#i am originally unoriginal.

[fluffypinkpillows]

GOD THATS SO ADORABLE. This is how I’m literally writing M!R in my au fic for ittw too so the coincidence is hilarious lmao. I also really like the idea of Sun Wukong being like “You have a home with me now, don’t be sad!” to Reader and she just looks at him and cries.

(I didn’t really make demon monkey reader but i like to think that i made it popular totally by accident, so seeing this made me extremely happy)

I love the idea of Monkey!Reader for many reasons but like, imagine an isekai’d monkey reader (or just one without a home to return to) who is lamenting not being able to go home (whether or not because it’s simply not possible or because there’s no way they can go home as a monkey) only to be met with Wukong who just like…casually flicks their ear or somethin and goes “Your a Sun now. Sun Y/N. Bam. Now you have a home.”

Like he’s super protective of the monkeys on his own mountain and considers every single one of them to be his family so I think he’d just immediately call dibs on M!R (or any other monkey in need of a home for that matter)

[shesnake]

24 hour time loops: not long enough to create or undo anything permanent, crazy-making but often still funny

365 day time loops: the most fucked up shit you could possibly imagine

[rapha-reads]

I finished Memnoch The Devil and now I'm sad. And incredibly confused. What even was AR trying to tell with this story? What was she working through? Why putting Lestat through all of that, why doing away with Armand (and Mael) in such a cavalier, rude and undeserving way? Why the whole treaty of theology (that was actually, in all honesty, quite frankly boring most of the times - except the parts about Evolution and during the Fourth Crusade, that was interesting, the rest was seriously bland)?

I have rarely been so confused by a book that by the end of it I still don't know if I've liked it or hated it. I mean, I finished it, so a part of me was captivated, sure, but another part of me was extremely frustrated and annoyed.

I don't know. I want to carry on with the next book but I think I need a break before I continue. I did just read 5 tomes in less than two weeks, I need to slow down (if you're wondering, yes, that's why I haven't answered your messages yet). I'm gonna go read some fics, as a palate cleanser.

Edit: scratch that, I'm jumping straight into the next one, it's The Vampire Armand, I need to know more about Armand and to stop being consumed by Lestat for a minute. Lestat is. The only word that comes to my mind is invasive, but he's not nefarious, just... He's an immense, huge, all-encompassing presence that drowns everything and anything and I need him to leave me alone for a minute, so let's go find out more about Armand.

[glitterhoof]

i want to have my own toy line and movie so bad

[ka1purush]

Bringing this back because somehow this is single handedly my most famous post ever.

I just know for a fact Martin would buy this

[green-again]

will I finish this course or will this course finish me

[hunkydorkling]

Do I think now's a good time of day to second guess myself? Yeah.

[starfellmoth]

“DoodleFrog” was taken on Twitter and I feel unoriginal having just changed the “o” to a “0”. Kinda wanna keep the “Frog” association but I’m willing to change it for something more creative. Any ideas as to what I should change my branding to?

[luescris]

*crashes in* have something original

This is for a college romance story between these two characters because I was feeling cheesy more may or may not be on the way depending okay bye

[lavendercell]

Struggling not to delete this account and myself at the moment cause existing is embarrassing

[infamousmonkey-cat]

I'm by no means a sport guy and this is totally off the dome, but does it say something about the USAmerican psyche that all of their most popular sports (American football, basketball, baseball) are ones that basically nobody else participates in? Like lots of countries play soccer*, cricket and rugby, and it means that teams from different continents are coming together to compete, but in the US they're basically all just competing against other US cities, right? Like it perpetuates isolationism surely? It's interesting, the ghosts

*Used to roll my eyes at calling it soccer but tbf besides American football there is also Aussie rules and peil, so whatever

[pinkrosealice]

I really like crossover fanfics and fan art, I really do. However I sometimes feel like some of the most popular fandom crossovers are also ones that perpetually fall into boring and predictable patterns while simultaneously and consistently ignoring/forgetting the most obvious and easy ways two or more fictional properties could be combined or crossed over.

And I think this is nowhere more apparent than the absolute proliferation of Danny Phantom and DC comics content here on this site.

Because you know what, I think there are some really cool and interesting things you could do with placing Danny and company in the world of DC or vice versa. The problem is that overwhelmingly I don't see any of those interesting ideas being done.

It's all the same variation of like three different plot points, all of which are exacerbated in their boring unoriginality and fandom cringiness by the fact that they also almost entirely revolve around the same flanderizations of DC characters that originate from people whose understanding of these comic book characters is entirely based off of watching the Teen Titans and Young Justice cartoons.

I am so so so so tired of seeing the same premise of Danny getting involved with Batman because he's a dark-haired light colored eyed superhero "twink" just like the rest of the male Robins. I'm tired of him getting adopted by Bruce, I'm tired of him being secretly Dick Grayson's long lost relative.

What's even worse is this crossovers frequent demonstration of what I think is the inexcusable sin of unoriginally using John Constantine, a character that I by and large think the vast majority of this website and it's user base just doesn't understand and probably never will. (this is a whole separate rant but the website that at one point had the majority of its user-base obsessed with an imaginary queer interpretation of one of the most aggressively mediocre and dude bro heterosexual paranormal TV shows to have ever existed is one that I think is fundamentally incapable of actually understanding or appreciating a legitimately compelling queer paranormal/urban fantasy character. The website that thinks Cas and & Dean were anything, whether that be a compelling romance, compelling characters or even in a good or enjoyable show, I think are forever incapable of actually understanding John.)

Do I think you could write an interesting story with John Constantine interacting with Danny? Yeah sure but I think that that would be entirely predicated on one's ability to actually write John compellingly, which is a dubious ask in the first place AND regardless it's still the most uninspired and boring interpretation of what you could do with "Danny interacting with one of the supernatural characters of DC"

Here are some actual recommendations for interesting crossovers and universe fusions :

*The fact that people want to have Danny Fenton interact with DC characters and Deadman and Secret are not the characters that immediately come to mind for fic ideas shows I think either the fundamental lack of creativity on the part of people who like this crossover, or just that they really don't know shit about DC comics....... Danny and Boston Brand would play off each other so well both comedically and as potential mentor and mentee. Greta and Danny would be ADORABLE together whether it is just friends or in a shippy dynamic.

* We need stories where Danny is interacting with The Spector, and the lack of them is just plain criminal in my opinion. I really could see a bunch of really cool stories where GhostKing Danny is put into conflict with the Vengeance of God. Or make him team up with The Specter have and have him fight Eclipso.

*we know the DC afterlife is incredibly complicated and interconnected with other mystical realms such as The Dreaming and Hell, maybe explore how that would relate to DP's conception of the Ghost Zone. Danny, Zachary Zatara and Kid Devil's bizarre interdimensional odyssey would be a great fic!

* if one has to put Danny in Gotham for some reason or another have him fight against the Gentleman Ghost, play around with the relationship with the glowing green ectoplasm and the green glowing liquid of the Lazarus Pits, and if you do that you have an excuse to make him interact with Jason Todd if you absolutely can't resist bringing in a member of the Bat family. Remember, Jason has the ability to summon forth magical blades under certain circumstances and as a character who has repeatedly died and come back to life he's the only bat that I think would actually have interesting interactions with Danny.

* but above all if you have to have Danny Phantom and company goes to Gotham as your story premise, I cannot emphasize this enough, HAVE HIM TEAM UP WITH RAGMAN!!!!!! I swear to God, have the snarky Ghost Boy interact with the character whose costume is literally filled with ghosts!!!!!!

*going back to the ectoplasm and Lazarus Pit idea, make Danny an avatar of The Black/ Rot. I would absolutely love to see him have to contend with the likes of Anton Arcane or come into conflict with Swamp Thing and Animal Man. Also having Swamp Thing present in the story would give a far more organic reason as to why John Constantine would be interested in this teenager with ghost powers.

So yeah I would kindly ask the people who are so insistent on producing crossover content of these two fandoms to actually do some interesting ideas.

And incidentally while we're on the subject matter, the fact that so much of Danny Phantom is directly inspired by Spider-Man and yet there's not really a lot of crossover between DP and Marvel properties is really really bizarre to me, especially because this website's user base purports to be such huge appreciators of the Spider-Verse films........

[dalekofchaos]

Not interested in LIS:Double Exposure

Okay I saw the Double Exposure trailer and I am not playing it.

Multiple reasons.

The Deck Nine IGN article. I will not support a developer that knowingly protected a bigoted groomer and allowed a Nazi to sneak in White Supremacist signs in the game.

Max learned nothing about the first game. Nevermind there is no Chloe, Warren or anyone from Arcadia insight(we'll get to that) Max apparently formed another codependent relationship that she couldn't let go to the point where she's fucking up reality by creating yet another parallel world. Either Deck Nine is entirely unoriginal or Max didn't learn a damned thing

That is not Max. If your defense is "she grew up" I got news for you. I've looked the same for nearly a decade. I've had friends while changing their aesthetic, they look the same. you don’t look like an entirely new person when you age, the new model looks nothing like max there’s barely even resemblance. Also I know, we all change our style as we get older, but Max's style was unique and it made Max Caulfield who she is. It didn't need to change. Deck Nine just Stephified Max. Was it really that hard to give Max bangs? Not just that. No freckles, eyes and eyebrows look completely different. This is not Max Caulfield.

4. No one from Arcadia Bay returned. It's pretty obvious Deck Nine is either keeping Chloe's fate a secret, but it's also clear they are trying to skirt around the issue of the endings without pissing everyone off. Feels like a copout to whatever ending you chose to give a new cast of characters. For the fans who wanted more time to play as Max and Chloe, I feel bad for you, I especially wanted to see Chloe again. So what the fuck was this supposed to be for then?

Though another point; why the hell are we supposed to be okay with the fact that Max is using her power again to save this brand new character we have zero previous connection to? Especially if the game’s gonna try to straddle both endings to LiS 1; seems very insulting to have Max be okay with doing it for a character we have no previous attachment to, but she’s left her girlfriend to die alone, thinking nobody loved her?

Also you had the perfect chance to make a fucking game that has Max save Rachel. I know I just did a tangent about Max not learning anything, but if you were just going to have Max use her powers again, why the fuck didn't you do it to save Rachel from a fate she never deserved? Godfucking forbid you give attention to Warren, Kate or Victoria. I just wanted to see these characters get some screen time, make cameos or give us SOME hint to what they are up to after the events of the first game. But no, we can't have that. We can't be given anything of substance for Warren, Kate or Victoria. Can't learn anything about their fates in the LIS 2 Save Arcadia Bay ending, can't find out Warren or Kate survived the storm in Wavelengths via talking to Steph during the storm anniversary and we can't see them again in DE. I know it's just a teaser, but seriously why even do a new Max game if we don't even get cameos from these characters? Knowing how Deck Nine is, they are just gonna find a way to demonize Warren to paint him like Eliot, regress Victoria's character and not even give Kate the time of day to mention. Jesus fucking christ, I just wanted to see Max and Warren Go Ape, fun Max and Victoria photodates and to see Max and Kate have one fucking Tea date. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR???

5. Deck Nine are literally just swiping DontNod’s characters for the purposes of chasing that brand recognition. It's just copy pasting lighting in a bottle and milking a cow out of this franchise. BTS was remotely successful because of Chloe and Rachel's relationship. True Colors is fun at first, but realize it's just a hollow imitation of the first game. DONTNOD's story was original, fun and unique. I had problems with it but it was still THEIR story on their terms and not developed from a place of corporate cynicism asking for preorders ASAP that come bundled with a box of tissues and bobbleheads of dead teenagers. Read recent interviews from DONTNOD and you can TELL they got burned by SquareEnix over this. I hope they can channel that into something with Bloom and Rage because I’d love to see them recapture that magic again.

I had fears of what would happen if Deck Nine ever got their hands on Max. And looks like I was right to be worried.

To be clear, I think making stories with someone else’s character is great and cool and it’s literally what fanfiction is and technically, MUCH of mass media now IS “fanfiction”. The difference here is DONTNOD deliberately wanted LIS 1 canon left alone, near as I can tell. But no, Square Enix wanted a franchise and Deck Nine was more than happy to milk the cow for all it was worth and Deck Nine has shown they don't understand DONTNOD's characters

The game looks like it's repeating everything about the first game, but none of the charm that made it great. It's beat for beat the same fucking game. Dead friend, murder mystery, but without the ambiance, charm or magic that made the first game good. Deck Nine is completely unoriginal, DE is a soulless cashgrab and their hyperrealism killed the entire essence of the game and its characters.

It's quite literally a copy and paste of True Colors, but with Max.

And when we just look at this. Double Exposure is just soulless. It's style over substance and I knew. I just KNEW that if Deck Nine got their hands on Max it would be half-assed and soulless shit like this. They dared to slap Max's name on a Steph lookalike and then just do True Colors again, but more hollow.

There's something just so disappointing about the change in art style over the years. The art direction in the first game was charming and now it just feels kinda soulless. The awkward chunkyness of the models really made it stand out but now it feels way too smooth

life is strange going from one studios passion project to another’s cashgrab is one of the biggest modern tragedies in the world deck nine they could never make me like you. All the charm of the franchise from the cartoonish artstyle to the episodical releases has been completely stripped away it’s just very disappointing to see.

This meme is literally Double Exposure.

[anonymousewrites]

Apple of My Eye Chapter Fourteen

Harry Hook x Child of Snow White! Reader

Chapter Fourteen: Yo, Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me)

Summary: (Y/N) and Harry talk, and Mal gets some unusual "allies" to defeat Audrey.

            Harry laughed wildly as he sped the motorcycle down the small alleys of the Isle. (Y/N) held onto him tightly to avoid falling, watching people and buildings zip past. There was no way Evie, Jay, or Carlos were catching up to them, so they had resigned themself to going along for the ride. It wasn’t as if Harry was going to crash the bike and hurt himself, too, so they felt relatively safe for now.

            “Is it me or the bike that’s got your heart racin’, Highness?” said Harry as they turned a corner tightly and (Y/N) grabbed him tighter.

            “Is it my presence making you show off, or is your driving this bad because you have a death wish?” responded (Y/N).

            “A pirate’s gotta show off when someone charmin’ is around.” Harry applied the brakes abruptly, and they came to a screeching halt in an alley. “But I don’t want to scare ya off.” He hopped off the bike and offered a hand. “Highness?”

            (Y/N) smiled, rolled their eyes, and took his hand as they swung their leg over the bike. They stepped to the ground easily. But Harry still held their hand. (Y/N) looked at him, not making a move to step back. They looked down at their hands, back up at one another, and pulled their hands back.

            “What happens now?” said (Y/N). “Am I being kidnapped again?” They chuckled. “If that’s the plan, I’m going to have to disappoint. We’re a little too busy with other problems, so no ransom this time.”

            Harry grinned. “No kidnapping this time, Highness. I’m not ‘unoriginal,’ remember?”

            “I’m still ‘Highness,’ ” said (Y/N), smirking.

            “I told you, if it pleases you, we can upgrade to ‘love,’ ” said Harry, grinning.

            “Tempting, but I don’t get much out of it,” said (Y/N), smiling.

            “You could,” teased Harry, leaning on the wall.

            (Y/N) laughed, scoffed, and rolled their eyes. Harry’s smile just widened upon seeing their clear amusement. He liked making them smile.

            “Okay, seriously, Harry—”

            “First name basis? I can work with that.”

            “—Why did you take me?” said (Y/N).

            “…The rose.” Harry looked at (Y/N) and tilted his head. “From that Cotil-whatever. It was my sash.”

            (Y/N) looked at him. “It was.”

            “Why?” said Harry.

            “Because you and Uma are right,” said (Y/N). “It’s unfair that you were left behind on the Isle with so many others while Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos were here for so long.” They looked at Harry. “I wanted you to know that I was being honest when I said I wanted to help more VKs. I wasn’t going to forget that there were more people to help.”

            Harry looked at them, and he smiled slightly. “You are an interesting royal, Highness.”

            “You’re an interesting pirate,” replied (Y/N).

            “I try to be,” said Harry, grinning.

            “You succeed,” said (Y/N), smirking. “Other than the kidnapping stuff. That’s cliché.”

            “How can I make it more original?” Harry took a step closer.

            “Certainly not by flirting with me, I’ve read a hundred books like that,” said (Y/N), playfully stepping away from me.

            “Ya like pirates?” said Harry, leaning in and tilting his head.

            “Oh, sure,” said (Y/N). “I like stories where they get beaten by valiant, brave sailors.” They smiled brightly.

            “Pity. I like the ones where they win,” said Harry, smirking.

            “A true pity,” said (Y/N).

            “And if it was a pirate like meself?” said Harry.

            “We’ll see,” said (Y/N).

            “Will we?” said Harry, his grin softening slightly.

            “Second chances apply to everyone,” said (Y/N). Their gaze was intense as they smiled at him. “And I forgive.”

            “Do you?” said Harry.

            “I’m going to forgive you for kidnapping me twice, so, yes,” said (Y/N), laughing.

            “Suppose I should let ya go so ya can forgive me,” said Harry.

            “Please and thank you, I am quite busy,” said (Y/N).

            Harry bowed. “As you wish, Highness.” He gestured to the exit of the alley. “Out here, go to starboard, you’re home free.”

            “Thank you,” said (Y/N), smiling. They walked to the end of the alley, paused, and looked back. From a pocket, they pulled out a familiar red sash. “When you see me again, you can have this back.”

            Harry grinned. “It’s a deal.”

            (Y/N) laughed and turned the corner.

l

            (Y/N) leaned against the wall at the barrier of the Isle. They brightened when they saw the VKs coming towards them. Evie’s eyes widened.

            “(Y/N)!” Evie ran to them and hugged them. “You’re alright!”

            “We were about to scour the Isle for you,” said Carlos.

            “How did you get away?” said Jay.

            “They were more interested in having fun with the bikes than kidnapping me,” said (Y/N). “Harry was just amusing himself by annoying you.”

            “Sounds like him,” said Mal.

            Evie raised an eyebrow at (Y/N), who just smiled.

            “Did we get the ember?” said (Y/N).

            “We did,” said Mal, holding it up. (Y/N) smiled in relief.

            “Let’s get out of here,” said Jay. He pressed the remote in his hand, and the barrier opened to let them walk through.

            After they stepped through, the ember lit up, coming to life in the magical air. It sparked, and strands of Mal’s hair took on a blue tint.

            “Whoa. You got a little Hades thing going on,” said Evie.

            “That thing packs a punch,” said Carlos.

            “Hopefully it’ll ‘punch’ the sense into Audrey,” said (Y/N).

            “Whoo!”

            The VKs jumped and turned around. Two familiar pirates had leapt through the closing barrier and rolled to their feet. (Y/N)’s eyes widened. It was Harry and Gil.

            “We made it, bro!” said Gil excitedly.

            “We made it!” said Harry, and the pair hugged before grinning wildly at the other VKs and (Y/N). “Hey, guys, we’re just coming for a wee visit.” They stepped forward, and Carlos and Jay blocked their path. “Oh, come on, I told Highness we would see each other again. I’m just keepin’ my word.”

            “How flattering, you’re sneaking out to see me,” said (Y/N).

            “Who else would I see, Highness?” said Harry, grinning.

            “Get back inside the barrier, Hook,” said Jay, pushing him back.

            “Make me, Jay,” said Harry, shoving him back.

            Jay stumbled into Mal, and she accidentally dropped the ember. It clattered to the ground and bounced off the bridge.

            “No!” said Mal, eyes wide.

            “Oh!” gasped (Y/N), trying to reach for it and missing.

            A tentacle reached out and snatched the ember. Everyone’s eyes widened. A familiar face rose from the water. Uma grinned and waved up at the group.

            “Drop something?” she said with a smirk.

            “It can’t get wet!” said Mal. “Give it back before it goes out.”

            “Uma?” exclaimed Harry and Gil.

            “That’s my name,” said Uma. She submerged herself.

            “No!” cried Mal.

            A whirl of water shot into the air and fell across the bridge.

            “Hi, boys,” said Uma, grinning at her crew. She was in a human form and a captain’s uniform again. She still held the ember, glowing, in her hand.

            “Welcome back!” Harry grinned.

            “Uma, you swam off and forgot all about us.” Gil had a disappointed expression as he spoke.

            “Yeah. Planning her revenge, no doubt,” said Mal, crossing her arms.

            “It’s not all about you, Mal,” scoffed Uma. “I was looking for a hole in the barrier to let everybody out. And you know what I found, boys? It’s way better out there than we thought. There’s this thing that looks like a furry rock, called a coconut. And fish so big you could dance on their back.” She smiled wide, ecstatic to share her discoveries with her crew. She glared at Mal and her crew. “And they’ve been keeping it all to themselves.”

            “Whatever.” Mal rolled her eyes. “Uma, I need that to break a spell.” She held out her hand.

            “Cast by Audrey, Sleeping Beauty’s daughter,” said Carlos.

            “So the good guy is the bad guy?” Uma raised a brow and chuckled.

            “Mean girl to evil girl pipeline,” said (Y/N), sighing.

            “Well, I might not give it back,” said Uma, pouting at Mal. “Let’s see what happens.”

            “Uma, this is not the time for games!” snapped Mal. “People’s lives are in danger!”

            Uma just laughed, and Harry and Gil grinned. Mal was pretty easy to read.

            “Guarantee me that every single villain kid who wants to can get off the Isle,” said Uma.

            Nothing selfish. Just asking for freedom. (Y/N) almost smiled. It seemed Uma had grown a little. (Y/N) had been right, she wanted what was best for the Isle.

            “I can’t do that,” said Mal.

            “Can’t do that?” Uma walked to the edge of the bridge and held the ember over the water. “Well, how about now?”

            “Deal!” said Mal instantly. “Deal.”

            Uma pretended to drop the ember and catch it. Everyone gasped.

            “Uma,” said (Y/N). “Her word is good. We were going to bring over VKs more frequently, too, so this is just…faster.” They smiled to try to assuage the tension.

            Uma looked at them and then her crew. Gil shrugged, and Harry nodded. He believed (Y/N)’s words.

            “I”ll still keep this for the time being.” Uma pocketed the ember. She grinned at Mal’s frustration. “Because if you think I trust you to save the world on your own, think again…This is a job for pirates.”

            “Yeah,” said Gil and Harry, grinning.

            “We can always go back to hating each other when this is over,” whispered Jay to Mal.

            “Fine.” Mal was furious.

            “Where are our bikes?” demanded Jay.

            “Oh, yeah. We crashed them,” said Gil brightly.

            Harry imitated an engine, mimed it falling, and made an crashing sound. He winked at (Y/N).

            “Here’s a thought,” said Evie, hands on her hips. “We could try to be friends. Put our history behind us and celebrate our differences.”

            “We’d be pretty strong together,” agreed (Y/N).

            The three pirates looked at the other VKs. All of them looked skeptical.

            “Who wants gum?” offered Evie, popping a piece into her mouth.

            Uma turned away. “Let’s go.”

            “No?” Evie rolled her eyes.

            (Y/N) patted her on the shoulder.

            “Ah,” said Mal as Uma took a step. “No. I’m in charge. Let’s go.”

            Uma rolled her eyes, and they both started walking at the same time. Evie and (Y/N) sighed and followed the group.

             “This is going to be trouble, isn’t it?” said (Y/N).

            “Definitely,” said Evie.

l

            The VKs and (Y/N) walked through the grounds of Auradon Prep. Soft snores echoed around them. People were slumped over tables and benches, completely asleep. The sleeping spell had hit everyone hard.

            “They’re asleep. Everyone,” said Mal as she went through her contacts on her phone. No one was responding. “I can’t get Ben.”

            “Or Dizzy or Doug,” said Mal.

            “Or Jane,” said Carlos.

            “Fairy Godmother isn’t responding,” said (Y/N). “Not good.”

            “Is that Auradon Prep?” said Celia, staring at the academy. Her eyes went wide.

            “Yeah. When everybody wakes up, you’re going to love it,” said Carlos.

            “Yes,” said Celia, fist pumping the air.

            “Everything is so…” Gil stared around him.

            “Freaky,” said Jay.

            “Green,” said Gil. “You have leaves on your trees. And what are those colored things on the bushes?”

            “Flowers?” said Jay.

            “Flowers are pretty,” decided Gil.

            While Gil admired the new plants and fresh food, Harry admired wallets. He grinned as he pulled a wallet from a sleeping student.

            “I believe I deserve some compensation for my muscle, my wiles, and my role in this endeavor,” said Harry, smirking.

            “Harry.” (Y/N) stood over him and put their hands on their hips.

            Harry sighed dramatically. “I’ve got to do some piracy.”

            (Y/N) laughed. “More like pickpocketing.”

            “Ya wound me, Highness,” said Harry. “I am a proper pirate, through and through.” He bowed. He smirked. “Got the swords and wit to prove it.”

            “Is that what you call your shameless flirting?” said (Y/N).

            “Shameless?” Harry raised a brow and chuckled.

            “Is uncontrollable a better word?” said (Y/N).

            “No,” said Harry. He leaned on a tree and winked. “I only flirt with the handsome royals.”

            “Huh. Ben’s taken. I feel sorry for you,” teased (Y/N).

            “Benny ain’t as handsome as you, Highness,” said Harry.

            (Y/N) smiled slightly and fought back their blush. “Still trying to charm me?”

            “I guess I am shameless,” said Harry.

            (Y/N) laughed.

            “Dude!” Carlos ran towards the dog, thankfully alive.

            “He’s awake?” said Evie.

            “Sleeping spells don’t work on animals,” said (Y/N).

            “Dude, do you know what happened here?” asked Carlos.

            “Yup. Audrey showed up. She put everybody to sleep,” said Dude. “And then she turned some of them to—”

            “Guys.” Evie’s eyes widened as she found just what Audrey had done. Statues. There were so many people they recognized frozen in stone. “She turned them to stone.”

            “Alright,” said Mal. “We have to stay on our toes.”

            “Look, since we’re here, let’s check the school,” said Uma, gesturing to Auradon Prep.

            “No,” said Mal decisively. “Audrey went straight for the crown, so, I think it’s safe to assume that she’s gonna go for Ben and his castle next. That’s where we’ll go.”

            “Says who?” said Uma.

            “Says me,” said Mal.

            “Says you. What’s that supposed to mean?”

            “Guys,” said Evie before they could start arguing again. It was an ongoing battle.

            “To the castle,” said Mal, walking off.

            Uma and her crew huffed but followed.

l

            “Ben!” shouted Mal as they walked through the halls of the castle.

            “This way,” said Dude, tracking Ben’s scent as best he could.

            “Ben could be asleep anywhere,” said Mal, groaning.

            “Or turned to stone,” said Celia.

            Evie covered Celia’s mouth as Mal’s eyes widened in panic.

            “Ben!” called (Y/N).

            “I got a scent. Very pungent cologne,” said Dude. “Easy to track. Follow me, people.”

            “Thanks, Dude,” said Carlos.

            “FYI, I give great cuddles,” said Dude, eager to get affection from the newcomers.

            “Cool,” said Gil. “I never had a pet growing up. Well, except for the elk head in Dad’s man cave, but that wasn’t—”

            “Hold up.” Uma put up a hand. She stared at marks on the wall.

            (Y/N) peered closed. They were claw marks. “That can’t be good,” they murmured.

            “Oh, Ben…” said Mal softly.

            “We’ll find him,” said (Y/N).

            “Follow me,” said Dude.

He led them into a presentation hall where suits of armor stood at the walls, swords hung on crests, and a dais for speeches and shows of armor stood in the middle.

            “Ben!” said Mal in frustration.

            Harry admired the suits of armor and the swords. “Would ya duel me with these?”

            “Why not,” said (Y/N). “We save Auradon; we duel.”

            Harry grinned.

            “I bet you lost some sleep thinking about me on the loose?” said Uma, smirking at Mal.

            “No,” said Mal. “Dragons don’t really lose sleep. I wonder what fried octopus tastes like?”

            “Okay, why don’t we not do this?” said Evie.

            “We’re celebrating our differences,” said Uma.

            A laugh echoed through the room. Pink smoke filtered from within a suit of armor.

            “I believe we’re being challenged,” said Harry.

            “We’re getting that duel now,” said (Y/N).

            “Let’s split up and look for Audrey.” Uma and Mal were too busy fighting to listen to them.

            “That makes absolutely no sense!” said Mal. “Unless you give me my ember, she’s going to spell you.”

            “Girls!” shouted Harry as the armor moved.

            “We have a situation here!” said (Y/N).

            “Do you like a prince, Mal?” said Audrey’s voice from the armor. “How about a knight in shining armor? Or knights?”

            All the armor began to move. (Y/N) narrowed their eyes. It was time to go up against Audrey.

Taglist:

@neenieweenie

@hampterfae

@american-idiot-jpg

@lunalixya

@roo024

@unholycheesesnack

@paastaboi

@lbee13

@rory-cakes

@theeghosted

@newttheglue250

@bridkesby

@yappydoo

@echoheartza

@pain-in-the-ashe

@sugarrush-blush

@sanaxo-o

@ara-theo

[nyxshadowhawk]

A Retrospective on Harry Potter

Why did I like it in the first place? What about it worked? Where do I go from here?

I have decided to give up Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s reputation now stinks to high heaven. At this point, she is quite indefensible. And even if that weren’t the case, she is not someone that I would want to associate with anyway. Meanwhile, the internet has not only turned against her, but against Harry Potter itself. An innocent question on Reddit, about which Hogwarts Houses the ATLA characters would be in, got downvoted to oblivion. Innumerable Tumblr threads insist that fantasy fans should get into literally anything else (suggestions include Discworld, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, and Percy Jackson). And now that Harry Potter is no longer a sacred cow, there has been a recent slew of video essays that rip it to shreds, attacking it for its poor worldbuilding, unoriginality, and the problematic ideas baked into the original books (like the whole SPEW thing), etc. Those criticisms always existed, but now they’re getting thrown into the limelight.

It pains me to see such an ignoble downfall of Harry Potter’s reputation. If Rowling had just kept her damn mouth shut, Harry Potter would have aged gracefully, becoming a beloved children’s classic. I'd still plan to introduce it to my own kids one day (after Rowling dies and the dust settles). It’s not surprising that not all aspects of it have aged well, since it’s been more than twenty years since its original publishing date, and everything starts to show its age after that long. I acknowledge that most of the criticisms of the series that I’ve seen lately are valid, and I’ve read plenty of better books. And yet, when I return to the books themselves, even with the knowledge of who JKR really is inside my head, I still really enjoy reading them! There’s still a lot about them that I think works!

None of the other things I’ve read have had as collossal of an impact upon my identity, my values, and my own writing as Harry Potter. It’s hard to move on from it, not just because it’s something I enjoy, but because I have to literally extract my identity from it. I don’t know who I’d be without Harry Potter. I don’t know what my work would look like without Harry Potter. I don’t know how to carry it with me as just another piece of media that I like, as opposed to a filter for who I am as a person. So, with all that in mind, I have to ask myself why I liked Harry Potter so much in the first place. If I’m going to move on from it, then I have to be able to define and isolate the things about it that I want to keep with me. Something about it obviously worked, on a massive scale. So what was it?

It’s not the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is objectively quite terrible, especially in comparison to that of other fantasy writers who knew what they were doing. At best, it’s inconsistent and poorly thought-out, and at worst it’s insensitive or even racist. Is it the characters? The characters are, in my opinion, one of the stronger parts of the story. But I felt very called-out by one of the many online commentators, who said that anyone who identifies with Harry is too cowardly to write self-insert fic. (I do not remember who said it or even which site it was on, but I distinctly remember the phrase, “Reject Harry Potter, embrace Y/N.”) The reason why people get so invested in Harry Potter’s characters is because they’re easy to project upon, and it’s possible that my love of Harry comes more from over a decade’s worth of projection than anything else. The incessant arguments over characters like Snape, Dumbledore, and James Potter ultimately stem from the fact that these characters do not always come across the way Rowling wanted them to. As for the writing itself, it’s decent, but not spectacular. Harry Potter is something of a sandbox world, with less substance than it appears to have and a crapton of missed opportunities, making it ripe for fanfic. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing precisely that — using Harry Potter as a jumping-off point to fill in the gaps and develop my own ideas, some of which became my original projects.

So what does Harry Potter actually have that sets it apart? Why are people so desperate to be part of Harry Potter’s world if the worldbuilding is bad? What, specifically, is so compelling about it? I think that there’s one answer, one thing that is at the center of Potter-mania, and that has been the underlying drive of my love of it for the past decade and a half: the vibe.

Harry Potter’s vibe is immaculate.

You know what I mean, right? It’s not actually a product of any specific trope, but rather a series of aesthetic elements: The wizarding school in a grand castle, with its pointed windows and torches and suits of armor, ghosts and talking portraits and moving staircases, its Great Hall with floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky, its hundreds of magically-concealed secret doorways. Dumbledore’s Office, behind the gryphon statue, with armillary spheres in every single shot. Deliberate archaisms that evoke the Middle Ages without going as far as a Ren Faire: characters wearing heavy robes, writing with quills and ink on parchment instead of paper, drinking from goblets, decorating with tapestries. Owls, cats, toads. Cauldrons simmering in a dungeon laboratory. Shelves piled with dusty tomes, scrolls, glass vials, crystal balls, hourglasses. Magical candy shaped like insects and amphibians. A library with a restricted section. A forbidden forest full of unicorns and werewolves. That is the Vibe.

There are five armillary spheres just in this shot. They are unequivocally the most Wizard of tabletop decor.

There’s more to it than just the aesthetic, though. The vibe is present in something that writers call soft worldbuilding.

There’s a phrase that writers use to describe magic systems, coined by Brandon Sanderson: hard magic and soft magic. Sanderson’s first law of magic is, “An author’s ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” A hard magic system has clearly-defined rules — you know where magic comes from, how it works and under which conditions, how the characters can use it, and what its limitations are. Examples of really good hard magic systems include Avatar: The Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist. If the audience doesn’t understand the conditions under which magic can work, then using magic to get out of any kind of scrape risks feeling like the writer pulled something out of their ass. It begs the question, “Well, if they could do that, then why didn’t they do that before?”

You may come away from that thinking that having clearly-defined rules is always better worldbuilding than not having them, but this isn’t the case. Soft magic isn’t fully explained to the audience, but that doesn’t matter, because it isn’t trying to solve problems — its purpose is to be evocative. Soft magic enhances the atmosphere of a world by creating a sense of wonder. If your everyman protagonist is constantly running into cool magical shit that they don’t understand, then the world feels like it teems with magic, magic that is greater and more powerful than they know, leaving lots of secrets to uncover. Harry Potter, at least in the early books, excels at this. The soft magic in Harry Potter is what got me hooked, and I think it’s what a lot of other people liked about it, too.

The essence of soft magic is best summed up by this scene in the fourth film, in which Harry enters the Weasleys’ tiny tent at the Quidditch World Cup, only to find that it’s much bigger on the inside. His reaction is to smile and say, “I love magic.”

That’s it. That’s the essence of it. You don’t need to know the exact spell that makes the tent bigger on the inside. You don’t need to know how Dumbledore can make the food appear on the table with a flick of a wand, or how he can make a bunch of poofy sleeping bags appear with another flick. You don’t need to know how and why the portraits or wizard cards move. You don’t need to know how wizards can appear and disappear on a whim, or what the Deluminator is, or where the Sword of Gryffindor came from. You don’t need to know how the Room of Requirement works. Knowing these things defeats the purpose. It kills the vibe, that vibe being that there is a large and wondrous magical world around you that will always have more to discover.

One of the best “soft magic” moments in the books comes early in Philosopher’s Stone, when Harry is trying to navigate Hogwarts for the first time:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8

Many of these details don’t come back later in the series, which is a shame, because this one paragraph is super evocative! It establishes Hogwarts as an inherently magical place, in which the very architecture doesn’t conform to normal rules. Hogwarts seems like it would be exciting to explore (assuming you weren’t late for class), and it gets even better when you learn about all the secret rooms and passages. The games capitalized on this by building all the secret rooms behind bookcases, mirrors, illusory walls, etc. into the game world, and rewarding you for finding them. The utter fascination that produces is hard to overstate.

Another one of the most evocative moments in the first book is when Harry sees Diagon Alley for the first time, after passing through the magically sealed brick wall (the mechanics of which, again, are never explained). This is your first proper glimpse at the wizarding world and what it has to offer:

Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad....” A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.... —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5

What works so well here is the magical weirdness of wizardishness juxtaposed against normalcy. Eeylops Owl Emporium is just a pet shop to wizards. A woman makes a very mundane complaint about the price of goods, but the goods happen to be dragon liver. Broomsticks are treated like cars. All of these small moments contribute to the feeling of the wizarding world being alive, inhabited, and also magical. It gets you to ask the question of what your life would be like if you were a wizard. What do wizards wear? What do they eat? What do they haggle over and complain about? What do they do for fun?

In Book 3, Harry enjoys Diagon Alley for a few weeks when he suddenly has free time, and we get to experience the wizarding world in a state of “normalcy,” when he isn’t trying to save the world. He gets free ice creams from Florean Fortescue, gazes longingly at the Firebolt, and engages with delightfully weird people. He’s a wizard, living a (briefly) normal wizard life among other wizards in wizard-land. And that is fun. It’s so fun, that people want that experience for themselves, enough for there to be several theme parks and other immersive experiences dedicated to recreating the world of Harry Potter.

One of the greatest things about Universal was its phenomenal attention to detail. You can hear Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the women’s bathroom, and only the women’s bathroom. The walls of the Three Broomsticks have shadows of a broom sweeping by itself and an owl flying projected against the wall, so convincingly that you’ll do a double take when you see it. Knockturn Alley is down a little secret tunnel off of the main street, and that’s where you have to go to buy Dark Arts-themed stuff. It’s really well done.

Another thing that contributes to the vibe, in my opinion, is that the wizarding world is slightly macabre. They eat candy shaped like frogs, flies, mice, and so forth, and they have gross-tasting jellybeans. In the film’s version of the Diagon Alley sequence above, there’s a random shot of a pet bat available for purchase. In the third film, when Harry is practicing the Patronus Charm with Lupin, the candles are shaped like human spines. In the first book, this is Petunia’s description of Lily’s behavior after she became a witch:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school, and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 4

I remember reading this for the first time, and it just kind of made intuitive sense to me. I suppose it fits into the “eye of newt and toe of frog” association between magical people and gross things, but somehow it works. Unfortunately, this is retconned later with the knowledge that wizards can’t use magic outside school, but before that limitation gets imposed, the idea of Lily amusing herself by turning teacups into rats seems like an inherently witchy thing to do.

That association between magic and the macabre shows up elsewhere, as well. In The Owl House, Luz’s interest in gross things is one of the things that marks her as a “weirdo” in the real world. When she goes to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, weird and gross stuff is absolutely everywhere. That world’s vibe leans more towards the macabre than the whimsical, but it works because you sort of expect the gross stuff to exist alongside the concept of witches, and that they would be an intrinsic part of the world they inhabit. You don’t question it, because it’s part of the vibe.

(The Owl House is one of the few things I’ve encountered that has a similar vibe to Harry Potter, but it’s still not the same vibe. In fact, The Owl House outright mocks the expectation that magical worlds be whimsical, and directly mocks Harry Potter more than once. The overall vibe is much closer to Gravity Falls.)

The Harry Potter films utilize a lot of similar soft worldbuilding with the background details, especially in the early films that were still brightly-colored and whimsical. For example, the scene in Flourish and Blotts in the second film has impossibly-stacked piles of books and old-timey looking signs describing their subjects, which include things like “Celestial Studies” and “Unicorns.” When Harry arrives in the Burrow in the same film, one of the first things he sees is dishes washing themselves and knitting needles working by themselves, taking completely mundane things and instantly establishing them as magical. In that Patronus scene with Harry and Lupin, the spine-candles and a bunch of random orbs (and the obligatory giant armillary sphere) float around in the background. One small detail that I personally appreciate is the designs on the walls above the teacher’s table in the Great Hall, which are from an alchemical manuscript called the Ripley Scroll:

It’s all these little things that add up to produce The Vibe.

Obviously, much of the vibe is expressed very well in John Williams’ score for the first three Harry Potter films. The mystical minor key of the main theme, the tinkly glockenspiel, the strings, the rising and falling notes that mimic the fluttering of an owl, the flight of a broomstick, or the waving of a wand. That initial shot of the castle across the lake as the orchestra swells, as the children arrive at their wizarding school:

If you grew up with Harry Potter, just looking at this image gives you The Vibe. The nostalgia hit is definitely part of it, but The Vibe was already there, back when you were a child and you didn’t have nostalgia yet.

In my opinion, only Williams’ score captures this vibe — the later films, though their scores are very good, do not. But the soundtrack of the first two video games, by Jeremy Soule (the same person who did Skyrim) absolutely nails it. This, right here, is Harry Potter’s vibe, condensed and distilled:

This is why I feel invalidated by the common advice “just read another book.” I have read other books. I’ve read plenty of other books, many of which are wonderfully written and have left an impact on me. But there’s still only one Harry Potter. To date, there’s only other book that has filled me with a similarly intense longing for a fictional place, and that is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book deliberately prioritized atmosphere over everything else in the story, and actually lampshades this in-universe. The Night Circus has a plot and it has characters, but it’s not about its plot or characters. It’s about the setting and its atmosphere. It swallows you up and transports you to a fictional place that is so evocative and so magical that you just have to be part of it or you’ll die. And even then, The Night Circus has a different kind of vibe from Harry Potter. In this particular capacity, there’s nothing else like Harry Potter.

The thing is, I don’t think Rowling was being as deliberate as Erin Morgenstern. (In fact, given many of Rowling’s recent statements, I question how many of her creative choices were deliberated at all.) She was throwing random magical stuff into the background without thinking too hard about it, which works when you’re writing a kids’ story, but stops working when you try to age it up. Actually, scratch that — soft worldbuilding is definitely not just for kids! The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system, for crying out loud, and Tolkien is the original archmage of worldbuilding. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that prioritizing atmosphere over meticulousness is bad worldbuilding. That is a valid way to worldbuild! Not everything needs to be clearly explained, not everything needs to make sense. The problem is that Harry Potter doesn’t balance it well. Certain things do have to be explained in order for the magic to play an active role in the story (and the setting of a magic school lends itself to that kind of explanation), but no rules are ever established for the kinds of magic that need rules. When you begin thinking about the rules, you’re no longer just enjoying the magic for what it is. At worst, you begin running up against the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

It wasn’t actually the “aging up” of the story that did it in, per se, but rather, the introduction of realism. The early books were heavily stylized, and the later books were less so. A heavily stylized story can more easily maintain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. That’s why, for example, you don’t ask why the characters are singing in a musical — you just sort of accept the story’s outlandish internal logic, and the inherent melodrama of it doesn’t take you out of the story. Stylized stories are more concerned with being emotionally consistent over being logically consistent. The later Harry Potter books changed their emotional tone, but without changing the worldbuilding style to compensate.

In addition to the more mature themes and darker tone, Harry Potter introduced more realism as it went, but Rowling did not have the worldbuilding chops to pull this off. There’s the basic magic system stuff: When you begin thinking about it too hard, something like a Time-Turner stops being a fun magical device, and starts threatening to break the entire story. Then there’s the characters: Dumbledore leaving Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep in the first book is an age-old fairy tale trope that goes unquestioned, but with the introduction of realism in the later books, it suddenly becomes abandonment of a child to an abusive family. The exaggerated stereotypes of characters like the Dursleys become tone-deaf. The fun school rivalry of the House system is suddenly lacking in nuance. And then there’s the shift in tone: The wizarding world that we were introduced to as a marvellous place is revealed to be dystopian. You start thinking about how impractical things like owl messengers are, you start wondering if Slytherin is being unjustly punished, the bad history appears glaringly obvious, the quaint archaisms become dangerously regressive. Oh, and the grand feasts are made through slave labor! The wizarding world suddenly feels small and backward instead of grand and marvellous. J.K. Rowling’s bigotry throws it all into an even harsher light.

This is why I’ve always preferred the early books and films to the later ones. There’s a lot of things I like about the later ones, but they’re not as stylized — they don’t have The Vibe. Thinking about things too hard is just a necessary condition of adulthood, but it’s still possible to tell a dark, mature story that is highly stylized. I really think JKR could have better pulled off that shift if she was a more competent worldbuilder. But it is painfully obvious that she did not think things through, and probably didn’t understand why she had to. In her defense, she did not know that her story would end up being one of the most scrutinized of all time. As it stands, her strength in worldbuilding was in the softer, smaller, deliberately unexplained moments of magic that were there just to provide atmosphere. And there were less and less of those as the books went along.

Pretty much all the Harry Potter-related content released since the last film — including Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Hogwarts Mystery, Hogwarts Legacy, Magic Awakened, and that short-lived Pokemon Go thing — have been unsuccessful attempts at recreating The Vibe. In fact, the only piece of supplemental Potter content that I think had that Vibe down pat was the original Pottermore, back when it was more of an interactive game. And of course that got axed. That was right around the time things started going downhill.

Some of the art from Pottermore’s original Sorting quiz.

So what now? Well, that’s the question.

I think I can safely say that The Vibe was the reason I liked Harry Potter. It’s the thing I still like the most about it. I’ve spent years chasing it, like an elusive Patronus through a dark wood. If I can capture and distill that Vibe, and use drops of it in my own work, then perhaps I won’t need Harry Potter anymore.

I'm gonna write the story that I wish Harry Potter was, and when I'm a famous author, I won't become a bigot. I'll see you on the other side.

[fenrins]

im gonna be a hater tonight but idc! its a lomg one but i rlly wanted to rant 😔😔

im just gonna go right in and say it: some house of the dragon characters are unoriginal and lazy, and it pisses me tf off. im sick and tired of seeing the same oc regurgitated in this fandom bc istg half of these hotd ocs are literally just daenerys targaryen thrown back in time under a different name.

i usually dont care abt fanfic because its fanfic. nothing i can do, its probably some child having fun, but like i said im just TIRED of looking through hotd fanfics and seeing daenerys pop up as a faceclaim, and then going on to see that half (or all) of dany’s entire character is put into an oc with little to no actual originality if this makes sense.

before i get into this, what the fuck happened to the originality in original character? like genuinely? this is mainly abt one oc i legit just saw like an hour ago off of tiktok bc but still this applies to the daenerys knockoffs i (regularly) see and cry abt like my grown ass should not care but i do!!!!

starting off, the oc’s name is daenera. cool! fine! she’s not a daughter of rhaenyra which is a slay, but is a daughter of alicent and viserys which eh, good enough. we go on to find out that for some reason vizzy t and ali hate her, and at age 16 they decide to ship her off to pentos so she can marry a dothraki warlord. im not even joking. aside from that, she’s in pentos for a year, and comes back with an army of 550k and three dragons. okay hello daenerys! anyways she apparently fights for rhaenyra, but also bangs aemond, daemon, and cregan in the two year timeframe that the dance takes place in.

no one is gonna read this but my ass is mad and idgaf! i need to complain!! but anyways, i am sick and tired of the ocs that are just cheap copies of daenerys because at what point is this an original character? if youre using a faceclaim of daenerys for your character and essentially adding her entire plotline onto your oc, is it even an oc anymore? like i get being inspired to base a character off of her because dany is literally the blueprint, but copy and pasting her entire character and then going off and ignoring grrm’s established lore (yes, its a fanfic, but ive seen too many oc’s claim both cannibal AND vermithor at the same time and i am TIRED) is just lazy and boring.

i wish people did more with their hotd ocs honestly. like theres hundreds of houses and shit and actual ORIGINAL ideas one could use instead of just taking dany’s whole character and just making it their own. i dont even want to start an argument with this but i NEED to see more original characters. like im writing my own two on wattpad rn (one’s a dragonseed whos like schizophrenic idk and the other’s a mormont who slays the day away) but even then i just need more than aemond x his sister or niece or smth idk yk??

im just reiterating points ive made but man its just ughhhh