#i just want to do what each character needs and is true for their character

[gffa]

The Mace Windu novel The Glass Abyss has a romance plot running through it and I wasn't sure I liked it at first, but the way the book portrayed it wound up really fascinating me. If I hadn't known ahead of time, I wouldn't have known it was intended to be a romance, and I think in part that was deliberate because Mace as a character doesn't care that he's a Jedi and in a romantic relationship. Like, it's just not an issue! There's nothing contradictory there! There is absolutely zero conflict about being in a romantic relationship within him, there is not so much a single sentence in the entire book about how it would conflict with the Jedi way or that it's wrong. Instead, it's about Mace wanting to choose his path with his eyes open, that relationship is part of another path he could take, but the point of the book is for Mace to realize that he is a Jedi, through and through, and there's never any "oops, guess I shouldn't have fucked her" about the relationship even once he reaffirms himself as a Jedi. It is true that he cannot stay with her, he cannot prioritize her above his duty, the relationship ends with mutual care and parting, that they're two people who have different paths and you're left with the sense that their paths might cross again and that would be fine, they would meet again if that would happen. Otherwise, they take with each other the memories and affection, but they're both needed elsewhere. He cared deeply for her, but he was not attached to her. Mace is presented as a rather traditionalist Jedi in the book and even he has no problems or conflict with a Jedi having a romantic relationship, when that relationship doesn't cross over into attachment (the desire to keep them because you're afraid to live without them, putting staying with them over the thousands of lives you could help across the galaxy), which is exactly how I've seen the Jedi's views on romantic relationships! The Jedi have always said that feelings are normal, it's what you do with them, it's that you don't let them rule you. Obi-Wan says it in The Clone Wars, "It's not that these [romantic] feelings aren't allowed. They're normal." You just can't be a Jedi and devote yourself to a romantic partner above your vows. But the romance and feelings themselves? The relationship happening while you're in one spot? As long as you maintain your balance? There was not one single moment that Mace thought this wasn't allowed, not even when he reaffirmed his Jedi path. He had to go at the end of their adventure, but the relationship was never wrong or against who he was as a Jedi.

[girl-with-many-fandoms]

Potentially MAJOR Hazbin season 2 spoiler if this “leak” ends up not being a fake. I just need to get my thoughts and feelings out somewhere and maybe there are a few others out there that feel the same way I do about it.

I just saw on TikTok a supposed leaked song with line animation that, if true, reveals that Rosie owns Alastor’s soul.

It’s hard to tell what’s fake or not nowadays with so many super talented artists and people using AI generated voices to mimic the actual voice actors so I REALLY hope it’s just a convincing fake.

If this is true though, I will be absolutely DEVASTATED. I adore their friendship - and not just the fanon friendship and/or QPR that we as a fandom have created with HC’s - but also the canon friendship we saw in episode 7 of season 1.

Have you ever had something happen in a show that upset/disappointed you so much that you actually had to step away from the show for a while and process before you could continue to watch and enjoy it? That will be me if this is real.

Because the wording in the song, plus the rough animation accompanying it, really gives the impression that (1) They don’t like each other at all like we thought they did & (2) Rosie literally views Alastor as a pet to puppet and nothing more.

And a friend of mine said that even if it’s real they could still maybe be friends but I’m sorry, Alastor as a character just wouldn’t be friends with or even willingly friendly with someone who owns him and limits his powers to where he almost dies in a fight and has a mental breakdown about after said fight. So if this is a true leak, season 1 episode 7 was all fake friendship and that hurts my heart so much.

Also, aside from the fact that I’ll be heartbroken about this, it just doesn’t make sense to me from a plot standpoint. I know a lot of people don’t want it to be Lilith just because it seems obvious but Lilith or Roo at least make sense narratively.

I just don’t see how, story wise, Rosie owning him could make as much sense as other potential candidates for who he has a contract with.

Why would Rosie help the hotel by letting Charlie use her people to fight for the hotel and then turn around and handicap a powerful person that is also defending the hotel? Why make him disappear for 7 years, what did she possibly gain from that? As far as I can tell nothing really changed for her during his absence.

Anyways, I’m rambling. TL:DR if the “leaked” song and animation ends up being a real leak I will be devastated and very disappointed in Hazbin.

[a-chicken-with-adhd]

This has been on my mind for a while, I've talked to myself about it a lot to work things out and the wording. Here it is.

I think i have a really cool narrative or idea for a red hood/Jason Robin comic run. Correct me if I'm wrong but from the knowledge I have. Jason's run as Robin was short in comparison to Damian, Tim's, and Dick's. I've seen a lot of year one Batman and Robin, Batman and Robin, Batman and son. Where it's Dick Damian or Tim, but not Jason. I've noticed a lot of comics focuse of Red Hood Jason and not Robin Jason or they have robin jason as a haunting narrative for redhood Jason. (I might be completely wrong but this is just what I've noticed from my visit to my local comic book store weekly)

I propose an idea.

A semi decently long comic run of Jason as Robin and Jason as redhood. It's a somewhat non-linear storyline. It's first introduced with Robin Jason year one, there's two narrators- Robin Jason that speaks his mind in present tense in the moment kinda like normal comics on what hes dojng what he found out and what he needs to do, but there's also a second narrative a second monolog that doesnt appear as often.

Their color box is a darker richer red, they speak in past tense and their text box speaks more on reworking their view of what happened and what they felt(kinda like in therapy where you review? Reconstruct? Put a different lense? On the memory) that monolog box belongs to Redhood Jason todd and it doesn't appear often.

The comic run will take on a more detective comic style, where it's not action! Action! Action! And you have a whole ark done in 6 issues, but where it takes its time, building feeling, the world, the situation, the stakes, the characters. You get to see Jason out of the Robin costume and in the Robin costume. You get to see some of his habits change as he grows into his new environment, how his Morals change the longer he's Robin. But I don't want the comic to drag as some arks in detective comics does. I want good pacing.

I want the struggles and story ark that Jason Robin has to go through really make him struggle or touch on a moral he has, causing inner reflection and change.

Then I want the comic to switch to the true present time. With Jason as redhood. I want the monolog boxes to then change with redhood being the main voice now talking in present tense abou the situation , what he found out, what he's going to do. While Robin Jason's voice is more background. Not talking in past tense but rather future tense.

I want their issues(the problems they are facing) to parallel each other. They are facing similar a situation but now in different times, I want then for Robin Jason's monolog box to talk in future tense about if he came across a similar situation what he would do. Only for present redhood to not do it. To show how different Jason Robin and Jason redhood are.

I want there to be mirrors between Bruce and Jason's relationship while he was Robin and while he is redhood. His relationship with Dick etc. I want there to he parallels between Jason out of the Robin costume and Jason out of the redhood gear, parallels on how they are nothing like each other but exactly the same. Their habits are similar but slightly to the left of each other.

I want the story to be haunting, inner reflective, and bittersweet.

Maybe the comic ends with redhood Jason looking at the mirror and seeing Robin Jason looking back. They stand face to face, looking each other in the eye, their monologs overlap and for once in the entirety of the comics run, they are thinking the exact same thing in the same tense because they are the same the person. they are one, nothings slightly to the left of each other.

But, because they are on each side of the mirror, it shows how separate and different they are.

[flutterbyoz]

This is going to be a pretty long post but I found that once I started I couldn't stop! Hopefully it all makes some kind of sense

I miss Richonne everyday, they still fill so much of my headspace and though it's been a few months since The Ones Who Live episode 6, I think I miss them now more than ever.

Though I would love a TOWL season 2, more Richonne is always a good thing, there are a 2 things that I think are important if/when we see them again and a couple of things I'd like to see happen.

1. Andy, Danai and Scott come back because they want to and because they feel they have the perfect story to tell.

We know they will only come back for a story that feels right and necessary to tell and I love that! I love the fact that not only do they care about giving us amazing stories but they also care about the characters having a story that needs to be told rather than just coming back just for the sake of it.

I also love how it's a team thing with the three of them. Andy and Scott waited for Danai to be free to do S1 and Andy has made it pretty clear he'll do it if Danai does and if the story comes from her and/or Scott. The friendship, trust, respect, care and love that exists between the three of them is something I adore ❤️ I've said it before but the friendship between Andy and Danai especially is one of my favourite things, it's easy to see that it's genuine and not just put on for promo or anything else. There is a real connection between them and they trust each other completely and Andy knows she can write a story worthy of being told.

2. Andy, Danai and Scott need to have full creative control.

AMC knows by now that this trio can deliver. They know they can create an amazing story, they can bring in the viewers, generate the hype, the engagement and earn glowing reviews, they can bring in new viewers and bring back those who left. They know this creative team can produce high quality TV, revive a franchise and deliver an episode and performances worthy of Emmy buzz. I don't doubt that if/when Andy, Danai and Scott wish to tell more stories, AMC will greenlight it without a second thought.

As well as greenlighting a second season or even another 6 episode series, AMC need to give full creative control to the trio. They've more than proven they know what they're doing so just let them do what they do best. Set them free to produce another incredible show because you know, when Andy, Danai and Scott get together they create magic. They know what they're doing, they what works for the characters and for the fans.

I've seen some discussion lately about whether what fans want should be high priority when it comes to writing a show. Now, while I understand and believe that the wants of the fans are important, after all you do need to create a show that fans are going to want to watch, engage with and keep watching, you also need to keep the story true to the characters and their journeys. Sometimes what the fans want doesn't align with what we know about the characters and/or their relationship and it's not really right to forgo a characters story/journey just because some fans don't like it.

Luckily for us, what Andy, Danai and Scott want for Richonne is also what so many of us want too, it also makes sense and is true to the characters. They know these characters and their relationship like no one else and they love them just like we do and when they write and create a show they aren't just writing for the fans, they are doing what's right for Rick and Michonne too.

Again, I have no doubt that AMC will jump at the chance to have them back again and I'm also very hopeful that, just as with S1, they will give them full control over everything. They need it as they've shown that what they do works.

3. Michael Slovis back as director

Not only did Danai write the perfect episode with 'What We' but Michael Slovis also did an incredible job directing it. He just seemed to understand these characters and Andy and Danai so well, he got them on a level that other writers/directors didn't appear to on the flagship show. I also read somewhere that it was his idea to put in the kiss in the car at the end, showing how, now they were together and on the same page again, they simply couldn't keep their hands off each other and I love that!

If we do get more Richonne, I'd love for him to come back and direct and if he and Danai could work together again on an episode she wrote then that would be awesome! They make a great team, along with Andy of course, and they delivered one of the best episodes this franchise has ever seen.

Now, as for what I'd like to see in a possible season 2 or another mini series there is quite a lot but the two that I'd most like are:

1. Domestic Richonne and Grimes family time

After everything they've all been through, this beautiful family deserve to enjoy some 'normal' family time. I'd love to see Richonne and their kids at home, cooking dinner, playing games, enjoying family fun days, I'd love to see Rick and RJ bonding, Rick and Judith bonding, Michonne and the kids reconnecting and Rick and Michonne enjoying married life.

I know many people would love to see them have another baby and I totally get why and it wouldn't surprise me after TOWL to be honest but I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, it would be lovely to have another little Grimes to add to the family, maybe a little girl who is her mothers twin but her personality is all her dad. Rick missed out on so much with RJ and seeing him get to dote on a pregnant Michonne and witness the birth of his child would be amazing.

However, on the other hand I think just letting them stay as a family of 4 may be the best thing. Adding a pregnancy into the mix could stir up some old wounds for Michonne and there are risks involved, it's also one more thing to worry about and Rick's already overprotectiveness would go into overdrive. So while another baby Grimes would be lovely I'm very happy with how they are now but if they could find a way to include a pregnancy/baby into the story then I certainly wouldn't be against it.

I just want more of the Grimes being a family, being happy and feeling loved. We always have to keep in mind that this is The Walking Dead and it's not going to be sunshine and rainbows all the time. With Andy saying something along the lines of he'd like to take it back to the horror roots, we know there will be some level of peril and threat but with Andy and Danai in charge, I know we can trust them to do right by these characters.

2. Michonne's trauma

This is something I've seen brought up a few times recently and it's something I've been thinking about for a while too. It's quite a difficult thing and doesn't really fit into the happy family time I've mentioned but I think it's important to address.

For obvious reasons, TOWL S1 was mostly about Rick's trauma and PTSD, I have no issues with that, I liked the way it was addressed, how Michonne helped him through it and brought him home. However, I think some people seem to forget that Michonne is carrying a lot of trauma herself and apart from a brief mention in TOWL, it has largely been overlooked.

Michonne had a lot to deal with on the flagship show, not only did she lose the love of her life but she also had a daughter to raise alone, a baby on the way, Judith was kidnapped and she herself was attacked and branded while pregnant. Due to not feeling safe she cut herself off and lost trust in a lot of people and friendships seemed to drop off. She also went through hell trying to get to Rick and it all left her with some heavy trauma that really needs to be addressed.

In a possible future story I'd like to see this trauma get brought to the forefront, Ricks PTSD will still be a factor and seeing him try to adjust back to a 'normal' life may see it rear its head again. We all know Michonne is Rick's rock, she'll be with him every step of the way and will be his shelter from the storm but I would also like to see Rick do the same for her.

Everyone knows how much Rick adores his wife, there is no question that he loves her more than life itself but I still don't know whether he knows the full extent of what she went through while he was gone. It may be a conscious decision on Michonne's part to keep some things back from him, at least until they got home but I think he needs to know. Michonne needs his support, she needs to be able to get out everything she's been bottling up so he can be her rock just like she is his.

Not only do they need time to reconnect with their kids but they also need time to reconnect as a couple and though I know Rick regrets what he did and said to Michonne in TOWL, it still hurt her deeply. There was a lot of effort on Rick's part to make up for that and I know Michonne doesn't hold it against him but they need time to heal together and I'd really like to see that explored in any future story.

If you've managed to reach the end then thank you! I know this was a very long post and I didn't intend for it to be so but here we are.

If we do get more Grimes adventures, I think there will be some sort of time jump and depending on what that looks like we could be looking at slightly different versions of what I mentioned above. I do think we'll get some family time, romantic Richonne moments and obviously some danger thrown in, but I do wonder if Michonne's trauma will be brought up at all. With Danai almost certainly having a big part in writing any future story, I like to think she would address it and she would definitely do it justice.

With the DVD saying season 1, Andy saying there is an infinite chance it could happen again if Danai and Scott are writing it, and the fact Danai is very secretive when asked about the future of Richonne I do think something will happen at some point. What that will be and when I have no idea but to me, Andy and Danai strike me as the kind of people to be honest and straightforward with the fans and would say outright if there was no more.

Whatever happens, we've been truly blessed by Richonne and Andy & Danai. I've never seen two actors more committed to their characters, more in tune with and supportive of their relationship and their fans and have such a supportive, caring, respectful and loving friendship off screen. The Walking Dead really struck gold with these two and would be lucky to have them back again.

[barracuda-shark-games]

Progress Update 11/2/24

First, I want to apologize for failing to meet the deadline I set for chapter 1. The coding has been getting more complex and after doing some play testing I realized I'm going to have to actually make some keys and guides for myself so that it's easier to keep track of everything. (What? You mean to tell me I can't just vibe and write as it comes to me and that, in fact, organized planning is a necessity especially when coding is involved???)

I'm not happy with the way it plays yet, so it will need a bit more tweaking before I can post this rough draft of chapter 1, part 1. :')

This has very much been a learn-as-you-go experience for me! I really regret that I don't have an update ready for you all. I don't want to to give you nothing, so as a show of good faith here's a little peak into some of the code (minor code spoilers under the cut, no lore spoilers, though):

Example 1: Relationship Code

A character's relationship score determines how well your MC and the character know each other.

A character's friendship/rivalry score determines how ideologically aligned your MC is with that character.

And the flirt score is rather self-explanatory.

Example 2: Banquet Reaction

Your MC's gut reaction to the banquet reveal is noted and will come up in future flavor text as early as the start of chapter 1.

Example 3: MC's Sexuality

There are three factors that you decide which set your MC's sexuality.

The first is your character's orientation, i.e. who they can experience attraction to. The options are:

men

women

all

none

The second is whether or not they experience sexual attraction/desire. MCs who experience attraction to "none" are automatically asexual, setting this code to "true". For all others, the player will be prompted to set whether or not they are asexual.

The third is whether or not they experience romantic attraction/desire. MCs who experience attraction to "none" are automatically aromantic, setting this code to "true". For all others, the player will be prompted to set whether or not they are aromantic.

Note: this kind of coding for MC sexuality isn't necessarily how it's going to be done in future titles, but feels necessary in a setting in which the MC is expected to adhere to heteronormativity for the sake of their duties. A MC who experiences same-sex attraction has added layers to their situation, as does a MC who has no desire for sex regardless of orientation. In a story like my other planned IF, Binary Stars, the MC's sexuality doesn't play such a big factor in their life circumstances and only comes up in their romance paths, so there's a lot more nuance and flexibility and it isn't as reductive as "men, women, all of the above, or none of the above."

Thank you for your patience and for reading! I hope the wait is worth it, and I will post an update this month. <3

-Janus

[lovely-p-issues]

Okay, you've made me realise that I misspoke in my previous response (and I used italics incorrectly lmao)

I'll start with the most important one - yes, I do think that until the very end Ody saw Eurylochus as his friend (as you wrote, he literally appears as a ghost alongside his mum and Polites)

However. I think this relationship was incredibly damaged by everything that happened, and these most important relationships have a way of being strengthened by tragedies. That's why, despite all my love for this character, after everything he and Ody did to each other, I could never vote for him

But I just need to address your really good points and how I look at it

sacrificing the crew

Yes, my mistake, abandoning the crew on the island of Kirke could be called reasonable - I meant rather to point out that sacrificing six men was also essentially the best tactic for survival, in a situation where you are in the middle of nowhere, chased by a god of sea and have to sail somewhere (but surely there is something much darker about deliberately choosing the death of six men than refusing to save them, even if it was ultimately to reduce the bloodshed associated with pointless battle)

(just to be clear, none of these decisions lie with my general view on the world, they are simply comparable in my eyes)

My point was rather that, of all people, Eurylochus could understand Odysseus - he himself was prepared to do something very similar, yet he completely ignored it and started a mutiny (I wonder now if the crew ever found out that Eurylochus had refused to save them…)

Nor does Eurylochus ever deny this plea by Odysseus in Mutiny:

Don't make me fight you, brother, you know you'd have done the same If you want all the power, you must carry all the blame

I interpret this as Eurylochus saying "that's true, but at the end of the day it was you who made that decision, so we can blame you for this"

while we're on Mutiny….

I just remembered how annoyed I was that the moment the crew, headed by Eurylochus, realised how badly they had screwed up, they immediately turn to Odysseus. Odysseus, whom they had just removed from power, thinking they knew better.

In a normal situation, I wouldn't put up with telling a person close to me very clearly ‘don't do that, there will be consequences’, but when it actually happens, they look at me, expecting me to somehow solve the problem

Eurylochus's advice

Did Odysseus need a man who could pull him down to earth? Absolutely.

The problem is that Eurylochus does it in public, in front of the entire crew, not only trying to talk sense into Odysseus, but sowing doubt among the crew.

When Ody pulls him aside at the end of Luck Runs Out this is practically the first thing he points out to him. A captain making a mistake is a terrible thing, but a crew left to their own devices…. well, Mutiny showed that, despite his flaws, Odysseus made better decisions most of the time (motivated by a desire to get home) than they did, focused more on the present moment, hunger and fatigue.

But even putting tactics aside - I think the friends know best that a public confrontation is not the best idea. While we obviously don't know how Odysseus would have reacted to a private conversation with Eurylochus - it seems to me personally that at least he could have focused on what was being said to him, rather than making sure his men don't fall apart.

I will end here, because we can point those thing for eternity and I didn't even started rating about Odysseus's mistakes as a friend-

I just don't think Eury was a really good friend in general. He was a decent man, he was trying his best, he was obviously tired and broken, but looking from perspetive of the first question, he just... doesn't stand a chance

And I still love him tho.

(i will probably get through every character in survey when it's finished lmao)

(i regret setting seven days instead of one for this)

[hecksupremechips]

Details that make me FERAL

[konshokoentaiko]

i need to write a lawlight au where l and light are contestants on an idol survival show à la idol producer (2018)

[sysig]

Pivotal bright spot (Patreon)

[brrdhouse]

i had to take a while before even STARTING to type this response because i was jittering too hard in excitement, real footage of me attached vvv

... this is me the next morning realizing nothing i wrote saved correctly. anywho.

first of all, please talk more about your au. i love god aus, i need to know as much lore as you're willing to tell me.

i also understand moving from more popular to problematic/ obscure faves. stan and mabel are and will also be close to my heart, but when i'm really thinking about it? pacifica, gideon, and weirdly the two surviving clones from double dipper are the ones i love the most.

i feel a little dumb overanalyzing it all, but i don't think people nowadays talk about how tragic the characters of pacifica and gideon really are. pacifica was trained on a bell, for gods sake, that's horrifying! she was conditioned to be the perfect obedient yet unsympathic child the northwests could have. gideon was a child star being corrupted by dark magic, which is already horrible without my early grave headcanon. not to mention the possibility that bud was using the memory gun on his own son. (when i get you bud gleeful... better watch out)

i think they'd bond on the idea of the ever-praised (thank you so much, i'm so happy that line landed as well as it did) "outcast yet above it all" because they understand each other in a way no one else in the group could. yeah, pacifica was close with other zodiac members, and yeah, they all had moments they weren't proud of, but none of them understood how good those moments had felt for her. it felt good to command a crowd. to be the center of attention. to ridicule others because you were just.. above them.

but gideon did. and he didn't scold her when she made a mean comment, or call her selfish when she'd split something and give him the smaller portion, because they both knew he could slip up and do the same. no matter how much they both tried to be good people, they were raised to be terrible people and that wasn't something that could just go away.

she had spent the last few years carving a crack in her metaphorical walls for him to slip through, and his death made her want to tear the whole thing down and start anew. but then there was wendy hugging her as the ambulance arrived, and dipper holding her hand at the funeral, and mcgucket checking in on her with whatever he could do to get her spirits up, and it all left her more willing to be vulnerable to the others. they could never fully understand why she did the things she did, not like he had, but they could try and that was enough sometimes.

touching on robbie before i talk about them all as a whole, i think his anger does finally start to simmer instead of constantly boiling over. he'll never not be angry, he'd have to mad-scientist gideon back alive and knock some sense into his parents to stop, but it didn't have to consume him.

that first year after the funeral, his friends didn't know what to do with him. he was an asshole, true and honest, moreso than he was as a kid, and it sucked. he didn't like the fact that he was self-isolating, but the hot rage that filled him everytime he saw something weird or dangerous or really anything related to his hometown was blinding and indiscriminatory on who it landed on.

he thinks that coffee meet with mabel saved him. they talked, and she was amicable in the face of his irritation, but he could feel how she skirted over the same topics he should. no weirdness. no grieving, other than her own. she mentions once, how upsetting it was to be at that funeral, openly weeping, when some people couldn't manage a single tear. but when she starts gripping the paper cup tight enough for it to strain, she takes a breath, looks out the window, and blinks away the tears of frustration.

he asks how she handles it, and she says, "i don't. not really. i just stopped trying to tell other people how they should grieve, even if i think they're being insensitive douchebags," ending it with a strained giggle.

and so he starts letting that anger transform, melting into cool numbness that's easier to work with. when the depression gets bad enough that he starts calling out of work, nate starts bringing over food, and wendy makes her little brothers—although they aren't so little anymore—go over there to clean the dark corner of the world that robbie had settled in after the anger faded. tambry and lee force him to hang out with them again, and eventually he starts liking it.

even after he gets back on his feet, he's still angry. but it doesn't burn as bright, or as hot. it sparks when he talks to his parents, but he lets it wash over him, talks to mabel about it days later and wonder how the annoying twelve-year-old he used to scoff at had become so dear to him. he starts talking to the rest of them more, finds a similar—but not the same, never the same—bond in the northwest girl, and starts living his life again.

i'm really happy that you liked the robbie section in my other response!! it's definitely the one i was proudest of when writing it, so knowing that it's appreciated just makes me so giddy

and yes!! i love the idea that while gideon's death isn't a good thing by any means, it does bring the rest of them together. they're trying to fill the void that the loss left, and they can never get him back but they can find him in each other. evil thoughts about other characters' deaths and the reactions, but stan is the next to go and that actually brings some of them further apart, in my evil heart i mostly mean that about dipper and mabel, and how that divides the group, but all of them are impacted in some way. it doesn't take another death to bring them together again, that's just cruel, but i like the idea of the group losing their favorite conmen impacting them in different ways.

the idea of the zodiac as a family, as a whole, is one of my favorites. like yes, they've gone through unspeakable horrors, most of them aren't codependent but they still need each other, and eventually begin to function as a family unit no matter how much they try to deny it. specifically about the other members of the antagonist trio, they saw gideon as an annoying little brother, and look towards the people they've begun to see as siblings and parents—in the stead of being only children with bad relationships with their parents—for comfort and guidance. it's all very dear to me.

and augh, just really quick before i send this off, deity!robbie being there to get the rest of them... them not being his, but still caring for them and wanting to fight for them to be together, even in the cold expanse of the void. hearing gideon's laughter and incoherent whispers and knowing that this one's his favorite, but it still needs its family... tearing my heart out, clawing my skin off, etc. etc.

this took a minute longer than i wanted it to because tumblr hates me and i'm trying to redownload my skyrim set-up at the same time (i'm a multi-tasking king, i say, floundering at my desk), but it's here! i'm happy with it! i checked all the points on my bullet list that i wanted to! amazing!

teen gideon headcanons because i love him :] i am constantly thinking about him and how he's the only zodiac member (and honestly, only main-ish character because of the book of bill and the website) that doesn't get a sympathetic moment, other than POSSIBLY the finale but that barely counts

i think he deserves to have a SORT OF redemption, at least internally, because he took dipper's advice in weirdmageddon to heart. even if he gets over his crush on mabel (which i think he does. mom said its my canon now) theres still the truth of "people wont wanna be around you if youre a selfish prick"

anyways he makes me emotional so i'm giving him attention

im scared tumblr will kill the quality on my tiny handwriting so transcription under the cut:

after turning like 15, he just starts traveling, gets out of oregon and hits the ground running

uses my headcanon (?) that the amulet takes years from you, and gideon probably won't live past his 20s

he finds this out, has a total mid-life (literally) crisis at 14-15 and decides to do anything "normal" he can do because he doesn't have long to do it

ofc he still has anger issues and obsesses over people and everything else, but he's a lot better at managing it [than] when he was a kid

he doesn't care if he dies with people still hating him, but he wants it to be known that he tried

[ladysophiebeckett]

marcela does a lot of cruel things throughout the series but i think her true moment of traditional telenovela villainy is that dinner she has with margarita and patricia, (the day betty gets made president) where she basically states 'yeah i know armando is still in love with her and i know beatriz is still in love with him but she believes everything in the letter and she has no way to disprove it. and armando has no witnesses to speak on his favor.'

and she's very smug about it:

in marcela's head she believes the only one she's really hurting by withholding this information is beatriz, how armando feels is not even much of an afterthought. marcela puts herself and her needs first. which is understandable. she has no incentive to help beatriz and why would she? she sees beatriz as the reason why her relationship with armando deteriorated even tho it's actually more complicated than that.

of course armando knows he doesn't have witnesses or anything to prove that in middle of everything he did truly fall in love with her and he's not going to ask anyone for help. mario offers to talk to her (tho not seriously) and even patricia says mario could tell betty the truth but marcela knows betty would never believe the author of the letter.

her only goal is to keep armando by her side. i dont know if she knows that she's hurting him or if she justifies her own actions as a consequence of his past actions towards her. or maybe its something she knows she's doing but doesn't care. (im gonna let the audience decide that bc im not even sure how i feel about that).

we see armando go through hell after betty disappears but when she returns he never once thinks to tell her about what exactly happened after she went away. he only says 'all the damage i did to myself' but never elaborates and betty never asks. it's deliberate that armando never tells her about his state of mind during that period of time bc he knows that to do so would be seen as a form of manipulation. that's not how you prove to someone that you've changed. and that's aside from him knowing that she would never believe him. (bc we know she wouldn't). he loves betty and although he's not yet at the point of truly understanding just how much pain and damage he's caused her, he would never want her to take him back bc she feels sorry for him.

meanwhile, way before the truth of the embargo happens, marcela tells him she would never survive him ending their engagement. that it would just as bad as when her parents died.

his face is immediately affected and she knows. she knows that the only way to keep him is through manipulation. and later on, participating in the act of withholding information that could help him, but again she doesn't see it as helping him. and never actually does. when she gives beatriz this information, it's actually in her attempt to save the company her father co founded. bc up until the last minute she was still holding out hope that betty's indifference to armando would push him back to her. not understanding that armando's changed indefinitely. he's not going to be manipulated by her again and he's not going to stoop to his past behaviors bc it never did him or anyone any good to begin with.

[phagodyke]

I love to talk but I rly do feel like we have to be talking for a minimum of 8 hours straight before I feel like I can even begin to rly broach things on my mind or that have been bothering me a lot that I actually want to talk abt without being vague or deflecting or omitting or lying and if the conversation takes a break at any point it resets back to 0 and its still nice regardless but.

[cambriancrew]

I also want to add that, for most of the novel, the first person point of view character (who has a few different names but is for the most of the book the titular character) is functionally blind, and as someone who is also functionally blind without glasses and is prepared for her vision to progress to the point where even glasses can't fix it anymore, Hawkspar was amazing representation. Yes it was magical blindness, and she did regain enough vision to tell vague shapes apart (which is what I mean by functional blindness - not total blindness, but still not quite able to really see) and it came with terrifying yet useful visions of the future, and yes it was (sorry for spoilers but it's relevant to the discussion) magically healed at the end as was the rest of the people with Hawkspar who like her also had their natural eyes replaced with eyes of stone ... But it never felt like tokenization, and the recovery was earned and necessary to the plot, and overall it just felt like a beautiful representation of what it's like to be functionally blind.

I went until age 14 with uncorrected legal blindness, when my parents were basically forced by the school to get me glasses because even at the front row and peering through a slit between my fingers to see better I still couldn't read the board or see anything clearly more than about 8 inches in front of my face. (Down to about 4 or 5 now.) I got around about as well as the blind main character, able to discern basic shapes but that's about it. Unlike her, I could still see splotches of color, and can still see very close up and obviously now with glasses, but other parts of her blindness felt really spot on.

I want to do as well as she did with blindness, but with plurality - the experience of being many individuals sharing one body and brain. The main characters who become a plural system together will be of magical origin too, and there won't be a magical fix of it back to how things were before, but otherwise I want the experience as revealed in the story to ring true. I want to show the struggles, the joys, the frustrations, the discoveries that make you appreciate each other all the more. I want to show what it's like to have been, or thought you were, one person all your life and now suddenly you're not. I want to show what it's like to have to lean on each other, and to want to not need to. I want to show what it's like to feel like you don't have as much time to be yourself anymore. I want to show the beauty of being able to communicate with each other without words, just emotions and pictures and pure concepts. I want to show the frustration of not having an easy way to express to people around you which one of the system you are. Just like how in Hawkspar Holly Lisle showed functional blindness, I want to write something that shows functional plurality.

And it won't be just those main characters. There's another system in the series, of traumagenic origin. And a wide variety of dragon characters who are also a type of plural - two or three heads, one body, one shared identity, and how some dragons choose this and some do not, and neither choice is lauded above the other. And another human who accidentally creates systemmates in one of her magical experiments. And maybe more, but those for sure.

Functional blindness is rarely seen in fiction, and when it is it's usually the butt of a joke - the character with glasses that make their eyes look ginormous, or Velma Dinkly feeling about on the floor because she can't see well enough to find her glasses without her glasses. (Which is a regular occurrence for me! Thank God for phone cameras now which make it so I can look around and see better.)

Similarly, plurality is almost always shown as either a joke - "Which of your personalities is it this time?" or much MUCH worse, as the reason someone is a murderer. Practically every single police procedural or who-done-it murder mystery since the 80s has had at least one case where the culprit is a plural system, usually one with Dissociative Identity Disorder. There's multiple horror movies with it, most notably and recently Split.

There's a rare few examples of it where it's not a scary thing or a joke: The season 2 Chicago episode Theseus's Ship that had a really well done side plot of a plural system comprised of a host and a tulpa. There's Yu-Gi-Oh, with several characters being systems. There's the game Celeste, where the main character Madeline comes face to face with another entity that's normally inside her called Part of Me, dubbed by the fandom "Badeline", who really isn't all bad at all. There's the book series The Hybrid Chronicles, which I really need to read, about a world where everyone starts out as a system of two but one emerges as the sole person with the other one gone away some time in childhood, and the main characters are a system that decide they don't want either of them to go away.

Anyways. Thanks, Holly. Your words and your example will live on.

One of my favorite authors, Holly Lisle, died recently from cancer. She wasn't my favorite due to her books, though I return time and time again to Hawkspar. She was my favorite due to how she inspired me to write. One thing she did wonderfully in Hawkspar was juggle two different PoVs, one in first person and the other in third, which is how I'm doing the Cord of Three novels. Another thing is that the climax of Hawkspar isn't an epic battle, though there is one near the end. Instead, it's a masterful speech in front of the world's version of the United Nations. One day, I will write a climax as satisfying to me as that speech.

But mostly it was her blog that made me love her as an author. That and her books on writing.

There's a blog post of hers that has been in my favorites for years, and I've come back to it more times than I can count. Its advice has been the best way to recalibrate my motivation for my writing, better than anything else. It's called Writer's Block: Losing and Regaining Writer's Hunger. I do writing dates, rekindle my love of writing through reading books that make me want to write my own, and write things that are outside of my comfort zone just to break free of my internal censor, all on the advice from this post.

Holly, I hope wherever you are now, you see the outpouring of love from your fans and your writing community. You were amazing, and you will be missed dearly.

[waywardsalt]

tag rant but man i fuckin hate the new direction for loz

[gigifujijifu]

Ok so I first wrote a mess in the tags but by the end of it I realized the actual answer, for me, is not just following impulses for who I want to play but also: spreadsheets.

My boyfriend and I make spreadsheets almost as a hobby. We have... a lot of alts, so to make it easier we have spreadsheets for things like which alts we've done holiday events on, and which trade-able cosmetics we've unlocked on who so we can pass extras around without having to log into everyone to check (not that I collect anything in a completionist sense with so many alts).

I also made a spreadsheet that lets us mark which WT stickers we need that week and it will flag which ones we have in common with each others alts so we can pair them off to do them more efficiently if we want.

I realize it's excessive but it's a kind of fun project and I love all of my characters and my bf dearly so playing with them no matter who I'm on or with is fun and there's always something to do.

people who have alts on ffxiv

how do you do it /g

[bbygirl-aemond]

okay now that i've slept on this episode (and watched the behind the scenes) i want to talk more about this idea of rhaenyra as a cult leader who has completely drunk her own kool-aid. it's an a+ development for her character and i truly hope the writers continue to lean into it further.

hotd has built up this idea of dragons being a conduit for the divine from the very beginning of season one, when viserys and rhaenyra talk about how the targaryen's perceived proximity to the gods comes via their control of dragons. earlier in season two we also heard the smallfolk describe the dragons as invulnerable gods during the parading of meleys's head. this is a deliberate narrative that the targaryens have cultivated (as jace pointed out) to provide themselves with a divine mandate to justify their rule.

this idea of the dragons as a divine mandate is beginning to intersect with the conqueror's dream for rhaenyra in a fascinating way. rhaenyra has always placed more importance on the conqueror's dream than, say, daemon or jace, but this episode goes much further, and is full of rhaenyra talking about being given signs and instructions from the gods. i think addam claiming seasmoke was a transformation for her- she was smiling and had this look of near elation once he claimed her as queen.

i think she genuinely believes that the gods broke the rules of dragon claiming in order to give her a loyal dragon rider right when she needed one. we then see this same elated smile again when she successfully brings vermithor to heel.

each of these little moments is something she takes as confirmation that she's being aided by the gods. this is why she is so convinced that the dragon seeds who claim vermithor and silverwing will be loyal to her- she has convinced herself that all of this is the gods signaling to her and that they will bring her loyal dragon riders the way they brought her addam. the dragon tamers point out what rhaenyra is not willing to acknowledge; these are not true signs from the gods, but things that rhaenyra herself is reading into and arranging for herself. she is seeing what she wants to see. and this will be proven true when hugh and ulf betray rhaenyra, likely due to rhaenyra's own actions in locking the dragonseeds in to die. they were not loyal believers sent from the gods to serve her; they were just men, and she's given them the fantasy equivalent of nuclear missiles.

a large part of this belief in divine validation is definitely due to rhaenyra's own deep seated insecurity due to viserys neglecting her in her childhood and her small council not taking her seriously enough, but i also think this is a coping mechanism on rhaenyra's part. she has no choice but to lean into this war as fully as she can now, to describe herself as helpless in the wake of what the gods have set before her, because she needs her losses to mean something. she needs visenya's death and luke's death to mean something. she needs the loss of her relationship with alicent to mean something.

but in doing this, she is already beginning to push others away from her. she has lost the support of the dragon tamers, and she has also pushed away jace; when he confronted her about a valid concern about how this would make his own ascension even more fraught, she just parroted more of that divine mandate nonsense back to him, which he is clearly not buying. i'll be curious to see how much deeper she falls into this cultish spiral and how much more it costs her.