#i finished the game i just want to write essays on every single character and relationship

[archaeren]

How I learned to write smarter, not harder

(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)

A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.

The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.

As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!

Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!

2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)

Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.

Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.

I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.

Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!

This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.

As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.

When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD

People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.

What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!

What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.

You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.

And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.

And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.

If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?

And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD

In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.

Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.

Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)

And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)

[ohnoitstbskyen]

PINNED POST, FAQ, INFORMATION

Hi, I'm TBSkyen. I make videos on YouTube sometimes. This is my main tumblr blog, the "brand" blog as it were, where I maintain my Social Media Presence™ on this site.

I use the ironic ™ to signal my personal discomfort with the work of being a minor media personality even while I still do that work and make a living off it.

I have a sideblog called @tbposting, mostly for shitposts and reblogs, and in my opinion I have pretty darn good taste in reblogs, so you can follow that if you want. It's also where I'll do random personal posting, microblogging, etc.

This main blog is primarily for 1) answering asks, and 2) posting my Original Content™, usually my main channel videos, as well as the occasional longer essay or critique. Sometimes I'll reblog an interesting or useful thing, or boost a friend's work, but I try to keep the spam to a minimum.

---

About Me

I am a thirtysomething content creator whose primary expertise is character design.

I have a bachelor's degree in English, never finished my master's, did most of a bachelor's degree in history, and that's it. These are my academic qualifications, no more and no less.

My professional experience is primarily being a freelancer and self-employed creator. I spent the better part of a decade working as a commission artist, running webcomics, drawing fanart, and the occasional animation work and not safe for work commissions, and I have at this point a decade of experience and self-study in the subjects I cover. I have also done online community management for, god help me, almost twenty years, so that's a part of my skillset I'll never escape.

I do not have any particular professional creative industry experience, although given what I hear from my professional friends, sometimes that seems like a blessing.

Please maintain a critical distance when engaging with my work. I am a critic. My work is very rarely meant to be taken as authoritative or didactic, and when it is, I will make it clear in my writing. Just because I speak with confidence doesn't mean I am trying to assert objective truth.

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TAGS (to follow, or filter)

#tbanswers is the tag for every single ask I answer on this blog

#tb reblog is the tag for reblogs

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#tb recommends is for the occasional recommendation of a video essay or other creator

Yes, I know the spaces are inconsistent. It's not on purpose, I just typed them in haphazardly when I started using them and it's stuck.

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FAQ (before you ask)

Q: Will you ever do a video about ____ ? A: The answer to this question is almost universally "maybe someday, if I have time, and if I feel I have anything worthwhile to say." And the more realistic answer is "no, because I already have far too much on my plate and I have burned myself out too many times." In general, please don't ask me this question, I will most likely not answer it because I have given the same answer a thousand times, but I still feel guilty about not answering them.

Q: Will you continue your series of videos about ____ ? A: Yes! I will continue the let's plays I started, I will finish the Boss Designs series, I will do another What's the Deal With, I will do more shorts about the subjects I've got going on. The main obstacle is, again, my tendency to overload myself.

Q: Do you have a PO box? Can I send you something? A: Not yet, but I'm looking into it. It may be a while before I get it set up.

Q: Do you have merchandise? A: A little bit, yes, at tbskyen.redbubble.com.

Q: What's your opinion on [game/movie/comic/book/etc]? A: I struggle to answer very open, broad questions like this. Most things I have opinions about, I have multiple opinions, and different ones depending on the perspective and specific element in question. I'm much more likely to answer specific, bounded questions.

Q: Can I send you fanart? A: PLEASE. Askbox, tag me on bluesky, send it to my email! I love seeing every piece of it!

Q: Why do you never appear on camera? A: A forest witch cursed me to look not quite but ALMOST like Paul Giamatti in all photos and videos ever taken of me, and his laywers sent me a cease-and-desist.

Q: Are you gay/straight/bi/other? A: The decision I've made for myself, at least for this period of my life, is that privacy is precious, and once given up can never be reclaimed on the internet. I am open about being aromantic (not asexual), because it's a sometimes invisible and underdiscussed identity, and I know it would have helped me a lot to see someone speak about it when I was younger.

The rest of it is for me to know, and for you to speculate about, although preferably somewhere I can't see it. I accept that this is a part of being a Personality, but it still feels weird, y'know?

Q: Is it weird if I find your voice kinda hot? A: I've put a lot of work into developing this voice and making it nice to listen to, so that's not weird at all and I find it quite complimentary, thank you.

I generally don't mind people doing flirty/thirsty posting about or at me, just so long as we all understand that 1) you should never give a stranger like me information which could be used to harm you. Nicer-seeming YouTubers than me have turned out to be monsters.

And 2) it will never go beyond playful online flirtiness. I like to fluster my live chat, I'll flirt back in an ask or a post maybe, but I am not flirting with you, or inviting any kind of closer intimacy with you, the person I responded to.

Think of me like a comedian doing crowd-work at a show - you can chat to me in the bar after the show, but when I asked you what you do for work I wasn't looking for a personal connection, I was doing my work as an entertainer. Please no sending me nudes, or propositions, or confession letters in my email inbox. We are strangers, and I am always performing a persona in public.

[weirdkpopgirl]

Friends Who Kiss | Chenle Fic #1

Title: Friends Who Kiss

Genre: Best friends to lovers, high school/college au

Warnings: mentions of the reader being insecure and having a mental breakdown at some point. a little suggestive, but not really

Word Count: ~ 5.6k

Author's Note: Okay to be very honest, I think that this story is kinda stupid and cliché. But it was an idea that I still wanted to try writing. And this is my first full-length fic for Chenle too, so I'm happy to post something for him. So to those who like cheesy romance stories, I hope you enjoy this. Thank you for reading ^ ^

➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶

Since the start of high school, Zhong Chenle has been a consistent part of your life. He arrived as a transfer student from Shanghai, while you were the reserved kid who often used studying as an excuse to avoid social interaction. So rather than you reaching out to him first, it was he who practically claimed you as his best friend. Your personalities were a striking contrast, but it proved to be the perfect balance. It didn't take long for the two of you to become inseparable.

However, your friendship took a turn in eleventh grade. You guys had gone to your house after school to do homework. Except it was mostly you working on assignments, while Chenle was animatedly ranting about some mobile game Jisung was terrible at playing.

“It’s unbelievable! Every time I check his character gets killed,” Chenle laughed, and you responded with a soft hum of acknowledgment.

The boy glanced up from his phone to find you engrossed in your textbooks. While your attention was focused on writing an essay, you were also trying to keep your mind from drifting to the unsettling conversation you had during lunch that day. Typically, you and Chenle sat together with his friends. But Jisung needed the boy’s help stalking his crush, so you found yourself sitting with some of the girls in your class. 

Sensing the inner conflict brewing in your mind, Chenle rose from the bed and leaned over your shoulder. 

“You've been at this since we got here. How is your brain not fried?” he asked, blunt as usual.

You shot the boy with an unappreciative glare. “It is fried. But our essay is due on Monday, and I still have to help you with yours.”

Chenle sighed, well aware of your enduring determination. Ever since he met you, he couldn’t understand why you stressed so much over assignments, especially when you always completed them before the due date. Then you somehow managed to go out of your way to ensure he was doing the same.

“You’re more than halfway finished, and I’ll get to mine on my own time,” He reassured, “Why don’t you take a break for now?”

Before you could protest, Chenle swiftly pulled you out of your chair and guided you to sit on the bed with him. Worry clouded his gaze. “Something’s troubling you, isn’t it?”

Your teeth sank into your lower lip, hating how Chenle knew you so well. He didn’t have a problem sharing what was on his mind, while you were the exact opposite. Yet, even a single look at you was enough for him to detect something was off.

“The girls at lunch were going on about their dating experiences and stuff,” you began to explain, your tone tinged with irritation at the memory. “They were all so surprised when I said I haven’t had my first kiss yet.”

You pushed yourself to meet Chenle's gaze, half dreading that he might burst into laughter. Instead, his expression held a hint of amusement, and that alone made you regret bringing up the topic.

Before he could respond, you hurriedly attempted to backtrack on your words. “It's stupid, I know—”

“It’s not stupid if it’s making you upset,” Chenle said firmly.

Leaning back in your seat, you let out an exasperated sigh. “I just can’t get their judgmental looks out of my head. All because I don’t have much experience with dating?”

Chenle's expression softened as he confessed, "There's nothing wrong with that, and there’s a lot of people like you. I haven't had my first kiss either."

“Really?!” You stared at him in disbelief. “Didn't you date Ko Mi-so though?”

Chenle scoffed, appearing slightly offended. “Okay, that happened such a long time ago. And we didn't even last a month, so we never kissed.”

Now that you thought about it, he was right about their relationship ending almost as quickly as it began. You recalled the time back in tenth grade when Chenle was quite smug about dating Mi-so, who happened to be the prettiest girl in class. Frankly, you were somewhat relieved when they broke up, given that she didn't particularly like you. Chenle hasn’t dated anyone since.

“Oh, I guess that makes sense,” your voice trailed off. 

The boy stayed silent for a moment before an idea dawned on him. “You know what? Why don’t we have our first kiss now?”

Your cheeks felt like they were competing for a world record in how quickly they heated up at Chenle's proposal. He couldn't possibly be serious.

“Did I hear you right?” you stammered, thoroughly taken aback by the suggestion.

Chenle nodded confidently, “I mean, we're best friends, so it's not that weird. And it's better than kissing someone we don't know as well or not have a connection with.”

You could kind of see his point. Having Chenle as your first kiss did seem much safer than kissing some random guy. Besides, it wasn’t like either of you had any underlying feelings for each other. This would solely be for practice.

“Alright,” you reluctantly agreed, “But you have to promise not to make fun of me if I turn out to be a bad kisser."

Chenle chuckled and nodded. He inched closer to you on the bed, leaving little space between the two of you. Although he saw you every day, having your face this near made a faint blush tinge his cheeks.

He started to lean in more before pausing. "Um, maybe you should close your eyes."

"Oh—right," you mumbled awkwardly, then took a deep breath before allowing your eyelids to shut.

He had to suppress a chuckle, finding you kinda cute in that moment. Before you had a chance to second-guess yourself, Chenle pressed his lips against yours in a tender kiss. Shortly after, he drew back, searching for your reaction.

“So, how was that?” He asked, voice laced with teasing.

You stared at him incredulously for a moment before realizing he was waiting for you to answer. “I suppose it was okay,” you mumbled.

Chenle tilted his head with an amused grin. “Just okay?”

“Yeah, I guess I didn't feel much because we're not really into each other like that,” you admitted with a nonchalant shrug.

Okay, you might have partially lied about not feeling much during the kiss. Truth be told, there was this strange, fluttery sensation in your chest when your best friend's lips grazed yours. But perhaps all first kisses were like that, and you were simply overthinking it.

The boy beside you let out a hearty laugh. “Well at least we got that over with.”

You had to muster all your self-control not to blush when he followed up with, “And you're not a bad kisser, by the way.”

Believing that the experiment was over, the two of you returned to your previous tasks. Nothing changed much after that day in your bedroom, as you and Chenle remained best friends. But little did you realize that this wouldn't be the last kiss you'd be sharing with him. 

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

Despite your previous attempts to justify it, the second kiss you shared with Chenle happened partially because of you. As your senior year of high school unfolded, Chenle prepared for his performance at the spring festival. It was you who initially urged him to participate in the talent show. The countless times you had witnessed his piano playing and singing during your private moments together convinced you that he should share his talents with the world. Your compliments not only fueled Chenle’s ego but also prompted him to eagerly jot his name down on the sign-up sheet.

However, what you didn’t expect was to find him backstage, looking as pale as a ghost. He was supposed to go after a group of girls who were dancing to Red Velvet’s “Red Flavor.” With the intention of cheering him on in person, you spotted the dark-haired boy sitting on a chair, anxiously bouncing his legs.

“Last-minute jitters?" you asked softly.

Chenle glanced up at you and crossed his arms in a nonchalant manner. “What, me? I'm fine,” he replied, though his tone lacked conviction.

Just as Chenle knew you like the back of his hand, you were among the few who could read him. While he was partially correct about never being nervous, it didn't take an idiot to perceive that he was in that moment. It was evident he was trying to play it off to uphold his confident image. 

One aspect that troubled you about Chenle was his constant facade of cheerfulness and carefree demeanor. No one could genuinely be happy all the time, and he was the kind of person who concealed his negative feelings when around others.

After deliberating on how to address the situation, you gently rested your hand on his shoulder, bringing yourself to eye level with him.

“Hey, you’re going to be amazing out there,” you reassured him. “I’ve seen how many hours you put into practicing that song. You have nothing to worry about.”

Chenle let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, you're right.”

The smile he bestowed upon you didn't quite convince you. Biting your lip in hesitation, you glanced around to ensure no one else was nearby. Once you were sure that you were alone, you leaned down and gently planted a kiss on the boy’s forehead. Chenle’s eyes widened in surprise at your actions.

“What was that for?”

Blushing, you took a step back and stammered, “Just for good luck, you know. I—I’ll be right there in the crowd, watching you. So if you feel nervous on stage, just look at me.”

A more reassured smile spread across Chenle’s lips and before he stood up to swiftly peck you on the lips, leaving you more stunned than he was a few seconds ago.

“There, I definitely feel more ready now,” he declared with a teasing glint. And the smug Chenle you were familiar with had returned.

As Chenle’s playfulness lingered in the air, the sound of the audience clapping erupted for the girls, putting an end to your “moment.” With a knowing look, you both parted ways, allowing Chenle to step into the spotlight for his performance.

As he took the stage, you found a spot in the crowd, eyes fixed on him with awe. The rhythm of the applause filled the air, drowning out any lingering thoughts. In that moment, the stage became his world, and you couldn't help but be swept away by the magic of his talent. The earlier exchange faded into the background as you watched Chenle shine, each note and melody weaving a captivating spell that left you in admiration.

Neither of you mentioned the kiss after that day. The interaction remained more platonic than anything, a gesture that was only meant to show your support for him. But Chenle still liked to think he killed the stage because of it.

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Chenle was undeniably responsible for the next time the two of you kissed. However, this particular incident didn't unfold until the first semester of your freshman year in college. The joy of discovering you both had been accepted into the same university was palpable, though Chenle appeared to be more exuberant about the news. In contrast, you felt a sense of relief, grateful that you wouldn't be venturing into the world of college alone.

In one of your classes, a sunbae began to show interest in you. Despite your attempts to politely reject him, it became apparent that he wasn't willing to accept no for an answer. 

One day after class, he cornered you in the hallway, insisting that you go out with him. As you tried to maintain your composure, he grabbed you by the wrist when you tried to walk away. The harsh move triggered internal panic within you.

You could sense the danger in his tone as his head tilted cockily. “Come on, (Y/n), don’t be so difficult. I know you’re just playing hard to get.”

“I—I’m sorry but I just don’t feel the same as you, Sunbae,” you stuttered, trying to be assertive. “Please let go.”

Refusing to relent, the sunbae was on the verge of pulling you in closer when another hand intervened, forcefully ripping you out of his grasp. Your head turned in astonishment to see Chenle casting a disgusted look at the guy in front of you. The flames in Chenle’s eyes made you realize that you had never seen him so livid before.

“She said to let go of her. What part of that do you not understand?” Chenle’s voice cut through the tension.

The sunbae scoffed and crossed his arms in defense, “Yah, who are you to involve yourself in someone else’s matters? Are you her boyfriend or something?”

You watched as the corner of Chenle’s lips turned into a smirk as he snaked an arm around your waist in a protective gesture. 

“That’s right. So who are you to go after another man’s girlfriend?” he retorted confidently. Your eyes widened, almost surprised as the jerk in front of you.

Shaking his head in a mix of disbelief and embarrassment, the sunbae pointed a finger at you. “This is a joke, right? You just asked him to pretend to be your boyfriend to mess with me!”

Before you could respond, Chenle took matters into his own hands. His free hand briskly moved to the back of your neck, drawing you in for a passionate kiss. In a typical situation, your best friend's impulsive actions might have freaked you out immediately. However, the way his fingers delicately pressed against your back reassured you that he was doing this for your sake, Closing your eyes, you kissed back and tried to reciprocate with the same passion Chenle was pouring.

Moments later, Chenle pulled away and turned to the sunbae, wearing a satisfied grin on his face. “Do you believe her now? Not that she has to prove anything to you.”

The older male muttered begrudgingly under his breath, “Whatever, not worth my time.”

With a scowl, he stormed off, leaving behind a palpable sense of relief in the wake of his departure. Once he was gone, you removed yourself from Chenle's hold and shot him a look of confusion.

“You know you didn’t have to do that right?” 

Chenle chuckled, “Well, someone had to put an end to his nonsense. Besides, I've always wanted to play the protective boyfriend card.”

“Protective boyfriend? You almost gave me a heart attack!” You smacked him on the shoulder.

Chenle’s smirk remained, but he adopted a more concerned tone. “But seriously, (Y/n), why didn’t you tell me he was bothering you earlier?”

“I thought I could handle things on my own.” You shrugged weakly, lowering your head in guilt.

Chenle sighed, recognizing your aversion to depending on others for your problems. Throughout the time he’d known you, he'd witnessed your willingness to go to great lengths to help those you cared about. However, when it came to your own struggles, you seemed to prefer suffering in silence.

“We’re best friends for a reason,” he reminded you, “Looking after each other is 50/50, you know?”

You offered him a small smile, “I guess you’re right. Thanks for saving me today.”

“Well, you can thank me by buying food tonight,” Chenle said, the playful glint returning to his eyes. “It’s your turn anyway.”

Rolling your eyes, you let him lead you out of the building. But Chenle’s words from earlier lingered in the back of your mind. “We’re best friends for a reason.” 

The two of you were the epitome of what best friends were. And that was all the two of you would ever be, right?

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

At this point, you were beginning to lose count of the number of times you’ve kissed your best friend. Despite this, your friendship maintained its familiar rhythm throughout the university. But after that hallway encounter, the awkwardness that came with kissing your best friend faded. Although it was more of Chenle seeming unfazed, and you becoming less surprised each time it happened. And indeed, there were a few more instances that caused your lips to meet.

Like the time Chenle excitedly dragged you to his dorm to watch a Golden State Warriors game, and, in the heat of the moment, he gave you a quick kiss before cheering some more. Then there was the other time when you both went out for drinks with friends, a few drunken kisses were shared.

There weren't any real feelings attached to the kisses you and Chenle shared. At least, that was what you repeatedly told yourself. However, as you were halfway through your first year of university, you finally started to question the true nature of your friendship with Zhong Chenle.

Those thoughts began to sink in just before your first finals in college. Isolated in your dorm room, you immersed yourself in studying for a math exam scheduled in three days. Calls and texts from friends went largely ignored as you turned off your phone in an attempt to focus. However, Chenle wasn't about to let that slide. 

One night, he let himself into your dorm, carrying a bag of your favorite takeout—knowing well that you tended to skip meals when stressed. You could see the determination in his face, ready to scold you. But the expression quickly transitioned to one of concern when he caught you on the verge of a breakdown. 

You sat at your desk surrounded by textbooks and notebooks filled with scribbled equations. The sight of your trembling body and slightly tousled hair, a result of pulling on it too hard, tugged at Chenle’s heart. He was well aware of how your anxiety affected you at times. But he had never witnessed it manifest quite like this.

Instantly, the bag was placed on the floor, and he was at your side. “(Y/n), what's wrong?" 

“I—I'm going to fail my calc final,” you swallowed, your fingers curling into fists. Your shoulders slumped, and the weight of despair was evident in the way you hunched over the desk.

He placed a hand on your shoulder, attempting to calm you down. “You still have a few weeks before finals, (Y/n). And you’re not going to fail.”

“Yes, I am!” you cut him off, your voice strained. Tears welled up in your eyes, and your hands clenched even tighter. “I’ve been studying for days, and my dumb brain still doesn't understand anything. Do you know how stupid I feel?”

“Being bad at math doesn’t make you stupid, (Y/n),” Chenle said, trying to inject a bit of lightheartedness into the situation. However, his comment didn’t seem to offer you any comfort.

You shook your head miserably in response. “Stop trying to be nice. I'm going to fail, and then I’ll end up letting down my parents and everyone else.”

Chenle’s heart ached at the defeat in your voice. Setting his jokes aside, he recognized that words weren’t what you needed at the moment. Instead, he enveloped you in a warm embrace. You hesitated only briefly before surrendering to his comforting hold, attempting to fight back tears.

“Just let it out,” he whispered.

Those simple words acted as an emotional release trigger, and Chenle found himself gently rubbing your back as you quietly cried into his shoulder. A sense of mixed emotions flooded him as he held you in that moment. A part of him felt a twinge of relief, grateful that you let him be there for you. You often kept your emotions bottled up, making it a challenge for him to discern how you truly felt at times. 

However, there was a pang of sadness accompanying that satisfaction. He knew you didn't just cry in front of anyone, and realizing that you had reached this breaking point signaled the depth of your struggle.

After a while, Chenle gently pulled back, brushing a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “You need a break, (Y/n). Let’s step away from the desk for a bit.”

"No, I really should—" you began to protest, but Chenle cut you off.

"You really should eat the food I brought you before it gets cold," he insisted, picking up the bag again.

He led you to sit on the carpet of your cramped dorm room, creating a makeshift dining space for the two of you. As you both shared a meal, Chenle continued to provide a comforting presence, occasionally cracking a joke to lighten the atmosphere.

As the night wore on, the exhaustion in your eyes became more prominent. Even so, you knew you should go back to studying. But Chenle seemed to disagree.

“Maybe you should just rest for the night. I promise to help you with math in the morning,” he suggested. However, upon seeing the unconvinced look you gave him, he backtracked on his words. “Okay, I'll have Renjun help you.”

Too tired to argue, you gave in, and that's how you found yourself lying in bed with your best friend. Back in high school, you used to have sleepovers at his house on the weekends. At night, the two of you would be lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and talking about anything. However, having him beside you at that moment felt strange. 

You saw a sincere tenderness reflected in those large eyes of his. A part of you wondered if Chenle often gazed at you with such fondness and you simply hadn’t noticed before. Either way, the way he was looking at you made you feel even stranger. And the short silence that had settled between the two of you wasn’t helping.

Uncertain of how much longer you could endure the intensity, you broke eye contact with him and murmured, “Thank you for always being there for me, even when I try to push you away”

Chenle chuckled, adjusting his position to prop himself up on his elbow. “Well, of course, because how could you live without me?”

His ability to joke at a time like this struck you as unfathomable. Instead of the usual eye roll or pushing off the bed, a serious expression remained etched on your face. 

“You're right, I don't think I can live without you,” you said, your voice laced with drowsiness. “Because you’re one of the few people who truly care about me.”

The amusement in his eyes danced away, as he felt the gravity of your words. Something about seeing this vulnerable side of you was so beautiful in his eyes. Before he could fully process his own thoughts, Chenle found himself leaning in to close the space between you with his lips meeting your own.

Uncertain whether it was the leftover stress from your meltdown or the sleep deprivation that prompted you to kiss back without much thought. You could recall all the times you’ve kissed Chenle throughout the years. But this one would always stand out to you.

This kiss lasted a lot longer than your previous ones. But it wasn’t just the way he tilted your chin upward for a better angle, or the feeling of his dark locks of hair slipping between your fingers. Nor was it the soft pressure of his lips moving in sync with yours. It was the indescribable emotions that made time seem to stand still, weaving an unspoken connection that surpassed words and left you yearning for more.

Aside from pulling away, both of you gasping for breath, and noticing how Chenle's lips were redder than you had ever seen them, you vaguely recalled what happened after the kiss. When you woke up the next morning, Chenle was already gone. However, he had left you a text message, mentioning that he went to check if Renjun could help tutor you in math.

But math was no longer the sole stressor in your mind. Your best friend had kissed you last night, and unlike all the other times, this one left you feeling more confused than ever. 

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

True to his word, Renjun offered to meet up with you that Sunday afternoon at the campus library. Within an hour of sitting down to unravel the calculus concept that eluded you, Renjun finally helped you grasp the material. Although the looming fear of failing finals had diminished, you still felt a weight on your shoulders.

“You don’t seem as relieved as I thought you’d be,” Renjun remarked lightheartedly. Even he could tell your mind was preoccupied with something else.

You smiled sheepishly, “No, I am! I seriously owe you for helping me out. I just…”

“Is it something to do with Chenle?” he asked, almost like he was a mind reader.

His unexpected question caught you off guard. “How did you know?” you stammered, feeling the heat quickly rise to your cheeks.

A knowing smile played on the boy’s lips as he leaned back in his seat. “Oh come on, (Y/n). You have that look on your face that something happened between the two of you.”

Sometimes you seriously wished Renjun wasn’t so good at reading people. Even though you weren’t as close to him as Chenle was, he’s known you long enough to notice things that others wouldn’t. For instance, when something was troubling you.

Biting your lip, you debated whether to be truthful with Renjun. Although you didn't typically share your problems with others, you recognized that confiding in someone at a time like this was necessary to maintain your sanity.

“Chenle kissed me last night,” you tossed the statement out in the air, hoping you wouldn’t regret it.

Renjun’s eyes widened at this revelation, “He did?!”

“Well you see, we’ve kissed before. But this time it felt different,” you clarified, baffling the boy across from you even more. Internally cringing, you were acutely aware of how bad this sounded.

Before he could question, you continued to elaborate. “Look, it's not as complicated as it sounds. It’s just ever since we agreed to be each other’s first kiss, Chenle and I just keep having these…accidental kisses. Whether it’s out of excitement or to get guys hitting on me to go away.”

Renjun listened quietly as you recounted all the other times you’ve kissed Chenle. When you circled back to the previous night, you felt more conflicted than ever.

“But the kiss last night left me feeling so confused,” you confessed, running a hand through your hair. “Initially, I thought he was just doing it out of comfort, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Well, have you considered the possibility that he has feelings for you?” Renjun inquired, crossing his arms. His suggestion sounded so simple, yet it felt like navigating uncharted territory in your mind.

You shook your head in denial. “N—No, I mean we’ve been best friends for five years. He can’t possibly see me that way.”

“Like that’s ever stopped friends from falling for each other,” Renjun cocked his head. “It doesn’t take a genius to know that he likes you, (Y/n).”

His point made you mentally curse. If you looked at your history with Chenle from an objective point of view, the two of you certainly didn’t act like normal best friends.

“And, it’s pretty obvious that you like him too,” Renjun added, twirling the pencil between his fingers.

His statement left you feeling exposed, as if you had been caught red-handed committing a crime. Laughing nervously, you shook your head, “Renjun, we’re just friends. I…I don’t see him that way.”

Renjun raised an eyebrow, “Friends who kiss? Did you really not feel anything in those moments?”

Your teeth sank further into your lower lip as Renjun’s question hit you. The reality of your feelings for Chenle lingered in the air, challenging the facade you had built to convince yourself otherwise. It was like trying to hold sand in your fists, slipping away no matter how tightly you clenched. The truth, however inconvenient, seemed to be unraveling before you.

“I…I did feel something,” you slowly admitted, “But I never said anything because I didn’t want our friendship to change. It just seemed easier to pretend those moments were nothing more than accidents.”

Renjun’s eyes softened with understanding. “Well maybe a little change is what you need in your friendship.”

Maybe Renjun was onto something, perhaps change was necessary. In the past, you had always held out on dating, using the excuse that you were waiting for the right person. Despite the fear of potential rejection, what if Chenle was the person you had been waiting for all along?

▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃

Chenle’s living room bathed in the gentle glow of the TV screen, a familiar sight during your Friday movie nights since college began. It was supposed to be a time to unwind, to escape the pressures of school for a little while. However, instead of the usual peaceful and easygoing atmosphere, an unspoken tension hung in the air tonight. Beyond picking a movie and deciding who made the popcorn, you and Chenle barely talked. The weight of the unspoken words made the space feel suffocating, and you couldn't shake the feeling of unease that settled in your chest.

Unable to endure the weighty silence any longer, you turned your head to make a lame comment about the movie. However, before you could speak, Chenle beat you to it.

“Can we talk?” His voice carried a hint of restlessness, an unusual departure from his usual tone.

Trying to maintain a casual demeanor, you lightly nodded. With your acknowledgment, Chenle exhaled deeply and sat up straighter to face you properly.

“I know how crazy this might sound,” he started, running a hand through his hair. “But I’ve been thinking, and I don’t think we can stay friends.”

His words felt like a gun being pointed at your chest, panic surged within you as you tried to process the boy’s words. Of all the ways you predicted this conversation could go, this was not one of them.

“What do you mean?” you asked, your voice even smaller than his.

Noticing the perplexity in your eyes, Chenle continued. “You see, I've been in love with you for—I don’t know how long. But I spent all these years burying my feelings like a fool, because I never thought you’d see me that way. Yet, every time we kiss, it becomes harder for me to ignore my feelings for you.”

Chenle glanced down at his folded hands, vulnerability seeping into those brown orbs of his. “The other night made me realize that I don’t want to just be friends who kiss anymore. I want to be something more to you.”

His words lingered in the air now that they were out in the open. Your heart raced faster than it ever has before, as your cheeks flushed with heat. Chenle’s eyes bore into yours, his expression nervous yet hopeful. 

For a moment, you were left speechless. But you still had the sense to hit him on the shoulder, scolding, “Oh my gosh, you can’t start a conversation like that, Chenle. You scared me!”

The boy chuckled sheepishly, rubbing his shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. But seriously, (Y/n), I meant what I said.”

A mix of emotions played on your face before you quietly admitted, “Honestly, I’ve wanted to be something more to you since that day we kissed in my bedroom.”

You noticed a smile of relief beginning to form on his lips, but you held up a finger before he could say anything. Now that he had taken the first step, you decided it was time for you to do the same.

“But I kept trying to convince myself that all the times we kissed were accidental or just for comfort,” you confessed, looking directly into his eyes. “And the reason I’ve been pushing away my feelings for you was because I was afraid of losing a friend who means the world to me.”

His hand rested on top of yours, the light touch sending a shiver down your spine. “You don’t have to be afraid because you’ll never lose me, (Y/n).”

The softness and sincerity in his eyes made you want to cry for some inexplicable reason. You once believed that confessing your feelings for Chenle would only lead to frustration and heartbreak. However, as you sat here with him, holding his hand, those worries seemed to vanish.

“So…what do we do now?” you asked, unsure of what was supposed to come next in these situations.

A mischievous glint danced in his eyes as he grinned. “I think this is the part where we kiss. But you know, as boyfriend and girlfriend.”

Just as you were processing his words, he moved closer, his breath warm against your skin, making your heart flutter. His eyes searched yours for permission. 

“Well, what are you waiting for then?” you whispered.

With that, the distance between you closed, and your lips met in a tender kiss. It was a sweet surrender, a culmination of years of friendship and suppressed feelings. Although this wasn’t your first kiss with Chenle, it felt that way in a sense. For you could finally savor the tender feeling of his lips without questioning the intention behind it.

In that moment, all you focused on was the way Chenle had his hand on the small of your back, guiding you closer as he deepened the kiss. Your fingers found their way to rest on the nape of his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin. 

Although the change in this dynamic had just begun, this newfound connection promised countless moments of shared laughter, whispered confessions, and the sweet warmth of shared kisses. You had a feeling that you could easily get used to this beautiful new normal. By the way Chenle smiled during the kiss, you could tell he felt the same way.

➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶

[bleachbleachbleach]

🗻🏃🏻‍♂️箱根の山は？ 天下の険！🗻🏃🏻‍♂️

We finished our annual Run with the Wind rewatch last night, which is a series I love so intensely that if I had to recommend one anime to someone it would be this one. It clocks in at a cool 23 episodes, which makes it approachable, and it's so character-driven it doesn't matter if the premise sounds inherently interesting or not.

Do you love running? asks fourth-year university student Kiyose Haiji in the opening scene. If you don't, YOU WILL, as all of his roommates are about to find out, whether they want to or not (they do not).

It's based on a light novel by Miura Shion, who also wrote The Great Passage, which is a book (and anime series!) about writing a dictionary, which if you're like me will sell you on her instantly and if you are not might sell you on the premise that it's not the premise you need to be drawn to. The premise of Run with the Wind is the Hakone Ekiden: An annual, university marathon relay held up and down the mountains of Hakone just after New Years. Specifically, a 10-person college dorm that gets tricked/dragged/lovingly blackmailed into becoming an elite, 10-person marathon relay team.

Except most of the house aren't runners, and none of them wanted to be (except Haiji. Haiji's the one in the green. Can you tell?). They're law students and game show-loving job hunters; sun-starved otaku; coders who smoke; they're at the club; they're after girls; they have a girlfriend, actually; they are unassuming exchange students who like bathing in the dark and tuning into their friends' shoujo-style love lives; they are stealing 100 yen buns because they lost all their rent money in a single night of gambling.

Run With the Wind comes with all the tropes (extreme underdog story! DESTINATION TRAINING CAMP! fireworks! bathhouses! shared meals! hurt/comfort! very questionable driving (is this a real trope? it is to me)! cute dog! extremely homosexual soliloquies! extremely polyamorous nakama! It's goofy and charming and incredibly grounded in all of the small details of its characters lives and passions and insecurities. It's philosophical without being pedantic, existential without being nihilistic, and it's pure in the sense of being genuine, pure in the sense of being about some weird dudes who are willing to be deeply weird and to witness each other's weirdness.

There's so much to love about this series: The little notes on the walls of their dorm; the personalizations of everyone's shoes and phones and clothes; the amount of mayo someone is willing to put on curry; the eyes of the taxi driver as people have an insane conversation in the backseat; the amount of shit that exists in piles in the halls of the dorm; the slopes of Hakone; the team cheer; the sound of a metal windmill, creaking in strong wind.

It makes us cry every single time. The world for the Aotake boys. <333 Plus, this year (2024) was the ONE HUNDREDTH RUNNING of the real Hakone Ekiden!

For additional recs, here's my favorite:

film "about" running - Atanarjuat (2001)

fanfic "about" running - Run, glasshoe (2009)

essay "about" running - Repetitive Stress, Devin Kelly (2021)

[guzsdaily]

Killing Demons

Day 34 - Dec 9th, 12.023

With a title like that, you're probably thinking that today's topic is something like: "killing your inner demons". But nop, I just don't have any good subject that I want to write today, so I will just talk about one of my favorite games that I played today.

GO FUCKING PLAY THIS GAME. I don't care if you like boomer shooters or first-person shooters, go play this fucking piece of art. This is simply one of the best, if not the best game I played in a long time. I not even good at it and a love it.

This game is still unfinished, but I think I never had so much fun with a game, the sound design, the graphics, the hidden lore, the soundtrack, oh my fucking god the soundtrack. I will try to be straight to the point and explain without giving spoilers, but just let me say, talking about this game in text, is not an easy task. However, let's just say that if this was a video essay, I would be screaming.

The Gameplay

I will just say this out of the gate: I'm not good at shooters, and even worse at fast-paced ones. I died a lot in this game, every single boss needed me at least 7 to 10 tries in this game, and the more difficult ones (I'm looking at you V2 and Gabriel) I lost count of how many tries I needed. But I think I never had so much satisfaction with a difficult game in my life.

This game is a boomer shooter, but not like your typical Doom, no no, this is Doom on fucking steroids. While games like Doom I would say it's just a walk and shot, I can't really say much because I never play it, but from what I seem it is somewhat to the ground. Well, let's just say that in this game, good luck being on the ground for more than 10 minutes without dying. Want to be in one place waiting for the enemies and being a tank? You will probably die instantly. I never played a game that makes me have to move and go around this much, while still needing to aim and kill enemies. I really wanted to have screenshots and videos for this entry, but unfortunately I didn't record any of my runs, but just fucking search it on YouTube or something, and you will know what I'm talking about.

And this isn't the best part. Again, I'm not good at this game, so unfortunately I can't really say that much. But the sheer amount of guns and attack combos you can do in this game is something which makes even my humble programmer mind blow up trying to figure out how much there's it. I think that the best way I can really tell about the combos is: you can toss a coin from your revolver, change to a laser canon, and shot that coin in the middle of the air to make the laser ricochet to the back of an enemy, killing it instantly most of the time. I almost am never able to shoot the coin, but when I do, the dopamine hits hard.

Also, the Enemies

I will not turn this entry into an entire essay, I already plan to do it on the future, but I just wanted to highlight the design of some of the enemies here, because as someone who likes design characters, they are an inspiration I would say.

This first fella has a flamethrower, and if you toss a coin behind him and hit it, the bullet will ricochet to its gas tank, blowing him up.

These two made my life be miserable... but also a lot happier.

Images taken from the ULTRAKILL's community wiki.

The Lore

I will pass this paragraph because I've to admit that I didn't yet dig deeper into the lore and didn't finish the game yet. However, just the fact that that angel is called "Gabriel, Judge of Hell" and "The Apostate of Hate", is already a win for me. Just want to say that this game seems to have a lot of secrets, because it has a lot of actual hidden levels and sections, but also a lot of secrets and history telling in his characters and world in general.

The Soundtrack [and Voice acting]

This is something which I need to talk about, because it was what made me actually dragged to play this game in the first place. The soundtrack of this game makes my blood flow faster, even more when you mix the voice acting, I wanted to be lying here, but I actually feel hotter and something when listening to it.

The best way to describe is showing, so just listen to it:

I can feel the hatred of Gabriel, and when the music kicks in, it just makes me scream in a sense. I'm not a violent person, I'm not someone who feels hate or any similar feeling. However, this song, makes me understand what hate means in a way. Also, I cannot stop thinking about fight scenes and characters in an epic battle fighting for their deaths when I listen to it. It's the last breath, it's this or nothing, I can't die now, I will not die now.

The album arts

Never in my life I would think that a cover art for an album/song would inspire me so much.

I would like to again be lying here, but these cover arts actually made me create an entire section of the fictional universe that I'm writing/creating for my art and characters. This duotone style and even more the blend between holy and tech/industrial is something which I personally never seen, and simply love.

An inspiration in the form of game

This is probably stretching too much, however ULTRAKILL is somewhat of an inspiration to me. One, this game is made by mostly one guy as its seem, and he was able to make such a game design that I have never seen in other games. Two, every media that I consume of

it makes me be somewhat inspired to create my world and characters, from music to art. Three, it made me remember what I love in games, which is see your progress and skills improving over time, challenge yourself, actually give focus to the game instead of having it together with a video in the background or something like it.

Yes, it can be "just another boomer shooter", but it actually made me enjoy games again as a hobby and made me feel a lot more inspired, even more now when I'm focusing on work and job, and almost forgot for my love in video games, art and even video making. I have to admit that I almost forget to play it sometimes unfortunately, because it is comforting just sit and watch videos all day, but playing this game again really made me remember to also focus and have fun doing things that I love and can improve upon. Even when what you're improving is how fast and stylish you can kill a demon in a virtual game.

So go fucking play this game! And remember:

Mankind is dead. Blood is fuel. Hell is full.

---

Today's Artists & Creative Things

Game:ULTRAKILL - by Arsi "Hakita" Patala (published by New Blood Interactive) - Go play this game.

Album:Ultrakill: Imperfect Hatred (Original Game Soundtrack) - by Heaven Pierce Her (Hakita) - Go listen to this album (I personally prefer this act/soundtrack/album).

Song:The Death of God's Will - by Heaven Pierce Her (Hakita) - Go listen to this song (Personally prefer when it has the voice acting together, but even then it stills superb. Just the name of the song is already a piece on its own).

---

Copyright (c) 2023-present Gustavo "Guz" L. de Mello contact.guz013@gmail.com

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License

[tuiyla]

I’m not sure if you’ve written about it before, but what do you think Kitty’s back story is. Is it all defensive because of the sexual assault? Or what are your views on her past?

Alright so, sorry I've been as late answering this as other asks because I actually got really excited to answer and then, you know, life. So much "life" that, not exaggerating, I started working on a grand Kitty essay that goes into excruciating detail about what her backstory must have been like and what her arc represents. Sadly god only knows when if ever that gets finished so my answer to you is essentially a tl;dr (or too long didn't write) version of it. Some discussions of sexual assault and its effects.

Though it's not referenced in any other episodes, I take what she says to Ryder seriously. Every sentence Kitty says is hugely revealing about her character. I've written about the scene itself here, though answering a different type of question. Basically, I think a lot is explained about Kitty not only because of the assault she reveals but also its aftermath. It's key that people didn't believe her, ridiculed her, ostracized her. Not that Kitty isn't a hugely problematic character, particularly in season 4, but it makes sense that she'd work so hard never to feel like that again. In early season 5, she even acknowledges that she's a habitual liar and I firmly believe that comes from others labelling her a liar and her retreating, maybe even doubling down on that. Kitty's defense is being unknowable by being this duplicitous bitch who lies to Marley's face and takes so, so long to reveal her true vulnerability.

There's an excellent deleted scene that I've also written about and one that I think further explains much about her. About her self-worth and how it's been tied to her looks but also about how she does want to belong, she just doesn't quite know how. I also think that is yet another effect of how she was previously treated after coming forward about her assault. Kitty has difficulty trusting that groups will accept her now and she cares about the Glee club much sooner and much more than she'd admit because she found what she was looking for there. This is further highlighted in season 6 when she admits how hurt she was by the club's end and everyone's abandonment.

I consider the main themes of Kitty's story to be self-worth issues tied to beauty and sexuality, trust issues but also a deep need to belong to a group that will accept her. Some of this is touched on in the canon-for-me Previously Unaired Christmas where she lets it slip that she doesn't feel worthy of playing the Virgin Mary - "more like Mary Magdalene". And going back to the Lights Out scene, she tells Ryder that she talks a big game with guys but actually backs out when it comes to intimacy. Who knows what went down with Puck, yuck, but this also checks out.

That is way less coherent than I would have liked it to be but I don't want to put off replying. Long story short, I do think she's defensive because of her past, if in subtle ways that all make sense as pieces of a larger puzzle. I think the assault itself traumatized her, of course, but it was really how her environment handled the truth when she confessed that left an arguably even greater scar. In my view of Kitty, not being believed then was a crucial and heartbreaking milestone for her character. Maybe she would have had issues with her self-worth regardless, as the deleted scene hints at, but because of the assault her views on intimacy got jangled up. And because of the aftermath, she started choosing lies and masks as a defense. To be clear, none of this excuses what she did to Marley and I think that instance was largely independent from this, just Kitty being a stupid kid blind to the consequences. But in general, her behaviour checks out to have been heavily influenced by the single event and what it resulted in in terms of her relationships with her peers.

[dorimares]

tagged by @disengaged ty!!💕

rules: tag people you want to know better

last song? snow-sleep by kardashev, new find but im so obsessed

favourite colour? purple!! specifically like a rlly dark dusky violet

currently watching? video essay on which sims game has the toughest economy lmao (sims 2 stays winning x)

last movie/show? rewatching black sails season 4 + god it still hits just as hard

sweet/spicy/savoury? sweet!!

relationship status? single rip

current obsessions? baldur's gate 3~~~~ i've been playing it every day since my birthday last month + im still only like halfway through act 3 TT the obsession is so real though, started writing character study fic partway through act 2 so we'll see if i ever actually finish it soon (fingers crossed)

last thing you googled? how to format short story manuscripts for submission (editing a translation but messed up the formatting + forgot how its meant to look lmao)

i tag @dannyburke @ilovethecolorpink @sheauz @officialkendallroy @tomiecult @redvelvct if u want!!✨

[armed-saphire]

NOW ITS UR TURN WHO ARE YOUR MGS FAVS AND WHY!1!1?1!1?1!1?11!1! ٩( 'ω' )و

EHEHEEEE OK SO I'll say my fav from each game

Mgs1 is def Liquid he. He's so overdramatic it's really funny. He did so many backflips while explaining his tragic backstory 🥰 and then he just fucking died and turned into an arm which is the real tragedy (I have so many random HCs for him it's insane... I also rewrote his backstory a little...the recessive thing is so dumb)

Mgs2 I think it's a split between Raiden and Fortune. Raiden I really enjoyed playing as a character who is just... idk how to put it I just like that he's flawed and not some morally perfect charismatic guy. It feels like he's set up to be that way and then he whines about everything and is very dismissive at some points. It feels like he's a real person and not perfectly crafted to be the ultimate stereotypical good guy protagonist who can stay cool and collected in every situation. He has his moments where he lets emotion get the better of him and I like it a lot.

Fortune I have less to say about her but it doesn't mean I like her less. I think she's a really tragic character backstory wise but I also like how she sort of "plays into it" I guess? Ocelot points it out himself near the end of the game ("you couldn't get enough of the drama"). I thought the ending where she found out she could've died any time and she didn't have some magic ability was sad too and I lowkey wish she didn't die and was like redeemed somehow (imagine she comes back in mgs4 and has to go against Vamp or something that would've been so cool)..anyway I guess I didn't actually have less to say I like Fortune a lot blehhh😋

mgs3 AGH.. EVA ILY she is such a well written character and I love her so much I could write an essay on her if I wanted but I'll keep it more brief here. She's like a perfect subversion of the typical sexualized woman in video game thing...it's what she's doing as a spy for the mission and the best part is it doesn't even really work lol nice job snake. The game itself even adheres to whether Eva is in her Eva persona or her Tatyana one. It's....aghhhhghhh so great. (I have so many thoughts about her and Liquid btw)

Mgs4...difficult but probably Screaming Mantis. For real this time not a lot to say about her but I do like her a lot more since playing the game she went from my least fav B&B unit member to my fav one. She was really fun to watch in all her cutscenes and her boss fight was one of the best MGS boss fights I've ever done tbh. The callbacks and references to the first game were so good I won't lie I was giggling kicking my feet a lil bit. Screaming Mantis ily I have so many thoughts <333

Peace Walker ermmm Kaz and Paz equal I can't decide..also maybe Amanda. Yeah I like everyone a lot 😭 and Cécile....not Snake tho sorry lol. I haven't finished the game so I haven't gotten the full character arcs of everyone so it's hard to pinpoint exact explanations but you know I love Kaz forever and ever mwah mwah (I'm also a transfem Kaz truther and I'm RIGHT!!!). Amanda has a lot of really cool tapes explaining a lot of...not really exposition but it gives a lot of great context to her character. And her voice acting especially in cutscenes is some of the best voice acting I've seen in an mgs game so it adds a lot. Paz I need to learn more about her. I know basic plot points but not the inbetween stuff that really lets you get to know her. I do feel really sad for her though, Kojima decided he wanted shock value instead of a female character having a nice ending 🤷‍♀️ Sucks.

Mgsv QUIET!!!! QUIET ILY!!! she's soooooo OUGH. I'm glad a lot of the fandom has fixed her from her extremely flawed portrayal in the game because it shows what really could've been and I think I latch more onto that than the version of her in the game just a little. The foundation they were working with was still really good. The way they show her and venom building such a strong bond despite never having a single conversation is really well done and I like it a lot. Quiet ily my favourite creaturething killgirl my favourite ear biter offer...

[ofallthingsnasty]

I started reading your fics on ao3 and my goodness they are such a treat😍💕 dark and nasty fanfics just hit different('capture kill' and 'through the briar' have me in a chokehold omg😖😮‍💨)

I also feel super happy to find people that feel exactly like I do about Micah from rdr2. Like he is the worst plz shoot him, but he is also just a fascinating character. I hate him, but I also think he's neat( and low-key kinda of funny) haha but I never say it out loud out of fear of getting absolutely blasted by the fandom🙃💀I mean looking at the fact that a lot of rdr2 fix-it fics, fix it by banishing Micah to shadow realm at the first possible moment and everybody making full blown essays of why he's the worst character of all time, is enough for me to keep my mouth shut lol 😭 So its really nice to see that there are people that appreciate his character and Peter Blomquist's fantastic work portraying Micah Bell.

Also are you planning on giving 'capture kill' and 'through the briar' sequals👀? Because I am 100% here for any continuation for either of them🫶

Thank you so much!! 🥰💖💖 I am so incredibly glad you like my fics - especially 'through the briar' and 'capture kill', they've grown to be my favorite stories. A little darkness sometimes (or all the time) is just so... indulgent 😉

And oh my god, anon, you fucking get me. Micah is one of my favorite characters - and the only character I truly loathe but still adore because he's just so damn well-written. He makes me uneasy in the game, to the point I visibly cringe, he is a total piece of shit I just want to punch - but he is such a good character. One of the best villains to me. And exactly, a giant part of that is Peter Blomquist's wonderful voice acting. That man is a fucking magician because you can identify Micah from his breaths alone. He did one hell of a job on that blond bastard and I really admire him for it.

"but I also think he's neat( and low-key kinda of funny) haha but I never say it out loud out of fear of getting absolutely blasted by the fandom🙃💀"

To be entirely honest, I had the same worries as you when I posted 'through the briar'. You have a lot of people on here who send you hate for writing noncon AND there are a few others who hate Micah with every fibre of their being (which is totally understandable, but please don't send hate haha) - I was really nervous to draw the ire of BOTH of these parties. I was fully prepared to get a few nasty comments and otherwise silence on that fic - and I am STILL floored at the sheer amount of positive feedback I've gotten. You don't know how happy every single comment I've gotten has made and still makes me. 'through the briar' was two months of work and a lot of headaches for me and for it to scratch an itch for so many people has been one of the highlights of my little 'career' as a fic writer. Genuinely, thank you so much for your love!!

Regarding sequels, I have written about some scenarios after 'through the briar' happens - here and here. I want to write out the immediate aftermath and that little escape scenario as little vignettes on here, it's on my list!! I am basically waiting for my muse to fully strike - right now, I'm still pre-occupied with getting through One Piece, so that might take a while 🙈 As for capture kill - I am currently working on a little Bill pwp - just a little thing, some years into the future with him - that should be done by tomorrow! Other than that, I have some thirsts/scenarios here, here and here. Both of these fic will probably not get a 'proper' sequel but I don't want to rule it out, I am known to finish WIPs that have been rotting away in my docs for three years 😭 I am however always open to write little blurbs and the like, feel free to ask for anything that might come to your mind!! 🤗 And thank you again for your sweet message, it means so much to me.

[libratxt]

hiiii <3 big ask big answer is what i'm expecting would LOVE to know your top 5/faves across various media that are new(in release or just new to you) this year! so: shows, movies, games, books, songs/albums, new artists you've discovered etc

hi!!! you don't know how excited i got to see this pop up in my inbox, i love talking about things i love so thank you <333 i hope you don't mind that this will be super long lol 😭

shows severance - okay so i have to start off with severance because it is THE BEST show i saw this year, i've begged everyone i know to watch it. i encourage you to watch it if you haven't! it has such an exciting premise (what if you have no recollection of who you are at work, and the work version of yourself has no idea who you are outside of work, and you had to reconcile those two people?) it's such a juicy concept that explores the way jobs take advantage of workers, in an amazing sci-fi setting. also from a totally nerdy perspective, the retro-futurist aesthetic of it is amazing like the set designers really created an immaculate setting. it's a great story of found family, it has mystery, it has twists. i watched it twice all the way through! when i finished it the first time i was in despair at the thought of having to wait for its second season.

andor - euuugh i hesitate to put a star wars show here because as much as i love star wars, the shows for the most part suck so bad. but i loved andor so so much. i was genuinely surprised week to week at how every single episode was crafted beautifully and kept me engaged. i was pleased at how unapologetically it holds a mirror to the evils of fascism and white supremacy and colonization. it's definitely not without its flaws but as a star wars fans it's everything that star wars should be. it's so clear that the people involved in its creation are passionate about the story they're telling.

and in an attempt to not make you read an essay about every show i liked, some other faves were: interview with the vampire and ted lasso, and technically not new to me this year but i have to say succession my forever love <3

movies nope - i love horror, i love movies, i am so scared of aliens lol. this movie was so amazing for so many reasons. but among one of my biggest reasons for loving nope is that it feels like the kind of movie only someone who loves movies can make. it's so clear jordan peele loves movies, and so much about nope feels like a love letter to the making of movies, which i'm sure is a weird takeaway but it was one of my takeaways regardless. the story, acting, sound design were fantastic. i had so much fun watching it.

everything, everywhere, all at once - there's so much to say about this one. i love when the whole point is that yes, we are just stupid little humans trying to connect. i love reckless optimism. as someone with immigrant parents, a lot resonated with me. and the visuals were incredible. i love that it's goofy and over the top and poignant and that it balances all those things so beautifully.

meet me in the bathroom - i love documentaries!!! and music so much! this was such a fun look at the explosion of rock music in new york city during the early aughts. it's the kind of movie that makes you want to convince your friends to start a terrible punk band with you immediately after watching.

other faves: thoroughbreds, street gang: how we got to sesame street, and lake mungo (a slow-burn documentary style horror movie that genuinely freaked me out, and i don't scare easy!)

games i didn't really play many new games this year, mostly just revisited some old ones. but i have to insist that disco elysium is the best game i've played in recent memory. i played it for the first time last year. it's brilliant. the writing is incredible, the characters are incredible, the voice acting is incredible. i would try to explain what makes it so great, but it really is the kind of thing you have to experience for yourself. and i highly encourage you do!

books i feel like i read so many great books this year among them: the only good indians by stephen graham jones - a group of friends are haunted by a mistake they made in their youth. it's great psychological horror and commentary on the native american experience

crying in h-mart by michelle zauner - michelle zauner's memoir on reconnecting with her culture after her mother's death. it also gives really great insight on japanese breakfast's discography. it made me cry a ton!

the final revival of opal and nev by dawnie walton - a fictional oral history of a black punk rock musician. it's fun, it's emotional, the writing is great and the characters really suck you in. i think it's also a great read if you're someone who's into music

lost boy by christina henry - this one shocked me with how much i ended up liking it. it's an imagining of captain hook's origin story, which didn't sound initially appealing to me, but it was so beautifully written, devastating, and even horrific at times. the affection that jamie (who becomes captain hook) has for the other lost boys is just really tender and sweet. this is one of the most recent books i read this year and it quickly became one of my favorites!

music

you've been reading for so long now, i'll try to keep this concise:

songs: mujeres by y la bamba (i only heard this song for the first time a few months ago and it got to my 8th spot on my spotify wrapped!! the drums are incredible, the lyrics are fun, i just love listening to it) la combi versace by rosalia, pattern doubt by young jesus, hertz by amyl and the sniffers, good times by genesis owusu, back to oz by sufjan stevens, should've been me by mitski, and so so so many more

albums: in the aeroplane over the sea by neutral milk hotel, fever to tell by yeah yeah yeahs, laurel hell by mitski, jubilee by japanese breakfast, sable by japanese breakfast (i don't think i ever listened to this album all the way through but the first couple of songs are perfect to listen to while i'm working on writing)

[tartagliaxx]

ah, to have kaveh help w/ tedious college work (´‐ ω‐) =з... writing essays are on par w/ giving presentations in terms of 'tasks u believe would be easy to get done, but actually they're not.'

i hope u get through yur essays in no time x3!

might be a bit of a silly question, but i was wondering what are yur favourite quests/ moments/

it's much easier to give the story its due attention when most of my time is no longer spent fighting for dear life in every combat bc my characters' build was based on vibes and vibes only.

-sandalphon

ah, to have kaveh help w/ tedious college work (´‐ ω‐) =з… writing essays are on par w/ giving presentations in terms of 'tasks u believe would be easy to get done, but actually they're not.' i hope u get through yur essays in no time x3! this might be a bit of a silly question, but i was wondering what is yur favourite quests/ moments/ events/ lore, in the game :3c? (i have started playing on a diff server bc i want to focus moar on the lore, and it's much easier to give the story its due attention when most of my time is no longer spent fighting for dear life in every combat bc my characters' build was based on vibes and vibes only (´-ω-`)). have a nice day!!

i can just see him running up to his s/o the next day w a very tired but proud smile and an invitation to go grab some drinks… 🥺 im gonna make myself cry… what i mean to say is, i wish i had a kaveh who completed my essays for me but no. the world said im too powerful and i should remain single to balance the books. (but yes. fuck presentations and finding related literature, i say as i finish both essays in a day out of spite)

honestly, i might be a bit biased bc hehehehehe my bbyboy alhaitham BUT! i was genuinely floored by the entirety of the sumeru archon quest. i was literally on the edge of my seat in every moment and i just adore the roles and characters of each member of the cast. when nahida said “the first sage of buer” bro… i was tearing up and having chills…

i’ve always been very particular abt the story bc its primarily why i kept playing genshin but at the same time, i also only pull for characters that i vibe with. fortunately, i have this condition where i perceive religiously farming for good artifacts as equal to feeding them well and… haha… i love my boys okay 🥲 i have an na account but one look at my 100% map in asia and im logging out and saying “nope… not today… no more anemoculi for me”

[all-pacas]

today on helen plays forbidden west:

I BEAT THE GAME

* anyway i really really really do not like or trust tilda’s “lol let’s just carefully activate every single horus in the world” plan * regalla fight was kind of a bummer. i get that she was sort of a fake antagonist but … eh. * anyway i spared her * oh hey sylens * reluctant team up time????? or enemies time??? LET’S FIND OUT * SYLENS IS GOING TO THE BASEEEEEEEEE * love sylens hating every single one of aloy’s friends (but being right about tilda) * "erend and i tried speaking to sylens… but apparently our 'tribal prattle is unnecessary'" HAHAHAHA JOIN TEAM BASE SYLENS, JOIN IT * i love how everyone is like “tilda is the fucking worst, not even a human, cold as ice,” and with sylens it’s just UGH THAT ASSHOLE * HA CONFIRMED TILDA AND ELISABET WERE GIRLFRIENDS * copy pasting from discord: * i feel like they had about a week and a half -- ted and elisabet -- where they were almost friends, visionaries in arms, and then elisabet wised up but ted never realized they weren't friends * IN A WEIRD WAY I THINK TED REALLY DID LIKE HER. like he's incapable of human feeling but i think part of him really did want to paternalistically but kind of genuinely live and meet lis's kids and guide them *  because that's the closest he can understand "human caring" *  honestly i was half expecting the elisabet code to open the door to his bunker, like he's so deranged he HONESTLY THOUGHT she might wanna hang out *  dfgdfg poor elisabet no wonder she had no friends her options were tilda and ted *  “at least she had bestie trav!” TRUE SHE PLAYED SO MUCH HACKEY SACK WITH TRAV *  ie: he would just sometimes throw one at the back of her head *  and she'd be like TRAVis and he's like "naw you're supposed ta hit it back to me” * honestly sylens’s distaste for the quen is PRETTY LEGIT. like he’s the worst but he’s not wrong. the quen are pretty fucking sus. * okay new theory: the “sirius base was destroyed”  thing is a lie, and the zeniths are just the advance party * ALVA HAS A GIRLFRIEND!! * OH NO FORBIDDEN ERSA LORE * OH  NO THIS IS INCREDIBLE * aloy almost crying when  she talks about varl i’m NOT OKAY * zo asking aloy to retrieve her seeds if the worst happens and talking about varl I AM NOT!!! OKAY!!! * oh no kotallo is getting a tattoo to remember varl I AM NOT OKAY * time to beat this fucking game guys * okay erend whining the entire time he and aloy are adventuring together is really funny. like it should be annoying but no it’s super funny. * IS BETA PATCHING THE SPECTORS INTO GAIA/HEPHAESTUS * NOPE SHE JUST HACKED THE CAULDRONS GOD I LOVE THIS * THUNDERJAW ARMYYYYYYYY *  “in case we don’t make it………i just have one regret………ALL THIS CLIMBING” HAHAHA erend * lol aloy looks at her friends climbing the ridge and turns back to help zo and only zo up the last bit * oh i see regalla found a fun way to die good for her nice knowing you * HI ZENITHS * HI TIME TO FUCKING DIE * HI DINOSAUR ARMY * HI ERIK * TIME TO FUCKING DIE * OH GOOD ZO INCOMING KILL HIM ZO * RIGHT IN THE BACK GOOD JOB ZO * NOW WE’RE HAVING FUN RIGHT god love zo * nemesis, greek goddess of retribution and absolute justice, huh? btw, i did notice earlier that the zeniths are using roman gods for their AIs, which is honestly a pretty nice touch * SYLENS WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR MAGIC ORB * betaaaaaaaa * WELL I KNOW WHAT THE THIRD GAME IS GONNA BE ABOUT * okay (game paused), so the zeniths built a robot army, a NEW faro plague, on sirius. just like the first one, they lost control of it and it killed most of them — so they fled to earth, stocking up on supplies and trying to nab GAIA in order to find a new planet to settle and i guess draw nemesis to earth and leave it there? * GOD okay yeah i love “nemesis” as a name now. nemesis commonly means “greatest enemy,” but she was the greek goddess of absolute judgement originally: helping those who had been treated injustly and punishing those who had taken too much or behaved unjustly. justice on an absolute black and white scale. she wasn’t about punishment or enemies, but striking down those who had risen too high. the zeniths call it nemesis because it is their enemy, but nemesis is also trying to strike them down for rising too highly and acting with too much hubris. * anyway ken amada in persona 3 was my favorite little murderer and his persona was nemesis and so apparently this knowledge has proved useful for me * and tilda just killed gerard and the game isn’t over whoops * OH so nemesis is not a literal faro plague, it’s a SUPER AI * OH i was just thinking that nemesis’s schtick sounds a lot like HEPHAESTUS and yeah it’s literally. nemesis is literally the Glitch. * tilda: come with me and let everyone on earth and also beta die :) * SHE’S A COLLECTOR SHE WANTS GENUINES * so here’s the thing. it’s good that aloy sent alva off to figure out what secrets tilda was hiding, but i’m not actually sure it made a _difference_ — surely tilda would have made the same “you’re coming with me, we need to leave earth” speech either way? i am not actually sure tilda realizes aloy (and elisabet) finds that reprehensible. also what is tilda’s plan, actually? sure, she creates a new planet with aloy and whoever else she finds worth collecting, but she doesn’t have the embryos, she can’t populate that planet. just lives together on an empty world? with her art and her collections? SPACE CAPITALISTS, MAN. * but aloy clearly already had pegged that tilda was… sincere, but also morally vacant. if anything, all alva did was provide proof that aloy was right to suspect her. * what’s interesting is that i think tilda was being sincere about almost everything: she really did hate the other zeniths, she really does hate the emptiness of minds — she’s like sylens, but with _culture_ instead of _science_ — and she really did want to help clear them out. i think she even really did think she loved elisabet. she certainly admired her, and i’m not sure that tilda has any real understanding of love besides “admirable things i want to own.” of course, where her plan differed from team aloy was that tilda still believed in the zenith’s ultimate goals — to flee and start a new planet — she just didn’t want to deal with _them_ anymore. i think, had the Glitch never happened, she might have been willing to team up with Team Aloy against the zeniths and been content to live on earth if she could create a little compound for herself — _maybe_ — but she’s simply not willing to be selfless. the idea of putting herself second is utterly foreign to her. * so when team aloy was gathering up for this mission i was thinking: we have aloy (a nora), erend (oseram), kotallo (tenekth), zo (utaru), sylens (banuk… maybe), and alva (quen). of all the major tribes, the only one we’re actually missing is a carja member of the team, which is odd. i really thought talanah was going to be that person, unless i somehow missed the chance to recruit her. but it does seem like the third game’s plot is going to be “fix GAIA and everyone needs to put their political bullshit aside and get ready for war,” which — IDK. ultimately the little meridian field trip at the start of the game had no purpose — i mean, aloy found out about sylens, but that could have been done in other ways — and for all that the carja have been a major influence throughout this game — the oseram rebellion against them, the tenekth and regalla’s civil war over the idea of diplomacy with them — it’s odd that we see and hear almost nothing _from_ them. i can’t imagine a third game not involving them in this effort, especially as the carja have the wealth and infrastructure and ability to build forts, but it is _weird_ how present yet absent they are in this. unless the game is planning on making the carja the bad faction, which i _also_ can’t see, as we just had a civil war with them last game and the game really wants us to like avad and get behind his dreams of peace and diplomacy — not to mention that he’s already started that unification process on his own by reaching out to all the other tribes and trying to open borders and establish friendships. i don’t believe we should go Roman Empire Everyone Is Carja Now, but the framework is _there_. * anyway hi sylens * “you’re the last person to act sensibly in the face of impossible odds” i mean sylens isn’t wrong * honestly love sylens and aloy’s last conversation * sylens is putting himself first, but he — unlike tilda — does understand and respect aloy enough to ask and respect her wishes, and then she actually GETS THROUGH TO HIM and he sees THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP and i’m sure he’s like “lol anyway i still have a rocket ship see ya” GOD love this lack of redemption arc, love how he and aloy HAAAAAATE one another but are not enemies and are usually on the same side, i love him as a character * GOD * “hope it’s really over this time” and aloy’s little “ooof” look * ALOY PUTTING ELISABET’S NECKLACE NEXT TO ROST’S UGH BOTH OF HER PARENTS * GAIA HAS ALMOST ALL HER FUNCTIONS NOW * THE GANG IS LEAVING TO START PROJECT CLAN UNITY * lmao erend went straight to vegas of course he did * alvaaaaaa staying in america * sylens is still in the base with aloy and beta got what a weird trio * still missing two but omg ARTEMIS IS BACK people can have cows now!!! and CATS AND DOGS FOR ALL * okay i loved this game * it does feel transitional in a way — it lacked the first game’s mystery and drive and sense of impending doom, but the story itself was still really good and clearly in ultimate service for setting up the third game: earth vs. THE ALIEN EMBODIMENT OF CAPITALISM * but it also really focused on giving aloy a FAMILY. she already “had” elisabet, but getting her to mourn rost, giving her a SISTER, giving her GAIA, giving her varl and zo and kotallo and alva and erend and EVEN SYLENS, teaching her to rely on others and work with others and leveraging that into what comes next, which is going to be TRIBE UNITY * god! the world is going to be so different! i’m sure that NEMESIS will cause the machines to go feral again in some way, HEPHAESTUS is still loose and i imagine the next game will start with trying to finally wrangle that asshole, but everyone — lmao the tribes are all going to get some CULTURE SHOCK, i didn’t quite see if GAIA had apollo back but i think so? she’s just missing HEPHAESTUS and HADES, right? we’re about to get a HELLA tech revolution lmao * i imagine there will be a timeskip to allow zo to have a BABY oh my god i want to know its gender and if they name it after vala or varl or something that makes me cry!! the zeniths were fleeing but didn’t seem like they were planning to leave RIGHT that second had team aloy not gotten in their way, so i imagine there’s some leeway in the timeline before NEMESIS shows up? * also i didn’t mention this before but wow the music in this game was way, way better than the first game. like it was REALLY GOOD. good background music, good battle music, good world music, good SINGING, like the first game’s music was fine but this game was REALLY GOOD * HAHAHA SPECIAL THANKS TO THE RIJKSMUSEUM ie “special thanks for letting them say our space capitalist stole half their collection” * speaking of which, special thanks to guerilla games, a dutch studio, deciding they would have one (1) dutch character and that she would be the final boss. LOVE THAT FOR THEM. * GOD THIS GAME WAS GOOD TIME TO PLAY IT AGAIN * varl i miss you already you were the best and i love you still

[qqueenofhades]

The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

Further Reading

Ailes, Marianne J. ‘The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. by Dawn M. Hadley (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 214–37.

Ashton, Gail. ‘The Perverse Dynamics of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 15 (2005), 51–74.

Boyd, David L. ‘Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 77–113.

Busse, Peter. ‘The Poet as Spouse of his Patron: Homoerotic Love in Medieval Welsh and Irish Poetry?’, Studi Celtici 2 (2003), 175–92.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. ‘A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Diacritics 24 (1994), 205–226.

Kocher, Suzanne. ‘Gay Knights in Medieval French Fiction: Constructs of Queerness and Non-Transgression’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 51–66.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 273–86.

Kuefler, Matthew. ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179–214.

McVitty, E. Amanda, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77.

Mieszkowski, Gretchen. ‘The Prose Lancelot's Galehot, Malory's Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature’, Arthuriana 5 (1995), 21–51.

Moss, Rachel E. ‘ “And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts’ ”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 42 (2016), 101–13.

Zeikowitz, Richard E. ‘Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes’, College English 65 (2002), 67–80.

[seraphinitegames]

The Wayhaven Chronicles—Update 26/11/2021

It was some seriously awesomely intense writing this week! :D

Not just because the scene was quite intense, but I think it was the most nuanced bit of coding and dialogue I've done so far, lol! 

In this moment, it's really important that everything feels smooth. I want it to feel like each member of Unit Bravo's decisions are because of what's being discussed, their own thoughts on it, and the person suggesting things, not just because of the game mechanics calculating in the background.

For example, if M agrees (because they have enough friend points), then I want F's next dialogue to bounce off of what M said but their response will depend on if they have enough friend points, so they might disagree with M or not. But after that N also needs to make a choice, but they might refer to what M and F said (whether that was to agree or disagree), so I need to make sure that not only triggers correctly but reads like a seamless conversation!

It's also not just the friend points that come into it but the actual situation. Another example being that N is more likely to agree with the MC in this moment because they already agree with the MC's side of things (if the MC decides on that option, anyway :D), so N actually needs less friend points to 'pass' the check than they might in another scenario where they don't agree.

On the other hand, M needs A LOT of points (or to already be besties, lol) in order to agree, because it's not something they want to do.

So yeah...intense, but also incredibly satisfying! :D

But once I was definitely finished with that (it's a scene I’ve kept bouncing back to because it just hasn’t been just right so far) I went back to the next fun bit where I'm on this one version of Chapter Ten, and F is having a little chit chat about just how the MC feels about how things went down...so maybe your MC didn't win the argument, maybe they didn't want to start an argument and just went along with it, maybe they were actually in agreement...we all know how well F picks up on these things ;D

I'm loving these more intimate moments with UB that isn't necessarily romance. Romance is obviously always my favourite, and I will get it into every single moment I possibly can, lol! But this really is fun to start exploring this idea of just how the MC is fitting into Unit Bravo so far. Obviously, that can/will change over time too if your MC feels like it!

Wow, sorry, that was a bit of an essay! I was just seriously happy to see the story coming to life in a different way that involves the MC in their new role—the MC no longer outside of UB's decisions but proactively part of it!

Ok, enough hyper blabbering now, hehe! :D

Next week, I have a very strict goal for myself that I am determined to make, but I also have social media days, which I am super eager for! 

And we have a winner for the theme of the Patreon Christmas/Winter scenarios next month!

Christmas Party at The Agency!

This was probably the tightest poll we've ever had, hehe! :D I was watching it swing so closely between ice skating and the Agency party.

So I'll be planning those out over the weekend and writing them up on next week's social media days! Lots of chances for awkward situations and character cameos, I'm feeling...

Hope you all have the most amazing weekend! We'll be offline as usual, so I'll talk to you all soon <3

[realcube]

haikyuu!! characters with a chubby! s/o 💗

characters: tsukishima, oikawa, atsumu, osamu & suna

thank you anon for this cute request 🥺

tw// comfort, fluff, angst if you squint, insecure! reader, swearing, they/them reader but reader wears a dress (in osamu’s)

(a/n): anon requested comfort but i feel bad bc i’m writing this like ‘no, (y/n)! stop being sad! you’re beautiful! 😡’ then i remember that i can just select+delete the pain away💗💖

Kei Tsukishima

let’s not pretend like tsukki gives a fuck what you look like tbh ✋

like nobody is ‘perfect’ and everyone is insecure (to varying degrees) so why would he care about your weight?

nobody ticks every single box to meet society’s definition of ‘beauty’  

plus, tsukki thought beauty standards were stupid away so he created his own - and you meet every single one 💖

in fact, almost everyone meets his beauty standards - besides himself ‘:)

he seriously doesn’t care about your weight tbh, it’s the most trivial thing so why would he care?

although, he wasn’t naïve enough to think that everyone was like-minded

your front of ‘i don’t care about what other people think of me’ was strong enough to fool even the most observant of poeple, including tsukki

however, tsukishima failed to take into consideration that you were his girlfriend, meaning that you could be playing the same game as him; ‘pretend to not care about superficial things like beauty so nobody will think for a second that you are insecure about your body’

he wasn’t one to give compliments but neither were you tbh so the mutual agreement y’all have of ‘let’s call each other names as a form of endearment to avoid those awkward moments were you are looking for the right words for praise but can’t come up with anything’  was fair

but after you accidentally sent him a self-deprecating ‘joke’ message that was clearly meant for a friend, he never passed up the opportunity to compliment you ever again

like he kinda just stared at the message like 😮 ‘does (y/n) seriously care about their weight? why? it doesn’t even matter. how stupid! who told them that the shape of their body is important? bc it’s not..’

then he turns to look in the mirror like ‘wow you srsly need to put on muscle, lanky bitch. or else (y/n) will probably leave you for some built jackass like kuroo. pick up some weights, noodle arms!’

anyway, he’s not too good with words and comfort in situations like these but he’ll probably reply to your text with something out-of-character and surprisingly sweet

to paraphrase (bc the actual text would probably be like a whole damn persuasive essay LMAO he starts with the introduction, makes five points and finishes with a conclusion pfft) , i think it would be something like: ‘hey, (y/n). ik that text was probably meant for one of your friends (but if they’re the ones making you feel bad about your weight then you should probably drop those toxic cunts anyway 💅✨) but i just wanted to say that even though you are the biggest clown i’ve ever met (/j) you’re still v beautiful 💗 stop being insecure or i’ll pass away ⚰💀 ok thx love you bye’

Tōru Oikawa

how are you insecure if you’re dating oikawa? /j

like he is such a hypeman

whenever y’all take pics in your ✨fancy outfits ✨ for formal event, he acts as though you are second most beautiful thing on the face of this earth 😍 (second to him ofc)

but he only does that so he can keep up the reputation he has of being effortlessly confident bc he’s scared that if it slips for even a second, everyone will see how truly insecure he is

truthfully, in his eyes, you come first place by miles (❤ ω ❤)

like srsly, you’re so gorgeous in that dress!! he hopes that you know that he is joking about the whole ‘second place’ thing bc you should be able to tell by the way he looks at you that you’re genuinely the most striking person he’s ever laid his eyes on 

you never acted overly confident in front of him but he definitely didn’t think you were as insecure as you are

he thought you were just..humble :)

sometimes he’d hear you mutter something mean about yourself as you passed the mirror but he paid no mind to it as he figured that you just cared about your appearance and wanted to maintain a certain image

however, once he was made aware that you didn’t want to maintain your image but rather, change it - he never let you murmur anything nasty about yourself under your breath ever again, not without proceeding to tackle you to the ground and shower you with his love, affection & praise 💞💕❤

and he never made a ‘second place’ joke ever again, he started his honesty streak by reassuring you that you’ll always be the number one in his eyes 🤩

also, after that, he was a lot more open about his own insecurities with you and you made sure to respect them and help him in a similar way that he did

there is just so much love and admiration between the two of you and at first you were both to shy to express it but now, you both are showering each other in compliments 24/7 bc you both just want the other one to know how perfect you view them as (❁´◡`❁)

Atsumu Miya

atsumu is a hypeman like oikawa but...better :)

IT’S BC HE HAS NO SHAME

he’ll compliment you on anything you wear and he makes it a point to use the most inappropriate compliment as possible, relative to the outfit you’re wearing

so if you’re wearing your pyjamas, he’ll call you ‘glamourous’

if you are wearing a swimsuit, he’ll call you ‘elegant’

if you’re in your work clothes/school uniform, he’ll call you ‘sexy’

and if you’re in lingerie, he’ll call you ‘adorable’

but it makes you blush so hey, no complaints

so when he finds out that you’re actually insecure about your weight, he’s just like ‘no ❤’

like he hates the idea that when you look in the mirror, you don’t see the god(dess) he sees

like why? it’s the same person

💞 fuck ‘perception’ 💞

💕 ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ TF YOU ARE THE FUCKING BEAUTY💕

grrr he was so mad  

but he was also soft 

he was like ‘if (y/n) insecure? then why hot? then why pretty? then why fit perfectly into my arms?’

plus, THIGHS

he’d never diss a person bc they had small thighs or anything BUT he’d also NEVER complain about being given the chance to be with someone with some good thighs 👍

tbh the best could do to help was compliment you ten times harder to eliMINATE ALL YOUR INSECURIES 

(and ofc i don’t mean that in a way - for example - if you’re insecure about your nose, he’ll fkn chop it off......he won’t chop your nose off LMAO he’ll just show you how much he loves it, to the point where you have no choice but to love it too ( •̀ ω •́ )✧ )

anyway, plz love (or at least, tolerate) yourself or else he’ll suffocate you with all his love and affection :D

Osamu Miya

osamu is at a loss when it comes to typical beauty standards tbh

to him, weight (and most things) are similar to..hand size, for example

just like how you can’t imagine someone feeling self-conscious about the size of their hand (especially if their hand is a healthy size) 

he can’t imagine why some one would be shamed for their weight (especially if they’re a healthy size)

so had no idea you could possibly be insecure about something like that and he probably on realised after a few years in the relationship 😅

there was a formal event coming up and y’all were going as dates so you wanted to shop for outfits together 

as couples do ✌

anyway, he was on a dress site, scrolling away until you pointed out one that you thought was pretty - and it matched the color of the tie osamu bought too!

it was a fair price (for a formal dress 🙄 which is probably like $68/50) so osamu was like ‘buy it then ( •̀ ω •́ )✧’  bc he thought it would so gorgeous on you 

but you were like ‘no’

and after he pried further, you explained how you thought it wouldn’t ‘suit your body type’ 

GRRR HE dislikes IT WHEN PPL SAY THIS SO MUCH BC HOE YOU DON’T HAVE A BODY TYPE YOU’VE GOT A BODY 😡💕 WEAR THE DAMN DRESS IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BEAUTIFUL 

but like deadass it’s not your blood type-  it’s just a thing ppl made up to make ppl (mostly women) feel bad about themselves for no reason

but that might just be his inner atsumu talking 🤷‍♂️

he didn’t even know what to say at first- he was just like ????? body type ????

but once he figured out what you meant, he still had no idea what to say- at least, without sounding rude

what if someone came up to you and told you they were insecure about the shape of their knee.......what do you even say???

so he was silent for like the rest of the day

you decided to give him some space just in case something happened which had upset him

he had no idea what to say, in all honesty, so he hoped that his actions spoke louder than words 

around 3 days had passed since you last spoke to osamu and you were beginning to think something you had said made him uncomfortable

you were studying in your room until there was a ring at your door so you rushed downstairs and you opened it to reveal a package sitting on your doormat

you had recently ordered some cleaning equipment so you were sure that the content of the package was probably that

so imagine your surprise when you tear it open to reveal  — you guessed it —  the dress 💕

Rintarō Suna

when he says that he doesn’t care what ppl look like, he means it

he upkeeps his own appearance though bc..it’s his!

like why would he care about what weight you are? that’s none of his business

as you can tell, he’s generally not shallow but sometimes when y’all are just cuddling and your face is pressed to his chest, the words ‘you’re so cute’ just fall from his lips

so ofc he appreciates compliments over his skills, personality, humour etc over flattery about his appearance 

hence, the praise he gives you is usually based around those things too bc he just thinks that you’re just like him in the fact you don’t appreciate skin-deep comments

so when he found out that you’re actually insecure about your weight (or something else), he kinda blames himself

he thinks that the whole reason you’re not extremely confident in your appearance is all due to him and the fact he fact he maybe didn’t compliment you on your looks enough  — but that’s not to say that he doesn’t think you’re beautiful 

you’re the most radiant person he’s ever laid his eyes on and he thought you knew that regardless of whether he vocalised it or not

he wasn’t really sure what to do tbh

bc he loved you and wanted to comfort you ofc but he was scared of making things worse

like what if something he says accidentally makes you so upset that you break-up with him 😭

but he knew he couldn’t just stay silent about the issue, especially when he wanted to say to much

thus, he sent you a heartfelt message on discord 

(rather than snap, whatsapp etc so he could edit it after he posts it bc knowing him, he’ll probably write something, reread it ten times then as soon as he hits send, he spots a bunch of mistakes)

and he’d explain how you’re simply divine regardless of your insecurity and if anything, it just makes you cuter 😍

ok ok so i really don’t want it so seem like he has a fetish bc HE DOESN’T 

but he think your curves are so fun and pretty ❤ 

like everything about you is pretty but suna just can’t comprehend why you’re insecure about something like your weight when he literally adores it (bc he adores everything about you) 

[bogleech]

Someone asked some weeks ago if I had graphomania after something I said and I didn’t think I did because it’s defined psychiatrically as a “morbid” urge to write to the point of writing long, rambling, confused statements that mean nothing. But, I do have an urge to compile lists? I don’t mean fun and exciting lists necessarily. When I was younger I’d just list hundreds of animals or fictional creatures or characters from media, on paper, organized in different ways, and then something would change and instead of editing the list - because that meant erasing something, and that looked bad! - I’d write it all over again. Once I got a computer and could do these things digitally I’d sit down for hours tinkering with stupid list files. I shared part of that list of animal pets I had in mind for a Mortasheen game but there also exist lists of the clothing a Mortasheen player character could have purchased, organized by the zone they’d take up on the hypothetical CG model or sprite, and it’s literally dozens of types of ordinary hats and socks and pants with some weird or interesting ones thrown in sparingly. Deliberately sparingly, even, because a “real” game would have a whole lot of boring clothes and the list needed to feel “authentic.” There’s food lists and weapon lists and even furniture lists because I also wanted home decorating mechanics. For every concept I’ve ever made I have 50 more, I make up another 10-30 monsters every single day that I jot down and never use. In conversations with people what I type “gets ahead” of what I’m actually thinking or want to say and I kind of assumed that was a common experience? Writing something before you finish considering whether it’s what you actually want to communicate? And writing paragraphs upon paragraphs or dozens of little messages when it’s not even a subject I’m passionate about, then people think I’m in some freaky worked-up state or something because sometimes they’ll say “calm down” and I am literally in the calmest most casual mental state I even have, that’s precisely when I ramble more. The less I even “care” about the subject at hand the more likely I’m going to make an essay because then I’m not carefully pruning and picking every word. :( This very post is probably going to be five paragraphs longer while I sit and write it but then just before I post it I’m probably going to cut half of it or more, then I’m probably going to edit it nine more times to fix the “flow” or “feel” of just a couple select sentences if not completely redo it.

I don’t know, I kinda thought this was something most people experienced and that was how we managed to create the internet and keep it packed with so much nonsense as it is.