that often towards the guilty), and he doesn’t talk down to people even though he’s stronger and knows better. He’s as confident as a cool big brother, as supportive and sturdy as a good dad, as vaguely ethereal and perfectly impossible as Santa Claus. It’s not an act, it’s not impersonal - he wants you to be okay, he cares about you and he’ll do whatever he can to make sure you’ll be alright. When that’s done just right? That kind of unreserved, unconditional, powerful demonstration of kindness making a difference, even from a cartoon alien, can knock a lot of typically steely emotional walls down like balsa wood, especially when that can save the day just as much as quick wits or a fist, the way anyone here could too in the right circumstances when they try their best.

Superman is a romantic figure

Something overlooked or deliberately sidelined by many is that a huge, huge part of Superman’s appeal in lots of circles is that he can be a romantic ideal rather than (or as well as) a protective one. He’s a sweet, funny, confident, smart guy who’s built like Adonis and doesn’t think he’s better than everybody else even though he’s literally the best. He holds down a socially valuable job he’s successful and happy at, he’s gentle and considerate, and he’s entirely comfortable being second in his household to a commanding career woman who he’s instinctively protective of, but also willing to back off of when she feels smothered because he acknowledges her independence. He can fly her to the moon, he never lets her forget how happy he is that when he was left lost and alone on the other side of the universe he fell to the one place he could find her, and he wears tights. The comics may forget that, but Lois & Clark knew it. Smallville sure as hell knew it. So have the last couple movies, and Supergirl. Even Christopher Reeve, America’s Dad, got it on with Margot Kidder in that weird shiny Fortress hammock. You wanna talk about the aspects of Superman that go for…ahem…primal instincts, that he’s the member of the Justice League historically most likely to go shirtless* is worth bringing up.

* Aside from maybe Batman, who’s usually beat to hell and too miserable to leverage any of that playboy charm, and Aquaman, who’s Aquaman.

Superman is an easy power fantasy

Obviously, superheroes are often power fantasies in general; they do stuff we can’t do but wish we could. And Superman’s near the top of that list not just because he’s iconic, and not even because of the scope of his power - Green Lantern and Thor are comparable in terms of raw ability, GL even has an honest-to-goodness wishing ring, but they don’t measure up in that regard. What is is, I think, is that Superman’s powers are rooted in physicality, and therefore easy to imagine yourself doing. Everything most people can do, he does best, from lifting to running to looking to hearing to punching. Even his non-physical powers have a connection to actual physical acts: to see through objects he focuses as if peering through a fog, he doesn’t shoot power blasts from his fists to light things on fire but instead burns them with a furious glare, he doesn’t dispassionately levitate through the air as a standard but takes off and holds his arms forward as if in a mighty never-ending leap. Batman may be ‘real’, but if you imagined suddenly being him, you wouldn’t be Batman, you’d be a rich dude with a weaponized theme park in his basement, because you have no training and no tangible point of reference for thinking of how anything works beyond “punch and throw things”. But it’s easy to imagine being Superman in a visceral, physical sense - just imagine everything you did worked optimally, even the way it only could in a dream.

Superman is fun

All of the above makes him grand and likable, but that’s not the same as being able to support decades of monthly adventure stories. The basis of that is that he lives in a universe-sized, Earth-shaped toybox. He doesn’t just have superpowers and a nifty suit, he’s got a cave at the North Pole right near Santa with a time machine, statues of all his friends, a space zoo, a gun that turns people into ghosts, and a bottle city full of real people, plus robots to keep it all tidy, and only he can get in because the key was forged in the heart of a star. His cousin, kid, dog, and a few of his best friends wear capes too, and his ‘brother’ with reverse-superpowers lives on a cube planet where it’s perpetually opposite day. His friends and wife often go on their own adventures and get temporary superpowers just by being in his vicinity, he dated a mermaid in college, his after-school club was in the future and he commutes to the moon for work, and his deadliest enemies include a crazed mad scientist, an evil robot with a death-heart, a mischievous imp in a derby hat, and brilliant alien computer literally named Brainiac. Superman lives in a sci-fi fantasy dreamland of childish archetypes that can exist on any scale from the microscopic to the galactic to the other-dimensional, and as a result of that he can go on any adventure imaginable, to any time and place, and as a super-man who doesn’t often have to worry for his own safety, he can survive and appreciate and care for it all.

Superman mythologizes the mundane

And it’s where the fun and the big, mythic aura Superman carries meet that the magic happens that makes him as versatile and effective a character as there is in fiction: everything he does is rooted in something incredibly normal and human. His wild super-suit of circus royalty is made to reconnect with his heritage the only way he has, and to try and make himself colorful and unthreatening to a world he needs to accept him. When he travels through time, it’s never just to save reality, it’s to go see family and friends. He walks his dog around the rings of Saturn, he looks at his city in a bottle and wonders if he’ll ever be able to get around to taking care of that, he walks on the bottom of the ocean to think things through privately, and spends an entire day saving the world to get away from a conversation he doesn’t want to have. Every mad, cosmic aspect of his world is something totally normal blown up to be as big as it feels, and even when he does interact with the truly ‘mundane’, his presence alone elevates it to myth in a way no other superhero can. That’s the true source of his ability to adapt, rarely tapped but always potent: he can do anything, because he’s us.

Superman’s an actual good, interesting character

I place this at the bottom because it’s the aspect that’s most rarely captured, especially in the public eye (though the handful of times it has been are why he’s my favorite). But when he’s handled properly, then even divorced from everything else, Superman is fascinating as a *person*. Raised knowing there’s something different about him even as his weird alienness lets him understand people and the world around them in ways no others can, he learned one day he was born of the most mind-shattering act of cosmic horror imaginable, with a place greater than Earth in every way destroyed by coincidence, a signpost by any measure that the universe is a chaotic, meaningless, cruel place that destroys the innocent with indifference…and he became a good man who treasures life over anything. He has power that lets him do literally anything he pleases, and he spends half his life among us at a desk job because he thinks we’re just swell and he wants to keep being part of it all. Even though he can never entirely, not really, divvying his life up into discrete, manageable chunks that let him interact with the world on his own terms and try to see through what he sees as his responsibility, until a woman sees through the deception and self-deception and gets the real him to tentatively come out.

He has fun little hobbies, and unusual friendships, and a complex rivalry with the one man in the world who could’ve been his equal. He’s seen the best and worst of the world, and he accepts it all, but he still radiates a decency and innocence that can be mistaken for naivete by those who don’t know him. He’s clever but easy to catch off-guard in the right circumstances, always struggling to be the god people expect him to be rather than the inadequate fake his humility can make him look at himself as, he likes football and pretzels and pulp novels and Metallica, he gets a kick out of writing because it’s one of the few things he can do on an even playing field, he’s not sure how best to raise his kid, he worries that that one alien dictator is going to pop by again soon and he might not be ready to deal with it, he has to coordinate dates with his wife precisely because they both have such busy schedules, he counts dust particles in the air when he gets bored, and he believes in everybody. There’s so much going on with this guy, this identity-case, this brute, this pacifist, this establishment-man, this rebel and idealist and weirdo and a dozen other conflicting things. He’s been and done just about everything with charm and style over the decades, and it works, because it all adds up into one nice guy’s unusual, well-rounded life. And because it’s always anchored by an understanding: for all that he’s a unique freak of creation, he knows that in all the madness and uncertainty and horror, the one thing we have to rely on is each other. So he’ll put on his suit and throw himself out there against the only things in the universe that could kill him when he could be doing anything else, because he’s found a home with us little people when he lost his, and he knows we’re worth the fight; everyone is, aliens just like him in their own ways, waiting to be saved the way they saved him when he landed in a field. That’s why Superman’s great.

#Superman #Analysis #Opinion

370 notes · View notes

jennacha · 7 years ago

Text

here’s a big rant about The Child Thief

ok i have a big confession to make

I’m kind of obsessed with the book The Child Thief.

It’s not a particularly good book. In fact, I would go as far to say it’s poor. The writing has the cadence of 15-year-old-going-through-their-novelist-phase. I guess I could say it reads like fan fiction. The plot is very messy. The characters are badly written. It feels like a book that wasn’t edited. The word “magic” is used a lot, and it’s embarrassing. There’s a part where a character slams their fist on the ground and yells “WHY?!” and it’s embarrassing. The dialogue feels like it came out of a 1990s teen adventure fantasy movie trying to imitate the success of a Corey Feldman/Haim movie. Several times throughout the book the thought, “Why did the author do this?” popped in my head. However, the author is a fantasy illustrator, so the descriptive writing is a plus. He knows how to illustrate the landscape with words as well as he would in painting. The book is not a special unit dumpster fire piece of shit insult to literature; in fact, as far as I know a lot of people like it and it has gotten a decent amount of praise. It’s just not very good, in terms of the surface level writing. But I can easily see a lot of people enjoying it for basic entertainment value.

So that would be my YA-focus blog summary review of the book.

My public outcry summary review of the book is this:

I’m obsessed with the book because it’s so fucking weird.

It’s so fucking weird in that it’s a perfect shitstorm of the author not knowing what he’s doing, and thinking he’s knowing what he’s doing. Like a perfect bad B-movie that exhibits textbook schlock where the director is incompetent and clueless but lacks any self-awareness, in terms of style, layout, and production.

But also, the author thinks what he’s doing is…cool.

The book is about evil Peter Pan.

I could end this whole thing right there. But I must release these hounds. I’ve been needing to let all this out.

My wretched insanity craves affirmation.

This book should be a carbon copy of every other average to below average dark fantasy novel that you see on the bookstore shelves and never heard of and wonder what the author is doing now with all their not-fame. This book should be one that could’ve been written by anybody and it wouldn’t have made a difference. This book should be one of sixty million examples of nothing special. In a way, it is definitely 100% yes definitely yes all those things. The universe decided that I would be the bearer of the burden of having much stronger feelings about it then necessary. I probably feel more strongly about it than the author ever did. It is in my life now.

The biggest thing about this book being so fucking weird is the mind boggling tonal inconsistency. There are a number of shifts in universe-encompassing moods, which go from “Christopher-Nolan-but-also-kind-of-Stephanie-Meyer-dark-gloomy-the-world-is-unhappy-and-I-like-it-that-way”, to “David-Fincher-the-world-is-ACTUALLY-awful”, to “Oh-right-this-is-a-Peter-Pan-story-whimsical-fun-Goonies-meets-Disney-Channel-original”, to “A-worse-version-of-The-Hobbit-movies-with-some-redeeming-qualities”, to “Quentin-Tarantino-literally-wrote-this.” This isn’t hyperbole. The writing language can be REALLY EMBARRASSING and straight out of a Disney movie. That tone of a fun romp for the whole family is cradled by an abundance of swearing, unsettling fantasy-horror, and extreme, shocking violence.

You know when you’re watching Beetlejuice, and you’re like “Okay this movie is for children” and then out of nowhere Michael Keaton goes “NICE FUCKIN’ MODEL” and grabs his dick.

In The Child Thief, THAT washes over you every time you finish reading a sentence. Only, it’s as if you’re watching Hook, and at one point Robin Williams slices a person’s face off, and the camera stays on the faceless person for a minute and Steven Spielberg walks into frame and points to the gurgling faceless head and describes to you how you can still see the holes where the mouth, nose, and eyes were.

(Yes that actually happens in the book.)

Or if you’re watching Neverending Story and at one point you get expository dialogue explaining how Atreyu was pimped as a boy and had to live on the streets because his mother was, uh, a drug addict or something?.

(That also happens.)

Or if you’re watching Indian in the Cupboard and the film opens with a little girl about to get raped by her dad.

(I’m serious.)

Or if you’re watching Hocus Pocus and Bette Midler is a vampire and she preys on a 6-year-old kid and neither of them have shirts on.

(I swear to god.)

Or if you’re reading a modern re-imagining of Peter Pan and the story involves blatant themes of gore in acute descriptive detail, mass murder, torture, and scenes with naked women and perverted fantasy-creature-men.

(Oh, wait.)

You’re probably thinking, “All those themes are found pretty much everywhere in every medium, especially the naked women and perverts. Big whoop.” I’ll add, then, all those themes, involving children.

Now you’re thinking, “Jenna don’t you love that movie Drag Me To Hell which involves a child being murdered within the first 2.5 minutes?”

Just hear me out and yes.

The Child Thief is entertaining in how CAPTIVATING the strangeness is. The tonal mishmash of kid-friendly meets rated-R is something I actually like, when it's a hit. I like things that have a quality of whimsy amidst dark themes. Movies such as Temple of Doom, Gremlins, Return to Oz, Darkman have this quality…basically almost every movie from the 1980s during the period when audiences had grown up with movies after censorship was abolished and half the world said “think of the children” and the other half said “no.” There are tons and tons of other examples in every medium of how general tonal contrast makes for unique and effective works of art. My point is, this specific type of tonal contrast also can be done well.

But those movies don’t open with attempted child rape, and they don’t end with children literally being mowed down in a grisly battle scene (I’m serious). I’m making a lot of comparisons to movies because the book almost feels like a movie, in that the author isn’t a novelist, he’s a visual story-maker who wrote a book because he knew that no movie studio would pick this shit up. Maybe the films I listed didn’t intend for tonal contrast to be a calculated driving element for their stories, but the subtlety of tones in those movies allows for one encompassing, harmonious tonal blanket to wrap them in. There is no subtlety in The Child Thief.

The tonal confusion of The Child Thief is, I almost wanna say coincidental. I think the author just didn’t know how to write well, but he’s a very dark visual guy and had all these dark visuals in his head ready to be unleashed. All the horrible violence and awful themes are fine in and of itself, but they aren’t earned if the attitude of “I’m gunna turn the children’s book foundation on its head” isn’t committed to, and “I’m gunna subvert everything you know and love about Peter Pan” isn’t calculatedly plotted out. The author has a bad sense of humor, a poor understanding of what is required of an epic storyline, and treats violence, horror and revenge less like a literary device and more like a fetishization of coolness in a vulgar display of power as a writer.

The misguidedness goes as far as the character writing. None of the characters’ motivations make sense. The author couldn’t keep track of either committing to one motivation or the other, a lot of the times for the sake of the plot. Especially with the Peter Pan character. He’s basically literally the anti-christ (this is 100% canon, if the author says it isn’t then he’s a liar and an idiot) and written like a “troubled villain” but then gets these VERY polarized directions of unrelenting psychopathic Cause It’s Die Motherfucka Die Motherfucka Still, Fool villainy and ham-fisted humanism and victimhood. It’s a case of like, the author meant for him to be the charming bad guy who tricks the audience into being on his side because that’s what Peter does to the characters in the book. But the author found him too cool and wanted to be his friend, but in order to justify being friends with a character who wants to murder everybody, he inappropriately gives him remorse and forces the reader to feel bad for him.

And like all the kids in the book are supposed to super love Peter Pan but the version of Neverland is like this horrific, NIGHTMARE HELL of a place and the kids are basically being used to fight in a war, and all the kids are totally okay with it, because their lives in the real world were really awful and the whole thing is that Peter “saves” them and they’ll do anything for him. And it’s like, okay???????????????????? But wouldn’t it be cooler if the kids were like okay this guy is a fucking psycho and Neverland is a horrific, nightmare hell and I’m learning a lot about myself right now having once trusted him???? And then in their retaliation Peter would show his true colors and enforce aggression onto them in serving as his personal enslaved militia? And it becomes like this inner circle of conflict? And since Peter is the only person who can bring them back to the real world, they play ball but hope to steer their own agenda out of the situation? OH, right, that DOES happen, but with ONE of the characters. ONE. Conveniently, the main character. And god knows there can’t be more than one smart human being at a time.

But if you want to SUBVERT the BELOVED CHILDREN’S STORY FORMAT wouldn’t it be fun to do PETER PAN VS. THE LOST BOYS? Instead of MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE PETER PAN AND THE HOT TOPIC LOST BOYS VS. THE ONLY SEMI-SMART MAIN CHARACTER? Like wouldn’t it be GREAT if the characters WEREN'T DUMB? And the author put in some CONSTRUCTIVE, CHALLENGING CREATIVE EFFORT and treated the interactions like a CHESS GAME instead of a CONTRIVED MISUNDERSTANDING BETWEEN JOEY, ROSS, CHANDLER, RACHEL, MONICA AND THE OTHER ONE? Wouldn’t it be GREAT if ALL THE CHARACTERS TURNED AGAINST PETER but then Peter SLOWLY CHARMED SOME OR ALL OF THEM BACK IN, to make him MORE like an UNEARTHLY MONSTER? Like the lost boys became SELF-AWARE LITERAL VICTIMS OF THE ORIGINAL TALE FORMAT, where Peter Pain is this IMPOSSIBLY CHARMING CHARACTER THAT IS BELOVED BY THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE? ALSO, the MAIN CHARACTER is supposed to be the MODEL OF REASON FOR THE READER TO RELATE TO, but the main character still gets CHARMED BY PETER PAN, WHILE WE KNOW AS RATIONAL ADULTS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING TO HAPPEN? LIKE THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE HOW READING BOOKS IS? When we KNOW WHAT’S GUNNA HAPPEN? BUT THE AUTHOR WANTS TO BE PETER’S FRIEND SO HE DOES IT ANYWAY? AND LIKE SEVERAL OTHER CHARACTERS THAT THE MAIN CHARACTER IS FRIENDS WITH ARE ALSO SUPPOSED TO BE FIGURES OF REASON BUT THEY’RE ALSO 100% PARTISAN IN SIDING WITH PETER? SO IT’S LIKE HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LIKE ALL YOU DUMB, DUMB KIDS?

LIKE OKAY, SO HOW IT GOES IS THAT PETER CAN LIKE WALK ACROSS THE DIMENSION BETWEEN NEVERLAND AND THE REAL WORLD AND THAT'S HOW HE GETS THE KIDS? SO AT ONE POINT IN NEVERLAND THEY ALL HAVE TO SCAVENGE FOR FOOD BECAUSE THE VEGETATION IN NEVERLAND IS DYING, AND THEY MENTION HOW PETER USED TO BRING THEM FOOD FROM THE REAL WORLD? AND IT'S LIKE, HOW ABOUT YOU JUST KEEP DOING THAT? OR LIKE, WHY DON'T ANY OF YOU WANT TO JUST LEAVE? YEAH THE REAL WORLD SUCKS, BUT IS IT WORTH STARVING TO DEATH JUST SO YOU CAN STICK IT TO THE MAN? LIKE ARE THERE PEDIATRICIANS IN NEVERLAND? ARE THERE AT-RISK YOUTH SHELTERS? FOSTER CARE? NEVERLAND SOUP KITCHENS? NEVERLAND SOCIAL WORKERS? NEVERLAND CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES? NEVERLAND POLICE? NO? JUST MONSTERS THAT PAINFULLY KILL YOU, ZOMBIE PIRATES, NO FOOD, AND LITERALLY THE ANTI-CHRIST?

AND THEN THERE’S RIDICULOUS SHIT LIKE, AT ONE POINT ALL THESE MAGICAL FANTASY CHARACTERS HIJACK A NEW YORK CITY FERRY TO GET TO THE HARBOR AND IT’S LIKE, THIS IS SO RIDICULOUS IT SHOULD BE AWESOME, BUT IT ISN’T AWESOME BUT IT SHOULD BE SO WHY ISN’T IT?

AND LIKE ONE OF THE CHARACTERS IS A FAT USELESS KID NAMED DANNY AND THERE IS NO REASON FOR HIM TO BE IN THE BOOK BESIDES TO BE THE TOKEN FAT USELESS KID NAMED DANNY?

BUT DANNY IS LIKE ALSO THE ONLY OTHER SMART CHARACTER IN THE BOOK BECAUSE HE’S LIKE WHY DID I SAY YES TO THIS WHY ARE WE STILL FOLLOWING THIS GUY WHY DON’T WE JUST LEAVE AND IT’S LIKE YEAH PUT DANNY IN CHARGE BUT NOBODY LISTENS TO HIM AND HE’S JUST COMPLETELY UTTERLY USELESS?

AND THEN CAPTAIN HOOK ADOPTS DANNY AND IT’S LIKE OH MY GOD THE AUTHOR FORGOT HE NEEDED TO GIVE DANNY SOMETHING TO DO?

AND LIKE I DON’T EVEN REMEMBER THE MAIN CHARACTER’S NAME?

AND THEN AT THE END OF THE BOOK, SO, THERE’S THIS BIG HUGE BATTLE SCENE WHERE CHILDREN DIE LEFT AND RIGHT, LIKE THE “ANTAGONIST” (NOT PETER) HAS A HUGE SWORD AND IS SWINGING AT THE KIDS LIKE HE’S HARVESTING WHEAT, OH AND YEAH, BY THE WAY, AGAIN, THE REAL WORLD IS LOCATED IN NEW YORK CITY AND THE BATTLE HAPPENS ON LIKE THE FRONT LAWN OF A LIBRARY OR SOMETHING. LIKE THE STORY KIND OF TOTALLY GOES OFF THE RAILS INTO FANTASTIC SCHLOCK. AND AT ONE POINT THE BATTLE IS ABRUPTLY INTERRUPTED BY NYC POLICE AND IT’S LIKE ARE YOU SHITTING MY NUTS THE NYC COPS ARE INVOLVED IN THIS FANTASY BATTLE THIS IS AMAZING, BUT THEN THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN AND IT GOES NOWHERE. AND ALL THE MAIN CHARACTERS ARE DYING, AND NONE OF THEM HAD ARCS, LIKE NONE OF THEM REALIZED WHAT THEY GOT THEMSELVES INTO OR WHAT PETER REALLY WAS, AND AT THE ACT 3 POST-LOW POINT THE MAIN CHARACTER DIDN’T GO OFF TO DO HIS OWN THING AND TRY TO SAVE THE DAY, HE JUST GOES WITH PETER TO DO WHATEVER HE WANTS, AND THEN HIS ARC IS BASICALLY NOTHING AND THEN HE DIES. AND *PETER* WINS. AND AGAIN HE’S LITERALLY THE ANTI CHRIST SO THE BOOK ENDS WITH HIM BRIDGING THE REAL WORLD WITH NEVERLAND, AND BASICALLY BEING THE BRINGER OF HELL UNTO THE EARTH. AND UP UNTIL THEN THE BOOK HAD ABOUT 68 INSTANCES OF THE READER SWITCHING BETWEEN FEELING BAD FOR PETER AND THEN ACCEPTING THAT HE IS HITLER NURSE RATCHED MAO STALIN. SO WHEN ALL THE KIDS DIE, HE HAS A SCENE OF FEELING REALLY BAD AND THE READER IS SUPPOSED TO BE ALL LIKE AW HE REALLY DOES CARE! AND THEN NEVERLAND GETS BRIDGED INTO NEW YORK CITY, AND HE’S LIKE HA HA HA HA I DID IT I WON. BUT IT’S WRITTEN IN SUCH A WAY THAT LIKE, THE AUDIENCE IS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE, WHEEEEEE! LIKE THIS THING THAT HAPPENED IS THE DOOM OF MANKIND, AND THE TONE SHOULD REALLY BE “OH GOD NO.” BUT THE AUTHOR WAS HAPPY THAT PETER WON IN THE END BECAUSE HE WANTS TO BE HIS FRIEND, EVEN THOUGH LIKE FIFTEEN PAGES AGO PETER CAUSED THE DEATH OF AN ARMY OF CHILDREN (AFTER ANOTHER 600 PAGES OF ALL KINDS OF OTHER AWFUL SHIT). SO NOT ONLY ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FEEL SAD THAT PETER FEELS SAD, BUT THEN WE’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL HAPPY THAT PETER FEELS HAPPY. HOW ABOUT GO FUCK YOURSELF? HOW ABOUT IF YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE PETER A CHALLENGING UNRELIABLE ANTI-HERO, DON’T MAKE HIS DARK QUALITIES SO INCONTESTABLY EVIL, OR, EITHER CHOOSE TO MAKE PETER HATED BY THE AUDIENCE, OR MAKE THE AUDIENCE FEEL FOOLISH FOR BEING CHARMED BY PETER AND PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THE BAD SHIT THAT HAPPENED AND GO FUCK YOURSELF?

...

I’ll give a different example of both tonal incongruence and bad character writing.

So, the opening scene of the book that involves attempted child rape, so. What happens is that Peter saves the little girl in time by killing the dad, and gains her trust to go to Neverland. The way the story regards the introduction to Peter is that of wonder and curiosity through the little girl’s eyes, as if it was derived from the original children’s tale. So the opener is meant to establish: a gritty “realness” to the book (which is never earned but i digress), and Peter as a mysterious magical hero. Then, the story carries on into describing Peter’s motivation in saving (the book uses “stealing”) children, which vaguely mentions his villainous indulgence (he’s saving children to recruit them in an army in Neverland to fight captain hook because his mommy is the president of neverland and there’s almost-Oedipal themes going on). Fine. However, the cadence of Peter actually being villainous is very very…undermined. Like the actual voice of the NARRATION is misinformed. Like the narration sounds more like Peter’s inner monologue speaking in the third person. Like the third person is in on it. Like the author is painting Peter as this wicked wrongdoer as if it’s a cool thing and he wants to be his friend (Oh wait).

This is how the voice of the opener is handled: Child rape —> Peter prevents child rape and saves child —> Peter is a good guy for doing this —> Peter is still a good guy for doing this but he did it maybe not for the right reasons. As it turns out, Peter is unquestionably the bad guy. Peter was the bad guy from the start, Peter was the bad guy while he was saving the little girl.

The rest of the book is handled like this: Peter is cool and badass —> Peter is mischievous but still the person we want to follow —> Peter is a psycho...but still cool —> Oh shit Peter has a super awful past and his psycho-ness is the result of being a victim so I forgive him —> Wow Peter’s both a psycho and an asshole—> Okay I dunno about Peter —> The author keeps having Peter save people from being raped as if he’s not an asshole but he’s still a psycho and an asshole so I still don’t know —> The plot has a a lot of stuff so I guess I’m still with Peter —> Okay Peter won but everyone is dead because of him and he’s still an asshole so I still don’t know.

Peter tricks victims of rape, abuse, slavery, etc. into thinking they’re being saved when in fact he objectifies them for his personal needs. Remember how I said this book’s insane tonal confusion isn’t subtle? Well, from the book’s perspective, putting a finger on Peter’s good side and bad side...is subtle. Problematically subtle. Which, on a literary standpoint, sounds like a good thing, but...

This is the part when I say the thing you ACTUALLY SHOULDN’T BE SUBTLE ABOUT is PETER. You CAN be subtle about his tragic backstory. Be subtle about sprinkling his good qualities over his CAKE TOWER of BADNESS. Give him some KICK. Have the flavors INTERACT. Make the audience be like “OOOH, is that cumin?? Interesting! HMMMM! INTERESTING! CUMIN! ON DORITOS! YEAh I am definitely eating Doritos, this is absolutely Doritos, but there’s some CUMIN in there! Okay, back to eating my DORITOS! OOOOH, IS THAT CAYENNE?????” But whatever you do, make it CLEAR what you are SERVING. You should not have a MIXED BAG, a MEDLEY, and try to sell it like not-a-medley. You should NOT make half your plate super spicy and half your plate super sweet and make the audience roll the dice on each bite they take. Peter Pan isn’t some complexass Faustian character study, it’s SUBVERSIVE HYPERVIOLENT DARK FANTASY PORN. IT’S DORITOS

This is how the voice of the opener should've been handled: Child rape —> Peter prevents child rape and saves child —> Peter is the bad guy.

This is how the voice of the rest of the book should've been handled: No matter what happens —> Peter is the bad guy.

I don’t have and never will have the literary criticism credentials to say anything with credible boldness, but I’m going to say this anyway: Using child rape to force the reader to feel a certain way about the tone of the world and the first heroic impression of a character is wrong. Forcing an act of heroism (especially for you to then later say “Just kidding not the hero”) in that context is inappropriate and wrong. That’s like throwing 9/11 into the background of a love story to force the audience to feel extra emotional. 1) There are many, many, many, many ways you can establish “realness” in your opener with or without violence. I’m not saying there is a hierarchy of what kind of awful things involving children are okay to write about, but opening your story with attempted child rape is an unnecessary extreme if parts of your story reads like an episode of Saved By The Bell. Revenge alone isn’t cool. John Wick is cool because of the way revenge is handled. Writing about attempted child rape and then immediate revenge on the rapist is the Epipen-shot-to-the-brain method of forcibly getting your audience to go “I LIKE PETER!”, which isn’t at all earned and probably shouldn’t be in your story… 2) ESPECIALLY if you don’t simultaneously establish with slats nailed on a wall that Peter is the bad guy. The author basically deceived the audience into liking Peter in the worst way possible, ironically, which is what he had Peter do to the other characters. If you want to cleverly deceive the audience into liking Peter, do it through his dialogue, personality, the externalized product of the relationship between him and his environment. Be inventive about it. It’s a book. You got words. Use...words to your advantage. If you want to open your story with attempted child rape at the very least as a way to tell the audience this shit’s serious, don’t.

Just don’t. It’s fine.

The Child Thief can’t be pinned as So Bad It’s Good. It’s poor, but it’s not Tommy Wiseau-acclaim-bad. The only way I can describe it is So Disorderly It’s Weird. But it has potential for being SO Weird It’s Kind Of Genius. Which makes it So Almost SO Weird It’s Kind Of Genius It’s Frustrating.

The book’s biggest detriment is that it takes itself too seriously. The author’s motivating in writing the book (this is fact) was that he recognized that the beloved original tale of Peter Pan has a lot of dark elements, but continues to be celebrated as a children’s story. And he wanted to take that notion and run with it. What happened was that he selectively fell in love with elements of that concept, and instead of writing a story that was meant to pull the rug from under us, he ended up writing a run-of-the-mill edgy dark fantasy that he was obliged to pepper with Peter Pan references. Instead of pulling the entire rug beneath our feet and hauling us onto our asses, he took a small handful of rug here and there and just occasionally tugged at it roughly, so that we’d almost lose our balance and get annoyed and tell him to stop.

The book lacks its own conceptual self-awareness that it built for itself, and the result is two different bodies trying to be forcibly shoved into the same book-sized box, when it should’ve been a new gross, satirical, humorous, unique body entirely.

In that sense, I really think this book could’ve been truly unironically awesome. I love the idea of cartoonishly exaggerating the dark elements (especially the violence) of the original tale that have been culturally ignored, like a lot of (or most) (or all) old children’s tales. My ideal solution to this book would actually be making it even more ridiculous in every way, but strung together with self-awareness and intention, where the author could acknowledge that the absurdity is instrumental, not indulgent. There are many aspects of the book that I really like thematically, and none of them are fully (or at all) seen through to their potential. These ideas aren’t really intentionally presented in the book, but: I like the idea that Peter is a sadistic volatile killing machine because he’s cursed with being riiiiiight on the cusp of hitting puberty, and his body is trapped without that natural sexual/psychological release, turning him into an aggressive animal constantly teased by unfulfilled subconscious heat. I like the idea that the lost boys element would be subverted into an inevitable Lord of the Flies esque shitstorm. I like the idea that the danger and villainy are at first generalized in adults but eventually presented in the children. I like the idea that every single possible fucking thing in the world—both the real world (mostly nyc LoL!) and Neverland—are a threat and are actively trying to kill the children, and the children treat it like an adventure before the horror becomes real. I like the idea of illustrating the outcome of blindly following fun naive figures of leadership. There are even a number of character interaction scenes that I like format wise. Just minus the embarrassing dialogue. That stuff's easy to rewrite in your head as you read it. Also I would take out that part in the book that I described as Bette Midler not having a shirt on while preying on a 6 year old. That part was really fucking uncomfortable. Seriously wtf, Gerald Brom.

I must concede this notion: The writer didn’t set out to create a masterpiece. He wrote the book to have fun. He succeeded, and his readers expected the same thing and received the experience they wanted. Of all the things that could’ve landed in my hands and tickled me in a weird enough way to make me wish it was better, for some reason it had to be this.

I could keep going, but...eh, (sigh).

But lastly—again, the descriptive writing of the world is very lush, and at times effectively horrific. The reading experience is a constant stop and start call-and-response of really great potential, really clumsy writing, and really misunderstood tonal directions. All those things put this book directly on the edge of FRUSTRATING. Uniquely frustrating. It couldn’t have been salvaged by the hands of a more competent writer, because the product came to light specifically out of the author’s unintentional confusion, not his laziness. A lazy product with potential can be salvaged through additions and tweaks, but The Child Thief cannot because the story was seen through the way it existed in the author’s head and heart. It is exactly what it...is. It can’t be imitated, or inspired by, or re-re-imagined. This weirdass fucking book is just sitting on this planet, being read by people, and shit.

…..Anyway. This was all just meant to be the caption for my fan art. http://jennacha.tumblr.com/post/172559227502/i-made-fan-art-of-a-book-i-both-love-and-hate-lol

#the child thief #brom #gerald brom

12 notes · View notes

renegade-shepard-archived · 7 years ago

Text

tag time!

i was tagged my @the-shifty-cow & @lilithleelynn thnx friends!

RULES: answer 30 questions and tag 10 blogs you are contractually obligated to know

TAGGING: @vixilancia @glowsh3p @adventure-butt @thedarwini @you-are-a-program @ta-mars-space @thatswhatshiisaid @bronzeagelove @joufancyhuh @pavustive (u guys obviously dont have to do this but id love it if u did!)

Nicknames: ryn (w/e u wanna call me rly) ive also had a shit ton of gamertags like cid & moh that ppl still call me

Gender/pronouns: he/him

Star sign: capricorn

Height: 5′ im smol

Time: 7:14pm est

Birthday: dec 24th

Favorite bands: i like a lot of bullshit from the 80s and 90s

Favorite solo artist: i honestly have no idea. i just listen to spotify on random

Song stuck in your head: i posted this on here a few days ago but its still stuck in my head not alone - matt & kim

this is rly long so the rest is under the cut if u care ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Last movie you watched?: RIPD

Last show?: i cant even remember i rarely watch shows. probably stranger things?

Why did you create your blog?: as i got older & couldnt hang out w/my gang as much it got a little lonely i guess in the sense that i was constantly surrounded by ppl w/different interests than me. &my family &best friend at the time only ever made fun of my interest in gaming. so tumblr was a nice place to go and create bonds w/ppl who shared those interests. &then a rly close friend of mine at the time that i met on here had sent me over their photoshop &taught me how to make simple gifs. ive deleted a few times and remade but ive never rly left. being able to easily join a community of ppl who all share love for something u love to is rly something special

What do you post?: videogame content mainly with a smattering of random shit i like and a sprinkle of memes

Last thing you googled?: if alistair had a last name hah

Other blogs: i used to run content specific blogs back in the day. i dont anymore yall can suffer in this fresh hell w/me

AO3: i dont have one. i dont think i could find the time to write, create content, draw &do daily life shit. & i actually dont read fanfiction ._. my ideas of characters never match anyone elses close enough so its actually anxiety inducing to read other ppls stuff. but im sure ur all great writers! (i always try to throw a like out to all my mutuals when i see their fanfiction posted on here)

Do you get asks?: lately i do. a few times a week at least. its amazing u r all amazing thank u for being so interested in sebastian &sending me all the nice tidings &everything else D: <3

How did you get the idea for your URL?: i just fucking love renegade shepards sheeeit

I follow: 202

Followers: 899

Average hours of sleep: idk like 4? insomnia blows

Lucky number: i dont have one but my favorite is 2 and idky tbqh

Instruments: i used to play the saxaphone >>

What are you wearing?: zelda pajamas &a tshirt that says the real guy the best guy

Dream job: i had always wanted to be a movie director, laywer, or therapist. right now i just wanna have a job lol

Dream trip: to the fridge

Favorite food: a hearty beef stew or any kind of marinated meat w/some plain rice. i eat like a fkn peasant

Significant other?: nah

Last book I read: probably the satanic bible? god its literally been over a decade rly. ive never been into reading.

Top 3 fictional universes: bioshock, mass effect, world of warcraft

#tag meme #about me

16 notes · View notes

fyrapartnersearch · 7 years ago

Text

OC fun times!

Heya! Folks call me Sky, and I’m kind of bad at introductions! But dang if I’m not good at bulleted lists: - 25, she/they - EST/GMT -5 - chill as hell; also constantly exhausted by Life™

I’m looking for something casual, like “reply when you feel like it.” I’m kind of a busy bee and sometimes my brain just doesn’t wanna do stuff, ya know? This courtesy will be extended to you too, of course. Expect at least one or two replies a week, though. During downtime, I’m totally cool with just chatting, playing video games, and screaming over headcanons. You wanna make some playlists and mood boards? LET’S DO IT. All I really ask is we keep contact. If you gotta drop, that’s no problem just let me know.

THE GIST - OCs only, 1x1 - Long term, casual - Partner should be 18+ - RPs over Discord, email, or Google docs

NOTES i. Post length isn’t super important to me so long as it’s enough to keep the story going. Can’t say I’m a fan of 5+ paragraphs of description that just bog things down. You know what I’m talking about. Typically I do about 500 words, third person, past or present tense.

ii. Not really into smut, sorry not sorry. I think it’s boring to write lmao. Romance is great though and is encouraged. Sexual and other dark/adult themes are fine and my limits are few, but let’s talk about it so we can figure out where the line is. For pairings, I prefer gay ships (m/m, f/f, etc.) but I’m not against straight (m/f) pairs.

GENRES/SETTINGS: You’re better off asking than me listing anything because it’d be a long list. However, in general I enjoy: fantasy, supernatural, sci-fi, post-apocalypse, steampunk, magitech, medieval, modern, slice of life, adventure.

For fandoms, I can do: Fallout, Dragon Age, Steven Universe, and may consider Mass Effect.

STORY IDEAS: I have a few story ideas over here. If none of these catch your eye, please do throw some ideas my way! Get this ball rollin’!

Annnnd that’s it! Woo, we got to the end! If you decide to hit me up, tell me a bit about yourself and what you’re interested in. Awkward small talk is never fun.

CONTACT Discord: skycode#7918 Email: [email protected]

✌️

#oc rp #para #semipara #long term #email #messenger #submission

2 notes · View notes

samfishers · 7 years ago

Text

@rock-paperback-scissors tagged me to answer this!! Thank you for the tag <3

Tagging @ntbogoni @nexustation @the-sound-guy @poweredbycoffeeandwine @anorptron @lonyn if you wanna!!

Name/nickname: Camila. I don’t really have a nickname but some call me Mimi sometimes

Gender: Female

Hogwarts House: I don’t know shit about HP so I’ll have to leave this blank lol

Favourite animal: Dogs and parrots

Hours of sleep: 6

Dogs or cats: Dogs I guess

Number of blankets: 1

Dream trip: Somewhere fun/creepy/nice landscape with my friends

Dream job: Just something nice within my field. I’m not really picky. Highways construction advisor would be cool

Time: 4:00 PM

Favorite Bands: Green Day, Papa Roach, Muse, Shinedown, Placebo, Misfits, MCR, OM&M, Theset etc

Favorite Solo Artists: Jeff Bridges, Duca Leindecker, Konstantin Nikolsky, Johnny Cash, Michale Graves, Mika, Zakk Wylde

Song Stuck In My Head: Still Breathing - Green Day

Last Movie I Watched: Woody Woodpecker lmao

Last Show I Watched: Ghost Adventures

When Did I Create My Blog: 2010

What Do I Post/Reblog: Mainly my interests. Games, some movies, comics, shows, whatever piques my interest!

Last Thing I Googled: something about that missing angaran sister in Havarl. Boy do I get stuck in that planet

Other Blogs: I don’t have any sideblogs of my own. I help run @masseffect-clickbait tho :)

Do I Get Asks: Less than I’d like to!!!!

Why I Choose My URL: Sam Fisher the Splinter Cell dude

Following: 275 jesus this is not proportional I gotta fix this

Followers: 802

Lucky Number: not sure I have one

Favorite Instrument: Guitar or drums?

What Am I Wearing: Long sleeve shirt, jeans and sneakers

Favorite Food: Pizza

Nationality: Brazilian

Favorite Song: Going to Pasalacqua - Green Day

Last Book Read: I’m currently reading DC’s Cosmic Odyssey if it counts

Top Three Fictional Universes I’d Like To Join: Mass Effect (no reapers please), TRON and Infamous

#tag #about me

5 notes · View notes

seekeroftruthpromestein · 5 years ago

Text

Alright. Lets check out Ladies Village. Going around first to see some things before hand.

That’s actually incredibly comforting. Its nice to know that, and my Morales are consistent.

Let’s check out Luddite real quick.

Interesting. So she’s the one who has been writing help messages. I really feel for this girl. I wanna pat her.

Here at Lady’s village. It seems like we already know two things. A) That this place is filled with Monsters because Alice is more helpful. And B) A group of adventures left after some incident with a bunch of dead humans.

That’s good to know.

Oooh? New continent! New Continent!

....Southeast you say?

Me and Me are on the same page about Me.

Dammit VN Luka and Alice. Teaching your daughter how to be badass. Though, I suppose this is good for us so. Good job?

So yeah. This place needs to die too. I get that they’ve stopped so, F+ I guess, but still.

Setouchi Body!

Horray! I can fulfill my dreams and destroy this place!

Here’s something that i’m realizing. The game very rarely addresses Alice. Because her existence is shared with Ilias. She becomes unimportant to the plot because they both have to fill the same role. Its typically your “mass effect dialog” problem. Where any party member who gets addressed will always be addressed vaugly (with a few notable exceptions). It does well in making the illusion that they are there, which is good. But once you see past it, it feels disingenuous.

Neris for example has said nothing to Alice the entire time and is instead interested in getting to know Luka. Now, this *COULD* be explained that Luka has died in her universe and she already clearly knows her, but its still rather awkward that she doens’t address it.

So. Any time she is addressed is a treat.

This line however continues, and its clear it can go two ways. “Fufu the former Goddess looks like a total disgrace”.

You know what? As I say that, it is unfair to look at the strings, especially when i’m only seeing one. Like I said, its so rare that Alice is part of the plot at all, I should just be happy she’s an entity at all.

I’m reminded of a story with a stage play about a man going to assemble an old band of his with his girlfriend. His girlfriend in the play the entire time and it turns out at the end that she was dead the whole time. Hints being that none of the other band members ever looked at her or addressed her.

I think, if you ever find yourself writing for something, you should avoid that at all times. Having the entire world revovle around your protagonist can be very empty.

Which, this game avoids narrowly by having the characters talk to each other plenty often. While I am coming off this with the rant that Alice rarely gets addressed in the story proper despite being an important focal point, the rest of the game does a nice job trying to have your party talk to each other, and having enough conversations that it can really be interesting. Having them have their own lives and hobbies and such.

Anyway! Let’s get back to the game. We’re playing Spider’s Parlor and the fly.

I guess the fly eats the Spider in this story though.

You two are lucky to be alive. I’m sure if Ilias was here she’d flat out tell you you should be dead.

Considering how much else this game blatantly stole. I’m gonna go on a limb and say that this was inspired by Majin Buu.

Sonya. Have you not been paying attention? That’s all we DO. Get involved with the power struggle of others.

So join her then?

Yeah. That’s a bit hard to forgive.

Good. I’ll go inform the grieving mother of the son that you ate last year who still is pacing eagerly for her son to come home...

God I made that dark. But I just got off the coat tails of the game pushing a really serious topic, its a bit hard to get into the “lol eating people” mindset. Like. Those are two entirely diffrent tones that you can’t merge.

Anyway. Yada yada. Beat up Majin Buu or whatever on the mountain. Got it.

I love that it definitely feels like the writers just realized that they pretty well depicted the horrors of rape so they are now doing everything they can to remove the casual instances. Because yeah, between Luddite, Witch village, and Succubus Village plots. The game really pushed that the, what should be obvious lesson, that rape is bad. A lesson I feel shouldn’t be needed, but considering who this game is for, definitely glad they are including it.

In many ways, it feels like a disclaimer. “Listen. We know that you’re probably someone who actually wants this to happen to you, considering your playing the game. So here’s the deal. It’ll pretty much only happen to you. Which in some ways makes it consensual because you’re playing it.. And the POV is clearly male oriented.” (The Male Oriented POV does actually annoy me though, as a girl playing this game, I wanna see some ladies moan and have a good time dammit! Not just be there to satisfy the guy!).

Anyway! I’m getting REALLY offtrack a lot. Let’s continue.

You know what. Despite my rant earlier. This is actually a little better. I mean, its horrifying if you think about it. But it actually brushes against comedic sociopathy.

There’s nothing funny about leading men and getting eaten. And i’m sure if you thought about this it is horrifying. But the casual way she says it, it makes it funny. Its still horrifying and because i’m still in a serious mood from earlier makes me cock an eyebrow. But its handled at least a little better.

So yeah. If this place was more of this it would be at least nicer. Though I still think these people should die.

I hate these designs so much. Slapping a girls head on a monster isn’t sexy! It’s weird! look! just take off the head and it would be a lot better! As of now, do you know what it actually reminds me of? Do you! It reminds me of this game right here!

Let me guess. “But wait! you have the wrong idea! I was doing good! They were bad! Here’s a complicated social trolly problem with no right answers! for you to pick!”

Okay good. We’re going simple.

Looking at her form. I can already guess what her “deal” is. God. Vore machine going on over here.

You know... I don’t... NORMALLY much thought in capturing these fights. Because normally nothing happens. So. Okay. She devours Alice? Mkay. I’ll just have Promestein Reviv- wait. Where is she? Chrome came up and took her place! I didn’t even REALIZE that was a mechanic! She was just eaten! She’s gone! Like! What the hell! That’s weird! That’s horrifying!

I guess now that we won she got spat out.

SOMEONE has a De-aging fetish.

You’ve successfully hooked me.

Considering how late it is I better go to sleep. However. Next time...

#Prommey Plays Paradox #Paradox 2

0 notes

find-your-rp-partner · 8 years ago

Text

Tales from the Borderlands [+ others!]

heyo everyone! you can call me persenche. for a short about me - 23, south dakota, mountain time, classic Cat Lady Lesbian™, long-suffering college student, 11+ years of roleplaying experience under my belt. my casual typing style on here doesn't reflect my writing style when roleplaying, by the by. here's the tl;dr gist of it, fellas - + long-term one on one + e-mail only for the roleplay --> for ooc talk, i'm chill with e-mail, skype, hangouts, or discord + adv. lit+, quality over quantity [though both are lovely tbh] + m/m, f/f, f/m, nb; platonic or romantic + i'm lgbt+ and neurodivergent friendly and you need to be too + not keen on doubling, but i can be swayed + let me know if you want to ditch the roleplay + my main limits are i fade to black and don't do rape/bestiality/etc. + love, love, love angst and character development the most + primarily seeking a one on onewriting partner for Tales from the Borderlands [dibs on Rhys] if any of that caught your attention, my e-mail is listed at the bottom. otherwise, i'll be more detailed in what i'm looking for and what you can expect from me next. __ i'd love to find a partner who adores plotting and swoons at the chance to chat ooc about our characters and the possibilities between and before them - headcanons, discussing [serious or silly!] potential scenarios and twists, playlists, art, you name it. i enjoy making friends out of my roleplaying partners, so talking out of a roleplay is a strong preference. however, let me know if you're not into that! quality over quantity, but a middle ground is solid, too. i'm able to write 4,000+ words if a reply calls for it, but i don't want length for the sake of length, you know? i can match and mirror - if the roleplay calls for longer posts, don't hesitate to hit me with a novel. i looove that shit. just as much, if only a page works then that's fine! e-mail only for roleplaying. i'm all for giving you my skype/discord/google hangout/whatever once we're getting things going and we're both comfortable chatting on there. it's summer right now, so i'm on frequently for talking. on the topic of frequency, i'm not the quickest at roleplay responses. i'm more of a one to three days gal. if unfortunate life stuff occurs, i might end up as a once a week for roleplay replies. however!! i will always let you know if it will take me longer than three days for a response, or if i'll not be around for a day or two in the case of ooc chatting. the plus side is i'm near always around for ooc chatting and willing to sacrifice all hopes of a productive sleep schedule to talk. generous, huh? lmao. don't ditch. if you want to call quits, let me know. even if all you write is "bye", it's better than me getting to fret over if something happened to you or if my e-mails aren't going though. i'll keep my grubby fingers off the keyboard and not reply if you prefer, just please let me know! on this topic! i recently had an issue with gmail marking my responses as spam and popping them in that folder for others. it seems like it was fixed, but please, please, please feel free to shoot me a message if, after a day or two, you haven't heard from me! it's likely an e-mail issue. dark, angsty, nitty-gritty ideas? my name is at the top of the 'loves the shit outta that' list. i'm all about hard choices, plot twists, making characters suffer - good ol' and well done angst with a purpose. character development is also one of my favourite aspects of roleplaying, so slam me with all the details - really let me know what your character is feeling, thinking, doing, and show me how they're changing from what's happening to them, yadda yadda. also! if you have a character craving, i'm 100% fine with you playing a character from a game/book/movie/whatever in the universe we go with. wanna slam your favourite character from a different video game into another game/plot/whatever's universe? i'm down with that. character and/or plot transplants are good with me. ocs get a thumbs-up, too. __ what i'm looking for is Tales from the Borderlands. i'm open to almost any pairing, chill with ocs, all that jazz. we can go post-game, during game, au, anything. my one stopping point is i am not comfortable shipping Handsome Jack and Rhys together; if you wanna cook up a platonic plot with them, sure, but i'm personally not willing nor comfortable in pairing them romantically. --> i have two small plot ideas, or we can come up with something together. --> i'd like to try my hand at writing Rhys --> i'm fine with whoever you want to play - an oc, Vaughn, Fiona, Sasha, Handsome Jack, August, an original character, etc. --> my preferences are Vaughn/Rhys, Sasha/Rhys, and Fiona/Rhys __ otherwise, if that doesn't strike your fancy, here's some others i might be willing to roleplay. i'll list who i'd like to play as in it. - + Fallout 4: small plot idea. would prefer to play as my Sole Survivor. however, i've played all Fallout games released, so i'm also game for New Vegas, 3, 2, 1, or a mix. + TellTale's The Walking Dead: Ben Paul. have played seasons 1 and 2. + NieR: Grimoire Weiss, Kainé + NieR Automata + Silent Hill series: Angela Orosco + We Happy Few: Arthur Hastings + Kentucky Route Zero + Dishonored 1 and 2: Kirin Jindosh, Daud, Billie Lurk + The Evil Within: Joseph Oda, Tatiana Gutierrez, Juli Kidman + Resident Evil 7 + The Last of Us + The Adventure Zone: Taako + Dragon Age: Origins, 2, and Inquisition + Mass Effect 1, 2, 3 + Until Dawn: Josh Washington + Left 4 Dead + Portal: Wheatley + and a shit ton more i can't remember enough to list. if you send me a suggestion, i'll likely know it [and if i don't, again, i'm down with character/plot transplants] i'm not strictly limited to fandoms. others include - + [post] apocalypse [have a plot and a couple small ideas] + horror/survival + some ghost hunting show gone horribly wrong + androids and all their sad little existential issues [small plot idea] + desolation, being lost, an abruptly empty/decaying world - something weird and otherwordly in our world and the discomfort of it no one dares to put in words + hit me up with topics - i'm flexible! __ finally, if you're interested you can drop me a message at ----> [email protected] feel free to include things about yourself, limits, ideas, and if you have any cutie pets

#rp partner search #rp partner ad #rp ad #rp search #fandom #original #videogame #email #submission

9 notes · View notes