#i have a vague notion of where the plot is going

[balioc]

Thoughts on the Barbie Movie

Hoo boy. Here we go.

This is long. Spoilers abound.

I

The movie is not, in any normal sense, a Barbie movie (like this or this or this or whatever). It is not a story of Barbie doing the kinds of things that Barbie does in stories. It is an endlessly postmodern and self-referential movie about Barbie, which is to say, about the Barbie franchise and its role in culture. Which is, at least plausibly, an interesting thing for a movie to be.

You probably knew all that already. But it does give us a baseline of "this movie kind of had to be political and discourse-y, one way or another." Or even, to be more specific: "to some large extent this movie had to be about feminism, explicitly, if it was going to exist at all." How could you talk meaningfully about Barbie's role in culture without touching on that stuff?

II

The evaluative TLDR:

Barbie is very ambitious, and in many places very fun. It is also deeply confused, and fragmented, about what it's trying to say and do. Often it raises genuinely interested problems/scenarios and then totally fails to address them, or else addresses them in ways that are incoherent. The text knows that it's doing this, and on several occasions kind of apologizes for it; a couple of times it more or less looks into the camera and says "sorry, we're not going to deal with this properly;" but, well, that's not a substitute for dealing with things properly.

There is also a streak of genuine political nastiness running through the film, in a place where the story really cannot afford it. It...doesn't match up, tonally or thematically, with some of the surrounding material. I have no background at all in cinematic stratigraphy, but I would be fascinated to learn about Barbie's editorial history, because I have the vague sense that a more-cogent (and more-interesting) story got hacked apart and then Frankensteined together into something much cheaper and worse.

III

The opening sequence of the movie is wild. You've seen most of it -- or you can, if you haven't, and you want to -- because it is the film's first teaser trailer. Girls are playing listlessly with baby dolls; a giant Barbie appears like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey; and then the girls enter a frenzy of destruction, bashing their baby dolls' heads against the ground.

I don't know whether I would have found it as disturbing as I did, if I didn't actually have a baby of my own. But speaking from the standpoint of a parent...yeah, wow, it's more viscerally horrific than most actual horror I've seen recently. The narration says some stuff about Barbie providing a new and more rewarding set of imagination games to play, but the visuals by themselves tell a message loud and clear, which is: Barbie will turn your daughters into infanticidal maenads. It wouldn't need any editing at all to be part of a shock-you-silly Reefer-Madness-y moral panic film.

Which is really good! And really interesting! It starts us off on an undeniable thematic note: there is something primal and powerful and very dangerous about Barbie.

IV

The very best part of the movie is probably the part that comes right after the opening, when we explore the movie's depiction of "Barbieland" by going through Barbie's Typical Day, before we get into any of the notional plot or metaphysics. It's joyful and charming in a consistent way. The gags are (mostly) great. The movie is in love with its base premise, and that love is palpable.

This sequence makes one thing very clear:

Barbie treats Ken like absolute dogshit. She is a bad girlfriend.

And it's taken seriously. I mean, it's played for laughs, almost everything in this movie is played for laughs, but...it's not mean-spirited, not here. It's not, like, "ha ha, Ken, what a contemptible loser." He's Pierrot, asking for very basic forms of affection and attention and respect, and getting the door slammed in his face over and over. It's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

That colors everything that comes later.

The movie doesn't forget this, or fail to acknowledge it. At the end, after everything, Barbie does apologize to Ken for her treatment of him. It's a halfhearted and supremely unsatisfying kind of apology, especially in context, but...it's there, in so many words! I'm not making it up! This thematic foundation was laid down, not-very-subtly, right at the beginning!

V

This movie, which is at least trying to be ambitious, is juggling a million themes. Many of them are dumb at their core, and have no real promise; many of them lack any kind of narrative synergy with the others. But there are at least two which, I believe, (a) are genuinely worthwhile individually and (b) work well together in a story.

One is: What does it mean to be a symbol rather than a person? To exist, not for your own sake, but for the sake of influencing the dreams and culture of entities that you don't know and can't really understand?

The other is: What is the proper ordering of the relationship between Barbie and Ken?

I've seen a number of Takes in which people say, essentially: Couldn't this have ended with the Barbies and the Kens just being decent to each other and treating each other like humans? Couldn't there have been equality and mutual respect, instead of the weird uncomfortable girlboss-supremacist stuff that we got? And I sympathize with that impulse tremendously, but the honest answer has to be: No. We cannot have simple equality and esteem between Barbie and Ken, not in a movie like this. That would be a lie. Because this is a movie about Barbie-as-symbol, and when you're looking at Barbie through that lens, it is true and unavoidable that Ken is an appendage and an afterthought. You can have toys for boys; you can have dolls for boys (even if you call them "action figures" or whatever); for that matter, you can have dolls of boys for girls, so that girls can tell stories centering on male characters; but that's not what Ken is, and never has been. There are no Ken stories, and no one particularly wants them. Ken exists to be Barbie's boyfriend.

(One of the most painful moments of the movie comes during the resolution wrapup. Ken wails to Barbie that he has no identity outside her. She says, basically, "you have to find one, because I'm leaving you." And he...acts like he's had an epiphany, and does a little silly celebration. But his "insight" is just literally "I'm Ken," there's absolutely nothing there, and of course it's the most hollow and awful thing in the world because he really does have no identity outside her.)

VI

The movie's metaphysics are not even slightly consistent. The nature of Barbieland, and the ways that it affects and is affected by the real world, are completely different in every scene. In large part because the film can't ever pass up a gag, whether or not it's funny, no matter how much damage it does to the narrative and the theming overall.

The worst part is that the movie is not capable of saying anything remotely coherent about the real world, because its version of the "real world" is as weird and fake as its Barbieland. Will Ferrell's CEO of Mattel character is more of an absurd cartoon than any of the Barbies or Kens. Mattel HQ is some kind of surreal labyrinth tower out of The Matrix. A random receptionist can handle herself like James Bond in a car chase, for reasons that are [handwaved in a gag].

VII

So. Yes. There is the sequence in the third act where Ken takes over Barbieland with the power of patriarchy. This is pretty much as bad as it can be. And I say this as someone who thinks that the movie probably did actually need a plot thread doing roughly that kind of thing.

Almost as bad as it can be. The wannabe-patriarch Kens are gleefully goofy in a way that you can't help but love, or at least, I couldn't help but love it. Which has something to do with the writing and something to do with the charisma of all the Ken actors. The main Ken, Ryan Gosling's Ken, really seems to believe that being a successful patriarch has a lot to do with riding majestic horses and wearing a giant fur coat without a shirt, and when he takes over Barbie's Dream House he names it Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House -- that kind of thing.

But. Apart from that, it's real unfortunate. The justification for Ken's ability to conquer Barbieland with patriarchy, instantly and effortlessly, is -- in almost so many words -- they had no defenses against it, it was like the American Indians encountering smallpox. I...don't think I need to spell out the problems with that.

Worse yet, the whole sequence is soaked in, uh, let's call it "2014-era upper-middle-class social-status-oriented feminism." The real bad behavior on the part of the Kens, the stuff they do when they're not being adorably weird, is: mansplaining their extensive opinions about cars and movies, and wanting to show off how helpful and knowledgeable they are to "damsels" who are having trouble using machines or computers. Apparently that's the real problem at hand, the causus belli of the gender wars. The way that you deprogram a patriarchy-brainwashed Barbie is by...ranting to her about the stereotypical social irritations of upper-middle-class women (e.g. "you have to keep yourself thin but not act like you care about being thin," "you have to be a confident leader but also be nurturing and supportive," etc.) [note that the Barbies of Barbieland have never encountered these irritations, at least not at the hands of men]. And the girlboss victory montage consists of having the Barbies put on deceptive manipulative bimbo acts to stroke the Kens' egos, which sure is one way to depict girlboss feminist victory.

But the most unforgivable thing of all is the depiction of the patriarchy-brainwashed Barbies. They're lad-magazine caricatures, endlessly offering their Kens "brewski beers," dressing up as French maids, gazing on in cow-eyed adoration as their Kens mansplain stuff to them.

Barbie does, in fact, have a problematic history with the patriarchy. And it does not look like that.

VIII

@brazenautomaton:

Barbie isn’t someone who had to fight through the patriarchy to be seen as good enough to be an astronaut even though she’s a woman. Barbie’s a fucking astronaut because she’s fucking Barbie of course she’s good enough to be an astronaut.

That is...one aspect of the deep Barbie lore. It is the Barbie-nature that Mattel was trying to push, as far back as my own childhood; it's certainly the Barbie-nature that Mattel is trying to push in this movie. But there is another side to Barbie, even older and even more fundamental than Senator Astronaut Veterinarian Barbie, and you can't make a postmodern movie-about-Barbie without addressing it.

This is Barbie the fashion doll. The Barbie who is an icon of ultra-consumerist teenage girlhood, whose life is defined by her fancy clothes and her fancy car. The Barbie whose most salient traits are her hourglass figure and her long blonde hair and her feet that are always posed to fit into high heels. The Barbie of "math class is tough!" The Barbie who is kinda vapid and shallow and, yes, boy-crazy.

How can you tell a story about Barbie wrestling with the culture of patriarchy, and not talk about that? How can you depict Barbie falling victim to the patriarchy and have it look nothing like that?

...the movie does bring up the specter of Vapid Consumerist Barbie, briefly. When Margot Robbie's Barbie first comes to the real world and meets with the sullen teenage daughter character, she has a litany of That Thing thrown in her face, and it makes her sad. But nothing is ever done with it, and it goes nowhere.

IX

And it could all have fit together so well. That's the hell of it.

You can imagine the version of the story in which Ken conquers Barbieland with patriarchy, because the Barbies are actually vulnerable to patriarchal narratives, because Vapid Consumerist Barbie is the chthonic serpent that gnaws at the foundations of Senator Astronaut Veterinarian Barbie civilization. He successfully makes them all forget that they're senators and astronauts and veterinarians, and turns them into airheaded teenage fashionistas who think that math class is tough.

And this avails him, and the other Kens, nothing. Even within the "patriarchal" version of Barbieland, Ken is still an afterthought and an appendage. He still gets treated like dogshit, just in a different idiom.

Because the thing that has always been true of Barbie, though every age and every phase of her mythos, is: she is the main character of her own story.

This is what the movie was telling us all the way back in the horrific 2001-pastiche prologue, right? Even when Barbie was just a swimsuit model, the point was that she let girls tell stories about themselves (or idealized/aspirational versions of themselves), not about boys or babies. That is a truer, and more powerful, feminist message about the meaning of Barbie than any message the movie actually bothers conveying.

The gag scene practically writes itself: the brainwashed Barbies are sitting around in a giggly slumber-party huddle talking about how dreamy Ken is, and actual Ken cannot get a word in edgewise, he can't even get them to notice he's there, because even Vapid Consumerist Barbie is fundamentally centered in her own life. Her narrative is not about a boy, it's about the experience of being a girl (mostly engaging with other girls) who likes thinking and talking about boys. Which is very much beside the point, if you started out with the complaint that your girlfriend never paid any attention to you.

Patriarchy hurts men too, indeed.

X

The movie ends, as I've intimated, in a disappointing squidge of thematic confusion. Barbie announces that she never really loved Ken, and leaves him, because...well, because these days the smart-set target audience is allergic to romantic narratives that Produce the Couple, as far as I can tell. Then she goes to the real world and becomes a real girl, a move that means nothing and is nonsensical even by the standards of the Barbie metaphysics, because the storytellers don't know how to end her arc and Becoming a Real Girl is the sort of thing that feels like a meaningful conclusion.

The Kens...sigh...the Kens ask for equal rights in Barbieland, more or less, and get told, "nah, but we'll throw you some bones." And they're happy with this, more or less, because they're dumb and don't really care. The narrator says, approximately, "maybe someday they'll make as much progress as women have in the real world." Haw haw.

It's probably too much to hope for a movie like this to be willing to say something substantive about responsibility and kindness in relationships. It's almost certainly too much to hope for a movie like this to be willing to say something about the nature of love symbols and love narratives. But all the pieces really were there, laid out very conspicuously. The movie could have wrapped up with: Ken doesn't need to be more important than Barbie, he doesn't even need to be as important as Barbie, he just needs to be treated with human decency. And if little girls are going to play with Barbies, and fantasize about having cute guys hanging all over them -- maybe they should have functional models of romance and human connection in which to root their fantasies, and not terrible ones.

[bomberqueen17]

the gay dolphins are too powerful

yesterday i was facing the facts that i do need to actually work out the technical mcguffins in this novel. like, i have some vague notion that there's a problem with the radio network because of solar flares and our heroes are going to... somehow... fix it. idk.

plot and worldbuilding wittering behind the cut

this was the main plot in the solarpunk mammoths novel too, and i had a vague notion that a problem on such a global scale as that would need to like. it would need to be solved by more than one person. and so my nebulous notion is that possibly several sets of characters could work on it in these loosely-connected novels where really i'm just exploring different ecosystems.

idk i just-- y'all know about the Turkey City Lexicon right? I got it as a hand-out in college creative writing class and of course it reshaped my brain, but. one of the Tropes To Beware they've got is the Cozy Catastrophe, which is startlingly prevalent and once you see it you can't unsee-- "the world is ending! all of humanity will die! unless... Jeff and Suzy, you're our only hope!" and our two everyman protagonists somehow are the only resources the entire world can muster and honestly the entire world seems to consist of one American city block with about three hundred people in it at most. Hm.

so i was like yah this catastrophe is way too cozy.

meanwhile i forget how it came up but @sonnetsandsinging, helpfully spitballing, said something about space whales and i was like

OMG in a world with genetically-engineered mammoths with radio collars that translate their brain waves to allow them to speak in human language it is ABSURD that they are the only species of animal that has been given this treatment

so like. what other animals do we try to talk to all the time besides elephants?

DOLPHINS

so now this world has genetically-engineered dolphins with brainwaves-to-speech dorsal fin attachments. like duh of course it does. i can't believe I hadn't thought of that.

there should be other animals too but i can't decide which ones, currently taking submissions. What Else Should Slightly-Disconcertingly Speak.

(My criteria: should be an animal intelligent enough to have successful communication with humans already, something relatively long-lived, something that couldn't use sign language or other methods already. My concept, which is not scientific really, is that it's been well-studied that while many animals have complex communication systems, humans are the only ones whose brains are structured specifically for language, so the Magic Fictional Science here is that they've had that ability genetically-engineered in, but of course the physical production of human-intelligible language is beyond the physical structure of most animals, hence the brainwave-interface collars. which btw could also be used on profoundly disabled humans, and that might be a plot point at some point; i do have some disabled characters in this story. I know I researched those like, communication board things that nonverbal humans can use and I settled on Magical Radio-Networked Interfaces that speak out loud instead for the simple expedient of streamlining things because like how is a mammoth going to carry a communication board around that it can like get out and point at. how is a dolphin going to carry anything. so, this is just where I ended up.)

(I was thinking parrots but then parrots wouldn't need the collar because they can actually make human-speech noises on their own. so that's a fun variation. maybe in this world african grey parrots actually just talk.)

Anyway back when I first started the solarpunk mammoths novel I researched Asian elephants a lot and studied their social structures and read up on their physical abilities etc., so in between trying to find out how radio waves and semiconductors work (i get the radio waves thing & think i have my mcguffin sorted out but semiconductors made my eyes glaze over and then begin weeping so i gave up) (also supercapacitors i don't understand u sorry bye) (do i know any electronics engineers who want to explain this in normal languages? shit i do know a chemical engineer maybe she knows. heck) ... ok i wandered away from this post to text her and then forgot i was making it. i did not get a lot of sleep last night the amphetamines are not being kind this go-round but i must continue the experiment. uhhhhh where was i

GAY DOLPHINS

too powerful

Yeah so I started researching dolphins, because if I'm going to have named-and-speaking dolphin characters, I need to know a little bit about how they work.

Now I have a slight head-start on this, just as I did on mammoths. Mammoths, I've been obsessed with since I was a toddler. But dolphins. For a while I used to go to SCA camping events and there was this guy who used to be a Navy diver and then worked for Sea World and he. well he was really good at telling stories, was his deal. And he had Seen Some Shit, and some of that shit was about interacting with dolphins. And the thing about dolphins is that. Well, they're violent little chaos gremlins, and just in the course of going about their normal lives, one of the things they do to interact with the world is, well. they have sex with things.

when they do this to people it is generally not a positive experience for the person. but. so i knew that going in. and most of the information on the internet about dolphins is really like. earnest and loving and whatever, which is great. but the thing is that dolphins are chaos gremlins who will fuck anything they can't eat, eat anything they can't fuck, or sometimes do both to the same unfortunate object if it proves to be possible.

what i'm saying is, these are going to be really entertaining characters to work with. because elephants, conversely, do not have recreational sex. they do a lot of things, but they just don't really do that. so dolphins are like. inverse-elephants, culturally.

Elephants also tend to have a strong matriarch, strong bonds between females, and then the males tend to be largely solitary, but will congregate more loosely, often around an older male who will teach them manners. (A well-mannered bull is MUCH more likely to be allowed to mate with desirable females, who have little patience with male foibles.)

Dolphins have looser gender roles; on the whole, the females tend to loosely congregate, and pregnant females usually go back to their mother's pod to birth and raise young, not dissimilar to elephants, but the males--

male dolphins very, very frequently will pair-bond. Two males of similar age-- adult males have very little to do with juveniles of either sex, generally-- will pair-bond and will be inseparable for the rest of their lives. If one of them dies, the other will mourn-- mourning behavior is well-documented in dolphins-- and then will seek to pair off with another adult male, because male dolphins prefer to work in pairs, for survival and companionship. (Dolphin "pods" are also more loosely-organized than elephant herds; dolphins will have a couple of core companions, but then will freely associate and disassociate with other individuals and groups over short periods of time without much fuss, depending on the situation.)

The pair-bonded males are the ones who in the wild do the behavior you see in shows, where they do like synchronized jumps and very-close fast-precise swimming and such, which in the wild are apparently courtship or threat displays-- i.e. "look how tight we are, you can't fight us" or, alternately, "isn't that hot" because

yes that's often how they court females. The pair will corral a desirable female and herd her away from other dolphins so they can both mate with her, and keep her from mating with anybody else.

(other females have been observed collaborating to free a corralled female who did not want this to happen, so it's not quite as rapey as it sounds. though, i mean. dolphins. what can you do.)

anyway dolphin threesomes are canon. but that derailed the rest of my night and i was unable to concentrate on anything else because the gay-- I should say really bisexual dolphins are too powerful.

so anyway i wrote a test scene with a dolphin character, and i had my main character take his wife and baby down to the jetty to introduce them to his dolphin pals, and a bonded male pair he'd known for years showed up and immediately tried to steal the wife, and then expressed shock that he didn't have his male best friend with him, because in their experience breeding was THEE most important time to have your buddy with you. He explains that his buddy is off on a long-term work assignment, and they're like hmph next time you breed you MUST include him, it is so much easier trust us. and the wife is like hmmmmm!

henceforth i will refer to m/m/f threesomes as "dolphin style" you're welcome

[mrghostrat]

I remember you posting a blurred gif of the outline of atws, so if you don't mind me asking, how do you do that? Like, get the outline onto paper and not just scenes in your head. That's something I've always struggled with, because it's hard to write without an outline, but hard to do the outline when I don't have a first draft? I'm not sure how to explain it so I hope this makes any sense at all lmao

ahh so fair! some people just don't operate that way and you gotta do what's best for your brain. no point exhausting all your energy trying to squeeze into a "standard writing process" that'll make writing even more difficult for yourself.

under the cut, i'm going to explain my writing process every step of the way, using scenes of ATWS. i hope it helps in some way? i don't think it's anything special, but this is just how i write to appease my adhd.

first, this might help: i once used storyplanner.com when i didn't know how to even start a story and i loved it. it's a great tool that can hold your hand every step of the way, or just prompt you to think on your own. there's over 20 planners that ask different questions like "what's your character's major flaw?" "what's the inciting incident?" "what outside elements hinder the character?" etc that will present you with a complete story structure when you're done with it.

ok, now, how i write:

as for the post in reference, that's the 2nd stage of my writing process. i get carried away with tangents and hone in on details, so i plan in dot points to try and force myself to keep it simple and stay zoomed out.

i just write what happens in chronological order, and if i have an idea for a later scene (or something that i just want to happen, but don't know when/where/how), i note that in a separate document that i can refer to while i plan. this also allows me to gloss over vague sections to keep my writing flow going.

stage 1:

i've started using Notion's "toggle list" feature to minimise the less important parts of a scene and keep myself focused on the overarching plot during this stage. this is what the first point looks like:

i go beat by beat, essentially amounting to an elevator pitch for each stage of my story. "crowley and aziraphale are streamer roommates" + "people start to notice they each live with someone and the speculation starts" + "crowley and aziraphale interact on twitch" + "they attend the edinburgh meetup" etc.

i finish a story before i move on from this stage. i won't start writing something in earnest until i know how it ends.

stage 2:

this is what you saw in my gif, and why that page was so long. that's every scene i'm going to write in the story.

sometimes i jump straight from stage 1 to writing, but ATWS required a lot more figuring out before i started any kind of prose. here i'm basically noting down the details of what each scene is, the brunt of what's happening. this is when i have to figure out those "vague sections" i glossed over earlier.

it's still just intended to be a rough outline so i know where the characters are and what's moving their relationship along. most of these dot points are short because i've already thought about them a thousand times, and may have more details noted down in a different document.

meanwhile some of them i'm planning out the scene as i'm dotting it, making not of dialogue that i want to include.

stage 3: my bracket method

i only use this stage when i'm struggling to write and need to baby step into it. this is my "bracket method" in which i write the scene without, like... caring? some people may consider this "double handling" which may drive you mad, but it's the most helpful thing i've ever done for my process.

i switch tenses, i write how i chat (no capitals etc) and just word vomit the scene without focusing on prose. ATWS came quite easily at first, and i didn't need to use stage 3 until i got to chapter 4 and hadn't written in a few days.

stage 4:

this is writing the actual prose, but i wanted to include it so you can see the differences, to help better understand my notes/planning/outlining stages:

and this is what a scene looks like with stage three bridging the gap:

[infiniteetcetera]

My thoughts on the next ACOTAR books before we potentially learn more today (not sure if that rumor is true but hoping🤞)

1) I feel like next book is probably Elain/Azriel’s. I have nothing against Elain/Lucien and I’m actually quite fond of Gwyn/Az, but I don’t see gwyn ever getting a POV/book before characters like Elain and Mor. Could I see a world where the book is Elain/Azriel’s POV but they don’t wind up with each other? Absolutely! I even think that could be a fun twist, but overall I think most likely next book is an Elriel one, and even if they aren’t endgame it will AT LEAST have both their POVs (maybe Lucien’s too)

2) My dream for the next NEXT ACOTAR book/novella is a TOD style “separate from the main plot line” book for Lucien. I LOVE Lucien and have since book 1 and I think he’s a perfect character to explore the other courts with (autumn, day, spring) which a LOT of people have been wanting. Especially if Elain breaks their bond, I think Lucien getting a side quest book with his own personal journey like Chaol in TOD would be SO good. I’ve seen people bring up this notion for Azriel (that Elain/Lucien will be next book, then Az gets his own) but I don’t see a point in that (ie above) Azriel’s story is very wrapped up with Elain and the rest of the IC/main plot line, but there’s SO much depth to Lucien’s storylines, other characters to explore with him (band of exiles, eris, tamlin, helion, etc) and more than enough plot lines for his own book that vaguely touches the main koeshi plot (like tower of dawn) but has its own focuses as well.

3) The last book (or at least the last one she’s contracted for 👀) a multi-POV KOA style huge AF entertaining book. Ideally this would have all the ACOFAS POV’s as well as others (Elain & Az obv, Lucien, the Valkeryies??) I think this would be perfect, especially for fans who miss characters like Feyre being narrator. I can’t see the last book going any other way honestly, it’d feel wrong to end one person/couples story.

THOUGHTS???

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou Ch. 5 Meakashi pt. 5

The voice acting: "pachi pachi pachi pachi pachi." Anyway, hell yeah baseball. (he said in the tone of voice that implies immeasurable suffering) It turns out our lad Satoshi isn't the best at sports, and suffers from a type of performance anxiety and can't just completely dominate the field.

I want you to just sort of tuck that "you need to let your demon out" line into the back of your mind. We'll get back to it, in a few.

Personal question there doc, and not one I think you should be asking a minor.

"Goodbye doctor Freeman! Be adequate!" -Half-Life 2: Episode 2

Oh that rascal.

It is somewhat disconcerting the amount of anime tropes this series invokes only to pull the rug out from under you and be like "see, it's all mental disorders!" Tatarigoroshi tried to pass off the unreliable Satoshi idea as a joke, but here it's like no, it's mental disorders. Also, this is another idea I want you to just keep vaguely aware of for the future.

This line got me thinking, back in Watanagashi when "Mion" randomly decides to rant at Keiichi that Satoko is a cursed child, that was probably Shion disguised as Mion. Nothing, at any point in the preceding events of the chapter or the first chapter led to the idea that Mion had any belief in the notion of curses. Hell in Onikakushi she outright says to Keiichi that she doesn't believe in Oyashiro. Shion, meanwhile, has her belief in the curse, and there was that interaction in Tatarigoroshi when she interrogates Keiichi about the idea that Satoshi transferred away. Which makes me wonder, at what point did Shion knock out Mion to more or less take over her day to day life? There was the part where Ooishi mentions that Shion disappeared that day he saw Keiichi and her at the library together. Was that the time? Or was it earlier in the day? I want to remind you that during that part of Watanagashi Keiichi gets interrogated three times about his actions during Watanagashi, and who he was with. But prior to Mion asking him about it she mentions that she's leaving school early that day due to a hangover. Then, when he sees Shion she mentions she also has a bit of a hangover due to a family drinking party. This is all circumstantial, because at the time I doubt that plot idea of Shion having to live a secret hidden life from the rest of the Sonozaki family had occurred to Ryukishi. But what if, that night Shion took and imprisoned Mion in the torture shack and just left her there for the rest of the chapter until the end? And the Shion and Mion we keep seeing throughout the chapter is in fact just Shion, since she can dupe people into thinking she's her sister. It would go to further explain just why Satoko had to die shortly after dealing with Rika. There's the surface level reasoning of she's aware Rika went to the main Sonozaki house, but if this is Shion she can do away with the girl she feels drove Satoshi away.

Also, this is again circumstantial evidence, but I feel the line about letting the demon out proves that the Mion that confessed to the various crimes towards the end of Watanagashi was Shion. Sure, you could argue that Mion talking about releasing the inner demon might make sense since she in theory has that demon tattoo on her back. But she never really expresses any belief in the paranormal or spirituality. Basically what I'm saying is, I'm all-in on the idea that Shion put Mion out of action for the entire second half of chapter two: Watanagashi.

For no reason, here's Remake and Original Irie.

Shion is weirdly possessive of this guy she's only known for a month. I know romance can make you do some extremely questionable things, but in universe, they just had a conversation about how forcing a child to grow up too fast can cause mental issues. And here Shion wants to force Satoko grow up, and just endure the abuse. If anything, you'd think Shion would be more sympathetic to Satoko's situation because she's the unwanted twin of a crime syndicate. She probably wasn't treated especially well by the rest of the family. I know it's probably meant to be read that she's being harsh because she's trying to do the right thing for Satoshi, but that doesn't really hold up to scrutiny at all. She is wanting to lay all of the abuse at the feet of the victim of it, and wants to tell her to suck it up and just take the lumps. In addition to being an extremely callous way of looking at things, it also would not work at all.

I wonder if this little tirade of Shion's made Irie think about the Sonozaki family at all. He's interacted with them in the past, so it feels reasonable to assume he'd be aware that Mion has a twin sister (he interacted with baby Mion in Himatsubushi, I'll remind you). So I wonder if he listened to Shion go on about how when you really think about it all this is Satoko's fault, and go "hey wait, this doesn't seem like Mion at all. Wait a second! Her twin sister?" Cause I imagine it's going to come up that he's aware that Shion's Shion.

She's gonna offer to adopt Satoko! Take her to a nice farm upstate.

Linkin Park.mp3

[singswan-springswan]

Behold: a little plot bunny that's been bouncing around my head. Another Kanera mermaid AU because I'm obsessed with mermaids and Kanera is love Kanera is life. Kanan's trying desperately not to blow his cover on land but gaslighting his human partner Hera is harder than he thought, especially when he can't help but save her from drowning on the occasion.

words: 1174

~

Hera knew Kanan was a skeptic—and in all fairness, she’d been one too. But before all that, he was supposed to trust her. That’d been the first thing to connect them. Her wild ideas, and his fascinated willingness to go along with them. Of course, Hera knew that he had boundaries, but they’d been difficult to find in the two years he’d been her best friend, and the fact that they existed in the first place was something of a vague notion. In any case, she never thought he’d draw the line here.

“This isn’t me being radical, Kanan.” Hera huffed, smacking the meter stick into her other hand. These days, it felt like a necessary thing to have him take her side, even if there was no solid opposition to take sides against, and even if the argument didn’t involve him. Hera just liked when he supported her, if she was honest. Which was silly. As if he didn’t support her by default as it was, here she stood now, demanding he agree with the one assertion that made him dig his heels in. 

But really, wasn’t he used to her crazy ideas by now? Surely he couldn’t be putting this past her. He should have seen it coming. She should have seen it coming too. Kriff, maybe she really was crazy, but could he at least agree with her?

Kanan propped a handsome cheekbone on his fist, elbow slanted lazily atop the messy table. Hera could stand to tidy things up in here; the galley of her beloved ship was something that should be clean on the regular. But she’d been down here all night with her murder board, and there hadn’t been time before Kanan wandered in for breakfast. He looked bored, having finished his bagel by now. There was a closed-off tolerance behind his eyes: a look so rare it made Hera frantic to have him understand.

She pointed the stick to the whiteboard on her right, where she’d pinned up photographs and newspaper clippings and a flaky array of sticky notes—all very neatly organized from her point of view, though a small voice in her head said that Kanan and perhaps a Hera who wasn’t sleep deprived would not see it the same way.

“This is me being logical. Look, I have it all thought out.”

Kanan—bless him—didn’t patronize her with a pointed sweep of the room. Hera really ought to clean up.

“There’s nothing logical about what happened.” He said in a blunt tone. At least he was focused on her, not indulging the rant with presence alone. 

“Exactly! There’s no logical explanation. Which can only mean my survival was supernatural. We both know I should have died that night—there was no chance for me to make it through the storm on my own, even with all my skill and experience—so whoever rescued me must have been specially gifted and enhanced individuals like that simply don’t exist within the human understanding of the world. Besides, I saw—”

“You imagined.” Kanan interrupted, frowning a little now, to Hera’s immense frustration. “You were half drowned by the time you made it back to shore, and that much more exhausted. On top of that, your imagination is one of the more impressive ones out there.”

Hera glared at him. “I saw,” She insisted. “Things that can’t be explained by a human understanding of the world. And you know me. I’m adaptable.”

Kanan sighed heavily and rubbed a hand against his brow. He was certainly being firm about this line, and not crossing it and such. And that was maddening to Hera. It didn’t fit his pattern of behavior to be so adamant about not believing her. Sure, this might be her craziest idea to date, but a few of her past conspiracy theories came pretty darn close and as she recalled, he’d jumped on board without a second thought. So why was this any different?

Outside, a boat motor rumbled past the marina, and the Ghost creaked pleasantly while it rocked on the wake coming in. Hera could hear the bustle of other mariners on the docks too, mingled with seagull chatter and clanging equipment. This late in the morning, the first round of fishermen were coming to port already. And she still hadn’t convinced Kanan.

“Okay,” He dropped the hands from his face and held them pressed together, fingers pointed her direction. “This is what we know.”

Hera narrowed her eyes, but she let him talk.

“You were stupid enough to take the Phantom out without me when you knew the forecast was bad, and you were caught on the open ocean when a storm rolled in. The dinghy capsized, probably on the seabed by now, with all your equipment—and you were lucky enough to wash up on shore before you drowned completely. Does that sound about right?”

Hera swung the meter stick down to smack a pile of papers in front of Kanan, eliciting a sharp noise and no reaction but an unimpressed raise of the eyebrow. “What I know,” She snapped. “Is that I should be dead. And I have one very specific person to thank for that. I was rescued, Kanan. Someone saved me: someone not human. Someone from the sea.” 

She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it herself. And although the memories from that night were fuzzy around the edges, she distinctly recalled the moment on the beach, vomiting sea water in the pouring rain, tucked into a pair of strong arms. She remembered babbling in confusion, and she remembered her rescuer vanishing in a brilliant blur of green and gold, before she could properly register the feel of scales beneath her hand. These memories weren’t products of an exhausted brain or overstimulated imagination. She knew she sounded crazy otherwise, but she couldn’t betray herself. Maybe for that reason, she was so determined to convince Kanan. She didn’t want to be crazy and alone.

But he was unimpressed with her stubborn insistence. He wasn’t patronizing, or indulgent—which would have made his disbelief worse—so small miracles. At least he had the decency to be straight with her.

“Hera,” Kanan gave her a flat look. “You know mermaids aren’t real, right?”

There was no budging on that line of his. Hera wanted to pout, cross her arms, insist that no actually she didn’t know that, and neither did he really. But they’d been at this for hours already. She’d started her rant the moment he strolled in—hair still a beautiful mess from sleep—and she’d meticulously explained every node on her murder board with fine detail, so if that hadn’t convinced him even a smidge, then whining definitely wouldn’t.

Instead, Hera drew herself up and gave him her best calculating stare. “What would it take?” She asked slowly, carefully. “To make you believe?”

Kanan crossed his arms and leaned back: the foreign picture of closed off. His lips pinched. His eyes had a wall behind them. “You couldn’t convince me.” He said plainly. “Fairytales don’t exist.”

[bonefall]

would love to see how you end up plotting out DOTC eventually bc as someone who has never read DOTC & is only reading your Reactions to DOTC… i think it could be a very fun exercise for me as a writer to try and write out your version of DOTC without any pre-conceived notions or baggage from reading & being attached to the original version

Man it would be a dream come true to eventually collaborate with ghost writers to bring the outlines to life. I'd love if that came together someday

So far I have a couple fragments and thoughts for how I want to rework DOTC, but it's not totally pieced together yet.

Concepts and thoughts, vague goals:

First and foremost I want to fix the xenophobia. It is a problem that the mountain cats bring civilization to the uncivilized.

At the same time I don't want to reverse course so hard that the Tribe migrants are themselves a foreign, violent, invading force.

Ideally I want the Park Cat culture and the Tribe Cat culture to mix, and form the beginning of Clan cat culture. For all its strengths and weaknesses.

The politics of the five groups should be delightfully messy.

There should be more girls in important roles to make up for how badly Storm and Bright got fridged

More of these bloodlines need to survive to contribute to the gene pool

Budding ideas, fragments:

I'm splitting up the Gray/Clear/Thunder kittens and giving them to the families that went extinct.

The Clan rank-names stem from Park Cat culture, the two-part naming stems from Tribe Cat culture.

SkyClan and ShadowClan are going to be the first two to form.

Jagged Peak's death and Clear Sky's rejection of his son is the climax of the first book, and the moment the two Clans split.

ThunderClan is going to battle SkyClan for the right to live in the forest

Thunder is missing his back leg in the same spot where Jagged Peak lost his

Thunder's name is Thunder Storm. His mother was Bright Storm.

New Tribe name scheme; they have last names. Last names are chosen by the parents. His name was Thunder Sky before Clear Sky rejected him.

Quiet Rain's name is going to change to Quiet Wing. Clear/Gray and Jagged had different fathers, explaining the three different last names.

Political Sprouts; some thoughts on the history of each Clan and how it influences relations;

SkyClan and ShadowClan are the first to split and have very bad blood between them; but are open to uniting against a common enemy

WindClan is a Park cat response to SkyClan and ShadowClan; It was previously loosely associated families with individual territories

RiverClan WAS united, the cats who become WindClan later broke off from this group.

WindClan and RiverClan are willing to defend each other when applicable.

Thunder Storm is raised in ShadowClan. His group is initially an expansion of ShadowClan, like a satellite territory.

I'm thinking of making it so a big part of Thunder's development is seeing the poor treatment of people like Bumble and realizing that SkyClan and ShadowClan share a common disease.

Defying Tall Shadow's orders to purge people like Bumble is potentially what causes the Thunder/Shadow split.

ALL FIVE CLANS WILL BE PRESENT AT THE FIRST BATTLE.

And that's what I've got of the early conflict so far. The later conflict with One Eye is still brewing.

[skyselfships]

I read "A Twisted Tale: Go the Distance"

I read it for Meg getting her own story and Persephone and Hades. Long post under the cut. This is mostly me talking about what makes it's way into my head rent-free, the whole thing with Meg's ex and Persephone.

The plot happens because Zeus refuses to let Hercules give up his godhood to be with Meg. Meg overhears Demeter talking about Persephone. Meg tries to object to Zeus keeping Hercules as a god. Zeus doesn't like that. Hera, behind his back, offers Meg a chance to become a god so she can be with Hercules. First get a flute (it's relevant). And then rescue the soul of her ex's wife.

Hades is there in the half where Meg is in the Underworld. He's still a villain and an asshole. And we still love him.

Meg's journey involves vulnerability, to be able to open up to others and accept their support. In the book, Meg grew up with a single mother after the father left (he didn't want to take responsbility of raising a family), loses her mother in a chariot accident, and grows up having to be strong. When Meg was at a low point, she prayed to the gods for help and Hades answered. You know what happened after that. Meg gets dumped and becomes distrustful. The film happens where Meg became vulnerable around Hercules and Hades uses her to get Hercules to make a deal with him, Meg saves Hercules and dies in the process, you know how the film goes. The quest happens, she has Pegasus and Phil with her until she makes it to the Underworld. Meg grows past the notion of having to act strong and independent to the point of refusing help from others.

The Deal with the Ex

I personally don't like this version of how Meg gave up her soul and got dumped but this version exists in a way that contributes to the story's theme. The film was only vague about the ex and Hades could be an unreliable narrator for all we know, so we can interpret the situation however we want.

Meg and Aegus meet because music. The two fall in love and would have married but Aegus falls ill. Other people don't like him because they're jealous of him as a musician and he is their competition. Meg can't afford medicine so she prays to the gods but they don't answer, so she prays to him and he answers. Meg offers to give anything for Aegus' life, Hades asks for her soul, and she accepts. This is by telepathic conversation, they don't shake on it. Meg is then dragged into the Underworld and here's the part I don't like: The book adds that time runs faster in the Underworld than in the mortal realm. That specific detail contributes to why Aegus leaves Meg. Anyway, Meg works for Hades. She doesn't get to visit Aegus. The next time she sees him is when Hades shows her Aegus with Katerina. Hades didn't cause Aegus to leave Meg and go with Katerina, he probably showed her that to give her a reason to continue working for him. Later in the book reveals that Aegus searched for Meg once he recovered but couldn't find her and reached the conclusion that she died. He mourned for her and met Katerina who lifted him from his grief. The two marry and have a baby. (It's not wrong for Aegus to find love after losing Meg. The "Carl's Date" short doesn't invalidate Carl and Ellie's relationship, Ellie wanted Carl to live his life after her death. Under similar logic, Aegus shouldn't be living in the past.)

About Katerina: She died when the titans attacked which is why Meg has to bring her back. I don't have anything to write home about her. She's not a bad person or anything, just a regular mortal that died when she shouldn't have. She made a place in Aegus and Meg's lives. To the cosmos, what difference does her life make? But Hera made her important. Because of the quest, Meg and Aegus reunite and patch things up.

I don't like that Meg's ex is written as sympathetic because of what it implies when you think about it long enough. This version of Meg's ex and his new lover works with this story and Meg's quest, it just doesn't sit right with me. Maybe I just don't like it because it doesn't fit my headcanon which doesn't matter here. Or because it feels like an insult to Meg becoming cynical and distrustful when the book made the whole thing involve timezones out of Meg and Aegus' control. It's the timezone. I don't like the timezone. Anyone can do bad things. In the film, Meg assisted Hades with his plans because she had to until she fell in love with Hercules and reforms, but she is not a bad person. Hades is the villain in a film that accidentally makes him sympathetic and Zeus an asshole, Hades is responsible for the damage the titans caused so that's a bad thing, but Hades also keeps his word about his end of the deals he makes. Unlike Ursula, we don't see him sabotaging others to prevent them from fulfilling their end. I don't think he has time for that anyway. I don't know how to word any of this. What I'm trying to go for is that bad people aren't restricted to royalty, viziers with magic artifacts, gods, or whatever. Think of Gothel from "Tangled" who is human through and through minus the de-aging flower power and abuses Rapunzel to ensure she stays in the tower, Gaston exploiting his reputation with the town while forcing Belle to marry him, the Coachman in "Pinocchio" trafficking donkey-turned boys, basically any human person who doesn't have magical powers and does horrible things. Or if you want to think outside of Disney, Chris Hargensen and Margaret White from "Carrie". Chris is a school bully and Margaret is an abusive mother using religion to justify her behavior. Compared to Carrie herself, those two are scarier because of how close to reality they are. If Meg's ex was just an average human guy that was horrible enough of a person to dump her for another girl, then it means that anyone can be a bad person, not just Underworld gods or monsters that you'll never meet in real life.

Persephone

She's here! She's relevant! She appears in the second half of the story after Meg makes it to the Underworld. Her presence in the story is hinted at in the beginning and lo and behold here she is.

Her appearance in this story is different from the film version. Here, she has tan skin, dark eyes, black hair with a crown of silver flowers, and a cobalt blue dress (as opposed to brown) with a floral silver belt (for the day) at the waist.

She and Hades have a good relationship. Persephone calms Hades when he gets mad, Hades likes that she is someone she can talk to on equal footing with even when having a disagreement as opposed to Pain and Panic (they're subordinates and they're dumbasses) and the Fates (they talk in circles), and Persephone can grow what she wants without being told what to do. (It's implied that she either left the Olympians/wanted to stay in the Underworld to escape a controlling life.) She also likes watching the plants' struggles to grow and their deaths, so she probably has a morbid or dark but not evil side to her, which means she's not some ingenue or naive innocent girl. And Hades is willing to burn the world for a future where they can be happy together. They go so well with each other that you can root for them to have a happy ending. Also, Hades deserves to be happy. He was doomed by the narrative in the film but now that narrative is over so he can do whatever.

Meg helps the two by appealing to Hera for Persephone to be able to go back and forth between the mortal realm and the Underworld so they can be happy. No one told her to help, she decided to on her own.

Hades is still an asshole to Meg about her quest while Persephone is the nicer one by helping Meg. Hades is willing to pretend he doesn't see Meg bringing Katerina out of the Underworld but other than that, he doesn't help. This part of Meg's quest is like the Orpheus and Eurydice myth except she doesn't turn back.

By the time Persephone leaves the Underworld because spring is approaching, Hades had proposed to her off-screen. We don't get to see the wedding even though there's a time skip in the epilogue.

[liloinkoink]

Hi hi, I am so here about learning about yorr dnd AU. I am super super new here so please throw it all at me!!

i did a short summary of the premise for the last ask, so i’m just gonna tell you a bunch about my dude, Ellery

each of us basically brought one of to the table—they started out as our sonas, but they became kind of removed enough to be their own guys

Ellery i have. so many thoughts on. i gave him amnesia which is my guilty pleasure Favorite trope ever so im having a ball

Ellery is a death prophet, receiving visions from Myrkul about whatever Myrkul sees fit to share. Myrkul warns him of the upcoming apocalypse, but sharing this vision w the temple is what spurred the Cyric group to act and kill him, destroy myrkul, and bring on the end times. he felt terribly guilty in the days leading up to his death about his vision causing his own destruction and putting his friends in danger, and that’s had a lingering effect on him even with amnesia

after his revival he’s quieter. he doesn’t know why, but he has the vague notion he shouldn’t speak. he doesn’t share his visions as much unless Mar, who shares them now thru their soulbond, brings them up. his amnesia was probably partially caused by his own guilt, and learning about how his vision lead to the apocalypse and Mar’s death after his own has him very reluctant to gain his memories back (among other reasons. his amnesia fascinates me)

i asked everyone to give me notes about their characters so i could write fic better, and in those notes i asked everyone to tell me how their characters act 1) when calm or in shenanigans, 2) when stressed, under pressure, or in danger, and 3) how they generally speak

for an example, i gave a response for Ellery for all of that

if things are calm he’s probably just chillin quietly most of the time. i joke about elevator music playing in his head 24/7 but i think he’s been like. trying to watch everyone talk/interact to figure out what the people around him are actually like and get to know his friends (again). hes also trying to learn what he himself was like, based on how they approach/treat him, and letting the other four set the pace for their relationships to/with him

he also has a lingering feeling he shouldn’t talk bc of what explaining his vision did, even if he doesn’t rlly remember where that feeling came from, and is especially reluctant to speak up at the start

he’ll respond if spoken to directly and cut in occasionally, or bring smth up if he thinks it’s important, but mostly he’s just watching/listening. the longer they’re together the more he’s going to weigh in on convos unprompted + the more animated/expressive he’ll become

that said. in all points of the story you can also just. rope him into shenanigans or interactions and he’ll kind of just roll with it. if you sit down next to him and ask him “is water wet” he will just keep discussing it with you until you stop. literally you can walk up to him and press A indefinitely he Will just keep going

for what kinda stuff he says and how he talks. i’m giving him the fancy/pretentious end of my word bank. hes getting the fantasy end and PR manager/communications aspects of my speech.

that said, i do think the way he talks has changed since he died. pre ritual he was probably very aware of his position as leader and was careful he was staying like. a good religious leader ™. but now he has less of a filter and is more willing to make stupid jokes or be kind of mean/teasing (esp later in plot). while i do think he’d swear sometimes before his death behind closed doors it IS funny as hell to me if flint and syyrin hear him swear casually for the first time post revival (tho i don’t think, even post revival, that he swears as much as i do)

in high stress/danger situations he’s also relatively calm? at least when everyone else is around. he trusts his team will watch out for him. i like the image of him being relatively quiet in battle using spells and shit from the back, tho a few of his attack cantrips are touch-based iirc so he’s probably in and out. in battle i think he sticks around mar and iscariot bc he knows he and mar need to watch their health together and iscariot will Always help/protect him. i do think the quiet would probs lead to him getting injured and not thinking to mention it until the end of a fight. this Also contributes to him looking scarier on the battlefield. it’s unearned his stats suck ass but the ppl they’re fighting don’t need to know that

i think he sorta sits on his feelings until he literally can’t anymore, either by mar knowing them via shared visions, a physical injury becoming unmanageable, or him being unable to control his expressions abt them. like not saying anything about being afraid or overwhelmed until he ends up shaking or in tears

him being affectionate is the same way. he isn’t gonna say anything about it he’s just gonna go stand/sit near people until he gets what he wants

also i think he just says ominous shit sometimes. at the start it’s bc he’s just. weird. and later he starts saying it on purpose for a reaction while playing it completely straight bc he thinks it’s funny

[moviemunchies]

Some-BODY once told me that Shrek was a really good move. It was huge when it first came out; everyone, I mean, everyone I know loved it, and it was freaking everywhere you looked. I was never that into it, though. In the past few years, it’s experienced something of a revival–I’ve seen discussions of how it’s actually a really good movie, covering themes like acceptance and self-image. And Dreamworks has made a lot of really good movies! So I thought it was about time I re-watched the film since I found it on Netflix.

And during this re-watch, I discovered that…. I don’t like this movie.

Shrek adapts a picture book by William Steig that you’ve probably never heard of into a CGI animated feature about the titular ogre. Rejected by ordinary people, Shrek lives alone in his swamp, until he saves the life of Donkey, a talking donkey and would-be victim of Lord Farquaad’s attempts to purge his realm, Duloc, of fairy tale creatures. Farquaad is forcefully re-locating these creatures to Shrek’s swamp, much to the ogre’s chagrin. Walking straight into Duloc, Shrek and Farquaad make a deal: he’ll get his swamp back if he goes and saves Princess Fiona to be Farquaad’s bride in order to legitimize his kingship. Of course, saving Princess Fiona isn’t so easy, and she has her own secrets that she’d rather not let anyone find out; and even then, Shrek finds that handing her over to Farquaad isn’t what he really wants.

Alright, so you can’t really talk about this movie without mentioning that the entire thing is built from the ground up as a massive ‘F*** YOU’ to Disney. Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the co-founders of Dreamworks Studios, was former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and had a falling out, to put it mildly, with both Roy Disney (Walt Disney’s nephew and member of the board) and Disney CEO Michael Eisner, to start his own company. It’s popularly speculated that the villain of Shrek was designed to resemble Michael Eisner, and also his name sounds like ‘F***wad’.

If you did not pick up that the movie hated Disney and everything about it, that information should give you enough to work with. Though it is blindingly obvious; the princess plot where things don’t go according to plan, the fairy tale characters acting mostly as pests, the dirty jokes, how Duloc’s entrance brings to mind Disney theme parks with even a parody of “It’s a Small World”, the bird exploding when Fiona’s singing with it… It’s pretty much all there.

And yes, Disney had sort of gotten a reputation for squeaky-clean princess stories, and their attempts to move past those haven’t made much money–in part because management didn’t know how to market and when to release those movies. Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire might have been hits if it weren’t for those factors, but the people in charge didn’t think they’d be money makers, and thus screwed them over and said, “Welp! Those movies don’t do well, I guess!” It’s understandable, then, that a guy who worked at Disney might have had some frustration about how he couldn’t break out of the mold, and hold some resentment for that mold and then make a movie about it.

It’s so… crude, though? Much of the humor in this movie just isn’t my thing. It doesn’t feel like a passionate or thoughtful deconstruction of Disney, most of the time, it feels like taking a hammer to it, except that hammer makes fart noises. There are so many jokes that aren’t aimed at kids, but they’re not really funny as much as ‘Tee-hee, look what we put in an animated movie vaguely aimed at families!’ Like, no, I did not need a bit that implies Lord Farquaad is jacking off to the image of Princess Fiona in the Magic Mirror.

Farquaad is also annoying and that he clearly has some sort of hang-up about fairy tale creatures, and wants them out, though it’s never really developed much. Why does he hate fairy tales so much? Again, as a stand-in for Disney’s management, the notion that the guy in charge wants a standardized feel to his kingdom, and will ship out anyone different/magical makes sense; however, this falls apart because the fairy tale creatures are again, clearly meant to be annoying/stupid! And the whole idea of not judging people based on how they look or who they’re born as is thrown out the window with all the jokes about how short Farquaad is!

Probably not helping is my past experience with this movie. Many years ago, when this was A Thing, and kids just watched all the time, we were at some dinner party or New Year’s party or something. It got late and we started three different movies (this one, Princess Bride, and Willow), so probably New Year’s. The kids at the party put on this movie, and dear Lord do you have any idea how annoying it is to watch a movie where your fellow audience members know all the jokes, and say it along with the movie? Except their timing is off, so they say it right before it’s said in the movie? Yeah, that was this viewing experience. It was the most annoying way to watch what’s supposed to be a comedic film.

A lot of the jokes just don’t make much sense to me, either. Why is Robin Hood French in this movie? At first I assumed that it’s a roundabout allusion to Kevin Costner having the wrong accent in Prince of Thieves, but I looked it up, and apparently, no! It’s just because the people making the movie thought it would be funny. That’s dumb and makes no sense.

There are some things in the animation that haven’t aged well, but they had no way of knowing it at the time, they were doing the best with what they had. And so ‘meh’ on that front.

And I can’t help but think that if it hadn’t been for Shrek that so many things would have been different–the dominance of CGI over other forms of animation, the over-reliance on pop culture references, celebrity voice actors, the big dance party at the end of the movie–Shrek wasn’t the origin of all of these ideas, but it definite catapulted them into popular consciousness. Oh, and putting Eddie Murphy in tons of things. That was A Thing That Used to be A Thing for years and we all hated it.

There are some things in this movie that I do like, to be clear! I like Shrek and Fiona’s relationship! I like their character development. I like their interactions. I like that their journey consists of both of them accepting themselves and not worrying about conventional attractiveness. I don’t generally like the, “The couple has a misunderstanding based on half of a conversation,” thing, but here it’s because it reflects both of their self-loathing and I think that’s actually really interesting!

[There’s a Tumblr post about it, too.]

And there are, I guess, some jokes I liked.

Overall, though, I don’t like this movie. I can’t like this movie. Shrek doesn’t feel like a movie made by people telling a story they love, it feels like a bunch of people rambling on about how much they hate the Walt Disney Company. And to be clear, there’s a lot to dislike about the Walt Disney Company and the movies it makes. That alone doesn’t make Shrek a good movie, though. I have heard that Shrek 2 is good; I haven’t seen any of it to my recollection, so I might give it a try? As it is, though, with all the other fantastic films Dreamworks has created, I’m struggling to see why people are so attached to this one.

[distortedmoondisc]

hiiai for the ask game thing 🥺👉👈

Hi!! Thank you so much for asking for my otp vi 🥹💖💖💖

So! I hope I don't get too rambly with it ahdhfj

1. What made you ship it?: oh boy, the first and second chapters of the !! Main Story made me become so obsessed with them it wasn't even normal. I went into ensemble stars without any idea or notion about the franchise or the writing beforehand and I was absolutely confused with the way the characters talked to each other (the enstars writing is definitely an acquired taste imo lmao). So you must imagine how insane I felt when I, who wasn't used to male characters having such blatant, shameless and obviously deliberately flirty/romantic/shippy intended dialogue with each other such as.... This:

This was!!!! On their first meeting!!! They have known each other for less than 5 minutes and Aira has already fondled Hiiro's bicep!!!! Are these two normal??? (If you've been into enstars long enough you'll know that the answer is !!! No !!!)

And what's funnier is that after Aira does the (rub, rub), the next dialogue is literally this:

so like.... Akira (writer of all of the !! Main story) here had to force a switch on the conversation so these two could focus again on the topic they were discussing before (about whether or not they're underachievers and about Ensemble Square) from that fondling muscles scene. This means Akira didn't have any need to write that scene between these two, it wasn't necessary for the plot. The madlad just added that scene in there out of nowhere. Just for the funsies. For a silly little laugh. Because there's nothing more fun than making your OCs flirt with each other this shamelessly in your own story. He really gets the assignment.

Listing a few honorable mentions for hiiai interactions from the first and second episodes of the !! MS that made me imprint on them so hard that they became my biggest otp since july of last year and has taken hold of my heart ever since 🫶

Hiiro fawning over Aira's beautiful name 🥺🥺🥺

Hiiro here was really like yeah you're my soulmate, my soulmate bestie (no but seriously do you ever think about how hiiro became so attached to aira so quickly and wanted to become his friend so bad, and how he also saw their meeting as fate....)

He is so dramatic, he didn't even get directly rejected here

This is a personal favorite. I can't stress how mentally ill I was when I read Hiiro saying "I'll do my best to destroy the future where you'll feel sad" DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF???? this should be added to the "is this Russian literature or enstars" online quiz

If you are observant enough you'll see that Hiiro is the one shamelessly flirting all the time AHDJF but Aira himself (mostly in later chapters) also says some questionable stuff about Hiiro in some parts that makes you go... Huh (Aira saying to Hiiro "Aira-kun's route is no longer available for you!" Aira why are you equating yourself and Hiiro as the protagonist and romantic interest of a dating sim game? Do you have anything to share with the class?)

But yeah... them (vaguely gestures with hand). They give a very strong first impression to say the least, so it's not hard to imagine how I came to ship them as quickly and as strongly as I did ahdjf

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?: God, there's so many things I like about hiiai I don't think I can ever list them or rank them, but I'll try ahdjf

For starters, I just really like their dynamic (very basic answer, I know). A thing I really love about their dynamic is how Hiiro is so openly affectionate with Aira, and I think it's cute how Aira is so tsun about his care and affection for hiro-kun, but he just can't leave him alone and thinks of him so often (he mentions him all the time in the game's home lines wwww).

Another thing I love is the way their relationship develops throughout the !! main story. How Aira stuck to him and to Alkaloid due to obligation (in order to survive as an idol in ES) but actually became attached to Hiiro and formed the unique dynamic with him where Aira feels like he can't leave Hiiro alone to prevent him from getting into trouble (and while there is truth to that, there's also the fact that just genuinely Aira loves Hiiro because the first friend he's had in a long time, and a very loyal and loving one at that). In Hiiro's case, he also got attached to Aira very quickly since he was also his very first friend on the city 🥺

In general, I love that hiiai are each other's first friends in ES when they were completely alone, and that by finding each other they found the solution to their chronic loneliness (because Aira and Hiiro both suffer a lot from severe loneliness ever since their childhoods. Aira has never been able to keep lasting friendships and Hiiro's only company in his hometown was Rinne. So them finding each other and hitting it off so quickly and easily means a lot for the both of them, and they both try their best to make the friendship work because they want to keep it and make it last, yk?)

Another facet of hiiai that I like... how Aira always teaches Hiiro new things and helps him understand the world around him. I like to think about how Aira is, literally and metaphorically, the reason Hiiro loves the city, and how that is what leads him to stay there instead of going back to his hometown with his brother (and I just sit here and wonder if the rinniki parallels were intentional from Akira's part?)

I mean literally because Aira is the one who taught Hiiro what idols are, and that was what made Hiiro realize that yes, this is something he likes and a thing he wants to do with his life. And metaphorically, because I believe that for Hiiro, Aira is a representation of the city. Aira is a city boy, he has an upbringing and worldview completely different from his. Aira grew up in a world that is completely unknown and new to Hiiro, a world in which Hiiro didn't plan on staying for long in the first place, a world that Hiiro didn't plan on getting attached to, but that he still came to like at the end — so Hiiro, by loving and accepting Aira, is metaphorically loving and embracing the city and coming to understand it*. And we know that Hiiro deciding to stay in the city and becoming an idol for real is one of the most important parts of his arc of independence and self discovery, so this gives Hiiro's relationship with Aira another layer of depth that makes their bond more important and essential for each of their characters and arcs.

*I almost forgot to clarify why I think that Hiiro coming to like the city is such a big deal (and note, this is a personal interpretation). Basically, because Hiiro was so dead set on bringing his brother back to their hometown so he could become the monarch, he was still close minded about the outside world and stuck with the old arbitrary rules taught by his hometown. But just as Rinne predicted and hoped, Hiiro ended up being marveled by the city and all the things it offers and so many things he's never seen before (and you can extrapolate that marvel he feels for the city as the marvel and interest he feels for Aira when they first meet). So just as Rinne left his hometown in favor of the city—which was a thing Hiiro didn't understand before because he didn't know what even made the city so good in the first place to make his brother want to leave—Hiiro ended up liking the city as well and choosing to stay there instead of going back home, therefore chosing his own path like Rinne.

But then again, this is just my personal interpretation of the text ahdjf

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?: I probably do, but I can't really think of one at the moment ahdjfj I guess one unpopular opinion is that I think that Aira isn't as stereotypically tsundere as people tend to depict him as in fanworks.

Don't get me wrong, Aira def is very tsun (and he is deliberately written as a stereotypical tsundere sometimes for the comedy bits and/or to make his feelings about others obvious. It might seem paradoxical, but the more tsun the acts—the biggest reaction he gets out of one of Hiiro's actions, for example—the more obvious his true feelings come across), but I also think it is often overlooked his character development in the !! MS where he grows to become more honest about his feelings and doesn't reject Hiiro's displays of affection as much and is even openly happy about them (like when he was happy that Hiiro held his hand and said it made him feel reassured). But this characterization isn't the most consistent throughout stories (and that is a thing that bothers me a little but talking about enstars' lore inconsistency is a story for another day ahdjf), so this is something very personal 😅

And that's all... thank goodness it was only 3 questions AHDJF I was hoping I'd write a short post, but it seems I *did* end up rambling about hiiai after all 😔🤙 what bring prompted to talk about the otp does to a person.

[beatrice-otter]

🍓 and 🔪

🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction?

I had plot bunnies and worldbuilding and characterization stuff in middle school, I had a whole journal filled with stuff about my OC (who was Spock and Saavik's daughter named Amanda, she was a priestess and married to a Human Starfleet captain, they had several kids together, and she sometimes still shows up idly in my brain despite the fact that it's been 30 years). And then in the late 90s I started reading fanfiction online on various websites. (I was horrified when fanfix.com died!)

But I didn't actually write it until I was in my 20s, for two reasons. First, I had the vague notion I would become a SF/F writer, and so my writing was going into two novels (that I still have around, but I haven't read them since). Second, while I wanted to write fanfiction, I didn't know where to POST it. Because most fanfiction in those days was on mailing lists or personal web sites or USENET and I didn't have a website, didn't know how to build one, and didn't know how to get on usenet. What I really wanted was to know where all the fanfic writers hung out, but I couldn't find them. I knew there were communities out there, because they'd mention them in the authors' notes, but not with enough details for me to figure out how to join.

And then I found Livejournal (anyone can make a journal and post! very low technical skills needed, no money needed, AND the community is here!) and the rest is history.

🔪 ⇢ what’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I dunno. The only thing that's coming to mind was trying to figure out how much would be a reasonable sum of money for a mobster to pay a hit man in the 1930s. (For A Purpose-Driven Life, my Agent Carter Dottie/Whitney AU.) To come up with a number I found an Australian article from the 2010s with how much it cost to hire a hitman, converted that to USD, and then plugged the number into an inflation calculator. Which, it's not going to be anywhere near accurate, but I needed SOMETHING to put in, and that was the best I could find. Turned out to be $500. (If anyone has better data on that, please let me know!)

From the Writers Truth & Dare Ask Game

[bomberqueen17]

character creation menu

like, when i'm in this mode of trying to make a thing and it's going sort of well i wind up sort of subsuming most of my attention to it

and i keep accidentally hijacking conversations IRL and god i am struggling not to do that but literally everything I encounter IRL Gives Me An Idea For That Book

(yes, i did send a message on instagram, the only platform i still have contact with him, to my friend the former Navy diver, to ask him for more dolphin insights. yeah. we'll see. it's been years and he got politically Weird [not that way!!! the other way actually don't worry] so i'm not sure how that'll go.)

but anyway, on Character Creation

one of the problems i have is that i have to kind of write things to find them. and so i was going along writing about a particular B-plot problem, and I had a character say something snippy that I then needed an uninvolved person to overhear and react to, for scene pacing reasons (idk, it just seemed right)

and i had needed an original character for another role in the A plot so i was like ah yes, Placeholder can do that and then we segue flawlessly back into the A plot, so I wrote a bunch of that but the character was such a bland placeholder (i devoted zero thought to their name, and was like i guess they'd call themself a consultant ok, and then my brain filled in "Rin" for their name, and I'm a thousand words in before I'm like. this person cannot be named Consultant Rin.) But I got the A plot sequence done and it holds up, and reading back over it, mm this person needs more personality.

I stepped away from the computer and was eating a meal with Dude and talking to him about something unrelated, and then I was musing on how various of his coworkers sound on Zoom calls, and the only one I can tell apart is the woman with a mild speech impediment, and he was telling me more about her and I suddenly in midsentence was like "oh I don't think I've ever written a character with a speech impediment" and like.

there's technical challenges to that, which was interesting to contemplate-- just like writing a character with an accent, where you don't want to descend into like, exotifying dialect but you do want to convey something of the uniqueness of this person's diction whenever they speak. so that's a fun and interesting constraint to put on a character, and can help with a real problem I have always had in my writing, where I love writing dialogue but everyone just talks like me unless I put a ton of attention into making sure they don't.

but this character immediately morphed in my mind, from Placeholder With Stolen Name to

Extremely Autistic Technician With Like, Absolutely No Rizz Who Within Five Minutes Becomes Everyone's Favorite Person

and is not based on anyone I know but I immediately knew and loved them and that is a much better standpoint from whence to create a character.

I also need to come up with names for everybody, and that's on the list, but I'm getting there. I'm just glad I have a mental image now. I don't do visual imagination stuff very well-- fanfiction is nice because I can usually find an image of a character and refer back to that, because I'm not exactly faceblind but I don't hold images well in my mind. With original characters it's so so so so hard, because I can't imagine that well, but it really helps me keep a voice distinctive if I can look at the person and think about them talking. So.

At least having some vague notion rather than like one of those blank wooden poseable artist figure model things helps.

[indignantlemur]

Writing process question: With a story as long and involved as Emigre, do you have a master plot plan with an idea of where things will go all the way till the end, or are you sort of making it up in sections as you go? Or somewhere in between?

Hello! I started out, some 12 years ago, with a nebulous plot idea and a bunch of characters with a broad idea for an actual story in the background. I knew where I wanted my characters to go, the big scenes I wanted to write, and I had only a vague notion about the ending.

That worked for me for the first little while, but then my computer died and I lost my vague guideline notes. After that I was completely lost and totally disheartened. Regrettably, this coincided with some very unpleasant happenings in my personal life, and ultimately I ended up stopping my writing entirely.

Since returning to writing, I've salvaged all of the plot points I can recall and I've actually sat down and written out a point-for-point roadmap. I've patched as many plot holes as I can with this roadmap, tried to account for all of the characters that have been mentioned even once, and have a very thorough accounting of what happens from now until the end of the story. This has actually been hugely helpful, and I find it a lot more productive than my old, off the cuff method of writing.

So, for example, I'll usually set up something like this:

Bulreeng Taal: Dagmar and Thelen go to the local festival. Mixed results. INCLUDE:

A. First Vrath-Thelen encounter, goes poorly ; "I just wanted to talk to her and walk her home -because I thought she was in danger- and I was an idiot. I forgot how words worked and came off like an ass." B. Differing reactions to Dagmar, nice positive feels and disappointing negative reaction C. Draw from [inspiration 1] and [inspiration 2] for the festival but keep it alien! Figure out colours/themes, traditions, lore! D. Themes of healing and moving on/letting go throughout E. Enemies-to-loves starting vibes? See if it fits. F. Dagmar and Thelen have a conversation about boundaries, Tha’an/Sannev politics, and making an effort. Establish bestie-dom! IMPORTANT SUBPLOT INFO: Plant seeds for Dagmar/Thelen, maybe Vrath/Thelen where applicable but don't break the chapter for it

2. Date with Shral! (NOTE: Same day as BULREENG TAAL.)

A. Shral and Dagmar chat; expand upon dynamic, emphasize themes of calming and settling each other. B. SHRAL LAUGHS. Great maple syrup heist, ridiculousness. C. Constellations and lore! Write up a draft of a creation story, figure out themes and tidbits. Contrast the Star Thief with the Great Maple Syrup heist? Skip if it breaks the flow. D. Dagmar's gear failure - look up details for hypothermia, cold shock, and reactions to sudden, extreme temperature drops. Make it realistic. Gear fails gradually, a little at a time, before abruptly cutting out. E. If it fits, revisit intimacy between Dagmar and Shral. Consider realistic hesitation and reasons for caution - for Dagmar especially. Work with limitations from that perspective. F. Character development point: Shral is more open during intimacy, versus closed off and stoic otherwise. Contrast important! G. Ruin an arbiter's day, drop hints about Shral, make Dagmar oblivious. INCLUDE: yellow flash, identification cards, autopilot. “What’s wrong, Esheth? You look like you’ve seen a sea spirit.” / “I think I pulled over an Am Tal operative for speeding today.” / “...Oh shit.” / “It gets worse.”

The important thing about setting up my notes this way is not to hold them up as hard and fast rules but as guidelines. Sometimes the dialogue I'd like to include doesn't quite work, or the scene progresses more organically if I skip a bit here or leave some exposition for later on.

Currently, I have the entire story mapped out until the end, with two story arcs to complete and a bunch of additional chapters as well for various bits of lead-up, lore, exposition, and development. I also have about a dozen side stories tentatively mapped out in a similar fashion, too!

Cheers, and thanks for the ask! <3

[sniffanimal]

vague tw that I'm talking about weird fears and triggers I have, I'm gonna try and not be detailed but listing them above the cut seems redundant so only read below if you want to read about weird upsetting things

notably death, pregnancy, and suicide are mentioned.

I have like 4 fears that are like to my core absolute terror fears and like 3 of them are the easiest things to never encounter and the last one is so unlikely but they're still like terrifying to me

one is freezing to death, specifically on a mountain. I hate hiking and rock climbing already, so I'm likely never going to climb a mountain in the first place, let alone an icy mountain. but I'm terrified of dying in the cold, especially from low oxygen/nitrogen poisoning.

similarly, I'm terrified of being far underwater, really more than a few feet underwater in general. I'm afraid of drowning, but also afraid of decompression and nitrogen poisoning. I don't like swimming in the first place so the odds of me like, scuba diving, are so slim. but I'm so scared

those two also combine to my fear of dying in the vacuum of space, which again is very easy to not do.

next, I'm VERY afraid of getting pregnant. this is relatively easy to avoid, using contraceptives and such, but stuff like the Handmaid's Tale is deep horror to me. the entire process of pregnancy makes me sick, I'm scared of not only like the social emotional repercussions of having a baby, that's also terrifying, but the medical biological process of developing a baby and giving live birth is skin crawlingly terrifying to me. I think it's similar to how most people feel about the idea of getting a parasite. part of the horror is the fact that my body is designed to do this, and that people all over love doing it and seek out doing it, and it's regarded as a general good. what if you woke up one day and everyone was telling you it's extremely good and normal to have tapeworms and that God will bless you with a tapeworm someday. horrifying.

the last one that I can think of is assisted suicide. my full opinion is just people have a right to make informed medical choices about their bodies and nothing further than that. but something very specific about assisted suicide like gives me the willies. idk what aspect of it is, maybe it's just my entire history of suicide prevention depression therapy repelling against the notion of it being the best option for someone, idk. hospice care also sorta freaks me out in general. I think I'm really just scared of death in its many forms, but that's anxiety, babe!

I find the fact that I'm watching Grey's anatomy, a show where death is probably the second biggest plot driving force behind sex, interesting. It's kind of like watching a horror movie you know will scare you, or looking at a picture of something fucked up out of morbid curiosity. it helps knowing it's a TV show and thus not real, so it's like a safe way to engage with this fear of death in a way.

[invested-in-your-future]

Ironwood should have never been the villain

Hot take but I disagree.

I think Ironwood is perfect antagonist to showcase how fallible and flawed humanity can be. He is well meaning and he genuinely believes in his mission and goals and the idea of Greater Good. But he's also someone who grew up in post-world-war times in a country that's 100% was the bad guy before and is in quite a fickle state. Its no wonder he would strive to be better and desperately try to prove himself, even at the cost of his own wellbeing (oh look the theme of self sacrifice again and the toxic notion of "heroism" based upon society's expectations). Writing him as rigid by-the-book General that is willing to do whatever is necessary to keep the fragile peace going makes 100% sense. But inability to change and improvise should also be his flaw - while Ironwood sees threats that Ozpin is blind to, Ironwood genuinely does not realize the consequences and issues Ozpin sees in him.

I am of opinion that he was always intended to eventually "cross the line" and do something genuinely bad out of desperation and circumstance. The type of person that, when situation goes completely out of his control, would end up with him making decisions that are hard or impossible to come back from. A tragic case of a good intentions leading to worst decisions. A case study of human nature and the effect division, desperation and self destructive impulses can have upon it. And a thematic allusion of the real world's tendency to abandon war veterans and soldiers to their personal hell with no regard for their mental or physical wellbeing, after their country exploited them to the ultimate limit.

The issue however, just like with pretty much EVERYTHING in the show, is absolutely ZERO ACTUAL PROGRESSION. Its true for character relationships - Yang and Blake never actually getting to solve the issues that have been brewing since V3. Its true for characterization - Yang, Blake, Ruby, Weiss - all of them basically were given less than breadcrumbs so far rather than proper character writing - it took YEARS to acknowledge that Ruby might be traumatized and even that ended up with writing off trauma and character progression as NOT NEEDED "YOU ARE FLAWLESS" nonsense and Yang still has pretty much ZERO development in terms of her trauma (And Blake literally exists only as character design). It extends to the world itself too - time in Remnant only seems to move when there's a screentime given to a location - Come Volume 20, Glynda will still be vaguely standing around Vale and Mistral will still be exactly identical place as the team left it.

So its no surprise that that's true for character alignment too - Summer is either Best Mother Ever or Filthy Dishonest Liar, Raven is either uwusadregrets or Worst Mother Ever How Dare She. Even Salem is not immune to this as she literally has TWO phases of her backstory - "omg caring wife" and "I literally want to murder the entire world out of spite", with the awful flashback episode flipping the switch INSTANTLY between the two states. And that's true for Ironwood - there's no character arc. There's no actual genuine exploration of "road to hell is paved with good intentions", there's no moral conundrum. There's just a flip of the switch as plot demands. Its a Game of Thrones-esque situation where the writers wanted to do specific thing with the character but kind of forgot to do the reasonable build-up, so it just happens. THE BELLLLLLLLLS.

What I think should have happened is that Salem's stupid fortress of DOOM or relics or Cinder or Salem's Evil Troupe of Evil should have never played a role in Fall of Atlas. It should have been ALL Internal. Just Kingdom of Atlas imploding in on itself as consequence of Fall of Beacon and the worsening situation in the world. Make Atlas story arc ALL ABOUT power plays within Atlas, with different people having wildly different ideas on where to actually aim the army at and different characters having different ideas on how to bring back order to destabilized country. Just have the team be stuck in a situation that is few steps away from world war with different ways provided to solve it. In the end, lines are crossed and Atlas falls apart from it's own sense of self-importance, grandeur, paranoia, classism and nationalism and Ironwood, misguided and tragic, falls with the country he sacrificed everything for. The lead cast are left to wonder whether there was any other way to resolve this, but they'll never know. In this situation, willingly or unwillingly, they played the role of being the ones at the center of a Kingdom falling apart. What do they do now? Where do they go from here? Does each of them question actions that led them to this point in time? Do all of them arrive at the same conclusion?

I think to sell this its important to have Salem side to NEVER lift even a finger. The Story of Fall of Atlas is the story of division of humanity and Salem's side already did all they need to do with Beacon for that. Humanity are the ones that, as lyrics go, train their heroes and build their armies, and then with single moment, single event, they turn on each other and burn.