#he is canonically hella powerful - I just thought of a bit of an explanation for that aside the Chaos Drives and all

[silent-lily]

- But... what would happen if you take off all your inhibitor rings? - Well, nothing good - that's for sure. I'll probably just burn out after a while and collapse. - Huh. Better leave this as a last resort for sure. It's not like there's gonna be such a dire situation you'll need to go all out, right?..

Another doodle thingie for our AU RP. We haven't actually gotten to this moment (yet), but the concept is all thought out.

It kinda spurred out from one question I've been thinking about for a while: how exactly did Gerald give Shadow a soul? How did he create one (if he even did)?

Details under the cut! (because I can't NOT ramble about it)

Yes, I know it's been said numerous times that Shadow has "a soul one like Maria's" and that they're basically literally soulmates. But how exactly did Gerald manage to give him one in the first place?

... After going through Frontiers's story it clicked.

Gerald probably knew at least something about Cyberspace and the Ancients' technology of transforming everything about a person into data.

After all, he conducted numerous researches at the time he's been working on Project Shadow.

So then, an idea for the AU was born.

---

While researching Chaos Emeralds and everything connected to them - now puzzled about how to create a truly living being - Gerald tried seeking answers in Mystic Ruins and nearby.

There, by accident, he found a strange mechanism. A tall tower with a platform, with a gear installed in a panel at the base. It was clearly weathered down by the sands of time and seemed defunct. But when Gerald touched the gear, that actually reawakened the machine mechanism - the tower started glowing blue, emanating a low hum. And then a tall figure appeared before the scientist...

Their name was Mantis. A being from an ancient civilization known to be long gone from this world. The last guardian of one of the passageways to distant islands where something terrifying and dangerous has been shut away a long, long time ago. They've been dead for centuries - and yet all their memories, feelings, emotions, their everything was still here, right in this peculiar piece of machinery.

Gerald had to know how this was possible.

Mantis could share the knowledge with him - but only on one condition: that the scientist would keep this just to himself and use it only and only for good. And then, they told Gerald what they knew about Cyberspace...

But one problem remained: how can you just create a soul? You had to have at least something for a base here. And not just any person's data would suffice - though, Gerald had a thought about copying some of it from his beloved granddaughter Maria (her kindness and compassion for sure). It would probably take time to find someone truly fitting.

... But what if not?

Risking it, Gerald proposed to Mantis that he'd take their soul to create a new life. A noble, dedicated warrior that used to protect their kind from any danger - that way they could continue on with their duty and also have a chance to see the world as it was nowadays.

Mantis was silent for a bit - then agreed. But added:

Only if you destroy these Gates. You'll have to fully extract all of me from the system - and after that, nobody will be here to guard them. And they can't just be left like that.

An easy thing to do - and not so at the same time. It always hurts a scientist to destroy something of a great significance. But alas, Gerald had to comply.

He did it after he took all of Mantis' data from the machine. And then returned to The ARK, already thinking about how his new creation was finally coming together as intended after all the brainstorming, searching and testing. Now only to hide some things from Black Doom and the government...

---

So yeah, tl;dr Shadow's soul is actually that of one of the Ancients (albeit modified, of course). Which (partially) is why he's that powerful in terms of chaos energy and using Chaos Emeralds.

Taking off all his inhibitor rings AND being in superform can cause a major overload for him, knocking him out - but not fully. If the will and the need to fight are strong, it will release Mantis from deep within, and they will take his place in the battle.

But that would be the end for Shadow - he'll just literally burn away, torn apart by the continuous massive chaos energy outburst.

Thankfully, no battles have required such dire measures in the past - and probably won't in the future. Right?.. (haha suuuuure)

Bonus: additional scribble of Mantis as they actually are, not influenced by Shadow's own looks! They're overall very chill with strong sense of duty. Wow, a Sonic OC that's not a mobian... Way to go, me.

[thelovelyghostwriter]

KuraNeon and Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Someone: “Eww you like KuraNeon? But doesn’t he not like her because she’s a flesh collector?” 

Me: 

Okay, first off, Kurapika doesn’t necessarily hate Neon. I honestly can’t recall anywhere in hunter x hunter where he criticizes Neon’s attitude or her hobby in thoughts or voicing it out. Yes, he did display a strong prejudice on flesh collectors and vows to arrest them; Melody also rephrased it and said that he’d kill Neon if he has to. However, there was literally no indication of Kurapika being annoyed with Neon even. In fact, he was so surprised to see the flesh collector, his boss, being a young girl (as I am too). I’d say it completely destroys his initial expectation/imagery of what a flesh collector should be. 

Secondly, let’s just say... it’s hella saucy if Kurapika starts liking Neon. 

Imagine the MENTAL STRAIN Kurapika has if he ever finds himself liking a flesh collector aka Neon. Can you imagine the cognitive dissonance he has? HUGE bruh. 

Source: https://elearningindustry.com/apply-cognitive-dissonance-theory-elearning

Okay, just a layman explanation of Cognitive Dissonance Theory: It’s when a person’s beliefs has been inconsistent with his/her actions. They feel cognitive dissonance because there has been a discrepancy between what they know and what they are doing. 

There are three ways a person can resolve cognitive dissonance: 

1) Change Belief

2) Change Action

3) Change Action Perception 

Now, let’s apply it to Kurapika liking/lusting after Neon. He can either: 

1) Change belief - which is about his prejudice on flesh collectors. This will likely not happen because flesh collectors are indirectly the cause of his clan’s demise. 

2) Change action - stop liking/lusting for Neon. This is possible but when you’re around someone and you have to guard them for 24/7; it’s going to be very difficult. 

3) Change action perception - think of Neon as more than just a flesh collector. This is likely what will happen. Kurapika is smart enough to realise that Neon is a girl who has had poor upbringing by her dad and had been exploited for power gain among the mafia. 

HOW INTERESTING OF USING THEORIES FOR YOUR ANIME SHIPS HAHAH. I love this ship because it opens up to this possibility and potential conflict; and it’s even indicated in Cognitive Dissonance Theory. 

Call me nuts, but I guess I like using psychology theories to help me build up concepts of pairings because these theories have been studied in actual human behaviours. You can say it’s “impossible” because she’s a “flesh collector”, but it really isn’t. According to Cognitive Dissonance Theory, it can happen with some mental adjustments. 

Of course, I’m not stating that it’s canon or anything, all I’m saying is that it’s not 100% impossible in terms of HUMAN BEHAVIOUR and this conflict makes the concept of KuraNeon really interesting for me, rather than some boring-ass vanilla ships. 

I think there are other ships that falls into this same vein (e.g. Chrollo/Kurapika, Ging/Pariston, Cheadle/Pariston) but I guess KuraNeon is more of a clear cut because of her diva attitude and Kurapika’s affiliation with the Nostrade Family.

He’s the Nostrade Family Young Boss now because he’s married to Neon.  

Now, you’re all wondering, Kurapika can’t possibly like Neon because they are totally opposite or assuming that “she isn’t his type”. How are we supposed to know what type of person Kurapika likes? Just because a person is very opposite to someone, it does not necessarily mean that they aren’t his/her type (I’d try to get some scientific stuff on opposites attract later on). 

Also, if you haven’t noticed, Kurapika became close friends with Melody, Leorio and Gon - people who are the complete opposite of him. Arguably, I’d say Killua is the most similar to him and yet they are not as close as he would be to Melody or Leorio. In fact, he seems to be get attached to people even if he doesn’t want to or he’s annoyed with them at first, as evident by the way he got angry at Uvogin when he heard that the Phantom Troupe killed his co-workers, when initially he did not want to get close to anyone. 

People say he’s cold, but I’d argue that he does get attached, but tries to separate himself from people. He’s not avoidant-dismissive attachment style, he has avoidant-fearful attachment style. In fact, Neon is actually more of the avoidant-dismissive attachment style, meaning that she’s less likely to get attached to anyone more than him. I’d talk about Attachment Style Theory in another day. 

Regardless, sometimes when it comes to shipping, you just need a bit of imagination. 

I truly don’t get why people would want to diss on another’s ships and state that it’s a crack-pairing and it isn’t canon. In fact, in Hunter x Hunter, almost none of the pairings are canon! Even if they have a lot of interactions, there’s hardly any concrete indication that they are canon or they are implied ever so faintly. 

I think so long as you can make a pairing work in fanfics/fanarts and have your own concept while using their canon personality, anything’s possible. 

For me, KuraNeon and the concept of Cognitive Dissonance is my jam and motivations for liking this ship. 

Also, in mobile games: 

Not really entirely a crackpairing tbh. 

[otakween]

100-man-nen Chikyuu no Tabi: Bander Book - Final Thoughts

I feel like this was just a bunch of nonsense. The film kept jumping from idea to idea hoping something would stick. I did enjoy the more original bits (like the cultures of the different planets), but the really awkward homages to Hollywood were just off putting. I know that movie references are kinda a Tezuka thing and normally I like them, but these did not feel well integrated at all. At one point they made a reference to The Birds and it just said "A. HITCHCOCK" in the background in text. Like, yeah, thanks for that. Also, Dracula and the mummy show up, cuz why not?

At least I got some pretty aesthetic screenshots out of this. Full thoughts below the cut.

Notes:

-As usual, although it's definitely not as smooth as modern shows/movies, 70s anime is beautiful and you can see the passion behind it (especially with how much more difficult animation was back in that time). Some of the character design was pretty whack (Bander's design is really doofy looking), I admire the inventiveness and variety (no same-face syndrome here!) I don't really have the vocabulary to describe it but the simple color palette is very pleasing to the eyes as well.

-I'm very confused how Black Jack fits into this story. I've never read/watched a single Black Jack story, but I had no idea he had anything to do with Sci-Fi. I legit just thought he was a rogue doctor lol. I can't tell if this is supposed to be part of his canon or if they were just reusing the character and this is like an alternate universe where he has a space brother. -big shrug-

-One confusing aspect of the film were characters just magically knowing names. Somehow Banders' adoptive parents knew he was named Bander (was his capsule labelled or something?) and somehow Marina knew Mimuru's name (plant lady powers??) Zero explanation.

-Two very anime/Japan things about this movie: a fixation on boobs (EVERY animal had boobs including reptiles) and the step sister being the love interest, because of course she is. The second Mimuru was introduced as a step sibling, I instantly knew. DangitJapan, it doesn't matter if they're not blood related if you spend 17 years growing up with someone it's weird!!

-The transformation sequences were fun. I bet those were tricky to animate.

-Why did that one lady wear her transformation ring on her nipple and then the dad wore his on his arm? Do these people not know that you can wear rings on your finger? Is that one lady just kinky?

-They did the same thing they did in I'm Standing on a Million Lives where you use the word for horse ("uma") to describe something that's definitely not a horse. I guess anything you ride is an "uma"?? (Unless it's a chocobo).

-The alien designs were a mixture of creative and cursed. That weird water-boob monster in the desert freaked me out lol

-Can't say the female characters were super inspiring. Their only traits were "love interest #1" and "love interest #2" It was also hella awkward how Mimuru was just waiting for Marina to die to swoop in and be the rebound.

-I enjoyed Black Jack's old timey badassery. He kinda reminds me of Tuxedo Mask with his suave cape swishes haha

-I got major Star Wars vibes from some scenes, but this only came out a year after that, so I don't know if they would really have had time to be inspired by it.

-I feel like the movie mostly made sense until we got to the part with Dracula and then I just lost the plot completely. The plot felt pretty aimless to begin with because Bander was just like "I'm going to Earth because a robot told me so!!" Like, he didn't exactly have a plan or goal.

-Dr. Sharaku made no sense. First of all: why is he a baby? I swear they just didn't explain that. Second, why exactly did he create "the power of fear"? He was literally just like "Yeah, I spent 3 years making this uber deadly weapon, sure would be bad if someone used it." Then why'd you make it!? Just for science reasons?

-I could have done without the "history of the world" bit. That honestly felt like padding. Even Bander was like "get on with it!"

-Marina's death sequence where she transforms into a tree was nice. Reminded me of Fantasia 2000. I feel like snippets of this movie are great, but all together it's a bit of a mess.

So yeah, that was a thing. Definitely one of my more obscure viewings (not a lot of info about this online). As far as I can tell, this is a standalone work, aside from referencing other stuff. The way it's called "Bander Book" makes it sound like it's one "book" in a series, so I'm not sure why they called it that. Anyway, it was a hot mess so I give it a 5 outta 10.

[thebastardofgloucester]

So...The Rise of Skywalker (Spoilers, obviously)

No Star Wars movie is anywhere close to perfect. Frankly, they all have serious flaws of logistics or plot logic or characterisation changes or deus ex machinas or lack of originality (which includes A New Hope when you look at its inspirations). It's pointless and silly to pretend otherwise. At its best, Star Wars overcomes that with captivating characters, glorious spectacle, and John Williams.

I think you'll all be familiar with how much I disliked The Last Jedi (and chafed at being lumped in for disliking the movie in with bigots, unimaginative fanboys, and the like).

I liked The Rise of Skywalker. A lot. It had more than enough to offset its major shortcomings, in my opinion. It was not 'soulless,' it was not a complete recreation of Return of the Jedi anymore than The Last Jedi was a rough retelling of The Empire Strikes Back, and it was not as bad or incoherent as Attack of the Clones, jfc are you high

There are certain areas where I am more sympathetic to that not being the case for some people than others. I don't think it completely junked The Last Jedi, but it did demonstrate a huge gap in creative visions, preferred plot structures, and other priorities. Blame for that should not lie with JJ Abrams (or Chris Terrio) or Rian Johnson, who did what they thought was best, and what they were hired to do, and what they thought audiences would enjoy. It should lie with the Lucasfilm story group and Kathleen Kennedy, who had every opportunity to make a trilogy with a united vision and simply declined to do so. (There are a set of different issues with Disney that I'll get to)

Anyway, here's my take on individual components.

Rey ‘Palpatine’

We might as well start with the single most contentious part of the film, and where it is perceived (wrongly, in my opinion) to clash the most with The Last Jedi: Rey being of the Palpatine bloodline.

Rey's arc was about pushing past her own past traumas and doubts and the repeated attempts of other people to define who she was to make her own identity. It is about the refutation of destiny, of genetic determinism. I'm not really sure how anyone really came away with a different impression. I understand being annoyed that Rey couldn't just come from nothing, but call me an annoying fanboy - I wanted some explanation for how Rey was a match for the grandson of literal Space Jesus. Anakin being the most powerful Jedi ever born (and how he was failed by those who were supposed to guide him to that destiny) is kind of central to the entire mythology of Star Wars. Is it reductive and elitist? I guess. I certainly enjoy having Jedi not born of the Skywalker bloodline in the old EU and the Clone Wars/Rebels story. I was frustrated by killing off all of Luke's students as part of resetting the universe in The Force Awakens, and never learning anything about them.

Honestly, as somebody who was in the Rey Skywalker camp (and wrote fanfiction to that effect!), I was glad to be wrong. This was better. It gave Rey more agency, and emphasized found family.

The exposition is weird and clunky. JJ clearly meant for Rey to have some kind of blood link to the previous mythology of the series - you cannot watch the sequence in Maz's castle and tell me otherwise. Rian didn't want to tell that story. JJ did. Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm threw their hands up in the air and Disney raked in the cash. Looking at that Maz castle beat, there's a very good case to be made that Rey was supposed to be either a Skywalker or a Solo, and Palpatine was JJ's attempt to not completely throw out Rian's idea (that her parents went into hiding, becoming 'no one,' abandoning her and being killed somewhere else - their motivations in TLJ (drunks ditching her) are imputed by Kylo and Rey's own fears of abandonment, remember).

Weirdly, I think that of the outcomes, Palpatine was the best one. Explaining how Rey ends up alone on Jakku when she's related to either Luke or Leia is pretty hard without further damaging their characters. Palpatine having lovers, mistresses, whatever before Mace melted his face is gross but entirely plausible. The timeline is...confusing - I guess there's enough basis for Palpatine still having agents running around, chasing down Rey, that even years after his death Rey's parents would leave her behind in an attempt to protect her. It's a bit muddy, but so was Anakin being Luke and Leia's father before we had the prequels. A novel here would probably help if it is written competently)

The point is that Rey's arc refutes genetic destiny. Instead of being afraid of her, as the Jedi were of Anakin (and to an extent, the Skywalkers were of Ben) Luke and Leia (specifically Leia) allow her to grow into her own person, and ultimately she chooses to take the name Skywalker to honor them (and Ben's sacrifice). The problem in my mind is less that Rey is a Palpatine by blood or a Skywalker by choice, and more that she's the only Jedi standing at the end of the trilogy. Making Finn's absolutely obvious force sensitivity a bigger deal narratively in TROS would have helped a lot (more on that later). And we still have the important implications of Broom Boy! He's not erased from existence, there simply wasn't room for his story in these 2.5 hours.

The First Act (and a bit)

The first 30 minutes or so of The Rise of Skywalker are...nuts. They feel less like a movie and more like a series of trailers or a 'previously on' for a movie we never saw. It's about as well done as it could be at establishing plot threads, the situation of the Resistance v the First Order, and where characters are starting from, as you could reasonably expect, but it's like cramming the entirety of the Jabba's Palace segment of Return of the Jedi into about half its runtime, at most.

What it comes down to, and I said this at the time, is that The Last Jedi is a very bad sequel to The Force Awakens. That doesn't (REPEAT: DOES NOT) make it bad film, or even a bad Star Wars film. But in terms of what the middle movie of a planned trilogy should be. It is. Not Good. JJ had seeded hints of Rey's origins and opened a bunch of mysteries. You can contend that he never intended or was never capable of answering them, and I think that's entirely unfair and reducing JJ's opus to the unsatisfying ending of 'Lost' is stupid and lazy, but they were there. The Last Jedi threw all of that out with extreme prejudice. I deeply disliked that; other people didn't. Either way, you had a problem (and you would have had even more of a problem if Colin Trevorrow had directed Episode IX as planned - this could have been SO. MUCH. WORSE.). The Rise of Skywalker is a natural sequel to The Force Awakens, though Palpatine's return could have been foreshadowed much better (or at all, if we're honest?) and it really makes me wonder how much changed from the first drafts of The Force Awakens to the version of The Rise of Skywalker we saw on screen.

I saw some criticisms that we had to read the tie-in material (including a bit from Fortnite??) to understand all the specifics of what planets these were, who Kylo Ren was murdering, etc...I don’t really think any of that was particularly important. It actually opens up a ton of new storytelling opportunities and made the universe feel big again, which The Last Jedi didn’t, at least for me. Apparently the planet Kylo is fighting on is Mustafar. That...doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense (maybe we finally have a Star Wars world that isn’t a single biome?) but it wasn’t actually that important. We saw Kylo searching for the Sith Wayfinder and murdering anybody in his way, we saw Poe and Finn being pursued from one end of the universe to another, and we got the 16 hour deadline before the fleet was ready (which was...weird, admittedly, but not in the slightest less weird that the fleet running out of fuel on a slow-motion chase or needing to fly off to an entirely different system to find a ‘code breaker’ to counter a techo gadget thing that let you trace people through hyperspace.

And yeah, if you are going to forgive The Last Jedi the dumb codebreaker/fuel shit which led to the detached Canto Bight B plot, you have to just acknowledge the Wayfinder thing as a macguffin that gets the plot moving in a certain direction and gives a clear path from narrative point a to narrative point b. Rian is not ahead of JJ on this aspect.

The subsequent fetch quest is less about the macguffin and more about the character beats on the way. Kylo and his boy band pursue Rey, Rey realizes her powers are kinda scary and hella impressive (including the healing mechanic, which is entirely precedented in past canon), you get to see some brilliant, funny, and touching moments between the trio we were not allowed in The Last Jedi, Rey discovers hints about her past, and Lando shows up.

We also get to my least favorite part of the film.

Poe Dameron is Better Than This

I do not understand why they ret-conned Poe into having a past as a smuggler, or why Keri Russell’s character was even necessary. You could explain it as youthful rebellion, maybe after Poe’s mom Shara Bey died (both his parents were Rebel veterans - that’s a lot of pressure), but it fits awkwardly into the established timeline.

The one good thing that came out of it was a moment where Poe is tempted to leave the Resistance, but that only makes sense because of Poe’s terrible hotheaded, reckless characterization in The Last Jedi, neither of which at all fit with his portrayal in the Poe Dameron comics (which are excellent). Poe eventually gets where he needs to be, and the conversation with Lando after Leia passes is one of the best moments of the film, and justified bringing Lando all by itself. Oscar Isaac is apparently really frustrated with Poe’s character and I cannot blame him. Rian Johnson started this weirdness, and it is one of the greatest flaws of The Last Jedi and more people need to acknowledge how racist it was to reduce a 30-something brown-skinned veteran to an impulsive, out of control idiot who gets physically and verbally smacked around by two white women, and JJ didn’t really try to fix it. I guess his arc kinda works in a vacuum. I still deeply dislike it. Cutting that entire section down to the bare bones would have made more room for...

Finn and the Triad

The dynamic between Finn, Poe, and Rey was fantastic. There is abundant basis for Finn and Poe to be canon romantic interests, and I cannot conclude it was anything but Disney’s cowardice that prevented that from happening (and honestly, same for Finn and Rey). JJ is no more to blame than Rian - I genuinely believe this came from higher up. It sucks. A lot. What we do get is precious, and frankly makes Rian’s argument for separating them (that they would get along and it would be boring) kinda silly. They are also incredibly funny together - John, Isaac, and Daisy play off each other so damn well, and I was cackling when the Falcon was on fire and Poe was mad about BB-8.

Finn is absolutely force sensitive. It is apparently what he was trying to say to Rey, he has feelings that turn out to be correct like three times, he wielded a lightsaber with some proficiency in The Force Awakens. It’s canon. Why it isn’t explicit is a function of the Force User plot becoming divorced from Finn and Poe in The Last Jedi. JJ and Terrio also could have fixed that, and chose not to.

We got a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been with Janna and the other defectors. It was really good, but it wasn’t nearly enough, and I am Mad about it. To borrow from some great ideas on twitter, Janna could have revealed that her unit heard about Finn on Jakku and it inspired them to defect. They could have together swayed a bunch of reluctant stormtroopers to rebel (they were otherwise just treated as facist canon-fodder, which, not great when a lot of them are child soldiers!). It was perfectly set up from TFA and they just...dropped the ball.

Like I said, I’m Mad. TLJ did nothing with Finn as a defector or the child soldier thing in general, and TROS did the bare minimum. Huge, huge wasted opportunity. We got promises that we’d get to find out more about who Finn is and...we didn’t, or at least, not in the theatrical cut. TLJ had a scene of Finn and Phasma talking about his being a traitor/defector. Rian cut it down to a fight scene and the ‘Rebel Scum’ line. Writers jail for both of them, tbh, though JJ clearly cared about Finn (he’s why the character exists as he does, as why Boyega was cast, and maybe if TLJ doesn’t make Kylo into Rey’s co-protagonist we get something different. I'm not going to blame Rian for something JJ could have fixed if he cared to.

And least we got something, I guess.

Kylo Ben

I think the first time I actually cared about Ben Solo as a character was when Kylo symbolically ‘died,’ and Ben was saved by Rey’s healing abilities. That was excellent writing, even if it was not subtle. I liked Leia and Han (as part of Ben’s memories) have a role in helping him find some sort of redemption. I was frustrated and mad that Anakin Skywalker’s grandkid could be a straight up space fascist with even fewer redeeming qualities. He still deserved to die. He had no family to go back to and he was directly responsible for thousands of innocent deaths and closely linked to the death of trillions. Like Vader, you don’t just come back from that.

Like Anakin, Ben made his own choices. Was he manipulated by Snoke/Palpatine? Sure. He still had multiple occasions to chose differently and did not. It’s part of his flaws as a character. Han and Leia did their best as parents - we find out Leia even abandoned her Jedi training because she was afraid for her son. Ben’s inevitable fall (which mirrors that of Jacen Solo, a truly fascinating character who I will always be Mad about) soured the sequel trilogy from the start in some ways, but it is hard to envision it without Ben turning. I don’t know. I think without Ben being who he was we simply have a different set of movies.

The kiss is...I don’t even know. Rey clearly cared about Ben, and believed he could change, but also refused to compromise who she was in order to pull him back to the light. I would have vastly preferred a forehead kiss or something along those lines.

On balance I’m glad he got a Vader redemption. I think Palpatine came back in part because Ben simply was not a particularly captivating villain, and without him to provide contrast and make the stakes clear, Ben’s redemption is not possible, and that’s arguably an even worse outcome, especially given how he was manipulated so much at an impressionable age. I’m really glad Leia had a chance to influence his turn as her final act in this life (Carrie deserved a better ending but it was the best they could do after Carrie’s death imo).

Grandpa Palps

First, Palpatine finding a way to survive and setting up multiple contingency plans to return to power is completely in keeping with his portrayal in both the old and Nu EUs (a big part of the post-Endor stuff is Operation Cinder, where Palpatine posthumously ordered the scouring of dozens of Imperial loyalist worlds to spread fear and prevent the Empire from continuing without him). Palpatine also LOVES his superweapons - he built two Death Stars, ffs. A fleet of them is not exactly a stretch in terms of strategy. The Rise of Skywalker definitely felt like it owed a debt to one of the more divisive bits of the old Star Wars EU - the Dark Empire series of comics by Tom Veitch and Kevin J Anderson, which have cloned Palpatines, Luke turning to the Dark Side, an ungodly number of superweapons, and a planet where Palpatine hides and builds them after his defeat.

I don’t think his survival ruins Anakin’s arc - Anakin’s actions still destroyed Palpatine’s Empire (that he helped to build) and its 26 year reign of terror. The galaxy got 30 years of relative peace and then a war that was not nearly as destructive or large scale as the Galactic Civil War. People saying it makes Anakin’s arc irrelevant are just being silly.

Retconning Snoke to a cloned puppet (probably an unwitting one) is actually not a bad writing choice. It explains why he was such a cardboard cut-out villain, and why he was so easily defeated. Honestly, I’m far more okay with how he died in The Last Jedi now that I know this (even if the pacing and the placement of that scene is still utterly bizarre).

The new EU set up cults and fanatics around the Dark Side and its avatars in the emperor and Vader. None of that felt particularly implausible to me as a result.

Legacies in the Sequel Trilogy

I really loved the ‘thousand generations live in you’ conceit. I loved the power of the old Jedi, snuffed out by Palpatine, helping Rey defeat him one last time (including my girl Ahsoka, RIP, I'm sure you went out like a badass). These are legacies and powers that don’t require blood ties or dynasties, they just rely on the force spanning the whole of the GFFA.

Ben is offered the chance to either turn away from his grandfather’s dark path early enough to warrant redemption, or to follow it through until the end. He actually chooses to do neither. With Leia’s dying intercession, he ends up following Anakin’s path to an extent, but his story is ultimately about the tragedy of expectations, fears, and the immense weight of the Skywalker name and legacy. All of his family are caught up in it. Rey is mostly apart from it, and then explicitly subverts her destiny to be Palpatine’s heir, and faces her fear of ending up there, by intent or just fate. As Luke says, some things are stronger than blood. Rey’s story is the ultimate testament to that, and it’s a pretty powerful message.

Leia. Oh god. I was absolutely thrilled when we found out she trained as a Jedi, and then served as Rey’s Jedi Master after Luke failed Rey so badly (after failing Ben). I think Luke’s story from TLJ to TROS is easily the most consistent, honestly. He made mistakes, both with Ben, and then with Rey, and he recognized it. The Rise of Skywalker acknowledges that Luke wasn’t right in how he handled training Rey either, and that went a long way to making me better accept how Rian portrayed him as flippant and dismissive and cynical.

Carrie’s absence was so badly felt. As I’ve said previously, I think they did the best job they could with the footage they held back and Carrie’s recorded audio. They managed to give her a relatively coherent story and an effect on the plot which she didn’t really have in The Last Jedi. I’ve seen speculation that it was supposed to be Leia, not Luke, who gave Rey that pep talk on Ahch-To, and in some ways it might have made more sense. Selfishly, I’m still glad it was Luke, because it helped reconcile my feelings about him in The Last Jedi. But they really did a great job in a really, really tough situation.

Rose Tico

Let’s just get it out there: the film’s treatment of Rose Tico and Kelly Marie Tran was inexcusably bad. Whether her character was a great addition to the cast in the Last Jedi or not, KMT faced horrendous abuse from various bigots and assholes, and after making a lot of public promises they reduced her to barely a minute of screen-time and no real impact on the plot. It’s shitty, it’s bad, and JJ and Disney should feel bad.

Introducing a character like Rose mid-way through a trilogy is risky, and while it worked with Lando, JJ clearly had no idea what to do with her. It’s just a mess, it’s the biggest black mark on the film, and on the sequel trilogy more broadly. Nobody comes out looking good here, and Rose Tico needs a Disney + series of her own or something. Protect Kelly Marie Tran at all costs.

The Rest

- Lando was great. So great. I wish we’d gotten the line that his daughter had been stolen by the First Order (and thus was potentially Janna) - we’d better get a book or a film or something. Lando’s conversation with Poe salvaged his character arc. Billy Dee Williams did a damn good job getting in shape for the role. He came out as genderfluid recently. He’s an absolute treasure and thank god they didn’t waste him.

- I just wanted to reiterate how HAPPY I AM THAT JJ ABRAMS MADE LEIA A JEDI HOLY SHIT

- It was a blink and you’ll miss it moment for people who didn’t read Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath series, but the death of Temmin ‘Snap’ Wexley in a battle where his step-dad (Wedge Antilles) made a brief appearance was devastating and I still don’t know how to feel about it.

- The space battles were awesome. Lando and Chewie bringing in the cavalry was what we were so cruelly teased for in The Last Jedi, which I am still mad about. Forget the logistics, forget the story logic, it was awesome. Maybe in the future I’ll be more annoyed. I honestly doubt it.

- Hux lives (and dies) for drama. He’s the pettiest son of a bitch in the GFFA, he would absolutely turn informant to win his fight with Kylo Ren, especially if he suspected that Kylo had killed Snoke and then was an incompetent child. His dying shortly thereafter is honestly exactly what the character deserved.

- On the cavalry moment, and the galaxy rising to destroy the First Order - I loved it in Return of the Jedi’s special edition, I love it here. There’s a thematic resonance with our heroes overcoming their fear and the galaxy at large being stirred to action. I just wish we’d gotten a few ragtag forces to show up at Crait, but that was a choice Rian made. I’m glad JJ chose differently. It was incredibly Star Wars.

- The 3PO stuff was weird, especially given how emotionally centred it was in the final trailers. It was also tied up in the Poe stuff I disliked. I don’t really know what else to say. At least R2D2, BB-8, and him felt like characters, not purely plot devices.

- Chewie - his reaction to losing Leia was absolutely devastating, his relationship with the next gen trio was great, and his death fake-out was...weird. I could go either way with that - killing him would have been a huge risk I could have respected, on the other hand if he was going to go out he deserved better than that (like, say, a moon getting dropped on him saving the life of Han Solo's kid). His ‘death’ did set up a crucial character beat for Rey. And there were, in fact, two transports, I remember that.

TLDR;

It was a fun movie! It tried to do way too much because The Last Jedi was not an effective sequel to The Force Awakens, and that’s on Kennedy and the LFL story group more than anyone else. It nailed the broad strokes of the Jedi/Force plot in my opinion, including subverting genetic destiny and the power of blood ties over everything else. In the process, it let a number of characters down, who were unfortunately also the characters of color, which is: not great.

I found it rewarding as a fan. It rewarded my faith in the goodness of the denizens of the GFFA and the power of found family. I’ve loved Rey from the start and I’m thrilled with how her arc ended with her burying the Skywalker legacy and making a new start with her new family in Poe and Finn (and Rose, damn it). I’m glad it made me feel better about Luke Skywalker and finally made Leia a bona-fide lightsaber wielding Jedi. I was exhilarated coming out of it, instead of exhausted and frustrated like I was in The Last Jedi. It didn’t make me hate Star Wars. It had extreme Return of the Jedi energy, and that is literally all I needed out of this film.

Here’s to a load of more complex, nuanced, and adventurous storytelling that the Skywalker saga never really allowed. I’m still excited for the prospect of Rian working with his own characters in the universe. I think JJ should probably be done.

Chuck Wendig said that the Star Wars universe was junk. Fun, whimsical, exciting, but ultimately not really a well-crafted piece of art. I’m inclined to agree.

[amberandmetal]

Thoughts on Endgame

Spoilers under the cut

Let’s start with the negatives to get it out of the way, yeah?

I can not believe they didn’t fix the travesty that was Loki’s death in IW. That big of a character? That character arc? A character that was only supposed to be a one movie villain yet became one of the most beloved characters of the entire MCU? You fully expect us to believe that the end of such an amazing character would be going at Thanos with a dagger and being killed off in the beginning of a movie? Like he was nothing? Insulting to Loki, insulting to the fans.

I can understand why they killed Nat instead of Clint, although I was fuming during that scene, I did not cry one bit, I was that pissed off. And yeah maybe the patriarchy has made me bitter and resentful but all I could think of was “You really gonna do that? Kill off the only female Avenger of the original 6?” and especially after how they have treated her character, giving her a new personality every movie. It didn’t feel right. Would’ve made more sense (to me at least) for Hawkeye to take the plunge and for Nat to dissappear at the end of the movie, just leaving never to be heard of again. It feels more in line with their characters. But maybe that’s just me.

Thor. Don’t even get me started on the dumpsterfire that is Thor’s character. Up until Ragnarök he was consistent, he made sense. Then ragnarök came and turned both Thor and Loki into cartoons, a character development that made no sense. And now the Russos finished Taika’s work by putting the final nail in Thor’s characterisation coffin by making him a parody of himself. And also, I am deeply dissapointed in the MCU for turning obesity into a joke. “Look, a fat Thor, how funny, ha-ha.” Oh, and let’s not forget that apparently panic attacks are comedy gold as well. Thor is not this cartoon comic relief and I will deny anything Thor related post-AOU until my dying day. 

They fucking screwed Banner in much the same way. They turned him into a buffon and a comic relief.

I actually had a feeling Steve would find a way back into the 40′s and settle down with Peggy. And even though I think that’s a perfect ending for him, to finally get what he wanted (because yeah Steggy is canon, Peggy is the love of Steve’s life, and Stucky and Stony are fanon, get it straight (badum-tss) people/ sincerely a Stony shipper), it raises way too many questions about the timelines. If Steve stayed with Peggy then wouldn’t that create a different timeline because even though a second Steve would still get woken from the ice in 70 years, there is Peggy and the husband and children she never had that she in the “normal” timeline already had. And if so then our Steve is in a different timeline so how tf did he end up in the “normal” timeline all those years later, like an old man. How did he swap timelines? Or does the Russos have another explanation for what happened with Steve’s time fiddling?

Tony’s death. I still haven’t cried about it because it’s so surreal. It’s like my heart mind won’t accept it. I love how they gave him the final line from the first Iron man movie as his last one ever, but it still.. yeah I can’t really go into it because I haven’t fully processed it yet. Joe Russo being a doctor in CATWS and now he was a survivor in group? Are we supposed to think it’s the same character? He didn’t act like it? Like what was that?

And for all of you complaining about how “Steve would never leave Bucky behind”, did you not catch on when Bucky said “I’m going to miss you”? I mean clearly Steve would not do something like this without talking it through with Bucky first and I can imagine Steve asked if Bucky wanted to do the same, and Bucky refusing. He has suffered way more trauma than Steve, plus a dude with a metal arm in the forties? Schyeah, no. And yeah, Steve did say to Sam that he “got to thinking” or something like that, like the decision was made when he was already back there, but maybe that’s just something he says to Sam. You don’t think Sam would feel hurt or left out if he found out Steve had planned on doing this without telling him? And Bucky fucking knew. Or else he wouldn’t have told Sam to “Come on, go on” to go over to Steve, otherwise Bucky would have fucking gone first. He wasn’t surprised. So either they talked about it beforehand, or they didn’t because they didn’t have to, but Bucky knew.

And lastly my thoughts on the time line conundrum: So let’s call the standard timeline timeline 1, and our original Steve for Steve 1. So Steve 1 goes back in time to be with Peggy, creating Timeline 2 (so the Sam and Bucky he goes to visit shouldn’t be Timeline 1 Sam and Bucky but Timeline 2 Sam and Bucky, but somehow he skipped?), how does this work when Steve 2 gets brought back from the ice and goes to find Peggy, who in this timeline is married to Steve 1? And then when Steve 2 inevitably finds himself in the same Endgame scenario as Steve 1 had done, he will go back in time in Timeline 2. Will that create a Timeline 3 and so on and so forth to eternity? Or will he find himself a.k.a Steve 1 already there with Peggy at the moment where Timeline 1 broke off into Timeline 2?... This is giving me a headache and needs it’s own individual post.. 

Okay now let’s get to the good stuff

I love  my blue queen. Nebula is just amazing. And I love how they brought Gamora back because this Gamora who hadn’t left Thanos and joined the GOTG yet will just bring so much to the next GOTG movie and I am HERE FOR IT.

The scene where everyone came back. Do I need to say more? Best fucking scene in the entire MCU. I cried like full on ugly crying, with the noises and shaking and “fuckfuckfuck what is going on onscreen, everything is blurry!” So powerful.

Our all female attack group to help Danvers get through the masses of alien scum (hell yeah, I’m biased). My heart literally exploded into sunshine and rainbows.

 This deserves two bulletpoints. The female badassery!

Steve-motherfucking-Rogers picking up Mjölnir. Steve-motherfucking-Rogers is hella worthy.

The cinematography is just insane.

How wellmade the scenes in 2012 were? All the new scenes and angles we got to see and just, wow.

They managed to keep all these different timelines, stories and characters in time with each other in a way that it didn’t feel scattered and it all made sense.

Peter being a flailing potato teenager when he came back and the look  on Tony’s face.

Morgan Stark.

Stan Lee’s cameo.

Tony getting some closure with Howard.

Pepper Potts kicking ass and taking names in her own suit.

Rocket being a sassmaster (as well as Nebula “Watch out. There’s an idiot on the landsite.”)

The reconcileation between Cap and Tony. (Still lamenting the absence of the hug we all deserved but hey, what u gonna do?)

Valkyrie on her fucking winged horse, oh my fucking god I think the last hetero in me went belly up at that moment.

Carol- fucking- Danvers.

Frigga.

Tony checking out Steve’s ass. “That is America’s ass”

The Steve x Steve fight? New kink activated, just saying.

I’m sure there are more points and I will update this when I think of them, but this is what I got so far. And even though there’s a lot that pissed me off I am still very much happy with it and just in awe. I’m sad but.. yeah this was a good ending.

[bixgirl1]

I think I saw you say somewhere that have a squick of self harming in fan fictions and that's what you don't like right? Do you have other ones and what do you like ?

Hi nonnie!  Yep, a squick is something that, when reading, a person tends to avoid. It can be an outright trigger or simply something that makes the reader crinkle their nose and shake their head before closing out. It’s a fairly universal term in fandom that helps to explain why you won’t/can’t/don’t like reading something, and the beauty of it is that, once the word is used, no further explanation is (or should be) required — because sometimes there is no further explanation, you know? Sometimes you just… don’t like something. 

As for my personal squicks/likes/and dislikes, that requires a longer answer, so I’m going to put it under a cut.

The short answer is yes and no. Self-harm can be a squick of mine — but it very much depends on how it’s handled, and its context. It’s something I’ll usually avoid reading if I see it in the tags and am not familiar enough with the author to feel safe reading it, which is something I take into account. If I see a story posted by an author that I’ve liked but have never read anything from them approaching that tag, I’ll probably wait to see if they’ll post a fic with similar but more gentle tags/content to see if their style/thought processes on the subject line up with my own. Other writers, whose work I’ve consumed to the point where I feel comfortable enough with their headspace, I’ll dive right in.

That being said, honestly, these days I have very few hardline squicks —  scat-play and/or vomit-play are two, and suicide and self-harm edge very close as well (with the caveat from above). When I was less familiar with fandom, more untried, I had — or thought I had — a lot. lol. That can happen, I think; it can be really terrifying to edge out of your comfort zone. But then you read absolutely every long, plotty drarry a writer offers, every short, hot bit of smut, and there are these other ones lingering with tags like incest or dub/non-con or major character death or infidelity, and think “hmmm.” All of those are still listed in my ‘know the author first’ file, but I’ve learned I can love some stories with those tags. But that’s me. Not everyone will want to venture out of their comfort zones, and that’s fine. Great, even! Fanfic allows us a lot of wonderful things, and one of those can be escapism. So never let anyone make you feel bad about sticking to the things you like; this is all just relevant to my personal fic tastes.

And regarding those, in answer to your other question — I know I’ve got a list somewhere, lj or dw maybe, with a pretty full list of my likes and dislikes and squicks, but I haven’t updated it in a long time, so:

(I’m applying these to Harry/Draco, but I’ll read a bunch of other pairings too. Harry/Teddy, Draco/Albus, some Jeddy and Scorbus, Harry/Sirius, a bit of Wolfstar, James Sirius/Albus Severus, Romione, and Pansmione are probably my faves)

Squicks and/or squick-ish content (ie, stuff my friends would never put in a gift fic for me. lol) I’ll only read if I know the writer very well and trust them (asterisks next to the ones I’m more rigid about):

-Suicide**

-Self-harm (especially cutting)**

-Vomit/scat play***

-Major character death

-Unhappily ambiguous endings

-Character bashing*** (to be fair, if a writer does this, I don’t usually like a lot of their stuff)

-Endings (happy or unhappy) where my preferred couple doesn’t end up together**

That’s it. And I make exceptions.

General fic dislikes that I’ll “psh” if I’ve read a couple of the writers things and like them, but that still have the ability to turn me off of a story real quick:

-Non-con

-Massive deviations from canon characterization. (Meaning: Draco is incredibly flamboyant and there’s no explanation or hints as to why/how he’d become so; Harry hates Ron; Ron is stupid; Hermione is a perky prop, etc. I’m perfectly fine reading most things if I understand why they’re that way.)

-Infidelity

-Also, when mental health issues are addressed (I tend to write about them a lot), I dislike grandstanding about them as much as I dislike them being glossed over, if that makes any sense. If I want to read detailed explanations about mental illness, I’ve got about two dozen textbooks I can refer to; alternately, if trauma is brought up in the fic, there needs to be (for me), some exploration of it.

-Permanent disability fics

-Fisting

-Muggle AU’s

-Mpreg — very rarely (usually just because I’m not often in the mood for it)

-Schmoopy fluff. (I don’t mind the sweet, but I don’t want to get cavities)

-Bloodplay

Now, for the fun ones!

Fic likes:

-Tropes. I’m a trope whore, I admit it. I love so many of them they should probably get a subcatagory of my favorites. lol.

-Forced Proximity

-Bed-Sharing

-Eighth Year

-Auror Partners

-Powerful!Harry

-Controlled!Draco (magically, for both; I like ‘em skilled as hell)

-Wandlore

-Master of Death lore

-Aristocratic Draco (or bad boy Draco, or fucked up Draco…I like Draco a lot, okay?)

-Flirting

-UST

-Pining

-Banter and snark

-Friends to lovers

-Lovers to friends to more

-Dub-con where they both enjoy it

-Sex Pollen

-Antagonism

-Veela/Creature Fic

-Smart Harry (let’s give the boy some credit, can we???)

-Harry, Ron, and Hermione staying close

-Rescuing/being protective (I don’t care who rescues and who does the rescuing, though I tend to think of Harry as the rescuer more often than not. But I like when there’s an exchange.)

-Life debts

-Legilimency

-Accidental (or, hell, intentional) bonding

-Humor

-Angst with a happy ending

-Harry’s and Draco’s hair/eyes being described as they are in the books

-The first time they call each other by their first names being significant

-Fics that focus as much (or more) on characterization and relationship development as they do on outside plot

And a bunch more of these too.

Sex and sexual kinks:

-Draco. God yes. Put him in robes or a sharp suit or torn jeans and mmmmmmsfdhdfhlgjhuihghlhd. I like Draco being noticed. (*whispers* Objectified, even, especially if Harry doesn’t realize he’s doing it.)

-Vice versa Harry.

-Rimming

-Spanking

-Rentboys

-Sexual power plays

-One of them being experienced, the other not so experienced.

-Both of them being hella experienced

-Topping from the bottom (and also the top).

-Bottoming from the top (and also the bottom lol)

-Dirty talk

-Trust games (blindfolds, tying someone up)

-Fingering

-Post-sex fingering

-Flaccid cocks getting played with; proprietary touches.

-First times

-Dom/sub dynamics (with clear boundaries and safewords)

-Gentle sex

-Extended foreplay

-Semi-public sex

-Magical sex objects

-Cleaning spells (thank fuck for the magical world, amiright?)

-Messy blowjobs

-Kissing. Lots of kissing.

-Angry sex that turns into more

-Frantic sex

-Partially-clothed sex

-Frotting/grinding

-Teasing

-I might have a bit of a foot kink? lol

-Confidence

-Timidity/nerves

-Coming untouched

-Handjobs

-Shower/bath

Aaannnd most other sexual kinks you don’t see listed under my squicks or dislikes.

So there you go. A non-comprehensive guide to what I like and look for in a fic. Like I said, I’m not too picky about my dislikes these days (if I was, I wouldn’t be reading puppy play or consensual non-con or double penetration, and there are fics with those contents that have blown me the fuck away), but it’s really a personal thing. Kink tomato, and Fic Tomato (which idk if the latter is a thing, but I hope everyone gets what I mean. lol).

Thanks so much for the ask, nonnie!  It was a bit of a treat to stop and really consider how my fic likes and dislikes have changed over the last couple of years. Highly recommend you making your own list — and never letting anyone make you feel bad about it! ;D

[36horas]

my thoughts on KH3! spoilers ahoy!

every cutscene with sora being dumb/cute was amazing!!, hes one of my favorite characters of all time and watching him in glorious HD was a blessing, thank you nomura, you did great sweetie!

The game was fairly short!! It took us 40 hrs and a half to complete!! it felt especially short because I didn’t play the entire game alone (also a I finished Persona5 two months ago, and that took me 115hrs lol) but taking that aside, I think it was long enough, and went to the point with finishing sora’s story, because he fucking ded

oh yeah lets talk about the ending: it was emotional, I cried a lot (very special franchise to me) but after credits rolled, I kinda felt like it was forced to be a tragic ending??? Soras like “I HAVE TO GO ALONE RIGHT FUCKING NOW” and mickeys like “lol wtf , we can regroup and search for her all together, also if you go alone like that you could not comeback (even if this is not the first time u used the power of waking I guess)” and soras like “I GOTTA GO FUCKING NOW” I guess it was kinda poetic that hes journey started looking for kairi and it ends like that, but it didn’t felt quite right for me

I read a very good explanation for this… it has to do with what young xehanort tells sora about abusing the power of awakening and how its actually supposed to be used, which makes it have more sense for him to go alone, because he knew he was already going to die, knowing this he made his last deed to save kairi without putting anyone else at risk. This is sad because now theres a DEFINITIVE reason why sora was doomed (regardless of what happened after sora saved his friends hearts from the lich).

Someone in 4chan said that nomura cant write romance for shit and I agree, they should have developed kairi’s character alongside riku’s so it didn’t felt so out of the blue (I know its implicit since KH1, see my next point). Someone also said that KH2 kairi is a better character that KH3’s and HES FUCKING RIGHT lol. I kinda appreciate that since she wasn’t very developed they went for this “tranquil, serene” type of character with her, a good contrast with sora being a dumb energy ball. Still, it wasn’t enough.

sora and kairis relationship, heres how I took it:

KH1: its this kind of love/affection when you are not really sure how much you like someone? But both of you know that the other person is really important to you??? :( innocent, pure affection, that’s what it felt like. sometimes you don’t really need a reason to like someone and if sora and kairis relationship in KH 1 was like that, that’s ok!!

KH2 and after: it started to get a lil ambiguous, the reunion by KH2 end was cute! But after that, it chilled, took the back seat and started to get very confusing, specially because rikus relationship with sora EXISTS and it gets developed way better. At the beginning of KH3 I thought that they had scraped the idea of sora and kairi being canon?? Like, I was sure it was gonna be a explicit, real thing but shes being back for a while now… and they never interact?? What happened?? Im not joking.

Basically, they don’t give us reasons to want to see them TOGETHER and right there I think: wouldn’t it be great if they did a “memories” thing like in Zelda BoTW??? Everytime you finish a world and the Disney characters say something about love, courage, passion, etc sora gets a lil flashback of a short moment that happened with kairi?????? That would have been mad cute.

Because of this, you can tell how sora and riku’s development stops at this game, but It turns out they developed so well that the key scenes they have together are GREAT and they feel natural within the game story. This is how you write romance, nomura!!

 FAVORITE SCENES:

WOODY ROASTS YOUNG XEHANORT, we had to pause the game. It was too good

Every scene sora is picked on for being too dumb! Thank you nomuraa

When sora is like “I’ll go alone to fight xehanort” and starts walking, camera on his feet, when goofy and Donald’s enter the shot… this is my favorite scene in the entire franchise.

When roxas comes back!!! Hes my second fave!!! Something falls from the sky and you cant see shit and theres jesse mcartney!!!!!!!!!!! I gasped really hard.

When axel/roxas/xion reunite!!!!!!!!!!! Good cry, xion is safe

When terra/aqua/ven reunite!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fucking finally!!!!!

Sora and baymax fist bump!!

When riku comforts sora that he shouldnt worry about him and just focus on his task at hand (yen sids tower)

WHEN EVERYONES DED AND SORA CRIES AND RIKU IS LIKE “SORA, YOU DON’T BELIEVE THAT” AND STEPS IN FRONT OF HIS BOYFRIEND TO STOP THE WAVE OF DARKNESS INCOMING. SORA LOOKS UP AT HIM, RIKUS CONFIDENT FIGURE STANDS FOR SHORT UNTIL DARKNESS ENGULFES HIM, THEN SORA.

THIS IS HOW YOU WRITE ROMANCE NOMURA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We needed more moments like this with kairi if you wanted me to care enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jack sparrow kills luxord!!!!!!!!!

XION GETS A CUTE DRESS. I ACTUALLY WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN AND IT CAME TRUE! (also she gets more screentime than I thought!)

WHEN SORA AND KAIRI ARE IN THE LIGHT PORTAL AND SORA IS SURPRISED AND SAYS “KAIRI! IT WAS YOU! YOU WERE THE LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS!!” JUST LIKE IN THE SONG, GUYS!!!!!!! THE ONE FROM KH 1. REALLY THAT WAS HELLA CUTE NOMURA IT TEARED ME UP (you just needed a bit more like this all over the other games!!!!!!!!!!) also when sora protects kairi hugging her… that was very sweet and desperate! :’(

(Theres probably more but those are the ones that come to my mind right now.)

this franchise is very important to me, and really, besides Persona, the only other one that kept me hyped in every installment. I started playing KH1 back in 2004 and from that point on its been a joy to wait for the next title. Waiting for kh3 was tedious at times but still ended up loving every game.

I’m very happy I could enjoy the franchise as the titles came out. Thank you nomura!!!!

[fyrapartnersearch]

SHAME SHAME SHAME

everybody's people watchin' everybody’s punch clockin’

hey how are ya my name is emmy and i’m here to search for a new rp partner. a bit about me, i’m 22, canadian, work two part time jobs and attend uni full time and i go by she/her pronouns. i reside in the mountain timezone and i am thrilled to hopefully start writing with you. 

why should you write with me? because i promise that if i pick up an rp with you i’m gonna put 100 and 10 percent of my effort into our story. i’m looking for a long term gig, someone who i can really weave a plot with, someone who digs the cut of my jib. i want us to be able to sob over our characters together late into the night. i want us to exchange songs, playlists, posts found on the internet, aesthetic boards, whatever reminds us of our characters/our plot.

i will probably spam you with pictures of my character’s playby and i want to see mad pics of yours, too. i want us to go through our character’s struggles together as well as be able to cheer together when our characters get a hold on their situation and come up on top. i want us to inspire one another with our writing. it’s gonna be great. you & me honey. 

right now I'm looking for 1-2 new rp partners who are interested in something long-term and fully fleshed out. think 'mains'. 

gee, that sounds nice! i’m inclined to agree! but a few things you should know before you go any further: i write anywhere between full lit to lit + to novella style, so expect posts of at least 4 - 6 paragraphs baseline. sometimes i crank out 10. or just 5. depends entirely on what’s going on. i write according to situation, with a great amount of detail spent on what my character is thinking/feeling in response to yours. the replies you get will be fully fleshed out & enthralling. i am a stickler for grammar and spelling, though nobody’s perfect, i do occasionally have my slipups. all lowercase text is strictly kept to ooc communication. i can be sporadic with capitalization ooc but still keep good spelling. i will never pressure you into posting or writing ridiculous amounts just to match my post. i want you to have fun too! if i’ve had a bit too much to drink or am about to hit the hay, i’ll wait to post until i can give my post my full attention. usually i’ll be able to post at least once every week, sometimes multiple times a week depending on work & schoolwork. i'm available for ooc chat almost all the time. i also totally understand life happens and sometimes we just need a breather. ♥ i have bipolar depression, and sometimes my depression kicks my ass, but i’ll let you know when that happens.

oh goodness, what else? i write predominantly m/m pairings but i am open to m/f and f/f as well. i do not write high fantasy settings, sorry doll. my interests mostly align with modern day, slice of life kinda stuff, aside from the fandoms i do have. i don’t have many limits besides excessive gore, scat, mpreg, and writing smut for sake of smut. i love my romance just like anyone else does, but it’s got to have plot. our characters have to have chemistry or else i get bored. i haven’t doubled before but i think i’d be down for it with the right plot. usually i prefer that we play one character each, or we play multiple characters within a plot, but not usually more than one plot at the same time. but!!! i am totally willing to try new things!! just be patient with me as i learn m'kay? i have had several threads going at once with one partner which can be super fun. also most of my characters are pretty kinky but like, i prefer that we talk about kinks and limits one on one as opposed to airing out my character’s laundry. also- i wanna be your friend ooc. let’s chat. i find it’s so much easier to have muse and post if i enjoy the virtual company of the people i’m writing with.

ok but what do you write? 

what *don’t* i write? kidding. here’s a bit of fandom for ya. if i’ve got plots listed, they’re the ideas i have, but i’m totally open to yours as well. stars denote how much i’m craving them. i’ll list the canon characters i write after i list the fandom: 

mafia 2: vito scaletta  ***plot for mafia 2 a: we explore the dynamics of a relationship between vito and your oc. your oc could be in a position of great risk- think outside of the mafia, possibly a police officer, prostitute. some position where power dynamics could be played with. if the pairing is m/m we also deal with the themes of internalized homophobia and coming to terms with one’s identity. 

*bioshock 1, 2 & infinite: brigid tenbenbaum, andrew ryan, frank frontaine & eleanor lamb, sofia lamb & booker dewitt 

**marvel cinematic universe: tony stark, steve rogers

***greater marvel universe: logan howlett, carol danvers  ****random plot: we do a crossover and we ship sharon carter/carol danvers. i just. uuugh i have a lot of feelings about them and i have hella muse for these babes. lemme know if you’re down to give this a shot i will love you forever no word of a lie. 

but honestly where my heart lies is within oc rp. here are a few plots i have of mine, stars denote how much i’m craving them:

****(m/m) power & politics: my oc is a prestigious state senator, who lives a double life. he is currently in the closet with no intent on leaving it anytime soon. however, a certain someone falls into his life, making him question what he thought he knew for certain. your oc breaks down the walls my oc has put up and changes him into a softer, better man. however, with an upcoming presidential campaign on the horizon for my oc, the limits of the secret relationship will be pushed and pulled beyond what both parties have ‘signed up for.‘

****(m/m) the guardian: your oc is a newcomer to the nhl but is quickly making waves- think connor mcdavid style. he’s young and impressive, but mostly, impressionable. he starts to get battered around by both his teammates and opposing teams. after a few hard hits and fowl play within the game that have cost your oc bench and recovery time, the team’s coach calls in reinforcements to boost the team’s morale and serve as a protector to your oc. my oc is a player who hasn’t got the talent part but has got a huge heart. not to mention… huge hands. good for makin’ fists. good for fightin’.  my oc protects your oc during the games, coming to your oc’s aid, picking fights for your oc and protecting him on the ice. as such, the two players grow attached to one another.. perhaps too attached for the captain to be comfortable with. possibilities for a love triangle and other complications, for sure

***(m/m) too good to be true: our ocs start out in the whl, both as promising wingers. their good chemistry is vital to bringing back their team’s success. however, one of our ocs starts to get too attached to the other, and when an nhl draft separates them, one of our ocs is all too eager to cut contact and try to forget. the two excel in their nhl careers without one another, and end up on nhl teams with a history of deep rivalry. occasionally, the gloves hit the ice, fueled by the tension of unresolved feelings and the pressure of the respective teams to keep up the rivalry. the two are reunited when they are both chosen to play nationally for the same team, and are forced to reconcile what they have both buried so deeply within them. 

***(m/m) big money: these two ocs play for rival teams in the nhl. while their teams have a history of tension, our two ocs take it to the next level. audiences are more excited to watch these two fight than they are to watch the game itself. there’s a market in the violence between these two, and a reputation to maintain on both ends. if the public found out that these two were secretly seeing one another, their careers would both be over. 

**** (m/m) sugar daddy: my oc is a law student studying in your oc's country in order to get their degree abroad. they're from eastern europe and uh. broke af. they settle into an arrangement with your oc where your oc agrees to ~pay him for his company after they meet while my oc does camming online to make ends meet. we could take it anywhere- your oc could whisk mine off his feet and 'save' him or. be toxic & trashy and make my oc's life hell.

okay and, here are just some general prompts that could be intertwined with the plots above, or could be something we use to springboard into our own rp:

my oc has serious commitment issues. they often go around ‘ghosting’ individuals after 4-5 dates, with little to no explanation of why. your oc falls for mine, and is the first to confront my oc about their shitty habits. 

your oc and my oc were best friends, but they lost touch over a stupid fight they had when they were preteens. they can’t believe that they’re seeing one another in a bar, halfway across the world from where they met. 

your oc and my oc were flames. my oc proposed to yours, but yours turned them down. they never spoke again… until they were sharing a crammed elevator, with my oc being completely intoxicated, and still confessing their feelings for your oc. 

your oc is a huge fan of my oc’s nhl career/political career. your oc wins a contest to meet and have dinner with my oc. while my oc expects a boring night out, my oc is completely surprised by how well they hit it off with your oc. 

my oc, your first oc and your second oc all grew up together. your first oc has always been pining for my oc’s attention, and is thrilled when my oc and your first oc finally get together. they develop a long term relationship, but my oc knows it would devastate your first oc if they told them that they have been seeing your second oc for most of the relationship. 

i recognize that a lot of these focus on the nhl/the lives of professional hockey players- please don’t be worried about hockey knowledge/nhl jargon/whatever else goes through your head! i’m more interested in sport as a realm for drama than i am for following the rulebook and being 100% accurate to life when it comes to hockey. there’s a lot i don’t know and am still needing to learn, myself! if you know a lot, great!! if you don’t, let’s figure things out together! as for general oc ideas, here’s a list:

professor x student

veteran x civillian

cop x criminal 

psychiatrist x patient

** OC superheroes (I have a lot of muse for this one!)

street racing, fast-and-furious-esque setting

rival gangs 

** nhl/hockey based (lol obviously)

small town canadiana or americana 

fun, fluffy romance based modern settings

darker themes such as addiction, abuse, etc - i find it cathartic sometimes to write about violent material buuuut this has to be really fleshed out between us

historical setting- preferably, the second world war/1940s-1960s 

light worldbuilding - new to this but wanting to learn

honestly whatever you can pitch to me that isn’t high fantasy :)

i can expand on and work with any of these ideas, these are just like, topics. whatever i do with you, i promise it’ll be fleshed out, with tons of opportunity for drama. 

hell yeah let’s do this pal 

if any, and i mean any, of this piqued your fancy, pleaaaase shoot me an email at 

↳ ehmmywrites@gmail.com ! 

i will respond! but please send me something thoughtful! i’d like to hear what part of my ad that you’re interested in/why you chose to contact me. i am most wanting to rp over email and talk over google hangouts but i can be open to skype, too.  i sure look forward to hearing from you!   ♥

emmy

[tamsythepansy]

VOY: “Workforce”, the transest Star Trek episode ever

So. There’s a two-part episode of Star Trek: Voyager (“Workforce”) in which the crew all find themselves living out new lives as vaguely Fordist industrial workers on a planet called Quarra, all memory of their real lives having been artificially suppressed.

Imagine my surprise when, rewatching it years later, the bogus diagnosis they’re given as their memories start to resurface is...

...which also happens to be exactly what my partners have been reminding me for the last two months (bless them). I giggled.

Lo and behold, it happens to Tuvok as well:

Now, I get that it was the turn of the millennium and this hadn’t really entered the lexicon yet, but... this is just the tip of the iceberg. Watch along with me and see how it all plays out:

Tuvok, of course, is the first to experience memories of his real life breaking through the facade, has a panic attack, and is hospitalized:

Well, if this isn’t relatable to multitudes of trans and non-binary Star Trek fans, I don’t know what is. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Of course, the ‘treatment’ for Dysphoria Syndrome involves suppressing the offending memory engrams, so the patient can peacefully return to being a cog in the cisheteronormative machine Quarran power distribution facility (read what you will into that). As the expert on Dysphoria Syndrome himself later puts it:

Sounds like an allegory for LGBTQ conversion therapy to me, I mean, what?

Anyway, Seven realizes that Tuvok might be on to something, and heads to the mental health clinic to get a gender assessment investigate:

Stepping into the realm of the purely serious for a moment, I *have* sort of read Seven’s character arc as a plausible trans allegory, and it’s pretty compelling: having her true identity suppressed at an early age, and finally being forced to confront it in adulthood; processing layers upon layers of trauma just to function as an individual; being rehabilitated by a circle of strong, compassionate women, each with their own identity issues (plus the medical wizardry, overeager cisheteronormative life coaching, and starry-eyed / vaguely inappropriate crushing of The Doctor, I guess, so yeah); struggling to reclaim her human (/feminine) sense of self even while the effects of her Borg (/patriarchal) upbringing have thoroughly warped her thoughts (even as they continue to give her superhuman resilience and insight). I’m sure there’s even a comparison to be drawn to transfeminine desirability politics — Seven is continually presented both as an extremely conventionally attractive human *and* as a mysterious cyborg whose embodiment and manner communicates an often-threatening sense of Otherness — but I’ll leave that for a future discourse. I’m honestly spitballing a bit with all of this, but to see it so explicitly referenced, intentionally or not, is quite something.

So, Seven asks the obvious question, and it turns out that, while being trans is undoubtedly a Real Thing, the specifics are... inconclusive:

Let’s take a moment to celebrate the fact that we’re finally starting to see gender doctors who actually understand us in all our nuance, because...

...we already know this is bad news. (Paging Dr. Harry Benjamin.)

Anyway, the compassionate gender doctor goes to the conversion therapy doctor to see what’s up, because clearly something over at the power plant is turning people trans:

One important takeaway from this story is “never walk away and leave your work computer unlocked”:

I get it, though! On a planet ostensibly without Tumblr or OKCupid, trans community is just really, really hard to find. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The compassionate gender doctor soon notices a pattern:

...mm hmm, it all started when a genderqueer person sneezed in the employee locker room, and somehow the conversion therapy doctor wound up with his hands full as everybody in the office came down with a bad case of The Trans.

Finally, the compassionate gender doctor is determined to be just a little bit too sympathetic to these gender deviants, and the now-canonically trans but still awesome at passing Seven of Nine comes to the rescue:

As if this weren’t trans enough...

...check out the subplot featuring Jaffen, a co-worker with whom Captain Janeway has an adorable but bittersweet whirlwind relationship. Though Jaffen presents as male and uses he/him pronouns, THIS TOTALLY HAPPENS, and its implications are never made clear:

Though this is set up as the punchline of a “your father” joke, Jaffen isn’t just fucking around here. Tuvok knows what’s up, and proceeds to Vulcan-splain the joke right back to him:

Which begs the question, how do Norvalians procreate, anyway? Are they clones, like the Vorta? Do they deposit their genetic material into pods, like the J’naii? Do they pick up ready-made offspring, like the Kobali? Whatever the intent is, it has serious implications for whatever kind of relationship he and Janeway would have (like, it’s not on the cisheteronormative trajectory of sex and babies, at the very least). So, bear with me for a moment, because this is my honest-to-goodness fan theory: 

(okay, I admit I just had that image lying around, and this seemed like as good a moment as any to use it.)

What if Norvalians reproduce parthenogenetically, leaving the entire need for a biological “father” out of the equation?

This could mean one of two things: as with terrestrial Komodo dragons (I think), parthenogenesis happens but binary sexual reproduction is still an option (which honestly doesn’t seem like the most likely explanation, given the way Jaffen and Tuvok both frame it), *or*, as with terrestrial whiptail lizards, parthenogenesis is the default, and male (i.e., sperm-producing) offspring are extremely rare and/or usually infertile.

So yeah, okay, they reproduce parthenogenetically, Jaffen is a rare male and is probably infertile, and therefore the Jaffen/Janeway relationship is more about companionship and cooperation than sex and babies. I’m fine with that, and I actually find it quite heartwarming.

But, with that in mind, do we need to assume that Jaffen is male, whatever that means for his species? After all, whiptail lizards engage in female/female courtship behaviour, which somehow makes them more fecund — and remember, it’s the Delta Quadrant; we’ve seen enough weird sex shit by Season 7 (cf. “Elogium”, “Favorite Son”, “The Disease”, “Ashes to Ashes”, off the top of my head) that we can reasonably conclude that all bets are off. 

My interpretation? Jaffen is an honest, gallant, leather-waistcoat-rocking, he/him pronoun-using, parthenogenetic Space Butch. Maybe I’ve spent too much time on Sapphic Star Trek Tumblr, or have finally disappeared up my own genderqueer ass, but I’m convinced it’s the simplest explanation that’s congruent with the facts.

[I just spent a bunch of time trying to find the “Captain Janeway is a closet lesbian, change my mind” meme, but no dice.]

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far, it’s time for me to deliver on the non-binary trans lesbian Star Trek shitposting that I’m usually all about. Having been closeted for a long time, I know a thing or two about relationships that seem straight on the surface but are actually hella queer under the hood, so to speak. Just look at these two u-hauling it on the third date (it’s adorable!):

This also seems really gay for some reason:

And, at the end of the day, he’s a good ally:

Watch the whole episode for the obligatory Sad Lesbian Ending.

The icing on this three-tiered Tholian gay wedding cake

...yup.

[Thanks to Em for subtly egging me on (ha) and Bry for putting up with me procrastinating all night. Love you both.]

[aerlyse]

Well, I felt like doodling Genji and here it is ;v;)9! The main idea of this drawing was to think how he would be in the present without his mask-helmet.

Random thoughts under the cut

I’ve actually been investigating about him and his wounds and I’m pretty intrigued… In the Dragons cinematic we can see that when he removes the mask, he has ‘little’ scars in his face (plus… may his skin be like a bit… burnt? I couldn’t see that well, but it gave that impression, but since he doesn’t look like that in Blackwatch in the part of the face you can see, I think it may be just a sensation of mine). Also, there seem to be a pair of metallic dark pieces peeking over his cheeks that are not removed.

Going for the Blackwatch skin, we can see he lost both his legs (at least below his knees) and probably an arm? Also, he seems to have just the necessary pieces, meaning he’s not completely covered, what made me think that those pieces were indispensable for him being alive and function. Those pieces are all the lower part of his body, his chest (right part), his arm AND his neck and jaw (+forehead). Those last pieces made me think that maybe he got his neck broken or some kind of injury that made necessary for him to have protective pieces around his jaw and nape, plus those wires in the BW skin… dunno… We know he still has his hair because of the BW skin also. I suppose he has his natural color now since I don’t think he cares of dying it much when most of the time wears the full helmet.

I guess some of those pieces were replaced in his new body, going from ‘mechanical’ pieces and wires to something more technologic, ‘cybernetic’, that made possible to be less bulky and be more comfortable, but I guess some of the basic structure may stay in a form or another as it must be necessary for him, such as the jaw piece (or maybe it’s just that the helmet can be opened in different ways and it has several pieces to remove, but dunno, it gave me the sensation those pieces stayed there?)

About the eyes… I had doubts, because... In the Dragons cinematic they looked greyish, which would be his natural eye color, but in Blackwatch his eyes glowed red, making one think they were modified/enhanced in some way. Genji’s visor glows with an intense green when he’s wearing it (as the rest of the lights he has) but I have doubts… In BW is clear his eyes were modified, but in the Dragons cinematic they looked normal. Maybe in the ‘upgrade’ he went through, the doctors/mechanics (?) made his eyes look natural again when still keeping their function/enhancement? As in Dragons they look normal, it’d be logic to think they are (as Dragons goes after Blackwatch), but I kinda liked the idea of them being glowing green, maybe not all the time, but in some occasions. The first time he was operated sure there was like 0 time for aesthetic since he was dying, but maybe in the ‘upgrade’ they could’ve fixed something, such as the scars some of the devices/wires left him with or even making those pieces more aesthetically pleasing (indeed, they did with the whole armor, so maybe they also helped to heal or did something with some severe scars or such… who knows…)

At the end, I couldn’t decide the colors so I went for the first one (black hair green eyes) that is the one I think I’ll go with as headcanon and the other with his young colors too because why not.

I would really want to know how severe his wounds were tbh, because… As far as I know… It was Hanzo who fought him, and… with a katana… Genji lost two legs, an arm, got severely wounded in most of his body and covered in scars… by a katana wielded by his brother…? It seems so weird… I don’t think it’s easy to cut two femurs of a person moving with a katana even with it being hella sharp…? And the rest of scars? Either Hanzo was torturing him like… A LOT… or it wasn’t the sword what left Genji like that… I’ve been trying to think possible causes since I haven’t found any explanation in the canon (maybe there is and I missed it? Dunno) and I can’t avoid thinking in the dragons… We are not told much about them but… Both brothers can summon dragons. In the Dragons cinematic, Hanzo suffers the attack of both his own dragons but they go through him doing him no visible damage. They seem like spiritual energy that does other kind of damage. It can be thought that maybe as it was his own attack, they didn’t really affect him that much, but it doesn’t seem to have much sense I fear, though the injuries of Genji could be explained by a dragon attack (and more even thinking in TWO dragons). I don’t really know other way he could get his body covered in scars and get that broken otherwise…  Hanzo’s attack with the dragons in the game does a lot of damage to players that cross their path. In the game there is no ‘physical’ damage so no way of proving this. It could also be that Hanzo used the dragons power but in his blade as Genji’s special, and thinking that gave the katana some ‘magic strength’ that could devastate easily what encountered, but still, Genji has many irregular scars that doesn’t look as clean as sword wounds at all… I’m really curious about this, because it’s so difficult Hanzo with a katana on his own could do all that to Genji… The dragons would explain it but also not with exactitude… The last idea about this I have is that the room they were fighting into collapsed trapping Genji? Dunno… I don’t see his injuries explainable with what is shown of the story so these are my thoughts about it. I kinda like the dragon explanation but it also doesn’t make complete sense… but well, it’s all I have at the moment :<

[fyrapartnersearch]

PEOPLE WATCHIN'

shame, shame, shame

hey how are ya my name is emmy and i’m here to search for a new rp partner. a bit about me, i’m 21, canadian, in university, and i go by she/her pronouns. i reside in the mountain timezone and i am thrilled to hopefully start writing with you. i'm hoping to find a new partner or two to write with as my semester winds down!

why should you write with me? because i promise that if i pick up an rp with you i’m gonna put 100 and 10 percent of my effort into our story. i’m looking for a long term gig, someone who i can really weave a plot with, someone who digs the cut of my jib. i want us to be able to sob over our characters together late into the night. i want us to exchange songs, playlists, posts found on the internet, aesthetic boards, whatever reminds us of our characters/our plot. i will probably spam you with pictures of my character’s playby and i want to see mad pics of yours, too. i want us to go through our character’s struggles together as well as be able to cheer together when our characters get ahold of their sitch and come up on top. i want us to inspire one another with our writing. it’s gonna be great. you & me honey. 

gee, that sounds nice! i’m inclined to agree with ya! but a few things you should know before you go any further: i write anywhere between full lit to lit + to novella style, so expect posts of at least 4 - 6 paragraphs baseline. sometimes i crank out 10. or just 5. depends entirely on what’s going on. i write according to situation, with a great amount of detail spent on what my character is thinking/feeling in response to yours. the replies you get will be fully fleshed out & enthralling. i am a stickler for grammar and spelling, though nobody’s perfect, i do occasionally have my slipups. all lowercase text is strictly kept to ooc communication. i will never pressure you into posting or writing ridiculous amounts just to match my post. i want you to have fun too, ya hear? if i’ve had a bit too much to drink or am about to hit the hay, i’ll wait to post until i can give my post my full attention. usually i’ll be able to post at least once a day, sometimes multiple times a day if we’re in the same or a similar time zone. final exams and papers are coming up for me though so i'll be a little slow posting-wise, but still around ooc, until dec 15. i also totally understand life happens and sometimes we just need a breather. ♥ i have bipolar depression, and sometimes my depression kicks my ass, but i’ll let you know when that happens.

oh goodness, what else? i write predominantly m/m pairings but i am open to m/f and f/f as well. right now i am craving m/f with me playing the f buuut i'm also down for m/m as well. i tend to write pretty high-strung alpha males as characters, so i'm wanting to play a role other than that to challenge myself and try my hand at a different kind of character. i do not write high fantasy settings, sorry doll. my interests mostly align with modern day, slice of life kinda stuff, aside from the fandoms i do have. i don’t have many limits besides excessive gore, scat, mpreg, and writing smut for sake of smut. i love my romance just like anyone else does, but it’s got to have plot. our characters have to have chemistry or else i get bored. i haven’t doubled before but i think i’d be down for it with the right plot. usually i prefer that we play one character each, or we play multiple characters within a plot, but not usually more than one plot at the same time. but!!! i am totally willing to try new things!! just be patient with me as i learn m'kay? also most of my characters are pretty kinky but like, i prefer that we talk about kinks and limits one on one as opposed to airing out my character’s laundry. also- i wanna be your friend ooc. let’s chat. i find it’s so much easier to have muse and post if i enjoy the virtual company of the people i’m writing with.

ok but what do you write? 

what *don’t* i write? kidding. here’s a bit of fandom for ya. if i’ve got plots listed, they’re the ideas i have, but i’m totally open to yours as well. stars denote how much i’m craving them. i’ll list the canon characters i write after i list the fandom: 

fallout: new vegas & 4: arcade gannon & elder maxson, paladin danse - also got a ton of ocs for both *plot for fallout 4 a: we explore the cut ending to the brotherhood of steel questline, wherein the sole survivor and paladin danse refuse maxson’s final orders for danse, and fight for danse to become the leader of the brotherhood of steel. would likely require you playing maxon or danse and me playing the other, with one of us playing the sole survivor.  *plot for fallout 4 b: your/my oc is a double agent for the railroad, with the mission to infiltrate the brotherhood of steel and send intelligence back to the agents back at home base. your/my oc becomes unexpectedly attached to elder maxson through work and circumstance. eventually, your/my oc must make a choice of where their allegiance lies: within the arms of arthur or with the faction they are fighting for. (potentially, we could double and do plot a & b at the same time.) 

mafia 2: vito scaletta  ***plot for mafia 2 a: we explore the dynamics of a relationship between vito and your oc. your oc could be in a position of great risk- think outside of the mafia, possibly a police officer, prostitute. some position where power dynamics could be played with. if the pairing is m/m we also deal with the themes of internalized homophobia and coming to terms with one’s identity. 

*bioshock 1, 2 & infinite: brigid tenbenbaum, andrew ryan, frank frontaine & eleanor lamb, sofia lamb & booker dewitt 

**marvel cinematic universe: tony stark, steve rogers

**greater marvel universe: logan howlett, carol danvers  ***random plot: we do a crossover and we ship sharon carter/carol danvers. i just. uuugh i have a lot of feelings about them and i have hella muse for these babes. lemme know if you’re down to give this a shot i will love you forever no word of a lie. 

but honestly where my heart lies is within oc rp. here are a few plots i have of mine, stars denote how much i’m craving them:

****(m/m) power & politics: my oc is a prestigious state senator, who lives a double life. he is currently in the closet with no intent on leaving it anytime soon. however, a certain someone falls into his life, making him question what he thought he knew for certain. your oc breaks down the walls my oc has put up and changes him into a softer, better man. however, with an upcoming presidential campaign on the horizon for my oc, the limits of the secret relationship will be pushed and pulled beyond what both parties have ‘signed up for.‘ 

***(m/m) too good to be true: our ocs start out in the whl, both as promising wingers. their good chemistry is vital to bringing back their team’s success. however, one of our ocs starts to get too attached to the other, and when an nhl draft separates them, one of our ocs is all too eager to cut contact and try to forget. the two excel in their nhl careers without one another, and end up on nhl teams with a history of deep rivalry. occasionally, the gloves hit the ice, fueled by the tension of unresolved feelings and the pressure of the respective teams to keep up the rivalry. the two are reunited when they are both chosen to play nationally for the same team, and are forced to reconcile what they have both buried so deeply within them. 

***(m/m) big money: these two ocs play for rival teams in the nhl. while their teams have a history of tension, our two ocs take it to the next level. audiences are more excited to watch these two fight than they are to watch the game itself. there’s a market in the violence between these two, and a reputation to maintain on both ends. if the public found out that these two were secretly seeing one another, their careers would both be over. 

okay and, here are just some general prompts that could be intertwined with the plots above, or could be something we use to springboard into our own rp:

my oc has serious commitment issues. they often go around ‘ghosting’ individuals after 4-5 dates, with little to no explanation of why. your oc falls for mine, and is the first to confront my oc about their shitty habits. 

your oc and my oc were best friends, but they lost touch over a stupid fight they had when they were preteens. they can’t believe that they’re seeing one another in a bar, halfway across the world from where they met. 

your oc and my oc were flames. my oc proposed to yours, but yours turned them down. they never spoke again… until they were sharing a crammed elevator, with my oc being completely drunk, and still confessing their feelings for your oc. 

your oc is a huge fan of my oc’s nhl career/political career. your oc wins a contest to meet and have dinner with my oc. while my oc expects a boring night out, my oc is completely surprised by how well they hit it off with your oc. 

my oc, your first oc and your second oc all grew up together. your first oc has always been pining for my oc’s attention, and is thrilled when my oc and your first oc finally get together. they develop a long term relationship, but my oc knows it would devastate your first oc if they told them that they have been seeing your second oc for most of the relationship. 

i recognize that a lot of these focus on the nhl/the lives of professional hockey players- please don’t be worried about hockey knowledge/nhl jargon/whatever else goes through your head! i’m more interested in sport as a realm for drama than i am for following the rulebook and being 100% accurate to life when it comes to hockey. there’s a lot i don’t know and am still needing to learn, myself! as for general oc ideas, here’s a list:

professor x student

veteran x civillian

cop x criminal 

psychiatrist x patient

street racing, fast-and-furious-esque setting

rival gangs 

nhl/hockey based (lol obviously)

**small town canadiana or americana 

**something themed around equestrian life, like rodeo or english riding sports

fun, fluffy romance based modern settings

darker themes such as addiction, abuse, etc

*historical setting- preferably, the second world war/1940s-1960s, or like, 1980s old time hockey small town kinda shit 

honestly whatever you can pitch me that isn’t high fantasy ☺

i can honestly expand on and work with any of these ideas, these are just like, topics. whatever i do with you, i promise it’ll be fleshed out, with tons of opportunity for drama. 

hell yeah let’s do this pal 

if any, and i mean any, of this piqued your fancy, pleaaaase shoot me an email at 

↳ ehmmywrites@gmail.com ! 

i will respond! but please send me something thoughtful! i’d like to hear what part of my ad that you’re interested in/why you chose to contact me. i am most wanting to rp over email and talk over google hangouts but i can be open to skype, too.  i sure look forward to hearing from you!  ✌ & ♥ emmy