#genuinely have no idea how much people will care about this but i'm subjecting everyone to it anyway

[anheliotrope]

Rambling About C# Being Alright

I think C# is an alright language. This is one of the highest distinctions I can give to a language.

Warning: This post is verbose and rambly and probably only good at telling you why someone might like C# and not much else.

~~~

There's something I hate about every other language. Worst, there's things I hate about other languages that I know will never get better. Even worse, some of those things ALSO feel like unforced errors.

With C# there's a few things I dislike or that are missing. C#'s feature set does not obviously excel at anything, but it avoids making any huge misstep in things I care about. Nothing in C# makes me feel like the language designer has personally harmed me.

C# is a very tolerable language.

C# is multi-paradigm.

C# is the Full Middle Malcomist language.

C# will try to not hurt you.

A good way to describe C# is "what if Java sucked less". This, of course, already sounds unappealing to many, but that's alright. I'm not trying to gas it up too much here.

C# has sins, but let's try to put them into some context here and perhaps the reason why I'm posting will become more obvious:

C# didn't try to avoid generics and then implement them in a way that is very limiting (cough Go).

C# doesn't hamstring your ability to have statement lambdas because the language designer dislikes them and also because the language designer decided to have semantic whitespace making statement lambdas harder to deal with (cough Python).

C# doesn't require you to explicitly wrap value types into reference types so you can put value types into collections (cough Java).

C# doesn't ruin your ability to interact with memory efficiently because it forbids you from creating custom value types, ergo everything goes to the heap (cough cough Java, Minecraft).

C# doesn't have insane implicit type coercions that have become the subject of language design comedy (cough JavaScript).

C# doesn't keep privacy accessors as a suggestion and has the developers pinkie swear about it instead of actually enforcing it (cough cough Python).

Plainly put, a lot of the time I find C# to be alright by process of elimination. I'm not trying to shit on your favorite language. Everyone has different things they find tolerable. I have the Buddha nature so I wish for all things to find their tolerable language.

I do also think that C# is notable for being a mainstream language (aka not Haskell) that has a smaller amount of egregious mistakes, quirks and Faustian bargains.

The Typerrrrr

C# is statically typed, but the typing is largely effortless to navigate unlike something like Rust, and the GC gives a greater degree of safety than something like C++.

Of course, the typing being easy to work it also makes it less safe than Rust. But this is an appropriate trade-off for certain kinds of applications, especially considering that C# is memory safe by virtue of running on a VM. Don't come at me, I'm a Rust respecter!!

You know how some people talk about Python being amazing for prototyping? That's how I feel about C#. No matter how much time I would dedicate to Python, C# would still be a more productive language for me. The type system would genuinely make me faster for the vast majority of cases. Of course Python has gradual typing now, so any comparison gets more difficult when you consider that. But what I'm trying to say is that I never understood the idea that doing away entirely with static typing is good for fast iteration.

Also yes, C# can be used as a repl. Leave me alone with your repls. Also, while the debugger is active you can also evaluate arbitrary code within the current scope.

I think that going full dynamic typing is a mistake in almost every situation. The fact that C# doesn't do that already puts it above other languages for me. This stance on typing is controversial, but it's my opinion that is really shouldn't be. And the wind has constantly been blowing towards adding gradual typing to dynamic languages.

The modest typing capabilities C# coupled with OOP and inheritance lets you create pretty awful OOP slop. But that's whatever. At work we use inheritance in very few places where it results in neat code reuse, and then it's just mostly interfaces getting implemented.

C#'s typing and generic system is powerful enough to offer you a plethora of super-ergonomic collection transformation methods via the LINQ library. There's a lot of functional-style programming you can do with that. You know, map, filter, reduce, that stuff?

Even if you make a completely new collection type, if it implements IEnumerable<T> it will benefit from LINQ automatically. Every language these days has something like this, but it's so ridiculously easy to use in C#. Coupled with how C# lets you (1) easily define immutable data types, (2) explicitly control access to struct or class members, (3) do pattern matching, you can end up with code that flows really well.

A Friendly Kitchen Sink

Some people have described C#'s feature set as bloated. It is getting some syntactic diversity which makes it a bit harder to read someone else's code. But it doesn't make C# harder to learn, since it takes roughly the same amount of effort to get to a point where you can be effective in it.

Most of the more specific features can be effortlessly ignored. The ones that can't be effortlessly ignored tend to bring something genuinely useful to the language -- such as tuples and destructuring. Tuples have their own syntax, the syntax is pretty intuitive, but the first time you run into it, you will have to do a bit of learning.

C# has an immense amount of small features meant to make the language more ergonomic. They're too numerous to mention and they just keep getting added.

I'd like to draw attention to some features not because they're the most important but rather because it feels like they communicate the "personality" of C#. Not sure what level of detail was appropriate, so feel free to skim.

Stricter Null Handling. If you think not having to explicitly deal with null is the billion dollar mistake, then C# tries to fix a bit of the problem by allowing you to enable a strict context where you have to explicitly tell it that something can be null, otherwise it will assume that the possibility of a reference type being null is an error. It's a bit more complicated than that, but it definitely helps with safety around nullability.

Default Interface Implementation. A problem in C# which drives usage of inheritance is that with just interfaces there is no way to reuse code outside of passing function pointers. A lot of people don't get this and think that inheritance is just used because other people are stupid or something. If you have a couple of methods that would be implemented exactly the same for classes 1 through 99, but somewhat differently for classes 100 through 110, then without inheritance you're fucked. A much better way would be Rust's trait system, but for that to work you need really powerful generics, so it's too different of a path for C# to trod it. Instead what C# did was make it so that you can write an implementation for methods declared in an interface, as long as that implementation only uses members defined in the interface (this makes sense, why would it have access to anything else?). So now you can have a default implementation for the 1 through 99 case and save some of your sanity. Of course, it's not a panacea, if the implementation of the method requires access to the internal state of the 1 through 99 case, default interface implementation won't save you. But it can still make it easier via some techniques I won't get into. The important part is that default interface implementation allows code reuse and reduces reasons to use inheritance.

Performance Optimization. C# has a plethora of features regarding that. Most of which will never be encountered by the average programmer. Examples: (1) stackalloc - forcibly allocate reference types to the stack if you know they won't outlive the current scope. (2) Specialized APIs for avoiding memory allocations in happy paths. (3) Lazy initialization APIs. (4) APIs for dealing with memory more directly that allow high performance when interoping with C/C++ while still keeping a degree of safety.

Fine Control Over Async Runtime. C# lets you write your own... async builder and scheduler? It's a bit esoteric and hard to describe. But basically all the functionality of async/await that does magic under the hood? You can override that magic to do some very specific things that you'll rarely need. Unity3D takes advantage of this in order to allow async/await to work on WASM even though it is a single-threaded environment. It implements a cooperative scheduler so the program doesn't immediately freeze the moment you do await in a single-threaded environment. Most people don't know this capability exists and it doesn't affect them.

Tremendous Amount Of Synchronization Primitives and API. This ones does actually make multithreaded code harder to deal with, but basically C# erred a lot in favor of having many different ways to do multithreading because they wanted to suit different usecases. Most people just deal with idiomatic async/await code, but a very small minority of C# coders deal with locks, atomics, semaphores, mutex, monitors, interlocked, spin waiting etc. They knew they couldn't make this shit safe, so they tried to at least let you have ready-made options for your specific use case, even if it causes some balkanization.

Shortly Begging For Tagged Unions

What I miss from C# is more powerful generic bounds/constraints and tagged unions (or sum types or discriminated unions or type unions or any of the other 5 names this concept has).

The generic constraints you can use in C# are anemic and combined with the lack of tagged unions this is rather painful at times.

I remember seeing Microsoft devs saying they don't see enough of a usecase for tagged unions. I've at times wanted to strangle certain people. These two facts are related to one another.

My stance is that if you think your language doesn't need or benefit from tagged unions, either your language is very weird, or, more likely you're out of your goddamn mind. You are making me do really stupid things every time I need to represent a structure that can EITHER have a value of type A or a value of type B.

But I think C# will eventually get tagged unions. There's a proposal for it here. I would be overjoyed if it got implemented. It seems like it's been getting traction.

Also there was an entire section on unchecked exceptions that I removed because it wasn't interesting enough. Yes, C# could probably have checked exceptions and it didn't and it's a mistake. But ultimately it doesn't seem to have caused any make-or-break in a comparison with Java, which has them. They'd all be better off with returning an Error<T>. Short story is that the consequences of unchecked exceptions have been highly tolerable in practice.

Ecosystem State & FOSSness

C# is better than ever and the tooling ecosystem is better than ever. This is true of almost every language, but I think C# receives a rather high amount of improvements per version. Additionally the FOSS story is at its peak.

Roslyn, the bedrock of the toolchain, the compiler and analysis provider, is under MIT license. The fact that it does analysis as well is important, because this means you can use the wealth of Roslyn analyzers to do linting.

If your FOSS tooling lets you compile but you don't get any checking as you type, then your development experience is wildly substandard.

A lot of stupid crap with cross-platform compilation that used to be confusing or difficult is now rather easy to deal with. It's basically as easy as (1) use NET Core, (2) tell dotnet to build for Linux. These steps take no extra effort and the first step is the default way to write C# these days.

Dotnet is part of the SDK and contains functionality to create NET Core projects and to use other tools to build said projects. Dotnet is published under MIT, because the whole SDK and runtime are published under MIT.

Yes, the debugger situation is still bad -- there's no FOSS option for it, but this is more because nobody cares enough to go and solve it. Jetbrains proved anyone can do it if they have enough development time, since they wrote a debugger from scratch for their proprietary C# IDE Rider.

Where C# falls flat on its face is the "userspace" ecosystem. Plainly put, because C# is a Microsoft product, people with FOSS inclinations have steered clear of it to such a degree that the packages you have available are not even 10% of what packages a Python user has available, for example. People with FOSS inclinations are generally the people who write packages for your language!!

I guess if you really really hate leftpad, you might think this is a small bonus though.

Where-in I talk about Cross-Platform

The biggest thing the ecosystem has been lacking for me is a package, preferably FOSS, for developing cross-platform applications. Even if it's just cross-platform desktop applications.

Like yes, you can build C# to many platforms, no sweat. The same way you can build Rust to many platforms, some sweat. But if you can't show a good GUI on Linux, then it's not practically-speaking cross-platform for that purpose.

Microsoft has repeatedly done GUI stuff that, predictably, only works on Windows. And yes, Linux desktop is like 4%, but that 4% contains >50% of the people who create packages for your language's ecosystem, almost the exact point I made earlier. If a developer runs Linux and they can't have their app run on Linux, they are not going to touch your language with a ten foot pole for that purpose. I think this largely explains why C#'s ecosystem feels stunted.

The thing is, I'm not actually sure how bad or good the situation is, since most people just don't even try using C# for this usecase. There's a general... ecosystem malaise where few care to use the language for this, chiefly because of the tone that Microsoft set a decade ago. It's sad.

HOWEVER.

Avalonia, A New Hope?

Today we have Avalonia. Avalonia is an open-source framework that lets you build cross-platform applications in C#. It's MIT licensed. It will work on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and also somehow in the browser. It seems to this by actually drawing pixels via SkiaSharp (or optionally Direct2D on Windows).

They make money by offering migration services from WPF app to Avalonia. Plus general support.

I can't say how good Avalonia is yet. I've researched a bit and it's not obviously bad, which is distinct from being good. But if it's actually good, this would be a holy grail for the ecosystem:

You could use a statically typed language that is productive for this type of software development to create cross-platform applications that have higher performance than the Electron slop. That's valuable!

This possibility warrants a much higher level of enthusiasm than I've seen, especially within the ecosystem itself. This is an ecosystem that was, for a while, entirely landlocked, only able to make Windows desktop applications.

I cannot overstate how important it is for a language's ecosystem to have a package like this and have it be good. Rust is still missing a good option. Gnome is unpleasant to use and buggy. Falling back to using Electron while writing Rust just seems like a bad joke. A lot of the Rust crates that are neither Electron nor Gnome tend to be really really undercooked.

And now I've actually talked myself into checking out Avalonia... I mean after writing all of that I feel like a charlatan for not having investigated it already.

[14dayswithyou]

i asked a question about the post where it was said that canon renren wouldn't care about his children, so I decided to clarify

(I don't remember exactly how I asked)

By not caring about them, does he mean that he would not want to take part in their upbringing, since his father traumatized him very much?

(I hope that in the scene, where renren and angel meet his parents, it will be possible to shoot taylor (or replenish a renren account on the darknet with a new torture...)

(and happy belated birthday, renren!)

and another question: in day 3, it says that Ren only has a motorcycle, didn't Ren have a car? I remember for sure that somewhere there was an old answer where it was said that he had both a motorcycle and a car

ANSWERED: I think people see how "soft" Ren is on this blog and kinda forget the fact that he canonically only cares about Angel and no one else. He's often described as being apathetic, indifferent, and hostile towards everyone around him -- and the only person he truly feels empathy and genuine emotions for is Angel.

Ren would 100% care/be there for his kid and would never subject them to the same abuse he suffered as a child, but he won't prioritise them over Angel either. He'll love them because they're an extension of Angel, but he won't feel the same empathy or attachment the same way he does for his lifelong obsession. Canonically, Ren has no strong opinions on children, and he wouldn't really mind either way if Angel wanted to start a family or not. All he cares about -- and will ever care about -- is them.

If you haven't seen them already, here and here are two posts that show how Ren would react around his children.

I also wanna quickly clarify that Blog Ren differs from Canon Ren because while I don't see certain things happening in the official universe of 14DWY; I don't want to outright shut down people's creativity or ideas either. If someone asks about Ren's opinion on children, I'm not going to be like "he canonically hates them, next question". I want to give some sort of content that others can enjoy and work with. I hope this makes sense!! Any maybe helps to show the difference between the "canon" tag and "blog canon" tag! ^^

But!! As for Ren owning a car: he does!! It's a black Corvette -- but the reason why it's not mentioned in the demo is because it's linked with @unsentmemory's storyline (and the True Ending of 14DWY)! It'll be brought up later as more chapters are released, however!!

Also please keep in mind that we're only up to Day 3 out of 14+ days, so not all content found on this blog will appear in the demo ^^;

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for creating and running a gimmick blog?

A few months back, I was bored and decided to hop on the trend of gimmick blogs. Since I don't have any crazy skills like identifying cars or programming bots, I settled on something I thought was extremely simple: correcting typos. So I'll sometimes reblog posts that have typos in them and comment with corrections. I would only do this on posts that were already lighthearted or joking in tone; I would never derail a serious post with it. And I really haven't used it very often - maybe a couple times a week at most, just when I happen to notice a good candidate.

Well, recently I was inundated out of nowhere by a bunch of anons telling me this was a horribly offensive idea. According to them, I was insulting dyslexic people, non-native English speakers, people without access to education, and a whole bunch of other groups with these unwarranted corrections.

I had honestly never considered that angle, and I've paused using that blog so I can try and reflect on it. But when I replied to a couple of the asks asking for a better explanation of exactly how this was harmful - because I genuinely wanted to be informed - the vast majority of the replies, with few exceptions, were obscenely rude to me. I've been called classist, ableist, racist, and a lot of much worse words I don't care to repeat here. I blocked exactly two people because they were being extremely hateful in my notes, while still trying to engage with the more polite ones, but of course I still got accused of blocking and ignoring everyone I disagreed with.

The truth is, I'm still not sure whether or not I disagree with any of them on the actual subject at hand; I just can't deal with people being bitter and rude and assuming the worst of me. I tried to make it clear that I was more than willing to listen and have a conversation in good faith, but that has proved impossible.

So now I'm really hurt and really, really confused. I'm not going to just blindly trust a small group of hypocrites on the internet who claim they're worried about people's feelings while at the same time trying to completely villainize me as if I don't have feelings too. But I also understand that they might have a point. Sadly, politeness is not always correlated with correctness.

I absolutely do not want to continue running this gimmick blog if it's truly harmful and offensive to people. I've just never encountered this take before, and it was delivered with such vitriol that I had to take a break from tumblr entirely just to recover my sanity. So I'm hoping a much broader and less biased sample size will help to clear this up. I know an AITA poll isn't perfect, but it should do.

If I get a YTA verdict, I will delete the typo-correcting blog and stop immediately, no questions asked. If not, I'll know I just angered an extremely vocal minority that has no idea how to deal with conflict.

AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[idontmindifuforgetme]

u don’t have to answer this if u don’t want to or u feel u don’t have anything to say on it (obvi) but how do u deal with jealousy and comparison?

i genuinely just like my shit. i love how i look like, i love my stuff, i love where i come from, i love my family and friends, and i appreciate all the circumstances (good and bad) that have led me to be the person i am today. i've done a lot of esteemable things that have bolstered my confidence growing up, like getting an extremely hard degree and pushing myself outside of my comfort zone more than ever before. i treat other people w kindness and respect. i make sure to be a source of support rather than needless negativity. what people think of me (or have) doesn't get under my skin anymore, bc i've already proven my worth to myself. the fact of the matter is, i'll always hold my own opinion of myself higher than i do other people's opinions of me. i'm at a place where i just don't care that much. i've lost the need to correct people on their takes of me a long time ago.

my own happiness is king--everything else is secondary. if i like it, that's enough for me.

i find it pointless to compare myself to somebody else, simply because no two people have been dealt the exact same cards. i wouldn't compare a rose to a lily, so why should i be comparing myself to people who're--no matter who they are, no matter where they're from--never gonna be me? i'm me. the only person i should be comparing myself to is my past self. i am only in competition w myself. that is all.

as for jealousy, viewing people who have things i want as proof of concept has really helped. if another person gets a higher score on a test, i don't get jealous that they outdid me. i just view them as proof that i can get that score if i studied more efficiently. someone else's success isn't a lack of your own--it's just proof you can reach that success, even if the route doesn't look exactly the same, even if it might take longer.

contentment is entirely subjective. i've known wealthy people who're incredibly miserable. i've known people who struggle financially but could not be happier. other people's advantages don't rattle me, bc i don't care about them, bc i'm so eternally grateful for what i already have. i've also never really been that materialistic to begin with, so i've always understood that a person's worth lies in who they are rather than what they own (whether it be things, money, opportunities...). i can say w my whole chest that i wouldn't swap places w the most famous, most rich celebrity there is. i legitimately don't want to. i know that even if i have to work harder for things, i'll have more to say by the end of it all, and that in and of itself is so profound. not to mention the satisfaction from having challenged myself to get there--and i love a good challenge.

i've unleared the idea that i should view other women as competition. life is hard, we all struggle, we'll be living in a man's world for a long time, and it's just not worth the energy. yeah i'm ambitious, but not at the expense of other people. there's enough room for everyone. another woman's achievement doesn't mean less space for mine. we'll all be fine.

w all that said!! there are bad days. no human is just confident all the time, doesn't feel jealous all the time, doesn't compare themself all the time, doesn't let people's opinions get under their skin all the time. don't feel bad for doing it every now and then. it's natural and normal and just part of the human experience. nobody is perfect. just focus on you, view other people as inspiration rather than competition, and compare your progress to nobody else's but your own. it's been a game changer for me :)

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Having the statue scene be what caused Adrien to fall in love with Marinette feel like one of many spite moves from Astruc. Like once again, he saw how much people hated that scene but instead of addressing the criticisms he instead just point blank tries to force us to like the scene.

I'd go with arrogance over spite. I don't know much about the man, but the quotes I've seen and my limited knowledge of the industry are why my standard take is that he and the writing staff are genuinely trying to tell a good story. While we think they're failing at it, they don't. They think it's good. You're not going to sway me to their point of view, but I do understand how they could get into that mindset.

It's incredibly rare to get professional writers who want to punish the audience. It's incredibly common to get writers who are so far up their own ass that they think they shit gold and anyone who disagrees is just a hater who can't understand their vision. While that viewpoint isn't ideal, it's not a terrible trait for a creative. You're unlikely to succeed in a creative field if you can't get into some version of that mindset.

Speaking as a writer, if you want to succeed in a creative field, then you do genuinely need to be your own biggest fan and learn to ignore criticism. Not because you're above criticism, but because:

Issue 1: A lot of people struggle with the difference between personal taste and actual flaws, leading to some really shitty "criticism". That doesn't mean that it's bad to talk about a thing in terms of personal taste, it just means that your criticisms maybe be highly subjective opinions and not objective flaws that the creator needs to know about. It's why things like book reviews are for the audience and not the author. I know people who have found great reads based on negative reviews because those reviews talked about the book in question in an objective enough way for those people to realize it had things that they loved. That means that those were excellent reviews, they let people know if they'd like the book or not, which is what a review is meant to do! It also means that the reviews were pretty worthless to the authors because there was nothing that needed changing. It was all a matter of personal taste.

Issue 2: Taking point one a step further: more objective, "good" criticism isn't necessarily valuable to a creator. Sometimes creators are willing to include "flaws" because their creation doesn't fit their vision without those "flaws". Creators can get away with that because different audiences will care about different things and you're never going to be able to appeal to everyone. This is not the greatest example, but I think it gets my point across, so I'll use it here anyway. As someone who prefers reasonably healthy couples, if I were to read a story with an awful romance, then I'd probably hate it and have very clear, logical reasons why. But if the author is totally aware that the couple is awful and needed them to be such for the story they wanted to tell? Then my critique has no value to them. It's why good critique is so hard to get and give. Good critique is not about shaping a story into what you'd call good, it's about shaping the story the writer wants to tell into its best form. It's super hard, but also fun and a good learning experience.

Issue 3: A lot of criticism is highly situational and public feedback will only ever come after a work is done and available to the public. That makes it questionable how much value you'd get from reading feedback at that point. For an ongoing work where only a part is done, you might get something useful, but for a finished one? It's questionable if there's any point in reading negative comments. For example, I've received unsolicited critical feedback on fics that are several years old. I have no idea what the goal of those comments is. Even if I agree with them, I'm not going to rewrite the fic for them. I even asked one of them what their goal was and they couldn't tell me. They just wanted me to know and the button said "comments" not "positive comments."

Issue 4: You're never going to be perfect, so even a great work will have flaws, but it's unhealthy to dwell on them. Listening to a thousand people point out what you got wrong is not going to help anyone improve. That's why good creatives are open to feedback, but they tend to have a select group that they go to for feedback during the creative process. They then ignore most other feedback. In most cases, that is the healthy way to approach the creative process. It's why I don't agree with those who complain about someone blocking critics on twitter. Block and move on isn't just advice for the plebs. Successful creatives are allowed to prioritize their mental health, too.

Of course, there is a double edged sword in action here. Because creatives need to be their own fans and develop that ability to ignore criticism, they are always at risk of forming echo chambers that lead them to create lesser works because everyone in their core team thinks the same way they do. They may not even have a core team! It takes a lot of humility and luck to find people who give you good feedback.

The echo chamber issue is especially true when creatives are successful as it's hard to want to change when you're making money off of whatever crap you put out. Once you reach a certain level of success, there will be a whole lot less push back on your terrible ideas. If it's going to make money either way, then why worry if it's total crap? (This is a major problem in the publishing industry, btw. People with large social media followings can get a book deal with relative ease and publish almost anything they want because the publisher knows it will sell and it's not their name that's going to be looked down on.)

Generally speaking, this is what I think happened with Miraculous. The show is incredibly successful so there's no reason to listen to criticism or expand the creative team. Until the show stops making money, it doesn't matter how bad it is, so there's no reason for the writers to question if they've become blind to their own flaws. And by the time the show goes too far and stops making money? It will probably be too late to fix the problems so the show will just die. That's just how this trend works.

In summary, I would not be shocked if the writers genuinely think they're writing wonderful stories and that the critics just can't see it because we're the spiteful ones, not them. People can develop really weird standards for what is good, especially when they're immersed in the industry. For example, it's not like Disney wanted to ruin the Star Wars brand or have their 100th anniversary film - Wish - be universally panned. Studios want to make money. Writers want to tell stories people like. Spite it's rarely the answer when they fail to do those things.

The one caveat I will give to the above is if you're referring to the kind of spiteful arrogance where someone creates a thing, people criticize said thing, and so the person makes more of said thing in retaliation because that's 100% spite. But it's not the kind of spite where they're making a thing bad on purpose. It's them saying, "no, this was good and I'm gonna make more of it because you're wrong and I'm right." People do that shit all the time and, once again, it's not an inherently bad thing. Like all emotions, spite is a neutral force and a powerful motivator. It can lead to great things and terrible things. I can think of spite projects that were wildly successful and spite projects that totally flopped. (Relevant Tumblr post)

If that's the argument you're making when you say "spite", then I could totally see the statue scene choice happening because the writers heard people dunking on it and they went, "No, you're wrong, that scene was awesome! In fact, to show you how awesome, we're going to have that be when Adrien's crush started!" Spite? Yes. Ruining the show on purpose to get back at haters? No.

[1moreff-creator]

FF, considering that the end of Chapter 2 seems to be setting up the already prevalent theme of Fate and Choice to take centre stage in Chapter 3 (like how the theme of Trust was the focus of CH1, and the theme of Change was the focus of CH2), I wonder Do you have any predictions for Chapter 3? Where you think most of the characters will go from here, who you think might be the next to kick the bucket, and how you think it will tie into Teruko's own story (the next step of which, I predict, will be her making a decision on whether she's going to allow herself to make friendships with the rest of the cast even with the fear that they will abandon or die on her always in the back of her mind, or to let her fears control her and make her isolate herself further out of fear that she will result in them getting hurt because of her fated bad luck. But I'd also love to hear your thoughts on that :D)

Hey! Predictions, huh? Well, I'm not the best when it comes to guesswork, so this isn't going to be, like, my deepest post or anything, but it's still interesting to think about!

Spoilers for DRDT CH2

So now that we've made it past Read More: Yeah I have no idea.

You see, there's literally infinite ways for the story to progress past this point, and there comes a point where "what I think will happen" would be completely indistinguishable from "how I would write the rest of the story." And while that in itself is interesting to explore, I'm not the dev, so I'll save both your and my time by avoiding any completely unfounded predictions. That means that the fate of most characters, the arcs they will go through, the themes which will be explored, among many other things, are things that I have almost no genuine strong predictions, at least in regards to CH4 and beyond.

In terms of CH3, though, I do agree that the theme of fate is the most likely to be the centerpiece, though like with CH2 and CH1 there will probably be a whole lot of themes that get explored. Not to mention that what someone considers the "main theme" of a chapter is highly subjective; I'd argue the themes of belief ("all that glitters is not gold") and morality ("a good person") are just as important to CH2 as the theme of change. I can't tell which themes will actually be explored, though, because again, no idea where the story could go.

To give some ideas, though, some themes that are already on the table apart from fate and trust and change are memory (Elliot, Rose's photographic memory, Whit forgetting her mom is dead for a moment when Rose says it, etc), family (Elliot again, Rose's family, J's mom, Levi's situation, the hypothetical Diana Chiem, Teruko's brother, Whit's mom again, why does half this cast has family issues, etc), idolization (David->Xander, Hu->Nico, Whit->His mom ("We tend to idolize the dead" in his quote), everyone->Mai (once we actually start talking about her), etc), past and future (Xander & Min (check pinned comments in Bonus Episodes), Hu and Veronika moving on from their past, Charles forgetting his, Rose feeling hopeless in the future due to mistakes in her past, Levi not caring about his past, Arturo not being able to fully move on from his past, etc), and everything else under the Sun. You see why making predictions is hard? There's too much shit going on, the writing's just too good.

What I can theorize on a bit more comfortably is who's gonna die in CH3.

It's Charles.

Honestly I don't even feel comfortable predicting a double murder in CH3; other than "it's a trope," there's no reason for me to believe it atm. And "it's a trope" isn't evidence.

With Charles, though, we do have "Charles pronounced dead at 3" from the prologue, and given Whit's track record, yeah it's curtains for chemist boy. I know some people think Charles dying is "too obvious" because of this line, but it only feels obvious to freaks like me who spend way too much time looking at these guys and who've rewatched the series several times. In particular, I believe he'll be poisoned by strychnine, given it was omitted from the custom weapons list, meaning only him and Teruko know about it, which could lead to interesting developments in the trial. This also means that the Elliot mystery would be explored in more depth in CH3, which could also be inferred from Yoidore Shirazu... existing already.

Other things which will likely get brought up are Whit's secret, Teruko's secret (then again, I have zero fucking clue what David's gonna do next), Hu's treatment of Nico, Hu and Vero's secrets, Veronika's reactions to Levi almost dying and Ace's execution, the Nico-Rose situation, Arturo (just, like, in general), etc. I feel like J's family and Eden's guilty feelings about Arei and Min might still have to wait, though it could come up. Look these chapters are long we could genuinely cover all of that and still bring up new threads for CH4 to explore.

As for future killer predictions... again, zero clue. But, you know that theory/observation that's been going around about the objects that show up at the end of CH1 and CH2 and Mai? That Mai has a jacket kinda sorta like Min and gloves like Ace?

Although this is an insane metric and I fully expect it to go wrong probably as soon as CH3, it is practically the only semi-theory we have that could point to future culprits. And since I'm an evidence-based theorist at heart, here's who I believe the killers might be based on the only (and craziest) metric we have. Feel free to ignore the Hail Mary guesses, I have no reasoning for them beyond Vibes.

Arturo - Ribbon (Hail Mary guess - CH4 killer)

Hu: Flowers (Note: Her secret quote plays into why I believe she may be a killer. I fully expect to be wrong on her particularly, and even if she is a killer, I expect her to kill on accident, which is sort of possible with strychnine. I doubt Hu would kill someone on purpose). Hail Mary guess - CH3 killer, no double murder?

Veronika: Hair tie. Hail Mary guess - CH5 killer, double murder?

It could also be Vero's shoes btw, they look similar enough to Mai's.

Rose's stockings are actually also similar to Mai's, but I can't imagine the object for her being stockings instead of, like, her hat or apron.

In fact, that's sort of a counterargument to this entire theory. Even if Vero or Hu are killers, I would expect their objects to be the triangle earring and the butterfly hair accessory respectively. In fact, I see Vero in particular as a victim more than a killer, so that should tell you how confident I am in these things.

Keeping in mind my survivor predictions (Teruko - J - Whit - Levi - Rose), which haven't really changed other than me now considering Levi a more likely survivor than Rose, that would leave the victims as Charles (genuine prediction: CH3), Eden (Hail Mary - CH5), David (Hail Mary - CH5 or CH4), and Nico (Hail Mary - CH4 or CH3). Again, the Hail Marys are purely vibes only and have no attached reasoning.

Finally, for mastermind, there's three people in particular that I find genuine contenders for MM spot, but that will have to wait for a separate, more in-depth post, since this thing does actually have evidence attached.

I hope that was enough to satisfy you! Thanks for the ask, it was fun to think about!

[beevean]

A more fleshed out idea of how I would have ended the Lenector story in the most balanced way I can think of.

Lenore is Hector's prisoner, as per canon. He still treats her as nothing happened, like a good friend, but Lenore is sulking and angry and not even bothering to keep up the façade like Hector used to do in her position. It's unfair, after she treated him as her only confidant, and she couldn't care less, that's what the traitor gets. Hector thinks he should be happy, to have reversed the roles on her... but he isn't. Unlike Lenore, power over another person doesn't satisfy him. He can't help but see her as a depressed animal in a cage... much like he used to be.

He wanted to protect her, he really did, but only now he's seeing how much hurt he caused her. Much like she said she meant to do with the ring, although to this day he doesn't know if it was a lie or the truth. There is no joy in inflicting her the same fate she inflicted upon him, even if it comes from a place of well-meaning and not selfishness. He has seen what that kind of "eye for an eye" mentality brings to the world, and he wants none of it.

So, he finally takes a decision for himself, and repays the one debt he has with her. He helps her flee from the castle. He is, for the first time, showing empathy to a person and not an animal.

(I don't even think Isaac needs to be kept in the dark. Lenore on her own is harmless, nothing like Carmilla who became a danger to the world. Hector and Lenore are dangerous tools in the wrong hands, but they lack the ambition that makes them solid threats, as they are mostly concerned with feeling safe. If Isaac truly wants to do good to everyone, he has no reason to keep Lenore as a prisoner, not even to force her to work for him. Same for Hector, since the two might have "forgiven" each other, but they have no relationship whatsoever. Perhaps him heeding Hector's request could show more how compassionate he has truly grown.)

Lenore is confused as to why, and Hector more or less explains that he couldn't bear watching her drinking herself into a stupor. Lenore snaps, and yells at him that he has no right to feeling sorry for her after what he has done, after going behind her back, after ruining her life... and is promptly shot down by Hector flashing his mutilated hand. Every ounce of ire Lenore directs at Hector is actually directed at herself, and they both know it. She is deeply regretting everything she did for the sake of people that didn't even respect her, she is just too proud to apologize. And her pride, her insecurity, her need to be the one in control, was what prevented her from truly being the good person she wanted to be. The very reason Hector wasn't happy with her despite her best efforts, and destroyed her life.

She really thought something so paltry as a slave ring would tame the human spirit. She really thought humans, like vampires, would care more about safety than freedom. For a diplomat who set herself to bridge humankind and vampirekind, she let her basic instincts get the better of her.

"Why didn't you just kill me back then?" she yells, attacks, it feels so good to blame Hector rather than herself. "At least I wouldn't have known how little I matter to you!"

"I'm no longer that child," Hector responds. "I'm no longer the boy who believes to have the right to punish others. Besides, shouldn't you know the desire to spare someone's life no matter what?"

They had never breached that subject again, not after Lenore dismissed it in a fit of denial. It still weighs on her. He can no longer care.

"All this time," Hector says at last, "I expected an apology, but I think I don't need it anymore. As much as I don't need you anymore. I'm grateful for your efforts to protect me from your sisters' ire, so now I'll use them to live for myself. I'm sorry it had to be this way."

He holds no grudges anymore, and he has genuinely come to appreciate the real Lenore behind her masks and the way she took care of him during the previous six weeks, when the world would have chewed him and spit him out; but at the same time, he can't bear staying with her. She makes him too sad. It reminds him of how low he allowed himself to be brought for the sake of some scraps of love. She reminds him too much of a version of him he doesn't want to be. There are too many conflicting feelings in him. He can't help but think that, in another life, the two could have been genuine friends, if not more... but not this one. Too much baggage, too much shared misery. He is done with it. No more will he seek safety and love in other people, as if he wasn't strong enough. He deserves better.

Lenore doesn't know what to think anymore. She wants to die so badly, she is almost tempted to not hide herself from the sun: she can't concieve her existence as nothing more than a black hole, unworthy of living. She is nothing more than a disgusting monster doomed to spread misery to the world, she thinks, and she should die like one. She has nothing left, no allies, no home, and the one person she fell in love with is pulling away from her, and she can't bear being abandoned, and she completely understands why he's doing so. At the same time, however... Hector too has nothing left, and yet he wants to live. After everything he went through, after himself desiring death at Isaac's hand, he wants to experience real life, not survival like he has done since he was born. Lenore pretended to praise his strength when she was manipulating him, but now she has come to genuinely admire that trait. Can she, a vampire used to nothing but comfort, be as strong as a human being?

She wants to ask Hector if he thinks she's a good person. A glance at his mutilated hand answers her more than any word could. Lenore, all this time, had no idea what being "good" meant, she was only good at putting up a façade of gentleness, and she thought it was enough. All this time, she behaved like a vampire pretending to be human... so now, she will learn from the best human she has ever met. The best person. The only one who saw her as a person as well, behind her masks, behind her usefulness.

Even if Hector is now walking towards the dawn, with nothing but his resolution. For the first time, he will live for him, for himself.

They will never meet again, but in a twisted way, they gave each other what they needed to grow.

[starryriize]

hi hiii i love ur writing!was wondering if you could write some drabbles abt xikers as ever after high characters <3 have a good day/night!

xikers as ever after high characters

〔 members 〕 all! 〔 pairing 〕 none 〔 genre 〕 fluff? 〔 rating 〕 everyone 〔 content warnings 〕 none 〔 word count 〕 1k+

〔 summary 〕 not much just which ever after high characters correlate to xikers!

〔 author’s note 〕 ahhh the way ever after high was my entire childhood!! 🫶🏼 this took me forever i'm so so so sorry :(( i hope i did your ask justice 🧚🏼‍♀️ (also if you see some parts longer than others- i ran out of things to say)

🫧laur’s taglist: @leehanascent @cherrycolaberry @hyvelxve @bro-atz

melody piper ! minjae

⤷ melody is the daughter of the pied piper and it only makes sense that minjae is exactly like her!! she’s always making cool beats and performing her best on stage. unfortunately, she doesn’t get a lot of screen time and her popularity comes from her performances. melody is exceptionally good at applying creative ideas to any situation!

ᝰ the best stage performer, minjae, is always tearing up the stage and getting the audience excited!! he puts his members in the spotlight before he lets himself shine. it’s obvious that he gets more energy when performing especially with his friends! don’t underestimate him because he’s also incredibly smart. his leadership skills shine when his friends ask him questions about anything!! minjae gets teased, but his friends know there’s no one else they’d rather want as a leader :((

ashlynn ella ! sumin

⤷ everyone knows the story of cinderella and her daughter coincidentally has a shoe addiction…but more than that, she pursues her story but falls for someone that she’s not supposed to be with. she’s a natural leader with everyone drawn to her kind aura! it’s not just her looks that are because she is quite knowledgeable on many subjects, hence why she runs her own shoe business.

ᝰ i think sumin is similar in most respects. he likes fashion which always adds to his charm. i feel like he’s “quirky” but in the sense that he often thinks outside the box. his creativity is also evident in the style he performs! you can tell he also genuinely cares and loves his members just like ashlynn <33

c.a. cupid ! hyunwoo

⤷ cupid was a monster high student but she got curious and decided to see what ever after high was like! she’s popular for having a podcast on how people can find their true love, but her crush is already interested in someone else. she’s often overlooked because of her good lucks so people assume she doesn’t have a lot to offer besides her visuals.

ᝰ like cupid, hyunwoo sometimes wishes that people would stop overlooking his talent as an idol just because he has a “kdrama face.” he’s much more than just a visual and he knows that! him and cupid put others first before themselves. he’s an amazing singer and you can tell he has a genuine kind soul! don’t overlook him because he’s handsome :((

madeline hatter ! jinsik

⤷ she’s always finding new ways to entertain her best friends and she always loves to go on new adventures with them! madeline is often misunderstood as she tends to speak in riddles, and she’s expected to have a happier outlook. she wants to help everyone and she, most importantly, supports their dreams! she isn’t afraid to be the odd one out but she stands by her friends!

ᝰ i think jinsik is as entertaining as madeleine! whenever his friends want to pursue something, he’s supportive in the cutest way. if anything, he’s just as eccentric as the people of wonderland, always letting his curiosity get the better of him. yechan is assertive in the way he can read the room and make jokes to liven up any situation! his friends are lucky to have him <33

raven queen ! junmin

⤷ now raven queen was known for being outspoken, wanting to follow her own destiny- and junmin strikes me as the type to believe in that too. she refused to be defined by the expectations of others. unlike her mom, she places friendship and being herself over trying to fulfill her destiny.

ᝰ junmin doesn’t like to be defined by the expectations of others as well. he’s able to speak for himself and values his friendship like raven! similarly, he’s a go-getter, determined to show his skills as an idol to the world. i feel like he has doubts (who doesn’t) but he has his group to lift him up!

lizzie hearts ! junghoon

⤷ lizzie hearts, the daughter of the queen of hearts! she places family above all things, and it’s evident when she speaks about her mother. sure, her mother is strict at times but she knows that her mother is just trying to protect her. lizzie also loves wonderland dearly, and she happily takes her friends into wonderland to show them around!

ᝰ the king of my heart, junghoon, reminds me of lizzie because they’re both talented in every aspect. he has the kind of manners that you would see in a royal family, not to mention that he also has similar humor to lizzie! most importantly, he cares for his family and friends, not wanting them to worry about him too much- just like lizzie.

farah godfairy ! yujun

⤷ farah is a ball of sunshine! whether it’s noon or midnight, she tries her best to grant wishes! it’s obvious that she is consistently putting others before herself, and there’s the lingering fact that she doesn’t have anyone to grant her own wishes. farah gets a lot of attention for her skills, and she always smiles as she grants wishes! it makes her happy to see others happy :((

ᝰ in more ways than one, yujun puts others before himself. it’s clear in how he makes sure that other members get attention and he livens the mood by making fun! i think he also “grants wishes,” but more so for his fans. he performs his best for his fans because it’s all worth it to hear the cheers of joy from the crowd. like farah, yujun keeps his friends close <33

briar beauty ! seeun

⤷ briar beauty is the party girl! she’s always somehow incorporating fun into serious situations. whenever she plans a get-together, she always invites everyone and loves to make sure her friends get their fair share of the spotlight! she does have a few worries about her future because she often feels that she is just doing what is expected of her and not what she wants. however, briar does go for what she wants, whether it’s for better or for worse. if it’s what’s good for her, she goes for it!

ᝰ in the same way, seeun likes the spotlight! he knows he looks gold in whatever he wears and does. being an idol is hard work and i feel like he gets down when he doesn’t perform at his best. luckily, he has a good friend group like briar! his friends never hesitate to lift him up and make sure he knows that it’s okay to have flaws. the expectations of society is not what should define him. similar to briar, he recognizes that life is for living and having fun while being true to yourself! 

apple white ! yechan

⤷ the main character is apple considering that she’s somehow at the center of everything. although, this also means that she has quite the ego. she puts herself first, but she values her friends more than people think! apple white is loyal to the point where she was willing to go against her mother to prove to her friends that she truly wants the best for them :((

ᝰ i think yechan is similar to apple white because they’re both loved by their friends. yechan thinks of others and it's noticeable in the way he pays attention to his friends <33 he works hard to prove that he's not just the maknae! he gets lots of praise for his stage presence but he’d probably say it’s because he has confidence!

kitty cheshire ! hunter

⤷ kitty is a tease…like hunter but both of them love watching people go through their dreams! hunter likes to play tricks on his friends and so does kitty! not to mention how they have similar smiles! she may be mischievous but she also deeply cares about her friends.

ᝰ hunter reminds me of kitty in the way he cracks jokes and their matching smiles! i think he makes jokes and laughs a lot, but when it goes too far, he’s immediately apologizing. like kitty, he truly cares about his family and friends so he’d want to help them fulfill their dreams!

🫧join laur’s taglist!

[charrfie]

Ok, still salty over Two Realms (it SUCKED) so gotta ask you, how would YOU have done a third drawn to life game (I've kinda wanted one with wilfre seemingly being the antagonist at first before him either being dethroned or he was actually trying to help and fumbling it BADLY)

Ohhh I'm just so excited that people are so interested in my thoughts to the point I keep getting asks related to the topic!!!!! ^_^ Thank you it's very exciting to be able to talk to everyone like this. I don't often publicly interact with the fandom because of some bad experiences I've had in it some years ago but it seems like the environment of it has changed a lot... maybe I should be more vocal about my interest in the series? Everyone who's being so nice about it has been such a big help. That's unrelated to your question, I just wanted to express appreciation!

Now, to actually answer you lol.. I put this under a read more again since it's a little lengthy, but not NEARLY as long as my previous ask

-

Fellow two realms hater 🤝 It was just such a letdown idk where I would even start. The glaringly obvious answer is the actual gameplay itself what with the level design/lack of stylus being how it was but I think my personal biggest problem was the story itself. It seemed to retcon or at least gloss over a lot of the plot from previous games which not only felt clunky but overall lowered the stakes to such a degree... it made me not care about the character drama nearly as much. Which is such a shame! Drawn to life and drawn to life: the next chapter are genuinely my #1 most favorite video games to ever exist. I mean this with no exaggeration. Even if they're kind of bad. Lol. But!!! The potential that the story and characters have in the original two games completely reels me back in!!! There's SO much there, even if it's not put together with the most grace. The subject matter is so serious and something so rarely talked about, ESPECIALLY for the age demographic it was aimed towards. These characters feel so real!!! So fleshed out!!!! It's endlessly compelling!!!!!!!!

All this being said, I think what I would do is make dtl:tr a lot more character/story driven since thats such a major appeal for me in previous entries. While it's even more evident in two realms, both dtl and dtl:tnc do have levels that tend to be a big of a slog to get through in comparison to the 10 seconds of story the player might get as a reward; there would need to be more balance.

As for what this story would actually contain.... I'm a little conflicted. While I'm not the biggest fan of aldark as a villain (he kind of came out of nowhere just to fill a necessary role of "evil"), I *do* like the idea of wilfre being replaced rather than coming back again, and I REALLY REALLY REALLY like the concept of the shadow that controlled wilfre garnering the strength to present itself as a physical manifestation rather than a conduit. I don't even mind if it functions as a solely evil entity! There's something to be said for that just as there's something to be said for wilfre being more morally gray anti-hero than pointlessly evil villain. I'd love to do something in this vein, though probably leave the human world out of it? Or at least keep it very vague. The raposa world gives us as the viewers enough plausible deniability to accept ridiculous/strange events without question.... it's only because the human world is so painfully realistic that the ending of dtl:tnc has the effect it does. So needless to say that's a no on keeping it as the main storyline.

I really like your idea of wilfre trying to help and then fumbling. That's similar to what I wished for when two realms was first announced actually! I sooooo badly wanted to see him trying and failing to adjust to normalcy again post him being freed of the shadow's influence, which I talked about VERY briefly here following the games announcement. I'd love to see him trying to make amends with those he had hurt (a la "ice king apology tour" from the marcy & simon comics), rediscovering who he even is as an individual again, or parsing through what his relationship with the creator has become. It opens up for some pretty interesting conversations. Especially considering how much shit other raposa might give him when he fails to help in the way they expect him to. At the same time, I'd love to get some more dialogue on where jowee and mari are at in their lives. How mari handles leadership (as she actively struggled with it in dtl and dtl:tnc), if jowee has allowed himself to exist outside of the scope of others and their judgement/expectations, etc. The fact that those two get married at the end of two realms threw me for such a loop.... because even when nothing was actively threatening them in dtl:tr they still bickered so much? I'd really like to delve into how people can naturally grow apart as they age and come to understand they may not be right for those they grew up with, as painful as that realization may be. A remake of two realms could also be a cool way of having circi introduced into official canon since she's way too interesting of a character to be constainte to the non-canon wii game.

These are all the story changes I know for a fact I'd like. But it's hard to say definitively what the plot would be other than designating an antagonist concept and the general themes which would be at play. I'm not quite sure what or how a manifested shadow antagonist would again threaten the safety of the raposa world! I figure any retconning necessary for the raposa world to even exist in the first place could be as simple as "oh I knew we could trust the creator to establish a new world for us," which would also heavily contribute to wilfre's character struggles in a very interesting way. So that's not too big of a problem. Drawn to life has bullshitted more complicated things away than just that. I'll have to keep thinking! Maybe I can work up a proper dtl:tr rewritten au alongside the other two aus I have.

I'd love to hear other thoughts about a potential remake of two realms if anyone has them!

[everydayyoulovemeless]

Hello! I hope youre doing well and you're having a good day! I had quite a request but I'm not sure if you write stuff like that, What do you think of Joshua Graham with a male courier?

Considering Joshua is a mormon (We don't exacly know how christianity looks like in the wasteland or if its even simular to how it works now.) you whould Imagine he whould be more reserved(?) about it, or maybe even be somewhat against it. But then as strict as the legion was with homosexuality they still allowed it as long as the men in the relationship had children otherwise they whould be punished.

I'm interested what's your opinion on the matter or if you have any headcanons for it, whould Joshua be somewhat ashamed and maybe even slightly hide his relationship from people back in New Caanan (If he even returns there? Not sure) or whould he simply not care and maybe even base it slightly on his legion views that he claims he abandoned even if you can see in his actions in game that well he hasn't.

So sorry this ask is so long and I'm not too good at speaking english since it's not my first language, I'm always just really curious on this subject since everyone has a diffrent opinion on it!

Joshua Graham With A M!Courier

➼ Word Count » 0.7k ➼ Warnings » slight homophobia? ➼ Genre » Romantic ➼ A/N » This was so fun to write! Thank you for requesting it!

He definitely has some hesitance toward it. He was one of the ones who helped invent the anti-homosexuality rule in the Legion and still has a strong inner feeling of it being culturally wrong, although, he can't deny what he feels toward you.

It'll take him some time to warm up the idea. You'll notice that he goes off on his own a lot more than he usually would. It's mainly just so he can think as he walks around Zion, wanting to be alone in these moments of self-reflection.

Joshua is angry that he doesn't know how to feel about the matter. He wants to go against everything Ceasar used to preach about, but he's not sure how his family and the other natives would take it. Does God find it just? Would any of his loved ones agree with it? Does he even agree with it?

It won't take long before he makes his way straight to Daniel, with questions he never thought he'd have to ask.

Daniel would be a bit more forthcoming with his opinion, telling him that "the Lord only takes issue with those who harm his land and people".

He'd be a lot more private about your relationship than he would've been if you were a female. He doesn't mean for it to be rude, he's still just not entirely sure how he's religiously supposed to feel about the entire thing. No one in New Canan has ever explored the idea, so he's got no role model to follow in terms of what's expected of him in a situation like this.

One of his biggest qualms is deciding who does what. Joshua has always had the idea of a traditional marriage, but what's he supposed to do with a husband? Do you both provide? Or does one of you play the role of the "wife"? It's one of the things he'll want to work out with you as you both move forward.

Communication is big with him. He genuinely does want to try and make this work, but sometimes it feels like he's just stumbling in the dark. If you have any advice for him on how to feel less awkward around you romantically, please tell him, he wants to show he cares about you, but he can't if you don't tell him how.

Although he might not show very much PDA, you'll notice him being way more affectionate behind closed doors. Holding his hands over yours as you pray, rubbing circles into your shoulders, and even leaving small kisses over the palms of your hands. He tries not to do anything that would undermine you being a man, but he also desperately wants to show that he cares.

Religion will always play a big role in his life, nothing about that will ever change. Being new to this type of relationship, he wants to know more about your thoughts on Mormonism or how the two of you can better understand one another. Honesty is huge with him, just be upfront and tell him what you're looking for.

There'll be times when he refers to you as his 'friend' instead of his 'boyfriend', but it's mainly due to him still getting used to being open about your relationship. It scares him to think others might look down on him because of who he loves, and he doesn't want people to think any less of him than they might already.

He also might be a little pushier with you being a part of his religion, wanting you to get baptized as soon as possible if you're not already.

His heart races a lot when he and you are alone together. He always remembers the Legion and what they'd do to him if they ever found out. It makes your entire affair feel more exciting. Being with you makes him feel rebellious, a foreign feeling that he'll only accept for this particular situation.

If you both manage to make it to see your one-year anniversary, he'll carve a wooden cross out for you to wear as a necklace. (again, a little pushy with his religion, but he means well).

He ends up going to Daniel a lot for direction throughout the whole ordeal. He's constantly checking in to make sure God would be accepting of what he's doing, and Daniel's always there to reassure and talk him through it.

Out of a hatred for the Legion, and want to change, he'd be willing to try the relationship out and hope that God will lead him down his intended path. He prays for guidance in figuring out what is right for him and his future.

[blankd]

(I was going to attach this text to a reblog but I lost the original post, I'm appending more text to make it stand on it's own since it's a topic worth discussing IMO)

The Problem with Taash, an opinion from a ~*Mixed Race Queer Person and a Writer*~

spoilers for Veilguard and Taash's quest- while I haven't seen the ending of the game yet these are egregious writing issues that a 3rd act revelation isn't going to fix

Taash is technically not a "bad character" in a vacuum, they are bad because they are in a Dragon Age game with preexisting lore and this game has writing that is inconsistent with the tone and setting of the previous entries.

Their language is as anachronistic as the rest of Veilguard's main cast dialogue, with disbelief finally shattering at the idea that this Dark Medieval Fantasy suddenly manifests a damn about the gender binary, much less echo the same contemporary terms of 2024 Americans. If they took the time to come up with their own term (or god forbid, something UNIQUE to the setting), I PERSONALLY wouldn't quibble about it. The use of nonbinary is just a symptom of a bigger problem, bad/weak writing, and it is the most emblematic of the lack of care or priority in keeping DA's tone consistent.

Some may argue that using "modern terms" is good, but like anything that isn't a capsule of a specific time period, this kind of writing will age POORLY at best.

More subjectively, but still related to the bad writing problem: I initially didn't mind Taash being blunt and immature, but when no other companion pushed back on them (and Rook is mostly an enabler), it rapidly wore out its welcome. As the focus shifted (with the grace of an anvil) that their plot would be about Gender, I felt the interesting avenues for the character perish in real time. I KNEW more unique in-game hooks were being sacrificed to focus on this, and later scenes would show I wasn't wrong. I PERSONALLY would have preferred if Taash was NB out the gate so that their personal quest could be about literally anything more unique to Dragon Age.

The real crime is that the game literally sits you down to have a 101 chat, despite it being an M-rated game, it's insulting to everyone involved. That this is an inexorable part of Taash is not a "win" unless your litmus for quality is built entirely on reactionary "owns". If you are part of this group, I ask you to consider how practical it is to punish an audience for the words of people who are NOT in that audience. The people who were already reacting with disgust about the option to be NB in the character creator are NOT going to make it to Taash's personal quest.

Some may argue it's "good" it's mandatory, but to that I beg the question of what is LOST by having Taash being NB right out the gate. I know what the game would gain- it would have to actually put something else into Taash's character and maybe we'd be spared the hamfisted sensitivity conversation about pronouns. Like for fuck's sake the end of the world is happening, but sure let's pause the Dark Fantasy Apocalypse to attend an HR meeting in a pirate queen's office- yeah that's the MOST interesting thing that could happen there.

But really this all acts as setup for how despite taking great pains to make sure the player understands that Taash is NB (and that's heckin' valid), they then "have to decide" which SINGULAR culture they will embrace/identify with.

I genuinely don't know why this beat is here at all, but it's baffling to bludgeon that gender is not limited to a binary while presenting CULTURE as mutually exclusive. That ROOK has any input at all is just as staggering display of either a disrespect for the fiction or the player, or both. If you're going to have a sacrificial Very Special Episode character, you can't have it end as having shifted the same 'problem' over to a different topic.

I don't hold ill will to anyone who likes Taash as a character, but as a writer, queer rep is WELL beyond a character looking at the camera and saying they're Nonbinary. "But people will argue against it, they HAD to!" That is a bullshit excuse, GOOD writing doesn't cater to bad faith losers. The painter does not paint for the arsonist.

Misc Points I disagreed with more directly but had no real segue points (and some futureproofing against people who might use these to disregard what I've said): "Taash is only getting crit b/c they're BIPOC coded and queer [therefore this crit is founded in racism]" -Neve and Davrin ARE BIPOC, so unless they are bundled with the "unfair crit", this is not a substantiated assumption. As a tangent, if we're going to dig this deep whatever happened to the outrage at "making 'nonhuman species' NB". Diversity WIN the most inhuman party member is NB! (I personally don't have any strong feelings about that point, but I'm familiar with this being a common complaint from those who seek NB rep.)

"Taash gets crit but these NPCs don't [that's suspicious]" the NPCs don't have cutscenes dedicated to them coming out. The NPCs keep the game moving, but Taash's ~journey~ requires the player be invested and give input which creates the strange dissonance that Taash is trading out their mother's approval for Rook's (which is weird since NEVE is the one that introduces Taash to ~queer identities~ but is relatively ABSENT for the rest of it). Party members ought to have a sliver more autonomy- they can hook up without Rook, yet they can't be true to themselves unless Rook is there, what are the writers implying or achieving with this? The writers also tip their hand about what they want, defeating the point of having options at all in any of these scenes. The removal of player agency is not going to endear ANYONE to this character!

"Taash is also autistic [and is being unfairly criticized]" Taash can still be unpleasant and the lack of pushback from others is what makes it irritating since it comes across as the writers holding back for the sake of optics rather than committing to writing sensible to the fiction.

[celtrist]

Are there any dynamics or scenarios in your au you're especially invested in?

My interests have certainly altered a bit since I've fleshed it out more, but I've noticed I've gotten a lot more invested in Alastor's and Vox's relationship. I think it's in part due to it being one of the darker and more complex relationships in the AU! The only "boring" part is that it's not necessarily too different from what people think it's like in canon. Like okay, by all accounts Vox could have never had lustful or romantic attractions towards Alastor in canon (he was said to be obsessed, but obsession doesn't equal love) and I think most people would still agree that Vox does have a limit to what he'd do to Alastor within canon. But it also wouldn't feel "out of character" for him to do darker stuff like say non-con considering he doesn't seem to have issues with it in canon considering his relationship with Valentino. Would he actually DO non-con? Personally I don't think so (he seems like he would rather have enthusiastic consent), but I also don't think it's exactly out of character for people to depict him that way. So as a result of all of that, Vox in the Obsession AU is a bit boring on that front I won't lie. Unlike other characters, he's virtually the same as his canon counterpart, albeit more than likely darker and more obsessed than canon.

Where I get the most out of the relationship is how Vox differs from everyone else and the "temptation" he offers to Alastor. Alastor is also a lot less of a shit-talker to Vox in this AU. He typically would rather avoid the subject of Vox altogether and gets quieter rather than laughs at him. Both due to his short time with Vox and the relationship/betrayal that occurred. His bad end route was fun to explore and something I'd like to play around with more in the future.

Rosie was one I initially was pretty invested in, and still am. To a lesser degree but I'm sure I'll come out with more ideas for her when season 2 is out. She's pretty cut and dry though currently, but I do like the relationship between her and Alastor. Angel Dust grew to be a lot more interesting to me when I started thinking how Alastor would willingly get drugged by him. He was initially a bit of a "throwaway" as I knew I had to include him (radiodust was BIG during pilot days, so I had to include something with it in my presentation of the Obsession AU), but I wasn't really sure what to do with him. But the more I thought about it and some people talked about it, the more interested I got with it. How Alastor "uses" Angel to cope and vice-versa.

Mimzy is another one as I like how pretty much nobody else likes her and Alastor has a bit of "favoritism" toward her. She has a very backward way compared to everyone else: wanting Alastor to take care of her instead of the other way around. Which, he'll do happily! She is someone Alastor has a genuine history with due to knowing each other in life, so she's certainly someone he still cares about despite the curse. And I also just like the idea of him getting drunk to try and pretend she's not affected by the curse and it's like the good old days. It's very sad, and I really like it! I think another reason I like Mimzy's and Alastor's relationship a lot is because it sorta hits the marks that I like in Alastor fics: Alastor taking care of someone else. I don't really find myself always caring about sickfics where Alastor is the one sick and someone needs to take care of them. But sickfics where the other character is sick and he needs to take care of them? Yes, yes, yes! It's partly why I really like giving him parent-child relationships. But I also like things that have him taking care of people like Rosie or his mother.

And I suppose I should mention this as well: Emily! I never made much mention, but Emily is the main reason I was hesitant about angelic beings not being immune! While I'm not sure I'd go this route (it feels like it'd make more sense for Sir Pentious with this quite honestly), I had the idea of Emily coming down and helping the hotel wiggling in my mind for a while. And there, Alastor would finally have an actual confidant. I imagined once he realized she was slowly being affected he'd try to break away from her. But I'm not sure if I'd have that, just in part I don't really know if that should even happen let alone if it should be Emily and not someone else. I like Angelicsmile (or radiojoy) so I'm a bit bias even if it wouldn't be intended as a shipping thing.

And of course, I do need to mention Keekee. Ever since I decided she doesn't like him and as a result Alastor likes her, I've found a lot of joy in their dynamic. I also like Keekee though (I'm very much a cat person and I love the cyclops and key thing with her), so I'm a bit biased about Alastor's relationship with her. Him just forcing himself onto her to spend time with him and hear his grievances is a very fun idea and a bit ironic considering his situation. I do like to imagine that in more serious, quiet moments she might offer some comfort which is nice.

[itsclydebitches]

Have you seen the posts going around saying shit like "If a mutual likes Hazbin Hotel I will block them"?? It's genuinely upsetting me tbh, not just the idea that people don't like the show, but that they despise it so much they can't even stand the thought of someone they know liking the show. It reminds me of the Steven Universe hate train only worse. They also say shit like "the show is just someone saying swear words and expecting you to laugh", and if for a second we put aside the fact that that is blatantly not true, what's wrong with that? I'm allowed to like something that's a bit trash, right? I've already seen two different people I follow reblog posts to that effect (and worse, someone saying all a character boils down to is "i love being sexually abused <3" and i don't know how they ever came to that conclusion) and it's driving me mad. And somehow I just know that they don't actually give a shit about any "controversies" surrounding vivziepop, that's just a convenient excuse for most of them. I don't even care if Vivzie is a bad person, that's none of my business. just live and let live, you know?

Sorry for ranting, you're literally the only blog i follow who posts Hazbin fan content

Rant away, friend! Luckily for me I haven't come across any of those posts yet. Plenty of discourse surrounding whether fans are allowed to make romantic and/or sexual content for Alastor, the expected shipping wars, and - as you say - vague references to Vivzie controversies (which I'm too new a fan to even be aware of yet)... but nothing that's a complete rejection of the show itself. That's probably because I've only engaged with blogs posting a lot of Hazbin content though.

I'm a big fan of old school Internet rules which includes an emphasis on cultivating your own online space. You know, the thing tumblr is explicitly designed for. So in theory I applaud anyone blocking users/tags for a show they're not a fan of. Performatively posting about it more as a way to guilt others for liking Hazbin at all... not so much. If you want to block something just block it. If you're mutuals with someone you both presumably like each others' content. Not all of it necessarily, but enough to have followed in the first place, and often being mutuals for long enough leads to friendship because you're both getting interacting with one another a lot. All of which isn't to say that people don't unfollow mutuals, or that you can't drop a mutual because they've started posting something you dislike. Obviously both situations do happen, but it feels like an extreme enough response that these posters probably aren't actually doing this very often. Most people will wait the mutual out until their interest gets hooked on something new, or block the Hazbin tag and keep the friend, or just block without making a big announcement about it. So posts like that feel more like a way to show off how much you dislike the show and guilt others for their enjoyment which yeah, can be upsetting to see. Especially when, as you say, it costs nothing to just let people like things.

Which might sound hypocritical on my part given my RWBY interests, but I think there's a big difference between critically examining a show while supporting others who genuinely love it, and simplistically blasting it. I COMPLETELY get why Hazbin wouldn't be to everyone's tastes and, like with the SU example, anything that gets popular enough is going to develop its haters (especially cartoons trying to tackle non-childish subjects. That's always going to be a fandom landmine). But if you're going to make claims about a show, at least watch it to ensure you can back up your stance? And if your takeaway is still, "This is the worst fucking thing I've ever watched"... cool. Go forth and write about that on your own, personal blog. But no one should be surprised when they're also blocked for bragging about how many Hazbin fans they've blocked.

[deepfriedpaddymayne]

who, in your massively correct opinion, is the hottest sas boy? i can never tell if i think they're hot or i want to steal their gender

anon. before i start answering this, I need you to know that I went at this the most ridiculous way possible. just so you know, before you embark upon this journey.

imagine you are me. and you are a lesbian. and you think everyone on rogue heroes looks like Some Guy. and then you get this question. you might come up with an idea, make a joke, and move on.

OR.

you could choose to apply the scientific method. objectively quantify hotness in the Objective opinion of a lesbian. except, obviously, hotness depends on a series of factors - just because someone is attractive, it doesn't mean that they are Hot, you get me? you gotta keep their personality into account, too. AND on top of all of that, we need to account for gender envy. so you do what I did. and you open excel. and you start grading the boys depending on fuckability, dateability, and whether or not you want their gender. cool, now you have an Objective, Correct Answer. because obviously everyone's opinions on attractiveness are subjective and therefore all valid, BUT my subjective intepretation IS a little more correct than other people's. anyway, you have done all this. you have your answer. except you also have a visual memory and don't love numbers. and you might choose to chart it all out.

if, for some godforsaken reason, you had followed all of these steps, then you would find yourself with something like this.

and you would conclude that, if we exclude gender envy that might skew results, the hottest Rogue Heroes boy is Eoin McGonigal. which is ironic, considering he's in the cold, cold ground now.

I'm actually putting a cut here not to clog everyone's dash with this, but here are some little explanations on why I gave my score and clarifying some slightly confusing things about the chart:

Everyone is listed by surname to make sure they were all identifiable without clogging up the chart too much.

I do think most of them look, like. Fine. not, like, fiiiiiiine, they do genuinely just look. like some guys. half of them I wouldn't look at twice if I met them in tesco, you get me? anyway. I stared at so many pictures of these men trying to determine if they were fuckable. I think I am losing my mind.

Jordan, Cooper, and Stirling are actually all on the same point, they are just vaguely scattered around to make the labels readable. I had to install a whole new r package for this.

now the fun part. my completely Objective and Correct Judgment on each boy

-Stirling - his swagless looks and cringefail personality might have captivated Eve, but they are not enough for me. he looks mostly average, but he gets extra points because I am an Unusual Nose enjoyer

-Paddy - with all of my love for him he also does just look normal in my opinion (very pretty eyes, though). like, he looks good, but in a pretty normal way. and then on top of that there is his personality. (both of his scores turn into 10s if you have the highly specific brand of mental illness that Augustin and Eoin both have. get better soon pal)

-Lewes - Jock would absolutely make the best boyfriend out of the main trio, this is basically canon. he's also kind of pretty in a haunted doll way but again I do think he looks mostly Fine.

-Riley - not sure how to justify why his scores are so high tbh. but he seems very confident which is kind of attractive, I guess? also no idea why I want his gender. but I DO.

-Almonds - I just KNOW that Almonds would be such a kind and caring boyfriend. I had originally given him a 7 for fuckability but then I realised that if I was a gay man I would be all over his bear charms in a matter of seconds.

-Reg - Reg gets extra points for being kind of a malewife and also his massive tits but other than that I do think he's pretty average. I would be his friend though. I think he'd be a big lesbian ally in the same way Thor is.

-Kershaw - his fuckability is that high because he exclusively joined the SAS cause he loves killing fascists so my friends and I have an ongoing joke that he fucks like a freight train. that's it.

-Wee Johnny - a little Too Blond for my taste. also, I am sorry, but he is VERY young and I think at the point in life he's at, he'd be a little too self centred to be a good boyfriend. that said my man looks like a he/him lesbian and I'd steal his gender like a fae if I could.

-Fraser - I just KNOW he'd be the kindest, most gentle boyfriend on the planet. absolute sweetheart of a man. that said, he does just look like your run of the mill twink.

-Sadler - really don't know what it is about his odd as hell vibes that makes him so fuckable to me but there is SOMETHING. that said those odd as hell vibes do probably make him into a Not Ideal boyfriend.

-Eoin - I'm sorry, he's got it all. he cooks? he's sweet and understanding but can also be a bit of a little shit? buff but not massive? gets dimples when he smiles? AND he's got freckles and curly hair and an Unusual nose? he's literally perfect and undefeated winner of this contest. rest in peace sweet prince

-Augustin - he has very pretty eyes and face but his lankyness and weirdass way of moving (affectionate) does bring his fuckability score down a little. he's also Insane and while I do think he's very good at hiding it, you would eventually notice while you are dating him and go "huh!" (this, once again, does not apply if you are Paddy). oh that said I don't know what it is about his weird skinny puppetlike limbs that's so gender to me but. yah.

-Bergé - gonna be honest here, he's only included because I felt bad about Augustin being the only Frenchie on there. I like his moustache and his funky hat.

[my-castles-crumbling]

hi! I really admire you for always taking time to give advice to everyone and always having a kind and wise word for people. today I'm the one asking for advice.

I was very awkward at work today, and I just started. I always know how to make good first impressions but I always loose control once we move past it, because there's so many parameters I just can't be socially correct, I never pick the right things to say or do. sometimes I just start talking, about myself often, and then I just feel like I only talk about myself and I take all the space. I don't like it but it feels like I only care about me and want everyone to revolve around me. it's like I can't help it.

do you have any ideas (no pressure) on how to deal with that better, by any means? I tried not using the word "i" too much before but I ended up counting each time I said "I" and it wasn't a nice place for me. I don't know how else to stop myself from taking the space...

I hope you are having a good day, and I'm wishing you luck with the other asks, and also anything you might need luck for!! keep it up!!!

ps: I'm also a bit excited about getting an anon name, not going to lie :)

Are we the same person? I feel like we're the same person.

Honestly, as a neurodivergent person I struggle with this so much. It's not like I don't care, it's just that it's genuinely difficult, especially with people who like...aren't friends or I don't have a lot in common with. The way I deal with it is:

I honestly don't try with every coworker. If I did, I would tap out my social battery. If we don't talk a lot, they're kind of mean, or whatever, then I don't worry about it. You can't win over everyone.

With the coworkers I care about, either because they're genuinely nice people or because I need to work together with them, I try to remember at least one important thing to them. 'Susan' has a kid in college who's struggling. 'Beckey' has a five year old. 'Amanda' has two dogs that she loves. I may not know their whole story, but I know enough to ask about something that's important to them.

If I notice I'm talking too much about myself/my interests, I try to change the subject by either asking someone else's opinion on the subject (people LOVE to share their opinions) or asking them about that thing I know about them.

If a coworker talks about an important day coming up (birthday, kid's surgery that they're worried about, whatever) I put it in my phone, so I remember to ask them about it. That way they feel listened to.

Try to find one or two people at work that you don't have to overthink with. When you're feeling overwhelmed or tired, seek those people out and just chill.

I know it sounds like...calculated, I guess? But again, it's not that I don't care at all, it's just that my brain really struggles to grab into things that aren't my special interests or that don't have to do with the people I'm really close to. So I try to make up for it in other ways.

Naming you excited anon :)

[s7arcr0sser]

I have to get this off my chest because I've seen these two get misunderstood a lot already, and with the little attention the pairing is given, maybe it's time to contribute some. If you're willing to read this please just keep an open mind, i understand that Buzz and Ozma aren't the fandom's favorite pairing especially because of the appeal some other non canon ships have (even i see it - i don't blame anyone for it) but it really makes me sad when bias influences people's ability to enjoy things outside of their main interest.

***i should also emphasize that this is just how i interpret it - the beauty of art is that it's subjective***

It always tics me off whenever someone says that Buzz is arrogant or anything of the type. The creators of the show describe his character as "...his biggest flaw is that he believes in his own legend." He's confident. He's overconfident even, which isn't without reason considering he has nearly 100% success rate. It's easy to confuse the two but the difference is in that, he does not belittle anyone and doesn't feel threatened by someone being as good as him or even better. There are times when he has joked at other people's expense (notably - Opposites attract, Speed trap and Plasma monster) but here's the catch - he always learns and by the end makes up for it. It's because he's not the stoic emotionless type of hero, he has personality and sometimes says things he doesn't fully think through. His whole team, Buzz included, loves throwing jabs at each other all the time, their goal never is to genuinely offend.

That leads to my next point. He always means well. Again, he never belittles ON PURPOSE. It's more or less confirmed he's introverted - before Team Lightyear, he worked alone and still loves spending time on his own. That means he likely spent most of his time around Warp and not much of anyone else, his communication skills aren't great because he focuses on his job too much and hasn't spent much time developing them. Sometimes he misses social cues and misunderstands situations or how people feel. He wasn't a jerk to Ty on purpose, everyone is constantly outdoing each other in praising his achievements so he had no idea it annoys Ty to pieces. The moment Buzz found out how he truthly feels he did everything he could to make up for it.

It's a recurring theme that Buzz isn't crazy about wildlife, it's not just his interactions with Ozma but the whole episode Dirty work is about that very topic. He's stubborn and because that's so far removed from his usual line of work he tries everything he can to use his old methods rather than to try something newer. Little by little he gives into it once he starts to allow himself to understand.

That character only cares about their working field, is willing to completely disregard anything that's outside of it, no matter how that may seem unethical to everyone else, and because they haven't gotten enough perspective from the other side they don't see why that's wrong, but is slowly learning throughout the show and could have gotten more development if the show continued.

I'm talking about Ozma this time. See how that can apply to both of them? Ozma is just as wrong as Buzz and they both can get across as irrational, but they actually are trying to protect what they believe in. Buzz doesn't care about nature and Ozma doesn't care about people - directly opposing fields, they are fighting for what the other would sacrifice. That's why their clash is so interesting, they have EVERYTHING in common, with just one difference that's so detrimental that it completely overwhelms their relationship.

Just like how Buzz is misunderstood to be arrogant, Ozma is misunderstood to be cold. She so isn't in the slightest. She treats the ugliest, most dangerous and scariest beast with utmost care and admiration, she gets excited at the sight of a rare specimen even if it could bite her head off in a second, and would risk her safety just to study or help it.

It's people where her enthusiasm dissolves, she is presented as introverted as well which is why sometimes she says things that don't come across all that great. Sure, sometimes she doesn't care because she's not interested in socializing, but she sometimes just doesn't know (example - the bloody water and floating guts comment in Beasts for Karn).

I gotta admit, it also confuses me how Buzz could come off as misogynistic towards Ozma - dammit that guy went in and memorized the most boring stuff in the universe (in his opinion) just to go in and try to impress her. He respects her work greatly - it's just in a field he's never cared for until now. Ozma could've been a male character and it would've been the same thing, because it's not Ozma herself that Buzz doesn't understand, but it's her cause.

He frankly just doesn't know how to act towards people he's interested in or that are interested in him. That's why he gives her unwanted validation - he's just genuinely impressed with her, which is why he's interested in the first place, but has no idea how to express it. He doesn't think any less of her.

Ozma was willing to team up with Zurg to protect the millennial bugs, Buzz was willing to kill Karnian beasts to get back on track with his mission. Both are just as bad, we gotta admit that. But throughout the three episodes we see them together, we see them learn to make more and more compromises for each other. They learn to see the other's perspective, and in their last chronological episode Return to Karn, they barely have fights at all (sure, there's a bit of banter, but it's nowhere near as agressive as it was before). I would kill to see how it would have progressed further.

She just reminds him of himself too much. Remember Good Ol' Buzz? He could barely stand himself because of how stubborn, abrupt and close minded he can be. It's the same thing with Ozma! She has the same traits, and so does he, and it turns into a screaming match until it turns into something else. Because that's just how they are.

So how the hell could this ever work for them? Simple - they are the only ones that could understand each other. With any other partner it would be "you chose your career over me!". If Buzz wasn't an awkward mess he could pull anyone he wants - he wants Ozma because she doesn't care who he is. Because she's brilliant, assertive, a badass and fearless. Because he has to prove himself and it doesn't come easy for him. If she doesn't care for his reputation, why is she interested? For the same reasons - he's just an awesome and determined person. He doesn't give up and believes in everything that is good, to the point of naivete. Because if anyone can give you hope in humanity's goodness, it's him.

And as much as I want to add the darker layer that Ozma might also be subconsciously reminding Buzz of Zurg but from a safe distance, that's a bit too much of a biased interpretation, and we might not be ready for that talk yet.

If you've read all of this, you're crazy, and thank you for coming to my ted talk