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juiice · 2 months ago

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The Locked Tomb Fic Recs (8)

Part 1+ Links

Lots of people dont have time to read a lot of long fiction. so i'm going to make a list of my fave long fics, so you can pick out one to read! (hint: its most of the tag lol)(if your long fic isn’t on here i probably read it so long ago i forgot what happened so i can’t put it on this list until i read it again and that will take forever)

The criteria for this one is any hits any time. The Theme is..

… Double Novel Length! (over 100,000 Words)

Four very different roommate stories!

And They Were (the Worst) Roommates! by anotherpassingfancy Rated: E (yes sex) Finished

It’s her second year at Canaan University, and Gideon is finally coming into her own. She has a full athletic scholarship, best friends Pal and Cam, and a found family with the Pents and Terrible Teens. She shares a locker room with her hot teammate Corona, who even knows her name.

Gideon is happy.

And then she meets her new roommate, Harrowhark Nonagesimus.

I actually need to reread this one because i dont remember what happens BUT i do remember it was awesome. Read if you want fun college AU (i sure am after finishing this list!)

semi-charmed kinda life By: strangedelight rating: E (sex as plot points) WIP

Gideon asked questions. Harrow surprised her with answers. They reached an agreement; they decided to be smart, to be patient. Gideon made a promise, Harrow gave her one in return. Wait and see.

semi charmed kinda life is like when you finally find a good anime thats NOT about teens.(is that just me? Ok) i love the deep characterization in this one, and the rich setting of the 1990s that’s familiar but not too familiar. and it has my favorite thing in it: cam :) more serious than ATW(TW)R, and not completed, but it's Worth It to get into. And it has art! X/X/X/X/X/X @griddlebait is the author on tumblr idk if hes active but!! awesome fic we love it! Read if you want realistic AUs feat team 69 and gay thoughts.

We Have Always Lived in the Apartment By: labyrinthineRetribution rating: T (gore heavy, id say M) WIP

It is Harrowhark Nonagesimus' birthday, and it only gets worse from there.

WHALITA is crazy. LR always writes the craziest gideon/harrow ever, i think even more dysfunctional than canon, and it’s great to see them struggle with basic things, like… having a roommate. And not so basic things, like living out a horror movie. This one has some art too X @thatneoncrisis is the authors tumblr. Read if you want to be fucked up, and then abandoned because its not finished yet.

Let's Make The Most of this Beautiful Day (Since We're Together We Might As Well) By: br0ken_hands, jpnadia Rated: E (sex as major plot points) Finished

“Harrow?” Gideon does a double-take and grips on to the nearest solid object for support. The keys on the entryway table give a forlorn jingle at the impact. “Harrowhark Nonagesimus?”

The wraith stops dead partway down the stairs with her hand on the bannister. “Griddle?” (“Griddle?” asks Cam, incredulously, which is about how Gideon feels about that nickname, too.)

Palamedes gives them a very narrow look. “Harrow, my undergraduate study partner, Camilla Hect. And you’re Gideon Nav, I presume? I’ve heard about you; it’s a pleasure to meet. I take it you already know my roommate, Harrowhark Nonagesimus?”

Three best friends unsuitable roommate pairs buy adjoining properties and rip down the fences and have a shared garden. There is a goat.

This fic does not contain spoilers for Harrow the Ninth.

LMTMOTBD (SWTWMAW) is one hell of an acronym for one hell of a story. Thats probably why it's called 4gfs. these are the types of stories i want to print out and put on my shelf. Fun and sexy, not as serious as SCKL or WHALITA. I love everyones problems in this one. does that make sense? Read if you want smut and found family.

Four Empire Griddleharks

Cataclysmic Variable Star by: Elldritch Rating: M Finished

A continuation of the Harrow Nova AU from chapter 40 of Harrow the Ninth

CVS is like its own book. Pretty sure i’ve put this on lists before. I love reverend daughter gideon, and how the canon beats are twisted to fit the altered characters. Harrow nova Is… i'm kissing her and she has killed me. Read if you want more canon adjacent.

Attack on Ninth by: cmdrskip Rated:E (yes sex) Finished

Failing numerous times to escape the Ninth, Gideon gave up the ghost and settled into her forced servitude. The Emperor made no request for the Houses to attempt the Lyctor Trials. Gideon’s miserable life went on in the Ninth House, plateauing into a tedious rinse and repeat cycle of waiting for the seemingly unattainable sweet release of death. The monotony is broken when someone makes it their mission to murder the Ninth House scion. Somehow this becomes Gideon’s problem.

As if it was a universal rule, Gideon’s pitiful life gets worse in the drill shaft. (Get it? The Ninth is a pit and it sucks- whatever).

AU- Gideon becomes the Ninth's cav and tries to keep Harrow alive, without it killing her first.

This one was pretty good. I love the middle part of gtn when our girls are reluctantly working together. They are a little older in this one than canon, and managed to interact with people, and this has changed them just a bit. Read if you want that sweet enemies to lovers slow burn, and interesting plot to go along with it.

Resurrection By: N1ghtWr1ter Rated: E Finished

The Ninth House needs an heir. A little bit of flesh magic later, and its cavalier primary is set up to provide.

And then the Reverend Daughter manages to *ruin sex.*

This one is 100,000 words of delicious porn. Read if you want 100,000 words of griddlehark fucking nastey on every surface of the ninth. It also has a 20,000 word unfinished prequel in the same universe, reading not required.

The Flip Side By: No1fan15 Rated: M Finished

Gideon Nav is alive, resurrected by the King Undying, and she's having a hell of a time.

From a now embarrassingly protective Harrow, to her newly gained powers, to a Ninth House repopulated, shit is going down. With her sword, her wits, and her deeply buried feelings, she fights to keep this new life long enough to ensure her adept is safe. But Harrow's talking to herself, the Emperor is lying to them, and Gideon keeps fumbling every chance at a real conversation with the girl she died for.

Worst of all, the River is calling her back, and she doesn't know how long she can stay afloat.

This one is like an alternate HTN if gideon was immediately resurrected. Kinda similar to attack on ninth,in setting, but less sex. Read if you hated when gideon died and pretended like she was magically resurrected in your head.

Three Earth AUs.

Yellow Card By: Moonblastbitch Rated: E WIP

Harrowhark had 3 things she would always be grateful for: her two cousins, and her son.

Everything else was…fine. Work? Fine. Dealing with the gossipy PTA moms? Her marriage? Not great, but it was fine.

But her son’s big, ginger soccer coach? That butch is FINE.

What’s discretion compared to new discoveries? What’s loyalty and faithfulness when you’ve just found exactly where you belong?

Yellow card is immaculate. Read if you want to meet Kevin, and love him. Read if you want some steamy sex.

Ask A Ginger By: Rohad Rating: E Finished

Of all her gigs, writing advice for a column in a skin magazine is probably Gideon's favorite, though walking Noodle for Cam and Pal is a close second. Even when it brings her within glaring distance of their across-the-hall neighbors. The Nonagesimus sisters. The younger, a little weird but fine. The elder? A pit viper.

At least on the surface.

AAG is so funny and gives that good good gideon POV that i love. Read if you love Gideon.

I Will Not Die For You By:ghost_maiden_of_delphi Rating: M Finished

Gideon Nav is a mid-level enforcer for the Nonagesimus Crime Family, and all she wants is out. Luckily, she has a ticket: if she can ferry the don's daughter, Harrowhark, across the country to a meeting of The Nine Families.

There's only three problems: they can't fly, they can't use any of the Family's resources, and Harrowhark is the last person Gideon wants to spend two weeks trapped in a car with. But now it's up to her, alone, to keep Harrow safe and keep herself from losing it on the long, lonesome road ahead.

Read if you love… i'm running out of taglines. It's mafia, guys. Read it.

+ One Non Griddlehark Adventure

Everything Goes On By: cato_universe Rated: E Finished

In a different time and place, Mercymorn remembers.

2,000 years later the Lyctors are born again, to finally get it right.

This one is wild. This one’s not about our main cast at all and instead follows mercy, in another life. I really like it, it’s refreshing to follow her for so long. Read if you want something thats not griddlehark. Gideon is just barely in this one.

OK, if youve made it this far, congratulations! and goodbye.

#the locked tomb #fic rec #fanfiction #griddlehark #gideon the ninth #tlt #harrow nonagesimus #harrow the ninth

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starlight-bread-blog · 3 months ago

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Okay I'm gonna go full conspiracy, but some of y'all are way worse so I'm doing this. Listen up. Will Byers and Mike Wheeler are fictional characters. Meaning, that everything they do, everything they think and yes, everything they feel has a purpose. So let's look at the facts as they are. Mike couldn't tell El that he loves her, and Will is in love with Mike. Right off the bat, with Will, this fact could lead to two things:

Mike is also in love with Will, and there will be a love triangle with Mike in the middle.

Mike is not in love with Will, and Will will either end up alone, or die, or find another queer boy to love.

With scenario 1, everything is fine. But although on paper, scenario 2 makes sense, we should take into account that everything that Will feels is a carefully thought out decision.

Let's remember the themes and the message of Stranger Things. This show is about the freaks of society, the losers, the outcasts. How people may l give them the side eye, but they have each other. And they'll stand by each other no matter what. So, how does this relate to Will and Mike? Will is a gay boy in the 80s, which not only makes him an outcast, but an outright freak in the eyes of the public. It would go against Stranger Things' message to write a freak trying to find love in his best friend, the one who's supposed to be by his side forever, and having him rejected. In real life, this would not be a problem. If someone is straight, they're straight. But in fiction, the sexuality and or love interest of a character is again, a choice with ramification on the quality of the story. And writing Will, a "freak", having his heart broken by someone who he considered another freak, when you're telling a story about how freaks empower each other by sticking together, is not a smart writing decision.

(There is also the matter of the van scene, where Will's supposedly unrequited feelings are being used to repair El and Mike's relationship, as Will cries over not being able to be with Mike. In other words, if Mike isn't in love with Will, the outcast's suffering is used to fix what's more socially acceptable. Do you see the problem? I don't know how many times I'm going to repeat myself in this post, and I hope it's not getting annoying, but I need to make this as crystal clear as possible: Fiction is not real life. In real life, a gay boy could use some words of affirmation regardless of how they feel, it's just being nice. But in fiction, you have a job to do. You have a story to tell. You have a message you want to put out into the world. And this scene is not compatible with the message).

But let's look at Mike. In season 4, El confronts Mike about him not telling her that he loves her. And throughout that whole scene, not even once, does he just say that he loves her. In the end he does, but the reason as to why he stopped saying it, or why he didn't say it when she confronted him, is never explained. In real life, it's okay if Mike wants to deal with whatever he feels and the reasons behind it with himself. But this is not real life, this was deliberately written to be understood by an audience. It was written to serve a purpose. Mike not being able to tell El that he loves her was a serious conflict in season 4, and the cause behind it is left unknown. This is bad writing, plain and simple. Unless, there is some other factor we are not yet aware of. Unless, he could possibly have feelings for someone else. Maybe that someone is Will.

With that theory in mind, remember when Will and Mike met after a long time of not seeing each other? Will was gonna hug Mike, but Mike just went for a fist bump. There was a very awkward atmosphere in that moment. Why would there be? Once again, I'm not talking about real life. In real life, it could just be awkward because they haven't talked to each other in a while and Mike needs time to adjust. But this is fiction. Every emotion has a purpose, every bit leads to something. And so far, it led to nothing. There was just one awkward moment, with no explanation, and it's never brought up again. There is no reason for it to be there. It's common knowledge that unnecessary story bits shouldn't make it to the final cut. If this wouldn't be expanded upon in some way, it'd be bad writing. It wouldn't be the worst thing to ever happen, but combined with him not being able to tell El that he loves her, it's all very confusing to say the least. But the story is not over, and maybe, all will be explained. And just maybe, that awkwardness could be described as tension between the two. Maybe Mike is in love with Will. That would be the most logical explanation.

#will byers #i'm back on the shipping bullshit #i hope i'm not reaching lol #this is getting out of hand #mike wheeler #mike wheeler x will byers #will byers x mike wheeler #will x mike #mike x will #byler endgame #byler nation #byler meta #byler tumblr #byler is canon #byler is real #byler is requited #byler is endgame #stranger things #byler

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astercontrol · 18 days ago

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Thinking about that ask I got about "dark and edgy" versus "light-hearted" Tron movies.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize that part of the reason I like the original movie so much is that it's got SO much silliness, and yet also has extremely dark themes.

Not all of the dark themes are front-and-center in the story. Some of them only stand out after you've thought about it a while. But others are VERY clearly there. There's violence and gladiator battles-to-the-death. There's dictatorship and enslavement. Good guys are forced to murder senselessly for the bad guys' amusement. Friends are imprisoned together for ages talking about their hopes for when they get out and then one of them is killed just after they escape. There are villains grappling with how they've gone too far and are afraid to go farther but can't turn back now.

And yet there's also utterly absurd silliness! There's the way Crom blusters through his introduction as a compound interest program who's not made to fight in video games. There's a Bit that flies around going Yes and No and sassing Flynn as he does maybe the third-worst possible job of trying to drive a Recognizer. There's how Flynn acts before the whole adventure starts-- he is just an absolute clown and practically every single scene with him feels like a comedy.

The original TRON movie went SIGNIFICANTLY past the threshold of "this movie has so much silliness in it that it qualifies as a Silly Movie, regardless of what other deeply sad and serious stuff also happens in there."

That threshold isn't even "more than half." It's a small amount, proportionally. But silly is a powerful ingredient. It doesn't take very much to make the whole thing Distinctly Silly-Flavored.

But... that's a very fiction-centric trope.

If real life were held to this standard, real life would be far past that threshold. There is outright horror in this world. Lots and lots and lots of it. But mixed inextricably in with the horror and tragedy is more than enough silliness to make this, by fiction standards, a thoroughly silly world.

But we, as real people who are affected by the horror and tragedy as well as the silliness --- we don't judge the world by fiction standards.

And I think I'm realizing that I don't really judge fiction by those standards either.

You don't have to. I think some of the greatest writers don't. I think some of the greatest fiction of history isn't present-day-Hollywood easy to categorize as Deep Dark Edgy or Angsty Drama or Silly Light or Filthy Smutty or any box like that. I think the best of it has a big helping of each.

I wrote a fic about some of the "lightest" canon themes in that movie, like how Flynn keeps ending up in bizarrely homoerotic situations with Tron and Ram where he has absolutely no idea what's happening, and then suddenly at the end he kisses Tron's girlfriend for no clear reason, and then she kisses Tron and no one seems to care. My fic is Flynn's POV through all that nonsense and it's a serious story, about the painful emotional distance of socially navigating a world where people don't give the same signals you do, while you deeply care about respecting their boundaries even though you'll never understand them, and finally finding common ground because they, too, have known the feeling of facing someone you care about and not being able to articulate what you want.

I wrote a smut fic where that goofy compound interest program Crom loses his virginity to Ram and it turns out he has six tentacles that he uses for extra counting hands so he can go up to hexadecimal. And it's a sad angsty fic with, like, theology and philosophy and moral dilemmas about loyalty.

I wrote a fic about losing your purpose and questioning what you even are and splitting into multiple selves and being separated from someone you need to reach by a communication gap you'll never bridge, and being torn between loyalty to someone from a world you'll never understand and loyalty to someone who's basically you. And it's from the viewpoint of the fucking BIT.

There is no dark and light. There's fucking rainbows of color, everywhere.

And not many movies these days show it.

#tron #tronblr #tron 1982 #userworldproblems #kevin flynn #ram tron #yori #thoughts

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catenary-chad · 28 days ago

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TROPES VS ELECTRIC TRAINS IN MEDIA

(~5.5k words)

Oh no! The blunt end of a Class 91! If you don’t know what that is or what their infamous “parent” was, you will be very confused by this post. This is a part 2 and will be very confusing without the context of PART 1 unless you are a serious electric train enthusiast. There is just so much background info to discuss since so many people know so little about the topic.

This post will go into stereotypes vs reality with electric trains, both within Starlight Express itself and in broader media and fanon, what the gap between these reveals, and what human parallels there are. How an electric protagonist could look in Stex and why it’s especially fitting for a story about toy trains. With a bonus section on what an actually villainous Electra could look like, without unfairly presenting electric trains.

STEREOTYPES VS REALITY

There is such a fascinating yet infuriating disconnect between media depictions of electric trains and their reality, and this is especially true of Starlight Express

It’s a repeated theme, endless romanticization of the filthy, inefficient, outmoded and rightfully deposed steam engine… oh and that juice jack over there. Used as an insult in the Railway Series. An afterthought at best and erased in favor of making everything (usually inaccurately) battery powered at worst in Thomas and Friends. Often barely discussed in serious detail by train history documentaries. Treated as both unattainable idealism and something old and tired that can be replaced by less proven “bionic duckweed” solutions like hydrogen and batteries.

In doing research into how Electra would truly be, I kept finding this distinct cold and uncaring tone to how electric trains are discussed in English language media. They’re presented as a soulless non-entity, detailed technical info is not easy to casually find, and comment sections are filled with wild misconceptions about them (or people admitting they don’t know anything). So I’ll go over the big ones I see outside and inside this fandom, in fiction and nonfiction, and what the truth is.

*anything about being newfangled*

Electric trains predate widespread use of internal combustion engines. Their practical use as streetcars (late 1880s) is roughly halfway between the practical use of steam locomotives (1830) and practical use of diesel traction (1930s). They are older than electric toasters and most household appliances, because they predated the broader electrical grid in general. “General Electric makes trains too?” is a hilarious statement the more you know because they made trains long before they made household appliances. Early electric trains are super fascinating design-wise because they’re the missing link between “typical” steam vs diesel engine design, especially in terms of transmission and wheel arrangements.

This bizarre three-phase AC German railcar held the overall rail speed record from the 1900s to early 1950s. Eat your heart out, perpetual 100 mph steam engine arguments.

“you like electric trains? i bet you drive a Tesla and are a tech bro because you like that sci fi stuff”/ “electra is a vaporware fraud!”

I just can’t with this one. This is “didn’t even skim wikipedia once” tier ignorant and thoughtless. It’s on par with going “orcas are stupid mindless maneaters! And also fish, which don’t have souls of course!”. Except with dozens of people around you accepting this uncritically and parroting it, and orcas barely existing in mass media. Who all won’t even skim wikipedia to see how offensively wrong they are. It’s downright infuriating when it’s from people who clearly show at least some thought towards combustion trains, but that’s more of a railfan issue. A lot of these things are obscure enough I don’t expect people to know them, but this is the one that really gets to me because it’s so surface-level.

The vaporware/scam thing just pisses me off. Failed and cancelled electrification projects are usually just…. sad when you look at the reasons behind them. They get axed due to short-sighted business decisions and budget cuts (often while money gets funneled towards roads). And then you have the APT, done in by this exact mocking rhetoric after it finally got most of its technical flaws sorted out, after suffering from political and economic opposition for years. Shaming anything new for having problems early on and equating it to a scam when it’s a century+ old form of transport promotes the kind of unfounded cynicism that in term promotes stagnation and regression. Maybe that’s why this strikes a nerve with me so much. It just stinks of what killed the APT, whose own mockery in Stex just makes me sad in hindsight knowing what became of it a few years later.

Anyways, electric trains are up there with elevators and substations on the list of the least tech bro things there are. Actual electric trains, even the battery kind, are the antithesis of novelty “gadgetbahns” or unproven tech. They’re 150+ years old, WIDELY proven, robust technology and rail as an industry heavily skews towards conservative design, incremental improvement, bureaucracy, and not fixing things unless they’re broke. They’re very much a “big government” thing and skew towards left-wing and collectivist leanings, the complete opposite of those techno-feudalist nutjobs. Their fanbase and proponents are notably diverse and disproportionately LGBT. Musk HATES trains in general and tried to derail high speed rail progress in California, it’s a mix of not wanting to be alongside the common folk and them having no need for his batteries or autos. On a conceptual level, Electra would make him spontaneously combust in disgust if their hands brushed. Electric trains are the embodiment of what Curtis Yarvin demonizes as “the Cathedral” and if you don’t know who or what that is, it’s a separate, horrible rabbit hole very relevant to the current situation in the US.

Serious electric train fans tend to be into buses, elevators, maps, fans, general infrastructure/skyscrapers, and pre-WWII toy trains. A number of them openly despise the AI realistic humanoid robot apocalypse brand of sci fi in favor of utilitarian “blue collar” takes like Runaway (1984) that make the killer robots Roombas with guns and autonomous construction equipment gone haywire. The grounded, realistic, often unintuitive clunkiness of heavy-duty practical machines. They hate “gadgetbahns” and I think I’ve maybe seen one genuine maglev defender, there’s a weird sense of being technically conservative, but in a weirdly progressive way. They just dream of having freight interurbans back. There is often a sense of being a Silent Generation-era grandpa in a 30 year old’s body.

idk man it’s just enraging when an uncharismatic issue gets wrongly stereotyped on such a wrong and outright offensive level. So many people will draw from everything but actual electric trains for Electra. It’s why I get pissed at the idea of making Electra a Musk figure to re-villainize them, because it’s just fundamentally wrong on all levels and electric trains have so little representation in English media. Hell, the general public definitely knows more about lesbians and people will still rightfully call out the problems with Girlball. It’s such an aggravating, backwards, spectacularly ignorant depiction of something with so much to offer society.

If you’re going to villainize Electra, at least do something remotely accurate. I’ll go into this more later, but basically, hypnotism and being French are blank checks. If you want something DARK, nuanced, and bleak, Train Magneto, or Ganondorf.

“Electric trains are all subways, commuter trains, or high speed rail and are “weak” vs diesel and steam engines”

Subways, commuter trains, and high speed rail are just the most visible applications that require electrification. You can’t burn things in tunnels or you’ll kill people, EMUs are unbeatable at quick starting/stopping and basically required for the frequency suburban and subway trains require (see the GER Class A55 for an extreme example of steam tech trying to fill this niche, and comparisons between Caltrain’s old diesel locomotives vs new EMUs). You need monstrous horsepower for high speed operation, which is impossible without being monstrously heavy (hard to accelerate quickly) unless you use the external power supply of overhead lines. Power cars for high speed trains are 8,000+ at the low end, the highest for a diesel locomotive ever was 6,600 and it’s telling that the official speed record was the Class 43 HST at 148 mph (with some less confirmed accounts of others around the 160-170 range). Turbine trains have gotten to the 170 mph mark, but those have never been particularly successful because turbines run best at constant speeds, and are better used in power plants.

But electric locomotives are also excellent for freight service, it's the third "F" along with "Fast" and "Frequent" cited as the reason to pick direct electric vs battery or hydrogen power. it’s just that highly electrified Western countries don’t have much rail freight and freight-dominated countries like the US and Mexico have almost no electrified freight lines. With a change in gearing and weight, the monstrously high power electric locomotives are capable of is fantastic for heavy freight trains, especially in the mountains. See the IORE line, Leshuttle Class 9s, Deseret Power, and for some wild historical examples, the Norfolk and Western, Virginian, and Great Northern electrics. In steep areas, especially where there were tunnels, enormous electric locomotives filled the niche of the better known Big Boy or Y6Bs… but went pretty much forgotten due to lack of preservation. Even more typical modern electric locomotives in Europe today are usually mixed-traffic and great for faster freight use (even the CC 40100 was intended for this in the 60s). And all this isn’t even mentioning India or China, which have incredibly high HP freight electric locos but I don’t know as much about them.

(And that’s partly why I’m so Mykalectra biased, he’s physically accurate! Early diesel locomotives were relatively underpowered and Greaseball would be the lankier one if anything!)

*anything making electric trains rich and snooty/electra is spoiled and pampered*

One word objection: SUBWAYS

But really, it’s hard to consistently correlate any kind of traction with being rich/poor because there’s such wide extremes of both in the same countries. Yes, the newest completed electrification projects in the US and UK have been in notably wealthy areas (San Jose, London) and there are more expensive high speed trains. But the vast majority are pedestrian, even run down inner-city trains. Many poorer countries in eastern Europe have extensive electric networks. Even war-torn Ukraine has been rebuilding electrified lines. Oddly enough, I’ve heard this misconception weaponized against Intercity in the 90s, claiming it was largely servicing rich business travelers when most people used it to visit friends and other casual travel.

Basically, classism is a very solid theme to explore with talking trains but it doesn’t follow traction lines so let’s not demonize something that’s very much a “rising tide that raises all ships”. Populations should ALL have clean and efficient travel and pitying the electric train for being penned in is fairer to its true state than this blanket statement.

For the second part, see the US section on historically accurate Electra in the previous post. An electric intercity mainline train in the US circa the 80s, would be running on a Northeast Corridor in absolutely atrocious shape post-Penn Central collapse. It’s the reason there aren’t Nez Cassé engines running there today, X996 couldn’t handle the awful conditions. And due to its limited budget, deferred maintenance is a major problem with Amtrak, not to dangerous degrees, but to the point where locomotives don’t last as long as equivalents elsewhere. Even the “rich white guy train” Acelas are held together with DUCT TAPE (see photo proof) now at the ripe old age of 25 and are dropping out of service because they just can’t work anymore. This depiction aggravates me because it covers up such a huge irl problem. Admittedly, I don’t know how things are in the UK but the Class 91s are also facing relatively short lifespans (30ish years). Intercity trains with lots of start/stop and acceleration like these is an intense, taxing job in general.

“High maintenance and unreliable”

Couldn’t be further from the truth. Electric trains have few moving parts and there’s inherently less to go wrong on them, especially the older and simpler you go. There’s no diesel engine to contend with, which cuts down on a LOT vs them. In France, where late-era steam engines were exceptionally good and had fewer mechanical breakdowns…. they still had 30% uptime due to maintenance requirements, electric ones had upwards of 90%. The BR Class 91 (named Electra likely in reference to the character) became the most reliable engine in the network after its earlier issues were resolved.

The majority of problems are caused by catenary infrastructure, which I’ve gone into earlier. Properly designed, it’s a lot more weather-resiliant than roads and not relying on combustion has been a noted advantage of electric engines in extreme low temperatures (when designed for them).

The CC 40100 was unusually unreliable by electric standards because it was a quad-voltage engine built before modern power electronics, ironically being pre-computer was its main flaw. Semiconductor technology did so much to make AC-DC converters smaller and more reliable (and later, allowed practical use of lower maintenance AC motors). While computer problems do exist on modern electric trains, it’s not any worse than diesel equivalents.

The whole framing of “damn computers” and electric being a weak spooky magic thing vs strong “manly” combustion more broader understood by the masses is just objectively wrong with trains. They’re based on robust old tech that’s been quietly humming away in power plants and elevators for decades. People severely underestimate how beefy electrical equipment is in general because it’s not intuitive and such a “nerdy” thing not really presented accurately in media, and this becomes especially true of trains.

*just the mere idea of an electric train cheating in an uphill race or steam engines beating them by pure merit*

You know what I’m just going to put this article here. You’ll have to machine translate it if you don’t know French.

Or if you insist on something already in English,

This is just one example from “When the Steam Railroads Electrified” about early lines now lost to time. This book has example after example (with stats) of just how much electrifying improved timetables and performance. Steep inclines were something electric trains were numerically amazing at even early on.

I think it’s telling that the few people who’ve written serious, detailed accounts of the benefits of electrification have been incredibly well educated and will dump as many stats as possible. They’re something that becomes more impressive the more you actually know about them because they’re so undersold by mass media. Meanwhile steam engines get repeatedly whitewashed of their colossal faults and impracticality. They’re an absolutely TERRIBLE choice for a character who’s supposed to be genuinely good at something because they were so numerically terrible vs all but the most inefficient and poorly made of early diesel engines. I will give Greaseball a pass since there are sketchy but widespread claims early diesel manufacturers may have played dirty with marketing and testing vs steam, and him and Electra would have comparable enough top speeds that playing dirty makes sense between them. But steam vs electric was never much of a competition. Infrastructure costs were the limiting factor in their spread.

“lol Electra is a bad boss”

Greaseball is associated with a railroad voted worst place to work for years. Just look at r/railroading on reddit to get a taste for how awful UP is an employer (the other big US freight railroads are similar).

Steam engines lasted longest where labor regulations were weakest and wages were lowest due to their vastly higher labor requirements and dangerous, more unpleasant working conditions. This reversing was a cause of their downfall in several countries. It’s not as direct an association as with Greaseball, but they’re decidedly more associated with an anti-worker era and conditions.

Meanwhile Electra is ambiguously associated with France or Amtrak. France (and most of Europe) generally treats rail employees well. Amtrak is considered a much better employer than the freight railroads. All signs point towards being the BEST boss of the three. Nevermind that electric trains are so heavily associated with left-leaning politics.

“Electra is uneducated”

Okay, this one I’ve never actually seen in the wild but saw someone complain about. If you’ve actually seen this take please contact me privately, because this one is just mystifying. “Out of touch”, socially clunky, or superficially kind of a bimbo, sure, but I’ve never seen this specific phrasing.

Yeah so this one is laughably wrong on an objective level. Serious sources on electric trains are STUPID high quality and delightfully slop-free. They’re often by people with an engineering background at minimum, but “30+ years of experience in the field”, having multiple degrees in history and education, or association with serious university presses are the norm, not the exception. It’s an interest that has nothing to lose and everything to gain the more people know about it and attracts notably highly educated people.

Electra’s also just incredibly “edgy nerd” coded in canon in general because wacky time signatures and clever electrical puns. AC/DC is the smartest song in the musical by a long shot. If any major character feels like they have a college degree it’s Electra.

Though I’ll defend Electra embracing the bimbo aesthetic for weirdly serious reasons I’ll go into later. But also, there’s been an uptick in reclaiming it in recent years and breaking the association with those things being a sign of unintelligence. For an older and particularly extreme example: Britney Spear’s Guide to Semiconductor Physics

On top of all this, if anything benefits from ignorance, it’s the glamorization of steam power. Which neatly ties into Evangelical hostility to education and anti-intellectualism, and how climate change denial is a major facet of that. But this aspect of canon gets panned so universally I don’t feel the need to go that heavily into it.

THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF ALL OF THIS

Again, this section isn’t to label you as a bad person. It’s to raise how specifically and unintentionally interesting the implications of these things are and just how versatile the counternarrative of Electra’s reality would be. They're just so ambiguously minority-coded and you can take it in so many different and specific ways.

“Why does Electra make such a big deal of being electric in AC/DC?”

Because they are unironically futuristic in the context as 70s-80s Amtrak and such a vanishingly small, oppressed minority in the US that’s been fighting an uphill battle against widespread stereotyping for years. Look at how long this post is, can you imagine how insistent and exasperated you’d be trying to explain all this to people every waking moment? Having your unique needs and strengths constantly ignored and subjugated while regressive romanticization props up the wildly unqualified?

In the UK circa the 90s… it’s not as openly harsh an environment but they are still a huge step technologically and being electric is a defining trait and faces fluctuating political opposition.

With all this context and the struggling to nonexistant irl politics of widespread, persistent, rolling electrification, I just can’t view the song as terribly villainous.

-Being falsely stereotyped as weak, delicate, and finicky because others don’t understand basic physical facts about you

Female Electra would work so well because this is just so on the nose. There’s an element of Electra being depicted as wrongly “hysteric” vs actual electric trains that fits just as well. This becomes even more compelling with how Greaseball embodies how “masculine” people frame diesel engines to be… despite being physically weaker, less rugged in some ways, and anything but isolationist (they’ve always worked in packs).

-Being depicted as unstoppable and domineering, yet pathetic

Oh this is 1:1 with some antisemitic depictions of Jews, especially in the early 20th century. This can have some very ugly connotations. I’ll also point towards New York being the starting point and epicenter of electric heavy rail in the US and Lionel being started by a Jewish man

-Being treated as a new, alien threat despite being around for 100 years

This is why I think Electra being Asian can make so much sense, especially Chinese or Japanese-American, especially since those are prominent train-producing countries. Once again, a nearly 1:1 parallel to people.

-being treated as more radical and unreasonable than they are in general

Multiple cultures have been stereotyped this way, ironically even ones that are very conservative and have major issues to it. Here’s a video on this happening to the Romanichal in particular

This is also weaponized against black women in the US, Kamala Harris being a prominent example.

On a related note, while this post is intended to replace it with a broader and more international scope and more serious tone, see HERE for my previous post on how Electra’s framing near perfectly parallels the slander of the "dreaded libs"/“woke agenda” in the US. It may be a controversial take of mine but I genuinely believe the story as given becomes stronger when framing is flipped and these economic associations of steam and electric power are put on full display

“haha look at Electra throwing a shitfit in No Comeback”

That song could be made so heartbreaking in the context being an engine trial of the time period. Desperate to prove themself to avoid total annihilation in their last bastion, against a government that wants them dead. More focused on the ascended stopgap propped up by Big Oil, plot armor and the triumph of cliche leads to their loss to someone who would never win legitimately, and the country falls back into the dark ages of rolling coal. After all, second place may as well be last in an election.

Well you’d be pissed too and run off to where you’re more wanted and not at the mercy of the Overpowered Steam Shunter Complex that’s only grown more widespread in the Thomas TV show. Maybe the triumph of cliche in Anglophone train media was the real unbeatable rigged system all along. Already went into Electra running away to France in the last post.

-Electra being presented as superficial and frivolous for caring about appearances

Marketing, optics, and visual design are a HUGE thing in rail, especially passenger. It’s a completely sincere thing to care about and even the coldest of technical professionals will admit that the “sparks effect” is a thing. This is relevant to product design in general, see the NeoNurture situation as an example. This subject is way too broad to go into here but the London Underground has a great design history.

Also the sheer number of UP OCs and general glamorization of that company with little mention of how awful they actually are is a giant case of “you are not immune to propaganda”and example of how powerful this stuff is. For a more benign example, see how common milk and stock cars are despite being rarely used anymore- but they are popular as toys and in the media. The number of circus vs carnival train OCs is also telling despite the two being so similar- circus trains are common in the media, carnival ones are not. See Strates Shows for an irl example if curious

I think there’s an interesting thread of respectability politics with Electra, especially with how mundane and even dirty electric trains are seen as in the US. The emphasis on “clean” in What Time Is It? is especially interesting, the “hygiene olympics” are thing with black women specifically and that era of Electra has always kind of read as as being deliberately overly “feminine” to avoid being seen as “masculine”. There’s a number of ways to take that on the train front, there’s been passenger-oriented electric engines based on freight models that struggle to escape that image (GE E60), there’s also the thread of trying to look less “scary”… a word with very different connotations in each context.

Early Amtrak was also maligned for “just slapping paint on old equipment” which I think has fascinating parallels to how intense some of the UK tour makeup got vs how rock bottom its budget was. Slapping on a bit of bright makeup/paint to cheaply improve morale was also a thing during WWII.

-the general thread of being pinned as unreliable and blowing out power stations

Infrastructure failures. This stuff speaks more for infrastructure issues than failures of electric trains themselves. The Metroliners had issues with this in the 60s, and old power stations struggling to supply enough energy for modern trains on modern schedules is a big issues. We once again have the situation of blaming individuals for institutional failures.

Also there’s a fantastic disability metaphor to be had with electrification. It’s easy to paint being direct electric-only as one in a country with poor infrastructure and very limited electrified lines. They’re totally bricked outside of those areas It parallels disability accessibility in a lot of ways. With the fascinating caveat that some countries like Switzerland and India are 100% electrified and with that accommodation omnipresent, being electric-only isn’t even “a disability” anymore, it’s just the norm.

-The general projection of notable faults of steam (and diesel engines) onto Electra

“Every accusation is a confession”

Seriously, exploding, the hill thing, high maintenance- half the stuff they stick on Electra are notably issues with STEAM ENGINES. Eh I can’t discuss this further without going full character hate, which I've been trying to avoid here. See “why steam oppression fails” in my pinned post for my bizarrely deep reasons for why Rusty would be an amazing hateable villain.

TOY TRAINS AND THEIR CULTURAL IMPACT

A lot of these themes are complex and heavy but the setup of a kid playing with trains is a much lighter, but still effective way of approaching them. Control, representing the government/other authorities, has a bunch of both inherited and new toy trains and tracks. But uses their allowance to buy other toys vs replacing or maintaining tracks for the trains, then blames them for failing and derailing. Current attitudes and interest in various rolling stock are reflected in the kid's enthusiasm (or lack of) for their toy counterparts. Toy trains are a surprisingly great microcosm of the real thing in general.

The line between toy/model and “real” electric trains is surprisingly thin, especially early on. The very first electric train WAS a small model, and early human-scale demonstrators used batteries connected to the rails for power… a setup used pre-home electrification for early toy trains. The Volks Electric Railway in Brighton originally used a two-rail setup identical to that of many modern toy trains, though this never achieved widespread use in rail. The third rail setup used by the likes of Lionel isn’t visually accurate to the third rails on commuter trains and subways, but it works similarly and has similar problems with voltage drop. You also have issues with different brands and models running off AC vs DC power, a problem that exists with real trains in Europe, Japan, the northeastern US, and even South Africa. And while it’s very different, electrification in both toy and practical forms requires routine maintenance to function.

Toys are an understated pipeline to legitimate interest in actual electric trains, they’re probably the most prominent mass media depiction of them in the Anglosphere. I’ve seen multiple rail professionals and many serious electric railfans talk about models sparking interest in the real deal since you have to learn a lot of the same basic electrical things to understand them. And there’s several now-extinct electric classes that remain in public consciousness because they were popular toys, see the New Haven EP-5. That same phenomenon happens elsewhere too, the LBSCR E2 being by far the most infamous. Pre-WWII toys have a particularly strong association since diesel power wasn’t established yet and you had far more electric prototypes depicted. Intrigue over an unidentifiable heirloom train that ended up being a New York Central S-motor or Milwaukee Road Bipolar opens a world many wouldn’t know about otherwise.

(3,4, and 6 are all electric locmotives, Bipolar, ambiguous boxcab, and S-Motor respectively)

Outside of token GG1s and Amtrak models, it’s hard to find many historic American electric trains in model form unless custom made or bought as expensive artisan brass models. Those pre-WWII toys are often the most accessible option. Exposure to model trains definitely impacts people’s views of them, just see how many Europeans consider UP the singular American railroad due to their heavy modelling presence. Companies used to sponsor toys based on their trains as advertising and convenient PR since cultural relevance puts them in the public conscious.

And when the options are steam, diesel, and a token GG1, it perpetuates this limited view and interest in electrification. Look at continental European brands and you’ll find a lot more, the CC 40100 being one of the popular ones, and the Swiss Crocodile being M��rklin’s mascot…. people thought the Lego version of that engine was fictional on reddit, a misconception that also happened with old Lionels and is indicative of how widespread ignorance is.

In short, a story about toy trains is perfect for both working as a microcosm of larger electric rail infrastructure problems, and for addressing just how unrepresented and forgotten electric trains actually are vs steam and even diesel. You don’t really see people disappointed by model steam trains, you’re more likely to see them confused or let down by unfamiliar electric ones. Lionel 520 was a great real life example, it had an obscure basis and confused kids and was a flop (but later developed a cult following for how weird yet functional it was)

SO WHAT DOES THIS LEAVE YOU WITH?

Some surprisingly popular options

Michael Jackson and Prince work great as character basis/inspiration and are a perfect mix of superficially fun but capable of having so much depth. I’ve got a post on that here

Already talked about Grace Jones briefly, moving to France where she was more accepted and successful. I’ve seen an uptick in people clamoring for a more genderblind Electra and I’ve certainly given you a ton of ammo here on why female Electra could work so well. Tbh there’s a lot of interesting androgynous black celebrities to work off of in general.

Say what you will about the 2013 tour videos but for how superficial some find that take on the character, I think it’s surprisingly true to life and easy to give depth to

And then we already have a giant rotating bridge and documented history of clunky track design/conditions and tech issues hurting people. Going all in on the infrastructure route really works with the stage setup

I’ve got multiple clashing personal takes on how I’d approach protag Electra, with varying shades of sacrilege. I think the most agreeable one would be McCoy becomes the out of touch, high maintenance, but relatively neutral celeb, “OLC Belle but a GG1 engine” becomes Electra��s parental figure… and Greaseball is basically unchanged. Electra is a bitch and kind of a troll and in a weird way akin to a more optimistic OLC Rusty. Wins due to being strategic and versatile and capable of handling crappy track conditions. See here for more because it's long.

And if you’ve lasted this long and want a “hell has frozen over” option from me, I actually think OLC Rusty is largely fine as a character and has some traits that have aged well (incel doomer tendencies). My problem with him purely comes from the steam engine aspect. Making him an electric boxcab fits his attempted aim SO much better and brings attention to an actually overlooked aspect of train history, not to mention that some ridiculously antiquated electric trains have quietly run on backwater lines in the Americas, decades after the last non-tourist steam ones. See HERE for more on this.

BONUS: ACCURATELY VILLAINIZING ELECTRA

I can’t understate how much the hypnosis and “being French” parts are blank checks. Multi-Unit control has been a major advantage of electric trains since their first practical use in the 1880s, and that’s more or less electrical mind control. The CC 40100 Electra’s helmet was based on was a genuine symbol of French intrusion via rail, particularly in Germany. There was at least some intent to run it into England via the Channel Tunnel too. And to this day, companies associated with the French state rail network have massive global influence and reach… to varying reception. Look into Keolis.

Those are campy, lighter-hearted options, but for something darker and bleaker: train Magneto. Or Ganondorf . Because that’s how Electra starts to look with historical context in the US if you insist on making them a conqueror. Nearly wiped out, forgotten, and distinctly dehumanized, yet assured of their superiority because yeah, that’s how it is numbers-wise. Oh this gets complicated and easily problematic very fast, but it’s a lot more accurate and compelling than completely mischaracterizing poorly understood technology. Also, just imagine No Comeback in 23/16.

(Though a huge gap in this is that Japan, Germany, and France have vastly better preservation scenes and opportunities even on electrified mainlines. In turn, even this interpretation smacks of “we can’t let minorities have rights, what if they treat us how we treated them?”)

tbh I'll probably do a separate post on "actual bad things about electric trains to villainize outside of Stex" because PCBs are a big one, but were banned by the 80s... and the CC 40100 has a gas-cooled transformer anyways.... but then sulfur hexafluoride is a terrible greenhouse gas with its own issues

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

Pretty much the same list as the last post but if you want to see them again:

I can’t recommend Clive Lamming enough. Even machine translated. Fanciful style, wonderful at characterizing things and analyzing cultural impact while staying technical yet approachable.

Railnatter is a great source for UK rail politics and nuanced discussion of technology and policy

ocs4rail.com - this is long and can get very technical but free, modern, high-quality book on rail electrication, focused on the UK.

Banks Rail/ Robo Rail on youtube is great for very detailed but beginner friendly discussion of US rail politics

I have a playlist HERE of miscellaneous good electric train videos/podcasts

It’s a lot easier to find background on human politics discussed here, but The Cynical Historian on youtube has good videos on most of the topics relevant to here

#stex #starlight express #stex electra #we live in a train society #not meant to be accusatory a lot of this stuff is not well known #(Except for one bit that’s skimming wikipedia once level and really irks me)

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jinxquickfoot · 1 year ago

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So I finished my Age of Ultron rewatch. It's been a couple of years since I last saw it, and here are some random thoughts I had on it:

Things I will maintain I like about this movie:

It has some of my favorite jokes in the MCU, and they're usually the little moments. The little nod of validation Rhodey makes after getting a laugh at his "Boom! You looking for this?" story. Clint telling Steve he's no match for Ultron and Steve replying with, "Thanks, Barton". Clint's "Yeah, you better run" after Pietro has long since disappeared with Wanda, there are loads of them.

I like Vision, Wanda and Pietro. Despite being secondary characters with not a huge amount of screen time, Wanda and Pietro feel like real people with real backstories, and Paul Bettany is wonderful the first time we see him as Vis.

It's the only movie we get to see the Original 6 hang out as friends.

I love that Fury randomly shows up in the middle and is like "let me make a sandwich while we discuss how not to let the world end also by the way hi Tony I really care about you"

Other casual appearances of other MCU characters, something that is so lacking Phase 4 onwards. Sam being at the party and Thor going to Selvig for help makes the world feel lived in.

RDJ's never dropped the ball as Tony but his performance really stuck out to me here, god he's good

Steve and Thor have multiple moments of teaming up and working together, what an underrated duo

Hulk vs Iron Man suit inside an Iron Man Suit fight

The Avengers do their best to evacuate Sokovia before Ultron attacks, which does not excuse the amount of damage caused there, but I do think is a plot point everyone forgets about (myself included)

And things that annoy me (skipping over the stuff everyone talks about like the Natasha/Bruce plot):

I hate how Joss Whedon writes Steve, both here and in Avengers. He only feels like Steve when he's being given jokes, otherwise he is so self-serious and stiff, the core of Steve is his heart and it is nowhere to be found in this movie

The movie spends so long setting up character arcs that feel promising and have no payoff. What is the point of Laura telling Clint the Avengers need him if he's going to retire at the end of the movie. Steve has several references to finding home in a way that doesn't go anywhere (Until Endgame, I guess). Don't get me started on Natasha.

It's trying so hard to have a theme but it never says anything unique. Bruce, Tony, Natasha and Vision all refer to themselves as monsters. Ultron decides that the Avengers are the bad guys. Steve has a speech all about proving they're not the monsters Ultron says they are. Based on WHAT? What is the message of this movie?? That the Avengers are better than the evil AI who wants to kill everyone?

(I half-feel there was a previous draft where Clint was their heart, or something, or he died and they were like whelp Phil Coulson 2.0 let's go avenge him, and the random pieces of that are still floating around the script with nowhere to go)

NO ONE is remotely concerned enough when their friends are getting hurt (maybe just the hurt/comfort lover in me, but still.) Natasha comes across as the only person who cares when Clint sustains a life-threatening injury. No one seems to be bothered that Natasha is being held captive by a psychotic supervillain. Tony shows more emotion over a fictional future where they die than when someone is actually in danger.

They really could have had a premise where they weren't allowed to access technology at all and could have gone retro with everything and they didn't and that just feels like a wasted opportunity. Clint and Natasha digging out old spy tech. Steve being like "Yes! This is familiar! I got this!" Tony making genius inventions out of tech from fifty years ago. Come on, it was right there.

#thanks for coming to my ted talk #age of ultron #mcu #marvel #avengers #thoughts

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linklethehistorian · 5 months ago

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Linkle’s Fazbear Frights & Lore Insights #3: Count the Ways

[Read the general disclaimer and important notes for this series of articles here.]

[View the Masterlist of all completed articles here.]

Some Count the Ways specific notes:

I may be briefly talking about one of the mini-games in the game version of Into the Pit which revolves around Count the Ways, and in general, discussions about the book version and my thoughts on it in my previous article, as well as my thoughts on To Be Beautiful, may come up at certain points, so if you want to completely avoid Into the Pit and To Be Beautiful spoilers, maybe hold off on this one for now.

Again, my takes on William as a father, in regards to the games, may ruffle more than a few feathers of people who still insist on holding onto some of the old fanon stuff/do not believe in Frights Fiction. If you don’t like it and won’t go into it with an open mind, please just don’t read it; I’m not really in the mental state to go through a thousand comments trying to convince me of a notion that I simply don’t personally feel has any logical evidence behind it.

Now that that’s been said, let’s jump below the cut and get right to it! This is your last spoiler warning for Count the Ways, so if you want to turn back, do so now.

Overall Impressions

The Book:

I have to say, in terms of story, this one honestly just might be my favorite of the book. Don’t get me wrong; Into the Pit and To Be Beautiful are both great stories that I enjoyed listening to quite a lot, but the constant looming sense of danger and dread that this story oozes throughout every page and the way that it’s so expertly written so as to make all of the flashbacks feel natural through Millie’s reminiscence at the end of her life is something that simply can’t be outdone.

There is something especially, absolutely terrifying about the helplessness with which this tale is framed from beginning to end, knowing that Millie is trapped and there is absolutely nothing she can do but look back and reflect on every little thing that led her to where she is now, and the soon-to-be tragic end of her life that is — despite all her best efforts — inescapable.

Funtime Freddy’s horrifyingly menacing personality, too, with his cheerfully cold outlook, has to be one of my favorite things in the Frights series thus far; it’s such a fun, believable, and yet deeply unsettling characterization for such a relatively innocent-and-friendly-looking animatronic, and it frankly makes me hope that we will eventually get to see him again.

Millie and her grandpa, too, are quite unique, well-rounded, likeable and interesting characters for the length of the story we are given, and I have to say that I’m quite glad that Millie’s crush, Dylan, isn’t framed as a bad person for not being in love with Millie and having chosen someone else — which I feared the book might do, when I found out he was with the cheerleader of the school.

I’m glad that Millie is admonished by Dylan for the hypocrisy of her judgement of others based on their looks and interests, as I think that Millie being a genuinely flawed character makes her much more interesting than if she were treated as a complete victim and her judgment of Dylan’s girlfriend was proven to be correct.

As for the general theme I believe the book was trying to explore outside of the context of FNAF lore — how, often, when we say we want to die, what we actually mean is just that we want life to be different and better, and how, in those scenarios, the concept of dying is a form of escapism rather than a serious desire — I think that it was gotten across quite well, and in a very thought-provoking manner.

There is a lot more that I could say on the depth of this subject and hard-hitting themes that it tackles so beautifully, but I don’t want to spend too long in this section, as I know that the lore is what most people want to hear about, and I fear that I couldn’t do it the justice I desire, anyway, so for now, let us move on.

Normally, I would be cutting to a section where I talk about another version of the story that exist, but at the time of writing this, there is no graphic novel of Count the Ways, and I don’t really have much to say about the Count the Ways mini-game in the video game adaptation of Into the Pit, other than…it’s confusing, and I don’t really understand what it’s getting at half the time in relation to the story it’s supposed to be based on.

Lore Relevancy

Honestly, despite how much I loved this story, this is probably going to be one of the shortest posts I’ll make in regards to the lore relevancy section, since it’s really…pretty straightforward in its points of interest and, at least as far as I could tell each time I went through it, there isn’t all that much to speculate on, either.

The Lies and Half-truths

Well, calling Funtime Freddy pink was certainly one of the choices ever — I’ll start by saying that. In Sister Location, he’s very clearly a purple and white bear and not a pink one, but it’s extremely clear that that’s who they’re meaning to be the bear in the story — especially with Into the Pit’s game version properly confirming it in the mini-game based on this take — so, yeah, no idea what’s going on with that, exactly… Maybe I just have a different idea of what qualifies as pink. At best, I could see arguing he’s a particularly vibrant shade of mauve, but even then —

…Ah well, it doesn’t matter.

I think it goes without saying that, unless it comes up again in a story that sheds doubt on this, Millie probably isn’t a real person in the FNAF universe, or at least didn’t have all of these things happen to her or die, but that’s pretty much something we can say about nearly every person in the Fazbear Frights books.

That being said, the way that Millie died is quite similar to how one very important character — namely, Elizabeth — does die in the mainline canon, so at least that much isn’t a lie; it’s just that it didn’t happen exactly the same way as it did to Millie, nor did it ever happen to Millie herself, as far as we know (if Millicent Fitzsimmons even exists, which is doubtful).

The Truths and the Likely-Truths

The things I KNOW are True

So, now that we’ve moved past the lies and have gotten to talking about the truth, what are the things that I’m 100% confident Count the Ways is trying to tell us about the FNAF mainline canon lore?

Honestly? Not a lot. Whereas in most of the previous and soon-to-be-upcoming stories, there was a pretty long list of things I felt would be certainly or almost certainly relevant to the canon, in this one I actually think the two main points being discussed here are not only very simple, but also explored in very simple and obvious ways.

As I mentioned in the previous section, Millie’s death while being trapped in Funtime Freddy’s stomach is very clearly a parallel of Elizabeth and her death in Circus Baby, so I don’t think it requires a ton of proof or a long discussion of any kind before I can state that the story quite simply exists, first and foremost, to show off what the main two children-snatching, artificially intelligent Funtime Animatronics can do, and give us an example of some of the way Elizabeth could’ve died and why no one around Baby was likely to hear her over the general noise of the restaurant and customers.

Here is list some of the major possible function we learned Funtime Freddy (and possibly, by extension, Circus Baby) possess:

A just about soundproof design to prevent their captives from truly making enough noise to be noticed by those who might otherwise be able to find them.

The ability to keep children inside of them long enough for them to die of dehydration, or even provide them with water so that they could potentially die a longer death starvation, instead. Which stems from the fact that…

They can flood their belly chambers with water, allowing them to possibly drown their victims, or at least boil them alive by heating their internal temperature exponentially.

The ability to freeze their victims is also evidently within their capacity, as is the ability to electrocute them by sending bolts of electricity through their body cavity.

The power to send blades and metal rods through their stomach cavity in order to impale, decapitate, or bisect their captives quickly, making for a faster and more efficient kill.

I think, to that end, the story also exists to show off the fact that those animatronics are clearly programmed with their primary objective being to kill or to help each other kill, and that that is why most of their personalities in particular tend to feel so…either sadistic or utterly disarming at times in their dialogue of the games. They were made to be children snatching and killing machines.

And then, obviously, you have the return to the on-going theme of the Power of Wills and Wishes™️, this time presenting itself in Millie constantly saying and writing and thinking that she wishes for death, and her ‘coincidental’ encounter with Funtime Freddy then having him comment on and decide to grant her that (even though she realizes, just like Oswald and Sarah before her, that she should have been careful about what she wished for, as getting it didn’t ultimately turn out to be what she thought it would be at all).

The things I FEEL are True

Well, if that’s all I can state with absolutely certainty, are there at least some more, less objectively obvious things that I’m fairly confident in?

Not a great many, I’m afraid.

Even as I’m writing up this last section, I’m listening to the book yet a fourth time, analyzing every line as though I’m trying to crack some sort of hidden code and still coming up empty on the smoking gun that I’m seeking.

There are definitely things that I feel strongly are intentional — messages that I think are wanting to be conveyed — but not in the same way as I have with every story before this, and quite a few that I’ve read which come after it.

For example, I can see and I feel quite certain that there’s some manner of attempt to bring to the reader’s mind the story of Pizzeria Simulator, considering not only that Funtime Freddy was found by Millie’s grandfather in a Salvage yard in this story and there’s a lot of talk of her grandpa liking collect junk and putter around in his workshop salvaging and repairing things, but also that in the former book, To Be Beautiful, the obvious stand-in for Circus/Scrap Baby was found in a scrapyard and had to be ‘salvaged’ by Sarah; however, I’m not sure why this is the case.

It’s definitely there, but I still don’t know what relevance it actually has, in terms of telling us something about Pizzeria Simulator; the only theory I’ve yet been able to come up with is, admittedly, a bit too seemingly contradictory to what’s implied in canon for even me to fully believe, and that’s that, like Millie, Michael’s apparent willingness to die and/or casual acceptance towards the idea of doing so — as we’ve seen in the Security Logbook and had implied in Pizzeria Simulator — wasn’t actually a serious wish he had, and, despite having apparently in some way also given Henry the impression that he wanted it, he truly ended up regretting it once it was much too late, and the opportunity to die had been granted to him by said man.

While it’s not impossible that this is the reality, I’ve never been particularly convinced of the “Henry killed Michael against Michael’s will, wrongly assuming he wants death as much as Henry did” narrative, as I feel that it makes more sense for Michael’s character if he does genuinely not want to live in a world in which his entire family is gone — especially given the fact that he’s saddled with so much clear guilt for what happened to Garret at his own hands, and the domino effect of countless deaths that occurred thereafter.

Nevertheless, I do think it’s an interesting idea to note and contemplate, so I will put it out there.

As for whether or not I think Millie is meant to be a stand-in for Michael beyond that — despite what you’re probably expecting me to say by now, after two articles of insisting that this entire Fazbear Frights volume is trying to get across some sort of message about him — not…precisely.

The thing about Millie, as opposed to Oswald and Sarah in the two stories prior, is that while she does share some similarities with Michael that I think are at least partly intentional, and she also is clearly taking the place of Elizabeth in terms of how she dies, she’s also still distinct enough in both personality and plight that I don’t think she’s particularly meant to be anyone we already know in particular — just a unique character through which to convey various small tidbits of information about different people and events.

Believe me, I’ve sat here comparing her to every important character in the main canon for much longer than I’d care to admit, trying to see if there’s something or someone I could be overlooking that her individual circumstances could be solely relevant to, but at least at the time of writing this, I just haven’t found enough evidence to come firmly to such a conclusion.

I jotted down in the early notes for this article how it seems that the story of Millie and Hannah is a direct parallel to Abby and Sarah, respectively, just told from the opposite perspective, and I’ve asked myself in doing so (as per my previous article’s conclusions) whether or not this means that Millie is meant to be a stand-in for Elizabeth beyond just the circumstances of her death, but there is just absolutely nothing else that they have in common, so that idea had to be promptly abandoned.

At least if we said she’s Michael, there are some things that could be used to support that claim:

Her last name, Fitzsimmons, is phonetically reminiscent of one of Michael’s chosen aliases later in life: Fritz Smith.

She is called “Dracula’s Daughter” by many people in her school after being obsessed with the book, Dracula, and in Sister Location, Michael is obsessed with a soap opera style TV show called The Immortal and the Restless, which is about a vampire named Vlad — who is clearly meant to be a metaphor for Michael’s father, William. This technically makes Michael “Dracula’s Son”.

Funtime Freddy refers to Millie as an “ice cold goth”, and in general, throughout the book, she is shown and described to be an angsty teen who is distant with her family, which, minus the goth part as far as we know, does seem to be at least decently accurate to Michael’s character pre-Bite of ‘83.

Nevertheless, I’m not particularly convinced that this is exactly the case, either; certainly, I do think that Millie is supposed to have some traits that may harken back to the vague concept of Michael, so that readers might continue to keep him in mind, but I don’t think that she is Michael.

She does share Michael’s desire for death — whether or not Michael himself later felt regret at the end of his life, as speculated earlier as a possibility — and she also ultimately has that same secondary overarching theme of main characters feeling unlovable, unwanted, utterly invisible in any possible positive context, and like life is meaningless in its current state, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re one and the same. There just isn’t enough overwhelming proof or connection for me to personally come to that conclusion.

I know — that might come as a shock to people who have read my previous articles, with how strongly I’ve been asserting that I believe this entire volume of Fazbear Frights is trying to tell us something about Michael, but it’s true; while I do still think the story is trying to tell us something about him and about the nature of the Funtime animatronics, I don’t think that Millie is particularly meant to be any one character from canon. I think she shares things in common with at least two of them and is supposed to remind us of them for different reasons each, but other than that, she is very much and very clearly her own character with her own unique traits.

Michael doesn’t have a canonically mentioned equivalent to Dylan. Michael’s parents aren’t flighty, impractical people who squander their money and jump from project to project, and country to country. Michael’s grandfather — or anyone that we know he knew, for that matter — wasn’t canonically stated to have been a retired teacher of some form. Michael wasn’t known to be goth. There are certainly things we could read into certain details like these and more, if we really wanted to reach for things, but without any solid amount of undeniable proof, it’s all just rampant speculation.

No, it’s far easier to just say that Millie is her own character created for the purpose of the Fazbear Frights story, who borrows traits and elements of her life story from others who actually existed in the in-universe real FNAF world.

As for other things that I think are worth mentioning, I can really only think of the fact Funtime Freddy is described as pink in this story; I’m not sure what significance this actually has, but my immediate thought process was that he was described this way so as to bring to mind Funtime Foxy, since every other Sister Location animatronic had been represented in some way in this book already (Ballora and Baby through Eleanor, and Funtime Freddy through himself). I don’t know if this is true, and I don’t even know if it matters, but it is something I wanted to throw out there. That or…it was a mistake in the writing, or the author just defines colors differently than I do. Who knows?

Whatever the case, I could be missing something here, but I think that’s pretty much everything I wanted to talk about with this book. I hope you enjoyed, and I’ll see you all in the next one!

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likeadevils · 9 months ago

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what songs so far do you think were daydreaming exercises? to the best of your knowledge?

obligatory i’m just some guy

songs i’m pretty sure are fictional

I'm Only Me When I'm with You: it’s a 2003 song, before she moved to nashville, so she didn’t have any super close friends at the time. the romantic connotations are almost definitely made up

A Perfectly Good Heart: could be her being dramatic about a middle school breakup, but i think it’s more likely she was just daydreaming about being really sad

Fearless: taylor’s said she was just daydreaming about the perfect first date a million times, look at any concert she played this at in 2007/8

Timeless: she wrote it sometime in 2009, likely sometime after june because she mentions antiquing as a new hobby in the lover journals from that month. so it could be about somebody we don’t know about, or maybe taylor lautner, but my guess is she was just wandering around an antique store and daydreaming about being in love

Stay Stay Stay: she says she was just daydreaming, and while she definitely bent the truth with the red secret messages in particular, i’m prone to believe this one. she wrote it sometime in 2010, so “daydreaming about real love” could be a really sick burn about any number of people, but i think this was just her in between relationships fiddling around

Death By A Thousand Cuts: you can get into conspiracy theory stuff about just how on and off again her and joes relationship was, but it’s a pretty direct retelling of something great, so i believe it when she said she watched the movie and then got inspired

like, the vast majority of the unreleased tracks

song that kinda blur the line

Stay Beautiful: cor(e)y passed her in the hallway and she thought he was kinda cute, i don’t think it was a big thing as the song makes it seem

You Belong With Me: taylor’s said it was inspired by one of her band mates apologizing to his girlfriend on the phone, but everything else is made up

Mine: she said a guy put his arm around her and she saw a whole life flash before her eyes, so like, it kinda happened? it wasnt anyone she got super serious with though

Speak Now: she was the +1 to hayley williams’ ex’s wedding, joked about speak now-ing, then had a nightmare about one of her exes getting married

too many songs on folklore and evermore to list out

anything she’s ever written for a movie soundtrack

songs that probably have a muse but not anyone we know about so could be daydreaming

Cold As You: there’s an unreleased song, love to lose, that parallels cold as you. so possibly there’s some guy that inspired two songs, or she was just circling around similar themes

Electric Touch

Foolish One: possibly joe jonas angst, possible pre-relationship john mayer angst, possibly someone else, who knows what taylor was up to in 2009 man that girl had a fucking roster going

Everything Has Changed

Message In A Bottle: i like to think it’s about eddie redmayne but genuinely i have no clue

Wildest Dreams: iirc she said it was her being dramatic and thinking no one would ever want to really fall in love with her at the grammy museum performance but like who knows if it was general discomfort or a specific person that inspired it

Crazier: could be a drew song, could be her daydreaming

Beautiful Eyes and I Heart ?: don’t know enough about these songs to say one way or another, but i believe she’s claimed the i heart ? thing actually happened? cant remember where though

#asks*

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twilightmalachite · 8 months ago

Text

Timbres of Heaven - One For Two 6

Characters: Hinata, Yuuta

Translator: Mika Enstars

JP Proofreader: ksts

"I’ve always disliked that kind of thing about you."

[Read on my blog for the best viewing experience with Oi~ssu ♪]

Season: Spring

Location: Residential Area

Yuuta: I’ve always disliked that about you.

…It seriously makes me sick.

Hinata: …

…That’s Neiro’s like, isn’t it? From Timbres of Heaven.

Yuuta: Yup. Great that you noticed.

Hinata: I’ve been reading a lot in preparation for filming. I’ve memorized most of the scenes that I’m in already.

But you started talking in such a serious tone, it surprised me. What’s up with you all of a sudden?

Yuuta: You’ve been a coward all day, Aniki, so I started a fire under you to sober you up.

As you know, while the script for Timbres of Heaven is complete, it’s developments may change depending on the audience response.

If things stay the way they are, Neiro and the heroine will end up together—

Hinata: And depending on my efforts, there might be a chance it’ll be Amane instead.

Yuuta: Yup. Or one where Neiro, Amane, and the hero will all three be happy together.

The last one isn’t too realistic, but hey, it’s fiction. I think it’ll be an ending that’ll stick the most with the target audience.

Anyways. How it ends depends on our efforts—

In other words, it’s a match between you and me, Aniki.

Hinata: Right… I feel we’ve just been fighting ever since we entered ES, but…

I’m down for more. Every time we collide, we resonate and grow stronger.

I won’t lose to you, Yuuta-kun.

Yuuta: Right. I won’t lose, either. Right now, I—Neiro has an advantage, after all. Do your best to catch up!

I’ll be waiting for you, Aniki.

Location: Dressing Room

On the day of shooting of the Twin Wedding Vows MV, Timbres of Heaven’s theme soon. In the dressing room…

Hinata: …Oh, Anzu-san, good work so far today. Are you here to check in on us?

Yup. Today we’re doing the magazine interview and shooting the music video.

It’s a love drama, so it’s stuff like… When was your first love? What kind of love would you like to have? I’m a little tired of only being asked questions like that…

‘Cause I’m married to my work! ☆ Ohohohoho!

You’re like that too, aren’t you, Anzu-san? You, go-getter~♪

What you have there in your hands are work documents too, aren’t they?

…Wait, what? Bridal magazines… Marriage features…?

…Oh, you received a proposal from a bridal company, so you were reading them for reference?

I-I see~, it is nearly the season for bridal projects, isn’t it?

That spooked me. I started thinking you were gonna get married—

Hinata: I mean, not like I’d feel upset over that! Not at all! Don’t get me wrong, okay!

…Hm, what? Are you asking what my thoughts on marriage are?

You’re asking me, Anzu-san? …Well, it’s a question you’re asking me as a producer, so it’s fine.

I’ll give you a serious answer, as an idol.

…

If I get married, would it separate me from Yuuta-kun?

If it does, I can’t imagine it at all. We’ve been together since we were born.

So maybe we could all get together as three, like in the drama.

Even if we wouldn’t be able to register it, I guess it’s fine as long as we live happily.

It might look like a distorted relationship to everyone else, but… Happiness comes in different forms for different people.

And I want to choose a path that’ll end in happiness for both Yuuta-kun and I, whatever it may be.

Yuuta: Hey~, Aniki~. Filming for the MV’s starting~.

Huh? Wait, are you in the middle of something?

Hinata: Nah. We were just chatting.

Yuuta: I wonder how true that is~. ♪

Hinata: It’s true! Hinata-kun does not lie!

I’ll see you later, Anzu-san.

Yuuta: I’ll be borrowing Aniki, Anzu-san~.

Location: Timbres of Heaven MV Shooting Set

A couple minutes later…

Hinata: “♪~♪~♪”

Yuuta: “♪~♪~♪”

—Sooo, what were ya talking to Anzu-san about, Aniki?

Hinata: You’re so persistent, Yuuta-kun!

…It seems that she’s considering idols to appear in a bridal project.

And so she asked for my thoughts on marriage to use it as reference. I was just answering her question.

Yuuta: That’s all? You sure she wasn’t using work as a front and trying to probe the topic~?

Hinata: Anzu-san wouldn’t do something like that.

…Her lack of ulterior motives does irritate me, though.

Yuuta: So? What did you answer with, Aniki?

Hinata: That I don’t wanna be separated from you, Yuuta-kun, so I’d like to get together as three.

Yuuta: What? That’s unrealistic. Life isn’t a drama.

Hinata: …Yeah. That’s what I answered Anzu-san tentatively, but…

I want to stay with you, Yuuta-kun.

If I’m made to choose one person, then I choose Yuuta-kun.

Yuuta: Because without you, I’d be all alone?

What is that. Aren’t you smug.

Yuuta: (It’s you, Aniki. You’re the one who can’t live without me.)

…Enough talking about this. I can’t even imagine getting married.

It’s about time to focus on the filming, you know?

“♪~♪~♪”

(…This isn’t the time to get distracted, seriously.)

(Even though I’m trying so hard with my solo activities… In the end, only the weapon that is 2wink has landed us big jobs.)

(I’m not recognized by the public yet as an individual idol.)

Yuuta: (But, that’s to be expected. I’ll use any weapon available to me to pave a path, without getting discouraged.)

(And then… I’ll catch up with, and overtake Aniki… And beckon to him from somewhere warm.)

(“Come here, Hinata-kun.”)

Hinata: (…Yuuta-kun sure is in high spirits, huh?)

(It’s clear that he’s trying to have his presence be felt through Timbres of Heaven.)

(Twin Wedding Vows was created in a way that it’d fit any ending of Timbres of Heaven, but…)

(Even though it’s a song for the heroine, I feel like I’m singing about ourselves.)

(…Well, if I were to tell Yuuta-kun that right now, he’d probably say something like “that’s gross”, though. ♪)

(Hey, Yuuta-kun. What will happen to us in the future?)

(Will we be always together, even if we find a special someone? Or, perhaps…)

(…)

Hinata: (No matter what path we end up taking… I believe we can move forward with our chests held high.)

(Because it’ll be a path we paved together, as Yuuta-kun and I.)

(…I’m sure that our future is shining beautifully.)

“♪~♪~♪”

[ ☆ ]

← prev | story directory | next →

#hinata aoi #yuuta aoi #anzu #timbres of heaven #translation #event

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ultra-kek · 1 year ago

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Is it true you don't like anything from Grant Morrison, or just the man himself at all?

I don't think I've mentioned my thoughts on Grant Morrison here but I do really love Grant Morrison's early DC work, in particular Animal Man being one of my favorite comics of all time, but I find their later work to be so terrible that I consider it my least favorite comics of all time. I blame this on the running themes of Metatextuality and a sort of reconstructivist ideology in Morrison's work that has ended up completely antithetical to what i desire from comics.

While the absurdist ruminations on the nature of fiction in Animal Man made for an amazing and radical sort of comic that deconstructed a lot about both superheroes and the relationship between fiction and reality, over time their work fell into what to me feels like just very shallow and uninteresting narratives that frequently fall into the same traps as like, redditors and youtube theorists, where it doesn't really have that much to say beyond "woah... this is a work of fiction and we're breaking the fourth wall!!!!!1111" and "superheroes are actually super cool and should never be criticized". The top examples i can think of are their Batman run, which brought back several concepts but in ways that felt shallow (was it really that necessary to bring back the Batman of Zurr-En-Arrh as an edgy violent alternate personality?), meanspirited (Son of the Demon being brought into canon, but retconning Bruce and Talia's loving relationship to... that.), or even offensive (if you're going to make a modern version of the Batmen of all Nations, even if you're going to be rewriting them to attempt to make more realistic and progressive incarnations of them is it really necessary to keep the more offensive designs, and redesign others to be even more offensive? I don't think they had people of color on hand for that stuff...). Meanwhile there's the multiverse stuff that I just really can't bring myself to care about, that kind of thing is already really boring for me personally and though Morrison tries to make more meaningful narrative in them that narrative is just "Aren't superheroes really epic and cool?"

There's also the fact that regardless of being nonbinary Morrison hasn't really had the best track record when it comes to depicting minority groups. I already mentioned the Batmen of all Nations but there's them turning Talia into a misogynistic and somewhat racist stereotype, and Professor Pyg, who's Buffalo Bill-type queercoding is so offensive that I genuinely can't stomach it as a character. This is more controversial, but I feel this even about A Serious House on Serious Earth, both in the character of Mad Dog but also in the comic's general depiction of Batman's rogues' gallery not as characters of their own but as caricatures of mental illness existing primarily as foils for Batman's personal conflicts, which bled into the comics and kind of became a defining part of Batman as a franchise and its frequent usage of psychological themes.

Morrison also has a particularly unfortunate flaw in that theyre kind of... redditbrained. They're famous for their personal theory on the ending of the Killing Joke of how it actually represents Batman finally breaking his one rule and killing the Joker, despite how the comic very clearly frames the moment as the one last moment of understanding the two will ever have. There's also Morrison's idea of all Batman media being true, and justifying it as the sillier parts of Batman being caused by... him and Robin being on drugs. They've literally said that.

My main like, ideological opposition to Morrison though is in their reconstructivist themes and the way they place superheroes as like gods to be aspired to. I certainly fall closer to Moore when it comes to my perspective on comics and while I don't think they're beyond salvation Morrison simply isn't doing them any favors. I just don't want to see comics about how epic Batman and Superman are or whatever, I want to see more radical stuff that breaks down superhero comics as a whole. By all means I like seeing the weird reinvention of old concepts, but being so stuck in the past is just kind of, stupid.

#dc #txt #text #sorry this is rambly im sick as i write this and tumblr has been fucking up and blocking me from replying for like 2 days

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thesummerstorms · 7 months ago

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This is sooo late, but I didn't have a proper keyboard while I was housesitting and I've just managed to sit down now and do anything that required any length typing.

Thank you to @nepobabyeurydice for the tag!

If I'm being honest, I've not perfectly been able to keep track of who I saw answer this already on my dash, but if you are a writer and we are mutuals, consider yourself optionally tagged.

When did you start writing?

I remember typing up original stuff on our hand me down Windows 95 computer in elementary school, though I could not tell you what any of it was about.

My first fic was a very, very, very cringy Naruto fic when I was 11 and emo everything was at the height of its popularity. I never finished it, and it is now nonexistent, which is very much for the best.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I read a somewhat decent amount of science fiction that isn't as "loose" in it's worldbuilding as even space opera, but you will never catch me doing world building outside of fantasy. I can make things internally consistent, but do not ask me to make them realistic to science.

Also, just in general, while I don't read action per say, or at least read for action, a lot of my favorite genres and series do have fight scenes, and I cannot write those at all.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I can trace a few things in my own writing- both good and bad!- to a handful of authors that particularly influenced me as a young teenager, but I don't think it's anything anyone else would pick up on.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

I have a proper desk in my bedroom with a desktop PC and two monitors and everything, and if I'm doing any serious and researched meta, or leaving comments on particular fics, I use that.

But I don't really write fic so much these days, and what I do post tends to be... fragments? Concepts? Worldbuilding that morphs into slightly-longer than drabbles? here on tumblr. And 95% of that gets posted from my phone because inspiration struck and it was in my hand.

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

I don't go seeking things out, honestly. Like I said, I don't write plotted or long fic or really much fic at all. So what I do write comes out because it's sitting there poking at my brain for too long and then I can't ignore it anymore.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

... looking at my SW stuff and my PJO stuff, one thing I guess I like the idea of a lot is the boundary between human/larger than human, mortal/immortal, mutable/immutable etc.

I loved some eldritch Force stuff and I love the idea of the PJO gods as being forces as much as or more than they are people.

Like, there's an Anne Carson translation of a Sophocles quote I saw for the first time years ago on tumblr- "Nothing vast enters the lives of mortals without ruin"- and I can't help but fixate still on that idea. What if the vast is inherently part of you but in a way that is alien to your humanity? What happens when the "vast" is both sympathetic and destructive to your personhood?

Also, a slightly less pretentious and definitely less wordy answer, I just think angst is fun to write. Not pure tragedy or grimdark, but angst.

What is your reason for writing?

My brain Will Not Shut Up and it has to go <i>somewhere.</i>

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

I want people to talk about ideas with me!

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Not as a fiction writer per say, but I fucking killed every literary analysis paper I ever wrote in college. Like, this may sound arrogant, but I got nominated for awards by my professors. I thrived off of getting their feedback and that looping into a discussion. So I feel like meta comes easily as a result.

Now if only you could get paid and have health insurance writing literary analysis... alas, I cannot afford a doctorate and academia doesn't pay well or have decent enough healthcare access for my many needs.

How do you feel about your own writing?

I wish I could write long fic and coherent plots, but I am proud of the ideas I come up with sometimes.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

I feel like most of my writing is in conversation with what I read, whether it be the original text, other folks' fic, or meta. But even if it's in conversation, I'm never going to even have the idea much less the words unless it's something I'm interested enough in that my brain snags on it.

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thelooniemoonie · 2 years ago

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So I just finished reading House of Leaves...

Here are my thoughts. I will do my best to avoid spoilers, but will mention a thing or two.

Oh man, that was one hell of a ride. While I myself am a huge fan of horror, this was the first horror book I have read, and what a great experience it was!

Going into the book I already somewhat knew of the madness that lurks inside (that being the quarter inch, and the impossibly long hallway) and was surprised that the madness started on very early. Being the book is over 700 pages long, I sure as hell didn't expect it to start about 60 pages in.

What you don't expect however, is the madness that takes it's toll the longer the book goes on. Multiple storylines, narrators and themes start converging together to the point where everything starts falling into place, to the point it becomes nauseating as exploring the house itself. What I can say however, is that the house is only barely scratching the surface of what is truly going on within these pages.

For context the book is cleverly written as a meta-narrative, as an essay analyzing the film The Navidson Record, a fictional film that does not exist in the real world. What the book strangely does however, is reference actual real life sources when dissecting its premise, to the point where reality and fiction start blurring. The book feels as if it's having a conversation with itself, covering countless of different themes and metaphors that overlap with one another. Given this thing has been analyzed and picked apart for decades since its release, I'm gonna leave it to the experts about the secrets within its pages. (Although I will say this: pay attention. The longer the book goes on the more the different puzzle pieces will start clicking together.)

I was curious as to how a book may scare a reader since I'm unfamiliar with the experience of reading horror, but I will say the longer the book went on the worse it got. If I had to make a comparison, it would be the same feeling I experienced when watching Skinamarink: Dread. A long, droning kind of dread that one experiences when you are alone in your house and all the lights are off and everything is black. And you know no one is coming for you. But you swear you saw something from the corner of your eye. It's the feeling of running up the stairs after turning the lights off and praying something isn't running after you. Dread.

Very quickly things will become nauseating. At first I wasn't scared of the premise of the house: it's a haunted house that defies reality. So? But I found myself not dreading the events that unfolded or the "interesting" formatting of the book, but that the reality of the book itself seemed to be imploding on itself. Spoilers, but the one moment I think where I specifically started spiralling was when Exploration #5 was occurring, and Navidson had to stop and rest with only his matches, he pulls out a book to read and it's....the House of Leaves? The book you're reading right now? But how is that possible? How is Navidson reading the real life book that you're reading, when the fictional events that are pertaining to him are happening right now to him?? What are even the Johnny segments?? (Note: don't read them at work like I did) Why does nobody cited in this book know who the Navidsons are, even though they're quoted directly in reviewing the film?? What the hell is going on???

I made a joke in an earlier post that Navidson wants to fuck the house. I meant this as a joke. What I soon horrifically realized was that others were correcting me in that it wasn't a joke. Navidson wants to fuck the house. But he also doesn't want to fuck the house. But it is also a secret third thing that's literal to the foundation of this story. (No pun intended.) But oh god it gets so much worse.

At the time of writing this, I just finished the book 1 hour ago. I feel like I just stepped off the worst rollercoaster. And I loved it.

10/10 very spooks

On a less serious note I think the funniest moment in the book was when the Chad's and Daisy's teacher, after noticing their strange behaviour at school due to the effects of the house, reasonably decides to pay their parents a visit to talk about it. What the poor lady doesn't expect however, is that she arrives right after the events of the house unfold and the Navidsons are having the worst week of their life, coming to the screaming and crying family while there is a dead body on the floor.

In essence it can be summed up by this gif, which frankly sums up the vibe of the story overall:

So yeah it's a good book. I recommend it.

#the moon speaks #house of leaves #idk if i will post more but if i do i pull put it in the main tag #so if u wanna avoid spoilers you can just block it

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just-jae · 2 years ago

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About Vivsiepop's Beelzabub

Lots of drama over Bee's design. My Thoughts:

Beelzabub's design isn't forein. She's a canine character, like the Hellhounds she rules over. She wears knicked tanktop and shorts- Just like Loona and Tex's everyday clothes. She even talks like Loona, which is the best way I can describe at the moment is City-youth culture.

About her colors-- the pink and blue aren't her true colors, those are for the "Cotton Candy" song she sings-- she's wearing cotton candy colors. When bathed in yellow. and when transformed, her clothes turn red and black, her glowy hair turns completely gold. Even her little tuft turns gold.

This Matches with the general colorscheme of the other hellhounds except for the Yellow/gold.

So her design matches other characters.

As for Bee's bug theme:

She's got six, thin, long limbs. Fly wings you can hear flapping around, antenae lashes and ears, and stripes. Which is all a call to the bug theme of Biblical Beelzabub, who may not have been specifically seen as a bee, but at least was a flying bug. Even so, there's no rule saying you HAVE adhere to previous depictions of an entity in a fictional work. You don't, and shouldn't have to know anything about the bible to track who a given character is. Biblical lore can help predict what a character's about, but the show's own writing is what makes and defines the character in that show (Something I get to later).

When it comes to character design basics, Bee's still pretty in-lane, being introduced with an easy-to-recognize silhouette.

When it comes to animation practicality, Bee's base design (clothes, patterns) doesn't seem much harder to animate than these guys.

Even then, Bee's animation is very high quality in this episode, like the animation in the "Truth Seekers" episode or some parts of "The Harvest Moon Festival". They were adding extra details to the animation for fun, not because her design required it. The Honey was globbier than it needed to be, her body movements more fluid and detailed than they needed to be. It was for fun.

They could have definitely animated Bee's honeymane simpler than this, if it were that much of a strain on the animators, and still retained the same design. Plus, there are shortcuts to pulling this off, like animating the basic outline first and having another layer behind it that doesn't follow the outline, but instead is cropped by it. They do this with Stolas' sparkly cape in "Ozzie's".

(Obv, Bee's honey was more hands on, but you can see a similar method used if you watch how the globules move.) They can also animate the lava effect by itself and drag that animation to stay inside the outline, which they seem to do for the lava belly.

Even then. The whole point of this episode was to celebrate the show's success and progress. They did all this out of joy and to have fun. The only thing I'd say could have been concretely "better" only really applies if you approach this as a serious, plot-significant episode (Which it isn't), and that's the writing of the Bee's introduction scene (which was a song that was more to celebrate the show and Spotlight Kesha than providing important context on the characters/setting/themes.)

Other than that, most of the criticism about Bee's design is preference (subjective), expectation (subjective), or an overreaction to furries (Ironically plenty of fans of this show apparently find furries disgusting or lame and saw Bee's design and went "A canine Sin? The Furries are taking over!") (Subjective).

Acting like this is Viv being lazy, uninspired, or unreasonable, is just-- unfair, and unwarranted negativity. People are really acting like this is their work, and not Viv's. Viv didn't do anything technically wrong with Bee's design. It's one thing to not dig it (I personally still haven't warmed up to Ozzy's, and prolly never will, but I warmed up to Bee's a lot faster- especially after seeing her personality) it's another to try to shit on the creator or act like their designs are "wrong" because of expectations or personal taste, ESPECIALLY for an episode that isn't plot relevant and was made to celebrate real-world things like Viv's success in producing her own show and being able to work with Kesha.

Chill the fuck out, and kudo's to the team.

End thoughts.

#Helluva Boss #beelzabub #queen beelzebub #character design #fandom #critique #Seriously can yall chill tf out.#helluva boss episode 8 #helluva boss queen bee

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jormofyore · 9 months ago

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Mental Illness and TTRPG's

Today's post is a little more serious, and it's something I've wanted to touch upon for years, and that is the inclusion of mental illnesses in TTRPG's. For reference, I have schizoaffective disorder, which is a weird combination of schizophrenia and bipolar type 1, along with ADHD, added onto having a minor in psychology and a lifetime of experienced with this damnable illness.

Last year, I presented at NEPCA, an international pop culture conference, on the representation of schizophrenia in the video game Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Might have even got a couple of awards from it, which is pretty cool. That said, I gave some rather strong critiques of the game, and it isn't the first time I have encountered mental illness in media and games; don't get me started on crime shows. The point I want to make is how clumsy games often are when representing mental illness in their medium, especially TTRPG's. Mental illness is too often treated as a blunt weapon when utilized in games, and I'm not entirely sure of why. Maybe it's because of a lack of a understanding, or maybe it's because it's an edgy inclusion, but too often, these illnesses are meant to create a tragic character of some kind or give their purpose meaning. Give wikipedia a glance when listing fictional characters with schizophrenia, and you'll notice quickly how many of them are villains or used as a kind of comic relief. It's a tiresome trope, I assure you.

The main question you should always ask yourself before "giving" a mental illness to a villain or hero is: "why do they need it?" Sure, it may make the fallen paladin feel more authentic to have PTSD, and rightly so, it would be traumatic to make an error that you are unapologetic about that cost everything that defined you. But what is it about psychosis that draws people to give it to their villains and other characters in an effort to flesh them out? What purpose does it provide? What does it add to the character to make them see or hear things or fall into random, serious depressions? Why does it matter? These are just a smattering of questions that are important before deciding to make a character edgy. Once, a couple decades ago when I wasn't properly medicated, I was in a LARP and became afflicted with a Malkavian's Total Insanity. Lucky for me, I was already in the throes of a psychotic break that evening, and got voted for bonus experience points for what everyone thought was some of the best roleplaying they'd ever seen. Hilarious, I know. But recognize that some people's fiction is another persons real life that they often cannot escape before you include that "fiction" in a game. I'll never forget the mess of a book Hero's of Horror was for Pathfinder 1 and their inclusion of various mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, as a penalty inducing trait. A bit embarrassing to see my illness turned into a game mechanic, bro.

I'm not telling anyone not to include mental illness, because games are about exploration and agency. I want people to experiment and play about with what it means for a fictional world to have aspects of seemingly inescapable realities. It may seem funny to include a clown who is told what pranks to do by the voices he hears, thus foiling all kinds of divination magics. But what I am asking is that you just ask yourself a few questions about the purpose of including mental illness in a game before you pursue making it a theme. Be sensitive that it may cause discomfort due to how close to home it is. It's a tricky topic that is potentially going to upset or offend a person you may never expect, so all I ask is to treat the inclusion of these illnesses responsibly.

#pathfinder #pathfinder 2e #mental health #dnd #mental illness #psychology

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robotlesbianjavert · 2 years ago

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i’ve been following you for a while and i love your blog! got a question however: i see you blogging moral orel and i’ve never seen it but from what i’ve read on wikipedia, how would you compare the bad dad to bnha’s bad dads. is he fit to join the club. looking at him gives me afo vibes somehow.

eyyyyy thanks for following and keeping up !! you're a trooper. anyways clay puppington is way way worse than the bnha bad dads. like easy clear. one of the best characters! but definitely the worst dad.

moral orel primer

The thing about Moral Orel is that it's an edgy-ish mid 2000s satire about hypocritical fundamentalist Protestant environments and how badly one eager and god-loving kid can be lead to misinterpret the bible. It's got that irreverent humour. Skip the episode "God's Xhef" if you ever watch it. To set up my point, one of the running gags for the series is that at the result of Orel's shenanigans is Clay taking Orel to his study to belt him. And then his pants fall down! haha.

The series then takes a swerve, starting from the first season Christmas episode and leading into the third season, for a darker, more character-driven narrative. It delves more into the citizens of Moralton, the impact that their Christian environment has on them and their relationships with each other, and bits of history to understand how they turned out the way they did, etc

One of the characters most impacted here is Clay. While he's always been the second-most prominent character after Orel himself, and their relationship is central to the story, it's with this new take on the story that Clay really becomes the deuteragonist of the series. He becomes that much more fascinating a character, and his treatment of Orel and his family becomes that much more vile. Sadly the third season is cut short, reportedly after execs saw a particularly dark episode (not Orel or Clay related!) and thought. hm. that wasn't funny.

I lay that all out to explain that while Moral Orel starts off as a pretty silly, shock-value cartoon about how weird Christians are, it also depicts a lot of serious subject matters, and the treatment of that is much more frank and realistic and difficult as the series progresses.

So while he becomes a much more developed character that the audience can understand, Clay's abusive behaviour loses a lot of that wink-wink satirical irony. He's also CRAZY pathetic.

also it's got the mountain goats! that's how i first found moral orel!

how comparable is it to bnha?

First things first, I do think there are largely interesting things to say about how BNHA depicts abuse, despite the downhill trend of writing in the third act that I complain about all the time. I don't think every aspect is perfect, but it's like. I do think there's more positive to say there than how other stories depict abuse. There's actually lots that I love about what the series does, or think that it could do were it not hobbled by things and stuff.

Ultimately, there isn't really a bulletproof way of comparing fictional abusive situations to another, because respective to real life you can't compare one abusive situation against the other.

But one can compare things like the genre and structure of a story, who the intended audience is, what the production of the story is like, how much time and focus can be devoted to certain subjects and what the actual focus is meant to be, etc etc.

Moral Orel can pull together different elements of abuse, like the suffocating environment of Christian fundamentalism, the abuse of a self-destructive alcoholic, the neglect that comes from mutually disaffected and inept parents, the generational nature of abuse, so on and so forth in a sincere way. Meanwhile BNHA, as a weekly serialized shonen battle manga whose creator has become increasingly rundown, has Things To Say, but doesn't necessarily have the same capacity to devote its power to those things. Abuse is vital to the themes of BNHA, but it's not the center of it the way it is for Moral Orel.

So when Clay does his thing, stripped of the fantastical couching of BNHA's bad dads, it just feels more real and it feels worse as a result.

anyways.

clay SMASH bnha's bad dad club

Never a question that Clay is a worse dad than Enji lmao. However one feels about Endeavour's arc, or how well-written or 'deserved' it is, or how successful and genuine Enji is in his efforts, at the very least he's realised that he's done wrong and wants to atone for it, while also grappling with the fact that there may be no way for him to do that. spoilers but clay shan't do this. you get flickers that he has regrets, but he'll NEVER change baby.

I guess Clay gets a one-up where his marriage with Bloberta is mutually destructive, harmful, and toxic in comparison to Enji unambiguously abusing Rei though. so failmarriage win.

Kotarou is actually similar to Clay though! Lots to say, to compare and contrast. I'm actually kind of obsessed, especially because what I said about Clay being more realistic also applies to Kotarou - Kotarou just gets less screentime. They're both deeply affected by their childhood and relationships with their own parents in ways they take it out on their children (the "explained but not excused" idea behind fictional depictions of generational abuse). They also project an image of the upper(?)-middle class family man and Patriarch of the household, either to make up for the failings of their childhood or because it's what expected of them as a man in their world. (Wee bit of conjecture on Kotarou's part but I think it has solid grounding.)

But there's also significant differences. Physical abuse is normalized as corporal between Clay and Orel, on top of the emotional abuse, manipulation, and neglect. Kotarou's abuse of Tenko is largely emotional, with the big slap implied to be the first time that abuse manifested as physical and a line crossed for the rest of the family. And while I'm sure some people would debate this, the idea that Kotarou promised Nao a home full of joy feels genuine. He did want that, the happy family full of smiles he lost as a kid, only for his own resentment to poison everything when Tenko can't obey the rules Kotarou created and enforced to achieve it. Clay, on the other hand, like. There's bits of him implying he loves his family but doesn't have the means to show or act on it, but when he has a whole speech about the sacrifices he makes for his family, family never rings as more than an obligation that he has to put up with for the appearance of manhood.

And Shigaraki can have xyz feelings about his dad forever, but he accepts and espouses the one true lesson Kotarou taught him, that heroes can't do shit all. His father was always a scary and domineering figure, but it feels like while he will never forgive him, Shigaraki does understand him more as an adult. Meanwhile, Orel tries as hard as he can to honour thy father until he can't anymore.

Again, I think that Clay and Kotarou are probably most comparable in terms of being the Bad Dad with some similar hang-ups and relationships to their kids, but part of what makes Kotarou interesting is that we don't know what he would have done had Tenko's quirk not triggered how and when it did. With his family finally willing to push back against him and himself feeling regret for hitting Tenko, could he have changed? We don't know! But much like I said when talking about Enji, Clay's never going to change.

All For One has become more of a cartoon villain that I am determined to turn into a dress up doll for my own amusement than a bad dad and is more evil guardian or whatever. BUT there's one thing that I almost forgot about when I was first writing this up, but realised is actually soooo interesting.

There's a lot to say about AFO and Clay being the primary "teacher" to Shigaraki and Orel! I that while AFO does influence Shigaraki's villainous ideals, he also lets society and Shigaraki's experiences speak for themselves. And frankly, Shigaraki has a lot of leeway and agency in evolving his ideals through his own experiences, particularly after AFO's incarceration. He sees AFO for what he is, probably has for a long time, and is determined to establish his own identity outside of AFO regardless of what Shigaraki has learned from him. Clay is much more strict and obvious about imposing his worldview on his son, but while Orel is desperate for his dad's approval and love and can be led to do things that feel wrong for that love, Orel never absorbs those lessons the way that Clay wants him to, and separating himself from his father and come to terms with what Clay has done is a much more difficult process.

but mostly i just think that clay could do this

and afo could do this

beautiful world.

#abuse discussion cw. obviously.#sorry if you didn't expect an essay but i Love Moral Orel. i need to rewatch.#thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk at length. about. moral orel. i love you anon.#bnha bloggin #moral orel bloggin

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