#i can't say where the plot is going or if I'm going to like it

[namtanlovesfilm]

burnout syndrome: everything we know & my guesses

since burnout syndrome seems to be in its very early stages of development, here is what we know & certain of my plot point guesses:

while the show is written by jittirain (who wrote theory of love), it does not come from one of her novels. it will therefore be an original script made for this series.

offgun must have had some details about doing this show for about 6 months, since off has worked out very intensely almost every day since then (since p'nuchie required it for this role), and it also coincides with gun saying that off would have a six pack next year. I believe offgun had a knowledge that their next show would be more mature & sexual, which is when p'nuchie got brought in, and I believe dew arrived later as the third one in the love triangle, around the same time jittirain signed on.

p'nuchie working with offgun again is surprising considering her previous treatment by gmmtv (cutting her budget repeatedly & not promoting not me at all despite p'nuchie being a big deal director), however it is not THAT surprising since not me was by far her most popular & mainstream project, and she has always had a soft spot for gun with whom she has worked repeatedly. she also seems quite close to off.

now, for the plot: we do not know any character's name or much about them at all, which is why this project really seems to still be in its infancy. I would not expect an early 2025 release... I think this will be an end of the year release à la not me & cooking crush.

gun seems to play a poor character compared to white in not me, while off plays a rich character compared to sean in not me... it's a role reversal! gun's character seems to be the struggling artist type, and an openly queer character. he's basically yok from not me (yes I'm keeping the not me comparisons bc there's a LOT!) he's down to do any odd job for money which is how he meets off's character. he seems quite daring & confident, while also a bit introverted & in his own world.

off's character definitely has todd vibes for me (and not just bc that pool kiss scene reminded me of the first toddblack confrontation lol). he seems to be a businessman but is very shady. he is described as a "bad boy" by emi's character, and he hires gun to be his "stand-in"... but he's still in the same room, dictating everything to him?? he says he doesn't like people, but what does it mean exactly? does he have a phobia of people? then in this case, why is he going outside so easily? all of these questions will be answered once the script will be fully written imo. I think that, just like not me, the mock trailer & final show will be very different but evoke the same vibe & characters. in any case, off's character is highly intriguing, he's clearly a red flag & kind of a weirdo, and I can't wait to know more!

next we have dew's character, who is a fortune teller? probably not as a job but as a hobby? (side note, I find it funny that so many gmmtv 2025 featured fortune tellers & psychics lol.) although I feel like choosing dew for the role bc they seem to make him want to seem a soft nerd against off's character who's possessive & rough is kind of a miscast bc since dew is SO tall he just doesn't give off these kinds of vibes imo, I'm quite interested in this love triangle. both dew & gun seem to like each other, and gun's tears when dew leaves are giving SERIOUS "in love" vibes. HOWEVER, gun's character definitely has a strong attraction for off & uses him as his artistic muse... the last quote of the trailer is "if one day he has a heart... I can love him, right?" indicating that off's character has shown gun that he has no heart but gun falls for him anyways... I JUST WANNA KNOW THE BACK STORY FOR THESE CHARACTERS SO BAD BC I KNOW IT'S GONNA HIT SO HARD!!! but to get back to dew, I really wanna know where he fits into this story, because...

this is almost guaranteed to be an offgun endgame. I say almost bc there's always the possibility of it being a poly endgame but let's be for real, I don't see dewoff having any chemistry lol (though they can surprise me, I didn't think dew would have romantic chemistry with gun either!) but the fact that offgun have been a stable ship for 9 years, that they came out on stage from a different platform than dew, the positioning in the poster... and also everything in the trailer indicates that they are endgame. I'm curious to see what happens to dew then though lol, we shall see.

I'm very curious about emi's role. she obviously played gun's sister in the trainee, and now she plays his best friend so she's now the only actor who has been featured in 2 offgun shows with sing, especially back to back lol! seeing how there's only 5 characters shown for now & she was in the main actors list alongside offgundew... I think she'll have a big role, but I have no idea what it can be. in any case, I stan!

lastly for the characters, we have thor, who I'm also really intrigued by. we know he works in burnout bar but WHAT is burnout bar? why do they match random people by numbers? does everyone who comes there needs to be burned out? as a background place for the show, this bar is interesting & reminds me of the one in the jungle (which also featured off!) I wonder if we'll see off in that bar, even though it's been established as dewgun's place in the mock trailer, it's too central to the story to keep its main character out of it for the whole show. I'm hoping thor has a bigger role than just the bartender lol.

in conclusion, a lot of things are very vague about this show, which is a bit frustrating bc I WANNA KNOW MORE, but also really nice bc it means that, compared to certain other shows from gmmtv 2025, we won't be spoiled most of the story by the trailer :) also I'm betting that they will add one or two other cast members, but they haven't written the show yet so all of the characters aren't fleshed out yet. anyways, I can't wait! 💚💚💚

EDIT: turns out I have more to say lol

so I was looking at the poster closely while editing my thumbnail for my gmmtv 2025 reaction video, and I noticed something:

the whole poster is in red tones: the background, the title, the lighting in their hair... and their clothes... EXCEPT for dew's shirt.

although this is just a mock poster & once again, the show will likely evolve once the script is written, the visual story telling of this poster is extremely interesting!

dew's shirt is light blue compared to the rest of the poster which is overwhelmingly red. blue represents calm and peace, which seems in line with the little we have seen from dew's character so far.

gun's shirt is pink. in terms of value, him & dew both have lighter colored shirts, but in different families. dew's blue is a cold color while gun's pink is a warm color.

now onto off, who has a dark red shirt. in terms of value, his is completely different from both dew and gun's, which also fits the little of his character we've seen. he is called a "bad boy" and "chaos" in this trailer after all, which fits the darker red color well. however, in terms of color family, off & gun are more in line bc they're both wearing a shade of red which is a warm color. since this show will clearly hinge on their sexual desire for one another, this makes sense. and since the poster unity is in the red, which IS the color of passion, sex, and violence, it is clear that offgun are the main pairing of this show, with off's hand on gun's head while dew is only passively touching gun by being close to him.

although red is the color of violence, I don't think there will be much physical violence in this show, as the trailer didn't hint for it at all. although I wouldn't be surprised we get a scene of off & dew sparring to stay in line with the classic bl love triangle tropes. though since dew is much taller than off, I wonder how they'd make it look like a fair fight lmao.

anyways, back to the poster. by having gun & dew's clothes in the same value which is light, as well as dew snuggling to gun's heart, we can infere that gun will first like dew. after all, we meet dew before off in the trailer, and it seems to be the same for gun's character. dew is the "good guy" in this show, the one that "makes sense", where things are "easy." however, his clothes ARE in a different color family as gun's. blue is calm, but it's also cold. which is why dew seems to be able to walk away from his job with off, and more importantly, gun, in the trailer.

but for off, whose clothes are darker than gun, showing his "bad" side, he is at least in the same color family as gun's. we see in the trailer that gun has a lot of sexual desire for off, which is clear with the drawing he does of him where off's genitals are OUT and he's touching himself:

side note - I'm gonna need the full nude scene to include the moment off touches himself while gun dies in a sea of desire bc I genuinely think this will be the peak of queer cinema. yok in not me said nude drawing isn't sexual? make it. please p'nuchie, make it sexual in burnout syndrome 🙏

second side note - damn they made off's waist so snatched in that drawing, I love it 😏

ANYWAYS to conclude: we have offgun showing so much more visual cohesion in this poster, which really makes me think this will not be a full love triangle (in a poly way) but a show where the logical suitor (dew) gets overtaken by the chaotic, messy one (off.) now, how are they going to make it make sense and make us root for the bad boy? idk & I CANNOT wait!

although I do think that having dew (light blue) and off (dark red) have some sort of gay scene together WOULD make sense, and it would even more make sense that they wouldn't work bc they're literal opposites in everything, creating even more stakes in the love triangle.

that's it, I've ruled out that I don't want a poly ship or any trio scene, I want offdew having hooked up in the past & it haunting them LMAO

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Re-skimmed through a bunch of Dune Messiah last night because why not and now I am having thoughts:

The thing that sticks with me most is the tone. It's melancholy, it's eerie, it's unsettled and weird. Cannot think of a more pitch-perfect director for it than Denis Villeneuve. He's gonna nail it.

There is...not that much...actual story? Denis has referred to it in interviews as "a small book" and I'm like my guy it is 350 pages. But there are actually not that many plot beats. It's just that every. single. scene. is WILDLY overwritten. The real challenge of adapting Dune is not the giant worms or the dense complicated worldbuilding or the fact that actors have to say the name "Duncan Idaho" repeatedly with a straight face. It's that there are pages and pages and PAGES of internal monologue that have to be externalized somehow for film.

After a re-skim my gut instinct for "how much story goes in a feature film" is that if you just wrote out the dialogue and action that happens in every scene in the book in screenplay format you'd end up with...maybe about an hour of material? Which is great, actually, because it means there is room to add stuff. Like a whole new independent plotline for Chani if they decide to do that.

It may seem insane to add things to an adaptation of what's notoriously one of the wordiest series in classic sci-fi but it's worth remembering that they added quite a bit to Dune Part Two. Most of the first hour of the movie--almost everything before the worm ride except for Jessica drinking the Water of Life--is stuff that isn't in the book. And it's the best part of the movie essential to making the movie work as well as it does. Yes, they also cut elements from both parts (the dinner scene, the whole plotline where Gurney thinks Jessica is a Harkonnen spy, Thufir Hawat's fate, Leto II the Elder, murder toddler Alia) but I understand why each of those elements was cut or changed in the service of cinematic storytelling.

There's an interview (can't remember which one) with Jon Spaihts, the other co-writer of the scripts along with Denis, where he talks about how Dune is like a stage play, with so many of what would be the big action set pieces happening off-page. I kept thinking about that comparison while reviewing Dune Messiah because in addition to the scenes that do exist being wordy and internal as fuck, an absolutely insane list of major events/reveals/emotionally significant moments happen off-page. The list of things that we don't actually see in the main action of the story, that we're only told about after they happen, includes:

Chani finding out Irulan has been secretly dosing her with birth control for YEARS

People trying to capture a sandworm and take it off planet

Chani and Paul finding out Chani is pregnant after 12 years of trying to conceive

Paul flying an ornithopter carrying his extremely-about-to-go-into-labor partner while blind

CHANI DYING (first time reading I did NOT know this was coming and damn near threw my Kindle across the room at the way the information was delivered)

Alia executing a bunch of people including a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother

Paul walking into the desert at the end

You could add all these moments into a scene-for-scene film adaptation of the book and probably still have room to add more material.

The other thing that jumps out is that Paul doesn't really...govern...much. Like there's this whole subgenre of post-Dune/Dune Messiah-era fic that's just some combination of Paul, Chani, Irulan and sometimes Feyd traipsing around the palace having feelings while vague politics happens in the background, but I forgot that Dune Messiah is actually kinda like that??

There is a whole thread of Paul feeling kind of abstractly bad about being Space Hitler but he does not, in fact, actually do anything about it. And like yes both bureaucracies and religious movements can grow to have a life of their own that seems beyond the control of any one person. But also my dude you are the Emperor of the Known Universe. Someone is signing those space checks for the Endless War budget. You are not powerless here.

The one thing that really, clearly drives Paul to actively do things in the plot is not feeling guilty about having unleashed catastrophic religious war on the universe. It is protecting his family. Chani, Alia, his unborn children, and you could probably throw in Duncan by the end. That is what motivates him to act at key moments, and to want to hold on to power. And hey, y'know, if I'd experienced almost everyone I'd ever known getting murdered in a single night, I would probably get a bit intense about that too! It makes sense from a character point of view!

I'm very curious to see how these threads interweave with each other in the film, because the Villeneuve films put a lot of emphasis on Paul's agency and the fact that he may be constrained by shitty circumstances thousands of years in the making, but he still makes choices within that context. I can't see the narrative allowing film!Paul to get away with the same Poor Little Dictator routine as in the book. There are a few ways they could play this but I think the most interesting one is kinda the way they started going at the end of Part Two. Which is that as soon as you start reaching for that kind of power, then power becomes its own end and you will end up doing increasingly horrific things to maintain it. I think it would be quite interesting if the film shows us Paul not just being like "woe is me" but actively choosing to make the world worse because his trauma-driven fear of losing the people he loves makes him cling ever more desperately to power for its own sake.

If they went this route I think it would make Paul's decision at the end hit even harder. FWIW I actually really like Paul walking off into the desert at the end of the book. I think it brings things full circle with his relationship to the Fremen and creates this beautiful arc going back to the duel with Jamis. He first won a place among the Fremen through respecting their customs even though he really did not want to fight and kill someone he had no beef with. And by respecting the Fremen custom of the blind walking off into the desert, he proves himself to be fully Fremen and protects his children not by making them heirs to the throne but by making them Fremen.

And yeah, to a modern audience here on Earth it can look like "Paul conveniently fucks off and doesn't have to raise his newly-motherless children." And we can have a whole discussion about the unexamined ableism of the idea of someone who's gone blind voluntarily choosing death so as to "not be a burden" on their community. But neither of those readings is really the point here. Within the logic of Fremen cultural values, where the survival of the group as a whole is more important than the life of any one individual ("your water belongs to the tribe" etc.) Paul's choice is a willing and intentional self-sacrifice (see also: fedaykin) that wins him huge respect. There's a line in the book about Paul that's like "He would be one of them forever now" and damn if that didn't give me shivers. Like!! The political-symbolic implications!!! Which maybe I'm particularly attuned to because I just wrote a whole fic about what does it mean for an outsider to become Fremen but hmm something something Paul's final* act not being an exercise of Imperial power but an expression of kinship with an oppressed group and that being the thing that's needed to keep his family safe even if he is not physically present with them...IT IS RICH SYMBOLIC TERRITORY.

(*Yes yes I know about events in the next book. Shush.)

This kind of stuff is why I tend to think Chani may start out in a very different place in the story but the end will still be pretty close to what's in the book. It's too thematically powerful and tragic to go any other way.

But also...if they change things around enough that she is still alive at the end of the movie...I won't be sad about it.

[flowerspeakz]

Lmao I remember seeing images of vi as a pitfighter and thinking "noo spoilers 😭" (I didn't want to know ANYTHING about season 2 before watching it--get the best experience, yk?).

But like,,, Vi's pitfighter phase was so insignificant? Like actually so brushed over? I totally forgot about it because it had one stupid montage and that's it.

Why did she even become a pitfighter? Ik that it's her coping with her life falling apart, by why pitfighting? And also where's the pitfighting happening? And why is that vander replacement there? What??? Can they not like continue the insane worldbuilding they had from before please?

ffs I'm tired of people claiming that people critiquing arcane have no media literacy and want to be spoon fed. Be so fr the first season of arcane is so so SO GOOD because the reasoning behind characters' decisions were explained/shown before the decision was made. (silco choosing that kid to be the first human shimmer weapon because that kid fucked up his recon mission on vi/powder/mylo/claggor so badly, powder wanting to prove that she isn't a jinx because mylo keeps dissing her about it, marcus being a mess of a dirty cop because his family's safety is in silco's hands, etc, etc)

Characters are not real people. Sure, a real person can make decisions out of left field. Yeah, real people have microexpressions that can tell you a lot about what they're thining. But a character's motivations and how they think should be clear to the audience (generally, ofc there's exceptions im not stupid yo).

Yeah, I know why each character did what they did in s2, but not in the way I did in s1. Not in a way that matters.

I mean, I totally forgot that Mel and Jayce were in a relationship in s1. Where did that go?? I guess people are so obsessed with jayvik that they were probably celebrating that the writers forgor about that important character/plot point. You're telling me not a single character has ANY curiosity??? Jayce sees that Mel is a mage and doesn't, yk, insist on getting the full story??? And vice versa??? Even if they implied that that conversation happens off-screen that's not enough. Seeing how these two very close characters express these very traumatic events to each other would be such a good look into their internal mindscapes and how they view the crazy shit that just happened to them. But nooo. We can't explore their relationship together because jayce needs to be obsessed with viktor.

GOD I want a bi character in a show to come out of a same-sex relationship and end up in a "straight" relationship just to watch the internet fucking implode. Every bi/plurisexual person deserves a smooch on the forehead and a little voice that tells them 'love who you love, nothing could make you less queer than you are. yeah, people sure do think otherwise but fuck them ong holy shit'

omggg dont even get me started on caitvi... can we not get a healthy wlw relationship that isn't rooted in codependency and general toxicity?? "people just cant let lesbians have anything can they," i've heard people say in response to people criticising the caitvi sex scene... NO! I want sapphics to know that they can have healthy, non-abusive relationships where you, yk, actually talk to your partner and ARENT just the dirt under their nails. tf.

[ladylilithprime]

.....I have a lot of books that I've read, but I would hesitate to recommend them even where the authors have not to my knowledge done anything to warrant expulsion from the Good Writer Club on grounds that have nothing to do with writing. Especially on tumblr. Especially when at least two writers I devoured the works of have controversies in their personal lives that have caused many people to shun their works out of a sense of betrayal or just an overdeveloped desire for a social justice crusade. (Not getting into that up here, I've got a whole rant about the need for nuance and critical thinking and that's not the point at present.)

That said.

I did read the Harry Potter books until the fifth one when Rowling apparently fired her editor and started turning her books into more useful bludgeoning weapons. The movies were easier for me to sit through, though the adaptions changed things.

I tried to read Twilight and only got about a page and a half into the first book before I had to put it down from boredom. Again, the movie was easier for me to sit through (lack of first person narrative helped here) and I still haven't seen the others in the series.

I have never even picked up a book by Sarah J Maas, so I can't say anything about the quality of the writing from the perspective of me as a reader.

I haven't heard of any of the others, though I'm at least aware of Robert Jordan, much the way I'm aware of James Patterson.

The books I did read and devour?

The Brainship series and the Pern Chronicles by Anne McCaffrey (requiescat in pacem).

The Xanth series by Piers Anthony.

The Elvenbane and Elvenblood by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey.

Pretty much anything by Mercedes Lackey.

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C Wrede.

The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane.

The first three quartets in the Tortall universe by Tamora Pierce, though my appetite slowed after "Squire". (Not specifically a detractor to the later books, just where my own personal interest began to falter.)

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (yes I'm now aware of the issues surrounding her personally, but I wasn't when I read the book).

Pretty much everything by Terry Pratchett...

...which led me to his Good Omens co-author and various books he wrote. (Again with the timing of awareness, not getting into it here, see comments above.)

The Animorphs series by KA Applegate. (Tried to get into the Everworld series, didn't enjoy it as much.)

Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey (slow-going because I do have to be in a specific headspace to read that much BDSM porn, even when it's well-written and plot-relevant).

My partner loves the books by Lois McMaster Bujold and has read excerpts to me many times, which are quite entertaining.

I read Redwall by Brian Jacques and a couple others in the series, but found them more entertaining when I thought they were just talking animals.

So.

I'm currently sitting in a room surrounded by books because my family are all avid readers on a wide variety of genres. A lot of the books I'm staring at are not ones I would choose to read, and I've never been pressured to read them. My mum (just turned 80) has read many of them, usually right along with me. My dad (now 78) has read many of the same books as well as the rest she hasn't, and he's disagreed with many of them and written journals filled with notes and arguments on many of them. He was once given a book by an acquaintance who told him she thought he should read it because she knew he was a logical thinker (he did read it and told me later that the book was not at all logical; not having read it, I can't say either way).

Point is... go find a library and look through the stacks. Read the blurbs on the inside covers, maybe read a page or two. If you like it, keep reading. Look up the author on your phone if you have to in order to see what else they wrote.

And if you don't like the book, then just don't keep reading. Put it down, move on to another one. Don't go looking for controversy or dirt to justify not liking the book or the author. Don't do it to justify liking them, either. You do not need to justify your personal preferences. You can be aware of the politics the author has, even heartily disagree with their perspective and biases, and still enjoy reading a book. It's perfectly okay not to internalize what you read every time.

Otherwise, I wouldn't still reread The Chronicles of Narnia.

J. K. Rowling gave us facist Wizards.

Stephanie Meyer gave us Mormon Vampires.

And Sarah J. Maas gave us zionist Faeries.

The Holy Trinity of Mediocre White Women ruining fantasy for everyone!

[shepherds-of-haven]

do you have any poetry recommendations? or books with nice prose?

Hiya, I do not read poetry for leisure, so unfortunately I'm not a brilliant person to ask for recs--I like what I've heard of Li-Young Lee and Rumi, and if you're into the romantics, of course Walt Whitman, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, Keats, and Yeats are lovely! (Those are among my fiance's favorites--he's much more versed in poetry than I am and can recite multiple poems by heart!) When I was young, I liked Pablo Neruda, but I haven't revisited his poetry recently enough to feel strongly about it.

For fiction books with lovely prose, my old standbys are of course JRR Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion), Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), and Robin McKinley (The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, etc.). Patricia A. McKillip's prose is insanely lyrical, almost like a Celtic fairytale or Greek epic, though almost to the point where the plots were a bit slow: if you want to 'sink in' to the prose, though, she might be a good pick. Same with Guy Gavriel Kay (Tigana, The Lions of Al-Rassan). Oh, and Tad Williams, too--I loved his Shadowmarch series, but I hear Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is very poetic too.

If you want more recent recs, I thought The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden and The Curse of Chalion (and its sequel, The Paladin of Souls) by Lois McMaster Bujold had absolutely lush, sensuous, beautiful prose. Sharon Shinn's Mystic and Rider was great, too, though I would say it's just very well-written and velvety rather than outright poetic in its prose. Oh, and the prose in Robert V.S. Redick's two series--The Chathrand Voyage and The Fire Sacraments--is also absolutely insane! You can't go wrong with any of these, and they're all absolute standouts in the fantasy of the last 20 years, in my opinion!

Hope that's helpful!

[thegeekproblem]

okay, so there's no way i can actually write this fic, it's maybe too angsty for me? i just know i've been dissociating hard just thinking about it so let's purge the idea of my head. everyone feel free to write this fic, just tag me so i can go and read it. and who knows, maybe i will write it if i feel like i can get my ideas in order.

ANYWAY (timeline? what timeline?)

jason todd, after gotham war, with an implant in his head that makes him feel fear every time his adrenaline spikes, can't live in gotham anymore. once the criminal world in gotham find out about it he's hunted down like an animal, his normal nightmares just wake him up to more nightmares, there's no escape, no place safe. he runs from gotham, from the country. he leaves everything behind to go underground, as far away as he can manage. he returns to the all caste to hide from the world and as a way to at least be safe inside his head he erases all of his memories. everything. there's no bruce, no joker, no sheila, no catherine, no willis.

bruce notices the red hood is gone. he tries to search for him but there's no trace of him, he's just gone. damian says that talia helped him leave but he doesn't know where he is or if he'll ever come back. every once in a while bruce tries to look for him to no avail. barbara has a notification for a face scan world wide, tim has alarms in case he ever returns to gotham. still, jason is gone and life goes back to normal.

years pass and the world is under attack of the untitled and they have no idea how to save it. talia appears telling them the only way it can be saved is working with the all caste, there's a seer inside the caste that has seen what's going to happen and she needs to take them there. talia takes bruce to the chambers of all, even when all she wants to do is see gotham burn.

they arrive and ducra is waiting for them. (ducra knows who bruce is, who he is to jason but it's no longer important, she doesn't tell bruce any of this) ducra takes them to the seer but warns them that he's not completely here, that his mind has lived in the past-present-future and everything that could-would-will happen that he's kinda gone, that he paid the price with his memories so it doesn't matter. bruce doesn't care because he only wants to save the world and has no attachment to this seer.

they go to the chamber of the seer.

it's jason.

god, imagine jason, no memories, frustrated with the world and what it did to him, angry and unable to do anything about it looking at bruce and being like: i'm disappointed. i always wondered what type of person would do this to me? what did i do to make someone hate me this much? but i see you're just a normal human man.

A/N: if i ever get what the plot of this fic is actually about instead of just, you know, jus angst porn, i will write it. i love making jason suffer, but i also love bruce suffering the consequences of his own actions, and amnesia fics are just my jam, i fucking love them! i don't know where everyone else is in this fic, maybe dick and damian go with bruce to the chambers of all while tim and barbara man the fort back in gotham and dick goes all angsty-brother-filled-with-guilt at seeing seer!jason. and maybe jason is still a stubborn pice of shit, he still gets angry even if he doesn't understand why, he still holds grudges even when he no longer has memories. maybe seer!jason knows what's supposed to happen and joins them in gotham. also, imagine seer!jason sacrificing himself for people he doesn't remember because he knows that's what's supposed to happen. also, is there anyway to add jaydick to this fic??? i just love them so much.

[hyperdramas]

attracted to you | lee seokmin

pairing: lee seokmin x reader

warnings: lost of kissing, fluff, literally no plot, pet names (reader uses baby & seokmin's nicknames, seokmin uses love), one suggestive (??) sentence, fluff for days

now playing: attracted to you, pink pantheress

"Hi, love," Seokmin's voice is sweet as he leans over you, pressing a kiss to your cheek as you giggle at his softness. "Hi, Seok. Did you have a good day today?"

He sighs tiredly as he falls back into the duvet of your shared bed, letting out a loud, overexaggerated groan as you laugh at his antics. Seokmin's dark hair is sticking out from his hoodie, and you take it off, revealing his soft, freshly washed and cut hair. "Your haircut's so pretty, baby. Shows your pretty eyes."

Seokmin turns a flush pink, shaking his head as he covers his warming face. "Stop, don't say that." You chuckle, happy with his reaction as you place down your book.

"Do you have anything you're doing this evening?" Seokmin looks up at you with those big, brown, boba-like eyes of his, and you soften, shaking your head. "Not that I know of, no."

He smiles as he sits up, crawling up to where you are before he crashes on top of you, body heavy but not suffocating as he presses kisses to your exposed hips. You giggle at the feeling of Seokmin's lips on your cold, bare skin, and he smiles at you, watching your eyes with happiness.

"So pretty and so amazing. I think I love you." Seokmin punctuates each of his phrases with a kiss on your stomach, and you giggle, sighing as he sits up to look at your flushed cheeks.

"I think I love you too." You tease, and Seokmin falls back with you again, lips just a few inches away from yours as he smiles. "Don't just think it, love. Show me."

Giggling, you whip one arm around his neck, the other going to his back as you press him towards you in a soft kiss. His lips mold to yours as they've done millions of times before, and you can feel his back muscles tense under your touch as he pins you to the mattress, smiling against your lips.

Dokyeom gasps as you slip your fingertips under his hoodie, feeling his thin shirt as he chuckles while you kiss him. "You win, you win." He relents, and you smirk proudly, finally rolling from under him as he falls into the plush sheets.

"Ah, I love you." Dokyeom muses, eyes on you as he lays on his side. His head is on his hands like a little baby, and you push his hoodie from his face, finger tracing from his ear to his jawline and down his neck. "And I love you."

After a few minutes of lying there (with Seokmin staring at you like you've hung the stars in the sky), Seokmin sits up, groaning as you watch him with worried eyes. "What is it, Seok?"

"My back hurts. I think I'm getting old." Seokmin's voice is tense as he stretches, and you can hear the cracks in his back, earning a surprise yelp from Seokmin as his face turns pink. "See? I didn't even know my back could do that now."

Giggling at his surprised face, you sit up, legs pressed together as you watch him strip himself of his hoodie, revealing a form-fitting sweater that fits his body snugly. "You're not that old, Seokmin. You haven't even had a child yet."

"I'm waiting on you, love," Seokmin says with a soft smile. Although his tone and expression are sweet, the connotation of the sentence brings a burning feeling to your stomach and a pink hue to your cheeks.

"Waiting on me?" You repeat, and Seokmin hums, tucking his hoodie away as he returns to the bed and lies across it, head snugly in your lap. You stroke his cheek with your hand, stomach now filled with butterflies from his last sentence.

"Did that sentence do something to you?" Seokmin questions, and you nod quietly, laughing to yourself as you reply. "Mhm, it did. You're surprisingly good at flustering me tonight."

"I think it's because I love you." Seokmin chuckles, and you can't help but burst out laughing, head falling into Seokmin's neck as he giggles at your breath on his skin.

"You use that excuse for everything, Min." You smile, and he smiles up at you, shrugging.

"Because I do love you," Seokmin says, his eyes darting to your lips. You smile at his gaze and press a kiss to his forehead as his eyes squint shut. "Shut up, you big baby."

"But I'm your big baby," Seokmin states matter-of-factly, and you laugh.

"Yes, yes you are."

[mahou-furbies]

Now caught up with Mermaid Melody Aqua

When this originally started my involvement was mostly about gawking at Lukia's design and I only read a couple chapters before dropping off, but now I'm caught up. Aannnddd how do I put this... it's hard to gauge how critical I can be since this is clearly aimed at a younger audience, and also romance stories aimed at tween girls are already such a punching bag, but... this is the first time I'm considering if I should give a mal rating of 1/10 to a manga. I've read other Nakayoshi series and for the most part have been able to find something like or at least end with a wishy-washy "I'm not in the target audience but I guess it's okay for what it is" sentiment, but this one just has so many issues, in addition to a myriad of stuff that personally pisses me off.

The story is about the original series' heroine's teenage daughter Lukia, who, as anyone who knows anything at all about this manga, looks exactly like her mother for no reason. The ocean is in danger again and Lukia has to marry this one merman to prevent a catastrophe, but she is in love with a human boy, who doesn't know about her mermaid identity and is into both her human and mermaid personas separately and struggles to choose. There are also some magical girl battles. So not that unusual of a shoujo premise.

I tried to think of what my biggest issue with the manga is, but it turned out to be difficult since there are so many to choose from. For starters, I can't think of anything I like about Lukia. Obviously for someone who is into fun anime designs her look is an immediate 0/10 for being an exact copy of an existing character, but it also makes the story harder to follow at times when it's difficult to tell if a character is supposed to be Lukia or her mother. But even apart from the character design she's just so bland, and doesn't have much other passions than lusting after a boy and doing the plot, and even with the plot she's just sort of passively stumbling through. Like in the part where she's being pushed to be with her fiancé and she just limply goes along, and overall it feels as if she spends like 95% of the story looking flustered.

The boys are pretty generic shoujo love interests, and in general in control of the situation while the heroine blushes and follows. They also have little else going on outside chasing Lukia, and get into arguments with each other over who gets her while she feebly stands on the side (her opinion is irrelevant).

However despite the people in the main love triangle being extremely unlikable to me, somehow I'd say that the returning MMPPP cast draws the shortest straw in terms of characterisation. The former heroine Luchia has two roles; either she is the butt of the joke as an embarrassing mum, or an obstacle to Lukia's romance who pushes the arranged marriage, and both are depressing when you consider how she was originally a typical magical girl heroine. More often than not Luchia and her friends are more often than not written like immature teenagers, and at their lowest swoon over how attractive Lukia's fiancé is (all the while the readers are shown how unhappy Lukia is about having to marry some rando).

Lukia spends majority of the series thinking about men, and she doesn't really get proper friendships to balance that out. At the beginning the series does introduce a new mermaid as a friend to her, but they quickly fade into being just an accessory to Lukia. It feels like when the series wants to have a "the heroine is doing fun stuff with her girlfriends!" scene, it just has Lukia hang out with her mum and her mum's friends (who never grew up), which is kind of cringe.

Then there's the fanservice aspect; this is a shoujo series but it sure likes to have Lukia wear tops that show off her sizable rack and skirts short enough to show her butt cheeks. In one scene Lukia is just flat out naked so the main guy can walk in on her. And the mermaid tails have been drawn to display the curves of their legs, which to me creates a kind of grotesque effect when it looks like their feet have been cut off from the ankles.

Then finally some complaints about the overall storytelling, it's just so clunky. Like Luchia reveals that Lukia is a mermaid and already engaged, and Lukia runs off in anger. Next page she is introduced to the mascot and has some banter with him, and two pages later it's already the next day and we're at school. You would think that Luchia would at least try to talk a bit more about how her daughter's life is about to take a huge turn, but apparently nothing that was important enough to show to the reader happened during this time. In general there are a lot of moments where transitioning from one scene to another, or even from panel to panel, is noticeably clumsy. Characters also feel like they act just however the scene needs them to.

I am aware that there are plenty of women and girls who are into this kind of love stories where a big strong man shows up to swoop the blank slate heroine off her feet (just think about the popularity of Twilight and 50 Shades), and I would imagine that Mermaid Melody Aqua is aimed at 12-year-old girls who want a "sexy" romance with hot boys totally devoted to the viewpoint character. But I've never been there so I can't relate, and if I had to think "well someone else probably likes this" every time I think of writing a review I could never criticise anything. So let's just close with the sentiment that with the laziest character design imaginable, wet rag of a heroine, super conservative gender roles in the romance, inconsistent and dull characters, undignified portrayal of original series heroines, unappealing fanservice and overall weak writing this is a good contender for my least favourite manga ever. The story isn't over but it's hard to see how it could crawl out of this hole.

[emptymasks]

i've had constant aus and self-insert stories spinning around in my head for the past two months that i've been back into spn for, but i wasn't planning on doing anything more with them until i was browsing the fanart tags and discovered so many cool artists on here have been making spn ocs? it just never occurred to me that there would be any, let alone multiple, and to especially see ones being queer and trans made me really happy to see. so i took one of the too many different plots i'd been rotating in my head and made a little character out of it.

august north. he was killed by a demon when he was 26. his body was experimented on with the intent of creating an alternate long lasting vessel for lucifer. but a small amount of lucifer's grace bonded to august's body, reviving him as something not human, but not an angel. he meets the winchesters during season 4 of the show. he has some powers due to the archangel grace in him (healing factor, telekinesis) but it is not to the level of an archangel's power, possibly similar to regular angel's power or a bit less. he is a suitable alternate vessel for lucifer, if he were to say yes lucifer wouldn't burn through him like he does with nick. if lucifer's grace were to be removed from august's body then august would die, it is keeping him alive. the scar on his chest is from where lucifer's grace entered his body.

because of the whole 'boy with the devil's grace label' he ends up bonding a lot with sam, the two of them both being tied to lucifer through no choice of their own, and them both experiencing distrust and disgust from others because of this.

i really don't want any comments telling me that's not how angel grace works, i just liked the idea and it's my self-indulgent au. and august is entirely here for me to ship with lucifer so if that idea or lucifer in general makes you uncomfortable please just scroll on and don't judge me. i can't help falling back in love with this terrible archangel. i actually made a couple shrines on my website for sam and lucifer and boy i ended up writing way more about why i like them than i thought i would. the tldr is that i find things to relate to with lucifer in terms of the whole being cast out, family issues, being the black sheep of the family etc. and i find him fascinating, especially season 5 lucifer.

i'm not 100% sure on the storyline for august and lucifer, but lucifer does want to seek august out, partially because he's disgusted at a human having any of his grace, and partially because since sam is so hesitant to say yes it's nice for him to have this other option. i can imagine him visiting august in his dreams like he did with sam, trying to convince/manipulate him into saying yes, august not being bothered by his presence and instead feels drawn to him and ends up spending these dreams asking lucifer questions, and while lucifer is still trying to manipulate august into saying yes... he is lonely and this dead-alive human-angel boy is looking at him without disgust, isn't flinching when he touches him and he hasn't had anyone react like this to him in a long time and while he won't admit it a part of him is visiting august so often because out of all these hairless apes, this one isn't awful.

wow i wrote so much more than i meant too, oops. i guess that's good though, been a long while since i had an oc ramble this long.

[ID: a digital sketch page of my supernatural oc 'august north'. there's a half-body and full body drawing, with text around them. some of the text on the image i've already repeated in the text under the post but the rest reads: august north, supernatural oc, the boy with the devil's grace, pronouns: he/him, gender: trans man, height: 5'8", orientation: omnisexual, demisexual, demiromantic, nationality: english, occupation: hunter. august has pale brown curly hair that comes down to his collarbone in length, with a grey streak at the front right. he has two little braids going in front of each ear. in the half-body he's wearing a black coat, black long-sleeved shirt, a red bandana tied around his neck, white feather dangling earrings. in teh fullbody he's wearing black pants, black boots with spats over the top that look like little corsets, red with gold ribbon to lace them over the boots, a shirt button up that's unbuttoned and opened revealing the star shaped scar in between his pectorals from where lucifer's grace entered his body. he has two moles on his face, one under the outer corner of his right eye, one above the left side of his lip. his eyes are a blue-ish grey.]

[katsuki-king-of-twinks]

Pierce Brown's ability to believably write from Virginia's perspective will always amaze me.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm not going back to Gusu with you.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[phoenixcatch7]

It's always funny to me when in an lu fic the chain is offered bananas and don't accept them. Like, you're offering these high energy adventures free food?? Fruit they'll have never even heard of before??? A ridiculously expensive imported good at best?? AND it boosts your attack?

Not ONE of these idiots would ever turn down something new and interesting to eat at least once. They'd be all over those bananas and immediately get dubbed yiga and I'm honestly surprised no one has used it in a fic yet 🤭

[screamingwiththewolves]

I generally don't make posts like this, cause I don't wanna start an argument or disagreement, but I do find the "Is Hyde really a person?" discourse, a bit odd...I know it's a comic, and maybe I'll be proved horribly incorrect but...

Does he have emotions, with personality traits and preferences? Yes.

Does he insist he's a person? Yes.

Then he is, in fact, a person.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

when I want to write something self indulgent to give me all the angsty and cuddly hurt/comfort feels but I can't because I end up feeling guilty because I'm seeking after feels that I feel in an inappropriate place because my mom told me one time when I was 15 that I shouldn't search that out or it's probably sexual sin but it confuses me because ALL the feels happen that way for me even if it's entirely platonic and nonsexual and so I don't know if it's okay to want to write to that because apparently all pleasure of any sort, even over platonic stories, is sexual or comes with a possibly probably sexual feeling and I also am having a hard time figuring out what's genuine conviction from God and what's just my anxiety/OCD/perfectionism/fear of failure

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

if scars don't make man look good then being alive sure does

[mokeonn]

I love art and being creative so much but I really hate that low point in my story making process. Right now I'm trying to come up with the main plot for my story, my "defeat ganon" if you will, and it has been a huge nightmare. I am constantly coming up with the little details, smaller villains for arcs, and different cool concepts; without that "defeat ganon", I don't actually have anything to work with.

I basically have to wait until an idea pops in my head and I have a main plot idea down, then I have to refine everything to fit that idea, adjust the idea, and all that fun stuff.

But it's been a while since I came up with a story like this from scratch, so I completely forgot just how frustrating this period between coming up with concepts for the main plot is.