#i rly want to make some vague lore with it too

[planethead]

hit play on jamma's playlist and the first thing that plays is i dont like by chief keef. this songs too energetic trynna play at night

[jellitchi]

vat7k designs in my head...

i thought their canon designs were a eensy weensy bit Unpolished so i made these mostly for myself. erm if u rly want it i think varian is 19 here, hugo 19, nuru 18, yong 12.

i also made rhem all playlists and had to draw them a cover so thats what the last img is I linked each of em under my notes for all of em... Under the cut is Like a Huge Infodump of notes i have for each chara,,,,,,

i kept varians design basically the same, i dislike the design w the orange neck thing so i just Nuked it😭... Here's Varians playlist

Hugos design i just wanted to put him in something more Loose. hes a thief, a professional escape artist. i dont think wearing clunky metal is ideal for him. i also gave him a prosthetic arm (blond w no arm design trope!) but u cant see it in the ref so i added another drawing of him in his under layering👍 i vaguely referenced russian(?) clothes for him as well... Yeah not too much changed w him i just tried to make him slippery-er. Here's Hugo's playlist

yong came relatively easy to me, if it wasn't obvious i did rip gaming from g*nshin's hoodie. i thought the lion hood was Adorable and freaking perfect for what i had in mind for hos character. since the og notes said the fire kingdom is loosely Chinese inspired i basically just kept that. i mashed tgt a buncha diff dynasties though sorry for how inconsistent i was... i think he looks Okay. anyways i changed yongs role a bit, ill explain why im adjusting some of their roles later but i kept yong as the Jinx Type character. hes the eldest in his family and has a buncha younger siblings, hes a lion dancer and does performances w his family/siblings. he rly like special effects n keeps tryna incorporate his fireworks into their performances (it flops and he has to sew up the dmg) ill explain more of yongs role in another post maybe shrugs... Here's Yong's Playlist

miss nuru was a bit of a struggle for me i might share my full design process with her coz i did a Bunch of mockups for her😭😭😭... i didnt have a specific country of reference for her but i chose to make her vaguely south asian inspired. i also really wanted to keep the sheer fabric w the star / constellation map. i love that idea its so cute so shes still technically the navigator. but she also wields a sword too, fencing or whatever. (her and varian r Huge Cass fangirls which is probably why she started tryna use a sword (snuck out to watch cass compete) Okay ill talk abt this later) in my head, okay ill Probably make a whole nother post talking abt how im interpreting/writing each chara, but in my head i think nuru is the youngest and her kingdom's archivist. shes mostly in charge of like Her kingdoms history / artifacts / etc. ok im getting too side tracked ill save the lore dump for later but thats Nurus role in the party. Here's Nuru's Playlist

uhm below i made their character stats mostly to help me with planning / role developing. the yellow is their base stats the color behind is their end stats i guess. i was gonna explain my reasoning for their stats but ermm this post is kinda Really long so sorry😭... varian max int for obvious reasons, also max charisma just coz i feel like u kinda learn a thing or two being around a couple manipulators and spending time in jail idk shrugs... (also lets not forget the "ud b surprised what ppl would do for a cookie!") Hugo slippery guy, if a brick is thrown at him as hes running hes gonna try n run faster to shatter it, his mindset is Run Run Run! i think hes relatively agile too but yeah mostly a Speedster. i think he n varian got no Physical strength varian maybe just like A little coz Farm boy but I rly doubt quirin is making him do a Lotta heavy lifting. yong has incredible stamina and agility because hed a performer. nuru is the strongest coz this team would literally Flop without a proper Offense😭... i think varian n hugo r able to outwit plenty of their opponents but i think nuru is pretty good in a fight, same w yong. Yeah Okay Sorry for a Long Long Post thanks hope u guys enjoy

[milkbreadtoast]

tried drawing the mc from a dream i had recently... design and colors tbd(+placeholder clothes) but i decided to give him pink hair lol (more info under the cut)

ok im going to ramble a bit abt the lore now.... all this is tentative/im not sure bc it's based on a dream... he works for this organization that's basically like a super powered "peace keeping" police force/FBI type deal that paints itself as like super heroic & good & all abt justice... but it's secretly an evil organization that oppresses/experiments on monsters and hides this from the officers(except the higher ups) and the public... i think maybe 1 of the officers' jobs is to defend the public from monsters? (the monsters include animal-like ones but also magical creatures w human-like intelligence) but they secretly capture + do cruel experiments on monsters... and oppress them in other ways(?)

+ in the dream there was a resistance group of fox/werewolf-like shapeshifting monsters... ok im just gonna copy what i wrote here:

just gonna add that the mc prob joined the police force bc of the childhood friend incident (wants to protect ppl so this doesnt happen again?) + he was prob also chosen as a target by the resistance group bc of this incident too... like it's all connected... the childhood friend incident is related to the monsters... only they (and the evil org) know what rly happened... mc is chosen bc of his ties to that friend/the incident... maybe the childhood friend was a monster..? I'm not sure lol but def connected. MC also has superpowers but I haven't decided for sure what they are (i rmbr his ability in the dream but idk if im going w that kdfjdj like it has to make sense...)

also in the dream the mc guy had like unassuming brown haired just some guy energy but after waking up i was considering other colors and pink popped into my head lmfao... also if he looks kinda like yeseo LOOK AWAY... I RLY TRIED OK... this is why i made him pink and not brown🤧

the mc also had like 2-3 fellow officer friends in the organization... i vaguely have an afterimage of what they looked like... 1 of them was a more srs type... mc himself is p laid back... kinda dense and disarmingly nice type lol. Also he's a young adult... maybe 24ish? (or older cuz i can do whatever i want)

Bonus: i also drew this yesterday, it's another mc from a dream i had the other day (but im not satisfied w this lol + dont rmbr enough of the dream to flesh it out)

[runawaymun]

so.. reading and looking at your fics and art kinda makes me wanna try my hand at some stuff too (they are just so beautiful and elicit so many feels), but. you seem so knowledgeable and familiar with tolkien/elves lore (and so does everyone else i've started reading in this community of elf-lovers on tumblr haha) and i'm most assuredly not. i don't get so many of the world-building allusions authors make about the history/culture/magic, which is easy enough to deal with when reading, but do you think i'd be able to write anything good with such limited understanding of the world i'm writing in? i'm not even confident enough for modern au's because idek that much about the character's relationships/connections with each other, y'know? but what do you think? would the holes i have or straight up inaccuracies rly weaken the story and interrupt the reader's connection to the world/character's, or could i still get by? tolkien's worldbuilding is so intimidating lol

Oh my goodness, this is such a sweet ask.

I'm really glad that you love my art and writing so much, and I consider it SUCH a huge compliment that it inspires you to make your own! That's what it's all about, honestly.

So first off I just want to address the anxiety around the lore-knowledge and the Tolkien fandom because listen listen listen, there are people of every level of knowledge creating art and fics here. Let me just say that when I first published And the Stars Shine the Same three years ago, I was mostly working off of film knowledge and some vague book knowledge, and I was petrified to post it because of how intimidating the Tolkien fandom seemed. I was so worried about getting this wrong and making mistakes -- so know that you're not alone in that, and it is a very common anxiety in this fandom. The thing is, when I posted that fic I found that people loved it, and that everyone was so nice, and really I have not had anybody (save maybe...one person off the top of my head) get very nitpicky about the lore/language/etc. Everybody else was very nice, loved the fic, and super receptive and friendly.

I promise you that there are so many lovely people in this fandom and that, while they're extremely knowledgeable they're also so friendly. Nearly everybody I know would be delighted if you came into their inbox and asked them a question about their specific area of interest with regards to the Silm and LOTR. There are amazing resources in this fandom, and everybody is very happy to help when asked. When I was getting started I mostly talked to friends, looked at other fanart (because honestly there is a LOT of information packed into how people portray characters in fanart for this fandom), and when I wasn't sure on something I just checked the wikis. I believe Tolkien Gateway is one of the best resources, though I also use The One Wiki to Rule Them All, and this is one of the best resources I've found for just a quick look at common Sindarin phrases, and for everything else I use Parf Edhellen which is an incredibly comprehensive dictionary for Tolkien's various elvish languages. And if you're not sure on something, just send a call out into the void because there are dozens of besties on Tumblr who are happy to offer suggestions for names or phrase translations. There's also so much information on Youtube.

I didn't even get around to reading the Silm and rereading LOTR until I felt like it. Honest to god I looked at the wikis and asked friends for most of the stuff I needed.

And I know how intimidating it can be to build your own story within Tolkien's world, but for me what I liked so much about his work is that--- while he is specific on some things, he's also very vague on others. There is a lot of room for interpretation and your own headcannons and worldbuilding. That was part of why I chose the historical spot I did for Stars and Boundless Sky, because it was sort of "dead space" so to speak with regards to Tolkien's own worldbuilding, and so I was able to play around and do my own thing without worrying too much about stepping all over lore.

But okay, all of that to say: yes you can write good stories without being super knowledgeable. Please believe me you can. You can write whatever you want, so long as you love it, and it is yours. If you have a story you want to tell in Tolkien's little legendarium then please, please do. Tolkien's legendarium is a mythology, and mythologies are meant to be retold and reinterpreted. Tolkien's canon is incredibly loosy-goosey. There are parts of unfinished tales where Christopher Tolkien wrote: "I really couldn't make sense of my dad's notes, so here's everything. Knock yourself out ig" (notably, "Of Galadriel and Celeborn").

And Peter Jackson was fairly faithful when it comes to the og trilogy. Like there are things that I take issue with that are pet peeves of mine, and I know that's the same for a lot of people as well. Everybody has their things they take umbrage with and things they like, but generally if that's your base for knowledge you're going to be just fine to start writing fic. If you decide you want to research more, then that's up to you and the story you are trying to tell! If you're working off of the Hobbit films, that's a little different, but in general the Hobbit fandom is pretty chill when it comes to that. I would suggest reading the book if you can find the time to. It's an easy read and short, and it is very, very different to the films.

With the LOTR books...I know a lot of people are book purists and that's okay, and a lot of people go "oh you really SHOULD read the books", but tbqh as a lover of both, I think the films do a good job of telling you the heart of the story (barring a few characters like...uh. Elrond, whom PJ absolutely butchers, but I digress sorry sorry). The books do add a lot and deepen the meaning for a lot of things, and flesh a lot of characters out (and they're just fun to read), but again... yes you can write good stories without being super knowledgeable. I will say that over and over again nonnie I am grabbing you by the shoulders and looking you dead in the eye: please write your story if you want to. Please do not be afraid to just give it a stab. If you find that your lack of knowledge is holding you back for some reason, just ask! So many people will be happy to answer your questions.

Fanfiction is for everybody. Tolkien is for everybody. You do not have to be the most incredible skilled writer or know the lore really well to be able to write it. Please believe me as a person who was scared to write for the Tolkien fandom and then fell in love: people really do not gatekeep much, and if they do they're assholes. I have met so many lovely, friendly, genuine people by creating stuff for this fandom. You will be okay.

So...ough this got long, sorry. But TLDR: Yes. You can write a good story. If you are worried about holes/the story/characterization getting weakened, try to find a beta reader. They're absolute life-savers. Barring that, start posting, find a friend who as insane about your blorbos as you are, and then share snippets and plot ideas with them and within that kind of community you can get a feel for what's working in your story and what isn't. All of my best friends I have made on here are people who read my fics and have been so helpful in offering suggestions.

There are many resources, everybody is friendly, it is not as scary as it looks. The most important thing is that you have fun. Write what you want to write. It doesn't have to be good. All that matters is that you enjoy it.

[tactician]

datv spoilers abt how they handled one of the older games' companions under the cut

(also it's negative if you'd rather avoid that sort of thing)

man im not a datv hater by any means, in fact i Love It and i want to write up my general #thoughts about it sometime - both the positive and the negative, yay nuance - but i rly do need to take a moment to rant about how it lowkey did zevran so dirty and that's one aspect of it that i will never forgive!!!

LIKEEEE OK YES. i'll admit that im being dramatic / sensitive bc i love zev so fucking much and i have been steeled by years upon years of listening to the fandom treat one of my fav dragon age characters (literally the reason why i got into dragon age) like some kind of joke but. that experience is a lot different from seeing bioware do it. ik there's some cute shallow references to him sprinkled here-and-there (iirc 'the invitation' gearset is a reference to him which is pretty nice), but there's ALSO a banter that lucanis has w harding which implies that members of house arainai 'died from embarrassment' over a failed assassination contract in ferelden, which is obviously a reference to zevran - and ohhhh when i tell you it grinded my gears.... it really, really got to me...

i definitely understand wanting to keep immersion intact for people who killed off zevran in origins as well as people who got him through it and let him go off and hunt down crows - so making a reference to the actual contract and keeping the fallout of that contract vague makes sense. but being coy about it (a la harding assuming that leaders of house arainai literally just died from The Cringe Of It All and weren't, like, systematically hunted down by a former crow / survivor who went thru years of literal torture from them) is really like... i dunno! i don't like it! it left a bad taste in my mouth + seeing tons of people giggling over it ANNOYS MEEEE!!!! it legit ruins my own immersion bc wdym the crows have no opinion whatsoever on a character who was slaughtering them left and right in my worldstate lkfdgldkfh

and like even if you view it as a clumsy euphemism for zev hunting the leaders down later on, i still rly firmly maintain that it's a poor one. if he survives post-origins, zevran becomes a total thorn in the crows' side. he killed off influential leaders within the org... he even got a title for it (THE BLACK SHADOW. YES I REMEMBER)... and bioware is reducing that legacy to a joke about people dying from embarrassment -_- like please be serious.

furthermore i don't think it's immersion breaking to just... replace those lines with a sentence or two referencing an assassin within house arainai who defected and started taking down talons given how abhorrent house arainai was/is(?), either. a vague foreboding reference would literally do the job just fine. house arainai was not the fandom's ~*~Found Family Vibes~*~ lmao they were taking in child slaves and grooming them into ruthless assassins - but that lore is totally ignored in veilguard, too!!! even with all the fledglings around the crows' base in veilguard... it's just not elaborated on in a way that aligns with previously established lore.

DON'T GET ME WRONG THOUGH. i'm absolutely not part of the section of the fandom who hate on the crows being a "good-aligned" faction that rook can ally with, because obviously all of the houses aren't house arainai - some are scummier than others and some do, in fact, have the ~*~Found Family Vibes~*~. it just sucks so much that datv provides banter and dialogue setups where the #lore is like... talked about and explained to some degree... but those lines are wasted on empty shit like "the crows hire recruits from the military or the trades! :)" or weird trope-based jokes at the expense of previous companions rather than even vaguely implying that different houses do different things, and that some houses are shitty to a truly reprehensible level.

tl;dr imo if bioware doesn't want previous choices to matter or for stuff to be hyper-tailored to specific worldstate choices, that's cool and fine and deeply understandable, but characters should just be quiet about those choices ;LKGFHL;KFDG BUT HEY!!!!! if i missed a banter where zevran IS referenced in a manner which isn't a joke or linked to his sex appeal, i would rly love to hear about it... because as this sudden unplanned Essay that i spawned proves, im Quite salty about this L;FDGKGFHKLGHF

[trickstarbrave]

hang on i gotta be insane for a second

"The Void Ghost said: 'Stay with me a full hundred years and I will give you a power that no divinity will dare disobey.' But before the hundred years was up, Vivec was already looking for Lie Rock and found him.'Stupid stone,' Vivec said. 'To hide in the Scaled Blanket is to make a mark on nothing. His bargains are only for ruling kings!'"

"The ruling king is armored head to toe in brilliant flame. He is redeemed by each act he undertakes. His death is only a diagram back to the waking world. He sleeps the second way. The Sharmat is his double, and therefore you wonder if you rule nothing. Hortator and Sharmat, one and one, eleven, an inelegant number. Which of the ones is the more important? Could you ever tell if they switched places? I can and that is why you will need me."

"By chance, Nerevar met the Void Ghost first, who told him that he was in the wrong place to which the Hortator said, 'Me or you?' and the Void Ghost said both. This sermon does not tell what else was said between these masters."

these are three different things from the 36 sermons

so we're clear allow me to explain some things: "ruling king" here refers to someone who has achieved apotheosis. the amaranth, the new man, a bit vague on it, but whatever you want to call it. a man who is redeemed with every action he takes, who is freed from both fear and desire and uncertainty.

the void ghost meanwhile is lorkhan, the one who made this world precisely to make such a being through trial and hardship.

and lastly, vivec says the ruling king has the sharmat as his double before immediately describing the hortator (nerevar) and sharmat as doubles. nerevar isnt a ruling king as far as we know in lore. if he was he probably wouldnt have rly died the first go around.

i believe vivec intends for nerevar to become a ruling king. but i am curious then if lorkhan made the same deal to nerevar. or if he had attempted to just delay baar dau (the lie rock who in this story is sentient and one of vivec's children) by trickery. vivec doesnt elaborate, but he seems content with their discussion as he deals with baar dau (and uses it as a threat)

theres more stuff too i havent been able to put into coherent words. in the 36 sermons and what my beloved taught me both say nerevar's hands have the ghartoki on them. GHARTOK PADHOME to be exact. in the sermons it also describes them as a curse. the translation is roughly weapon+hand of padomy/change. ghartok can be translated as the hand you use for a weapon or hands that are weapons. it could just be an auspicious mark that marks him as a hero, but i am reminded of the accounts of mephala's black hands.

to quote the new whirling school on it

To become a Ruling King, you must blacken your hands by becoming intimate with both Theory and Terror. Logic and Hysteria, two chiral opposites. Desire disappears in the hands of a Theorist, and fear does not exist in the hands of a Terrorist. You become clear of mind and devoid of fear. […] Facing down the Godhead requires incredible bravery because God is armored head to toe in terror. Simply being in its soul-nullifying presence is terrifying, and commanding all the Terror in the world will not aid you. Neither will Theory, for CHIM is a form of self-delusion. You are insisting that you exist despite inarguable evidence to the contrary, and this requires an argument made with a complete lack of reason

but i might be stretching it here

[xshimaeraxx]

I've seen many posts about people missing how common asks used to be so I have been trying to send about an ask a week. Now I send this ask first anytime I follow someone as I really don't want to bother anyone, so I'd love to know if you enjoy receiving asks and if so what kind of asks. Not having energy for asks or being comfortable with them is perfectly okay.

The categories I have in my ask notebook that I file under are in colour. Please feel free to make your response as long as you want or private (the asker cannot directly respond to private responses).

Self, Job/Work: please let me know what you are comfortable with from eh idk just ask it to nothing personal at all.

Baggishield/Tolkien, Dragon Age, Johnlock/Sherlock, ineffable spouses, other fandom: Please let me know what fandoms. I think my main fandoms and ships are Bagginshield/The Hobbit, Sherlock/Johnlock, Dragon Age Inquisition, {Pippin/Faramir Merry/Eowyn}/The Lord of the Rings and I dip my toes in a few that I currently can't remember but ships I don't engage with the canon of at all are: Good Omens but only for Crowley/Azirapheal, Stranger Things but only for Steve/Eddie , The Witcher but only for Geralt/Jaskier, and Ladybug and Cat Noir but only for Adrinette .

OC's, art/drawing, their writing, blog specific only

Story snippets ideas and prompts: Do you like receiving them?

Pets: I'd love to know all about them

Garden and Hobbies: What type of gardening and/or hobbies?

Like being tagged in things: If so what kinds of things?

*Asks are sent for fun, no pressure to answer.

hello!!! yeah, i love receiving asks, lmao, & as for ur questions:

self, job/work: hmmm. im not rly comfy w any major questions ab my irl life (like stuff along the lines of “where specifically t do you live” (like im a brit, but if somewhere were to ask js where i live in the uk, i wldnt answer, as is common sense (imo) when it comes to the internet), “how old are you” “what is (are) your irl name(s)” etc. etc. - identifying stuff, basically), tho anythin’ else is pretty much on the table rn.

fandoms: oh, fandoms my beloved. my main fandoms atm (for both reading & writing, tho some r only reading while some r only writing, etc. etc.) are cuphead (i have way too much worldbuilding for this one au of mine that branches off into so many aus of the au, its genuinely gettin a lil crazy /pos /lh; i write fic for this one, aswell- in fact, its kinda my main writing-for fandom atm ^^), the hobbit (bagginshield my beloved i love you shjshsjehejs - i also dable vaguely in lotr (mainly gimli/legolas + parentshield tbh lmao) but its mostly js the hobbit for me), good omens (i love the ineffables i love s1 & s2 & HSJSHSJSHSJ i js love it like. all around. fuck gaimon tho, death of the author tyvmm), my hero academia/boku no hero academia (i dont engage w fandom much other then a few fanfic writers’ blogs here on tumblr & ao3 fanfic lmao XD; love the anime tho), harry potter (FUCK jkr, speaking as a brit myself none of us claim her, the transphobes can have her, we dont want her /lh - love the (good parts of) fanbase tho. ive actually made some rly good fic-writer friends thru it over on discord lmao), & ofc rise of the guardians!!! (fuckin love that thing, so sad there was never a second move :sadblob: love playin around w fanon/fandom lore tho, & i LOVE jackrabbit (bunnymund/jack) its my main ship in the fandom, tho im a multishipper so im also kinda partial to some other ones ofc)

ocs, art/drawing, writing, blog specific: not entirely sure what this one’s asking/if its actually a question, but imma answer it any lolol XD. anygays - ocs: i have a few cuphead ocs, but none of ‘em r self-inserts & all only rly exist bc of/for/to enhance/move forward the plot of my (main) cuphead au, tho ofc theyre still ocs - love ‘em like my children even if i dont love ‘em as much as i do the canon characters, snirk. art/drawing: i do draw, tho i rarely post any of my art, and one or two times i have its usually bc im js proud enough of it to want to share it, ehehe. writing: i write. so much fanfic. none of its posted, but i have so many wips i frankly dont know when any one of ‘em will be, sooo… shrug. blog specific: my blog isnt rly “specific”; its more js a place for me to enage w cool art & fics & such & reblog stuff i like on here as well as probably self-promo my own fics & such, as well as js a place to put my random ramblings in XD.

story snippets & prompts: oh, i love ‘em!! always nice 2 get a new burst of writing motivation ::D

pets: ohhh, cats. i love cats. had one for a while for around a good two years or so but after he injured his paw & we had 2 keep him inside for 3 weeks straight, the flightly lil bugger’s runaway. he (might’ve; still don’t know for sure whether it rly was him or not, but he apparently responded to his name from my mother’s accounts, so :shrug:) came back in the middle of the night a week or so ago now, but idtk whether he’s dead, alive, or js been taken in by some other family who thinks he’s a stray. :sigh:

gardening & hobbies: i don’t garden, and as for hobbies… not much, rly. i like writing fic, i like reading, i like going on (short, i have shite stamina) walks every other day or so, i like talkin w my few friends. like i said, not much. ::)

like being tagged in things: yes, i do! and as for what… anything, rly! tag games, fic wip games, askbox/ask games, im good w ‘em all! ::D

thx for the ask; have a good day/night/timezone!! ::>

[staurora]

My Thoughts on Xikers debut!

(gif retrieved from @hunternity )

So Xikers recently debuted with the album House of Tricky: Doorbell Ringing and I wanted to share my thoughts! I’ve been keeping an eye on them as KQ has released more content to build hype and I think they were very easy for me to get interested in compared to many other groups. And their album did not disappoint!

I won’t go into my specific thoughts on every song but I think the entire album as a whole is very well done. Its cohesive and high energy in a way that doesn’t feel annoying or dull, due to the great musicality from the production team (Hongjoong, Edenary crew, ily). If I had to describe the concept, it’s a sort of trickster concept with a modern, youthful kind of twist. They play around a little bit with varying genres while keeping a distinct Kpop sound as the through-line. I enjoyed it very much and I’ve been listening to it often since release!

(I hear they also have lore. I’m not gonna dive into that until like. Next comeback. It looks complicated and I don’t have enough material to judge yet lol)

When you look for negative opinions of them so far, the biggest thing I’ve seen is that people think they’re too much like Ateez, that KQ is just making them Ateez junior, etc. I can see why they feel like it sounds a bit similar, but at the same time, Ateez has a particular sound that I just… don’t really hear in these tracks? Idk how to describe it, like Ateez songs tend to have a more cinematic feeling most of the time I think? I could see a comparison between this album and maybe Fever part 2, but even then its a very vague similarity and I’ve always felt that particular album kind of stuck out of Ateez’s music. I think if Xikers were under JYP, everyone would compare them to Stray Kids in the same way, right? They just sound like a kpop boy group.

Also… yeah I’m sure KQ is trying to make a follow up to Ateez, one of their most profitable business moves to date (come on, KQ fellaz and then KQ fellaz 2? It’s pretty clear). But the members of Xikers are distinct individuals, and their personalities will naturally influence the direction of their music and performances. They will eventually move out from the shadows of senior performers. Hopefully they can bring something very new or innovative to their second comeback, make a wave like hala hala did but in a whole new way.

Anyway, to close on a positive note, here are some of my favorite things I’ve noticed from Xikers thus far!

Sumin! He’s probably my bias, along with Hunter? Hunter’s dance skills are CRAZY (and he did that one performance to all time hit Juggernaut by my fav Tyler the Creator so I’m. Biased.) Sumin kinda snuck up on me tho, for some reason he reminded me a bit of Changbin? But distinctly different, he has this particular kind of coolness yknow? I’m always rapper biased😔.

In Xikey, Minjae’s shout of “Xikers” rly gave me goosebumps! So powerful, he went all in and it paid off!

Edenary, HJ i am Kissing u deeply for Dynamic, that track fucks severely

Yechan… that kid has some crazy potential and I think everyone knows it. With him as well as the other members, I look forward to learning more about them as individuals and seeing those traits shine through in their music.

[fabaceous]

i was tagged by @thenelse to do 8 shows to get to know me better...ok honestly i dont watch a lot of tv. i mostly watch the same shows over and over so i actually could barely list 8. fyi the first 4 are probs my favorite shows but the rest are just shows that have impacted my life in some way. please dont judge me i swear i have good taste in other things 👍

1. yellowjackets obviously because it has literally everything i could ever ask for in a tv show. it irreparably alters my brain chemistry on a weekly basis

2. always sunny in philly. i can always bond with my girl friends’ boyfriends over this one LOL. ive seen every single episode a truly embarrassing number of times and i dream of being randomly thrust into a trivia situation where there is a question about always sunny because i have an obscene amount of knowledge on always sunny lore and am 100% confident i would nail it.

3. arrested development. second only to always sunny in the making lanie laugh category. tobias funke character of all time

4. haunting of hill house. winner of the making lanie cry category. great autumnal watch, i love rewatching around halloween. bent neck lady reveal had me legitimately in shambles

5. i mean the office i guess. i watched it in high school or maybe college,  mostly because my friends were always referencing it and i wanted to get the jokes...and lol i rly thought jim/pam was peak romance. luckily now im older and wiser and know jackieshauna is peak romance

6. back in college i watched all of friends because of a vaguely homoerotic bestie situation that later imploded and the one perk of losing her was that i was finally free to admit that show fucking sucks especially ross fuck that guy fr. me and my friends would have killed ross with hammers i can tell you that much

7. i used to watch bones with my parents when i was probably a little too young to be watching it. perhaps this is the origin of my fascination with morbid things

8. another childhood nostalgia show is monty python’s flying circus which i always watched with my dad. to this day we are capable of annoying everyone else in the room by having an entire conversation made up of monty python quotes (complete with bad fake accents)

EDIT BECAUSE I FORGOT THE MOST OBVIOUS ONE I KNEW I WAS MISSING SOMETHING: DARK (the german time travel one) thats actually a legit favorite of mine, took me on so many emotional journeys and made me laugh and weep and theorize and ponder. and it was good german practice 👍

well now you know, for better or worse...probably worse...anyway i nominate @chel-c-fsea @jamesv-t @movingtoparistoshootheroin @excluded-from-the-narrative ummm ermmm ehhhm... i would also say @teabookgremlin but you already got tagged...but...get double tagged i guess? lol ok i wont be offended if any of you guys dont do this but i didnt want to be boring and not tag anyone hehe <3

[llycaons]

Hinton got mad when people viewed her characters as gay, so I don't think she writes fic. She says she supports LGBT rights, she's just against people interpreting characters the wrong way. Definitely not a fic writer.

'the wrong way' lmao. um I can definitely see her not wanting her characters to be read as gay or writing slash fic herself, but keep in mind not all fanfic IS slash fic. there's general and non-romantic stuff too, and that includes a lot of the examples the other published authors gave. like slash is the expectation especially for a woman writing spn fic, but it's not necessarily a given. but she does read and write fic, and she does love supernatural. this article on fanlore has an excerpt sourced from a vulture article that I'm going to say it's probably real

I’ve written three or four stories for Supernatural, which is my favorite TV show. And a few years ago I wrote three Outsiders stories to see what kind of a response I would get. I use a different name, naturally. People would say, “Wow, you really got the characters down right!” And I’d be like, Glad to hear it. The feedback from fanfic readers tends to be really simple. Along the lines of, “Oh my God, I love this! Keep going!” Nothing specific, like what you’d get from an editor. But it is immediate, and there’s something to be said for that.

that's kind of fun actually. the fact that she got the characters right, not that she's an spn fan. not rly surprised though. midwestern vaguely conservative older people love stories about...family? or something

Two of the best stories I’ve ever read in my life, published or not, were fanfiction. One was actually an Outsiders story. The writing was gorgeous. Really beautiful — the way the writer conveyed the characters. So I wrote to her. She was European, and it took her a while to believe that it was really me. I said, “I think you’ve really got a future in writing, so keep it up.” Fanfiction can make me cry as easily as any other story.

wow....BUT ALSO. according to fanlore, she was in a twitter dispute about spn fanfic:

"One thing that really gets on my nerves: People who think they can write a better #SPN than the writers do. Try it. Just fucking try it." - S.E. Hinton

AND THEN SOMEONE WROTE A FANFIC RESPONSE TO THAT TWEET

well I think we've all learned some rich lore today about midwestern ya authors, the terrible shows they somehow enjoy, and the pathetically impotent yet almost charmingly passionate response of the supernatural fanned fiction community

[cupcraft]

heya cup!! i just want to hop on your post because ive actually been thinking about this kinda thing for a while now and i rly loved reading ur post bc i think you expressed everything in a really nice, respectful way!

personally, i am not at all a big crit enjoying person lol, bc of my demons (makes me v stressed for whatever reason lmao), so i tend to have discourse, crit tags blocked bc they kill my personal vibes etc. i will admit i've unfollowed people before for not tagging their crit lmao, but most of them time i will click through to see whats up, and i think most of the time, i do enjoy reading some crit, esp when its not like, my whole dash lmao, and esp when it comes from a place of love!! (hell im a cfiances main i think my entire mutuals circle only grudgingly accepted the csapnap book lore as canon like two months ago like i get cc's making Choices in regard to lore i do!)

crit is so so good and i love reading it from people who gen love the characters!! its always interesting to hear, and if im not in the mood, i can always block it lol. i love hearing people pick stories they love apart and analyze them, because i know they're doign it with great love in their heart. i remember after the ctubbo caimsey lore all my ctubbo mutuals got in a huddle and talked about why they did or didnt like the lore, and it was really fun to read!! it was so clear they really do love all the characters and enjoy cctubbo's content, even if they didnt like the choices made, and even if i personally enjoyed the lore (<- sick little ccabinetduo main) i really thought they made a lot of good points that i really enjoyed hearing!

but i think a lot of the time i can get really frustrated with "crit" is when its tinged with a weird sort of distaste for the cc's writing the characters, and perhaps in a bit of a unfair/petty way, i get really frustrated when i see people who often extremely, unfairly critical of people like quackity or karl, and their storytelling and ability to create character arcs. i feel like karl esp has gotten so much of this (which is personally so odd to me bc i feel like he's just a pretty likeable guy even if you're not into his content, but i digress sfdjkla 😭). so much "tales" crit is really irritating to me bc it feels really clearly like barely disguised dislike for cckarl seeping into a discussion of ckarl.

esp when i see people writing crit of a character that they do not main or usually talk about! there was a post a while back that was, like character crit of cq (apologies if this is too much of a vague to post lmao), and it really frustrated me, not just because i dont like it when people are mean to my little boy, but because it was clear that the author of the meta did not understand the lore they were talking about. they were completely misrepresenting a character morality and behavior in a way they absolutely would not be doing if they had watched the arc from cq's pov. and i know they're capable of writing well written, interesting, respectful meta and even crit bc they do it for characters they love. but when it comes to characters from cc's they personally dont like, the crit is. bad. its bad. like if you dont like their lore, dont watch it, dont post about it!! like curate your experience please!! but it feels like you dont enjoy any lore they could even do and you dont want to put in the effort to do so, so please do not engage with their lore!!!

tldr, well written crit w love for the characters always in mind always good!! (also the great majority tbh!!), crit for characters op hates the cc's who play them bad!! (a v small but really upsetting portion that has rlly turned me off the whole genre of post!)

hey soap thanks for your additions to this discussion :)! i really liked what you wrote here and agree with most of it. Because to the point of people who dont like a character writing meta i generally dont mind and if really do mind its chances those people have been blocked by me (it really depends on the take for me personally so in taht regard i do understand your frustration a lot! this is /nm btw).

And yeah the pt of my post isnt that you cant dislike ppl's posts but that i just want to open up the discussion how we can all coexist healthily within this sphere of analysis. And i dont blame you for disliking certain genres of posts in your experience even though i do still like those genres myself (with some nuance ofc).

At least one positive thing to do in situations of what you said (at least what i do) is write meta since i do understand the character (or like to think i do ig insome instances). which maybe would help people learn and change their view. I used to have really bad c!q and c!wilbur opinions ngl and i read a lot of meta ppl posted about them who did understnd their characters more and now people i think generally i have good takes on cwilbur so thanks to the wilburian meta-ers ig sldfjsdl!

all /nm gen liked your additions and stuff i hope you hav ea great day soap!

[fmdjoosungarchive]

���✧】━━━ ♥ d e s i g n e d     b y     a e s t h e t i c ♥ ━━━【✧】

the aesthetic is just conceptual so BEAR w me,,,, i’m plagiarizing okay,, sung would make his own character, and make a keychain of said character. and bc the Concept is meant to be him-ish, the character would b a mix of two animals, and be a bear in a puppy suit. so like the middle pics but Reversed. and there’d be two keychain options, the traditional ring, and a string type to attach to a phone case. lil 3d mf. super cute, adorable, luvs it

word count: 424

tldr; im doing the para first bc,, timeline purposes but also bc im Hype to mention how apeach sung’s inspo here

---

never did joosung ever think that as an idol, he’d be asked to design merchandise for himself. asked for opinions on what phrases, pictures, or items might resonate with their fans, sure, just like anything else they were vaguely asked for their opinion on.

designing something of his own felt too close to the discomfort he’d felt when he was pushed as some... fashion guy, a while back. however, this couldn’t be blamed as a him issue, considering he’d heard everyone in the company was being asked to do the same thing. all he knew for quite a while was that clothing would be off limits. sung didn’t want to fall back into the same marketing as fashion focused, and even if he did try, the only clothing items he’d personally be interested in wouldn’t be all that marketable against his, and quantum’s, image.

he’d felt stumped, when every time he tried to think on the subject, he found his mind wandering to subjects that felt more pertinent. schedules, relationships, script writing, song writing. staying on the subject long enough to give it a proper go never came to closure.

what got him there, eventually, was in conversation. a compliment on his apeach phone case, and the subsequent discussion where sung, in a not too common scenario, was able to gush about his love for this, in truth, useless character. vaguely, it’d sparked a sliver of a thought, that came to mind the next time he attempted to think about the design process. he wished he could make something that could have that strong of an effect.

-well, why not?

who was to say sung couldn’t make a character out of this? he hadn’t tried creating characters of his own since he was a child, but with as much of a literature fanatic as him, it should be doable, right?

although, considering this was supposed to be merchandise in some way, it should be a reflection of him, and when it came to what could be personified, immediately he jumped to animals. the eternal debate amongst his fans, was he more of a bear or a puppy? sung did at times feel a little slighted that cat was nearly never in the picture, but on a deeper level, he understood.

deciding between a bear or a puppy might give himself too much of a stake in the debate, but... he could play into it, if it was both. that would make the character more unique than the millions of bears and puppies out there.

-------------

sung vs bearppy... pear...

word count: 474

i wanna come up w more concepts abt the character

and i dont actually kno if theres any lore(??) abt the characters in the aesthetic so if this part is the same its just parallel thought lol

so the character wears the suit bc theyre rly friendly n lonely but no one wanted to hang w them bc theyre a Big Scary Bear n most ppl love dogs so it makes them less threatening

they had a backstory of trying different suits but nothing working and/or feeling right until the puppy suit

their fave food is a peanut butter n honey sandwich

they explain hibernation to their friends by saying theyre visiting their family abroad

their life goal is to have 100 friends

okay im gonna leave it there bc i feel like these kinds of characters r meant to b vague enough to project onto

 onto the product pitch!

so this one i think would have been his second pitch, and he’d feel more confident n stable in the headphones pitch, despite the idea coming first (i imagine the headphones to come from the connection to bears)

this is more pitching a concept of sales rather than explicit research suggesting sales would likely be good

he’d have made a powerpoint for this one too bc ofc he would, and he’d end up mentioning his initial concept around apeach but in a more general sense of line friends/kkt friends

and he’d put effort into selling the concept of a brand new character being marketable Just for being cute. it’s a harder sell because this is meant to be something branded, tied to the self, and,,, bc this is an area sung always felt he struggled with most

he knows the textbook knowledge of how to be professional, marketing techniques, blah blah, but when it comes to knowingly using his charisma to win someone over, he gets in his head and it feels like lying. he’s just not good at closing the sale

his main tactic here would be presenting the idea that this one stupid keychain could become a big piece of media that they can get a lot of coin from. it’s just a gamble, and he knows that, even if he wouldnt mention it (bc again, if he did, he’d feel like he was lying to try to reassure them that he Absolutely knows it would turn out well. he’s like no this could b a total flop i dont actually kno anything)

so yeah he’s selling the big picture of it starts with a keychain then its a feature film kind of thing

and because it’s what he feels he knows how to do, he’d try to throw in statistics wherever he can, but they’d b v supplementary there. he’d likely walk out of the meeting disappointed w himself (thanks childhood)

[strifesolution]

ask response + rambling abt mcyt, dont want ppl mistaking this as me disliking new age stuff so im putting it under the cut

i KNOW part of it is nostalgia blindness 100% honestly. i poke fun at dreamsmp’s popularity (despite now watching it myself and having a toe dipped in the fandom) out of??? jealous i guess? no other minecraft fandom was really like it, no matter how popular yogs/ah/mianite/team crafted got at their prime, none of them had the *fandom* culture it had. yogs had it special thing on tumblr, but it never reached cross platform. hermitcraft too, is still very popular, but hasn’t reached the same level dreamsmp has, and honestly, good! i really think it’s going to stick around *because* it’s not crazy popular.

 but the amount of fanmade content is INSANE compared to any other mcyt fandom. it’s unsurprising with people in quarantine having the time to watch long livestreams and produce it, and the fact that twitter is the norm for that fandom... you get the idea. and it just makes me, deep down, sad yogs never got an animatic that got 10 million views. 

but the THING ABOUT THIS IS i think that’s WHY it’s not the same! thinking back, im relieved old mcyt fandoms arent as main stream, god knows the alternate timeline where xephos getting confirmed gay trends on twitter. there was comfort (and still is) in them being small. even at its height the yogs fandom was condensed, ppl knew the names of most big fandom blogs, the drama wasnt often *between* fans, more between creators and fans, which is why the relation was distanced. 

im jumping topics here without rly finishing them, but also, on canon stuff. one thing that i care a lot about with yogs is that... nothing and everything is canon? the “lore” we were given was so vague and randomly thrown out ppl could pick and choose what they wanted. i really still appreciate what rythian and zoey acknowledged when they released the blackrock plot, abt how the story is ours now. w/ a lot of dreamsmp lore, ive noticed, yeah, it’s cool that stuff becomes canon and lore is validated, but then someone’s headcanon they made is inconsistent with what’s made canon, and bc of fandom pressure, they can’t rly express that headcanon without backlash or at least ppl explaining why its not canon

with yogs, i can say “hey, i headcanon nano and parvis as siblings!” and no one cares! but with dreamsmp, if i say “hey i like (x) and (y) as siblings” someone might say “actually, canonically (x) is the sibling of (z)”

dont get me wrong, i HAVE seen plenty of people super chill about personal headcanons! this is more just how by making certain things canon and not canon, the series looses its “its minecraft nothing is canon or non-canon” uniqueness to it.  ON YOUR SECOND POINT.

man. man. yeah. do you have any idea how bad i want server god dream lore on the smp??? that would fuck. something about the way the fandom characterizes admins is SO cool and im sad its just...not acknowledged on dreamsmp? same w other certain game mechanics, ppl getting kicked/banned, respawning, mechanics. remember how theres a lore explanation early blackrock about why modpacks change when servers change? THAT SHIT IS SO COOL. 

for my own personal reasons its hard for me to consume certain ghostbur content, but the whole “3 lore deaths” is cool in concept! but the dark comedy implications of respawning will always be more fun to me. ya dead ya dead was such a fun idea of hardcore mode as well. 

summery of this part: to some extent, old mcyt fandoms couldnt thrive without minecraft itself being popular, while dreamsmp just uses minecraft as its launching point

anyways, this is long and rambly and NOOOOOTTT consistent, but again, i like a lot of dreamsmp stuff, genuinely, but the general feeling and energy of it is VERY strangely than a lot of other mcyt fandoms. anyways its 5am im sorry if nothing makes senseaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[reversecreek]

clicks onto the dash wearing kitten heels n coyly holding my bang....... hi. me again. it took me so long to select a gif to use on cricket’s intro n i settled on this one bc he looks so unsure abt his smile n it’s rly his essence <3 u can find his pinterest board here n his (work in progress) spotify playlist here. hmu to plot!!! 

* alex wolff, cis male + he/him | you know cricket donahue, right? they’re twenty-two, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, all of their life, on and off? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to should have known better by sufjan stevens like, a million times this year, which slipping on wet leaves to photograph a tree struck alight by lightning, delivering a tedtalk to your own reflection to hype yourself up to buy groceries, hiding your hands inside of your sleeves in case you grew an impromptu megan fox thumb overnight thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is october 1st, so they’re a libra, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( nai, 24, gmt, she/her )

HISTORY:

cricket ws born to a couple tht lived in lilac ridge. their trailer was tucked closest to the woods n always fell under the shade. it was like the leaves wanted to pretend they were a perpetual hanging cloud on the family n that was kind of fitting. their only reason fr having him in the first place was a kind of shrugged like........... we’re under the income bracket we’d get child benefits so why not! may as well try it to rake in some extra cash! needless to say they didn’t rly think it thru or anticipate all of the responsibilities tht came w children n wound up seeing him as an extremely large burden n boy didn’t he know it!

(child neglect & abuse tw) i’ll try to keep this part vague n brief but things were Not Good for cricket growing up. people in lilac ridge didn’t like his parents n it was for a gd reason. he remembers foggy things. being little n wandering around combing the grass with a stick to search for wrappers to suck on bc he was hungry. feeling uneasy when the front door opened. finding out his name was cricket bc the insects used to crawl into their trailer thru the vents n his parents liked to squish them into the carpet -- his mum told him as much once. i think this says a lot. to excessively trim the fat of the story he wound up entering the system at around 8 after his latest and most serious hospital visit. his parents hd to deal w the authorities n last he heard they bounced to evade charges.

(anxiety & violence & trauma tw) cricket sustained a few lifelong injuries from his time in lilac ridge. his knee didn’t heal right which meant he had (n still has to this day) a limp n he’s partially deaf in one ear. he’s always been an incredibly insecure n anxious person so this mde him rly self conscious going into a strange n new environment tht wld b difficult fr any kid to adjust to, nvm w these added worries. he jst felt like something weird to ogle at honestly. he probably wld have felt like that no matter where he was or what he looked like. he cld be in a huge hall of 200 people all wearing the same uniform n he’d still feel like the odd one out. needless to say this didn’t rly help him make friends

cricket’s coping mechanisms were romanticising the things tht other people found ugly or embarrassing or painfully ordinary. he liked it when the rain hit clunky drops against school windows n forbid everyone from playing outside bc he could feel the vibrations through the rubber soles of his shoes n it was a little bit like hearing all of the world at once fr just a moment. he liked medieval fantasy lore about stout gnomes w crumbs in their beards n cheeks red from ale. he liked fallen nests with the remnants of hatched eggs still dirty from the branches n soil they’d hit on the way down. he liked the way the sunlight leaked thru the leaves of the trees in the woods and how, when he sat very still, he could tune into the ringing that was always in his ear n pretend it was coming from the same place, that light thru the leaves, that the angels were trying to talk to him.

he spent a lot of time in the red room at his high skl (i’m begging u this is not a 50 shades reference) (after googling i jst realised it’s called a darkroom bt i’m leaving this fr the sake of sexy bimbo authenticity) n felt quite at home in there. he borrowed a camera whenever he cld (maybe he did yearbook) n photography became his way of immortalising the world as the romanticised version he wanted it to be. his memories were bad bt his photos were beautiful. maybe if he took enough they’d paste over n bleed into each other. maybe bad cld be replaced w beautiful if he tried his very best.

he got placed into fostering w a family once bt apparently didn’t meet the vibe check of their tastes so he wound up returning to the group home he’d initially been placed in. overall this is where he grew up n he aged out the system rather than getting adopted. there was a sense of floundering/isolation/not feeling gd enough in tht bt cricket made do the best he knew how. 

that said there were some gd points! (shocking i kno bc his life hs been so fking bleak so far bt please it’s ok........) (is it?) (🤔). basically he interned as an assistant at this local photography studio during high skl working under this kind of whimsical yet endearing old man. suspected wizard possibly in cricket’s eyes, as an avid fantasy genre reader. for one of his bdays said old man / his boss bought him his very own film camera n cricket cried bc he’d never been bought a bday gift. this ws rly embarrassing bc this old man didn’t know how to emote n neither did cricket so he ws jst sort of sat wiping his eyes n sniffling saying he wasn’t crying as the old man pretended to suddenly clean his lenses. when cricket graduated he offered him a full time position there. they do like. wedding photographs n family portraits n all kinds of things...... pay isn’t huge bt it’s something n he Loves taking photos so it’s sexy <3

PERSONALITY:

SUCH an anxious person it’s actually unreal. overthinks absolutely everything he’s ever said. one morning he might hv put green socks on n for the rest of the day he’s nervously looking around like omggggggg they’re all looking at my socks probably thinking im a little green sock boy thinking i’m a fool n a jester this is all everyone’s probably thinking about i hv to hide my green socks..... even tho literally no-one cares

once saw a girl eating a chicken wing n in his head was like ok she likes chicken good future gift idea..... n turned up at her house with an entire rotisserie chicken

probably thinks WAY too hard abt what to write in bday cards n googles like generic ideas that he can use.... u open a card from cricket n it always says smthn weird like “Warmest wishes and love on your birthday and always!” or “You deserve everything happy. Wishing you that all year long!” tht he got off google

nervously fiddles w things a lot. literally anything. his hair. the cuffs of his sleeves. a thread on his bag. u name it

struggles w eye contact sometimes............ it’s like. he wants to talk to ppl n make friends bt he’s honestly so bad at it. he’s fumbling thru life like a nervous headless chicken

ALWAYS has his camera on him. like always. will tke a photo of u bc he thinks u look nice then be like im so sorry im so sorry...... bowing his head shakily holding his camera bc he doesn’t even kno what possessed him he jst thought it’d be a nice photograph bt boundaries exist. probably breathes very heavily over this later in his room panicking thinking he nw seems like hannibal lecter

probably more confident online bc he has time to think abt what he says more.......... i can see him hving a group of online friends tht he’s more confident w. honestly he’s pretty witty at heart he jst has a hard time verbalising things so ppl overlook him sometimes bt once u get to know him more / he’s more comfy he can b a funny little man.....

loves photographs where he cuts something out of them. loves missing spaces n voids. thinks it’s a rly interesting concept when something that isn’t there becomes the focus of a photograph where everything else is. probably loses his mind fr a collage like a front row 1d stan. likes experimenting w light n perception. pretty artistic honestly hs probably made a stop motion film in the past bc that’s just an extended form of photography in his mind bt i doubt he showed anyone

ummm...... very sweet bt like. he reminds me a lot of this quote. “he had the awkward tenderness of someone who has never been loved and is forced to improvise.” feel like tht sums him up quite nicely

WANTED CONNECTIONS

someone he met at a wedding: cricket probably ws forced to photograph a wedding fr his boss one time n it cld b interesting as a place to meet from that....... like. i can imagine either it being rly awkward maybe he accidentally spilled a drink on ur muse n was stuttering rly apologetic n it ws just a train wreck. or mayb they took pity on him or even (in a shocking turn of events) a shine to him n invited him to drink n dance. omgggg the thought of cricket trying to dance makes me wna die n probably mkes cricket wna hyperventilate bt idk maybe he went wild n let loose. mayb they wound up damaging the camera somehow. mayb they had to scramble to get another one n ur muse covered the cost n it was a strange late night excursion tht cricket thought about a lot since. cricket probably vowed to pay them bk somehow no matter what. idk. we can work things out. lots of diff options here. doesn’t have to b a wedding either can b any event tht required a photographer

ppl he went to school w: pretty self explanatory i suppose...... maybe they were frm completely different worlds..... mayb ur muse was popular n cricket was definitely not but they got paired fr an assignment n had to work on a project together....... mayb cricket asked ur muse on a date one time n it was completely embarrassing bc he didn’t realise they had a bf n it haunts cricket at night still bc he’s rly dramatic.... mayb ur muse felt sry fr him n ate lunch w him n inducted him into their group like a lost puppy finding a home.... world’s our oyster

neighbours from his brief time at lilac ridge: not to reference taylor swift but i’m gna reference taylor swift n say we cld do a seven inspired plot here. sighs a little..... then sighs a lot. he was here ages 0-8 so idk. we cld work out childhood plots perhaps....

sickening simp: i mean.............. cricket probably gets crushes on ppl so easily like just. anyone who’s the slightest bit nice to him.................. he’s a disgrace. ok i take it back. bt also please get it together freak............... i didn’t say that. he’d probably b extra nice to this person n try n pay close attention to things they liked so he cld get them little gifts. just a bit embarrassing n lovestruck bless his heart. wldn’t expect anything back tho honestly that just isn’t something he tends to do.

let’s go gays: cricket’s bi but he probably was rly in his head abt liking boys n tried to sort of squash it internally during his younger yrs...... i think he’s more comfy w it now MAYBE idk bt back then i picture him having a friend tht ws kind of like. similarly loserish as him perhaps (no offence to ur muse potentially filling this plot or cricket bt let’s face the facts) n they’d hang out n play games a lot n one time it jst kind of happened n he was like............. *struts in looking around sharply* What going on here? except not. bc it’s cricket. more like *shambles in looking around anxiously* What’s, uh... What’s... the happenings? S--... I’m sorry. (immediate apology for saying what’s the happenings bc nobody talks like that n it was an impulsive panic bc he didn’t know what else to say)

those who grew up in the system w him: maybe at the group home or i’d also like the family that fostered him n said sayonara. honestly i imagine the parents just thought he ws a bit too much of a handful / had too much baggage which is rly quite merciless n terrible but. if u think that aligns w ur muses home situation hmu......

um. can’t think of more bt just anything honestly. jst go wild.......

[nbapprentice]

You said a while back that while Supergiant games (Bastion, Transistor, Hades) was mostly okay, you had some words about them. I was curious as to what those words were, since Hades' full release is soon.

okay. alright. ive been playing hades lately so i definitely want to give my two cents (or dollars by the size this is gonna get). but let’s go Step by Step

the good: i want to throw a whole Endorsement over supergiant games with the art direction and its characters, which is what keeps me coming back again and again, and what i can assume is that most people are attracted to. 

gameplaywise, they have a Format they stick to which has become their staple, not to their detriment but to their advantage, like... gameplay tropes, so to speak, that they stick to (such as the addition of special conditions that give a disadvantage in exchange for more long-term rewards)

i fucking adore that they take one concept per game, go for it, and when they’re done they are Done; they don’t bother with sequels, they don’t want to run things to the ground and i fucking respect that. They have their themes, and they stick to them (to various degrees of success).

that said, like every piece of media, they are not perfect and this has to be analysed and spoken about

CONTENT WARNINGS: genocide and ethnic cleansing, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, suicide, and mentions of incest, and a general Spoilers warning

bastion: touches on ethnic cleansing, and not in a way i’d say is satisfactory. our narrator and one of our Sympathetic characters is one of the men who worked on a world-ending weapon meant to use against the Ura (a group of people coded as East Asian) which after a bit of googling is literally called “the final solution” if there was ever a war between the Ura and the Cael (who feel like rly tan white people to me). jesus fucking CHRIST.

we also meet more Ura other than our two named characters and we have to kill most of them. so that fucking blows.

the game tries for “being a genocidal monster will get you fucked up and blown up” which duh, but i feel we shouldn’t have had a person responsible for war crimes be one of our friends no matter how bad he feels about the whole thing, or the people victim of war crimes become villains in the latter half of the game. zia’s father could’ve taken ruck’s role ez pz.

transistor: the weakest of their games, imo; the lore and writing are fairly flimsy and i did not come out feeling Satisfied, especially because it had this rly good build-up that did not pay off. not to mention... their villains? 3/4 were gay people. lol. two married guys (not even explicit, you only realize by their shared last names) and the ps*cho lesbian trope (iirc she wanted to kill the protagonist’s lover or something). the female protagonist also ends up killing herself to live forever in a digital paradise with her dead lover. it’s. god. 

very Aesthetic, GORGEOUS music, interesting gameplay; had potential, i do not feel like it lived up to it at least as far as the story goes.

pyre: now this one. this one’s BEEFY. where transistor felt flimsy, pyre is rich; lots to sink your teeth into, rich in lore and loveable characters, again w the beautiful music, themes of cooperation and togetherness. my favorite of the cast is volfred sandalwood, the only Black (or, well, Black-coded) revolutionary i’ve ever seen portrayed with this amount of sympathy.

onto the bad: they literally have a Class of character named “Savage”; there’s the “mystical mentally ill person” trope; there is an overwhelming amount of explicit m/f pairs (one of them being. a romance that formed in a single day and then both of the characters were somehow willing to risk it all for each other? PLEASE) while the only hints of gayness are... hints. especially when Jodariel (another of my favs) is teased to have feelings for the player regardless of gender then only gets an ending with a male character with whom she has nothing in common 🙃

hades: and now. this one. music: gorgeous. character designs: spectacular (aphrodite is straight up naked but it’s so... natural and casual, it doesn’t feel sexualized at all). voice acting amazing. character interactions charming and endearing. as a greek mythology nerd, it was nice to see them go for the obscure shit like Zagreus at all, NOT portray Persephone and Hades as a loving couple, AND portrayed the gods as the bunch of petty assholes (some more benevolent than others) that they are. imo they’re too generous with their portrayal of achilles but i’ll allow it.

and finally... it seems all those criticisms about having all the gay characters hidden in the shadows paid off, cuz we got (aside of patroclus and achilles) a bisexual polyamorous protag. Holy Shit! and it’s not even playersexual, romance whomever you want shit without the routes recognizing each other: he explicitly talks about how he’s thinking abt them both (though it’s like “yeah usually mortals take one lover but gods love many huh” polyamory is a human thing too bro!!!!!)

and this is where it all goes, well, at least vaguely downhill lol. ok so the incest warning i gave up there? well. it’s not... outright incestuous. but it has some ugly implications. i want to emphasize: the characters never refer to each other as siblings, nor do they treat each other as such (thanatos, in fact, only recognizes hypnos as his brother, and megaera only sees the other furies as her sisters), but they were all raised by the same woman, Nyx... zagreus and thanatos even grew up together (im assuming megaera didnt meet zagreus until he was fully grown).

this is complicated even worse by the fact that they tried to trick zagreus into believing Nyx was his mother. he realized pretty early on this was not true but like... adoptive mothers, anyone? granted i can believe that bc of the attempt at deception that probably ruptured any attempt at actual familial closeness, and it’s not like hypnos and thanatos saw zagreus as their brother at any point, so they were p much aware of the truth too. with the fact that thanatos even looks like goth miles edgeworth (im not kidding you can google him up right now its literally edgeworth in a cowl) i rly feel they were aiming for Childhood Friend Anime Rival Man than the “surprise kiss bc ur not actually related <3″ shit. zagreus never once refers to nyx as his mother in-game, and also refers to thanatos and hypnos as her sons, never his brothers.

so yeah, like. if one’s feeling generous, zagreus and thanatos are more of a “my father is emotionally closed off and neglects me so my best friend’s mother basically raised me” kind of situation... just pulled off in, perhaps, the worst way possible (why didnt they just say Zagreus was told Hekate was his mom, that’s such an easy fix? or that he was born of nobody other than Hades??? [gestures at athena])

but then, the gods. aaaaaaaahhhhahahahh the gods. demeter shows up! and she calls zeus, hades and poseidon... her foster-brothers. which somehow would make the persephone thing less fucking awful, apparently. they really. really really did not need to do that. she could’ve just said “my fellow gods” or whatever. or my “god-brothers” or something, to pretend it was just a weird god alliance thing??? i dont know but implying that foster family isn’t family is just... bro, the dynamics still exist.

Don’t Like That.

i even contacted supergiant games over this. they reassured me they were even trying to avoid the incest of the original myths bc they didn’t want to mess with such a heavy theme. i believe them... but i really think they didn’t think this through. compared to something like fire emblem fates this is nearly benign, but the implications don’t look good :/

tl;dr of the tl;drs: i admire their artistic philosophy and the heavy emphasis on fresh gameplay, characters and their relationships; i appreciate that it seems that they listen to criticism?; i don’t appreciate that they didn’t think to at LEAST talk to adoptees when making a game about family.

[themanicgalaxy]

SPN 1X10 Asylum

Hello hello hello we back at it again

featuring potential rpg googling cuz this is the only chill time I allow myself regularly

Also Idk anything about this one so wheeeee

oho it’s gonna be like silent hill I see

and I’m trying to figure out an urban fantasy Jane Austen thing

That isn’t like...steal from pre-existing idea cuz that’s wrong, so I’m not gonna look at that google page anymore

we could theoretically use the same races+modifiers, it’s just the items+classes that get fucked

heh some kiddos hid in the asylum

OPE AND it’S HAUNTED

so the items likely depend on the class, and so now I gotta figure out the classes

Nobility, middle class, lower class and ~vague army thing~ seem like good bets

OH AND GROUNDSKEEPERS/SERVANTS

OH N O he has a wife AND HE’S POSSESSED

PUT YOUR HAND AWAY FROM THE GUN

HAND AWAY FROM GUN

ok this one was good intro, I like it a lot

and they’re angsting about their dad again

ThE mAn cAn BaRelY woRk a ToaSter heh

Dean’s hope/desire for approval + Sam’s cynicism HDOFASIHA

...I kinda wanna see a like....ball+locked in+murder one by one thing

ha Sam and the acting is KILLING me

I do love the “Everyone pick on Dean” thing it’s quite funny

OOO ACTUAL DETECTIVE WORK

OHO AND THEY JUST CREAK APART I LIKE THAT

dOn’T aSk Don’T tEll 

the imagery is genuinely creepy, the vibe is very good, very spook

I can’t believe I had to google how to spell genuinely

this argument hurts me I sWEAR TO GOD

Dean follows orders in hopes of getting praise + Sam’s given up ALFHISDASIH

I genuinely cannot say this enough but fuck John Winchester

heh Sam needing to do actual therapy to the get the deets, good, finally some good came from these fucking cases

Look, I understand ghost hunting is Cool and Hip but for fuck’s sake if murders and bad stuff happens, WHY WOULD YOU GO TOWARDS IT

ESPECIALLY THE OLD CREEPY THING, UNLESS YOU’RE TRAINED FOR G O D ‘ S SAKE

THE FLASHLIGHT THING+SILHOUTEE AHIDHFPS

I am too tired to google how to spell that

OH THAT CUT TO THE GUY IN THE STRAIGHT JACKET I ACTUALLY JUMPED

FU CK I’m genuinely scared/suspensed(idk if that’s a word who cares)

THIS IS WHY I NEVER PLAYED SILENT HILL I AM ~TERRIFIED~

JESUS THERE ARE MULTIPLE ASFIPS 

OHO? There’s LAYERS? A psycho killer killing the others?

FINALLY DEAN WITH THE COMMON SENSE WHY WOULD YOU GO INTO THE HAUNTED PSYCHO HOSPITAL

Look I’m aware that the psych ward is overdone but the imagery is effective for a reason 

I am genuinely scared rn, probably the first time since the pilot

Not that the other eps were bad, they just were more intrigue and interest and lore than actual horror imagery

WHY DO I KEEP WRITING GENUINELY I CANNOT SPELL IT TONIGHT

OH MY GOD HE’S BEHIND HER

Yes once again it’s the girl in danger, but whatever, ok, fine, we’ve established the misogyny 

Ok that’s a cool plot, the haunted patients trying to tell them something and them being too scared to listen

“Dean he’s your boss” “No” why do i feel like that Meant something, yk?

if it’s the doctor, paralleling all the horrible shit he did to the patients that are clearly in physical pain when they died....ohohoho

horror cliche? yes. But again, effective for a reason

especially for me, cuz I haven’t seen a lot of horror movies

Girl with shotgun feels like it’s set up to be joke, but I kinda like implication of girl needing to learn protection while guy did not

Am I reading into it on my own? probably, idk, I’ll choose to keep that in my head

hell even the filter’s coming in clutch this episode, it makes everything a bit extra Grunge

IHAPSFIS DOCTOR MAN AHIFSADPFAS

Is...Sam’s esp gonna kick in now? some Demony powers? 

HA SHE SHOT DEAN ok near him

EVIL DEMON SAM OH N O 

ASIFUSAPI THE DRAMATIC IRONY

OH MY GOD IT’S POSSESSION OH MY GOD

AND OF COURSE THEY HAVE BEEF THE SPIRIT CAN USE THIS IS WHY YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR EMOTIONS

Look I feel it says something these assholes have only had deep raw conversations whEN THEY WERE BEING POSSESSED OR SOMETHING IN THAT VEIN

ONE EMOTIONALLY SANE PERSON! O N E 

DEAN YOU SELF-SACRIFICIAL BASTARD It’s literally left to interpretation if Dean wanted to see what would happen or if it’s a trick fsaoidfjlhas

EWEWEW HIS MUMMFIED BODY

NO NOT THE FLASHLIGHT

HE TURNS TO FUCKING STONE IN FRONT OF DEAN THAT’S SO METAL

Sam: Tries to have a Talk 

Dean: nah, we don’t need to talk, no sharing, no caring, n o p e 

Dean he nearly killed you

AND WE END ON A DAD CLIFFHANGER

fuck that was horrific oh my god ok wrap-up

1. Good character dynamic exploration, good exploration of the brothers’ relationship, good good good character work

2. COOL SETTING! COOL STORY! I WAS ACTUALLY VERY SCARED

3. YES I KNOW IT’S CLICHE BUT IT WORKS OK 

4. the filter? rly rly worked for this story. Actually, most of everything worked for this story, I truly liked this episode

5. and now we’re gonna get John I’m so excited to hate him on main for ages, god I hate how much he fucked up his kids I hate him so much

6. and one last thing, the idea of the ENTIRE psych hospital being ghosts, and all of them being eternally tormented by the doctor man, and so they had to kill the source of unfinished business was Really quite cool and played on the general misery all around of those things and how that can spread. Am i reading too much into it, maybe, but GOOD LORD THAT WAS FUN.

This was literally so fun, so good, I enjoyed it a lot. WHEEEEEEE