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cricket-of-the-hill · 8 months ago

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So what's the deal with Fiddleford McGucket? Why's he like that?

Fiddleford as a character is so FUN because he's so complicated and tragic and honestly a little pathetic. On one hand you have this absolutely brilliant scientist with the potential to have been the in universe Steve Jobs who figured out that the universe is a hologram and built an honest to betsy transdimensional portal (with Ford's help, yes, but let's be honest: as mathematically brilliant as Ford was, I think his intelligence laid more in the theoretical side of things, really doubt he could have actually built the portal himself).

On the other hand, we have this man who up and leves his FAMILY to chase after a college friend who calls him one day saying "hey, I'm out in Oregon building a portal to another dimension. Little help?" and he doesn't even think twice before being like "bet" and getting his ass to Oregon. And even if you take in the context clues that things weren't going well with his marriage before he left (as pieced together by the brilliant @divorcedfiddleford in this post), he still had his son and McGucket Computermajigs and he just sets all that aside for this guy, which... 😶

I am gonna write this whole post on the assumption that Fiddleford was in love with Ford, but look, even if that's the case it doesn't make any of his actions less unhinged. Break here, because the post gets kinda long 😶‍🌫️

So here's the thing: in the fandom, it's fun to think that Fidds knew about Bill and they had some sort of taunting rivalry/love triangle thing going on and that's really fun to mess with, but FIDDLEFORD HAD NO IDEA ABOUT BILL. Ford never told him! So even if Fidds leaves California thinking he's gonna have his hot girl summer/queer arthouse romcom where he reconnects with the love of his youth and they spend the summer working in this secluded house in the woods where they can finally live out their romance, what he actually gets is a fucking psychological horror thriller where the guy he loves and is kinda trapped with is either slowly going insane or straight up getting possessed.

Now, all that is 😵‍💫 enough, but it gets worse because instead of doing the normal person thing and getting the hell out of Dodge, Fiddleford stays. He continues to help Ford to build the portal despite how weird the other man is getting, he continues to go cryptid hunting even after the nightmare goblin almost eats him, even if Ford clearly doesn't appreciate the work he does (research assistant? Not even partner? Come on), and never reciprocates the kind of gestures Fidds has towards him (like the infamous double Christmas gift bonanza).

Here's where the duality of Fiddleford Hadron McGucket kicks in: the thing is that he is incredibly brave in some ways and obviously really smart but also kind of a coward and an idiot when it comes to his relationships with others. He'll hit Thee Krampus upside the head with his banjo one day to save his friend and run away to Oregon instead of discussing divorce with this wife the next. He will leave everything he knows to pursue this one guy, but he will never ever ever confess to feeling anything other than friendship towards him. He'll put up with Stanford's creepy as all hell behavior but will never confront him about it even as Ford loses more and more of himself into his project (so no little intervention not even to help this man he's giving so much up for). Like, what was he expecting to get out of all this? If he was never planning to confess to Ford or leave his wife, what was he going to do once the portal was completed? Just keep on bouncing between wherever Ford went next and his family? Did he really think his wife and son wouldn't mind him leaving them behind without so much as a thought?

Operating under the assumption that Fiddleford is a closeted queer guy from rural Deep Down South Hillbilly County Tennessee (said with love, I'm also from the south, but we all know what homophobia looks like here) during the '80s (height of the aids pandemic which would have made everything worse) one can maybe understand why Fiddleford is like that. Why he is so so so afraid and why he ultimately chooses to erase his memories rather than just go back to his family.

So picture this: you are in love with your best friend but you can't tell him 'cause best case scenario he leaves you out to dry and worst case scenario maybe someone finds your boots down by the river and lets your parents know (and we know Ford is sweet and fruity himself and with a thing for outcasts and would never. Fiddleford probably knows that himself, but let me tell you that when you grow up with that fear it goes deep. Because you've most likely seen people who are kind get absolutely bent out of shape when confronted with the mere idea of someone like you existing in their near vicinity). Eventually, you get married and have a son because that is what you were supposed to do all along and even though you love your son and maybe even love your wife everything feels wrong. They expect you to be something you are not, you can never let your guard down, never be yourself, not even in your own home. So then that call comes and it's like a golden thicket: you can leave, give it a rest for a little while, go see your friend, stretch out those inventing muscles.

As much as the fandom clowns him for it, I honestly don't even think he went out there with the intention of cheating (emotionally or otherwise). BUT I do think he was hoping something would happen. It's just that it all depended on Ford taking that first step because Fidds sure as hell wouldn't. And then Ford didn't because he was too busy doing the sin cos tan with his trigonometry homework, but if he had, we could have had a brokenback mountain situation on our hands, lads. Then Fiddleford could have just gone along with it, and done all sorts of mind parkour to convince himself that that's somehow less bad than "outright" cheating on his wife.

So he gets to the cabin, right? And maybe things are good for a little while, like when they were in college. Fiddleford lets loose a little, Ford is happy with the company, they're friends! And I get the sense that they're the kind of friends that mesh really well, like their energies really match. As much as the fandom paints Fiddleford like a sweet cinnamon roll, that man is also a freak. He's out here building psychotic post divorce revenge pterodactyl robots and drinking abducted cow milk just to see what it's like. He's a bit unhinged! He and Ford are the two people in the world that can be like "I think the universe is a hologram." "Cool! Let's prove it mathematically, bro" and "I want to build a portal to another dimension. Just cause." "Catching a ride to your place with my toolbox as we speak, buddy." (My own personal head cannon is that Fiddleford didn't really become such a shaky jelly until the nightmare goblin got him. Like, he was never as adventurous as Ford, but I think before that particular traumatizing event he was all right for it).

Anyways, things are good for a bit, but the real world is still out there. Fiddleford has to make trips home every now and then, and every time he comes back it seems like something is different. A little off. At first it's nothing big, just a smile a little sharper than usual, a coldness in a look, Ford calling him "Specs" where before he was always a variation of his name. Then it's pointed comments that Fidds chalks up to a lack of sleep (is Ford even sleeping at all? Because he could have sworn for the past three nights he he has appeared in the same place Fidds left him when he went to sleep). Then it's a flash of yellow eyes, a maniacal laugh that Ford never used to make before, spells where he seemingly forgets how to use his body (bumps into things, tries to drink soda with his eyes?). As time goes on it starts to become more and more obvious that something is seriously wrong with this friend. And things back home are just getting worse and worse, Emma May isn't happy about Fiddleford skipping town so often, Tate wont stop asking for him, and look, was Fiddleford even making money while he was with Ford? He gettin' paid? Is Emma May back home trying to bring home the bacon while virtually single parenting? (How was Ford even supporting himself while studying anomalies? I can't imagine there's a lot of grants for that.)

But Fiddleford can't leave his friend and he can't really own up to how much messier things are at home because of this whole thing. So he keeps coming back to Gravity Falls, where he also can't really face up to Ford and either demand a clear answer as to what is going on or try to get him some help (an exorcist, maybe). Because if he does say something and Ford decides that he doesn't want Fiddleford around asking questions he's gonna have to go back home where after the Christmas thing he's honestly not sure he's really wanted anymore, not really sure he deserves it if he still was. So he keeps on doing his thing, telling himself "this is fine 🙂," while he sits in a room on fire with a bill-possessed Ford hanging from the ceiling like a spider and an disapproving Emma May looking in through a window.

I think the portal incident was what finally opened his eyes to the reality of his situation, in an ironic way. He destroyed his relationship with his wife and left his son for nothing. Left his own dreams and aspirations aside just to find out that when push comes to shove his opinion and well-being matter so little to this man he was ready to break the laws of physics for. He can't stay with Ford, and he sure as hell can't go back home, because that would mean having to face that he's done burned down all his bridges. So where do you go from there? Let me tell you, if I had the chance to forget the lowest, most selfish, stupid thing I did for a person who didn't even notice it, I'd do it in a second.

#gravity falls #fiddleford mcgucket #fiddleford hadron mcgucket #stanford pines #bill cipher #fiddauthor #fordsquared #fordford #the tragic ballad of fiddleford mcgucket #he just tears me up man 🥲#this sounds kinda critical of Ford but I swear I really do love him too #if I lost the situationship with him to a triangle I would also go crazy and start a cult #ford pines

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thewertsearch · 1 month ago

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Ask Comp 13/04

@bladekindeyewear submitted: You've noticed something important: Everyone seems to have come down with the SAME items that John gave them on their birth meteors. That means that excluding some incredible shenanigans, the ectobiology that created the kids only happened ONCE, and we're unlikely to see some weird repeat. John did it. In his session. Before the Scratch. Have you noticed the problem yet? In the Trolls' session, all of the ectobiology was done by KARKAT. In a session we now know was a POST-SCRATCH one. p=4053:

The Pre-Scratch trolls were forced to invoke the Scratch to even be BORN. And Lord English is somehow responsible. And this is apparently Lord English's "calling card". Utterly terrifying.

Yup. English's 'already-hereness' applies to more than just his physical presence, it seems!

Anonymous asked: I believe I sent an ask some time ago, regarding my eagerness towards seeing you take on my favorite character. At the time, I noted that their introduction was still a ways off, but now the moment is just about at hand and I couldn't possibly be more thrilled. Happy blogging, and welcome to Act 6! ^u^

Thank you! You're presumably talking about one of the new Players, and their introduction has certainly been a lot of fun for me so far. For the first time in forever, we're getting a new set of protagonists!

@sanctferum asked: seems like nobody has mentioned it yet, but 10/25, the day Cascade came out (and one of Homestuck's arc numbers, with 1025 being what you get when adding 413 and 612 together), was christened "Gristmas" by the fandom. Intermission 2, meanwhile, was (very fittingly) a Halloween upd8. Act 6 started on 11/11/11, so the arc number there is various configurations of 1 or 11. Truly the most important thing to happen on 11/11/11 and let neither man nor tod say otherwise.

Gristmas is pretty great - and thank you, I'll keep an eye out for long strings of ones. I imagine that we'll be seeing one on Jane's Cruxtruder, at the very least.

Anonymous asked: I'm surprised that no one pointed out that Hussie describing the story of the Troll Ancestors as Fanfiction is actually an accurate accusation In-Universe. As after, Doc Scratch took the trolls' original story, and rewrote it into how he wanted it to go. Anonymous asked: If you think about it, since Scratch is responsible for Alternia being such a hellhole when it originally wasn't, it is technically his "troll fanfiction".

Oh, I like that. Scratch is, after all, both the instigator and the narrator of the Ancestors' fucked-up lives, which does indeed put him in a position akin to that of a fanfiction writer. This Scratch-as-author stuff has layers, huh?

@manorinthewoods asked: If it was Bec's put-Jade-to-bed instincts that caused her revival, then Vriska's abuse of Jade to practice her powers on humans was the reason Jade survived Act 5. ~LOSS (9/1/24)

Good point, actually - but fucking hell, don't tell her that. You already know how insufferable she'd be about it.

Anonymous asked: Unsure if it was simply not mentioned, but in case you missed it there are two other messages on Jane's computer: Submit and Cease Reproduction

So there are.

CEASE REPRODUCTION, in particular, makes a lot of sense, now that I think about it. After all, I doubt the Condesce actually wants to rule over humanity; instead, she probably wants to exterminate them, so that they can be replaced with a brand-new cohort of trolls.

@joyfulldreams asked: Detective Pony is absolutely a masterwork of fanfiction. It has the original version on AO3, an equally excellent podfic by NakedBee, and then the podfic was later adapted by NakedBee into a full feature-length film. It has basically Legend status and in some ways has been partially(???) canonized because of how widely regarded it is by the fandom at large to be Legit. There is also a similar fic called Theatre of Coolty, a fanfic written in the format of a play, which I believe was written by the same person who voice acted DS in the Detective Pony podfic (DuckFace, I think) which NakedBee adapted into a short film. Recommend watching Theatre of Coolty before touching Detective Pony, tbh, it's much shorter and more easily digestible. (Both are EXTREMELY DENSE TEXTS.) Also you probably shouldn't touch either until you've finished Act 6, unfortunately. Theatre of Coolty has a minor spoiler for something pretty late in Act 6, and while Detective Pony doesn't TECHNICALLY have any REAL spoilers as-is (the movie has visuals that could be considered more spoilery), the entire thing is basically a deep dive into DS's character and you really ought to understand DS better before getting into it. (You don't even know his name yet!) @creamcloud0 asked:I don't know if it's what you were implying in your tags but i would absolutely LOVE seeing your dissection of Detective Pony. @heliotropopause asked: since we're doing this, The Serendipity Gospels should now also be spoiler-free, though i haven't double-checked, nor read the unfinished act three that's only available on tumblr. and yeah, very much seconded on sonnetstuck's Detective Pony- it'd spoil DS's name if you read it right now, along with maybe one other thing that'll get revealed soon, but it should be fine to read quite soon, and is one of the absolute best fanworks i've ever read. there's also a very high quality hours-long puppet theatre video adaptation of it made by someone else, but the visuals there contain spoilers up to pretty much the very end of the comic. ben-guy asked: The detective pony fic is absolutely still full of spoilers, if only for later kid bro characterization @pechikka asked: Im gonna be real. I don't even think of Detective Pony as a fanwork. To me it's just part of Homestuck's extended quasicanon to the same degree the epilogues are, and a crucial part of how I read kid bro as a character. It's THAT spot on to the characters and themes of Homestuck itself and it's a fascinating read. For obvious reasons tho that does means I absolutely cannot recommend anyone read it until kid bro has been introduced and has had a long while to be established as a character. @publicuniversalworstie asked: Seconding the Detective Pony recommendation as hard as I can, but I'd recommend saving it for after you finish the main comic at least. It's essentially a D-Stri character study. @hussianphilosopher submitted: There's really only one Hussie quote that matters.

(Thirding or fourth-ing or fifth-ing the Detective Pony recs, though I would argue that you need to wait a while before you read it - you need to meet teen-Bro and have seen quite a bit of him to actually get what it's going for.) Hussie's commentary is really interesting and deserves to be read if you like the comic, but the most recent and (in my opinion) most enlightening parts pretty much assume that you've read the Epilogues. If and when you're ever interested it's all wrapped up in the Homestuck Unofficial Collection.

I'm moving Detective Pony up on the list, because this all sounds amazing. We already know from the Auto-Responder conversation that Kid Bro is a pretty weird dude, so a deep dive into his character via a horse girl parody sounds like a hell of a time.

As for The Serendipity Gospels, if I can vet it completely for spoilers, it might finally be time for my first fanfiction analysis. After all, I've been waiting for this one for years.

Anonymous asked: How many doomed timelines have Sally and Sahlee made from their continued insistence on trying to break the Incipisphere even after seeing how utterly fucked they'd be from attempting that?

Less than you'd think, honestly. They'd definitely make a few, especially in the first days of the session, but once they start to understand how Doomed Timelines worked, they'd probably try to ensure their experiments were less destructive.

That's not to say they'd stop trying to violate the Alpha Timeline - but it does mean they'd be smarter about it, potentially abusing systems like the Scratch to create some additional non-doomed timelines. I can't tell you where their experiments would lead, though - not until I'm more familiar with Sburb's deeplore myself.

@elkian asked: Obviously Jake types on the coat sleeves, Power Glove-style xD @thelegendofgreg-2 asked: "Jake, for god's sake. How are you typing on a coat?" I am choosing to believe right now as of this very moment that every single one of the rainbow flashing boxes on the lining of his coat is a teeny tiny computer screen, and he has a keyboard hidden under one of the arms of his coat It's very practical

I do think that the sleeves are the best choice here - but I also like the idea that his clawed slipper is an integral part of the setup, with buttons on the soles that he needs to shift his weight to press. A shift key, perhaps?

This thing's just so awesomely impractical. Grandma Jade was a real one.

@library-seraph asked: "Michael Cera's a strange choice for one of these portraits. He's neither a harlequin, nor a gentleman, and thus doesn't really fit Dad's normal aesthetic." This is a fandom injoke, actually. So many people joked that the guy wearing the groucho glasses in the egbert house's hallway looked like michael cera despite it not being him, that Hussie decided to shout out the meme

Ah, that makes sense.

Sometimes, I wonder how many of the comic's 'confusing' moments are actually fandom in-jokes that I don't have the context to understand. To get that context, I need these messages, so keep 'em coming!

Anonymous asked: it truly is like, the greatest jape of all that your blog popularity is coinciding with the tumblr fanbase popularity of homestuck

No kidding? I wasn't aware there was an uptick in the fandom's Tumblr presence, but I'm happy to hear it!

The last thing I want to do is finish the comic, stroll into the fandom, and discover that it died before I was ready to engage with it. Not that that wouldn't be kind of funny.

@elkian asked: Possibly one of the funniest things about the Alpha Reboot here is finding out Jane, of her familysquad if not the humans as a whole (depending on how sincere Rose was about her taxidermy Jaspers rage) who has a problem with embalment. Everyone else has been involved in the taxidermy or other preservation of some kind of corpse; I was gonna exclude Bro but then remembered the horsebib.

Jane, Homestuck's primary cast is all weird as fuck. You need to get with the program.

@abysswarlock asked: AR to Jake: “Here’s your problem”

Jake's response:

Anonymous asked: while not that big of a deal on the grand scheme of things, the revelation that rose gets her eloquence and wordiness from her father is perhaps my favorite revelation in all of hs.

I like it too! Based on what Bro was like with Dave, I expect his kidsona to be the strong, silent type, but - assuming he's as chatty as AR - I really like Hussie's decision to make him a yapper.

It feels right, somehow - and I hope it means that he's the one who wrote this session's GameFAQs guide.

Anonymous asked: One of my favorite bits of the Auto-responder's replys to Jake is the % of how close the responses are to Bro's goes down as Jake catches on, dude is having the time of his life messing with him

This guy really is hilarious. He's honestly going to be a pretty tough act for the real Little Bro to follow.

Anonymous asked: ive sent an ask like this in the early days. but il say i have never been so extraordinarily possessed by a 2014 era fan of homestuck in its UPD8 era than i have been waiting all these days for the D Stri inteoduction chatlog. for reasons i am almost betting many may have expressed in this inbox already Anonymous asked: Every update you post convinces me harder that you're going to absolutely love kid bro Anonymous asked: So fucking excited for you to start analyzing kid bro it has me twirling my hair. I barely even have enough hair to twirl this is a high compliment. So excited

...that said, people have pretty high hopes for the impression he's going to make!

I'm sure that whatever vibe I get from him, one thing is already clear: he's clearly recognized as the post-Scratch kid, the Vriska of his team. His introduction is getting the most hype of any character outside of Hivebent.

Anonymous asked: "Though we adore Him we shall never enjoy His beauteous croak. We spill our blood on acres of black and white so they may cross the yellow yard. At last in Skaia's reflection through broken glass He may find the pond in which he's meant to squat." - A Prospitan book in [S] Seer: Descend.

Hey, you're right - this passage does make a lot more sense in retrospect. I guess the implication here is that Jade's frog might still be the designated Genesis Frog in the post-Scratch session...

This gels well with Umbra's earlier statement implying that Jade & co. will be slotted into the new session as Players. It also means the post-Scratch humans might not need a Space Player, since Jade can still fill that role as before.

...yeah, it's looking more and more likely that Jane's team will wield completely different Aspects to their predecessors. I honestly prefer this to the alternative, since it'll allow us to get up close and personal with four Aspects that we've previously only seen in the abridged Hivebent session - or, potentially, four Aspects we've never seen at all.

Anonymous asked: "Poppop in the attic" is a reference to the TV show Arrested Development. In one episode, Michael Cera's character is harboring his fugitive grandfather in the attic of his home. He attempts to inform his dad but he misinterprets "poppop" as a euphemism for sex or masturbation. @skelekingfeddy asked: ‘the mere fact you call it that tells him youre not ready’ is just reference to arrested development lol. basically the kid michael cera plays is hiding his grandpa/‘poppop’ in the attic away from the feds. later he tries to tell his dad but due to earlier misunderstandings he thinks ‘poppop’ is actually referring to having sex with his girlfriend. and so he tells michael cera ‘the mere fact you call making love poppop tells me youre not ready’ the auto-responder's line ‘since we've already shot that wad's eventuality on so many dry runs of flustered ambivalence’ is also an arrested development reference, albeit a much more subtle one (the original line is just ‘i prematurely shot my wad on what was supposed to be a dry run if you will’) @random2908 asked: Maybe others mentioned this already, but the stuff about Poppop and the attic is a quote from the tv show Arrested Development. There's a bit where Poppop is hiding in the attic, only Michael Cera knows he's there, and his father is trying to give him a sex talk and misinterprets "poppop" as a euphemism. It's been a while, but IIRC Hussie makes a few Arrested Development references in early Act 6; fans speculated at the time that they must have just watched the show for the first time.

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Ah. I've never seen Arrested Development myself, so it's kind of wild to see a teenage Michael Cera for the first time. People say he has a baby face now, but he actually was a baby, here.

Anonymous asked: The dads aren't clones their eyes are completely different colors :P

Turns out one of them's left-handed, and that's literally the only difference.

@wickedsick asked: RoLal my beloLal @morganwick asked: "Huh, we're approaching the halfway mark of the comic and I haven't met Roxy yet. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's Mom Lalonde's name, but it hasn't come up. How could she make such an impact that I'd have heard her name before starting Homestuck despite only really appearing in half- oh. That's how." @abundantchewtoys asked: You try to control yourself and not overhype Roxy, but the S-tier on your tierlist… it beckons. @necrowyrm asked: So hyped for you to get to know Roxy, the greatest character in homestuck by a mile @elkian asked: God I'm so excited for you to meet Roxy. I'm pretty sure you'll love her for multiple reasons.

I can't wait! Like I said, I think she's very likely to be one of my faves. Hackers play with with an unfair advantage in the Sally Sweepstakes.

@manorinthewoods submitted: https://www.tumblr.com/darks-arts/757253456235053056/got-inspired-by-this-post-n-made-a-new-troll?source=share ~LOSS (1/15/25)

Don't get it twisted - this is who the Condesce picks as her VP.

@mrjocrafter asked: Any Bro Strider (and to some extent every Strider) analysis needs to be tempered by the acknowledgement that that's just what Texas is like. Like, one time I saw someone hold up a self-driving taxi at sword point. Texas is just like that.

Apart from a three-day childhood trip to New York City, the USA is a closed book to me - but I've heard enough wild shit about Texas that I don't think you're kidding.

@carcinogeneticist-writes-fanfic submitted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuNgQEWgjwk Submitted for your approval: a full orchestra cover of Sburban Jungle. Possibly my favorite fan work of one of my favorite homestuck songs. Really captures that epic feel of the original song.

Dang. This fire burns hotter than the Green Sun.

@dedicatedfollower467 asked: i'm sure lots of people will have told you this, OR you will have figured it out yourself by the time you read this, but where DNA uses guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine to represent information, its counterpart, RNA, actually uses a base called uracil in place of thymine. Meaning that uranianUmbra manages to both break the troll/kids naming pattern AND fit in it, in a slightly different way. UwU Anonymous asked: Concerning UU: Uracil (U) is a nucleotide that replaces Thymine (T) in RNA, which makes UU an -- at least in theory -- valid base pair. Compare this to how their chat symbol is a caduceus, and the constellation Ophiucus (traditionally, Apollo battling a pair of serpents) is sometimes considered the thirteenth Zodiacal sign. Anonymous asked: Fun Biochemistry Fact: (Almost) All the players using a combination of GCAT in their names is a reference to the 4 amino acids found in DNA (guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine). The exception is John (EB), but who originally used GT only to change due to the trolls' interference. However, RNA, which 'reads' DNA to perform biological functions, uses Uracil (U) instead of thymine. I hope this helps your theorizing about UU! @3dgftw asked: belated congratulations on making it to act 6! from biologist to coder- the letter “U” is almost as important as GCAT in biology, and for a related reason! while G, C, A, and T are the most common nucleic acids, they’re not the only ones around! uracil (U) replaces T when RNA is transcribed, and this substitution is one of the reasons why it’s so unstable, comparatively. that, and the fact that RNA is a single stranded polymer, while DNA is double-stranded. it’s quite the headache for me- sometimes it feels like my RNA will degrade if I look at it wrong!

Huh. So the pattern arguably does still hold, for now - but since uracil is a component of RNA, rather than DNA, there's still an implication that UU is 'different' from our GCAT heroes in some fundamental way. What the hell is up with this girl?

Anonymous asked: The symbol that was similar to the Rod of Asclepius is the Caduceus, the symbol of Hermes (who I think is Asclepius' father?). Interestingly enough, the symbols are often confused with each other, which has led to medical organisations using the Caduceus instead of the Rod. I'm sure you already know, but if you don't, Hermes was the Messenger of the Gods, and patron of a lot of things, most notably travelers and thieves. Anonymous asked: Caduceus anon here. Small correction on my last ask, Asclepius was the son of Apollo, not Hermes. @likelyvampirical asked: Although both have been used in the medical profession, that symbol is actually the Caduceus, a symbol of Hermes, rather than the Rod of Asclepius. Although, the origin of the use of the Caduceus as a medical symbol is also thought to be mistaken symbology, so I suppose it's fitting.

It's possible that Hussie intended it to be the symbol for medicine, and simply got the reference wrong, but it's impossible to say for sure.

The thing certainly looks more like a caduceus to me, but I don't know what it would mean for UU to be Hermes-themed. Maybe she's a Player, and Hermes is her Denizen?

@skelekingfeddy asked: ok, some context on UU: basically, for more than a year the fandom had been theorizing about a SECRET 13TH TROLL. it started out as people pointing out that there were 4 kids and 12 trolls, so a 13th extra troll would make it so that it’s 4/13. then people realised, oh shit, there actually is a 13th extra zodiac named Ophiucus (one of the proposed symbols for which is the caduceus)! people even decided that their handle’s initials would be UU (because of Uracil, the fifth nucleotide base). the theory got so big, Toby even made a theme for UU as a bonus track in his Alternia solo album… …and now, in late 2011, here she is in the comic itself!!! she has the name, the zodiac symbol, everything. what’s her deal? you’ll just have to wait and see :)

That's good context to have, but I still have no idea what the implications are. It really doesn't feel like the trolls could have had a secret thirteenth Player stashed away somewhere, and we already know the pre-Scratch Alternian session was a twelve-Player one, too. Curiouser, curiouser and curiouser.

@aceotaku asked: random: it's only natural PM and Jack Noir were fated to be archenemies of sorts. After all, what is a dog's natural enemy according to cartoons without any real reason?

lmao, does this mean Jack's going to defeat PM by biting her ankle off?

@spiddermen asked: fun homestuck fact: shortly after homestuck ended, hussie came out as clowngender. everyone assumed this was just a bad joke for a while but it was not, hussie is nonbinary and one of the things I like about this second half of homestuck is that you can see them starting to critique the idea of gender roles a lot which I think is interesting. once they stopped working on homestuck they wrote psycholonials which explores these ideas and their thoughts on online society a lot more, it's really good

I heard about this recently, yeah! Apparently the official What Pumpkin press releases have switched to they/them for Hussie - who, if I'm not mistaken, uses any pronouns. Kind of based, honestly.

I'm surprised that this hasn't come up before, given how much the comic likes to delve into gender. I guess I just don't talk about things too much from an out-of-universe perspective, except to offer Doylist explanations for otherwise confusing plot developments.

@aceotaku asked: Your theory of Doc Scratch's Omniscience being based around meta knowledge of the author is incredibly clever and interesting and works really well especially with what we see of Scratch and Hussie after you made that theory. I also wanna bring up how he's my favourite villain in homestuck (I like his dark charisma and tendency to manipualte people while being upfront about his motives, goals and nature which i find unique) and am saddned by the many livebloggers who seem to genuinely hate him.

Oh yeah, I think Doc Scratch is great.

I kind of love to hate him, if that makes sense. He's totally awful, of course - but he's awful in a really fascinating way, that I haven't often seen in fiction. Above all, he's always entertaining to read.

@abibeur asked: One thing I like with the Betty Crocker propaganda is the obvious They Live reference, even if I didn't get it at my first reading. Jane Nada would be really funny… Even if there's another likely candidate to play a character with cool shades!

I picked up on the reference to They Live - but since I haven't seen the movie, I'm not really sure about the exact mechanics of the movie's iconic propaganda-revealing shades. One for the watch pile, for sure.

@abibeur asked: "Apparently his goofy lil' wave is a universal constant." This reminds me of another master of the wind…

Now that's a real Breath Player.

@calcamity asked: im rereading your liveblog for fun since youve reached act 6 (which features my favorite character) and i just have to say you have a great understanding of the characters. all of your pesterchum screenshot bits are (terminally funnily) in character. you could write some baller hs fanfic

Well, thank you very much!

I'm definitely going to at least write a fic involving my 'sonas, when I'm done. If I do have other ideas, though, I could easily end up writing some more canon-adjacent fiction, too. We'll see!

Anonymous asked: is jake english in the newtonverse called hass, just to tie this whole joke together? maybe the newtonverse is where the felt is the varnish instead, and hes like… hass brusher or whatever

Hass Brusher is too good. That one's 100% canon to the Newtonverse now.

@carcinogeneticist-writes-fanfic asked: New reader here who just caught up, congrats on making it to the EOA5! What was your favorite song of the four featured in Cascade? Savior of the Dreaming Dead is a top-tier personal favorite of mine, not just here or even in its album but in the entire Homestuck discography, and one of the songs I was most hoping would make it into the comic proper (not that you have to worry about that, I can def respect not wanting to hear any of the songs 'out of context' beforehand). Good luck with Act 6!

It probably was Savior of the Dreaming Dead, to be honest. It really sells how triumphant Jade's big moment was.

I also loved the section of the track that played during the Perfect Mendicant's transformation. The scene was already epic, but those chords knocked it into twelfth gear.

@krixwell asked: Curiously, as its card was stamped in the punch designix and used to alchemize a worn old hat, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias was "Oh no, not again."

Oh, that is a great pull. I need to reread the Hitchhiker's Guide series again sometime soon.

Anonymous asked: I never made the connection that Aradia's voices could have been coming from the Haidmaid before, but that fits so perfectly. I'm just imagining her summoning up a bunch of ghosts to constantly haunt Aradia and whisper exactly what she "needs" to hear.

That's pretty much what I'm thinking! I don't know if she'd have revealed herself in person, but she was absolutely behind that particular plot.

@aliceoverzero asked: I discovered this blog just before New Years and it's been an incredible binge-read. You've probably noticed by now that Homestuck is one of the most extreme cases of "you can never repeat the experience of reading it for the first time" due to the structures of its mysteries, and this was further amplified by the original reader experience including maddening wild speculation in between each wait for new pages to drop. Your deliberate pace with this liveblog and your willingness to slam the brakes to hyperfixate on details is the closest a returning reader can get to recapturing that feeling, and it's been a good reminder for me about why this comic has been so impactful to me. Thank you for doing this. Now that you've cleared Act 5, it's worth bringing up that while not present in the original panel where the declaration is made, the "most important character in homestuck" moment is expanded in Cascade to show that it includes both Lil Cal and Gamzee. This has prompted a lot of debate about which of them is actually being referred to as the most important character. Also now it's possible to talk about my favorite detail about Doc Scratch. His repeated use of the statement "I am an excellent host" has finally revealed its double-meaning. @leo60228 asked: so, what do you think about the alternate angle we saw the "The most important character in Homestuck fondly regards the miracle of a new beginning." panel from? @elkian asked: You may have received such a comment already, but during the "most important character in Homestuck" scene, Lil Cal was in Gamzee's lap. Either way you slice it, it's correct, but it's interesting to speculate which is meant. (Though ig one also requires considering Cal as a CHARACTER which is a bit unsettling…) Anonymous asked: Jade's laboratory falling seems to mirror Lord English's arrival. Also, in [S] Cascade you can see that Lil' Cal is also watching this happen. Does that make him the most important character in homestuck? @morganwick asked: In light of Cascade and Intermission 2, you might want to consider whether, now that you've seen the "miracle of a new beginning" moment in fuller context, the "most important character in Homestuck" might not have been referring to Gamzee after all…

Thank you!

And... uh, hang on a second. Do you mean what I think you mean?

...ah, fuck.

#asks #full liveblog #act 6 #fifteen minutes‚ she said

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yanderes-galore · 3 months ago

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I feel like Sabo is not appreciated enough in the One Piece fandom compared to his brothers, so can you write a yandere concept for him?

I think it's because many viewed him as a replacement for Ace in the story... Which I understand, but also think is unfair to say. 😔

Yandere! Sabo Concept

Pairing: Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Manipulation, Overprotective behavior, Clingy behavior, Possessive behavior, Violence, Oblivious/Delusional behavior, Stalking, Gaslighting, Jealousy, Blood, Dubious/Forced relationship.

Sabo's described as nice and diplomatic compared to Ace.

He's always adores freedom and exploration and is incredibly loyal to those he cares about.

Despite having noble heritage, Sabo doesn't think of himself as one.

Towards Luffy he's shown to be protective despite also being reckless.

I imagine he'd be a similar way with his obsession, too.

Sabo works with the Revolutionary Army who took him in and has been dedicated to the task of taking down the World Government.

He seems like he'd be a total sweetheart if he loved someone romantically.

He isn't very experienced in romance....

He's been more focused on working on rebellion than anything.

Even when he regains his memories, he's still unsure about romance.

Despite this I doubt he's as clueless as Luffy.

He knows more about it but never experienced it.

Sabo would be protective more than possessive, most of the ASL trio are.

Although I can also see Sabo becoming jealous.

Again, unlike Luffy, he'd understand why he's jealous and acknowledge the feeling as jealousy.

Sabo seems like he'd be shy when around his crush.

Luffy's blunt or clueless while Ace is confident...

Yet Sabo finds himself stuttering, face heating as he tries to communicate his thoughts.

He'd be so nice to his obsession.

He tries to be a gentleman, no doubt due to his noble genes showing through.

He wants to protect you and show you the world...

He may even ask you to join the Revolutionary Army just to have more time with you.

You may decline at first but he tries to be patient.

Compared to his brothers he seems more... soft?

He's nice and would no doubt try to talk out problems with his obsession.

Even if it includes his more concerning behavior....

Sabo lives for his obsession's smile.

He wants you to agree with his cause and in return he wants to defend you with the entirety of his being.

Plus, whenever he meets Luffy again, he no doubt introduces you to his younger brother.

No doubt calling you his lover even if you aren't.

There's probably some times he chooses to be oblivious to his behavior.

For example, what do you mean by stalking?

You think him keeping you safe is stalking?

He doesn't mean it :( (Lie.)

Also, kidnapping? He's never done that!

Pestering you to join the Revolutionary Army with him so he can keep an eye on you before you cave isn't the same thing in his mind.

What do you mean you aren't dating?

Did he not make the signs obvious enough?

What about the gifts? Or the affection?

Do you not love him? Maybe he needs to try harder?

Plus, he's just borrowing your jacket or your chapstick.

It's not weird.

Essentially, Sabo seems like he'd gaslight the both of you to excuse his behavior.

He just wants to be your sweet and protective boyfriend.

Is that too much to ask from his sweetheart?

The only "good" thing is the fact he does try to be good.

He really does love his obsession.

He doesn't view them as a pet or anything like that... and he tries to give them freedom.

Of course... He has to be there too but... close enough?

Sabo will always give you affection.

He kisses you, cuddles you...

If you want to try anything, he'll do it.

He waits until you're ready for most things... at least when you're in his grasp he does.

He doesn't like to rush you... and he tries to keep himself in check...

Yet he still happens to get jealous.

The good thing about Sabo is he isn't going to be... murderous when jealous.

Ace and Luffy tend to turn to violence easily, Sabo will try to be reasonable.

If he feels jealous, he'll try to intercept things.

He'll step in with a smile, flashing his rank while he wraps his arms around your waist.

He puts on a show, making it obvious he has his eyes on you.

He may even say he's your boyfriend who's just checking things out.

It's a subtle threat, an attempt to get the other person to back off.

If that doesn't work, he'll simply escort you out of the room.

He needs your attention, after all.

Sabo may get violent if he feels he has to.

If someone isn't backing off, he'll distract you before smashing his pipe into their head, or somewhere else less lethal if he's feeling merciful.

He's quick to grimace at the sight before rushing to clean himself.

If they're lucky it will just be a concussion.

When he has the Flame Flame Fruit, he might even burn others to teach them a lesson.

While it's tempting to say Sabo will brand you with such power, I think he's nicer than that.

He'd never hurt you on purpose.

Not... knowingly, at least.

He'd much rather prove he loves you with kisses and cuddles.

Maybe dates if he can find the time.

Sabo insists you two share a room, maybe even a hammock or bed.

He's... comforted when you're near.

Plus, you'll enjoy his higher body temperature, right?

You'll never be cold.

Sabo tries not to be too lethal of a yandere.

He's definitely just as dangerous as his two brothers... but more controlled.

First and foremost, he wants to be a gentleman to you.

After that, most likely away from your eyes, he'll work on removing those he feels will either hurt you or take you from him...

He's lost family before, but he isn't going to lose you too... Even if it requires blood to taint his image in your eyes.

#yandere one piece #yandere one piece x reader #yandere sabo #yandere sabo x reader

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inbarfink · 2 years ago

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So when I wrote down that Big Undertale Meta Post about how Sans probably doesn’t remember RESETs at all and why that’s cool - I got a lot of responses to the tune of ‘that’s probably canon but I’m still gonna enjoy Sans Remember fics because of the angst’. And, well... first I want to emphasize that those are very good and correct responses! Like ‘I acknowledge might or might not be in the text but I am also gonna explore alternative ideas Because I Enjoy Them’ is a Good Damn Position to have! Transformative Fandom is Transformative on purpose! Engage with the text and it’s various analyses but don’t let it chain your creativity or fun!

It’s just that… all of the people saying that they prefer Sans Remembering ‘for the Angst’ make me think that maybe folks are kinda ignoring the incredible angst potential of Sans NOT remembering.

My original post focused on how cool it is that Sans manages to be so on-top-of-things even though he doesn’t remember anything - but let’s not ignore the fact that this situation is also grim as shit.

Through some mysterious super-science or whatever, Sans has managed to discover that his timeline is being RESET and altered constantly (before the Player came along, Flowey had already managed to basically 100% the entire Underground) and he has no memory of what's going on and what exactly is being altered.

He knows he might’ve gone through the same day over and over and over again thousand times but he’s simply not aware of it. It’s all the helplessness and lack of forward momentum of a classic timeloop and none of the benefits of memorizing occurrences or acquiring extra information. That’s exactly the thing that drove him into his depressive spiral.

That line always strikes me. It’s like… Sans suspects that without the meddling of capricious immortal time gods, he’d be a much happier and motivated person. But he doesn’t know for sure, because he can’t remember how he was in some distant ‘original timeline’. He is essentially fighting to avenge a version of himself that might not even be real.

Like, yes, it is very impressive and badass how well Sans trained himself to notice every tiny little hint that might indicate that a RESET happened - but it’s impressive because the deck is stacked so heavily against him. And it is very impressive and badass how Sans managed to turn his weaknesses into strengths during his Boss Battle - but it’s impressive because these are usually huge weaknesses. Trying to work to solve a timeloop that you can only infer is going on through context clues is quite a hopeless and desperate mission!

Another bit in the Sans fight that I often think about is his unique reaction if you kill him and then RESET to Fight him again.

With how skilled he is at reading expressions, Sans probably knows what that ‘weird expression’ means, he knows the Player killed him once before and is here to try again. And yet he still goes along with the same attack plan he has, the one he knows killed him in that previous timeline. Why? Because he doesn’t know where the flaw in his plan was exactly, he can’t even begin to guess. So he has no choice but to go along with the plan he knows did kill him, because that’s the only thing he has.

You know, the thing about Sans, is that he always plays his cards very close to his chest. It’s very hard to tell what exactly he’s thinking. That’s probably why so many people do believe he remembers RESET. If any non-Flowey character remembered RESETs, only Sans would be remotely able to hide it so well. But for me? It makes me wonder how much of his Troll who Knows Too Much persona is a bit of an act as well.

You know, Sans’ deduction requires some keen observational skills - does he ever second-guess his conclusions? Living on constant high-alert that something has been reversed or that someone knows something they shouldn’t requires fostering a lot of paranoia, and that can’t be healthy for him. Is he ever overcome with doubt on whatever something was really an indication of a timeline RESET or not? How does he feel when he realizes something horrible happened on a previous timeline (for example, his brother dying) but he doesn’t know about the context to feel sure that he can stop it from happening again?

I also think about it in terms of his relationship to Papyrus in general. Sans tends to hide so many things from Papyrus, especially in timelines where the Player is particularly kill-happy...

In part it’s about his perception that Papyrus’ kindness and pacifism is born from naïveté and thus the only way to preserve it is to hide the cruelty and harshness of the world from him (Undyne also does that). But also, with the paranoia and helplessness Sans lives in every day - is it any wonder that he might believe that ignorance is bliss?

I do truly think it’s beautiful how fandom can experiment with cool non-canon ideas! There are probably so many great emotional angsty ideas tied up to Sans remembering RESETs! I just feel it’ll be a shame if people ignore just how dire and depressing Sans’ canon situation also is!

#undertale #ut #utdr #sans #sans undertale #sans ut #undertale analysis

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insomiaepisode · 2 months ago

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Unpopular Opinion: Mark's feelings about Sinclair and Darkwing make total sense for him to have. They aren't just pieces in a hypothetical thought experiment for him. Sinclair nearly killed someone who's now a friend to him and kidnapped Mark's BEST FRIEND.

Darkwing is way more redeemable but Mark was left out of the loop on that one, after Cecil TOLD him to bring him in. He was completely blindsided, felt like his trust was betrayed, and blew up. Maybe if Cecil had TRIED to ease Mark into the idea of rehabilitation in the first place, or just explain his points any time earlier, things might have gone better.

It's a completely understandable to want someone that harmed you or someone close to you to never see the light of day again. How many people do you know that would go "oh yeah you mutilated corpses and combined a human with robotics against their i will and kidnapped one of my friends, but they have you doing the same thing with DEAD SOLDIERS now, so I guess you must be a good person."

(Using corpses as weapons is so disgusting and I doubt Cecil asked Sinclair to look for a way to make it all robotic.)

As for the point about Mark being more willing to forgive his dad that people use as a gotcha... like ofc he is. that's his dad. People's parents hit them all the time and they still love them and stay in contact. People's kids will commit horrible crimes but they'll still love them and defend them. It's not necessarily right but it happens often because that's how we are. People make excuses for people they love. We forgive people we love more easily. Mark wants to have hope for his Dad, because that's his Dad.

People really don't account for how young Mark is. He's like 19 (and the general consensus in the fandom is that his aging likely slows after he got his powers) and has experienced so much mayhem and death in an incredibly personal way. He has so much responsibility to be Earth's greatest hero and it's gotta feel like all that work means nothing when things like that happen.

Of course he wants to be against murder, "heroes" don't do that. Of course he's not expecting Cecil to start working with the bad guys. He grew up in a world with Omni-Man and now he has to live up to the hero part of his Dad's legacy and not the villain part. And in that world, they didn't need Cecil's contingencies.

I'm not saying Mark's perfect and should never be criticized, but dear god. People are trying to hold him accountable like he's a real person. The weird takes I see on tiktok are the reason I should've never told that app I watched that show

#invincible #mark grayson #cecil stedman #cecil invincible #invincible series #invincible season 3 #invincible show #invincible s3 #unpopular opinion #unpopular thoughts

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miraculouslbcnreactions · 3 months ago

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A friend started watching Miraculous a couple of weeks ago; he was curious, and I accidentally sold it by spoiling him S5's finale. "Oh! I really enjoy the twist when the bad guy wins!" he said... I swear I tried to save him!

Anyway, he went through the honeymoon phase with S1 and S2. Now that he has watched half of S3 (btw, in our country, both Disney+ and Netflix DO NOT have the episodes in order, save for each season's 1st one and the finales), he went on a rant on Kwamibuster saying "c'mon! So, Marinette can hold all the trinkets without any consequence, why they do that?! Is a nice stand alone chapter, but there is no great consequence!" I just told him "welcome to the fandom!" and he went "OMG! I turned to the dark side!"

He still has Gabriel on a 8.5/10 scale, since he finds saving his wife as a noble if twisted reason to turn villian. Though he doesn't understand why Gabriel found Lila useful at the end of Oni-chan. I... don't have the heart to tell him about Chat Blanc nor Gabriel's later actions.

Were S1 and S2 really the best of Miraculous? I remember enjoying S3, but now hearing his fresh pov, I'm starting to have my doubts about when it all went to worse.

I was also relatively late coming to the fandom, so I got to see seasons one to three all in one go. I watched them over a series of a few weeks and my memory of that process is this: I thought season one was mediocre with a handful of truly bad episodes, but the premise was a lot of fun and had real potential. I started reading fanfiction after watching the few episodes because I love identity shenanigan romances and I wanted to see people tell this one without being held back by the show's format and intended audience. This is probably the only reason I finished season one. I didn't like the show so much as I thought it was good enough to watch so I could fully understand the fanfic.

Origins is where my opinion changed. It was legitimately good and even felt like a soft reboot for Alya, Adrien, and Chloe. I thought this indicated that the first season had done really well and so the show had been cleared to have a true overarching plot and serialized elements in the coming seasons.

Season two initially seemed to back that up with the Chloe stuff and Marinette meeting Fu, but then Queen Bee happened. That's the moment when I realized the show was never going to live up to its potential. It was incredibly disappointing to see Chloe go from finding the bee to revealing herself on national television within a few minutes. That is the least interesting way you could possibly play her finding the bee. I have referred to this choice as the canary in the coal mine before and I stand by that. If they couldn't handle something as tried and true as a mean girl redemption or do something interesting with Chloe finding the bee, then we were not in for a good time.

The introduction of Carapace just further confirmed that read. Nino wasn't carefully chosen for his miraculous. He was just in the right place at the right time and got the best miraculous for the situation. Chloe getting the bee felt more fitting and she wasn't even chosen for it! She just got to keep using it for some reason even though identity reveals were supposed to get you benched. It was weird and was also another warning sign of things to come. Identity reveals and their consequences would just become more and more confusing as the show went on.

While all of these things were disappointing, I don't fault anyone for being willing to keep watching because it wasn't all bad. Season two showed us that the show was going to suck from a long-form perspective, but it could deliver solid short-form content. Your friend put it really well:

It's a nice stand alone chapter, but there is no great consequence!

The early seasons of Miraculous had a lot of fun standalone chapters that had no greater consequence. Disappointing for those who wanted a serious story, but you don't need to tell a serious story to be good. If the show had stuck to a more lighthearted tone and just put out disjointed, but fun mini-stories, then it would have been fine. Not amazing, but serviceable. An endless series of writing prompts that don't really fit together, but that allow for a ton of fun fan content as people pick and choose which episodes to play with. I would have still had issues with some of those episodes, but because they didn't actually connect, I would have just shrugged and focused on the stuff that was fun. In fact, that's what I was doing for the first four seasons! There's a reason this blog didn't exist until mid season five even though I've had issues with the show since season one.

For example, does Chat Blanc technically ruin the love square by establishing that Adrien's love for Marinette isn't strong enough to keep him from killing her? Sure, but when it was just a random what-if episode, I could ignore it as one-off bad writing. Season four then chose to have Chat Blanc show up in Marinette's nightmare and also featured Marinette promoting Alya instead of Chat Noir, leading me to assume that Marinette was keeping Chat Noir at arms because of Chat Blanc. This changed how I viewed Chat Blanc. That episode suddenly mattered to the entire show and wasn't a one-off thing I could ignore.

The official word is that Chat Blanc had nothing to do with the season four conflict, but that's really not clear in the actual text to the point where I almost want to call BS. Why did you give Marinette a Chat Blanc nightmare if he doesn't matter to her mental state? That makes no sense!

Even if we embrace that official word, Chat Blanc is still not a one-off episode. It apparently haunts Adrien and kept him from the season five final even though Adrien never actually learned about Chat Blanc, which is frankly even more damning than my initial read of season four. It's now super official that Adrien's love for Marinette isn't enough to save the day and I'm not interested in a show that's sticking to that choice and repeating it ad nauseum (Chat Blanc, Ephemeral, and the season five ending). The one-off bad episode has now poisoned the entire show and it's not the only episode that did this.

We've reached a point where there are multiple choices haunting the show, making it so that there really aren't any more fun standalone chapters. Even if season six is written more like those early seasons, are any of us going to be able to enjoy love square hijinks when we're also waiting to see if Adrien will ever learn the truth of sentistatus or his father's death? And what about the knowledge that love will probably never win? It's hard to forget that, especially as more and more people learn the love square's secret identities, endlessly cheapening that reveal. Combined that with them maintaining the statue quo of Marinette being unable to act normal around Adrien and it's hard to picture season six being anything like a good time.

While I can't picture it, maybe you can! Seasons one to four all had episodes I enjoyed even though I was aware of the large scale flaws. Season five is the one that ruined that for me because, while there is no real overarching plot for the season, there was enough connective tissue that no episode felt like it truly stood alone no matter what the writers say. That connective tissue made the problems impossible to ignore and, now that my brain is in serialized mode, I can't go back to episodic. The season five cliffhanger of the lies is also too serious a point for me to mostly ignore it like I did with the other bad cliffhangers. The lies aren't just a dumb plot point, they're an incredibly serious character beat that I can't overlook. Every time the love square is on screen, I'm going to feel a little sick because I know canon isn't going to give this massive betrayal proper weight.

There's also retroactive rot at work here. Because the show has serialized elements, the more the show poisons its plot and characters, the more the rot creeps backwards, ruining the early stuff to the point where the flaws feel glaring. Knowing Chloe's ultimate fate makes it hard to enjoy her early canon writing. Knowing that Ladybug will fight Gabriel alone makes it hard to enjoy Ladynoir's big "you and me against the world" moments. Knowing that Gabriel will eventually win makes it hard to enjoy more moments than I can count.

So, to answer you question:

Were S1 and S2 really the best of Miraculous?

I'd say that the first four seasons all have good standalone episodes and even some good setups that would just never pay off. Season three and four just feel worse than the first two because that's when it started to become really clear that those payoffs would never come since the show had to finally own that fact with things like Chloe "damnation arc" and the lack of consequences for the mass identity reveal.

They also have more setups than the first two seasons and those probably stand out in your mind as being bad. That's how bad writing tends to work when that writing issues are more structural than scene-based. The longer the story goes, the more the cracks in the foundation show. The writing is rarely getting actively worse, there's just enough of it to properly show just how bad it is.

I do think season five was worse than any of the others, but only because the episodes had that awkward thing where they were try to be both episodic and serialized, really highlighting how bad the show was at long-form content. It wasn't so much that the writing got worse as it was that the show focused on the writing style that highlights its flaws. Season six going back to more truly episodic story telling may make it work for some people even if they hated season five. Only time will tell.

#anon ask #formula show problems #ml writing critical #ml writing salt

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babycharmander · 2 years ago

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TW ANTISEMITISM. THERE WILL BE DEPICTIONS OF ANTISEMITIC ARTWORK AND TEXT IN THIS POST.

Okay so, this is not the kind of post I normally make, ever, nor a sort of post I ever wanted to make. But this is an incredibly important issue that goes beyond fandom stuff, and I've talked with a few other people about it to confirm that it is something concerning.

I want to start by saying that I am not Jewish, but I know that you should never let antisemitism get its foot in the door. (If anyone who reads this is Jewish and needs to correct me on anything, please do so immediately.)

This was posted to the tags yesterday:

[ID: A screenshot of a post from @/liu4ka. The caption at the top reads "well he looks at me / and i look at him / and then he smiles" in very small, stylized text. The image below is artwork of Otto, facing right, with his eyes squinted and his mouth in a skewed, toothy grin, with his hands held up in a strange way. /end ID]

This picture looks perfectly fine at first glance... but the thing is, that caption you see there was not the original caption. I managed to get a screenshot of it before it was changed, and the original caption was this:

[ID: A screenshot of the original caption of the above post, which reads "well he looks at me / and i look at him / and then he smiles like sly jew" /end ID]

That's... a weird way to describe a smile. I'd wondered if this was referencing something, and apparently the first two lines are lyrics from a Weird Al song, but the third line is definitely not. That was making alarm bells ring in my mind, along with the pose Otto was in (which I'll explain in a moment).

Still, I wanted to give this user the benefit of a doubt, because it's entirely possible to unknowingly say something that sounds Bad. So I looked at their other account on VK (which is a Russian website that is, as I understand it, similar to Facebook--they have the same name there and post some of the same art). It didn't take me long before I found... this (photo taken with the google translate app). (I hate sharing this, but I need to show proof here):

[ID: A photo of a computer screen taken from the Google Translate app. It features a character facing right, with their eyes narrowed and with a toothy grin on their face and their hands clasped in a specific way in reference to the "happy merchant" Nazi meme. The caption reads "SCARY JEWISH MUSIC PLAYS." /end ID]

It's not in the screenshot here, but the post this was in also had a song linked with it whose title directly referenced the "happy merchant" meme.

If you're not familiar with that meme, please look it up, as I'm NOT comfortable putting that image on my blog. But it's an image people should be familiar with because it is VERY FREQUENTLY referenced by white supremacists and nazis, and that's what's being referenced here.

Obviously not every single piece of art with a character giving a sly look is going to be a reference to that meme, but CONTEXT is important. The Otto image isn't posed exactly like the meme--the hands are not the same--but alongside the original caption AND given the other art this same artist has drawn, I don't think there's any room for doubt here.

What also doesn't help the case is that there was misinformation going around that Otto was canonically Jewish, so I don't think any of this is coincidental.

I feel awful writing this stuff up. I never wanted to make a post like this, but this was a case where I felt like I should not remain quiet. Once again, this is something that goes beyond fandom. Antisemitism is not something you ever, EVER want let through the door, ANYWHERE. I do not want it in this community, and you shouldn't either.

If any member of the Jewish community wants to correct me on anything or add to this, please do so.

Thank you.

#psychonauts #psychonauts 2 #tw antisemitism

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roach-works · 1 year ago

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Hi!!!! I recently read When the Wolf Comes Home and I loved the premise the where the fic was heading. I know it hasn't been updated since 2017 so I was wondering if there was any intention of finishing it? I know it's possible you've moved on from that fandom and that is totally fine! If you are, would it be possible to share where you wanted to take the fic? Thank you, I absolutely loved your writing!!!

im a little stuck on that one because yeah i do sometimes noodle a little more on it and i had a pretty solid plot for the first year, after which i was going to be Very Firmly Done because so many rewrites attempt to take on the whole seven year span and founder on the complexity. but the problem is im really ambivalent and undecided on how much i want to participate in harry potter fandom at this late date, with JKR going mask-off nazi sympathizer. it's a weird situation where you can't argue for death of the author when the author is annoyingly alive and arguing that you should be dead.

im deeply reluctant to denounce people still participating in a fandom that i myself found incredibly fun and rewarding for, yknow, several decades of my life, and i don't think i'm better than them, just fortunate to be more interested in other projects.

but ambivalence towards the fandom and deep resentment towards the creator aren't really a productive headspace to actually write in, and i also don't want to finally work through my own doubts, finish another chapter, and then get my head torn off by people who are certain that i'm supporting JKR's toxic fuckwittery.

all in all it's easier and more rewarding to play with other fandoms and work on my many original projects.

where the fic was going:

as far as i remember, in When The Wolf Comes Home, draco was going to get his dad to hire lupin as his defense against the dark arts tutor and rent out the shrieking shack for the man to work out of, thus circumventing the curse on the DADA position and giving draco a werewolf mentor and independent bolt-hole.

quirrelmort was going to continue trying to figure out how to use or dispose of draco on his way to get the philosopher stone, a side-plot draco knew almost nothing about. draco would continue to try to maneuver harry into quirrel's way and snape out of his way, with indifferent success. harry and ron, lacking any voice of reason to temper their enthusiastic partnership of 'baby griffindors looking cool in front of their first real friend ever', would continue to believe that draco, the saddest wet puppy, was an evil monster and the cause of all their misfortunes. draco would continue to be the most mentally and emotionally unstable kid in the castle, taking all the heat off neville, who would end up looking fairly cool and collected by comparison. rita skeeter would feature somewhere in there, hired by narcissa to write little puff pieces on how tragic and brave draco was being about going to school with such a tragic disability.

remus lupin would end up with a full schedule tutoring DADA students about to take their NEWTs and OWLs and make a bunch of money. with lucius as his patron and PR agent, he would be accepted in hogsmeade as a dashing and heroic warlock who had been off having reams of secret agent adventures as dumbledore's key man in the muggle world. remus would not really know what to do with this but eat as much as possible and smile gamely when lucius showed him off to people.

eventually towards the end of the year quirrel would get rid of draco by orchestrating a fight between ron and draco where ron cut his fist on draco's teeth. this would count as a bite and draco would get thrown in azkaban and belatedly realize that he had completely and totally forgotten about sirius black's whole Saddest Wet Dog situation. sirius would do his best to take care of his tiny insane werepuppy cousin until the malfoys and longbottoms and weasleys combined to lever draco back out, using ron's ashamed testimony. draco would immediately turn around and reveal scabbers. the malfoys would end up looking like champions of truth and justice and the weasleys would, unfortunately, have to just stand there and smile gamely for the cameras.

while all this was happening harry would go after quirrel with hermione and neville and take him down. dumbledore would show up at the end, when voldemort was defeated and sirius was exonerated and several deep family feuds had been laid aside, to dispense twinkling paternal wisdom.

draco would kick him in the fork.

THE END.

#time traveling baby werewolves #writing #fic

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kiragecko · 1 year ago

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cherrystainedknuckles

I guess the only problem with being asked to take a “marie kondo approach” is that in order to find any fanfic that appears to be based in actual canon timeline and plot points and characterization (which does exist, and I’m not sure why fanon fans seem insistent that it doesn’t), I literally have to search for hours. I’m not joking, I consistently make fic rec lists, and I have to search for hours and hours for actual canonical basis. same thing with character tags on tumblr.

I’m not saying fanon fans have to stop enjoying fanon or making up their own content. I’m just saying that when the tags used for both fanon tim drake and canon tim drake are the same tag it just becomes incredibly annoying sometimes, and I understand why people who like to engage with canon (me, often) become frustrated

I have definitely had periods where I got incredibly frustrated with fanon! Around 2019, I was wondering if I needed to leave the Batfandom, because it had been so long since I read a new fic where the characters felt 'right'.

But, if you're willing to, I'd like you to consider what you mean when you divide 'fanon' from 'canon'. Because I struggle to find a hard line between the two, for several reasons:

1. Fandom is transformative. Every fanfic is going to have some interpretation of the source material. The line between what is too much interpretation and what is acceptable is different for every person. For me, I find it can even vary based on writing style or other odd things - lighthearted fic can have more noncanonical stuff in it than heavier fic, and still seem true to canon.

2. 'Canon' is subjective. I do not consider the movies or video games to be 'canon', and it annoys me when things from those creep into the fic I'm reading. (I'm okay with SOME Battinson.) Some aspects of the cartoons are okay. I consider precrisis Jason Todd to be an alternate reality version, but Donna's precrisis origins are more canonical than the dumb retcons. Wayne Family Adventures isn't my main version of the characters, but I'm not bothered if some elements show up in my stories. I'm ignoring most of the nu52, but I like Duke and I'm still watching this new Lian to see what happens. I doubt your divisions are identical to mine.

(Also, some things that I think of as 'fanon' have shown up in nu52 canon! I do not accept them as any more canon because of this.)

3. Most 'fanon' is based on canon. Canon Tim has weird sleep habits. 90s Dick is really lighthearted and joking around some characters in ways similar to fanon. Dick can canonically not be trusted to take care of himself if his mental health gets low enough. Jason likes classical literature. Etc.

These are exaggerated and/or twisted in a lot of fic, but where is the line where they stop being canon? I wouldn't bat an eye at a lot of this stuff, if it didn't show up SO OFTEN.

4. Most 'fanon fans' do know some canon. What line are you going to set where it will be 'enough'. And are they allowed to mention parts of the canon they haven't read yet? Is anyone allowed to talk about Dick's early Robin days, or only the tiny amount of people who have read the golden age stuff? A lot of the 'mistakes' I see are obviously made by people who have read ABOUT canon, but don't know quite how it fits together.

5. 'Canon' is FULL of contradictions. Yes, there are canon events. Yes, there is characterization that is consistent across 3/4s of comics. But. I'm still working on my sidekick timeline. I've devoted days to figuring out ages and passage of time. I've spent over a decade trying to figure out Jason Todd's motivations, and why Tim treats him the way he does. I've read all the 90s and early 2000s CANONICAL character assassination of Jason.

I spent years thinking that Donna's death was almost as foundational as Jason's, only to later discover that I had just happened to read the specific comics that focused on the fallout, and she only stayed dead for a short time. That happens to fans ALL THE TIME! We read a character summarizing an event we haven't directly read, and just accept it as what happened. But characters have biases, and not all writers care about accuracy.

I've read some Tim Drakes that I consider to be almost entirely 'fanon'. And quite a few that were so scarily 'canon' that I got chills. (Not all of which were similar to each other.) But the vast, vast majority have fallen somewhere in the middle.

I definitely do not want the responsibility of deciding which ones count as 'canon'! And I think I would strongly dislike anyone who tried to decide for me.

Being frustrated is logical, and I empathize. But the original post was about the impossible expectations some fans feel. The expectation to read thousands of comics, synthesize all the contradictions, and come to conclusions that match the 'true fans'. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to be complaining about.

If that's what some fans are experiencing, of course they're not going to want to engage with canon! There's no way for them to succeed, so why should they even try?

When you join THAT conversation to discuss your frustration about fanon, it strengthens that perception. When you call them 'fanon fans' it emphasizes their belief that you don't think they belong. And rather than trying to change, it's more likely that they'll double down. Canon is full of gatekeepers, so they'll avoid it.

#gatekeeping #fandom policing #fanon #canon vs fanon #usually don't do stuff like this anymore #I'm old and tired #but sometimes the words want to come out

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spectral-idiot · 1 month ago

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Insomnia- Chapter one. IS OUT!!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63984796#main

Fandom: Pokémon- Pokemon scarlet and violet

Words: 11.426

Chapthers: 1/3

Ships: Kieran x Original characther / Kieran x Noelle / SupernovaShippings /Mizuguri

Sumary: Kieran couldn't sleep, less that two weeks ago, he faced the death in the underpaths. His mind can't find the peace thinking about the dangerous journey he had alongside Miss. Briar, her sister and.. Her He is incredibly surprised when Noelle, the girl that emphasized all his inner problems, happened to have imsomnia too. Knocking his door at midnigth She went whit him. He, from all people. He won't survive this. But maybe, just maybe, things wouldn't go that bad after all. Maybe they could end up opening up, maybe they could start to fix this. No, everything can't be forgiven in one second, and it's still work to be done, but maybe, they can start

-Who is Noelle? Is an oc! My oc! I just love her so so much and I am so excited cause I got to write about her, give her the love she deserves and show her now.

You don't need to know anything about her beforehand, so you can just read this freely. This is my first work whit her, the only thing you gotta know is that she takes the place of Florian/Juliana/ ScarVio MC in the ScarVio story and that she was from Lumiose - Kalos before going to paldea.

Rant under the cut:

OHHHH FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY.

DUCKING FINALLY.

I GOT THIS OUT

GOT

THIS

OUT.

I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS SICE AUGUST, OK?

Yes, I know, I KNOOOW that now it looks like I spent 7 moths writing just 11k words but, THE 2ND CHAPTHER IS ALSO LONG AND I GOT IT ALRADEY FINISHED AND BEING PROOFREADED AS I WRITE THIS, AAAAAHHH

I AM ALSO SO SO DAMM PROUD OF WHAT I HAVE HERE. OK? LIKE, I LOVE IT WHIT EVERY CELL IN MY BODY.

I worked so hard in it and overcame a lot of anxiety and blocks. AND THIS BEAUTIFULL THING ITS WHAT CAME OUT. ITS MY BABY

IF YOU DOUBT ABOUT THIS HARD WORK, OR IF YOU FEEL THE END WAS WEIRD, ITS BECAUSE IT WAS SO BIG I HAD TO SPLIT IT IN TWO.

WRAAAHHHH I FEEL SO FREE AND RELIEVED NOW. MAN. ALL THAT LOVE AND WORK. FINALLY POSTED. MY HUGE HIATUS BROKEN.

I JUST LOVE NOELLE SHE IS MY BABY OK? AAAAAA

SHE MY BELOVED, I LOVED HER SO MUCH I HAD TO WRITE HER AS GOOD AS I COULD.

YOU GUYS JUST CAN BELIEVE HOW HAPPY I AM.

THERE WAS A WHOLE CHARACTHER ARC POR ME AND CHARACTHER DEVELOPMENT AS I WROTE THIS, SINCE IT TOOK THIS LONG FYI, OK?. I LEARNED A LOT ABOUT BEING MORE CONFIDENT AND APRECIATTE MYSELF

I EVEN GOT A BETTER SELF STEEM ALL OF IT´S JUST AAAAAAAAA

-Runs wildly, gets tired, takes a sip of his water bottle, calms down-

Okay, now that I am calmer.

Thanks for giving this work a chance and I hope you enjoyed the first stage of this ride!

Also thanks to a person that kinda helped me and motivated me trough all this incredible journey. She is an awesome person that gave me a lot of support till I believed in myself

As you can see, this one was a LOT more personal. And I like to think that influenced it to be as good as it is. I swear it's not ego it's just I am so happy and proud.

The second chapther is days away or a week at most. Already written and sent to proofread. I kinda hope you stick whit me for it and can enjoy it too

Noelle was a characther that has been in my.mind and heart since literally last july. And that love got printed here

I really hope you enjoyed the reading as much as I found happines writing this. Seriously i loved this whole journey

I also kinda hope you like this NGL

Whit all of that being said, I retire till the next chapther

Thanks and bye :)

-The spectre - Spectral Idiot

Also: No, I wont rant this much in the 2 chapthers left, DW

#writing #kieran pokemon #rival kieran #kieran #pokemon #pokemon indigo disk #pokemon kieran #oc #pokemon teal mask #original character #trainer noelle #noelle oc #noelle pokemon #oc x canon #original characther #original characther writing

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love-byers · 10 months ago

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Hi!! I binge-read some of your byler analysis, along with other users', and I can't help but STILL feel on the fence about hoping for byler endgame. I guess I just don't want to get my hopes super high only for them to be crushed by whatever CGI fest the düff3rs got in store to "go out with a bang" (while, obvs, sticking to the status quo and what they think the GA wants to see). I've seen so many intelligent people write media criticism pieces and analysis in support of the ship, but I still dread that the writers cry plausible deniability on all the clues they DID lay, that the people behind the N*f1ix social media accs confess that they've willingly posted queerbait to boost their engagement and thus get a bigger paycheck (I wouldn't blame them if they did, obvs; besides, it still means that some higher-up approved those misleading posts) and, worst of all, that this whole thing may end up blowing up negatively like the JohnLock conspiracy or the Voltron shenanigans or, y'know, the Supernatural fandom after Castiel's introduction and up until that lame ass final season. In your opinion, what makes byler different? Is there real hope for a satisfying mlm relationship from a show made by het men that capitalizes on 80s nerd culture nostalgia?

Sorry for coming off so jaded: I do wish for a byler ending, but it's been hard to keep my hopes aflame against these worries :c

i think everyone has some amount of doubt, which is totally understandable.

lgbt representation has come a long way, but a lot of us fans who are a bit older grew up consuming media that either had no representation or shitty representation. we sought ourselves in the media we loved and never found it, and corporations exploited that. nowadays there's way more representation that isn't left up to interpretation or censored, but a lot of the time that's in shows that are about romance and drama, high school a lot of the time. which is great, but stranger things is a sci fi show with romantic sub plots. it's easy for queer characters to end up being left out of a show like ST, but they haven't been at all.

one of the big messages of ST is embracing weirdness and being different. loving whatever it is you love, unashamed. when a character strays from being their true self or pushes away the things they love, there are consequences for the character. they become less likable to the audience. the entire theme of s4 is living in the truth, not hiding things, embracing love, being misunderstood simply because you're different. all of that is very queer coded. and it happens to be the season where will's love for mike fully comes into light.

there has been so much thought put into stranger things. the duffers have said there are no coincidences. they put thought into everything, thats why it takes so long to make a season, because they care so much. there are endless details i could point out not related to romance. they've also said they've been set on the ending for a while and will not be changing it to please people. i believe they said some people might not like the ending, but they don't care because they're making the story THEY want. which so far has uplifted queer people and promoted being different. so some antis may call be stupid for trusting them, but im choosing to. i believe they'll do these characters justice.

and my favorite quote from them is "The best plot twists don't make the audience say "wow I never saw that coming!", it makes you say "I should have seen that coming."

as a writer and a creative writing major, i definitely look up to the writers of ST. they are all incredibly talented and i hope one day i can put this much thought and love into a project. and, as a writer, i cannot see them throwing mike and will's relationship down the drain.

so, what makes byler different? there's very few shows where this much thought is put into everything. its not debatable that they do that, they've said it and its evident if you watch the show. so i refuse to believe all of these things between mike and will are just coincidences or accidents. there's just no possible way. i definitely had a klance phase and i can confidently say voltron writing is nowhere near the level of ST, and neither is supernatural. supernatural is one of those shows that has a lot of seasons and has gone all over the place in terms of writing and plot. the duffers have known the ending to this story since season 1. and unlike those shows with lots of seasons, ST only has 5. it won't be dragged on and beaten like a dead horse like some shows.

you don't have to completely eliminate your doubt. even i have doubt even after all i've said and posted. there is simply no way to confirm what'll happen before s5 releases, and they want it that way. just hold on until s5 friend

#stranger things #byler #will byers #mike wheeler #byler endgame #byler s5

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seasonalmoss · 5 months ago

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What's your Amanda AU?

its a Crossover AU! Written by me and @thequasarwinds

the AU actually started out as a thought experiment and it was supposed to be a silly side thing but, here we are. Its a AU that mostly consists of: Amanda the Adventurer, The Mandela Catalogue, and EPIC: the Musical. sorta weird combination namely with EPIC, but thats sorta the point? Me and my Twin (the writers of the AU) wanted to see what we could do with something like that.

so there’s variants of the AU, basically AUs of that AU, the pure raw AU with it alone is going through some rewrites so In this blog I’ll mostly talk about another variant of it (which has a lot of other fandoms in it, but it will largely stay irrelevant until I have to mention a piece of lore or another AU) So as a heads up all of these characters are typically actually cats, for many reasons, but mostly because 1) I cant draw humans for the life of me and Cats are cooler then humans /lh /hj 2) Warrior cats is in this silly AU (at least in the variant I’ll be talking about)

Overly simplified description of the plot:

in the nation of Serenity consisting of the counties, Mandela, Yonder, Bythorne, Werksha, and Kensdale, Riley after the events of ATA 2 decides to call a local paranormal group called BPS, for some further help, being confused on what to do. This eventually leads to Adam helping Amanda out of the TV show but getting lost and stranded on an island in the process. They get found and helped by Odysseus, who during his journey made a pit stop at a tiny island for extra supplies. Odysseus takes them home and fosters Amanda and takes care of Adam with his family, Telemachus upon gaining a new sister and learning of Hameln decides to join BPS figuring and hoping that’d it help him help his sister.

it is primarily an EPIC au, all the other fandoms are incredibly important to the plot and get there own time to shine, but it does start in Ody’s perspective and many of the POVs are in EPIC characters. The entirety of the first arc is mostly just the vengeance and Ithaca saga but reflavored. But the third act is when its primarily focused on Amanda and Wooly

so many aspects of this AU (like the locations) will be explained I swear but this is a very simple description of the plot. its also important to note that this AU is relatively new! So we’re still actively writing and rewriting it.

this AU has actually become very important and sentimental to us for a myriad of personal reasons. And im glad to be able to share it in some way, though I doubt its gonna get much traction.

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thewertsearch · 11 months ago

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Ask Comp 01/07

Anonymous asked:i think youre the first liveblogger ive seen to actually remember that orphaner dualscar was eridan’s flarping name?

Mindfang clearly describes the Serkets, so I wonder if Dualscar says anything about the Amporas?

Eridan's greatest enemy does have a duality theme, after all - and he was certainly scarred when the guy stole his crush >:)

@captorations asked:i have terrible news regarding homestuck and the good place: https://x.com/nbcthegoodplace/status/1039908767763259392?lang=en not to mention that. well. the two share more than you've encountered yet. it's very likely not a coincidence. have fun! oh and. re: my ongoing campaign of pointing out the homestuck ancestry of tlt characters. please compare aradia's "i am very much alive and i intend to stay that way" with dulcinea's "i'm not in the river and i won't ever be again"

...oh my god.

On reflection, this makes a lot of sense. Homestuck's fandom is pretty large, and some of its members were bound to be involved in the production of mainstream media. Still, it's wild to see a Homestuck reference - or, technically, a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff reference - on the official Twitter for a show this big.

And Aradia does have a lot in common with Dulcinea, doesn't she? For one thing, they didn't really start influencing the plot until after they died.

Anonymous asked: Not really important anymore, but looking at what Gamzee has in his Strife Deck, it doesn’t look like he has any ranged options: he’s got the bowling pins, what appear to be a discarded sickle and lance from Karkat and Tavros respectively, what I’m PRETTY SURE is a whip of some sort, and the Zillyhoo hammer. The closest to a ranged weapon in that stack is the whip, or maybe the pins if he’s willing to throw them, but neither seem like they’d work very well against Vriska. Barring some secret power or other plot twist, I think Gamzee would genuinely be the underdog in that matchup. (Which feels weird, because Gamzee’s been mutating into a slasher villain while Vriska’s still very much an antihero protagonist. Usually the power balance is the other way around with those archetypes!)

On the face of it, Gamzee didn't seem to have great odds in that fight - but it's hard to know for sure with this pesky Bard. His Strife Deck contains plenty of cards we haven't seen, and whatever he did to the Black King is still shrouded in mystery. Everything's just so uncertain with him.

@mimescantscream asked: I've really been holding back all this time, but now that we've met the Grand-highblood, it really is extra painful to see a Gamzee who was once incredibly loving of his friends (despite their constant ridicule) end up falling down the path that fate seems to have pre-ordained for him. Was he truly always meant to repeat echoes of the past? Could things ever have gone differently for him?

Yeah, I've been having similar thoughts. His PoV seemed completely sincere, so I don't think his original personality was a fabrication, or anything. I think there is a part of Gamzee that cares about his friends - and maybe even he wants it back.

@jade-harley-real asked: […] I want a rant on the bad doctor from you pls pls pls

Scratch is straight up the scariest character in Homestuck.

What's he up to now? Hard to say since we're not telling him what to do. Guardians can never be told what to do.

The aura of menace he's cultivated is incredible, especially considering he barely even moves. He's playing the entire cast like a fiddle, armed with nothing but a typewriter and his own supercharged brain - and there's no doubt in my mind that his confidence isn't a mask. He knows he's going to win in the end.

English is coming. He's basically already here.

@elkian asked: I'll probably never be a Vriska FAN, but I gotta admit, she really never had a chance, what with the only adults in her life being: a trollvorous spider 1 missed meal away from eating her, Marquise "I do what I want" Mindfang, and Doc Scratch. Some role models! @manorinthewoods asked: So, now that Mindfang has been revealed, here's a question for you: how much of Vriska's Vriskyness is because she's Vriska, how much is because of Mindfang, how much is because of her lusus, and how much is because of Alternia in general? ~LOSS (20/6/24)

This is why I don't think she'd be like this on Earth. At this point, it's obvious that none of her Incidents were the result of her personality as it naturally arose.

I mean, look how anti-Aradiacide she was! They weren't even really friends!

Anonymous asked: ‘AA: there are all sorts of friends to meet AA: ones you already know and ones you dont’ I mean…couldn’t she just be referring to various doomed selves? I don’t see why the dream bubbles would just be confined to the alpha timeline seeing as the furthest ring is weird in terms of time and space

I was assuming that only Alpha Timeline deaths would be preserved by the Bubbles, but you're right - I'm not sure that was a reasonable assumption.

The Horrorterrors seem to eschew the concept of the Alpha Timeline. and, they've coordinated with both Doomed and Alpha versions of Rose and Dave. Plus, yeah, there is no time in the Ring, so timelines are probably meaningless there. Why would it only interface with the Alpha?

If the Bubbles do preserve doomed souls, then we might also run into the John who died to Typheus, and the Jade he couldn't save. That's a pair of ghosts I'd be very interested to meet.

Anonymous asked: If every Aradia comes back from every doomed timeline, the number would double each time, so you could get over a thousand of her with only ten doomed timelines.

Fair point- although, if an already doomed Aradia went back in time again, she'd be double doomed. Is that even possible? Would she die twice as quickly?

@mhafanlol2000 asked: Your issues with quirks and speech-to-text are pretty simple to explain. If a troll were to speak into a non-modified speech-to-text program, it would output text with their quirk. Because they, quite literally, speak in their quirk. Terezi probably isnt actually saying “YOU H4V3 LOST TH3 G4M3”, each number at a time, but the vibes are definitely there. I don’t know, this is hard to describe if you don’t inherently get it.

I think, jokes aside, it is indeed about the vibes.

In the troll intro pages, you get told a little about how each troll talks, and I think that's how we're supposed to translate their quirks to an audible medium.

Anonymous asked: i think ppl in the fandom have over time kinda built up a like, generally separate understanding of quadrants from how theyre described in the "official" explanation. which is like, not representative of how these terms are used in homestuck, but probably more useful for describing Good relationships that Do Not Suck. like basically making moirails equivalent to being queer platonic partners, making blackrom more about having a healthy fun rivalry, that kinda stuff.

It's funny, actually - I don't think I've encountered a single asker who accepts the quadrants as they're originally described.

The main issue is that, with the possible exception of matespritship, we haven't seen a single troll relationship with reflects the infodump's explanation of the quadrants. I think Hussie might just have jumped the gun a little when dropping it.

Anonymous asked: Shoutout to Karkat poking his friends in the background! Terezi (crying over Dave) and now Soloux (talking to Terezi). Karkat isn’t sure what the right response is but wants to be included! Reminds me of actual cats, just putting a paw on you for no discernible reason. @manorinthewoods asked: I'd like to note that Karkat poking Terezi's tears is the same sprite (and same 'poooke'!) as Karkat poking Sollux's burnt-out eyesockets. ~LOSS (12/6/24)

My man just likes poking.

@alicesoinions asked: not much to say just wanted to say I really enjoy your liveblog!!

Glad you're enjoying!

I've actually got a few new followers recently. Maybe I'm showing up in people's recommendations?

@heliotropopause asked: Dream bubbles are pretty neat, eh? Neat enough to inspire half of HtN, I'd bet.

…wait.

Oh my god, you're right. It's literally a River Bubble. They're both located in afterlives, for crying out loud!

Anonymous asked: Wanted to thank your liveblog for reminding me of a lot that I had flat out missed in canon, due to not putting it together or just reading too quickly. Most recently and notably on my mind right now, is that Feferi is the one who set up the dreambubbles!!! I had always thought that they were just a part of the world that readers didn’t know about yet, like how we weren’t yet introduced to Alternia and it’s moons until act 5. This went right over my head and it has me absolutely REELING (fishing pun included just for fef!!)

Feferi truly is the MVP.

I wonder what happened to dead Players before the Bubbles?

They're certainly not the only type of afterlife in the multiverse. Alternia has at least two types of undead, which implies that the Players are very, very lucky to have retained their personhood postmortem. Imagine this was what Feferi looked like in Jade's dream.

Anonymous asked: Knowing sollux, he probably already had coded his tech to recognize if his speech ever changed, and gave himself a different typing quirk for it, long ago. Not because he knew or thought it would happen, but because he thought it would be a fun coding project ((I know nothing about coding))

And yet, you somehow know exactly how we think.

Anonymous asked: Something I hadn’t really thought about, until I started reading this liveblog, is how much VRISKA ((autocorrect decided to caps that and I’m leaving it in lol)) was manipul8ted into a lot of her violence. Scratch pushed her towards vengeance against Aradia, and she didn’t want to go through with it. Did VRISKA ever tell anyone how much of her live she spent resisting these forces, or even really acknowledge it? She didn’t hide Spidermom, and arguably her need to kill other trolls was to prevent herself from being killed. BUT on the other hand, VRISKA voice would make it sound like a compliment “I almost didn’t kill you why don’t you appreciate me!!!!!!!!”

The thing is, VRISKA probably felt a lot of social pressure not to tell people she was coerced into her crimes. That would reveal that she was reluctant to kill, which is the opposite of what the Empire wants.

@manorinthewoods asked: You could have written a great Homestuck if you'd been Hussie. I think your style, if translated from reacting-to-comic to making-comic, would work great with what Homestuck is, and could have made a better product. I think you'd make a cerebral Homestuck, which would have been cool to read, except I would have botched reading it like I botched reading Homestuck in our Alpha Timeline. ~LOSS (11/6/24)

Thank you! I've tried to write before, actually, but whenever I reread my stories, they come off as esoteric, stilted and a little hard to follow. It's not an insurmountable problem, of course, and I really need to take a writing workshop at some point.

I'd love to make a webcomic, too, but my art also leaves a lot to be desired. I can adapt sprites just fine, but original drawings are hard, guys. Did anyone else know about this?

Anonymous asked: i counted just now, and only like 24 out of all 54 paradox space comics have zero spoilers. some of them are certainly more substantial than others (e.g. i counted ones that include jade’s consorts that you havent seen yet as spoilers) but a lot of them have Very Big Spoilers

It would have been awfully messy. I'm probably just going to read it once I've reached the Gigapause of 2013, and no longer need to worry about spoilers.

@bladekindeyewear asked: “Nepeta wasn't trying to pacify Equius, nor did she seem to be fulfilling any rigidly defined 'role' in his life. They just came off as very good friends, and their relationship was much better for it.” Well, maybe we ought to look at it through the lens of real relationships between friends? Once a healthy dynamic and boundaries are established, perhaps Moirails stabilize as long as they’re together.

That's a good way to interpret moirallegence - although, it does raise an issue with the quadrant that I'll be discussing on its own post, once I've finished the comp. There's no point in prehashing what I'm about to say, so I'll see you there!

Anonymous asked: karkats message didn't go through because of trollians narrative awareness feature, where it'll display something different in service of one of the several "all"-seeing entities, of which the reader is one <3 watsonian and doylist explanations are kissing with tongue

Since the fourth wall is an actual, physical piece of technology in this world, this isn't even that far-fetched!

@sashonya asked: So, as the session's timers continues to count down, what do you think will happen after The Scratch?

Beyond 'the session ends', it's difficult to say for sure. I think the two most likely possibilities are that the kids start exploring other sessions, or travel to a location completely outside the current scope of the comic. I am, of course, hoping for both.

@ericvilas asked: "I still believe that out of all the trolls, Karkat’s traits were featured the most prominently in humanity" yeah, I guess even humans aren't free from the effects of carcinization

CG: THERE IS ONLY ONE STEP. CG: AND IT IS ME.

#asks #full liveblog #act 5.2

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paikothecateater · 9 months ago

Text

Alright, Danish Slaughterhouse rant.

So I first read this fic a while back. It was recommended to me by a friend. Now, they'd recommended me pretty weird stuff before (Iceland X fridge crack ship stuff) so I was a little bit skeptical when I started reading it. I wasn't super into the hetalia fandom at the time, so I had never seen anyone talking about this fic before.

Now I could rant about how fucking disgusting this story is, but that's already been done. This writer has managed to write a story so bad that people looked over some pretty major stuff.

Like how the writing is a fucking crime against humanity.

First I'd just like to say that I mean no hate towards the person who wrote this fic. It was a long time ago and I doubt they still stand by it. I'm sure they cringe at the thought of having been the one to write it. I will not be mentioning their name as 1) I don't even know it and 2) I don't want anyone harassing them.

It's pretty rare to become infamous in your fandom. Especially writing fan fics. The creator of Gutters, Glassmilk (I believe that's their name) made a fic that was so genuinely good and heartbreaking that they became famous among the fandom. The creator of the Danish slaughterhouse however, because famous in the fandom for making a fic that was genuinely so appalling people couldn't help talking about it.

I'll be using the names they gave the characters to make things easier.

I'll go ahead and bring up what is in my opinion a huge literary crime.

The lack of descriptivism.

I'd like to mention that I've written novels before. I've just been unable to publish them due to the lack of resources. It's hard publishing an English novel in an Arabic nation. Regardless, I think I know a thing or two about this whole process.

Descriptivism is something that I personally think is very important for a good story. This story left so much to be desired. All I could imagine for Mathias' house? Flat, solid colours, generic furniture, unclear structure. It had absolutely no character. You could have given it a design that would have reflected his personality and made it easier to understand the layout with just a few sentences. I know describing a layout is tough because it's a little tricky to stay consistent and it gets a bit repetitive in writing, but an attempt could have at least been made.

When we reach the second half of the fic, it becomes very hard to get invested in the suspense of what's happening because the layout is so confusing. Whenever a hiding place is mentioned, it's crucial that the layout is clear because if it isn't then the following questions will always distract from the anxiety: where is this hiding place in the house? Where is it in reference to the place Mathias is at? How escapable is it?

It genuinely gets too distracting.

Next there is character development.

I don't even have to be the one to say that the portrayal of Mathias' character is extremely butchered. Let's not even mention the weak ass motive for all this, but it is so genuinely weird how shit seems to go from zero to one hundred with this shit. More on that in a second.

The characters are genuinely some of the most one dimensional characters I think I've ever seen. Like seriously? How am I as a reader supposed to route for a wooden plank?

Emil is just 'emo teenager with headphones'

Lukas? 'barely mentioned overprotective brother'

Berwald is pretty much the same with 'overprotective father'

Tino 'every single mom in a survival movie'

And of course Mr. Mathias 'kill kill stab stab because pain and misery is fun?'

See? Incredibly one dimensional. At this point, you might as well route for Mathias to get this bullshit done quicker. None of them have genuinely lovable moments.

Peter is a whole other issue, because if you're a decent human being, you're going to be concerned for the child, but it doesn't change the fact that for the first half, he's also incredibly one dimensional.

Then is another huge issue, the red flags.

We all know what eventually happens between Mathias and Peter. The way this is portrayed is so fucking awful.

You're telling me Peter was found injured in a locked office and no one questioned it? Either Tino and Berwald are awful fucking parents or they're incredibly stupid. Lock picking? The absolute fuck? That doesn't even make a little sense. If it was my child I'd be freaking out. I'd immediately nope the fuck out of there because clearly this is not a safe place for my child. All they do is lightly chastise this poor child and move on?

I've never personally been a fan of Nordic ships because I see their relationship as platonic. I also have other reasons for genuinely disliking these ships, but I won't get into that.

That being said, The Peter situation was not the only or first red flag. Mathias is shown very early on to be very disrespectful of Lukas' boundaries and actually assaulted him. It was just brushed over as relationship drama. What even the fuck?

Then there's the situation with Emil. Arguably the worst one ever.

I hate to say it, but the portrayal of both Peter and Emil post the traumatic situation was actually pretty consistent with someone who has actually been through something like this. With Peter, the mannerisms of a victimised child are all present. Which further reinforces the fact that Tino and Berwald are absolutely brainless and I'll get into that in a second.

With Emil there's the conflicting feelings that come with being victimised by someone you genuinely trusted. The initial panic followed by the Internal conflict. When someone is attacked by someone they trust, there's a very common sense of confusion that follows. I'll try my best to explain it as well as I can.

Realistically, he'll have panicked, screamed, cursed, etcetera during the attack, however, afterwards, in a non-adrenalin induced state, his brain would begin to flood with so many things. There's the anger, hurt, sadness about being attacked. There's the devastating fear that this person who he'd trusted his entire life and relied on is now completely severed from his life. The fear that it'll happen again. And the overwhelming anxiety about having to deal with the situation.

I'll try to make a light comparison here.

Imagine you're in school and have to give a speech for whatever reason. You're in the middle of it, when someone suddenly walks up to you, slaps you across the face and insults you in front of the whole audience. Obviously, everyone saw, no one is blaming you, realistically, no matter what you say, everyone is on your side.

However, the pressure to respond to the situation is overwhelming. You have to address it because it happened and everyone knows it happened. You may still be very emotional about it and it may be too sensitive to talk about immediately, or you're just so confused about how to properly respond. Do you get angry? Do you play the saint and pretend it didn't affect you? Do you pretend it never happened? Regardless, you have to respond because everyone wants to know how it affected you, what happened? Why it happened?, etcetera.

This is exactly the situation Emil is in. So what does Lukas do as a good big brother?

He gently and patiently waits for Emil to open up to him while letting him know that he's safe and that he will be believed no matter what-

I'm just kidding, he violently pushes Emil for a response in a way that could only further traumatise him. He makes him feel like his emotional response isn't valid and that he somehow did something wrong instead of waiting until he's ready to talk or even take matters into his own hands and confront Mathias.

It is fucking horrible.

Then when their fight gets louder and the other three get involved (Berwald, Tino and Peter) and Peter finally confesses to having been hurt Tino puts on this whole caring act like 'oh remember how we taught you about this stuff?'

Bitch, what?

So this is a conversation that has happened before. And you still couldn't recognise the signs that something changed in Peter's behaviour? You teach the child about how to recognise when he's being victimised without teaching yourself how to recognise when your child is being victimised?

What the actual fuck?

I'd like to say that during this scene, Lukas feels guilty for the way he approached the situation which, yes, it was bad, you should be guilty, but it's not like he fucking does anything to rectify it.

Emil listens to Peter talking and has to come to the realisation that he was hurt. That his world was crumbling down. Still, Lukas makes no effort to make him feel supported.

Suddenly, this infuriating scene is interrupted by an even more infuriating one.

Berwald is understandably beating the absolute shit out of Mathias. The others run in and watch until Tino screams for Berwald to stop. Why? Because he's scaring Peter.

Hello? Then get Peter the fuck out. Surely this can't be the priority. Peter will survive watching his attacker get absolutely fucked up. I promise you. He will.

I'd also love to point out the sheer lack of fucks given about Emil and how this is affecting him. I'd like to give Tino the benefit of the doubt and say he was also concerned for Emil, but it doesn't even matter.

So like a fucking idiot, Berwald gets off of Mathias and they all start heading towards the door.

I'd like to mention that Mathias having already shot Emil in the leg was even more incentive for them to leave because even if it was an accident, clearly something is not quite right here. Surely Emil would prefer to heal at home and if Lukas was such a good brother he'd insist on taking Emil home.

Anyway, so, Mathias reveals his true intentions and the hunt begins.

Do I have to mention how stupid this is? A hunt? If he did actually have a motive he'd prefer to go for the easy kill, use those weird shock things and just murder them. If he's too sadistic for that he could also just casually immobilise them and torture them, but no, it has to be a hunt. Sure whatever.

As I said, the layout gets super complicated, but that's not the only issue.

He allegedly shot Emil to even out the playing field, but uh... What about Peter? Oh he gets to team up with the others? That's stupid and also doesn't solve the problem. Now you have to run for your life and lug a child around? It's just so damn weird because he was so committed to things being fair and as such shot him in the fucking leg, but Peter can go to hell?

Berwald and Tino are killed off pretty instantly, so I'll immediately skip onto the other two.

Why was Emil's situation so fucking weird? Also, I'm sorry for the weird topic, but how the fuck does the author think piss works? It's such a weird element to include in the story. It served no purpose to the story as Mathias already knew Emil was in the room. It just made it all grosser.

Also, again with the one dimensional characters. You're telling me Mathias never once felt pity?

It would have improved the story if maybe during the scene where he tries to drown Emil and presumes him dead for him to have a moment of remorse. Tear up about the fact that he murdered someone he cared about. It could've made Emil feel like there was hope for him. Just because your character is a monster that doesn't necessarily make them a psycho. It would've enhanced the story, but no.

And you're telling me after this whole situation everyone is just... Fine? Emil and Peter are just playing together? Emil had to abandon Peter to save himself, surely there will be a bit of tension about that.

Also, Mathias' motive is just bad. It's inconsistent with his character and doesn't make any sense.

This is a hetalia fic, no? There is a rule according to the canon that a nations decisions are secondary to their bosses. That being said, I've never met the Danish royal family, but I doubt the words 'go fuck your entire family' has ever left their mouths.

Another motive could've been that he was just fed up with how he was generally treated by the others. It's a weak motive, but it's better than that bullshit.

Also, the populations of the countries immigrating to Denmark because the Nordics are trapped at Mathias'?

Emil has been on long trips to visit south East Asia. His population stayed put then. So how does this work?

Overall, this fic is just badly written. It needs some serious work. It's inconsistent, dull, confusing, appalling and just downright criminal.

#aph fanfiction #aph nordics

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