#i could 100% edit a few things and make it into an original story or something

[oatmealdaydreams]

Polyamory in MY Fanfic? It's More Likely Than Ya Think.

Working on a lil something for the qpp analogical au I mentioned. Got plenty of side characters n such, some ocs. There's a polyamorous triad/throuple (idk what it's called?), and they three are married. It's this short and big woman who co-owns a bakery with one of her husbands, a taller and worry-prone guy w/ a deeper voice who also co-owns the bakery w/ his wife, and this sailor guy who can be a lil reckless sometimes on his trips and worries his partners. He's a hopeless romantic kinda guy. He also gets very blushy when hearing his husband's (co-baker) voice cause he's a bi diaster.

I love these three. They're side characters to the analogical fic, but they're my fav. The woman is Maria, the co-baker guy is Galen, and the sailor is Justin. Maria is aspec, and she laughs at her husbands as they flirt w/ each other and fluster the fuck outta one another. She finds it fuckin' hilarious. She's a total queen.

When I say Maria is a big woman, I mean she's fat. She's a fat, short woman and her partners love her to death. If anyone tries making neg comments about her, those two would beat their ass. Would fight for her, would die for her, would kill and live for her. Love me some mutual healthy devotion in relationships. And they three would do the same for each other.

Yeah, so Maria/Galen/Justin is a canon ship of my ocs. They'll appear for a bit in Chpt 1 (I'm writing it rn). Maria & Galen may appear later? Maybe, maybe not. TBD.

What should I call these three... I need some sort of ship/pairing name for 'em. Hm. BakerSail? Cause bakers and sailor. Or... idk. If ya any ideas for them, put it in the comments pls.

[cosmicatta]

One Piece Novel: Law — a short analysis

So, after a long time trying to get my hands on the Law light novel, I was finally able to read it recently! And, because I'm an obnoxiously intense person who can't just be normal about things, I found myself taking notes about everything I judged interesting.

And I thought I could share! So here's a mostly improvised essay about the Law novel, how it portrays Law and what it reveals about him as a character.

Some notes before I start:

The edition I've read of this novel is the official Spanish translation by Planeta. When quoting and mentioning numbered pages, I'm referencing that edition.

I originally posted this on Twitter as a thread! If it sounds familiar, that might be why.

For those who haven't read the novel and might want to: be mindful of some trigger warnings, including gruesome medical descriptions, suicidal thoughts, mentions of abuse, and violence in general (I won't be touching on these subjects here though).

These are just my personal impressions, I'm not trying to tell anyone how they should interpret the novel or Law's character. I'm just doing this for fun!

The story takes place right after Cora dies, following young Law's journey as he makes it to Swallow Island and desperately tries to survive. There, he will meet Bepo, Penguin and Shachi, as well as Wolf, a novel-exclusive character that welcomes Law and the boys into his home as a family.

Overall, it's a very short read, agile and straightforward. The style is very juvenile, but that was to be expected, and I'd say it does a pretty good job at capturing the feeling of watching a One Piece episode. The novel does kinda feel like a mini arc.

I'm unsure if light novels can be considered 100% canon in general, but since the contents don't contradict anything from what we've already seen in the manga/anime, I'm going to assume we can at least take the events described in this one as canon.

But I'll leave the plot aside a little bit to focus more on Law's psyche, analyzing everything in the novel as material that helps us further understand him.

The entire book (save from a few specific passages) is written from Law's point of view and in first person, so it offers a more in-depth look at his way of thinking, motivations and ideals.

What I find most interesting in this sense is that the whole story is very centered around Law's kindness. Though he does admit several times that he had wanted to see the world burn when he was under Doflamingo's care (as we already know from the source material), the novel makes it very obvious that Law's true nature is compassionate. His inner voice even explicitly states that he enjoys helping and making others happy. (Quotes roughly translated from Spanish):

P. 27: "And I felt very comfortable collaborating with the task of helping others."

P. 92: "Knowing that I was going to free a person from their pain [...] gave me a joy I had never experienced before."

P. 136: "Just imagining the surprised faces of the Old Man, Bepo and the others brought a smile to my face" [when planning on getting fresh fish for dinner as a surprise].

And, despite living under Wolf's motto of "give to take," Law never expects anything in return for any of his good actions. In fact, he gets furious at Wolf himself when, after saving his life, the old man insists on giving Law anything he demands as compensation.

P. 120: "I didn't save you because I wanted a reward!" [...] They [Bepo, Shachi and Penguin] burst into tears of happiness when they realized that you had survived. That's more than enough for me! [...]" I won't let you belittle their tears!"

But even then, Law keeps arguing that he only saved Wolf "on a whim," much like he would say years later when asked why he chose to save Luffy's life. This is a common theme throughout the whole book (which is also pretty obvious in the manga)—Law doesn't recognize his own kindness.

It's not modesty or shyness, his inner monologue makes it very clear that he doesn't see himself as good-natured, and is often confused at his own motivations.

In their first meeting, when Bepo asks him why he is so nice to him, Law doesn't know what to answer; and after that, when Law finds himself wondering why he's trying so hard to save Shachi and Penguin despite their past history, he blames it all on "doctor's pride."

P. 48: "I wasn't even a good person."

Still, regardless of what Law might think of himself, living in Swallow Island seems to be making him progressively gentler. He was wary and hostile towards Wolf at first, but eventually lets himself trust people again, trying to honor Cora's memory and what he taught Law.

In Swallow Island he builds his new found family little by little, though never letting go of Cora and what he meant to Law.

P. 39: "Cora and I were family, that's what I felt at heart, I had no doubts. We had loved each other without saying it out loud [...] Would I feel the same for the Old Man and Bepo eventually?"

Slowly, he starts finding comfort and joy in community. He lets himself be carefree around his new friends, treating them with open affection, laughing and being surprisingly enthusiastic (although he quickly starts taking his role as a leader very seriously, and sometimes avoids showing weakness around them so as not to worry them.)

Law even gets to become an active part of life in Pleasure Town, where he and the other boys are cherished after 3 years living and working there. He's comfortable with his role in the community and appreciates the people in town. His sense of duty towards them shines especially when the pirates arrive to attack the town.

Again, this contrasts with how Law sees himself even in the manga/anime, where he insists that he acts mostly out of selfishness and only seeking his own benefit (or, in the best of cases "on a whim.")

But the truth is that Law's decisions are almost always related to other people's desires.

In this sense, the concept of guilt is also key to understand Law's motivations and his relationship with the world as a whole. This is especially obvious when it comes to Cora—Law even briefly wishes that they had never met, so that Cora would still be alive (p. 128-129.)

In a way, guilt is what moves Law forward, and what slowly starts transforming into a thirst for revenge, into rage and hatred towards Doflamingo and possibly towards himself too. It's a kind of tragic guilt born out of love.

His love for Cora still haunts him, his last wish for Law is the big enigma that he tries to solve during his 3 years in Swallow Island: be free. What is freedom to Law? How can he fulfill Cora's request? This is the question that gives meaning to the novel.

We know that Law wouldn't feel free until finally taking down Doflamingo and avenging Cora's death many years later, but he hasn't reached that point of determination in the novel yet. Maybe that's what gives the narration that hopeful and optimistic tone, with a young Law that's still finding himself, experiencing wonder in loving again, and learning what it means for him to be true to his values. It's the start of an adventure, and its core theme is love.

The ending illustrates this very well; I especially like the moment where Law names the crew as they're setting sail:

P. 243: "Cora's love that he showed me, Wolf's affection, the trust I had in my companions. One word embodied it all: Heart."

It is love that gives Law a reason to keep going. And I'm so glad that the novel doesn't shy away from this fact and isn't afraid of sounding "sappy" or "corny," because I do believe emotion is a very important part of Law's character.

The epilogue closes with a very interesting quote in the last page:

"You hear that, Cora? This is my... This is our pirate crew."

It is unclear if by "our" he is referring to himself and Cora, as if dedicating this new beginning to him, or if he means him and his crew. I'd personally like to think he means it both ways. But in any case, it's interesting that he openly shares the honor of "owning" his crew with someone else. He is the captain, but not the owner. It's another little way in which his generosity is evidenced.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable read, and it left me wanting more. Obviously, it's not a literature masterpiece, but it gives a lot of interesting material for character analysis, which is super fun.

Finally, here’s a few fun facts for those who can’t/don’t want to read the novel but enjoy the little trivia:

The Polar Tang was built and designed by Wolf.

Law’s first tattoo was "DEATH," and he got it at a local tattoo shop in Pleasure Town at around 15 years old.

Shachi and Penguin are childhood friends and likely met through their parents.

Shachi had always wanted to be a hair stylist.

Law is bad at cooking.

Both Shachi and Penguin are good at cooking, especially Penguin, who worked as a waiter in Pleasure Town.

The Hearts’ jolly roger was collectively designed by Law, Bepo, Shachi and Penguin days before leaving Swallow Island.

Law decided the name of their crew upon setting sail for the first time.

And I think that's all! ♥ I hope my rambling was enjoyable at least!

Edit: I've now posted an analysis of the Ace novels too!

[kokushibitch]

my dmmd au where mink is actually a brown guy instead of being vaguely yellow and grey. left edit is just a skintone edit while the right contains more natural looking feathers. i also gave him a stronger face

i spent a while trying to pinpoint his nation. unfortunately his design contradicted itself a bit and the slapping of random feathers and dreamcatchers everywhere pisses me awf. i wish that the artists had chosen to stick with one specific nation, and the closer i looked it actually wasn't as bad as i initially thought, but there were still some pretty egregious errors made with his design that could be avoided with CURSORY research, and for a company like n+c, big as they are with the resources to do better research, is unacceptable. to be quite honest, i almost hesitate to even make this post because i really don't want people to run with the information ill be discussing. while i am a native dude that enjoys DMMD, i know so many others that dislike mink, his design, and story because he falls into quite a few racist tropes. also, just because i can kind of glean some information about mink's culture based on his character design/home design, does not mean that it's a 100% accurate portrayal of said culture.

TL;DR: i used to think he was supposed to be ojibwe, but upon further inspection i headcanon mink as navajo/dine and afronative, my reasoning below the cut. im gonna make a later post discussing the nuances of his route and the meta racism in DMMD cause its been a loooooooong time since ive played his route. while im not navajo myself (im tsalagi) i at least have the life experience to tell the goddamn difference between nations lol. i also love the inclusion of a rainbow in his design as a fellow indigenous rainbow enjoyer

note: dine and navajo are the same thing, but im gonna use navajo because thats what more people are familiar with.

the easiest way to start would be with his most obviously unique feature, his locced hair. loccing among NA nations wasn't super common, but it did happen due to the culture & rituals around hair (no cutting unless under specific circumstances, braids/plaits end up "locced" from saltwater, etc etc). to me, however, his locced hair didn't feel like a purposeful design choice. meaning, i dont think the artist chose the locced hair because they wanted to convey something traditional about mink's culture, i think they chose it just because it looks cool, or because mink kind of just falls into the "vaguely brown" category. i'd also be okay with interpreting him as black/native, which i think im gonna do because i know that there are (or was, dead fandom) plenty of black dmmd fans that identify with him

his second most unique cultural indicator is his dreamcatcher. unfortunately, dreamcatchers have kind fallen into that "vague native design" bullshit, but they do have a tribal origin: aanishinabe. again though, due to the sheer abundance of people slapping dreamcatchers onto vaguely native characters, i cant say that this is a strong enough point for me to say definitively that he's aanishinabe. also, you dont fuckin wear dreamcatchers. end of, they're not supposed to be on your body.

THEN there are even more important indicators to me that denote exactly which nation he's from.

just judging base on the patterns used on his traditional tapestries, blankets, and runners, would denote some sort of southwestern nation. now they're not accurate designs necessarily, but i can understand and see clearly where they took inspiration from.

the peace pipe on the wall in both his home and his hideout immediately indicate navajo, a southwestern nation. the fact that he has a strong religious orientation to smoking herbs (im assuming in place of tobacco) is also very navajo to me. the pottery in his home & hideout are also very strongly southwestern, as pottery was a very common art in the southwest. the fact that he has an altar at all is unique because altars are actually not common practice and are usually only found in the southwest, which is actually a good detail point whether it was intentional or not. ignore the dreamcatchers which were, again, thrown in randomly

and of course his homeland contains mountains and more importantly, cliffs and canyons which is another southwest feature. there's also his fuckass cowboy boots which are VERY southwestern

IGNORING the dreamcatcher in his hair AGAIN, he's also flexin beaded jewelry. to me, these are just like regular beads, but you could interpret them as turquoise if you wanted. traditional turquoise jewelry is usually inlayed onto silver bands or pieces as well as strung together like so. his white belt also contains a very southwestern design.

as much as some elements of his design annoy the fuck out of me, i love, love, love, love the inclusion of the rainbow in mink's character design. the rainbow is so important to so many different nations, and mink being a religious person, it actually makes a lot of sense for him to have this sort of draw to rainbows or rainbow colored items. specifically in navajo culture, rainbows are used as Bridges between The Navajo and The Holy People, basically communicating with a higher power. a rainbow is also a symbol of the 7 sacred rituals in navajo culture, one color per ritual. here's a youtube video about it, learn something

i do have some thoughts on mink de-loccing his hair in his good ending, but i think i will have to save that for another post further down the line

anways, ive made my case. mink is navajo

[voidedaurora]

Apologies for the ask about the 🍉 thing.

If you have a story to say you should say it, the group who made the document thought it was important to make it public. Maybe you can reach out to them if you need help. It’s never too late to share your story if you believe the person deserves to be called out.

She’s already known for lying. And she never addressed a lot of the things in the document. Like those multiple false grooming allegations. Just remember that there’s no backing out once you have it out to the public. Once on the internet always on the internet.

Hope you’re ok. Don’t be intimidated because of fans. They don’t know what you’ve gone through. You have a support group who already set the ground for you. Good luck with what you choose.

Not specifically replying to this ask but Im going to use this to say a bit of what I need to say. Follow up to my last post, Mel has made it clear that she is not going to talk to me, one of her friends dmed me (one of the two I mentioned prior) trying to get me to vc with all 3 of them to get "closure" and talk about things, this was only prompted by the fact I am now speaking out about this (clearly just trying to save face), I stayed silent for nearly 3 months giving her time to come and talk to me and it was honestly the last nail in the coffin for her to clearly only give a shit now that I'm speaking about it. So I'm done, I'm not going to keep any of her shit to myself anymore, I know I shouldn't have been keeping them to myself to begin with and I completely accept anyone who is upset at me for not speaking up sooner. Quickly, I will say that some of this I cannot provide solid proof for, you will all have to take some of this with a side of salt / use context to come to your own conclusions, but I still think its important to mention because I know what I saw and experienced, It is up to you whether you believe what I have to say or not Aswell, Some of this obviously could be wrong as she has refused to clear things up privately but I believe them to be true since I experienced what I experienced :/. I do not condone Harassment, witch-hunting, threats, attack anyone involved, or anything else of the sort You obviously may be honest about your feelings on the matter but have your morals about you when doing so. People that did not consent to being mentioned here will be censored when possible I will be reffering to Quartelz as Mel in this, just felt I'd clarify TW: S/A, Coercion, Grooming(?), General Toxicity, etc.

Firstly, To everyone who supports Mel after the google doc she "made" I've got some unfortunate news to share, She did not write that doc. Mel had quite a few of her friends at the time essentially write the entire document for her, I was one of those people. To clarify, we were not forced but since we all wanted the best for her and for her to be able to move on from it all so we all helped her. The apologies ESPECIALLY she did not write nor mean, She has stated many times to me personally that everyone did not deserve an apology, I will provide some screenshots backing up these claims below Others writing the doc/Proof I can edit the original doc (the public document was moved into a fresh file because I suggested it)

Proof of Mel being an unapologetic asshole about the whole thing (sorry for the rudeness) Her saying "how to write an apology I don't mean" which Is pretty self explanatory, Included more context of the convo so she cant scream at me for not, AS you can see I was very insistent on her writing the apology because I did think they all deserved one, aswell me saying "I'd write it for her but that'd "I would literally write the apology for u but that'd be bad" Which is bad on my end 100% especially because I went through with that, I accept full responsibility for that and I am sorry, you all deserved better

More apology stuff bruhh

(so sorry archi I know you are mentioned here alot but I need you for proof, If anyone attacks you I am so so sorry) Admitting the apology wasn't written by her directly + re-stating she didn't mean the apology a million times and not taking any accountability

Bonus SS of talking with one of her friends at the time about our frustrations of helping her with the doc only for her not to work on it I think that's enough proof she didn't mean a lick of that doc and didn't even write it herself, I do NOT have proof that I specifically wrote the apologies but before the doc was sent out to the public I practically rewrote entire areas to make her sound more genuine aswell fixed the entire thing up, then I had her go over it and edit it to "sound like her" Time for the next part which is one of the more serious topics within this whole thing, I initially was NOT going to bring this to the public or mention it at all since its fairly private but after thinking on it really hard ,and the fact this will never have any closure Clover and I have decided to let you all know about it, I am sure she's going to be quite upset this is public now but she shouldn't have done any of it in the first place. TW:// S/A and Coercion I don't really know how to approach talking about this but around the 30th of march 2023 (before and after) Clover, Mel, And I had all gotten pretty close as friends, This eventually evolved into us having sexual interactions with each other as a group twice. At the time we had all had lengthy conversations making sure everyone was ok with it, the whole consent protocol and such. Edit: for the record, our age differences at the time were me: 16 (10/16/2006) Clover: 17 (3/03/2006) Mel: 17 (8/30/2005) This is relevant because a while back (I am not sure when) Mel had admitted to me one day that she had only slept with Clover to do things with me. I know for a fact she will deny this. This obviously horrified me and clover both because we were under the impression it was a mutual thing between all of us, I'm sure Clover feels violated, used, and a sleuth of other things, I feel absolutely terrible about the entire thing because I was the one who had helped her feel comfortable with the whole thing in the first place and convinced her it was something mutual, and to have Mel later on admit it was not and she just wanted an excuse to do shit with me is absolutely disgusting. Clover and I are both extremely damaged from this and neither of us ever got an apology for this and probably never will, not one that she means at least, shes already proven she doesn't feel remorse for anything she does. You'd think the person that allegedly got assaulted herself and had dealt with homewrecking related things herself wouldn't do something like this but here we are. (Just clarification this was a 3 way, sorry to have to blatantly state it but I didn't want any confusion. Aswell I'd like to state for the record that the interactions happened twice total) I will not be sharing proof of any of this as it would include sharing sensitive information/conversations I don't think any of us would be comfortable being public, You may take this as you will but Clover and I both are living proof of this happening and I just hope you'll take our word for this one as it was already obvious Mel had a thing for me to literally everyone around us, I genuinely do not think I need proof to prove that part alone. There was another section I was going to add explaining another situation but I do not have enough proof gathered to speak on it at the moment so I'll keep it at these two for now. I initially wasn't going to make a big post like this but I wanted to get the stuff I know 100% out there (aswell wanted to get some of the worst out of the way :/) There is absolutely MORE I could/want to talk about but I simply do not have the context/proof to make a proper statement on it at the moment, maybe in the future I will.

also, if any of ya'll need more proof of stuff I CAN dig but I think I got it all covered? That's it for now, She's either going to deny everything, have her friends to defend her, flee the internet, or retaliate. Have a good day ya'll, I am done staying quiet for her also I'm so so sorry if this isn't written well in certain parts, I don't really know how to make stuff like this

[lavender-long-stories]

Writing Advice: Getting Words on a Page

With the 75k word count in November and 90k in August, I have been asked questions like how do I keep focus and what do I do when I get stuck. I am going to compile all the advice I have.

Over the last few years, I have posted 700k+ words of fan fiction and have been posting 3 to 6 chapters every week for the last ten months. This is not how to make your writing better. This is how to get words on a page. 

This is not all my original ideas. This is just a collection of things that have worked for me.

I am not sure I am the person to tell you how to make your writing better, but if people want my thoughts on that. I can make that post too.

When inspiration strikes, write like wild. 

If you have the time and you are bitten by the writing bug, keep writing anything while you are in peak form. You will thank yourself later when you feel like you can’t write everything. I have done the extreme version of this where I have a month (four chapters) written ahead of almost everything on my post schedule (you don’t need this), but this was really nice after I brunt out after finishing out the 90k challenge I destroyed myself with in August.

Write in little pockets of time.

You don’t need to sit down and write for two hours. Write 100 words here and 500 there. It will all add up. When I was struggling at the end of the 75k, I would just open a doc every few hours and write half a page until I got distracted and tried again later.

Change your font.

If you are struggling to edit or even just find yourself drifting while writing, change your font. It helps trick your brain into paying attention. (I like doing a mono font like Courier when I need writing vibes. It looks typewriter-y)

Take a shower. 

Not just for shower thoughts, being clean and fresh helps with focus

Get dressed.

I love being comfy, but something about getting dressed makes me feel like I am working and should finish my task. Extra points for it being fun. (Maybe cosplay a pirate or something.)

Move Locations.

Desk, kitchen table, bed, outside: changing location helps move you out of a brain rut.

Handwrite notes.

I take most of my notes on notion, but when I am struggling with my plot, I write out notes by hand, starting with what happened last and continuing from there, writing even things I know will happen. Then I transfer this to my digital notes so they are easier to move around in order, AND a lot of time, I add details when revising them to digital. Double power.

Always, always write down your thoughts and keep them.

Some of my most popular stories came from me rediscovering a 2 am thought that I wrote down six years ago. Keep a notepad next to the bed if you have to.

Change POV

If something is not working in a scene, maybe it is who you have reacting to it. Try switching POV. It helps you think of the scene from another perspective.

Watch a show in your genre.

I watch a lot of the silliest KDrama’s and get lots of romance ideas. Maybe I didn’t think of sending my character to a park or trapping them in a sky lift. Maybe I should add a stalker that sounds fun.

Take your bathroom breaks.

You should always drink lots of fluids and remember to take your bathroom breaks because the brief moment of walking away always gives me an idea.

Skim through the story and make notes on what HAS happened, not just what will happen.

This helps more with my style of having next to no plot outline. Need your next plot point and don’t know where to go? Remember that time they did x? Let’s build off that. This helps intertwine the plot without losing things.

Just read the story back.

You don’t always need to make notes, but sometimes just reading from the beginning can make you pick up on a detail that was unimportant at the time, and you may not even have meant to put in that could have a lot more meaning now. Then, you can call it clever foreshadowing.  

Explain your problem or the scene you are struggling with out loud.

It doesn’t have to be to someone. It could be a glass of water. This is called ‘rubber ducking. It’s a programmer term (hello, that is my day job). Restructuring your problem in a way you have to articulate it most of the time makes the solution come to you.

Try focusing on the scenery.

If you can’t get a scene to work open with the weather or how the floor is creaking under step, give the world a new feeling. How does the person feel about the weather or the temperature of the room? 

Can’t figure out what is wrong? Rewrite the chapter from scratch. 

Open a new doc and rewrite the chapter from memory. I do this a lot in the beginning of a story that didn’t quite hit the way I wanted it to. I will start the chapter from memory and skim the old one to ensure I didn’t miss anything important. Can’t do it from memory? Read a paragraph and write that from memory. 

Take a left turn.

Sometimes, if you can’t go any further, go back a sentence, a paragraph, a scene, a chapter, and just make a different decision. Turn left instead of right. Change how someone reacts to an argument. It opens a whole new lane to go down.

Excited for a scene that is in the future?

Write it! You don’t have to use it word for word in the future. Sometimes, you can copy and paste it in, and sometimes, you can just rewrite it, and you lose none of those thoughts you originally had.  Writing it might remind you of something that needs to happen first to help you get there.

Have more than one story you are working on.

I don’t think you need to be working on four+ stories like I do, but having something to switch to when your brain really isn’t feeling your main is a great way to keep you writing. Call it productive procrastination. This is the REAL reason I have so many stories uploading.  (ᵕ—ᴗ—)

Other Somewhat Related Advice

Context Switching

I work on multiple projects at a time, and I tend not to mix them up because they have a different vibe to me. It feels like stepping into each world.  If you are struggling with context switching between stories, I suggest finding a song or making a playlist that gives you that story’s ‘vibe’ and keeping a link to it in your writing folder or snagging a section of your story that captures the vibe you are going for and keeping it off to the side to reread when you need to switch.

Don’t edit the same day you write.

You’re not going to catch errors. Your brain is too familiar with what you wrote. Also, I recommend Grammarly or another grammar checker for all your missing comma and period needs. (Word, Docs, and any other text editor simply won't bully you enough.)

If you hate editing, don’t leave yourself with a painful amount of editing.

When people ask me how I edit my work, how many passes I take, etc, I tend to disappoint them. The short answer is one read-through (after using a grammar checker).  I learned a LONG time ago that as much as it would be nice to write a bunch of dialog and then tell yourself you will go back to add all the actions or write without quotes because it takes time, you will save yourself a lot of time and pain if you learn to write it correctly the first time and then editing won’t be as much of a chore. I have been writing for years, and I am used to how I write and edit. If you are newer to writing, give it another pass or two, but try to shift some of that work to the writing process, not the editing process.

Make yourself an editing cheat sheet.

Make yourself a doc or a notion of words you notice you use too much or common words you misspell when writing.  I usually make one when I get back and do a post edit (when the story has been up for a while and I get back with fresh eyes and edit it). Reading through your old work and find things that you don’t like or don’t want to do anymore is a great way to build this list and improve your writing.

Now go write.

Got any advice for me? Reblog and tell me.

[ai-the-broccoli]

AIKA (Love / Elegy)

I sang and recorded this in several hours of karaoke sessions over two days during the summer. my throat was very sore throughout, and I caught a fever after that, but I think it was halfway worth it.

I wrote the lyrics myself.

the music is from a certain song that you may very well have heard of (okay, yes, it's a parody of "Love Story").

It was record with mobile phones.

I really do not know how audio editing works.

the song is a bit high for my vocal range "comfort zone", also like I said my throat got very sore after the first few times (and because it's my own lyrics, I needed some tries to adjust to singing the entire thing)

the album picture you see above is a piece of fanart, drawn by me, of Himena Aika and San Kagura. it is not that directly connected to the content in this song (since this song is technically more about Himena and Hiko) but it feels like an idol album cover sort of thing if that makes sense lmao.

While the song was written for a certain Magia Record fanfic of mine, you 100% don't need to have read the fic (or even know MagiReco, really) to listen to it lol

my lyrics under the cut:

(note: this is the lyrics of the original version of this parody song, the one in the fic; the karaoke remix version has some slight changes due to it being karaoke and also remix [w/ like parts of 6 different takes layered over each other])

AIKA (愛歌・哀歌)

[Himena] We were both young when I first saw you I close my eyes, and we think back as one:

[Both] Let’s take a trip Down the resounding lane

[Hiko] The school bell rings, I’m walking on my own As you light your way through the crowd And wink at me…

[Himena] Little did they know —

[Hiko] ‘Cause you were Himena, you could outshine the Sun And all your friends orbited your glowing crown In shadows I stood alone Till you tiptoed to join me…

And you sang —

[Himena] “Hiko-kun, let’s go, find us some paper strips, I'll be wishing, for our love to always live. Stars in the sky, we’re Vega and Altair, Just like a love song — we’ll resonate forever.”

<music>

[Himena] I sneak out to see you; don’t wanna face the music We keep quiet 'cause we're dead if they hear ‘Cause they don’t get…

[Hiko] That true love doesn’t care

[Both]

— Oh, no!

[Himena] 'Cause you were Hiko-kun, and I noticed too late, All my friends laughed, chanting, “Just move on!” But you were everything to me I was begging, "Don’t do it — no!"

And I sang —

“Hiko-kun, let’s go, find us some paper strips, I'll be wishing, for our love to always live.

[Hiko] Stars in the sky, we’re Vega and Altair, Our tragic love song — shall pass down forever.”

[Both] Hiko-kun, don’t let them, decide how we truly feel (Himena, don’t let them, deny what is truly here) This love is different, but it's as real (This tune is difficult, but it is haunting!) One and the same, we’ll rise above the crowd (One and the same, our rhythm over them all) In this jolly love song, we harmonize together (An elegy we lament, be resonant forever)

<music>

[Himena] I got tired of searching Wondering when I would hear you again My one true love was fading Away into silence no one could bear

And I sang —

"Hiko-kun, how dare they, be so loud they drowned you out, I keep listening, but your voice has disappeared. Not an echo comes back, however much I may shout," And then at long last, you spoke to me and sang —

[Hiko] “Here I am, Himena; you never have to sing alone, I am you, and

[Himena] None can ever tear apart!

[Hiko] No more wishing papers,

[Himena] Do we need from now on,

[Both] Let’s harmonize forever — A one-and-only love song!”

<music>

[Hiko] ‘Cause we were both young when you first saw me…

[jccatstudios]

Hiiii!! Still can’t get over how amazing the SOC comic turned out, very great job!! 🫶🏼🫶🏼 I have two questions: I was very curious, what were the differences between the originally posted version and the final pdf version? Aand secondly, is there a theoretical possibility to obtain your comic physically some day? Would loove to add it to my Grishaverse collection 🦦

Thank you so much!!! To answer your questions...

The differences between the two versions are pretty small. Here are some of the edits I made:

moved speech bubbles to fit within printing guidelines

made character designs more consistent (ex. Inej's hair ties and knife belts, got rid of Geels's ring, got rid of the fastener on the back of Kaz's coat, etc)

updated faces of the main characters whenever I thought I could draw them better

updated backgrounds for consistency

got rid of a panel on comic page 29

changed the size of some things

expanded the art to fill the bleed for print (can't see that in the pdf though)

slight changes to dialogue

overall clean up of the art, especially in the beginning pages

I worked with a few of my professors on the edit passes, and they really helped me out with these subtle tweaks! Soon, I will be updating the tumblr pages to match the final pages, but you'll still be able to see the old pages on places where I can't edit photos, like insta and twitter.

As for the second question, while I will be doing a print run of Chapter 2, it will only be for people I know or people who are able to meet me in person. I went into my reasons a bit more here, but long story short is that the comic is too close to the source material to sell (in my opinion) and it would be too expensive to ship.

Also, I am 100% cool with people printing out the pdf and making their own copy! I've seen some people put it in a binder with plastic sleeves, but I also think you could just make a stapled copy too. I know that's not as nice as a perfect bound version, but that's a good way to have a physical copy.

[spaghettithighs]

The Bad Opinion Haver has a bad opinion: the worst tier list in existence.

(or at least the worst tier list I've seen in the last 3 to 5 business days)

So... I have beef. It's a silly beef, but I have it nonetheless. I've mentioned Lily Orchard the Bad Opinion Haver a few times before, and her uncanny ability to get under my skin. Right now, of all her myriad Bad Opinions(TM) my ire is drawn mostly to this:

Per the original description:

My wife (Lily) and I (Mikaila) made a tierlist for Baldur's Gate companions.

Before you jump to your keyboards to react, we judged them based on the following criteria.

Viability in a party

Relevance to the story

Their own character story

Their romance (if applicable)

The quality of content surrounding them

They were only tiered based on games they were a companion in (so Ajantis in BG2 and Viconia in BG3 weren't considered).

And they were tiered evenly, so if they were really strong in one area but weak in the others, they were tiered lower. So S Tier is high marks in everything, while RP tier is "Literally every other character in their respective game is better than them, only take them if you're roleplaying."

Now, of the Baldurs Gate CRPG series, I have only played BG3 to completion. I'm currently halfway through Baldur's Gate 1 (specifically the Enhanced Edition), and I haven't touched BG2 or Siege of Dragonspear yet. Regardless, I feel comfortable in saying the above tier list is one of the worst tier lists I've seen, and the reasons why have nothing to do with the specific placement of any character.

So, what makes it so awful? Well:

Reason one:

There, I fixed it (but not really)

The tier list ranks 57 characters from four separate games in a series, with the first game in the series having been published 25 years before the most recent one. That is a lot of characters for anyone to remember, and yet Lily Orchard didn't so much as bother to include their names, let alone the games that they appear in. (now, you could argue that this tier list is meant for people who already recognize all of the Baldurs Gate characters from portraits alone. That would be a fair assumption, if it weren't for the fact that 17 of the 57 characters above are not represented by their official Baldurs Gate artwork. In fact, I'm not 100% certain that I got all of the characters correct in my labelling - it's possible that I mixed up 2 or more characters, because I am working purely off of the information provided in the original tier list, which is... not a lot)

Reason 2: The criteria for this tier list are too broad.

To recap, we have 57 different characters from 4 different games, and they're being rated on 5 separate criteria:

Viability in a party (in other words, mechanical effectiveness)

Relevance to the story

Their own character story

Their romance (if applicable)

The quality of content surrounding them (we'll get back to this one)

Any one of these criteria would make for a good tier list... by itself. By ranking characters on all 5 at once, the reasoning for placing each character in each position becomes more muddied, especially when you withhold the information that would lead to each character being where they are. ... Okay, I said I wasn't going to get too into the specific placements of any character, but to illustrate my points I will bring up one example; Dynaheir is present in the S tier of this list, which implies that she scores exceptionally well in all 5 categories. So let's run through them quickly:

Mechanical Effectiveness: Dynaheir is certainly a good character in BG1, but her effectiveness is hampered by the same thing that hampers all mages in BG1 - limited spell selection due to low character level. For the first 4 or so levels she'll spend most of the time parked behind the tanky front-liners, mooching off of XP from the mundane fights until she's ready to bring out the big guns at 5th level. If you do use her spells in every fight, you're going to be resting a lot, and that brings its own complications in BG1.

Relevance to the story: Strictly speaking, none of the BG1 companions are essential to the story, not even Imoen. The game has 25 optional characters, and you'll be bringing at most 5 along with you at any given time. That's just not a lot of opportunity for deep character interaction.

Their own character story: Dynaheir will occasionally banter with Minsc, but the only quest relevant to her in BG1 is the one in which you first encounter her, and that could be argued to be Minsc's personal quest first and foremost. Then comes Baldurs Gate 2... and she's dead. :/

Their romance: Dyna's not romanceable, so this does not apply.

The quality of content surrounding them: I said we'll get back to this one. Be patient.

Now, to be fair, I did ask Lily directly why Dynaheir is in S tier, and here is her response:

"She's in S Tier because Mages are S Tier. Especially in BG1 with the Sleep/Web combo."

Okay, so Dynaheir is in S tier exclusively for mechanical reasons. Only... if that were the case:

Why are other mages from Baldurs Gate 1 (Edwin, Xzar, Quayle and Xan) not also in S tier with Dynaheir?

Is Lily aware that Dynaheir, who is barred from casting Enchantment spells, cannot cast Sleep?

I'm sure if I asked Lily about every other character in the tier list, I'd get a similar explanation that would lead to similar follow-up questions. However, I can't help but assume that the list's ambiguity is the whole point; Lily doesn't want these opinions to be open to debate.

Reason 3: The criteria for this tier list don't apply equally to every Baldur's Gate game

Let's cycle back to that first point; party viability / mechanical effectiveness. In Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 this is pretty important, because characters in these games are locked into the choices made at character creation. (this could lead to a whole separate discussion about accessibility in RPGs and "the burden of foreknowledge", but I digress). Aerie will always be a Cleric/Mage, Alora will always be a Thief, Khalid will always be a simp for Jaheira et cetera, so if you want a balanced party, you will have to consider the mechanical benefits of each character, as well as their banter and individual story beats.

In Baldur's Gate 3, you can change any companion's whole class at any time for 100 gold pieces.

In other words, the first criteria (Mechanical effectiveness) is completely irrelevant to Baldurs Gate 3 characters.

Before you say that shouldn't matter; every companion in Baldur's Gate 3 has unique dialog options for the Bard-only cantrip Vicious Mockery, and unique roars when entering a Barbarian rage. The ability to adjust any origin PC's class and abilities is a fully supported and wholly intentional part of the game, and should be considered as such when creating a tier list such as this one. Especially when you consider what else this tier list accounts for:

Reason 4: This tier list is based on heavily modded versions of each game.

Hey, remember that last point that I kept saying we'd get back to? Here it is again:

The quality of content surrounding (the character)

By content, Lily Orchard is referring to mods.

This isn't a matter of speculation; Lily Orchard is very open about the mods she uses when playing Baldur's Gate 1, 2 and even 3. Notably, Lily has often claimed that the Imoen Romance Mod (a mod that allows you to romance your own half-sister) is one of the greatest romances of all time. Given that Imoen is S-tier in Lily Orchard's rankings, and that romance is one of the list's criteria, the aforementioned mod has definitely made an impact on the tier list.

I'm not here to begrudge Lily's decision to play the Baldur's Gate games with mods, that's her choice as a consumer of media. As a reviewer, though, she should absolutely be basing her opinions off of un-modded content. Otherwise, the game that she plays could be (and demonstrably is) radically different to the game that a follower is playing.

Let me put it another way: several of the companions in Baldurs Gate 1 come in pairs - if you recruit one, the other joins automatically (or after a short quest). Dismiss one, and the other leaves with them. It's possible to travel with only one of the pair (usually by letting the unwanted character die and then dismissing the corpse) but the expectation is that you play with both, or with neither.

Lily has tiered the members of these pairings separately in the above tier list -because- you can play with separate characters via the above method. Now, if I were to install a mod that makes it so that paired characters will always leave if their dead companion is dismissed, that would impact the tier list above - an S tier character isn't going to be S tier if they're permanently attached to dead weight, after all. You could argue that this shouldn't matter, because I'm basing my opinions on a fully optional mod - and you'd be absolutely right.

The other reason to disqualify a tier list based on mods is one of self-selection. As previously mentioned, the Imoen Romance Mod has definitely influenced Lily's rankings, but I daresay that she included it because she likes Imoen in the first place. To that extent, what's to say that Lily hasn't specifically included modded content for characters she already enjoys playing? Neera the Wild Mage is in F-tier because Lily doesn't like the random nature of Wild Magic surges, but what's to stop her from adding a "good outcomes for Wild Magic only" mod, other than the fact that she already doesn't like Neera?

In Conclusion:

This tier list is bad. It's bad because it's incomprehensible, it's bad because it's indefensible, and it's bad because it's based on a version of Baldur's Gate that you will never play.

Tier lists by their very nature invite discussion - there is no tier list on the internet that won't spark up some level of disagreement, after all. And yet, by its obstinate ambiguity, this tier list has tried its damnedest to stifle any and all discussion on its core subject - forcing me to discuss, instead, just how much it fucking sucks.

Thank you for reading.

PS: I may as well share who my current BG1 party is comprised of - by Lily's metric, I have 2 S-tiers, a D-tier, an F-tier and one RP-tier. We're having fun~

[amelias-zelda-calamity-quintet]

Amelia's Zelda Calamity Quintet Resource List

Hi there, I'm Amelia (she/they). You may also know me as Hart or Echo (my old handle was echosound). This is a master post of links for my works as well as all the tags I use on this blog. This post will be pinned on the blog and I will update it as needed so check back if there's something new.

You can find my profiles here: AO3 - Wattpad

Expanding Hyrule Community Discord (16+)

Quick FAQs

Is this a main blog? This is a side blog, my main is @amelias-hart. To keep this blog mostly to fic updates and as a reference tool, I reblog LoZ stuff on my main, to include art and fics.

Can I draw fanart of your characters? Yes, absolutely. I should clarify. You are more than welcome to draw art based on the descriptions in my fics and the resources I put out for them. I work with other artists though for most of my character art. If you are going to use those designs, make sure you're familiar with their opinions on fanart.

What kinds of LoZ fics to you write? All of my fics are fully original legend and long form stories. My average chapter length is 3k and the shortest of my fics (not in a series) is currently drafting to be like 100 chapters.

How adult/mature are they? It ranges, but typically it's pretty tame. I don't really handle gore and explicit scenes, and I'm not a fan of dark fantasy generally as a writer. If fics are rated adult/mature, it's typically because the characters are largely adults.

Is there romance? We're on that Zelink train, absolutely! There are no explicit scenes, again, so the range here is fluff (GoS, RA) to some more mature flirting with some innuendo being about the most serious content (DAD). Maybe a more intense kissing scene once the slow burn gets through to that (MoaH).

How do you write so much? Autism baby. Got that clinical hyperfocus going.

Do I need to read your fics in a certain order? No, all of them are stand alone but they do share a linked timeline in the following: GoS -> MoaH -> RA -> CoL -> DAD (And honestly it's really just GoS and MoaH with any "serious" timeline lore connections)

What's the Convergence? To the previous point, it's referring to GoS any time it comes up. Really only a thing in MoaH and MoaH does try to explain it within the text.

Will add more as they come up. If it's not here, it's probably below. If not, send it as a reply or an ask and I'll add it!

Other Custom Tags List

#originallegends/#lozoriginallegends - Pending community tag for Legend of Zelda fics about original iterations of Hyrule. Check out @expanding-hyrule for more details.

#moahmemes - This is for memes and quotes redone with the MoaH cast for fun, mostly for character exploration and cause it's funny.

#moah worldbuilding - In character worbuilding snippets about various topics for the MoaH era of Hyrule.

Open Ask List

I'm always open to asks, but I have a few prompts I figured I'd throw out if y'all want ideas.

Web: Asks for an update to the MoaH Obsidian web

WIPWednesdays: I'll post a snippet of MoaH, very likely will contain spoilers for a later part/book than is out.

Star: I'll give ya a random factoid about something in one of my fics, you can add fic tags if you'd like a specific.

Character asks: I don't have art, but you can absolutely send in character asks for the cast. I love these, they're great character voice practice. Please keep to one question per ask, but you're welcome to send as many as you like.

Fic List

Goddess of Secrecy (Complete on Wattpad, New Edited Chapters On Wednesdays & Saturdays To Both) - #goddessofsecrecy, #gos, #gosspoilers

Hyrule has only ever dreamt of an end to the resurrection of Demise. With the returning of an ancient power, that dream could finally be fulfilled. Can the Hero of the Fourth Goddess save Hyrule once and for all?

Fic Links: AO3 - Wattpad

Mark of a Hero (Updates on Tuesdays & Fridays, 1 of 9) - #markofahero, #moah, #moahspoilers

Hyrule is at peace, or so the Royal Family would have its people believe. Something is afoot in the kingdom, and someone needs to do something about it. Least likely would be Marksmen Link Sayre- a mercenary and monster hunter doing his best to get by. Until a job goes wrong, and he gets roped into the secret plans of Hyrule's princess. Now Link must play the part of the Hero to dive deeper into the mystery, and maybe stumble into a legend of his own.

Fic Links:

Book 1: AO3 - Wattpad

Book 2:

Book 3:

Book 4:

Book 5:

Book 6:

Book 7:

Book 8:

Book 9:

Series Link: AO3

Arc Progress & Spoiler Reference

Character Reference Page

General Setting Resources Page

Restoration Age (Hiatus) - #restorationage

Hyrule has grown. The fairy tale kingdom that has endured for eons is no more. And while historians argue over what history needs to be preserved, Hyrule endures and thrives in the modern age. With the proverbial guide book gone, where will the kingdom go now? And what would a Hero mean for a country that no longer needs a Hero?

Fic Link: Wattpad - Not yet imported to AO3

Cinders of Life (Hiatus) - #cindersoflife

Hyrule has burned. No more is the vibrant kingdom that was once protected by the Hero. Now is the reign of evil, an evil without end. Hope is a word used without meaning, and hero is all but lost. Could one even stand if the people of Hyrule don't even know what they would be calling on?

Fic Link: Wattpad - Not yet imported to AO3

Day After Destiny (Hiatus) - #dayafterdestiny

Hyrule is beginning its new golden age. The king and queen prepare to hand their crowns to their daughter and her husband. It is a union out of legend, though legend is far from anyone's mind in Hyrule. For who would call upon ancient war heroes in a time of peace? The wars for Hyrule have been won.

Fic Link: Wattpad - Not yet imported to AO3

[whalehouse1]

@thefaeriefeatherdark Sorry, I just haven't had either the time nor the energy to write up a response to your thoughts on the AU and I apologize because this is basically stream of consciousness and not edited, but a few things about my 3 Superboys AU, which thanks to Jon is technically 5 but another time.

Okay, the Superboy AU has actually gotten worse thanks to Leah Williamson (long story, but now we have two Jons). But to answer your questions as best I can given my limited Super family knowlege. Connor is a Cadmus creation, he is straight up the series origins. Made by Cadmus with Lex's funding with Lex's and Clark's DNA. The main difference is he is the first attempt at being cloned and Cadmus lies and tells Lex the clone had deteriorated once he was out of his clone tube. If you want to add Contessa to this, you could have her doing this to spite Lex. I know nothing about her besides what you said in your post, but I'm sure she has good reasons to be spiteful to Lex. And you know to try to keep and groom a Superboy on her own.

As for Lena Thorul, I know nothing about her, but since I am a fan of random characters from Kara's original series (I want that trade if it will ever exist), I don't see any issue with her being involved. My only issue with Kara in your idea, is I hc her around the ages of the original Teen Titans from the comics. At most a year younger, only because I think it's funny that Dick will call her an old hag even though he's physically older, but she's older than even Clark by a decent amount.

I mean all three are Clark and Lex clones, so they will look alike, but as Connor and Kon do have other's DNA mixed in with them (Maik is the only 100% just those two's DNA), they're can be variation. I think Connor looks distinct enough, it could have just been the cartoon style, but he seems more muscular and taller. He's more of a football player, while Kon is more Baseball player in terms of general build (it's a very bad description, but the best way I can explain it without drawing it, sorry). And Maik is 12, he's baby shaped. But he's basically built thicker than Jon, but not really by much since again, babies. Connor doesn't have the earring like the other two do, but I think Maik in terms of appearance does get mistook as Kon's younger brother since they look a lot alike. Maik has much better fashion sense though, cause is it Kon if he is dressed well? Maik has the gray eyes from the movie cause they're very striking compared to everyone else's bright blue ones. I also just like grey eyes and there's not a lot of of them in comics. So Kon and Maik will look alike and will argue about who stole whose look, but it comes down to just their age and clothing. I think Maik will end up looking a bit more different when he gets older, but I think those two will resemble each other the most with the eyes and fashion being their difference sadly. As for their outfits, don't they all need those super awesome jackets? Connor sadly gets his black shirt and pants, it's boring, but you know which Super it is when you see this. I did liker Kon's outfit in Kelly's run and YJ98, but Maik's would start out as the same as in the movie, but I think he would keep a more subdued coloration in his outfit. I also think as he gets older, he would make his costume more punk-rock than just spiked shoulders. I'm not sure how exactly, but I like him having a music industry plant type of idea behind his creation and so I want to incorporate music styles into his older costume if that makes sense.

Well, we have how many Flashes now? It should be fine, right (laughing in DC's inability to give codenames to established heroes for mantle passing)? They would get new codenames, but I haven't thought that far ahead yet. Also their names would have to use some of their personality and stories (Nightwing coming from Clark's story, Troia coming from Donna's stay on the Greek Moon planet thingy, Tempest coming from his water magic, etc.). So that would take a bit to get a good codename for them. But them and both Jons would evolve into having their own codename. Kara at last could go for Superwoman (since as far as I know there isn't one running around (watch me be wrong and there's like 5).

Oh, I completely forgot about Matrix. I want to say since the goal of this AU is to give Ma and Pa Kent the biggest amount of grandchildren, I want to at first instinct say yes, but from what I remember about that, it's still just Kara just merged with another. Also, I just didn't enjoy the bits I've seen of it. But since I haven't read the whole story, I'm not going to say definitively no, but that was just a weird bit of Supergirl's history to me, but not enough for me to just, "yay, no" it. If you want those, ask me about Nightwing XD.

As for the "it's gotten more complicated" it might actually be more fun for you, since you like the paternity bit more, but again I haven't had a chance to read Kon's solo yet (I've been reading from the beginning and I haven't made it to Superman comics yet and until the 90's, there's not really any writer who I'm just going to skip (I can't with Dixon anymore. He can write good plots, but he's such an awful garbage person and it bleeds through too much for me. And actually between him and Fitzmartin, I almost started to hate Tim, but one of his fans actually helped me with that), so I still have awhile and time is a dick. But to the actual point, Connor is the first actual clone, but he isn't "alive" to the world as Contessa is keeping him a secret from Lex and so Lex decides to cut his losses and tries again and that's how we get Kon, but Kon on top of Lex and Luthor's DNA also has Westfield's DNA in the mix. So he'sd the first clone the world gets to know. As for where Contessa and Cadmus is storing Connor, I'm not 100%, since I really, really hated the clone tube, so they probably have a facility underground that they "trained" him in so that he would be perfect for their nefarious schemes. He 100% will keep Wolf, I don't know if it would be from an Outsiders' mission or a one off mission with the Titans, but he's getting Wolf. And I'm fine with him on the farm, the Supers can come and go from there and since it's centrally located, it's not a bad place for him to join up with others. He doesn't have flight, but he's fast and can jump. Also he can get the stickers from Lex again and one of the heroes could probably figure out a way to replicate them without the addiction issue, there's enough scientist to figure it out. I know absolutely nothing about Indigo, but as long as she isn't going to take him to the Legion of Superheroes I'm fine with it (still bitter about that arc with Kara in the show, it just never sat right with me). But I do like your idea of him staying at the Outsiders HQ until Clark invites him to the farm. I think Connor has more of a relationship with the Kents than Clark, because Clark just doesn't know him and after Kon doesn't know how to deal with this new, but older clone. And he has to deal with raising Jon, so he can't just drop everything to help raise this kid he never knew existed. I think it makes him more understandable than what YJ did with him where he just came off as a prick. The powers are right, the heat vision and cold breath aren't as strong as Clark or Kara's, but that can be enhanced with the shields and that's ofc where the flight comes in as well. I do think he has the most strength out of the three in terms of raw physical power. Kon's TTK though obviously wins in terms of actual strength.

Now, because I just want to make things over complicated for no reason, I get you like cybernatics, but as I'm not a big sci-fi fan, when Maik was being cloned, in an attempt to see if they could remove the kryptonite weakness, they had some red kyrptonite in the room where they were cloning him. He still has the weakness, but instead it warped his Kryptonian abilities to an extent. So for example, he has heat breath and frost vision. His superstrength isn't as strong as the others, but (thanks to your boiling water Kara thing), I think he has the strongest durability out of the Supers. This wasn't meant to contradict you, I just think it's funny Kara doesn't want to get him hurt, but if he's not around kryptonite, the kid could get punched by every other Super at full strength and he'd barely feel it. He's still strong and could punch a hole through a solid steel building without a problem, but he's losing the arm wrestling contests. He is also the one Lex had the most see-over on though so he is the smartest since he was basically being taught by Lex approved tutors and that. He also since he actually is the one clone that "got to be a kid" and if the aging thing was retconned, I'm fine with it, he started out as an actual kid, so he and Jon actually are one year apart (Jon's a year older, kid Jon, not teen Jon, as I said it got complicated, but another day), and he would have absorbed some of Lex's "morals", so he could have a good character arc of growing out of that greed inspired mindset and learning to see humans as humans. I do think the Danvers would be a great set for this. The Kents would be too, and they 100% get to help with their grandson, but the Danvers had Kara, who was a teen when they adopted her, with (depending on the timeline) good or bad Kryptonian ideaolgies and previous connotations on Earth and its inhabitants. So they have more experience with that than the Kents. Also, since he and Jon are essentially the same age and Maik starting as an antagonist, that would be a good start for them since it would give a chance of kids figuring out things and influencing each other and given what Jon has been through, it's not like he's 100% rainbows, unicorns and sunshine. He's been through the ringer, possibly more than any other Super, 3 years under Ultraman torture will do that to a person. More so, being left for dead and having to watch that person living your life. But yes, as Kon would have YJ and Connor would be best (for me personally) for the Outsiders with helping out the Titans and YJ at times, Maik would fit in perfectly with the amount of child heroes that exist right now. He might feel redundant if he joined up with Damian and Jon and the people I have on their youth team I have, but what's the harm in having two supers? But even excluding that fact, there's a large amount to make a team out of. And heck, he could even start on my Damian team, butt heads with him (not hard to do) and take a few with him to make his own team and get some of the others Damian couldn't recruit. Even more fun if it splits up the West twins so Wally and Linda have to listen to who has the better team at dinner at least twice a week. And for villains, they would have to fit a theme for him to grow, so if I were to write stories for him, I would want to figure out a good balance for that. I would have to think of a few examples, but someone targeting him for being Lex's son, clone, "hero", "weapon" wouldn't be bad, someone who isn't able to control their actions for one reason or another, I think an evil Toyman would be good to as well, a villain who wants the spotlight (like Punchline, but not as annoying, sorry I just don't like her), he'd be very good for a social media type of villain or a eugenics villain. There's potential for others, but for villains, I think the moral theme for the story should come before their gimmick for a good story (can you tell I'm a batbrat?).

As for the DNA samples, I think it'd be a cute story that Maik and Jon are wanting to be the babies (the twins come in after this so it's all pointless), and also just worried that since Cadmus and Lex both have had access to controlling all three clones, with each one being a stronger control (Maik even having a microchip just in case that Kara made inert whether through Kandor or heat vision, doesn't matter, but one of those), teaming up and Jon using some lockpicking skills he get from Damian and Maik knowing the layout of the building, breaking and entering and destroying the DNA samples Lex has and scanning the building for anything he could possibly use for more DNA and eradicating it. It doesn't even have to be a stressful comic, just a fun little one of them having fun destroying untold and unsolvable property damage to Lex Corp. Everyone wins. And I'll give you this for the cybernetics and Lex being more involved with him, we can give him electric touch. So he could be a human taser or stronger. Lightning has been shown able to incapacitate the Supers, so it wouldn't be a bad thing for Lex to put into the one he has the most control over, until he defects. But now relooking at the timeline you gave me, I don't know if Contessa could have been around for all three cloning attempts. If so, Maik could be the one she doesn't lie about to Lex, but if she couldn't have been in charge for Connor, the pettiness isn't needed. But I do like them lying to Lex that Connor was a failure, so when he finds out he's still alive and functioning, he tries to be a "good" dad with the stickers and to give him resources that Connor knows better than to accept after the incident with the stickers.

[moreteethplease]

> Play it here!

Five old men sit at the back of my church every single week after sermons and prayers. I wonder if the source of their sweat is the same as mine.

Hellfire (The Old Men At The Back Of My Church) is a short, semi-autobiographical bit of rambling made in bitsy for the Queer Wrath Game Jam. It (and parts of the devlog below) contain themes of death, suicide, homophobia, religious trauma, and implied sexism, all depicted in text only.

Devlog (and spoilers) under the cut.

This was a very easy, straightforward "game" (if it can even be called that) to make. I haven't made anything in bitsy in a solid six months and wanted to ease myself back into it with something that wasn't too hard to make work.

The events in Hellfire are generally true, but out of order, and some narrative gaps are filled with best-guesses or embellished. With that being said, the rage that fuels it is very real and the tale it tells is dear to my heart.

Writing

I started with the last two sentences of the script, then got writer's block and didn't touch it for a week. I almost thought I wouldn't finish it and would have to find a different concept.

Then, one fateful sleepless night, in the middle of a depressive episode, I wrote about 80% of the script on my phone while my spouse slept beside me. Usually depressive episodes are creative slumps for me, but this time it worked out. I finished off the script the next day without much editing. The result is a few too many run-on sentences, but I do think it works for the style of this "game", and it really does make it a "bit of rambling".

Art

By the time I was done with the script, I knew that I wanted the words to be the main focus of this "game". That meant no real gameplay beyond progressing through the script. I've done this before with You Died On A Tuesday, but even that had a minor interactive element, where you move your sprite across the page to get to the next "point". For Hellfire, I just wanted a story with pictures changing in the background. It was important to me that the pictures were always easily in view so the dialog box never blocked any of them. T make this work, the images are all on the bottom half of the screen.

I'm not sure if I'm 100% satisfied with the art for this "game". For example, the plate with the rice ladle animation is a bit too jagged and feels jarring to me, but by the time I noticed I disliked it, I had already finished putting the game together. I also am not sure about the air-conditioner animation. I asked my spouse what he thought it looked like and he said "a printer", so I might be cooked.

I'm also not sure if I like the frame where two hands slowly reach towards each other. They were originally a lot more solid, but I wanted them to be almost translucent in effect, as if they're fading away or not quite real. I tried to space out the solidness of the colour, but it always came out very uniform and looked strange. In the end, pixsy's image-to-bitsy converter got a better look than I could create myself:

Thoughts

I usually have something to say at the end of these, but I find myself at a loss for words. I've struggled with religious trauma and queer trauma for my entire life, and while I've learned to slowly heal the former, the latter has buried deep in a way that I don't really know how to heal from. I've lost so many queer friends and loved ones and I know that my government is unlikely to grant queer rights to its people in my lifetime. It's these sources of pain that make me write things like Hellfire... though hopefully my next work is a little less of a ramble.

Thank you for reading! If you’d like, you can play this not-quite-game here:

[randomnameless]

Localization discourse has started to rear its head again because of some Funimation localizer defending a line from Dragon Maid but it really got me thinking, I feel like so many people are so quick on demonizing anyone who doesn't like localization changes as pro-GG when it's much more simpler. People don't hate localization changes because of the message itself but rather because it's not what the character is saying 9/10 and it comes off as calculated and cynical. I feel like it's kind of a direct consequence of transformative fandom, with the whole "I'm going to write the story the way I want it to be and fill up the spaces" but instead of a fanfic it's with the original source material.

Pro GG?

What is GG? AI?

I remember this argument of the "it's not what the character is saying" and people being pissed because they couldn't get the "right" script - and tbh, after reading some arguments here and there, localisation always comes with necessary changes/adaptation to the text, let it be grammatically or to convey ideas from a language to another, so if you want a 100% faithful script then... better start to learn the language lol

With Funimation though...

The Shinchan earlier post was telling enough of my opinion about drastic changes that aren't used to transcribe a meaning or convey an idea to a foreign audience, it's just... erasing the source material and swapping your own ideas on them.

Like, uhhh

Funimation acquired the Shin-chan US license in 2005. Funimation's dub takes many liberties with the source material and was heavily Americanized. Many sexual references, dark humor, and references to then-current popular American culture were added, including many jokes about subjects such as Jews, terrorism, and Viagra. Characters were given significantly different personalities and new, previously non-existent backstories. For instance, Shin is refused an allowance, on he basis that he could use it to buy drugs (crystal meth), his schoolmate Kazama ('Georgie Herbert Walker Prescott III' in this dub) was an absurdly hawkish ultra-conservative Republican, the unseen father of Nene (known in the dub as "Penny") was suggested to be physically abusive towards both his wife and daughter, Principal Enchou was rewritten as a half Romani, half Peruvian man with a complicated, checkered backstory that includes a stint as an accident-prone magician, The kids' teacher: Yoshinaga-sensei (known in the dub as "Miss Polly"), was rewritten as a kinky and often domineering nymphomaniac,

The earlier Vitello and Phuuz dub also edited some jokes and/or what was considered indecent exposure like shin's buttocks and tried to "occidentalise" a few references, but it wasn't like straight up changing what a character is or their personality!

No doubts funimation was "authorised" by whoever had the rights of the franchise to lolcalise and edit it as they did but it just comes out as a "why did they rewrite that stuff like they did", to make more money, to make another "mature cartoon" like Family Guy expy, idk.

And to be honest... I don't really care, because I grew up with the Vitello Dub and read some manga chapters of Shin-chan, so I know what the manga/anime (sure, the dog wasn't named lucky but shiro!) is supposed to say and/or be about.

I don't agree when you say those "lololcalisations" are a consequence of the transformative fandom in general, transformative works have existed since... forever lol (some dude wrote in the early middle ages (grégoire de Tours?) how Franks are descendans of Achilles or something to explain how kickass his king and his people are like, at this point, he's writing a self-insert OC story, right?)

But in modern times, there used to be a clear (?) divide between what was transformative work and what was canon - 50 Shades of Grey sort of started as a Twilight fanfic, but it became its own thing and no calls it a Twilight adaptation or "Twilight" anymore.

The Aeneid? Despite what devoted fans wants the world to believe, is "just" a fanfiction, aka someone writing about the characters he """loves""" no matter how OOC they are. It's a Fodlan fanfic and treated as such. Or should lol.

Still, if in a fanfic, Flayn can apologise for being born as a lizard because having lizard blood means she's automatically evil and oppresses humanity due to the fact she exists, it's only a fanfic. It's not something I like, OOC as fuck, but okay, moving on. Rhea eating ketchup is my own hc, also OOC since we don't see her eating any in the games, same thing - but fanfics are OOC by essence because they're a transformative work !

As I said, okay, moving on.

But when what is supposed to be as close as "canon", albeit translated, dips in the same "OOC" territory?

Sure, Eng!Raphael will say "I" instead of "ore" to refer to himself - and yet, imo, if professional localisers (at least the people picked by the company to bring games to an international audience!) have some sort of leeway with canon, their work is inherently transformative - since they're localising -they are still bound by some rules, unlike a fanfic author, because the aim of their work is not the same.

When you write a fanfic, you write it for yourself, to tell the story you want.

Of course it depends, like the funi shin chan dub showed, but usually, I think, when you are a professional localising something (a manga, anime, book, tv series, myth, story, anything!) you are supposed to only bring "necessary" changes to the source material to bring this source material to the "targeted audience".

And it's kind of hard to determine at what point is a "change" necessary or not - back in the 2000, "Jonouchi" had to be changed in "Joey" because, supposedly, non japanese children wouldn't be able to understand/connect/watch/idk a show with a foreign name (even here in France, we got "Petit Coeur" aka Small/Little Heart for... Piccolo in the early 90s!) - but now in the 2020s Midorima isn't dubbed "Mike".

(even if 2013 saw a localised Fates edit "Suzukaze" to "Kaze" for reasons as foggy as Fodlan's 10k years of lore)

And we of course have the notion of "targeted audience" - here in France, in the 90s, basically any "animated cartoon" was supposed to be targeted for children, like 3 to 10 years old. Which is the reason why we got lunar dubs for Hokuto no Ken and City Hunter (no "brothels", but instead, "vegetarian restaurants"!).

Yugioh was dubbed for a younger audience than, I guess, what was the targeted audience for the manga (even the original anime, regardless of the dub or not, feels like it was made for younger "children" than the ones who would read the manga!).

And this is where I wanted to come with the modern "transform the source material!" lolcalisations - are they "heavily" edited because they target a specific audience?

Like... the funimation Shinchan dub was obviously not aimed at children the manga, or even the original anime, hell even the Vitello dub, were targeting.

It's almost as if we're not talking about "bringing this definite thing to random people", but "finding/tweaking random things to definite people".

Take Fodlan's lolcalisation, especially Treehouse/Pat's.

NoA was the only regional branch to have, on the official website, something like "the Church controls Fodlan".

Through the 4 (already 4!) years of coverage, some people are still finding dub exclusive lines that portray the CoS as "BaD" or in a more negative light than the original text. Pat completely missed (or was it on purpose?) Rhea's character, so Leigh had to dub Rhage, when Supreme Leader was scrubbed off her most, uh, dubious personality traits (tfw no information campaign anymore :( or calling Rhea a Nabatean as an insult :()

Why? Why those changes? Is it because Pat/Treehouse didn't want to bring the game to the US, but wanted to bring this game to the "Dany revolution yas slay kween" crowd + the "organised religion especially catholicism BaD" crowd? Or because they thought bringing "a game" to this crowd would bring more money than to bring "Fire Emblem Three Houses" to the general US crowd? So they "reworked" FE16 to have messages that would attract this certain crowd ?

(and apparently it worked, iirc the US sales made up for 50% of FE16's sales, so it was very popular (and profitable!!))

The Pat/Treehouse changes weren't "necessary" to understand the source material, or try to find similar references (a trip to a hot spring in Shinchan was replaced with a trip to Paris, because children who might not be familiar with japan might not know what is a hot spring, or what a "trip to the hot spring" is supposed to be), so why were they made?

Is it like the Funimation dub? To reach specific people, even if the meaning and essence of the original material is lost?

In a nutshell, I don't think localisation companies (Treehouse or Funi) work in a vaccum, if they can lolcalise so much, it obviously means they got the authorisation of whoever has the rights to the original source material (maybe even the creator themselves!) to "edit" the content...

But that's what I came to regret the time where localisation, even if they had westernised names and more westernised refs, wasn't that "free", as in, Funi and Pat/Treehouse write their fanfic of Shinchan/FE16 ? Sure, why not, I mean, everyone can write a fanfic. Can I get a peak at the original source - edited as necessary because i'm not reading in the original language and I might not catch all references - please? No, because the only thing available is either something I cannot understand, or a fanfiction that takes liberties, as fanfic do, with canon.

Take Shinchan.

OG : Shin is a preschooler who has a dog named Shiro - meaning white - because his dog is white.

Vitello dub : Shin is a preschooler who has a dog named Lucky.

Funi dub : Shin wants an allowance but his parents are afraid he will buy meth and he has a dog named Lucky.

Remove the "old school" Vitello dub, and either Shin is a preschooler who named his dog "white" because the dog is white, or Shin is... a young child who receives money but lives in an area where he could buy drugs.

I can't understand the OG material, and I know the Funi one is a fanfiction, so what should I do? Treat this fanfic as canon, or, learn the language/try to understand the material by myself using dubious tools like translating apps? Or am I cursed to forever miss on Shinchan, even in the 2000s, aka an era where people can translate and localise movies from one language to another, but apparently for this one manga/anime, it's not possible unless it's lolcalised? Snowhite was turned into "Blanche-Neige" but the story is mostly the same than the one told in the US, but for Shinchan, I can only get the "Family Guy" version that isn't told in Japan?

I remember there was a controversy about localisation (when the thing that sparked that controversy wasn't even localisation related!) where some people, annoyed with the "liberties" they have with their dub version, became intense and rude and want to see localisers as "mere" translators...

And it escalated to have some localisers basically saying a game they localised is "their take" on a story - which is true, because each translation/localisation works with the bias of the translator/localiser, even if they try to be as neutral as possible, they can't completely remove themselves from their work -

Still, in FE16, Pat'n'Treehouse removed the "Supreme Leader uses propaganda" mention. Why? Is it their bias talking, they don't want her to "look bad"? But the script, the game wants the player to know she uses "information campaigns". Pat's "take" is she doesn't use it, but as a player, can't I be offered the choice to make my own take after seeing the script that mentions it, or not? Is Pat the one who directed the script, and wrote it as the "main thread" that links everything in the game (regardless of Fodlan's consistency lol), or was it Kusakihara/someone else?

If pat arbitrarly "removes" this part of the script, but I see it because I play in Japanese/Chinese/Korean/heck maybe other languages whose dub wasn't overseen by Pat, can it be said I played the same game as the players who played with the Pat dub/script?

Pat's CF!Felix calls Dimitri a monster, OG CF!Felix calls him a man -> thankfully we can count on fans to find stuff like this out but, again, why this bias against Dimitri in CF - that comes here from the lolcalisation, and not from the original text?

Why is it there? What if someone wants to play, and hopefully, understand, not Pat's "take" on their relationship in CF, but the writers/developer's? Is that someone fucked, or kindly asked to learn japanese (aka to do Pat'n'Treehouse's job?).

I don't really have The Perfect Solution (tm) anon to the general localisation discourse, at one point I was on the "just translate" fence, but when you understand a pun or a reference, and how it connects to something else, the game/book/anime/movie you're watching takes another level and it's much more enjoyable!

And yet, growing up with 4Kids and seeing shit like Treehouse butchering stuff, or hearing about Funimation Shinchan is... disheartening.

The only thing I can say is I'll always be rooting for dual audio, let it be for preferences but also to get at least what is easily understandable to everyone (I mean intonations, shocks, laughs, etc etc) and a glimpse at what the game/moving/anime is supposed to be enjoyed, especially with story heavy scripts like the FE series - while reading subs, because even the script is translated/localised, at least with the audio, it's easier to spot "lolcalisations".

And let's not forget the most important lol

The Fandom itself!

Let it be for FE, Tales or anything else, what I find fascinating (on Tumblr but even on redshit and SF once upon a time!) is how fans will be able to compare scripts, people familiar/fluent/who know a language will be able to spot the changes, and inform anyone who wants to be informed in the community that, say, Xander and Marx are pretty different characters, just like Jp!Effie and "I love to eat"!Effie.

Of course sometimes there will be misinformation (remember the Dimitri is rude because he uses the omae pronoun?), but I still find fascinating how, faced with ridiculous lolcalisations, fandom itself - aka part of the people who were supposed to be the targets of said lolcalisation - tries to "correct" and remove the unecessary edits. There are still people who dgaf about what was lolcalised from what wasn't, but even if it's just a consequence of the lolcalisation growing more and more unrestrained/unchained to the source material - it makes fandom engagment all the more precious and fascinating.

Like, you have real people basically combing the script and/or providing a translation - for free! - to help other fans, when some lolcalisers are paid to... edit and "lolcalise" the script some fans want to see.

And so, we're back to square 1 : who is the targeted audience of Funi's Shinchan or FE Treehouse?

The players/watchers?

FE Fates was, I suppose, ultimately lolcalised for a """western"" audience", aka an US one because no one gives a fuck about the rest of the world - and yet, assuming a majority of fans are from the US, said lolcalisation was mocked/ridiculed and ultimateld decried by part of that audience from who the game was lolcalised.

Some people (I've seen a redshit post about it today!) claim the lolcalised changed aren't made for the audience, but, much like a fanfiction, those changed weren't made to be more palatable to an audience, but were made for themselves - aka to push some agenda (see redshit's theory about funi pushing a "woke" agenda in their dubs and subs when it doesn't exist in the og scripts).

And to be fair, with FE16's US exclusive "Church BaD and controls the world!!!" + "Dimtri is not a man but a monster!", idk what Treehouse was trying to do, push their "organised religions BaD" agenda and "Supreme Leader is right so let's make her opponents BaD to highlight how right she is" bias? - but I can't help but wonder if it was indeed the case, and given how Pat sucked as a voice director, if the localised!version wasn't just some sort of trolley Treehouse used to convey their ideas, regardless of what the game wanted to say.

I mean, it's still fascinating, to this day, nearly 5 years after the release of the game, that we still find "Treehouse exclusive" lines, or how FEH who's still running, also has "Treehouse exclusive" lines for Fodlan characters that absolutely don't match the non global, aka, jp lines, let them be written or spoken - putting on the tinfoil hat, I wonder if Treehouse or whoever oversees the localisation isn't deadly afraid that if they don't pay extreme attention and/or rewrite anything related to Fodlan, global!players will realise that they were fed "Pat's Fire Emblem Treehouse", instead of FE16, thus takes extra care to comb and/or rewritte every line/dialogue that could make a global player think twice and note that this thing they're reading/hearing of in FEH (or even Engage!! See Dimitri's lolcalised line about people of different races living together!) is completely different from "Pat's Fire Emblem Treehouse".

Tl;Dr because I ranted and disgressed and idk where am I anymore with this post lol :

I think there's a difference between fandom's transformative works - done for fun, as a hobby! - and some lolcaliser's transformative works - they're paid for that and aren't supposed to bring a fanfiction to the audience, at least not as localisers ; so I wouldn't blame "fandom" for the fuckery that happened (Funi's shinchan is more than 17 years old!) and is sadly still happening.

On the contrary, given how fandom (at least some part of it) actively refuses to accept the lolcalised "fanfiction" - to the point of doing translation work! - I think fandom is the reason why this discourse is happening.

[curiouselleth]

Of Elured, Elurin, and Gil-Galad

I started writing this intending to share my theories on the matter of Elured, Elurin, and Gil-galad, but it got long and very detailed. This is NOT edited at all, I just wrote most of this in one sitting... but I think it came out really good! (2,218 words?!?!?!?! HOW?!?!)

Most of this is my personal cannon, but it would fit within the story. Some of it has no clear basis in Tolkien, I originally made this theory for a fic I'm working on and needed to invent some things to make other ideas work. Mostly in how Maiar, Valar, and their powers can mess with time. (I am also kinda-maybe-just a little disregarding bit with Gil-galad being sent to the Falas in 455.)

Elured and Elurin survive being abandoned in the woods, and they are led to food and shelter by nightingales, and are eventually led south into the forests of Ossiriand.

While Melian had returned to Valinor after Thingol's death, and despite that the Girdle of Melian fell and she seemingly abandoned them when she left, she actually sent the nightingales to guide Elured and Elurin to safety. Her last act to help those in Middle Earth for a long time. (continued under the cut)

Maiar, Valar, or large concentrations of their powers can do weird things to time and aging. Whether making time pass faster or slower for those in their immediate vicinity, so one year would feel like months, or several years could pass in their vicinity while only one year may seem to pass away from them. With practice and skill their effect on time around them can be minimized, as pretty much all the valar and maiar do. This can cause aging to be faster or slower, or decay to slow down.

Elured and Elurin were too young to be taught of this, so barely more than 4 years after the Second Kinslaying (506), they have aged around 15 years in that time, and are about 21. As Elwing had Elrond and Elros at 22, I am assuming that since she was considered an adult then that they are at that age too.

Over the years they also slowly built up walls, hiding their true identities with magic, eventually so that none could recognize them, so they wouldn't be reminded or found again by the Feanorians. Part of it is that people will see what they expect, and who would expect to the see the twin sons of Dior, believed to be dead?

Now it is year 510, and Gondolin falls that summer. (I would guess it is around the solstice, in late June.)

Gwingloth is the daughter of Lalwen (daughter of Finwe), and was born a few years after Lalwen arrived Gondolin after its completion. She is a little young for a elf but well of age. Tolkien gateway says that is about 100 years old, I don't want to get a headache checking the Nature of Middle Earth right now 😅.

Gwingloth had never been fond of festivals, she often found the noise and the chaos overwhelming, so she had snuck outside the city, thinking to visit the gates, and to check on the guards who she had heard expressing sadness to be missing the festival.

She had been about to leave, but then the attack started. The guards had defended her with their lives, and when she was knocked unconscious they defended her until they fell, and in a strange bit of luck she was hidden in the bodies and presumed dead. When she came to she was once again lucky, and most of the fighting had moved on to the city. She managed to sneak out, and down the Dry River to Sirion. She did not know much of Beleriand, but she knew the south in Ossiriand to be safe, and she made a makeshift boat and sailed down Sirion until she reached the Fens of Sirion, where she left the river and ventured east until she met Elured and Elurin.

Elured and Elurin had been living semi-nomadically in Ossiriand in this time, with some help and guidance from the green elves there. Before they were of age, they lived with a small group of green elves in a hidden village of flets. They were not taken in my one specific family, but the whole village helped in their upbringing. They were taught to survive, fight, and to be able to sneak through the trees and hills with skill no other elves had. Once they were of age they began to live more nomadically, scouting or hunting to help that village.

The year they came of age the green elves gave them a gift that had been found near the River Ascar, the northernmost river in Ossiriand. It was two fine twin swords Thingol had crafted for the twins when he heard of their birth. (there was a small inscription) They had been taken in the sack by the dwarves and almost were cast into the river with the rest of the treasure, but they were found by one of the green elves, and kept. The twins each got a sword, as Thingol had first intended for them, his first great-grandchildren.

Shortly before Gwingloth arrived, the village made the decision to move further south, fearing the growing reports of orcs Elured and Elurin brought. The twins decided to remain while they figured out what they wanted to do. Do they seek out survivors from Doriath or other Sindar? Do they forsake their heritage and remain with the green elves who raised them and taught them?

Gwingloth and Elurin quickly fell in love, but Elured and Elurin found the word of Gondolin's fall to be the last straw in their decision to pursue the rumors they had heard of Elwing in the Havens of Sirion. Elured wished to go alone, as they had been planning to stealthily go to gather information, not to enter the city, so both of them did not need to go, and one of them needed to stay with Gwingloth as she recovered from the shock of Gondolin's fall and the battle, and her long, hungry journey south. Elured also... hinted... to Elurin that perhaps he should be trying to research Noldor and Sindar marriage traditions wink wink.

Elured traveled extremely light, nearly nothing with him but some basics he gathered and supplies and tools he made. He did bring his twin sword, as it was the finest weapon he had and he did not wish to be about without it, but he put a small enchantment on the inscription, hiding it. He first traveled north-west, in the direction of Nargothrond, to see if any survivors of Gondolin passed through the west part of the region. He was hoping inconspicuously to join a group of survivors heading to Sirion, and to tell them the story that he had been living in the wilderness ever since his city fell.

This worked a little too well, and he encountered the main group of survivors from Gondolin sheltering in Taur-en-Faroth, the forests on the west and south sides of Nargothrond. He called himself Ereinion, which had been Beren's nickname for him, as he was descended from Kings of Elves and Men. Perhaps he should've thought his story through more, with him being found outside a fallen city of the Noldor, and having darker hair, like most of the Noldor, with highlights that shone like gold in the sunlight, because rumors begin to fly that he is Finrod's, Orodreth's, or, somehow, Fingon's son. He tried to deflect, saying his appearance took more after his mother. The enchantment that both he and Elurin wove around themselves was still in effect, and made people see what they expected when they were looked upon. So the survivors expected to see the son of a noldor king? Well, that is what they saw.

He thought that quelled the rumors, so he continued travelling with them for some months, because it was safer. When they arrive in the Havens in the late winter (march???) of 511, he hears that it is true, Elwing is alive, but is almost immediately brought to the Isle of Sirion, for they started to believe him to be the rightful king of the Noldor.

It is on the Isle of Balar where he finally has to confront the fact that they think him to be their rightful king. He feared what would happen should the truth come out, and panics (privately), but ends up going along with it, planning to use it just until he can see Elwing, then... well he wasn't sure yet.

It takes months for the opportunity for him to return to the Havens of Sirion, and by then he was crowned as Gil-galad, King of the Noldor... and discovered just how busy that title makes you (karma?). By then it is late summer of 511, almost a year after he left Elurin and Gwingloth on a journey they expected to take only a few months. He had tried to covertly send messenger birds, but most returned with their messages unopened, if they returned at all.

Once he arrives in Sirion, he once again has a stoke of bad luck. Not only is Elwing considered just a little too young* to meet him, the King, he is too busy with politics and meetings to be able to sneak away to see her.

*I also have Elwing aging at an accelerated rate as well, she is almost 18, but is incorrectly considered too immature by a few of the other rulers of the Havens (who have sticks up their buts), so she is kept away.

Elured has to return to Balar, but the next year he is finally allowed to meet Elwing, for she finally set those other rulers straight, and is taking her place as leader of the Havens. The ceremony was small, but in the following days Elured was invited to meet her, not on strictly official business, but so the two of them could simply meet as people and leaders.

Elured is guided to her lovely home in the Havens, and when he knocks, he hears a call to enter, and he steps inside and into the living space. It's well decorated, cozy and lived it, and there's a vase of lily of the valley and cyclamen on a mantel above the hearth.

It had been so, so long since he had seen his little sister. And his breath caught for a moment when he saw her. She's so grown up. Without us. Elured thought, tears starting to form in his eyes.

"Ah you must be King Gil-galad! Suilad! It is so wonderful to finally meet you!"

"Ahm," he cleared his throat, "yes, it is wonderful to, meet you, too. I'm so glad we finally got the chance..." he trailed off.

"How goes matters on the Isle? Good? Well..." she continued talking but Elured was barely listening.

He worked rapidly to drop the enchantment disguising his identity, in denial, No, it must be the enchantment, that must be why she... why she doesn't he thought frantically as it finally came down.

But she didn't react. She kept on speaking about how things were in the Havens, until she notices his lack of response, she pauses, and looks closer at him. "Are... are you part maia as I am?" She haltingly asks.

"I. I am, yes, as you are." Elured hesitantly answers. Is this it? Is she starting to recognize me?

But she takes his hesitant response as him not wishing to speak of it, and says "I'm sorry, I did not mean to pry, and you need not answer. I too understand having a past too painful to speak of."

Elured nods, shocked and despairing. She didn't know him. His sister didn't know him anymore.

Elured is devastated that his sister does not know him, and perhaps it is cowardice, or perhaps he does not wish to bring her more pain by showing up in this life she's worked hard to make for herself and telling her that he is her brother, that both of her brothers were alive... and they shared the same past she called too painful to speak of.

Upon his return to Balar that day, he throws himself into work as High King of the Noldor, just a little longer, he tells himself. Then I'll go home. Just a little longer.

But days turn to months, and months into two years, and it is 514 when he can finally return to Ossiriand, for he did not want to forsake the people who had come to rely on him. He is only able to go back under the guise of seeking a stronger alliance with the green elves, but one night, when he is not so far from his home, he is able to slip away from his guards.

He travels light, only his one twin sword with him, speeding through the treetops until he reaches the edge of the empty village where they had lived. But all is silent.

As he steps into the flet he shared with his brother, there is not a sound, and it is empty. Gwingloth and his brother are gone.

There was no note, no message anywhere in the village, nor the trees. He is so desperate he checks the ground, for when the village was occupied none were allowed to go on the ground under the village to help keep it more hidden, not a trace of them or tracks.

All was silent and empty. His twin is gone. He unsheathes his twin sword, which now truly missing it's partner, it's other half, as he is. He drives it into the ground in the middle of the village, standing alone as a memorial... or as a grave, and he rips off a bit of his robe, with his new sigil of silver stars on a blue field.

Gil-galad turns and walks back to his camp, and his people. Once again devastated.

[mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune]

Crossover: Megamilla, RoboFizzxSari & Zestial x Eclipsa (2024)

---------------

[Note: please make sure to click on the drawing to get a better view of it...

I plan to use this as a Cover for Chapter 11 of "Falling For The Angel In Disguise" over Quotev, not sure if the whole Eclipsa x Zestial would really be a big thing, but Eclipsa x Globgor will always be the true OTP. I do plan to have Megamilla become a part of "Falling For The Angel In Disguise" at some point, also the story is for Mature Audiences only, maybe around 18+ and well the story might not be 100% perfect and there might be some bad grammar but I don't mind not many end up checking it out and I can just appreciate that it has a few who like it so far. so anyway I can use this drawing for here and for over there, so please do NOT reblog this without my permission.]

[Edit Note On June 1, 2024: I forgot to color a part of Carmilla's outfit and I had to fix that at around May, and I did fix it but then I rememered just now, I needed to fix the part that had to with one of Sari's arms that Robo-Fizz is holding the hand of, so had to edit that a bit too, but it is still the same...anyway had to replace the old version that I didn't know I had forgot to color part of Carmilla's outift, and forgot to put a certan part to one of Sari's arms...but it's fixed now...so that's good.]

Credit for Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss goes to Vivienne "Vivziepop" Medrano

Credit for Transformers goes to Hasbro & Takara

Credit for Transformers Animated goes to Sam Register & Matt Youngberg

Credit for Star Vs The Forces Of Evil goes to Daron Nefcy

--------------------

even if Robo-Fizz is seems to be smitten like a kitten for Sari, they could just end up being just friends, the appearance that Sari has in this drawing is suppose to be how she is going to look in "Falling For The Angel In Disguise" and her eyes go from blue to purple.

if I don't end up finishing and posting Chapter 11 on May, I can try to do so next month which will be June.

and if Eclipsa weren't married to Globgor, she could probably go for Zestial...she does have a type, so she could probably go for both Monsters and Demons, maybe even Charlie's Dad for all we know. guess I was being a bit weird with having Eclipsa x Zestial in there, but Eclipsa x Globgor will always be the One True Pairing, and it's okay that not everyone would be into Zestial being ship with Eclipsa Butterfly.

at the moment Sari is 23 years old in the story, but at some point she will have her 24th birthday.

Sari wasn't originally going to be the Main Character and Heroine of the story, and it wasn't originally going to have Transformers added to it, but some ideas started to change a bit, and the original Main Character and Heroine of the story, is now a Faux-Heroine that appears first before the true heroine appears.

I do have a idea of another drawing I want to do that has to do with the older version of Sari in this drawing, but I'll wait until maybe later to work on it because it also has to do with a poll idea I have but I wont say what it is right now...not until after I work on and finish the drawing that will have to do with the poll idea and Sari Sumdac.

anyway once again this drawing will be a Cover for the future chapter of "Falling For The Angel In Disguise" which once again is for Mature Audiences Only and some scenes may be a bit 18+ even if it might not be 100% perfect...

if I'm not able to get around to posting Chapter 11 over at Quotev around this month, I will try to do so next month. it might be okay if I take my time with it...

[izayoichan]

Get to Know Me - Sims Style

Thanks for the tag @dandylion240, always kinda fun to do these things.

What’s your favorite Sims death?

I think death by wohoo has to be my favorite, although as I only use the game for storytelling and even with that mostly screenshots, I don’t really see much to any death in the game.

Alpha CC or MaxisMatch?

I play with a mix, although my hair is always Alpha as I just am not a fan of having hair that looks like its made of clay. Other than that, my taste in cc is very very simple, if I like it, it doesn’t really matter what type of cc it is. I do lean towards alpha more than MM most of the time, but there is a lot of nice mm cc out there too.

Do you cheat your sims weight?

I never play with my sims, they just get to take screenshots these days, so yes, if they somhow added 100 pounds of weight somehow or suddenly go super skinny, I would. If I played with them, and it was not story, then they would have to handle it themselves if their weight randomly changed

Do you move objects?

All the time

Favorite Mod?

MCCC, Playable pets(its a lifesaver when you pose pets) and Wicked Whims and thats about it. I have very few mods.

First Expansion/Game Pack/Stuff Pack?

The Sims: Livin' Large as the first sime game i had was the original. And that was the first pack that came out. You really see the difference of what Sims is now, compared to back then, when you look at the amount of packs.

Do you pronounce live mode like aLIVE or LIVing?

I say Live mode as in aLive, the other way around is just wierd to me.

Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made?

Hmh.. Christian (Chris) I think.. a lot because without him, the legacy I now have running would never worlk

Have you made a simself?

I did once, hated it, and never ever used it again after the first use.

Which is your favorite EA hair color?

White, if they have it, white has always been a haircolor I have a thing for

Favorite EA hair?

None, as I do not use any EA hairs.

Favorite life stage?

I honestly think their all kinda lack-luster, so it’s hard to say. Specially since I do not play the game at all anymore. I guess young adult story wise as that is when a lot of things tend to happen.

Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay?

storyteller.. with occasional “build” which is more outdoor lots and nothing else. 

Are you a CC creator?

Nope, I have 0 skills like that. (If I could manage it, I would love to learn to make poses, but bad hands and blender is not a good combo, I tried 😂)

Do you have any Simblr friends or a Sim Squad?

I have made some friends here, which I am very happy about.

Do you have any sims merch?

No.

Do you have a YouTube for sims?

Nope, I have a youtube channel, but its not for sims

How has your “Sims style” changed throughout your years of playing?

I started fairly vanilla like most, and went more and more into the alpha cc, so I guess they have evolved into for me better looking sims. I also went from making mostly female sims, to now preffering to make male ones

What’s your origin id?

Izakins I think, and there is afaik nothing on there, as I do not share anything there as everything I make is full of cc.

Who’s your favorite CC creator?

Poses: @simmireen and @herecirmsims  Build: @kerriganhouse

There are so many, but those are the ones that instantly came to mind, and the three I always end up using stuff from. 

How long have you had simblr?

Ehm... yes.. some years now, I can’t quite remember when

How do you edit your pictures?

I don’t

What expansion/ gamepack is your favorite?

Pets (cats& dogs atm) and seasons. No sims game is good without either of them for me.

I know everyone I know has already been tagged, so I am going with the other way of doing this, if you want to do this, feel free to say I tagged you. 

[anonymousad]

Shelterwood: a follow-up and apology

someone reached out to me after publishing my Shelterwood crowdfunding post with some very valid stuff that I want to address. they mistakenly sent it non-anonymously (something I confirmed with them before just responding to the Ask), so in the spirit of keeping things unidentifiable around here I am going to screenshot the entire message (so you can know I'm not selectively cutting anything out) and then I'll respond to it in chunks:

A Genuine Apology

so let's start with the first chunk of text:

I'm going to be straight with you: while there were absolutely some points you made about the Shelterwood crowdfund that I agreed with, like how unreasonable the goal seemed for a show produced by a novice showrunner, something's really sticking out here. That thing is that Stephen Indrisano and Nigel McKeon are both young, white, non-binary novice showrunners who secured some high-billing talent and picked unreasonably high crowdfunding goals, but you treated one of them with a lot of grace and understanding... and then turned around and not only accused the other of essentially being the problem with the current state of podcasting, but also called them cis in the process despite having acknowledged their pronouns earlier in your write-up. That was... certainly something. It's almost like you had a specific point you wanted to make, so you just sort of conveniently forget that Stephen is non-binary to make it. That or you don't actually think Stephen is non-binary and were engaging in some passive-aggressive gatekeeping, which also sucks, just in a different way.

this is 100% something I fucked up on, I will readily admit that. my accidental erasure of Stephen's identity as a non-binary person is not okay, intentional or not.

I wrote the initial post gradually over the course of just over a week, top to bottom, and then did a quick skim of it at the end to make sure things were still up-to-date in accordance with any updates to the campaign itself. a result of this is that between when I started the post (where I included Stephen's pronouns of "he/they)" and when I was writing some of the later parts I had forgotten this. I think part of the reason is that the campaign is not really about Stephen, so it isn't like there are consistent references to him as an individual. in the few places there are, such as the intro section of the main text and the FAQ, "he" is used exclusively, which I think mistakenly put that in my mind as Stephen having a male gender identity because I hadn't seen a self-identification as being non-binary on their website or Twitter. but someone deciding to use a specific set of pronouns in the text of something like this (to avoid confusion or for any other reason) does NOT invalidate their use of other pronouns elsewhere. similarly you don't have to outwardly proclaim your gender identity for it to be respected and not assumed as cis.

I am genuinely very sorry about this, it was a mistake and I am in the process of editing the original post to reflect Stephen's proper gender identity.

now then.

let's talk about the difference between Nigel (Among the Stacks) and Stephen and the way I approached them, because you're right that there was a difference.

I think a key way that these two projects differ is that one of them was very clearly made by someone who didn't know what they were doing and was in over their head. Among the Stacks was a clear trainwreck from the moment they started revealing how bloated the cast and crew were. I had many conversations with other creators during that early time where we were all wondering how this thing could function with so many cooks in the kitchen, and how you could have a coherent story with that many characters. it was clearly a product of someone new and over-excited who didn't have a real idea of how to do what they were dreaming of.

in contrast, Shelterwood seems to be genuinely well-thought out and approached like it was created by someone who has done their research and been part of the community for a while. it has a full concept with a clearly outlined size and goals and is a very realistic sounding first project. if it weren't for the goal and the rewards we wouldn't be talking about it at all. as a pitch it is perfectly reasonable.

I went a bit easier on Nigel because just from looking a lot of us could tell that Among the Stacks was going to end in disaster. we didn't know when or how, just that there was no way a project like that could actually succeed. I also knew from interactions between Nigel and other people that she was not very good at taking critique or hearing other people out on stuff that they didn't agree with. I went into that post with the intention of being harsh but fair, because I wanted Nigel to hear what I had to say and LISTEN. not just brush it off as "someone is jealous of my amazing idea and so they are being mean". I was still a bit mean in that post at some parts, I will admit that. my tone can swing a bit far on the sarcastic side, especially the longer I spend on a given post digging into things.

Shelterwood is full of people who should know better, something that it makes a point to brag about. it isn't just one person's dream project that they don't know how to wrangle, Stephen is clearly a proficient showrunner to have pulled all of this together (and I do genuinely find the show's concept to be interesting, even if I didn't really communicate that in the post as much as I could have). Stephen has ALSO been around the block a few times in regards to working on audio dramas, whether or not they have helmed their own. this means that from the start my expectations for them were higher.

my goal was not to accuse Stephen of being "the problem", but I think that this campaign is INDICATIVE of a lot of the "the problems" going on right now with audio drama crowdfunding.

I did seriously think about pulling the last section into a completely separate post, but what I wrote applies to the context of this campaign and so I felt it was important to have that connection. if I had been able to fully communicate my thoughts on it before now, say for the Arden campaign, it would have been part of that post. but it took me a lot of time to get those words down in a way that actually communicated what I think the problem is.

I know having it as part of the Shelterwood post has an implication, and the implication is correct that this campaign is PART of the problem, but it isn't the whole problem.

It's also very weird that you lumped Shelterwood, Arden, Among the Stacks and Afflicted in with The Magnus Protocol, which was on an entirely different level. They're not comparable. Not a single one of those first four shows actually made their crowdfund goals. In Afflicted's case, the all or nothing state of the crowdfund means 100% of that money was returned to backers. The Among the Stacks crowdfund was cancelled. Which means that for 50% of your given examples, literally none of that money ended up tied up in those shows rather than being contributed to other, smaller shows. This is not comparable with The Magnus Protocol crowdfund situation, and I think you know that.

it's 100% true that The Magnus Protocol is on a whole other level than these other campaigns, I said as much in my write-up. it is not comparable and I wasn't attempting to compare nearly $1 million USD to $26,000.

what I was attempting (and may have failed) to do was to point out that what Rusty Quill did was change the playing field for the worse. when looking at those two numbers you can much more easily make attempts to justify the high goals being asked for here, because in comparison that's downright reasonable to what they raised.

as a note: TMP had a funding goal of £15,000 (approx. $19,500 USD). so they weren't actually asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to make 3 seasons of a show. in fact, what they asked for is less than the campaigns I'm trying to call out here. that Kickstarter has a lot of things that were suspect about it and felt slimey and exploitative, but the asking price was not really one of them.

however.

just because they didn't ASK for that much money doesn't mean they didn't know it would happen (maybe not to that extent, but still). this still had the same impact, which from what I can tell is making some people think that audio drama crowdfunding is for making a profit.

as for the next point about none of the shows except for TMA 2 hitting their goals:

the amount they are walking away with isn't really the point.

at the end of the day, it's about the fact that the more stuff like this happens, the more it is NORMALIZED. and these kinds of goals getting normalized is harmful.

as an example, in the world of video games there is something called "microtransactions". for anyone who doesn't know, these are additional, small purchases you make in a game that you often have already paid upwards of $60-70 USD for. in the beginning, they were marketed as "just cosmetic" and not going to impact gameplay. and so people didn't fight back too hard when EVERY game started implementing them. but of course, what that did was move the bar. it normalized people paying extra money on top of their purchase for something that used to be included for free with a game. and so the companies started pushing the needle further. and further.

now, this isn't a direct parallel for a lot of reasons, but when greed is being put forward as normal again and again (even when it continues to result in failure) it starts to cement it as something "normal". something to be expected.

the larger problem here is that these are unsustainable amounts of money to be trying to get out of the community.

which connects to this next section:

Speaking of The Magnus Protocol, there's also an assumption being made here that someone deprived of the option of helping one of these shows reach their crowdfund goal is automatically going to donate to another show... and I need you to remember that The Magnus Protocol's final tally was something stupid like 4000% of their original goal. Lower crowdfunding goals don't stop people from contributing once that goal has been reached. People just keep donating to that project. None of those people were donating to make sure the thing got made- they were donating because they liked The Magnus Archives, and the hard to swallow pill here is that that doesn't mean they would've contributed to other crowdfunds otherwise. I have my own issues with The Magnus Protocol thing. But the statement that that crowdfund snatched money out of the pockets of smaller shows by having an unreasonably high goal just straight-up does not hold water. That's nothing. It's 4000% less than nothing. You're allowed to be mad that that campaign got such a ridiculous amount of funding when so many smaller shows are struggling. You don't need to couch it in pseudo-logic to justify feeling that way. We're all mad about it. It's okay.

this is definitely a good call-out, this person is right that someone not donating to one campaign does not mean that money will go to another. in a lot of cases, the only reason someone sees a campaign is because it is being promoted by the things they already like (in The Magnus Protocol's case that obviously being The Magnus Archives), and that means they probably aren't going to be choosing between every campaign that is out there and deciding where their $5 is going to go. they might just as easily pocket it and buy a nice coffee the next day.

and that absolutely sucks, because it would be nice for the love that some people have towards specific shows to be something that extends to the whole medium.

but I do think there's something to be said for feeling like even a small donation is making an impact. I would feel kind of bad to only be able to give $20 towards a $10k+ goal, it isn't even a drop in the bucket towards what is needed and if I care enough to donate to something I do want it to succeed. but that same $20 to a campaign only asking for $3000? that's a lot more tangible of an impact. enough so that I could feel good about splitting that $20 between two projects maybe.

that isn't 100% the point of what you were saying, I know that. the reality is that not everyone in this community has a general investment in the success of others.

I think where that becomes the biggest problem is when some people only seem to have an investment in themselves, and no one else. that's where these things become problems, when the larger needs of the community are ignored for the sake of a few who repeatedly succeed.

I'm kind of bleeding a bit into my response to the next part, so here that chunk is:

And do I agree that we as a community need to start talking about what is and is not realistic when it comes to crowdfunding? Yeah, absolutely. You have a point there. That's a valuable and timely observation and I'm glad somebody said it. Unfortunately, the value of that point was absolutely buried by the extremely obvious fact that this time, in this case, something about this project is personal for you. I don't know what it is specifically, but I do feel the need to ask: You are aware that Tal Minear is involved in the show as a graphic designer and minor actor, right? They have nothing to do with the crowdfund or the rest of production. Their name being attached doesn't mean they're secretly running the show. This is not Tal's show. They'd be credited as a producer if they were that involved. So why do you feel the need to keep bringing them up? Anyway, it's extremely difficult to take your analysis in good faith when it's so transparently motivated by some sort of personal distaste for somebody/the people in the project, and that's a shame, because some of the things you're saying have value.

I certainly didn't shy away from pointing a bit of a finger at Tal Minear for promoting this ideology, among others. their clear involvement in this project makes me immediately more suspicious, because Re: Dracula was a self-admitted cash grab. and that stain on their character is not going to go away for me.

it's less that it's "personal" for me, and more that this is a figure in the community that I have repeatedly seen presented as an expert that MUST be listened to. including by themself. ESPECIALLY when it comes to the matter of crowdfunding.

now, if I were friends with someone like that AND they were involved with my project that was about to have a campaign, would I not lean on that resource? even just for advice on how to put it together and what needs to be included. Tal just wrote a small little article for Descript that has some very generic crowdfunding tips, so they are arguably the most knowledgeable person involved in the campaign to go to for advice and feedback.

I know for a fact that Tal has given crowdfunding advice unsolicited to people running campaigns, usually in the form of asking why crew is not being paid appropriately (a valid question in most cases where actors tend to get a huge portion of the budget). so I can't imagine a world where they didn't give at least a little input to a friend for a show that they are actively involved in.

I don't think they are running anything behind the scenes, no, Tal is not part of some audio drama Illuminati. but I do recognize the high esteem to which they are held by MANY community members.

my goal was to call out the culture that has grown around audio drama crowdfunding, and the ways that I've seen it hurting most people who attempt to do it. I have noticed that Tal is a big part of what has normalized that.

as for the ways in which I brought them up, yeah I like to be a bit snide and I probably laid it on a bit thick. it's easy to get carried away in these things, especially towards someone that I am admittedly not a huge fan of.

that is the extent to which it could be considered "personal" for me, but I understand if you don't believe that or if that still had too much of an impact on taking the rest of what I said seriously. that is your choice and I respect it, it's just very difficult for me to separate out their involvement given what I know outside of this.

You're just completely undercutting that value by surrounding it with so much pointless nitpicking and snideness. What happened to "#but actually my intention is to be thoughtful and not mean"? You claim to be acting in the interest and defense of the community, but as the creator of a small podcast that nets me absolutely zero profit, I'm not feeling it. This feels like it's about you, not the rest of us.

this is absolutely fair.

I am just one person at the end of the day. I've talked to others, discussed the situation surrounding this campaign and others like it with them, but I am the one typing it down and inserting my voice and my take on it.

as such, I am not going to be a perfect mouthpiece for everyone's thoughts about this stuff.

I WANT to be one that is largely beneficial, however.

sometimes I lean a bit heavy into the snideness for the sake of keeping things interesting; these write-ups are LONG and as a writer I recognize you have to do something to keep people engaged so they actually absorb what you are saying.

is that the right approach? probably not for everyone, but it is part of a reflection of my own voice that it comes out like this.

"#but actually my intention is to be thoughtful and not mean" is something I wrote, something that I still want to keep in mind but sometimes I fail at that. in this case, I found it hard to stick to.

repeatedly seeing campaigns like this is disheartening to me, it wears me out. there is an amount of what a lot of people might see as "bitterness", but it's not really about any specific project or person.

I think my massive fucking rant at the end of that post about capitalism ruining audio dramas with the need to make money unsustainably says a lot about how I feel about the current financial state of the world. a lot of that "bitterness" is from this deep rage towards to the system, directed outwards where it can be. maybe the flow of it was a bit strong on this one, but it is still an accurate reflection of the way that I see things.

note, an accurate reflection to ME. it's okay if it isn't accurate to you, that's part of why the conversations need to happen.

part of why I do the math breakdowns for the budget is to help myself try and get a grasp on what those numbers mean. the human brain is not really formatted to understand large quantities of things, especially something that is usually intangible in those high amounts like money. I also do it because I want to give someone the opportunity to say "actually, you're wrong because this does add up. you are just missing part of the picture."

I know the way I approached this might come off as defensive, that's not my intention. I decided to break it down like this so that no one would think I'm trying to skip over feedback or ignore certain points that make me look bad.

everything that this person said to me is a valid response to what I wrote, including the things I pushed back on.

I am very grateful that they reached out to me, and I want to continue the conversation. ESPECIALLY if they feel that I did not hear them here.

my responses are just that. a response. they are not a claim of being right or these reactions being unjustified. we are all only in our own heads, and the conclusions we come to are usually based in rationality. my mind is open to being changed, I want to see as full a picture as possible.

if you disagree with what I've said, that is fine.

if you agree with what I've said, that is fine.

if you aren't sure, that is also fine.

we're talking about something complex and nuanced and just because I'm the one bringing these things up doesn't mean I have the RIGHT opinion or that I am the person who SHOULD be saying it.

there is a reason that I am anonymous here, and it's mostly because the conversation is more important than who is speaking.

as always, my inbox and Asks are open.

feedback welcome, I mean that.