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morethansky · 5 months ago

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***THE ACOLYTE SPOILERS***

• Me, seconds before I could hear millions of thirsty voices crying out: Oh my god is a nymph-bathing thing about to happen, is he legitimately about to strip

• Sadly, unlike Osha, I am immune to the Stranger's practically full frontal, but the reveal of his little tied-back hair bits at the same time had me screaming into a pillow, so we all win.

• So the island was definitely meant to evoke Ahch-To, right? This was a very The Last Jedi episode (it even had the same mismatched pacing for the three storylines lmao), and the Kylo Ren theme was the most prominent it's been in the end credits. I think the theories about Qimir being a progenitor of the Ren are spot on. I like this quite a bit; it would be smart to build off of High Republic stuff while cementing Resistance-era lore. This would line up with the Bad Batch building off of the Clone Wars stuff while cementing Resistance-era lore. I also personally find it a bit boring that Bane's lineage is laid out all neatly and am particularly interested in darksiders being outside of it. And it would mean the show is drawing even more from the books and comics, which I'm always in favor of. And fun fact, my second-ever SW fic was based on the Rise of Kylo Ren comics!

• But ALSO, given that they clearly showed the cortosis vein, it also evokes Bal'demnic, the planet where Plagueis kills Tenebrous omg??? Not to be an annoying fanboy, but I adore the Darth Plagueis novel and we're apparently supposed to see two additional Sith Lords before the season ends somehow??? And in the novel, Tenebrous secretly trains multiple apprentices. I could totally see the season ending with Qimir suffering a vague fate and an extremely brief Tenebrous appearance that leaves the door open for a season 2 big bad. That David Harewood casting rumor is too delicious to be fake!

• On that note, since episode 2, I haven't been able to stop thinking about how when we're introduced to Qimir, he's sleeping, and he's awoken by Mae, who is now confirmed to have been his apprentice. Which is notably how Palpatine kills Plagueis. It just feels so much like a neat little allusion to me.

• Did this episode not have such Mend This Old Wound vibes?? Waking up in your enemy's lair, finding out your wounds were tended to by him, realizing he really wants to convert you, discovering he doesn't find you a threat, being surprised by his vulnerability, being surprised by what of his past and his inner self he's willing to divulge. Tbh I hadn't even realized how tropey those elements were until I watched this lmao.

• Sadly, despite my lifelong love for enemies-to-lovers stories, I don't vibe with a lot of M/F ships, bad boy/good girl ones especially. I'm happy for the Oshmir shippers, though, and at least it's happening in a story created by a queer woman, so hopefully it'll be done tastefully. Hmm... Perhaps if I genderbent Qimir I could get behind writing something, and then the seduction to the dark side would be strengthened by the queer metaphor...

• BUT ALSO YOOO OSHA/JECKI CONFIRMED???? And after Dafne Keen confirmed that she played Jecki as having a crush on Osha?? Y'all, Osha was TOTALLY floating the idea of asking Jecki out on a date with that whole "the next time I'm on Coruscant" thing, oh my goddd. The gays continue to be buried, but at least they exist, and I guess at least everyone else is buried, too?

• I love that we got a quiet moment of Sol grieving because finally there was nobody watching and he couldn't hold it together any longer. This is what I was begging for the entire run of the Bad Batch. Wonderfully acted, too. Lee Jung-Jae's expression work is so good, and I love the long, lingering shot and how you see the tears well up gradually.

• I love when actors have to act as characters acting, and Amandla Stenberg was already acting as two different characters that they had to keep distinct from each other, but in this episode, they had to act as one of their characters acting as the other character lmao. Incredible.

• Halfway through this episode I was like, why does it feel like we're getting blueballed for information omfg. We're definitely getting the second Brendok flashback episode next week, and obviously they had to keep it at the forefront of the viewers' minds without giving it away, but I feel like structurally they could've lined this up in a different way that didn't just reveal nothing in order to kick the can down the road lol. I guess this is a pretty classic issue in mysteries.

• I've been deeply confused as to why there's been so much Jedi-good/Jedi-bad discourse lately, but I don't see them as firmly in either court and that to me feels like the entire point of the part they play in the story?? Which is why I always love seeing the tension in the Jedi-Senate relationship and the way the political machinations play out, especially when Palpatine's not involved (at least overtly).

So I really liked Vernestra's conversation with the senator and the line about the Jedi always being transparent so an audit shouldn't be an issue and how the show clearly illustrates that that's not remotely true. Which is also really interesting because we have Sol doing a cover-up, possibly him and the other three Jedi who were Brendok doing a different cover-up, and also Vernestra, who doesn't know about what happened on Brendok or what Sol is hiding, clearly looking uncomfortable at the suggestion that the Jedi are transparent, pointing to other things they (or she specifically) haven't been disclosing.

I'm a sucker for political corruption in stories and when well-meaning people's hands are tied, so I'm eating it up. And of course I love how they're setting up the Jedi's fall from grace and building out context for why and how they would walk into Palpatine's trap.

• Qimir talking about being a Jedi a very long time ago is very intriguing. Upon seeing his scar, my first thought was Force lightning and that he was talking about being abandoned by a Sith master. But with Vernestra's whip making an appearance that doesn't add anything to the story otherwise, the show is clearly presenting it as the cause of the scar?? Which is VERY interesting.

• Mog's suggestion that Sol killed all the Jedi made my jaw drop because why would they even speak this outrageous idea into existence if it doesn't have truth to it in some way??? Like oh shit, that's REALLY fun. Has Sol killed Jedi before? Would he? Are the other Jedi wary of him? Do they feel the same way about the other three Jedi who were on Brendok? Mog specifically notes that Sol is very powerful. We already saw this with him going up against Qimir and surviving, so why this line?

• Sol was already my favorite character from the start just with how warm he was and how full of regret and how much he clearly loved Osha even though he wasn't supposed to, and every episode has drawn the darkness simmering within him closer to the surface, which brings him even closer to the kind of character I'm particularly fond of, so I'm very, very interested in where the show takes him. I don’t know if they could really swing Sith Master Sol, but Lee Jung-Jae sure as hell could act it.

• Can I just say, the writing for this show is definitely wobbly, but I at least appreciate that showrunner Leslye Headland has a refreshing understanding of story mechanics, even if she might love foils a little too much (and this is coming from a total foil whore). What she said about a good plot twist being built up so that the viewer realizes what's about to happen just before it's fulfilled instead of coming out of nowhere and being a total shock literally made me pump my fist because I've been complaining about the internet's poor understanding of this concept for literal years!! And the way she talked about how when you watch Jecki die, you want her to move out of the way so you can see the Stranger's face, and how in thinking that you've betrayed her and in a way become complicit in her death, is SO good.

• It's too bad all live-action Star Wars ever is doomed to have mediocre dialogue. But at least these things make me feel fairly confident in having high hopes for the Brendok reveal. And regardless of what happens, I am so excited to see goddess Mother Aniseya again next episode, omg omg!!!

#the acolyte spoilers #the acolyte #star wars #last week i wanted to be qimir choking mae #and this week i want to be osha holding a blade to qimir’s throat bless #let me dom that perpetually wet man #and that cute misguided assassin #amph talks

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thelediz · 6 months ago

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Sonic Underground episode 36: Sleepers

I’m watching Sonic Underground in search of inspiration to finish a fic I’ve been writing forever. It’s a sad state of affairs. See the recap of the first three episodes here, if you're interested!

The plot (for want of a better word): The Resistance is having problems. Robotnik seems to know their plans, people are going missing… Can the Sonic Underground figure out what’s going on before their team are wiped out completely?

Aleena is drawing attention to the world building in a way I love! She points out that Robotnik’s empire is HUGE, and the problem with that is that even today, with the internet and globalisation, the more area you control, the LESS control you have. There’s a reason the British Empire basically just lets most of the Commonwealth handle their own affairs and gets kind of annoyed when they need to step in. The Roman Empire legitimately did have to split itself in two in order to maintain order over its citizens, and that was the start of its end. You can set the laws, but if your people can’t see you and your influence, then… are you really in charge? Of course, this being Aleena, she doubts this issue. She has reason, because Robotnik has the SWATbots, who are supposedly maintained by centralised programming rather than orders, but I’m just saying, I didn’t get the idea of Aleena’s fractured empire from nowhere, okay? By the way, this monologue has almost nothing to do with the episode, but it's there and I enjoy it.

Amazingly, the triplets are actually working with other Resistance members on a mission. In theory, they’re waiting for the team to take out the security patrol, so Sonic can go on what sounds like a mid-to-late game sonic level (Sonia thinks it all sounds very dangerous. Sonic is unimpressed), but the team’s already been caught!

Maybe, in universe, this is why the triplets always work alone…

CYRUS! Back at base, Cyrus tells the triplets the others were captured, and Sonic runs off to save them from being robotocised, while Cyrus continues telling the other two that other Resistance members are going missing.

Sonic is proving himself a power house, taking out SWATbots without pausing and barely leaving scraps behind. Robotnik sees him coming and opens all the entrances, which Sonic sees as a trap and fails to care.

Sadly, he’s too late to save his friends, who have already been robotocised. And for once, Robotnik’s not interested in catching Sonic, he just wants to straight up kill him, which is very Eggman and honestly, probably the smarter play. But of course Sonic gets out.

The next mission is distracting security so the Resistance can loot Supply Ships, as they did in Episode 33, but it again goes badly, with Sonia almost captured, while Sonic and Manic note they were almost ALLOWED to get away. They note it as weird.

The next day, Robotnik is crowing over how his new plot has been working: the eponymous Sleepers, which are little spy drones with sleeping gas designed by Cyrus’s robotocised father. They seem pretty one and done, and require a rare and expensive… fuel? I guess? To run. Robotnik decides he’s going out to the mine to ensure he gets more fuel on time.

The Resistance (Sonia) comes up with a plan to figure out what’s going on: get Sonic to wear a tracker and waste time in public until something comes after him. I am more amused than I should be that Sonic really enjoys being ordered to go visit chilli dog vendors until someone notices him. I don’t think he’d love it so much these days (for diet reasons if nothing else. He's a healthier bean these days), but it’s a stupid little joke and I like it.

Now, the flaw in this plan is that they’ve sent Manic with Sonic, but only Sonic is wearing the tracker. So obviously, the Sleeper goes after Manic. Because Manic. At least we see how it works this time, and it’s honestly really creepy, especially because it does happen in broad daylight, in the open, and yet no one is around to stop it.

If you know, you know.

Sonic does, however, see it leaving, and steps in to stop the machine carting him off, only to be attacked by another Sleeper himself. Sonia and Cyrus show up to take care of Manic while Sonic deals with the new Sleeper. He does, but it ends up going off in his face for comedic purposes just as Sonia and Cyrus finish rescuing Manic. No harm no foul, though, so we move on.

They figure out the aforementioned fuel, and that it’s only mined in a single place. They decide they need to destroy the Sleepers and then the mine. So we’re a go for how to save the day.

Oh wow! I’d forgotten this! You remember that power the medallions have, to restore robotocised minds? IT’S COME UP AGAIN. They use it to restore Cyrus’s dad for a minute, so he can give them a security override that will give them the same access that Robotnik has and allows them to open all the cupboards.

The Song: Someday we’ll have it all again. Cheerful country-rock about how things are going to get better one day and dude, I am here for it. I want a full version of this song, with proper production, more emphasis on the guitar and drums to balance the vocals. I want a real version of this song.

But it ends bittersweet, of course, because they do not shy away from the fact Lionel (those who read The Underground Game please ignore the fact I called him Ryan, I forgot his actual name when I was writing it and had to headcanon it to being a nickname) loses his mind again almost as soon as they’re done destroying the Sleepers. They have to leave him behind, and it really hurts.

I love Cyrus and his plot for a reason.

Another quick and dirty ending, as Sleet is just reporting a successful vein of fuel found when Sonic appears in front of Sleet and Robotnik to report Sonia is blowing up his mine. And then she does while he’s standing there looking smug.

As someone who lives in a region that’s main industry is precious metal mining, the whole… blowing up of the resources and not just the mine is… a thing to see, but uh… cool. I’m sure that won’t have any ramifications to the environment or local population or whatever. Job done, day saved!

I mock, but this was another very competently written episode. And a Cyrus episode. The trashfire draws me in with this stuff, you know it does.

See you tomorrow for the next supposedly plot heavy episode: Bartleby the Prisoner!

#sonic underground #lediz fics #sonic the hedgehog #sonia hedgehog #manic hedgehog #a competent episode #I guess they have to have them occasionally to keep me off balance #robotocization #creepy subtext #I love this shows worldbuilding so much

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memryse · 3 years ago

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The magic of 3rd Life, or why such a simple hardcore miniseries works as well as it does

For a series which only lasted for eight sessions, 3rd Life has had a profound impact on the MCYT fandom. While it did go comparatively unnoticed on Twitter (as is consistent with YouTube-based Minecraft content as a whole, admittedly), Tumblr and other platforms have fallen in love with this series, and it’s become a vector for many fans to familiarise themselves with Hermitcraft and Empires SMP as well. But at its core, 3rd Life is a simple vanilla survival series with a gimmick. What about it resonates so much with so many people?

I would argue that its simplicity, its small cast, its vanilla gameplay “with a twist” is certainly part of it. It’s an easy series to consume, with many POVs totalling four hours or less, and it doesn’t require any prior knowledge of any of the members. Its mechanics are easy to understand. As a standalone, it functions perfectly – it’s immersive and can be followed easily by anyone, regardless of any prior knowledge they may or may not have. However, these factors alone don’t quite encompass what makes 3rd Life so special. Its true charm point lies in the format of the series, and how well it utilises improv.

[more below the cut; this is a fairly long post about 3rd/Last Life meta and my love of its improv. I'm mostly talking about 3rd Life here as it's a completed series, but this most definitely does apply to Last Life as well]

3rd Life is an entirely improv-based series. Whilst members may have a brief concept of the direction they’d like to take their series in – how heavily they want to roleplay, for example – the actual content of each session is fully improvised. Each episode is recorded in one three-hour block, and members are not allowed to play on the server outside of the allotted time other than specifically to finish builds. This time constraint prevents any planning from going into each episode, and interactions between players are completely spontaneous. Players simply run around the map looking for others to interact with (which is significantly easier with the limited world border) and chat about various events on the server, form alliances or deals, etc.

By definition, this almost completely negates the possibility of bad writing. Each player’s reaction to any server event is spontaneous, a legitimate reaction; they aren’t trying to play any specific roles or shoehorn in any specific events (with the exception of the Red King/Hand of the King roles, who were still completely improvising). Even the finale – a distinctly heart-wrenching and tragic scene – was improvised without Grian or Scar attempting to tell any specific story. According to Martyn, they weren’t roleplaying, they didn’t have any aims with that scene. It just happened to turn out in the way that it did, and they were legitimately sorry to one another. The server progressed in this natural way, and every person’s perspective tells a completely different story. It’s hard to identify any specific heroes or villains – fans of the Dream SMP can surely relate to this feeling, but I would argue that 3rd Life takes this one step further. 3rd Life is a tragedy from all perspectives, a tragedy which tells one cohesive story in its entirety before stopping as abruptly as it began.

3rd Life hinges entirely on its interactions between its members. Whilst solo content does exist – base building, for example – the majority of each session is spent interacting with others. 3rd Life is carried by its dialogue; nothing else drives the story, and yet many episodes are between 30 minutes and an hour long. It’s that dialogue-heavy. Members of the server have expressed trouble with even editing their videos because there is so much key dialogue that they don’t want to cut. People don’t watch 3rd Life for the actual gameplay, at all – there’s so little of it! They watch it for how each member interacts with the people around them. This is something not found in any other SMP I’ve encountered. SMPs livestreamed on Twitch have plenty of downtime, and people will happily watch streams on that SMP no matter what’s occurring on the server; people often watch them for their interest in specific members. Other currently popular YouTube SMPs, namely Hermitcraft and Empires, are well-balanced between solo content and interactions, and all server content hinges on the members’ various skills like building and redstone. 3rd Life is, to my knowledge, the only SMP which does not rely on building or redstone skills (what’s the point, when they’ll be dead the next week?), it doesn’t rely on the creator doing solo work talking to their chat, it doesn’t rely on planned roleplay. People legitimately just want to hear various members talking to each other. It’s a fascinatingly unique series in this regard. This dialogue-heavy aspect of 3rd Life ties back to my earlier point about 3rd Life feeling like a completely different series from all perspectives; with all of this dialogue being conveyed through proximity chat, so many events are entirely left out of other POVs, or presented in very different lights.

The pure improv format also helps significantly with worldbuilding, whilst also leaving plenty to the imagination. MCYT fandoms always require a significant amount of imagination to become invested in them, let alone make fan content of them, and 3rd Life is no exception to this. As discussed in this post, which was incidentally the inspiration for me to write this one, 3rdLife is full of lines which flesh out the series, which illustrate what happened better than can be shown in Minecraft. These lines are improvised on the spot, and are often complete throwaway lines in the creators’ eyes. In the fans’ eyes, they make 3rd Life feel alive, they provide plenty of material on which to base headcanons. Again, this isn’t necessarily unique to 3rd Life, it’s a common aspect of all Minecraft series, but I think this is where the rather angsty nature of 3rd Life comes into play. A dramatic survival game, entirely unscripted, with all events hinging entirely on your interpretation of them? It’s not hard to see why 3rd Life fans are so creative with character designs and fanfiction – hell, a lot of 3rd Life fics simply narrate canon in their own more dramatic light. Canon-compliant fics are significantly more common for 3rd Life than other fandoms I've encountered, because people hear these simple lines and want to dramatise them, put their own spins on them. I don't feel that this would be possible with any other series, not to the extent that 3rd Life fans do it. Other series' canon is either already dramatic, and so rehashing it can feel repetitive, or so lighthearted that people write AUs/new storylines. 3rd Life strikes a brand-new balance.

The development of its characters is also bolstered by improv. As no events on the server are pre-planned, members have to react completely spontaneously to anything that occurs. They don’t get time to think – only to react as though they genuinely were in that situation. As I said at the start, 3rd Life inherently lacks bad writing, because it’s not written. Ren, for instance, began 3rd Life as a kind and harmless person, with others often walking right over him. His reaction to his death by Grian and Scar’s trap spurs him to become the Red King; he raises an army and goes to war, and ends the series having taken countless lives, becoming hardened by war. He begins Last Life by isolating himself from others, seeming jaded and unwilling to form alliances, ready for another war to break out. Being improvised, it’s impossible to say how much of this was deliberate, or if Ren just started building his base without thinking about continuity from the previous season. This improv is what makes it feel so natural. It isn’t planned beforehand. This is Ren’s natural reaction to starting Last Life. It makes his character feel so much more real than it would if this was all scripted beforehand.

3rd Life is, overall, a testament to the power of improv. It manages to be compelling and dramatic without any acting feeling forced or wooden. Its characters’ arcs feel natural, because they are natural. Placing such a heavy emphasis on dialogue, with the gimmick of the server being a vehicle for interactions to happen rather than the sole appeal of the series, makes it truly feel as though we’re getting a glimpse into the characters’ lives, rather than watching a story which has been written beforehand. We get to watch everything unfold in real time. 3rd Life has a magic to it that, to my knowledge, no other SMP has been able to recreate.

#3rd life smp #last life smp #trafficblr #mae analyses #THIS IS REALLY META BUT I JUST <3 I HAVE SO MUCH LOVE FOR HOW WELL 3RD LIFE DOES WHAT IT DOES #THERE'S A *REASON* IT'S SO COMPELLING #it has this different feel to it #one that i've never encountered before because there is NOTHING like 3rd life out there #ohh i love 3rd life a normal and reasonable amount

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sarunohadaki · 3 years ago

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DQXI/Great British Bake-Off Crossover

Crossover week: Home | 1 | 2 | 3| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

This story idea in particular is very near and dear to my heart because when I first arrived in the SOS discord server, I mentioned it, and I got to talk with a lot of cool people for a long time about it. A lot of people seemed to love the idea, and Cicada even made art for it! 😭

It’s my favorite crossover idea and would be the most intricate to write. More under the cut because it’s another long post. (very long. With graphics. What is this, an essay?)

Spoilers for a potential future Saru fic.

Funny-but-I’m-not-using-these fic title ideas: Baking Bananaza, Fluff — and not just Meringue

Relationships: Gen or M/M (depending on how heavy the luminerik will come out)

Premise: Erik is a graduate student studying biogeochemistry with a particular interest in peat bogs in the UK. He interviews and gets on the show after Mia nags him to do it in the hopes that it’ll have a monetary reward, but as they soon find out, there’s no money involved. Erik participates anyway, figuring it’ll be a fun thing to do and help him hone his skills for the next time his sister randomly begs him to make éclairs at two in the afternoon.

He doesn’t really know what to expect, having never watched the show before, and is initially a little overwhelmed when he meets other amateur bakers from all over the country.

Twelve contestants enter the tent, but only one will come out on top. Who will it be?

Initial plan is to have none of the characters be related or know each other aside from the twins and Hendrik/Jasper. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have Rab related to El and so on and so forth, but I think it would be funner to have all the characters meet for the first time and develop friendships from there.

Everyone’s occupations are picked directly from my self-indulgent wants, haha.

And then here are some epithets, since the show uses things like this sometimes:

The structure of the fic

I initially thought it would be fun to do it sort of like a screenplay, but I am most comfortable writing in third person limited. BUT when you do it that way, you lose out on all the other disasters that are happening around the tent because you are only seeing what Erik’s seeing. And it would get boring after one episode to tell the reader, “I am now making this cake and following these directions.”

To combat this, I think it would be cool to do the omniscient POV for most of it, with the intention of writing it like an episode on TV. This would be interspersed with Erik’s director cut of events because he and Mia are watching the events play out while watching TV on the couch.

This would give us a chance to have Erik say, “Huh I didn’t realize the workstation behind me was almost literally on fire because I was too distracted trying to not over-mix my batter.” (Or staring distractedly into the back of ur crush’s head in front of you)

Plot

The short of it is you get to see a bunch of characters hang out and bake stuff semi-competitively! The long of it is, well… let me show you.

Each chapter is an episode

The Great British Bake Off usually has about 10 episodes, each with three challenges: the signature, technical, and showstopper. Whoever performs the worst holistically in each episode is eliminated. I have already roughly determined how that will play out based on some things I saw on a wiki. So, here’s the progression as it stands (don’t worry if it looks complicated at first — I can explain!):

To read this chart, each number refers to the episode. So, to see how people performed in episode 1, go to 1 and read down the column. From episode 1, you can see Erik, El, and Hendrik did well, while Ronnie and Faris did not. Vince got booted. Doing things this way, you can see Sylv had a few rough patches before they were eliminated, while El — the sweet boy — was never on the judges’ “least favourite bakers” list (alongside Jade, Rab, or Serena!)

This isn’t the final thing, and maybe there are patches that don’t make sense, but for a skeleton, it’s pretty useful for thinking up interesting plot points.

For example, Vince gets eliminated after baking an unchewable cake, and Sylv keeps pushing the envelope on how flamboyant their bakes can be in showstopper challenges, which lands them in trouble. Veronica really messes up in one episode and makes the food way too spicy.

Recipes

Okay. So you thought that chart was complicated, then behold this! Charts detailing any and every challenge from the Great British Bake Off from series 1-10, including signature, technical, and showstopper challenges with hour constraints where I could find them. Compiled from various wiki pages into one Google doc.

Potential problem: I don’t know if it would be plagiarizing to take various challenges and put them in a fic, and even more worrisome, if I could include recipes or just rip off what former contestants made. To create everything from scratch (pun intended) would take a lot of work. Based on the elimination chart, there are 225 instances of something being baked. Do you know how much work that is. (It goes down to 160 unique dishes when you take into account technical challenges all being the same recipe.)

In recent series (the gbbo say “series” and not “season”), they have had a few episodes such as “the ’80s,” “vegan,” and “forgotten bakes,” along with such classics as cakes, biscuits, etc. Pretty much every season includes the following episodes: Cakes (episode 1), biscuits (2), bread (3), desserts (~4), pastry (~6), patisserie (9), and a final challenge (episode 10). That leaves you with about 3 or 4 unique challenges each series unless you cut out one of those staple weeks, such as pastry. (Also, for anyone wondering the difference between pastry and patisserie: Pastry is a type of dough with fat and patisserie is a style of baking.)

This is where I said things were going to get intricate. Sometimes the details are what really sell a fic for me. Remember the five senses or that random thing that no one cares about but helps fill in the setting or make the story feel more alive. Having a masterful grasp of which characters are cooking what without overwhelming the reader would be difficult. Unlike TV, the reader is keeping track of all of this in their head!

I am no stranger to plopping some HTML into my fics from time to time and maybe that could help? To include graphics of what each person is baking, kind of like those… idk, “recipe blueprints” the narrator talks over where they tell you what the contestant is making and then they give you an illustrated piece of what the dish is supposed to look like.

Anyway, that’s a lot of work and I think just telling the reader, “he’s making this and I’m making this” would prolly suffice.

Why does any of this matter?

Because it’s fun. Because all of the characters will exchange jokes and poke at each other and I had plans to make Jasper and Hendrik have past beef and maybe Jasper throws food at Hennie or something. And also the pining for Elian would be very persistent. Erik and El have some stuff in common and their stations are right next to each other, maximizing the potential for banter and small talk about trying to manage school and this baking show thing at the same time.

In my heart, Erik wins because he’s the one who gets to date El at the end, but El is the hero so I know he’s the one who wins the show. And Hendrik has a secret baking sweet tooth so of course he comes in close third. (That is to prepare Hendrik for baking cakes for Jasper later.)

Unlike 80% of my fic ideas that are fusions, I think this one might be a legitimate crossover with people like Paul Hollywood, Merry Berry, and Noel Fielding. Sylv might slot into being a host, too.

#Crossover Week #my fic ideas #my writing #The Great british bake off #dqxi #luminerik #food #the thiccest outline #i have spent less time on homework than i have writing out all the notes for this

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your-turn-to-role · 5 years ago

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so i finally finished cinderbrush

general thoughts:

i would die for jamie wrenly

i mean this was the most taliesin taliesin's ever played, they're 99% him without the filter but somehow the addition of being a nonbinary teenage witch makes jamie the best character i've ever seen????? tal how do you do this. i love your kid.

ashley johnson has really gotta consider the lesbians in the audience before playing jock characters. i'm not even into guys but fuck

(what even is your sexuality if you're a girl into girls and also one fictional guy played by a girl and one fictional enby played by a guy? complicated? which i feel like was the point of this one shot. but i love them.)

the whole AF throwing the book at the teacher for deadnaming them and then lying and saying they were throwing it at a bird and jamie backing them up by saying "i saw it too" but then AF later admitting to the lie and jamie going "then what the hell did i see?" was hilarious

also "i wasn't lying for your benefit but i'm glad you got something out of it" jamie pls explain what happened in this classroom from your perspective i'm dying to know

four horsepower

every impulsive decision AF made was also hilarious

i agree with everyone else saying they should bring these characters back, i'm not sure if there's enough here for a full campaign but there's definitely enough for a few more episodes

i wannnaaaa seee alll the coooooolll shiiiiitt

speaking of endings though, while i understand that was rushed due to time, a lot of them got real fuckin hurt in that last fight?

like AF probably has supernatural werewolf healing but jamie and sasha don't

sasha has a serious leg wound hastily bandaged and jamie got fuckin shot point blank in the stomach

the first thing that happens after is not them getting arrested its them heading to the fucking hospital

(and then getting arrested)

(but legit there's so much hurt/comfort fic potential someone write it pls i need it)

(or if people want more angst ideas, any of their parents' reactions to anything in that ending)

(that said all of you writing ot4 fluff are still incredibly valid)

between the brief stuff we got of jamie and cam and the sadly also brief stuff of yasha and molly i need ashley and tal to play weird queer best friends in everything now actually? its such a good dynamic

honestly they don't even have to be best friends, just. tal as a very loudly queer weird kid and ashley as a quiet jock weird kid and also they're soft around each other. give me this in 500 different variations pls

half the cast was non binary. when will your fave ever. cr is already getting so delightfully queer but i appreciated the explicit use of they/them pronouns for major characters, and also the respect for them by every other character

also while more goth than usual, i loved that jamie and AF were sat next to each other because i feel like they were really representing the two ends of the nonbinary fashion spectrum

all of the music was great

they did a surprisingly good job as all 30+ year olds at being current teens. the occasional embarrassing moment but most of it was just funny and also "yeah i've been there" moments

(though - taliesin having way too much knowledge of party drugs, way too much experience getting arrested, he's talked about that before, it's not that surprising anymore. but tal relating hard to the "i didn't plan an outfit for this party so last minute i stole a table mat to make an ascot out of, because what my casual clothes really need right now is an ascot" decision was really the moment i went "what kind of life have you lived???")

the sheer ridiculous juxtaposition of AF, teenage werewolf with anger issues who has definitely killed a person, saying "that was the worst thing i've ever done" about lying to their dad and legitimately meaning it

did i mention i love jamie wrenly?

i really love jamie wrenly

they're the best

#cinderbrush #critical role #monsterhearts #jamie wrenly #cameron solomon #sasha murasaki #af flowers #cr thoughts #text #cr spoilers

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wishiwasntstillhere · 4 years ago

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me n my 98569345 ouran AUs

so on november 9th i started a doc to keep track of a bunch of ouran AUs ive been thinking about and i swear the number of aus has tripled since but anyway here’s a list because i doubt i’ll write them all but i have full outlines for all of them so i do kind of... want to. names are based off what i called them in my google doc. *** are the ones i have written 40% of already lol

AUs:

1. Dimension Hopper: For reasons unknown, Tamaki Suoh gets transported to an alternate dimension where he didn’t come to Japan when he turned 14. The people who were once his friends have no memory of nor patience for him anymore, and it’s up to him to bring the Host Club back together, and figure out why he was transported here in the first place. Endgame tamakyo.

2. ***Episode 8 fixit***: A series of endings and turning points that would have made me less freaked out about the disaster that is Episode 8. Read it and/or rant at “Haruhi Deserves Better, Hosts!” on ao3. Very much ongoing. Will stop when I can sleep at night again. No ships because my feelings about this episode are complicated enough.

3. Ghost AU: Haruhi is a normal girl who suddenly gains the ability to see ghosts, because her life is a nightmare. She meets the six infamous ghosts of Ouran Academy, each bound to this world by things out of their control.

4. ***Cinder-Renge***: Renge’s dad, who has raised her as a single parent for 15 whole years, suddenly remarries. It... doesn’t go so well for Renge. Luckily, the Host Club is there for their manager. Cinderella!AU, endgame harurenge!!!

5. Hanahaki disease au: Hanahaki disease but if it wasn’t a deadly condition, just a ridiculous, irresponsible, humiliatingly painful disease for one Kyouya Ootori. At first everyone assumes it’s haruhi he likes because literally everyone else in the host club has caught flowers for haruhi so they’re just waiting for kyouya to confess and get over it. Except that of course, they’re not actually for Haruhi, and although the flowers won’t kill him Kyouya would die before admitting his feelings for Tamaki Suoh.

6. Shameless Kyouya OC Girlfriend: The twins have a cousin who programs. Kyouya, looking to expand the host club’s capacities, hires her. Except she’s super sensitive, and he’s kind of a dick. It’s a long road to being friends, a longer road to becoming real, maskless friends, and then a surprisingly short tumble into love.

7. ***Soulmates of Different Flavors***: In a world where each soulmate bond has a different sign of soul-binding, some people feel their soulmates’ pain, others have the day of their meeting scrawled across their wrist. The Host Club is stuck managing seven different soulbonds, one for each of their soulmates. Found family-centric. Read more about the soulmate mechanics on this post!

8. ***Kyouya is stressed au***: Can we even call this an AU? Based off the fact that mental health and physical health are very much intertwined, and Kyouya Ootori spends too much time working on the computer. The Host Club bands together to help him relax and figure his stuff out, and Kyouya learns to let down his walls and practice self-compassion. Tamakyo. I do love a good emotionally vulnerable shoulder massage, after all.

9. Spy/Kidnap AU: Someone’s stolen Kyouya’s black book and is trying to kidnap him. Knowing they’ll probably go for the Host Club next, he kidnaps the host club to keep them safe. Together, they fight to keep each other safe and get to the bottom of the mystery. Involves spy tropes, but in lame ways because they’re a bunch of dorks. Also, obligatory “and there was only one bed” scene but there are seven people so it genuinely is a problem. Endgame tamakyo and mori/haruhi

10. Things the Twins Made Fun of About Tamakyo: listen I just need more mutual pining while everyone else in the host club suffers. Anyway, the host club does a cosplay––where they all act as each other. Naturally, the twins claim the roles of Tamaki and Kyouya, and drama ensues.

11. ***LGBTeen Solidarity***: So in high school being in love with girls was scary. And talking to fellow LGBT kids made me feel okay. So with that in mind, this is a story about how Haruhi and Renge are working out their relationship at the same time as Tamaki and Kyouya are angsting about how they can never be together... except that the more all 8 host club kids support each other, the less scary and more possible it seems.

12. Self soothing fic: Haruhi and Hikaru are having boundary issues. Haruhi is not very good at asking for help but she is good at reading people and solving their problems, so she goes to someone who is equally bad at asking for help but good at solving people’s problems. Kyouya and Haruhi talk it out so that Haruhi can work things out. I probably won’t post this bc Reasons but it exists.

13. Mr. Brightside/Satisfied: Tamaki isn’t making his move to ask Haruhi out, and Kyouya is legitimately losing it having to wait, and Haruhi is growing anxious and frustrated about it. In a truly terrible idea, Kyouya offers to fake-date Haruhi (who he has fallen in love with), so that Tamaki (who he has also fallen in love with) will finally get jealous enough to admit his feelings. In a completely out of the blue, totally unforeseen twist, the plan works too well and they all fall in love with each other like nerds. mostly a crackfic bc i love them but they’re all so dumb...

#fanfic ideas #my fics #ouran au anybody #ouran high school host club #tamakyo #harurenge #kyoya ootori #tamaki suoh #hey. if you ask me about any of my aus i would love you forever #also holy crap i cant believe there are so many #lai is out here

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astro-break · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on the third ep of Hypmic Rhythm Anima (as always, spoilers beware but not only for the anime itself but for future things covered in the Drama CD and the Manga. If you’re an anime only, those are marked with a *)

Right off the bat. Super disappointed that it isn’t a MTC episode. I wanted an MTC episode. :((((

Still got my MTC crumbs this week tho and I think I can hold out until next week which hopefully will give me the MTC episode I so desperately want (Yes, i have a division bias and i’m not afraid to show it)

Jakurai entertaining kids are just so cute. I think its very very precious.

* Also. What kind of doctor is Jakurai anyways? So far we know that he’s a councilor/therapist (helps Doppo w/ his anxiety), a pediatrician (he helped a kid), a family doctor (I think i might be wrong on this one), a surgeon (In the FP vs MTC manga he’s shown preforming surgery), a hitman/assassin (:/ yeah evil line records seems intent on retconning this one), a battle field medic (he’s state to be one during WWIII) and now he’s getting called into the orthopedic (things concerning the musculoskeletal system) and gastroenterology (working w. the digestive system) department, two things that have nothing in common with each other. And I’m sure I’m missing some. There is no way in hell this man can do all that he’s 35 for fucks sake. You’d be old and grey before you could learn and complete the credentials needed to work half of these jobs

Nice to now that theres some hints of jakurai’s past. I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing more of the detective later in the story, esp for Matenrou

Doppo being overworked as usual *sigh*. When will the man ever rest? Never... Though im a bit skeptical as to why one of his co-workers calls him doppo. this is a work environment, usually he’d be called “Kanonzaka” for the least amount of informality. seems sus to me. Though his depiction of his insecurities is nice

I love how his first reaction is to call Hifumi and as him if he’s killed anyone. Peak bromance guys.

Honestly Doppo’s method of trying to calm down is nice but not at all effective. He has the right mindset of calming down and letting his body breath, but the way he goes about it is... eh.

Tom and Iris’ argument is hilarious and I really want to see more of them and Rex! Can’t wait to see what happens with these three new characters

Iasdgfjsd;flkasjdflkasdjfkasdlvn ajsdk, MTCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

MY BPOYS OH MY GOD RIOU NEVER CHANGE

fsajghasdf i love them asdhfoiksldjfasdfj riou’s food looks so so so so so good omgggggg

Samatoki respecting the fuck outta Jakurai is amazing and I never get tired of their father-child kind of relationship (yes jakurai is a dad to TDD fight me.)

The Riou and Samatoki interactionnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ah my heart!! they know each other so well and play off each others strengths. its so cute and I love how Samatoki knows his teammates well enough to know when to play each of his pieces. He isn’t just some brute who speaks through his fists, but he does use his head too. I think this is one of the reasons why he’s also high up on the Yakuza ladder since he’s not only brawny but also brainy

EAT RIOUS FOOD SAMATOKI

ah yes, Jyuto kneeing a bitch. just what I needed to see on a stressful friday thank you for feeding me

I love MTC, im very happy with the MTC crumbs. Since MTR showed up in BB’s ep last week, i really really hope that next week’s ep will be MTC

There it is. Jakurai’s “Jitsuni Kyoumibukai” line

lolololololol the sound effects for MTR is hilarious. Though please give Doppo a break, man deserves it

Jaku’s hair man. its beautiful

Again, please give Doppo a break, he deserves with the 4 joints that they attacked

They say 3 times, but they attacked 4 places?? Did they not report one of them?

Ahhhhh the DoHifu interaction on the temple grounds is both hilarious and cute. Though I can’t help but feel bad for Doppo

* Huh, Jaku did you get that from your hitman days loll

Oh man host mode. Though I like how Doppo recognizes when Host Mode is a legitimate shield that Hifumi needs and is willing to give him that shield when he needs it. God I love their dynamic]

wow... yet another female stalker for Hifumi... very original. This is pretty similar to the stalker girl from the manga and CD

Lol callback to when Doppo was in the toilet and trying to calm down.

pffft the girl is so weird. I can’t stand her or Uwabami.

The plot is so convoluted holy shit. Is this a drama now? (I’ve never watched any c-dramas or k-dramas so I’m the furthest thing from a voice of authority but this seems like a drama show plot lmao.)

This is just a drama at this point lol. Misunderstandings, plot twists and cheesy shit all over the place. Its a badly written and hilarious drama thats for sure

Someone please write a fic where instead of the hypmic universe, the boys are all in a tv drama show plot and their hijinks bc it would fit perfectly. please

Ah, Doppochin snapped~ He’s very interesting once he gets fired up and thats when I really really like MTR. Don’t get me wrong, I love them normally but its when they get down to it that really makes me squeal in delight

Oh! So i think each character gets their own personalized intro w/ their speakers, not just the leaders. Thats honestly so so so cool. The 3D didn’t get in the way of the sequence and was really flashy and smooth. I love how they show the transformation and reveal of the mic and speaker. Honestly the Anime has so many good takes on thigs that aren’t touched on often in the franchise.

The rap was honestly fire this time around. I love it and have replayed it almost 20 times. According to the ending credits its called Welcome U which is so cute for such a funny and badass song. The strong base beat and imagery were so strong and included a lot of homages to things that really matches both Shinjuku, Matenrou and the lyric’s themes and they’re really small but important details! The humor was on point without sacrificing any of the amazingly cool elements and the three distinct styles of rap were integrated in such a catchy melody!

EG) the verse All Year Round features a quick shot of the four seasons and the things most prominently associated with each season. Spring has cherry blossoms and flower viewing, Summer has festivals, Fall and Winter have food that corresponds to events that happen in those seasons.

Doppo’s line of “The flea counters w/ a bite” is so so so cute bc he’s got a little w at the end and thats jp chatspeak for a laugh and skjdfhsdjfkslad adorable

Hifumi picking up right after and asking if Doppo is okay is just. Goals. And his gratutious english works really well and is super smooth! Very very good

Also the small homage to The Champions with Hifumi’s “Jump around” line and the format where Hifumi takes separate lines than Jaku and Doppo. Its a brilliant way to sneak these references in and they’ve kept that theme going from last episode

Foreshadowing with “We’re the true leader, Matenro!” Nice touch there lol.

Lol of course its attempted murder. Still gotta keep this PG 13 even though theres swearing abound

The ending w/ mimimi..... leaves me kind of torn since i don’t like how it ended but they did provide some nice advice. i guess

lsdf;jsalkdfjsldf Hifumi please you’ve known Doppo for over 25 years, you should know better than anyone what his charm points are. and shouldn’t you be the one who understands Doppo’s appeal? smh

SCREEEEEEE THAT TITLE OF THE NEXT EP. if its an MTC ep i will scream even more bc asudhfsdkjflasd A friend in need is a friend indeed this is just pushing my Poly!MTC agenda isn’t it

Final thoughts:

Please please please let next week be MTC please please please

DoHifu are goals, both romantically and platonically

The rap was fire and I’m going to keep listening to it on repeat. First ep was a bit of a disappointment in terms of CGI and raps but these latest two eps are really picking up the slack! I really hope they continue this for the next two!

JAKURAI WHAT KIND OF DOCTOR ARE YOU PLEASE TELL ME

#hypmic #hypnosis mic #hypnosis mic rhyme anima #hypnosis mic rythme anima spoilers #hypmic spoilers

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stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale · 4 years ago

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I’ve owned this blog for over 2 years now. I’m sick, emotional, and got shit to say...

In my sickness I haven’t been able to do much other than lay in bed and watch youtube/start a replay of twdg, but I also decided to go back through my blog.

It kind of just hit me that I’ve had this blog for over 2 years now.

I created it back in August of 2018 when I was literally just a ghost- liking, sometimes reblogging, and sending anons but too afraid to post anything of my own. I was starting to dabble in writing for this fandom but didn’t dare post any of the small stories I was writing.

Like... once upon a time, good ol’ dingus CJ was terrified to post her writing.

Shit, terrified to post anything.

I mean, I legitimately thought that if I posted any of the short stories I was writing, I would either be mocked due to my lack of experience within the community, or ignored completely because what I was writing wasn’t good enough compared to the other fics out there.

That was more than enough to make me trash everything I wrote.

Fun Fact: The very first story I wrote for the fandom was after playing ep1 for like the 5th time, back before ep2 released. It was about Clementine wandering down to the music room the night Marlon died to see Louis playing the piano. It was from her POV and how she watched him in the doorway. She wanted to make things right with him only for Louis to have a break down and start slamming on the keys. Eventually he grabbed a chair and smashed it over the piano. It ended with Clementine sneaking away undetected back to the dorms with plans to leave with AJ in the morning.

Angsty and bitter, yes. Anything I’d write today? Nooo.

I spent days going back and forth on whether or not I should post it only to delete it because bad.

I wrote other little fluffy drabbles that I never posted for similar reasons all while remaining a ghost in community.

Then ep2 came out.

Do y’all know what my very first post was...?

Which says a lot that it took them murdering Mitch for me to finally make my own nonsense and kick start everything. Thanks Telltale.

That was also when I wrote a story that y’all probably either forgot about or never heard of [which might be for the best tbh]: [when he smiled].

Oof.

Hahaha

There’s a whole story behind that one that involves hours of “Should I post it? No, I shouldn’t- well....” Then, a blog that to this day I deeply admire made a post asking for fic recommendations and I took it as a sign.

After spending another hour doubting myself, I finally quit being a baby and messaged them. We chatted, they read my story and honestly.... that really started everything.

As of today, I have written 51 individual stories.

I also have 4,685 posts on this blog, and yes, more than half of those are tagged #twdg louis. On top of that, we’ve done over 50 different themed nights and 4 challenges. Hell, we’ve even done a contest!

I have more friends and followers than I ever imagined like... what the fuck, y’all. When did that happen? This isn’t me being stupid or anything, I’m just a little overwhelmed looking through all this shit, remembering how this all started and realizing everything we’ve done in the past two years.

Like... I was so scared to talk to anyone in August 2018 hahaha

Now I’m constantly answering asks, chatting with buddies over messaging, I fucking stream games on Twitch [rip mixer] which is something I NEVER thought I would EVER do, and while I still have a lot of anxiety when it comes to posting stories it’s not nearly as bad as it once was.

What a fucking journey...

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I mean, I want to say thanks to everyone who has stuck around, to those who participate in the themed nights, to those who send me asks, and to those who merely follow me and enjoy the content. But I don’t really know if a small “thanks” really covers it, y’know?

When shit has really hit the fan here in the real world, whether it was shit with school or work or family or the scary shit going on right now, I’ve always had this blog to come to when I needed it. I’ve taken breaks when needed, too, and days where I thought about abandoning the blog because my anxiety tells me I’m not doing a good job, or I get a handful of nasty asks, or whatever.

But I’ve always come back because this is like a safe-space. It’s not perfect, but I love it. I love you guys. I love these games. I love the community.

I don’t think a simple “thank you” is sufficient but fuck, it’s what I got. I’m here for you guys, to chat about these games and discuss their characters, to gush over Louis and Clouis and everything else. I’m hear to work on my writing skills and finish my fics, even if I’m slowest dingus ever haha.

I’m just... I’m here. I’m here for you. I love having you here and I hope that while you’re following me, you’re enjoying the content, whatever it may be.

❤️I love you, and thank you ❤️

...Also, side note- going back and reading posts from when the episodes were coming out is so nostalgic. Like, it makes me smile but want to cry haha.

Reading through those posts brought up a lot of names that I never see anymore and that’s so bittersweet, y’know? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the thriving within the community of everyone theorizing about what would happen next and gushing about Louis and being so excited to see him again.

It’s so crazy haha

I miss it, but hey, it’s a good memory. And there’s always things to gush and theorize about here, so even if the community isn’t at the peak it once was, we still have fun here.

Okay, I’m done rambling.

I’m gonna go through my ask box and answer some stuff now. I just had some nostalgia while going through everything and well.... yeah. Hahaha

#hi i'm here to ramble about the blog #read my early posts from 2018 and it got me feeling things #bringing up memories and shit #excuse me i'm emotional #hahaha #gonna answer some asks now #because i've been asleep for most of the day #now i'm wide awake with nothing but muh piglet and tfs soundtrack to lighten the night #well and y'all

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elyvorg · 4 years ago

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Still a Hero - author’s commentary (part ADHD)

Yep, it’s that fic of mine again, the one I still haven’t stopped thinking about even though I published it like half a year ago now. I’m finally getting around to doing a little bit more author’s commentary on it that I didn’t do back then, because these bits involve the idea that Kaito has ADHD, and at the time I hadn’t yet made my post explaining all the reasons why I’m sure of that and all the symptoms of ADHD that Kaito is definitely affected by. For the purposes of this post here, I’m going to assume you’ve read that. Heck, even if you’re not interested in my fic, if you enjoy my analyses of Kaito, please go read that post if you haven’t already! It’d mean a lot to me.

My headcanon of ADHD-Kaito in DRV3 itself may or may not have been something the writers actually meant to drop a million hints towards and therefore may or may not be the official canon “truth” about him. But, since I’m the writer of Kaito in this particular fic, and I did have it consciously in mind that he’s ADHD while writing it, Kaito being (unknowingly) ADHD is officially canon in the Still a Hero universe, because I say so.

(And yeah, I doubt anyone even noticed this. Imagining that he’s ADHD doesn’t change anything about who Kaito is; it only adds an extra interesting layer to why he is this way. All I did was use that to help inform the ways I wrote him reacting to some of the things he went through in the fic.)

Chapter 2 – emotional dysregulation

The second and significantly worse half of Kaito’s self-torturing session, once he snaps and gets uncontrollably, painfully angry, was something I deliberately wrote as being some very nasty emotional dysregulation.

For the first half of this ordeal, when he’s thinking about breaking out on behalf of the kids to prove it’s possible after all, Kaito’s still basically in control of himself. He’s being stubborn and short-sighted and self-destructive and definitely making the wrong choice, but it’s still him making a choice and consciously deciding of his own volition that this is a good idea, that this pain will be worth the end result that he can totally reach.

This stops being the case after long enough, though – and it’s no coincidence that it happens right when it begins to sink in for Kaito on a deep, visceral level just how horribly helpless he is.

At that point, Kaito pretty much just snaps and loses control entirely, getting overwhelmed by a disproportionately-amplified rage that’s really just a defence mechanism for those other feelings that he simply can’t cope with. He drops any sense of the vaguely-rational mindset he had at the beginning that this is going to take a while and only gradually chip away at the frame’s integrity each time, and devolves into a completely irrational THIS NEXT SINGLE HIT WILL DEFINITELY BREAK IT. Which, of course, is incredibly counterproductive in that it only serves to make him feel even more weak and helpless furious when it repeatedly doesn’t.

Thankfully I don’t get the fly-into-a-rage kind of ADHD emotional dysregulation that often – but this also means that I can look at the very specific edge cases that do happen to trigger it for me and figure out that the root cause is almost certainly a completely immovable sense of helplessness. I’m not saying this is necessarily the case for every ADHDer who suffers from anger issues, but man does that make for some delightfully convenient personal experience for me to have drawn on when writing this particular scene.

I can also confirm from this experience that what sucks way more than the actual initial problem that the anger is triggered by (which doesn’t even have to be that big of a deal! ADHD loves to amplify stupid tiny things!) is the anger itself once it takes hold, how completely all-encompassing and uncontrollable it is. Nobody should ever want to feel that way. It’s different when you have a cause to be righteously angry about, like Kaito did at the beginning of this scene, but what I’m talking about doesn’t feel anything like that – it just feels ugly and painful and wrong.

Mind you, when this anger first takes control of him, Kaito does also choose to indulge in it rather than fight it, because he’s still stubbornly insisting to himself that any kind of pain is better than giving up. (Meanwhile, in other situations where Kaito’s gripped by this kind of too-strong anger, such as when he might end up hurting someone he cares about (oh hi trial 4), he’d probably be trying to fight it to some extent… but even when he does that, it doesn’t seem like it’s very successful.)

But even then, there’s some small, smothered, barely-acknowledged part of Kaito that really doesn’t want this at all. That part of him begins to feel more trapped by his own anger than by the contraption itself, hating the way he refuses to let up on hurting himself both physically and emotionally and really wishing he could control himself and just stop.

The problem is that the only real way to try and quell this kind of anger is to confront the true (and equally-amplified) painful emotions that the anger is just a cover for. Which in this case would, in theory, result in Kaito breaking down in a huge crying fit over how utterly trapped and helpless he feels. Yeah, no way he's doing that at this point in his arc, so furious self-destruction it is!

Chapter 4 – uncontrollable thoughts

Multiple times throughout the fic, but especially in chapter 4 when he’s attempting to sleep, Kaito tries to just think about nothing at all. He never truly manages it, because ADHD minds cannot ever think about nothing.

(…You know, even as I say that, there’s still a part of my brain going “but isn’t it actually because it’s not possible for anyone to think about nothing?”, despite that I’ve heard that actually that’s a perfectly reasonable thing for neurotypical people to be able to do. Sounds fake, but okay. My brain has never shut up even once in my life.)

The other problem here is the ADHD inability to properly control what we’re focusing on and thinking about. I’ve found that this gets even worse when I’m tired, dulling what little control I ever had in the first place. Instead of thinking about nothing, I just end up thinking about whatever random crap happens to be in the path of least resistance for my train of thought. This can be… not great when it comes to avoiding bad thoughts that it’s easy to spiral into focusing on when left unchecked.

I had this idea in mind a lot for this chapter as Kaito attempts to sleep. Usually, he’d be firmly trying to think about anything but what’s happening to him right now and how he’s feeling about it. When he’s this horribly exhausted, though, he has so much less control over that. So he keeps getting unwillingly bombarded by thoughts about the most immediate physical sensations he’s feeling – hungry, thirsty, hurting – and how much he wishes they’d just go away, even though that’s the last thing he wants to think about.

The whole “someone who thinks he’s strong” thing was meant to be this kind of idea, too. When Takehira says that to him at the beginning, it lodges somewhere deep in Kaito’s mind, because he subconsciously already feels like it’s the truth about him and is terrified of what it’d mean if it was. So naturally, on the surface, he stubbornly files it away as Not Worth Wasting Time Thinking About. But then it keeps popping into his head anyway, usually in moments where his mental defences are weakened, because an ADHD brain does not care what its owner doesn’t want to be thinking about and will nudge their train of thought down those paths whether they like it or not.

(Okay, so maybe all of this isn’t quite so specifically being caused by Kaito having ADHD. Probably anyone who’d been through what Kaito had would have lost a lot of their ability to control what they’re focusing on and thinking about by this point. …Unless the neurotypical equivalent here really would be to just naturally stop thinking about anything out of exhaustion, despite not being able to actually sleep? I wouldn’t know. But my point is that I had ADHD-related ideas in my mind to help me write this, either way.)

Chapter 6 – rejection sensitivity dysphoria

Kaito’s huge sobbing fit over believing he’s failing Shuichi and Maki was something I had very consciously in mind as the absolute worst kind of RSD-fuelled breakdown imaginable.

It might have seemed a bit excessive of me to have Kaito’s emotional pain completely eclipse the actual physical torture for so long – and he was sobbing uncontrollably for something like half an hour, maybe more, before it wore itself out – but, no, can confirm, RSD really is just that fucking awful. Imagine the already-very-legitimate pain of being convinced that his best friends are going to die because of him, but disproportionately multiplied by like a thousand. Next to that, the excruciating torture-poison is nothing.

(Well, maybe this would have made sense anyway, because the fact that the thought of getting his friends killed hurts even more than the torture is precisely why Kaito was obviously never going to break! But that wasn’t actually the main thing on my mind when I wrote it that way; I just realised that it fit that after the fact.)

I also drew off my own experiences of some of my worst RSD episodes (which were still not nearly as bad as what Kaito went through here, and which thankfully I haven’t had that many of) to help me write Kaito’s physical reactions to this kind of emotional agony. I hope I did a good job of getting across what it physically feels like to be crying that horrendously, uncontrollably hard – not just quiet sobbing, but straight-up loud, ugly, inconsolable bawling. In a way, writing it felt almost like yet another kind of torture I was putting him through.

#danganronpa v3 #kaito momota #kaito whump #torture #adhd headcanons #personal?#ramble #writing #as vaguely promised ages ago #for the tiny intersection of people who might be interested

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evak-fic-rec-turtleanon · 5 years ago

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Evak Fic Rec - Angst

Here are SOME of the angsty fics i love. They range from light to heavy angst. Make sure you read the tags. Some of these deal with heavy themes. A few I haven't read but I want to. I sure I'm forgetting a bunch of angsty fics I love. I wish I could make a comprehensive list but that's just impossible. If you want to suggest fics, I'll be happy to check them out. For the anon from this ask.

** Angst with happy ending ** No happy ending

***** With Happy Ending *****

(2017) Where's my Love by suckmyboardbxtch (757 words) - Even is in a depressive episode. Kinda ambiguous ending. I love this one so much. It's very short but it moved me.

(2017) Not Always Soft by scritch (1k words) - Here is what they don't tell you about the sadness. What sadness is like for Even. Ends on a hopeful note.

(2017) Alone by waitineedaname (2k words) - Character death. Painful. Kinda happy ending.

(2017) Love (in all it's boring simplicity) by verlore_poplap (2.8k words) - Even breaks Isak's heart in this one. Break up au.

(2017) To Burn With Desire by photographer_of_thoughts (6k words) - Unrequited love though not really. kinda angsty.

(2020) a garden for your love by eggsntoast (9.3k words) - Light angst I think. Hanahaki au. Funny and angsty and sweet and beautiful.

(2019) Your presence still lingers here by nofeartina (11k words) - Even is immortal. Isak isn't. Can you already feel the angst from that description? Because let me tell ya, it starts out fluffy but you can just see the angst underlying it. And then the angst hits and it's a delicious pain. With every update Amy Lee's voice gets louder and louder in my head. (I didn't pick Rearranged because I think that's a popular one. But if you haven't read it, please do so. It has a lovely amount of angst.)

(2018) shrivelfig by towonderland72 (kittpurrson) (11k words) - Reuploaded in 2020. Delicious angst mixed with a Potter au? Sign me up. tender (is the night) is also one of the popular angsty fics.

(2018) Lighthouse by Laika_the_husband (12k words) - I've been wanting to start this fic. Seems like a good amount of angst.

(2018) in these deep solitudes and awful cells by hippopotamus (14k words) - Post break up au. This one hurt (I say that like the rest of this list don't hurt)

(2017) Sideways and Slantways by iriswests (17k words) - Isak gets stuck in an elevator with the one person he's vowed never to speak to again. Moderate angst, I think with fluff sprinkled all over. I did not pick TMTTS because that one is pretty popular.

(2019) The Glow of the Cities Below Lead Us Back by LavenderWater (22k words) - Character death but it has a happy ending. Exactly a year to the day after Isak and Jonas die in an apartment fire, Even meets a strange man outside of his grief group. This man asks Even an impossible question: Would he rather move on from the pain of losing Isak or, if he could, would he chose to go back to him knowing what he knows now? Beautiful fic

(2017) Hard Knocks by DiscoNight (25k words) - The angst in this made me angry at everybody, I wanted to fight someone. Isak gets very hurt emotionally and physically. Dom/sub dynamic between Isak and Even.

(2018) Just your average ordinary everyday Superhero by vorfm95 (34k words) - Angsty superhero soulmate au. Has character death but it's a happy ending.

(2017) What Death Doesn't Touch by smokeshop (41k words) - I love this fic! It's been a long time since I read it so I can't remember what level of angst this is. Maybe moderate to heavy? I do remember that it is really good. They meet in a psychiatric hospital and grow in ways they'd never intended, and decide early on that they don't have to take it all so seriously.

(2019) Supernova by hannakin (45K words) - Childhood friends who drifted apart. Isak is angry at the world. He is lonely but determined that he is better off alone. People tell Even to not bother. That Isak is not worth it. But how can he not? All he wants is to see Isak smile again. Arghh the angst!

(2018) four movements on a first wedding by chevythunder (47k words) - Isak's spent years keeping his distance to Even, worried that any kind of closeness could trigger feelings he won't be able to suppress. Waking up married to Even after a blurry night in Las Vegas throws a slight wrench in those plans. Angsty. Theres's a cat. I loved the minor characters.

(2017) Don't Fuss Over Me by everything_else (53k words) - I love this fic so much! Involves an abusive relationship. A lot of angst and a lot of healing.

(2019) The first star you see may not be a star by Laika_the_husband (53k words) - I LOVE Laika's fics. He has a bunch of fics with heavy themes and this angsty one really cut deep for me. Isak is a sex worker who specializes in services of not traditionally sexual nature. Even, his new client has a request that is not the most bizarre, but the most disturbing one Isak has ever received. The fic ends on a hopeful note. And there is a short sequel that is fluffier.

(2017) Legitimate Expectations by champagneleftie (57k words) - Listen. The angst is quite heavy with this one. Involves infidelity. Such a good fic.

(2017) That's Not My Name by cuteandtwisted (61k words) - No angst list would be complete without Wiss but I think fics like BFYT have been mentioned a lot so I've picked an older fic to rec. One night stand that does not stay a one night stand.

(2019/2020) I Can Hardly Breathe by Flatfootmonster (82k words) - This is mostly moderate angst I think. There's a lot of fluff too. But there is a particular scene but that is straight up heavy angst. I love Bec's writing. If you get a chance to read their other stuff, you'll not regret it.

(2017) Don't Let Me Go by unfancyandy (86k words) - This one is in my to read. It seems like a very angsty fic going by the comments. And everybody has a lot of praise for it. Has the major character death tag. I'm not sure who died but I believe this has a happy ending.

(2018) Next to you, is where I call home by LostInAdmiration (101k words) - Childhood best friend au so you know there is pining. Inspired by the movie Jongens. They are in a track team.

(2017) The Oceans Shall Freeze by DiscoNight, realityiwanted (121k words) - The viking fic. yeah.gif

(2017) All Stories Are Echoes by sebastianL (123k words) - There is no way I can make a list that fit this fic and not put it on there. It's ASAE. It's sad, and beautiful and just everything. It's in first person pov which I usually have problems with and yet this is one of the best things I've read. It just works.

(WIP) (2017) Crash Into Me by endlessandinfinite (155k words) - I haven't read this yet but @isaksforelsket highly recommends it so I wanted to put this on here. I can't wait to start this fic!

(2017) Cleansing my Soul by imissedyourskin (217k words) - This is an incredible fic. Even fights for equal rights and is openly pansexual. Isak is a quiet admirer unsure of his sexuality. But there is always more than meets the eye...

***** No Happy Ending *****

70% of these are character death fics. Just ask if you want clarity on which ones they are

(2018) fade by hippopotamus (568 words) - Even fades away in a hospital, and Isak fades away with him

(2018) I will be the one to make you crawl by Tuii (1k words) - Not happy ending ish? A look into what it's like to be bipolar

(2017) you've got the light to fight the shadows by orphan_account (1k words) - Isak's thoughts after Even introduced Sonja.

(2020) Freedom by Hibiskisss (1.3k words) - Sad and beautiful. You decide whose pov it is.

(2017) We're the Masters of Our Own Fate by obscurial (1.8k words) I read this in bits and pieces because it is so good but so painful. I will come back and read the whole thing. My dearest Isak. Before you continue reading, I want you to know that this is not your fault. Isak returns to the hotel room, but this time, he is alone.

(2018) so lucky that you were mine by empty_venom (2k words) - Not a happy ending but kinda ends on a slightly comforting note. Very slightly, though. It's still heartbreaking.

(2018) Four Hours by bri_ness (2.2k words) - It's not heavy angst but it feels like heavy angst. Throat hurting because you're trying not to cry kinda pain. A fleeting moment of connection that was not allowed to go further.

(2019) ghosts that we knew by thekardemomme (2.5k words) - I cried so hard.

(2019) I'm Gonna See Some Friends by Wrappedbubble (4k words) - Oh this was painful.

(2018) pieces by tusktooth (4k words) - Painful! Isak wakes up in a hospital the day after Eva's party. The doctor tells him that he was in a coma.

(2018) I'll be right beside you by hannakin (20k words) - I haven't read this one but I skimmed the ending because that's what I do when there's character death mentioned and this looks like the kind of fic that would crack my heart open so I had to add it on here.

#evak fic rec #skam fic rec #personal recs #reminder these are my opinions #whats angsty for me may not be angsty for you :D #angst

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ryttu3k · 4 years ago

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I want to have them all on Tumblr, so. Here are my reaction posts, in order, for Resolution of the Daleks and season 12, part 1!

Resolution of the Daleks

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Resolution! Spoilers, obviously!

Okay, negative first, just to get it out of the way. Doctor Who, I really appreciate that you consistently have queer minor characters and queer couples. Just super casual and all, as it should be. Now can you please stop killing off half of said couples? Angstrom's wife, Frankie, now this young guy? It's really not cool.

Don't think the voiceover worked. I feel the prologue would have worked better with just visuals.

Again, Yaz didn't have much to do. The Doctor got a ton of action, Ryan and Graham both had significant interactions with Aaron, Yaz was... just kind of there. I'm hoping that when the show comes back in a year, now that Ryan has largely dealt with his issues, Yaz will get more attention?

UNIT was killed by Brexit?! Fuckin' rude!

Okay, on to the positive!

The Dalek was, frankly, fucking scary. Despite knowing that the Doctor would beat it, obviously, it caused huge swathes of damage and racked up a... rather high body count. Like it felt like a proper threat. Also, its ability to stop the TARDIS tracking it and stuff. Lin's terror felt extremely genuine and it was just nice and horrific overall, like - if it wasn't for the Doctor, it would feel like a genuine threat to the entire Earth.

(Also, it shut down the wifi. On New Years Day. What a monster!)

Oh man that Dalek laughter. Creepy as fuck. The Doctor dragging it in via hologram to dare it to laugh in her face? Fucking iconic.

"I've learned to think like a Dalek." Oof.

Doctor vs Dalek. Not just the physical aspect, but the mental part - the Doctor recognising the seriousness of it, but also having that element of cockiness ("Oh, mate") because, frankly, she's dealt with bigger threats. She's right when she points out that the biggest problem will be if regular humans try to engage it!

Elements of Dark!Doctor when she asks the team - almost desperately - if she gave it enough chances, if she was nice enough. Because the Doctor can get fucking scary around Daleks and she knows it. She's nice. She's friendly. But she's also the Doctor, and the Doctor has done some really damn questionable things to stop the Daleks, and she knows that. Fantastically done and I still desperately want some proper Dark!Doctor.

Really liked the parallels between the Doctor using scrap to make her sonic screwdriver, vs the Dalek using scrap to make its armour. The Doctor makes a tool, the Dalek makes items of war. Of course, well, the Doctor is probably more dangerous just with a swiss army sonic than a Dalek blaster...

I love how the whole, "Dads are complicated... so I've heard" bit could refer to either the loom thing or the Doctor having actual parents or the Doctor being a shitty dad themself XD

Graham was so excited to show off the TARDIS! Like he's just going, "How cool is this?!"

There were some legitimately funny moments! Graham's chair, "I suppose... we'll have to have a... conversation?", "Junkyard chic"... UNIT was killed by Brexit like that's so awful but. But in a kind of funny way.

Okay, now the unsure. Ryan, Graham, and Aaron. Ryan and Graham have sorted out their issues - but Aaron is still such a big overshadowing part of it that it's a bit of a shock when he comes back in. As someone with a similarly shit biological father, I was completely empathising with Ryan in the coffee shop conversation. And I do understand why they wanted reconciliation, so they showed Aaron as acknowledging his bullshit and Ryan ultimately choosing to forgive and save him.

But it's just... not that easy. It's not all going to be perfect just because they stopped a Dalek together. Aaron's neglect hurt Ryan really badly, and it just felt... too easy? Like it helped that Aaron was genuinely contrite, and that he had that good stepfather talk with Graham, but just... yeah, not sure how I feel about it, honestly.

The Doctor's first words to him being, "You weren't at Grace's funeral. Ryan waited for you, you let him down" were so, so good. Like the Doctor is just going "fuck you I'm his father now". Like tbh I think she was 100% prepared to yeet him off the TARDIS and be done with it. Like damn don't emotionally hurt one of her crew.

Some wonderfully savage lines, though. The Doctor's, "You're almost making up for your parenting deficit!"; Aaron and Ryan's, "Is that how you talk to your dad?" "I don't know, he's not been around"; Graham's fucking smirk when Ryan pointedly calls him 'Gramps'.

I did see a suggestion that would have made it much better - instead of the Dalek capturing Aaron, it captures Ryan. First, it ups the threat in the mind of the Doctor and Team TARDIS - this isn't some dickhead, this is one of them. And instead, it's Aaron who reaches out to Ryan, Aaron who risks his life, Aaron who has to come through for Ryan, instead of the other way around. Also would have tied in beautifully with, "Family isn't about DNA, or a name. It's about what you do, and you haven't done enough."

Also, 'srs tech skillz'. With a Z. Doctor why.

In conclusion, I am going to fight Nigel Farage for killing UNIT.

Spyfall part 1

Current response to Doctor Who: making a near-literal SDKFJHGSDASDKFH sound, grabbing a cushion, nearly throWING THE CUSHION.

More intelligent commentary when my brain comes back online.

Okay. Am calm. Am good! We're good.

MAJOR SPOILERS for Doctor Who: Spyfall, part 1!

So yeah I actually literally screamed (kind of... scream-laugh-holy-shit-yes). Like, even before Dhawan finished speaking the, "Or should I say spy... Master?" line because of the way he had said 'spymaster' in full in the line before and there's nothing that grabs my brain like that one word in that one context. It wasn't quite as mindblowing as the Utopia reveal, since, let's face it, it's only been a season since we last saw that magnificant arsehole, but still.

(Actually, since I didn't watch Twelve's run, the last time I saw them was exactly a decade ago in The End of Time, broadcast New Years Day 2010. And I still fucking cry over, "Get out of the way." So. That may have been why I literally screamed lmao)

I mean. It's the Master. I can't not. They're my favourite jerk. This is probably slightly concerning.

Anyway. Comments!

The good

Episode was just flat-out exciting. It reminded me both of the Three and Ten eras, a bit? Fun gadgets, fancy suits, and what ends up being a giant game! Did start wondering when they were talking about spies and codes and stuff. It's basically a puzzle that's been set up for the Doctor to solve. Plus, the way she was pretty much enlisted into it! Thirteen and Dhawan!Master might end up having a more Pertwee-Delgado-esque dynamic, maybe? I would be down for that!

(My introductory episode to the Master was The Mind of Evil. Let's just put it that way XD)

"I'm her best enemy." <3

I mean, in retrospect, isolated house full of high-tech stuff and a wall full of books about the Doctor... oh honey. Long, looong game of playing Spies and Conspiracies just for, apparently, the sheer funsies of it. Oh, honey. They're such a disaster and I love them.

The reveal scene, Jodie's acting. The way she just... freezes and hunches in on herself. She's been hiding her past more than other Doctors have in the past, and suddenly, here is her past!! Right here!! Laughing and joking and right there in front of her! And she's just like, "Ohhh shit, I was not ready to have this conversation again..."

Yasmin and Ryan's dynamic. I do like that they split up the usual combos of Thirteen-Yasmin and Graham-Ryan for once, because I do like seeing the way they play off each other! It makes them feel more cohesive as a group. I liked Ryan trying to comfort Yasmin after her experience.

Post-reveal, I'm now wondering if the weird zappy forest thing is the Master's TARDIS? Something to do with changing and processing DNA into something else? Something based around neurons, with the electric travelling system? Am also wondering what happened to Yasmin while in there, since she seemed to be processed in some way, and I'm wondering if she had part of her DNA rewritten as well - or maybe if she's been replaced entirely, like she's currently piloting an alien version of her own body while her actual self is still in there. They did already do that with Flesh!Amy, though.

Once this arc is over, I think Thirteen is definitely going to have to sit down and tell the Fam who the hell she actually is. Graham is having some serious questions, and the Master was definitely egging that on, pre-reveal.

How much do I love that even in a tux, the Doctor still has the culottes and boots? A lot, that is how much. Also, how much do I love the Doctor in a suit and on a motorbike? A lot, that is how much.

"I've had an upgrade." <3

Thirteen playing Snap. It's okay, Thirteen, you still win my heart <3

"Worst! Uber! Ever!!"

"Kisses!" Yes, we know ;) They've been texting! Someone write me a WhatsApp chat fic with plenty of subtext and double meaning, I require it. Also, memes. You know it's true. The Master isn't a Time Lord, they're a Meme Lord.

"Everything you think you know is a lie." Season hook? :o

The hmm

Main concern is how they're handling the Master's characterisation? Last we saw, they were so ready to jump the Doctor ship. Now it's back to games. Kind of wondering if that means the Master is just at the point of being resigned that they and the Doctor just don't work and so is going back to games because at least it makes them happy, but I'm happy to wait until next week to see how things play out!

Did see a suggestion that this is the Master from one of the alternate universes (or at least that seems to be the general consensus on why there were multiple maps), so not actually necessarily the same version as Missy. Alternatively, this could actually be a pre-Missy version! Maybe between Simm!Master and Missy, since we never actually see that regeneration?

Actually, if this is the one immediately before Missy and this two-parter ends with the Master regenerating and we actually do get Thirteen and Missy together on screen I may cry.

(Like I'm aro-ace and agender but I'm still so gay for both of them. There is no word other for this emotion other than 'I'm gay'.)

I kind of wish someone had double-checked the name of the company because VOR running the world is. Is. "Right now, VOR is more powerful than most nations." Just. *pinches bridge of nose* Like okay you know how we say 'oh yeah just google it' 'yeah I googled it' are they really gonna say 'yeah I just VO

'I'm going to V

I can't say it. I can't.

Apparently the Australia scenes were filmed in South Africa. Kind of assumed it wasn't really Australia as soon as I saw actually greenery in the background h e h.

Highkey wish I could have seen Missy and Thirteen together. Dhawan!Master is very fun so far but. Missy and Thirteen. See comment above about the Master's characterisation!

...ABC are you really going to keep to Thursday night broadcasts even after the UK switches their Sunday nights / our Monday mornings? Well that's a good way to guarantee I'll be watching them online first! I was happy to wait twelve hours or so so I could watch it with Mum, but like hell I'm going to wait three and a half days!

In conclusion, am dead, send help, is it Monday morning yet?

Spyfall part 2

Thoughts on Doctor Who: Spyfall, part 2!

GALLIFREY LOOOOORE.

Oh man I'm hyped. We got a teeny teaser to the Timeless Child way back last decade but now we may actually get to see what the fuck is going on. And hell, if nothing else, at least the discovery is being teased to be so devastating it did undo Missy's characterisation. If this incarnation of the Master is after her, at least. Still not necessarily anything to suggest that. The Master will likely be recurring over this season, so we'll find out more, at least!

God, the Master is so fucked up. Like. He's seen something apparently so massively traumatic that he had to destroy his own planet and legitimately does look broken by it? Unless he was acting, but I did not get that impression from the message at the end. And the only way he can think of to get the Doctor's attention is to start his old tricks? Not sure if it's better or worse for him to be pre-Missy tbh.

It's just... such an interesting dynamic. Also I really want to read into the whole... scene where the Master asks the Doctor to kneel and call him 'Master' in front of everyone - then, when she does (defiantly! Stubbornly!), he... kneels to be at the same level as her. Like, "I'm going to play these BDSM-esque power games with you but when it comes down to it, I still consider us equal."

Anyway the Master is def a service top.

This comment from Tumblr user upslapmeal:

"'why would it stop? I mean how else would I get your attention’ what did I say about the Master being like a cat knocking things off shelves"

I mean. Yeah.

"Contact." Old school.

The Companions! They get a capital C because they were rad as hell. I love them all deciding that what they do next is: carry on to save the world. Like they're all heroic af without the Doctor and it's so good.

"Don't make me do a soft-shoe shuffle!"

And questioning at the end, oooh man. There are some Implications there, yeah. They've found out some surface information, yes, but no real hint at the deeper trauma. And given what this coming season is hinting at, I strongly suspect we will indeed be getting that deeper trauma and maybe even Dark!Doctor. Gallifrey does tend to bring it out of them...

The whole on-the-run thing seemed to definitely be a callback to Sound of Drums. Uh, what's that going to do long-term? Send out a worldwide message saying, "Sorry, our bad, they're fine"? I mean, last time that happened... okay, Jack was already with Torchwood and so is used to Not Really Existing, but Martha definitely couldn't go back to fuckin' medical school. She ended up at UNIT and then went independent. They did not return to their normal lives.

Barton: needs a goddamn punch. He killed his mother what the fuck. On the plus side, at least he seems to have thoroughly destroyed his career? Be interesting to see if he reappears later, you don't go from the most powerful person on the planet to massive pariah overnight without Repercussions.

On to our guest characters! I hate to brag but I guessed who Ada was as soon as I heard her first name and saw her outfit. I mean the computers theme was already there, who else would she be? :D And I admittedly didn't know who Noor Inayat Khan was except in passing, but still. Little upset about the erased memories (Donna ;_; ), but I can see why the Doctor did it and like... this way, I'm glad they were able to avoid the implications of, "Ada only developed computing because she had already seen the future." Like people said that with Rosa Parks even though the Doctor said explicitly to only ensure there were enough seats filled and the act itself was all Rosa, so they may have wanted to play it safe.

I... really want to comment on how Ada definitely was crushing on the Doctor (and really, who wouldn't?), but she was a real person so I shall avoid those implications. (But really though!)

Doctor how many times have you been in someone's liver. This is some Magic School Bus Inside The Human Body bullshit and I love it.

Doctor's recording: "First of all, you're not gonna die! Second of all, don't talk back to the screens, obviously I'm a recording and I can't hear ya. Third, don't panic. Especially you, Graham."

Graham, panicking: "I'M NOT PANICKING!"

Doctor's recording: "Yes, you were! And I did just say, don't talk back to the screens!"

Graham: "????!?!!"

I want an entire series of the Master having a really infuriating seventy-seven years on Earth. Please.

Comments on continuity issues regarding that, "It's worse than Jodrell Bank!" "Did I ever apologise for that?" "No." "Good." exchange XD;; Like people are going, "Continuity error!! It was the Pharos Project, not Jodrell Bank!!" and like. Pharos was a project. Jodrell Bank is an observatory. You can do projects at observatories. Also, you can refer to projects by location, too. Am I referring to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Project or Tidbinbilla Station? Both! They refer to the same thing! In the Whoniverse, they likely did the Pharos Project at Jodrell Bank, and just had some lighthearted bantz about that time where the Master killed the Doctor, no biggie.

So, onwards to... an apparently unrelated episode for next week! Also, the Kassavin? Still there. Like. The Master only gave suggestions. They still have all those agents everywhere! They're still ready to act! And yeah, now they have the Master in their hands, so... I wonder if they'll make the Timeless Child a long, ongoing arc, and have the much more immediate threat of the Kassavin as the season finale?

Orphan 55

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Orphan 55!

...whew.

First thought: anvilicious, but some anvils need to be dropped, because, uh, have you seen the world lately.

It feels like quite a brittle episode? Even beyond the immediate tension of 'there are large angry creatures trying to kill everyone', there's just this sense of... like, tension. There's the tension between Benni and Vilma, which at first is kind of a sweet tension then becomes a life-threatening and sad tension. There's the tension between Roger Parslow Silas and his dad, with Silas not being taken seriously (although I do think him running out while they're in life-threatening danger is a bit much). The obvious and major tension between Bella and Kane that drives the whole episode, yes.

And there's also the tension amongst Team TARDIS! The episode starts with the Doctor still in Some Kinda Way about last week, and I felt a bit of tension between Yaz and Ryan? She seemed rather unimpressed by Bella, at any rate. I do like how organic the relationship between Ryan and Graham feels, at least. "It ain't the aliens that are gonna kill me, it’s worrying about you!"

Set and costume building, I felt, was kind of... eh? I liked how Tranquility itself looked, but the tunnels looked Very Generic, and some of the looks I felt didn't really work. Silas and his dad's green hair just looked very obviously fake, and I saw a description of Hyph3n-with-a-three looking like a cross between a Jellicle Cat and John Candy in Spaceballs (which... yeah, honestly). And I'm not sure about the Dregs, although I did initially have the thought that whatever the original inhabitants of the planet were, they must have been humanoid was amusingly accurate...

"I just pulled this out of a friend of mine! >:("

"Oh! ...We do not make any judgments on our guests and fully support any way you choose to enjoy yourself here at Tranquility Spa! ^_^;;"

"... ... ...It wasn't recreational! o.O"

God you could feel Hyph3n-with-a-three's embarrassment...

"If I had crayons and half a can of Spam, I could build you from scratch!" Excuse me I am at least Tofurky.

Also a logical issue on the whole journey to find Benni, because frankly, it just wasn't... sensible. Okay, bring a kid. Father of the year right there. Okay, bring an old woman. Granted, she could have insisted because it was her man-friend they were looking for, but surely she would have known she would slow them down? Her 'heroic sacrifice' felt very wasted, because dammit, she could have survived if she had stayed in the Dome where it was at least a bit safer!

"At least three eighths of a plan, right here! ...Two eights. I'll be honest, all I've got is the letter 'P'..."

So the Doctor is almost at the point of passing out from oxygen loss but hang on, let her first indulge her curiosity...

The sheer existence of orphan planets is very depressing. The sheer fact that there's at least fifty-five is very depressing.

There's an interesting comment about how straight after discussion of the reveal, the first shot of the preview is the Statue of Liberty. Very Planet of the Apes! (No apes next time, just Tesla vs Edison!) Also feeling a strong connection to Midnight (stunning resort on dangerous planet with a very personal enemy), and I saw a comment about Thirteen unintentionally The-End-Of-The-World-ing the Fam (and making a connection between 'very angry trees' and the Forests of Cheem). Bit of Ravolox. Bit of... fuck what was it... Curse of Fenric.

Although, we know that the Earth will eventually be consumed by the sun, and it was done in a way that was like... it was its time. This was not its time, was a colossal fuck-up on a planetary scale (and the Doctor continues to be 'eat the rich'), but it's also only one potential future. Which is good, because that got dark. Even more than The End of the World, even more than Utopia, even more than fuckin' Frontios, because this is the near-future. The shots we saw of the destruction were modern day! That was the Dome of the Rock you saw getting bombed!

"Be smarter than what made you." PAGING THE GOVERNMENT...

Going to put it on a solid... maybe 7/10? Some really good elements in there, but also some clunkers, and unfortunately not a patch on the same writer's It Takes You Away, which was one of the strongest of the last season.

Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror

Thoughts on Doctor Who - Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror!

Opinion before episode: man, Tesla's cool. Opinion after episode: man, Tesla is fuckin' cool! :D That was a well-done personality-based historical, absolutely - I think it's my second-favourite personality-based historical only to Rosa (there are other pseudo-historical based ones set in the past that I love, but they're not personality-based; the Human Nature duology is a good example).

But yeah, Tesla just came across as a really, really cool character. Genius and he knew it, yes, and the real Tesla did have some questionable views (sexism, mostly), but otherwise the archetypal Idealistic Genius who wants to change the world for the better. Contrast with Edison, who was... a businessman. With, like, a really punchable face. Still pretty intelligent, but... very, very punchable. I've read about the Tesla-Edison feud before and always sided with Tesla, and let's face it, so did the writer XD

Good mix of character combinations - with a lot of characters, it's easy for someone to get sidelined, but this managed to handle Thirteen and the Fam, and Tesla, Dorothy, and Edison, pretty well. There were some neat combinations, like Ryan and Dorothy bonding over the sense of adventure, and Graham and Edison's confrontation; I also really loved the whole conversation between Thirteen and Tesla on the joy of just... creating. There's actually a very nice overlap between arts and sciences.

Antagonists - not bad? I feel a lot of people were expecting the Racnoss, and there was such a similarity that I would have liked at least a throwaway line about how the Skithra were related or something. Ooh man she definitely brought out Dark!Doctor, though. Teleporting the queen back to the ship, specifically so she can be fried? I mean, she might have survived it. Might. And just that fantastic little change of expression when the queen asks the Doctor if she's ever seen a dead planet before! Whittaker pulled that one off.

There's a very interesting compare and contrast between the Skithra and Edison, I found. Thirteen has her speech about how once the Skithra are gone, they won't be remembered. Caput. Forgotten. They left nothing behind. Compare and contrast to Edison, who was openly accused of using other people's work, but who's able to learn from his mistakes, end on an even(ish) setting with Tesla, and who does get remembered. Which kind of stings, honestly, if you look at Tesla's actual history.

Like. Apparently that, "The man just didn't understand the American sense of humour," line was an actual historical line, according to Tesla's own records. The absolute main reason for the difference in fame and recognition is that Tesla was a genius who didn't know how to market. Edison was a marketer who could invent a bit. So in conclusion Edison is a dick and Tesla needs more respect, the end.

Favourite lines and scenes:

Tesla: "Is - is this your own design?" Thirteen: "I made it! Mainly out of spoons! :D" Tesla: "You're an inventor! :D" Thirteen: "I have my moments." Tesla: "I knew it! So you... so, you can understand how it feels, you know, when you have an idea, and - and to make it real. I don't think there's any greater thrill!" Thirteen: "I couldn't agree more." Tesla: "You... you spoke of aliens. People here laugh at the very idea." Thirteen: "But not you." Tesla: "Well, apparently I'm not like other people. It can be difficult, you know, to feel no one else sees the world the way you do. It's like you're, uh..." Thirteen: "...out of place."

Graham: "Yeah, still. I bet you'd jump at the chance to have him back working for you, wouldn't ya?" Edison: "Yeah?" Graham: "Yeah!" Edison: "How d'you figure that?" Graham: "'Cause I had a supervisor like you at my old depot. And men like you don't pay a bloke that much attention unless you think there's a payout comin'."

Thirteen: "I wouldn't go killing me and Yaz. 'Cause Yaz... can tell you what this is." Yaz: "It's a camera!" Thirteen: "Bingo!" *FLASH!*

Edison: "I couldn't figure it out either." Tesla: "The internal dimensions transcend the external." Thirteen: *GRIN* Edison: ._.

Thirteen: "You do realise, it's killing Edison that they want you and not him? ;D"

Graham: "Don't worry. This ain't our first rodeo!" Ryan: "We've never been to a rodeo." Graham: "...you're not helping, Ryan..."

Thirteen: "And what are you queen of, exactly? A stolen ship and second-hand guns? A queen of shreds and patches. You're not a ruler, you're a parasite." Queen: "And what are you? So clever, stealing onto my ship, taking what I claim as mine. But where has it got you? No weapons. No armour. No escape. Just the desperate hope you might change my mind." Thirteen: "No, we are way past that. I gave you your chance." Queen: "A chance to be like you?" Thirteen: "A chance to evolve. But you were too stupid to take it. When you die, there'll be nothing left behind - just a trail of blood and other people's brilliance. No one will even know you existed."

(Side note: I love that this speech was actually in front of the companions. They're starting to see that things are Not Okay.)

Thirteen: "Don't give up." Yaz: "Whatever anyone says." Tesla: "Well, let them talk. The present is theirs. I work for the future... and the future is mine."

Favourite incorrect lines:

Thirteen and Tesla, firing at the ship: "VIBE CHECK!"

Fugitive of the Judoon

I'M GONNA... NEED A HOT MOMENT TO PROCESS THAT...

WELL I. UH. OKAY.

lmao I'm serious I don't even know where to begin.

Uh, some very disorganised comments on Doctor Who - Fugitive of the Judoon!

I squealed when I heard Jack's voice then saw him in the flesh. I gasped audibly when 'Ruth' broke the glass. I yelped when we saw the buried TARDIS. I MAY HAVE SCREAMED A LITTLE WHEN 'RUTH' INTRODUCED HERSELF.

(Also can we talk about her outfit. That was on point.)

I'm getting a very... very early vibe? She didn't know what the sonic screwdriver was, and that was introduced with Troughton. Since we saw the Hartnell-Troughton regeneration, she must be pre-Hartnell? Maybe a Doctor whose memories were rewritten to the point that they thought the Hartnell incarnation was the earliest? Not to mention that was a pretty old-school-looking TARDIS!

Alternatively, maybe between Troughton and Pertwee? Either option has some inconsistency - if she's post Troughton, she should have known what the sonic was, although it admittedly did look very different. Plus, her TARDIS is already its police box shape, which was implied to have set in the junkyard. Also, we never actually do see the regeneration between Two and Three, and it could explain why Gallifrey was after her - she escaped after her trial after The War Games!

Definitely early, though.

Alternatively alternatively, Thirteen actually does say 'time is swirling around me'. Maybe an alternate timeline. Something to tie back to the Timeless Child?

"I've lived for thousands of years, so long I've lost count. I've had so many faces. How long have you known me? You don't know me. Not even a little bit."

That wasn't just aimed at the companions. I feel that was aimed at the Doctor themself.

(Related: the response from the fam was flat-out beautiful. Doesn't matter who she was or who she'll be. They know her now, and they love her.)

Just. Wow. Wow.

Really cool note from Twitter - disguised name was Ruth Clayton. Ruth = 'friend, companion'. Clayton = 'of the Earth'. She literally named herself 'friend of the Earth'.

"You're probably a bit confused right now."

I mean. Yeah. Confused and intrigued and what.

"Don't do points! I do points! Points are my thing!"

Jack. Jack. Smooching Graham, hitting on all the companions, getting into Shenanigans! The Lone Cyberman - I wonder if that's a totally different crisis that isn't even related to the current Gallifrey-Timeless Child one? The more important part is Jack's presence - the presence of another time traveller with a... unique relationship with the universe. The actual warning could be a red herring, but Jack showing up anywhere in the first place is a sign that something is happening with time?

Orphan 55 had a timeline that may or may not have been the 'real' one. Being only a potential future kind of doesn't work with what we know of established DW continuity, so I'm liking the 'alternate timeline' theory, maybe?

Ryan: "I liked him. Kind of cheesy."

Yaz: "But good cheesy."

Thirteen, smiling: "That's Jack."

Graham just standing there going, "He kissed me tho? ...Wasn't bad, actually."

"Is she safe?" Jack, honestly, is she ever safe?

"When she needs me... I'll be there." Oh yeah, he's so coming back later this season.

Also, Judoon, chameleon arch, the Master, Jack - getting big season 29 vibes here and that's a big thumbs up for me because that's my favourite season. We just need Martha to make an appearance now!

...hehe honestly, between Jodie's entire existence, and now, in the span of five episodes, introducing Dhawan!Master, Gat, and now Jo Martin as the first black female Doctor, and reintroducing Jack, one of the most overtly and openly queer characters on the series, the 'Doctor Who is too PC!' bunch are going to be so mad XD

"A platoon of Judoon... near the moon." / "Look at you, your platoon of Judoon near the... that lagoon..."

Man. The close-up in the very first shot of the watch. Nice tie-in.

"The Doctor never uses weapons!" "I know! Shut up! >.>"

Where do the Kasaavin come into play? Is this something they've done by integrating themselves throughout time and space? Maybe they're fraying the fabric?

My mind is blown. I can't wait for the rest of this season :D

[Part 2 - Praxeus to The Timeless Children]

#doctor who #companion love #best enemies #long post

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duhragonball · 4 years ago

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State of the Damn Wienerfic

I’ve finally finished the “thousand years ago” section of my OC’s backstory, which is a big relief to me. The first 141 chapters of Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan were intended to develop the title character as a protagonist in her own right, and not just a guest star or supporting player to the main cast, like Tapion in “Wrath of the Dragon”. I was always worried that I’d meet some untimely end before I finished, and no one would know how things turned out for her.

From 142 onward, I’m flashing forward to the events of Dragon Ball:Xenoverse. It’s not going to be a total adaptation of the game’s story mode, but I did like the notion that if I ever reached this point, the fic has a tenative ending, and a curious reader could run Xenoverse 1 on Steam and get a general idea of what happens next. But I’m still alive, so I guess I’ll go ahead and write my version.

It’s still surreal to me that I’ve reached this milestone. I’ve thought about it for so long and now it’s here. I wrote the bulk of #142 last November, and some other material that still needs to be organized, and my goal for this year’s NanoWriMo is to plow forward. A lot of things will be different, and I think one of them is that I feel like I can be more open about the creative process. So if you want to see how the sausage is made, click the read more. If you’d rather see how crayons are made, watch this video below.

youtube

There’s a Sesame Street version of this, but those are all orange crayons, and I like yellow better. Also I like the way Mr. Rogers says “crayons”.

All right, now that those weird crayon people are distracted, let’s talk about Luffa.

I came up with the idea around 2004, I think. DBZ was done airing in the U.S., and I wanted to write some sort of fanfic about it, but I was having trouble coming up with ideas. I felt like the main story had wrapped up very well with Z, and GT only seemed to prove that you can’t top the original story. So I started thinking about the lore, and that led me to the Legendary Super Saiyan that Vegeta spoke of in DBZ Episode 66.

There were a few things that bugged me about the DBZ fandom at the time. Mostly I was just reading the GameFaqs boards to find any hot scoops about upcoming DBZ games, and no one really knew much of anything, so the board was mostly guys shooting idle speculation back and forth. Occasionally someone would bring up the fact that we never saw any female Super Saiyans, which led some to suspect that such a thing must be impossible. The one explanation that stuck in my craw was that “women can’t get angry enough”. Usually, misogynists are always saying women are too emotional to do anything else, so by that logic, you’d think it would be much easier for Saiyan women. They’d just flip out whenever a stray laser bolt fries their hair, like Daphne Zuniga in “Spaceballs.”

The other thing that bugged me was the Broly-worship in some circles. One way or another, Broly hype reached American fans well before the Funimation dub of Movie 8. I remember the official promotions from Funimation acknowledging that fans kind of already knew who the guy was. For a few years before 2003, I think Broly became this mythical figure, like your friend whose uncle works for Nintendo, or “Q” telling 4-chan all about how everyone you don’t like is going to get arrested soon. I’m pretty sure this is why you can still find Broly fanart where he’s beating up Galactus, Kid Buu, and Superman, to name a few. I think a lot of fanboys got it in their head that Broly could kick anybody’s ass, which is weird because he can’t even win in his own movies.

I think even the official stuff played into this idea, since Broly would often be used as a special bonus boss in a lot of video games, so you beat Kid Buu and then hold on, now you have to fight Broly. So it’s not hard to get the vibe that he’s the real final boss of everything. I’m curious how the 2018 version of Broly will affect the perception of the character, but it’s probably too soon to tell. In the mid-2000′s, though, it felt like a lot of people believed that Broly was a more legitimate Super Saiyan than Goku or the others, by virtue of being green and irrationally violent.

So this was on my mind when I thought about what to do with the Super Saiyan from 1000 years ago. I felt like there were people who wanted to believe that this character was a lot more like Broly than Goku, which is dumb, because the whole point of Super Saiyan Goku was that he was taking on the same role as the last guy. And, for my money, the moral of Goku going Super Saiyan was that he was the only Saiyan of his generation who understood the same thing all the old Super Saiyans did. Something about his upbringing on Earth helped him reach that level. All the other Saiyans were too contaminated by their own culture of ruthless dickery.

And so I thought that it would really flip the script if I wrote a story about that Legendary Super Saiyan and made him very different from the fanboy perception of Broly. And I’d make him a her, just to twist the knife. Not only is this not Broly, but she’s one of those women Super Saiyans everyone thinks can’t happen. I doubt anyone from GameFaqs in 2007 would even notice my fic, but I’d like to think they’d be pissed about what I’ve done.

I tried writing some of this down in 2006, but I didn’t get very far, mostly because I was intimidated by the scope of the idea. I didn’t think I could do a long story, but I wasn’t sure a short story could get the idea across. So I just didn’t do it at all, and kept thinking about it from time to time. I wanted to make Luffa as a custom character in a video game, if they ever made a game with CAC features. Ultimate Tenkaichi had it, but you could only make a Saiyan man... which just reinforced my motivations for doing this kind of a story.

Finally, Dragon Ball Xenoverse debuted a more robust CAC feature in 2015, and I could design the character properly. I didn’t have much in the way of ideas, so I just sort of let the gameplay take me where it would. The game is set in the future, and Trunks just wishes for an ally, so who’s to say that this ally couldn’t have come from the past? You do a lot of grinding in the game, and there’s a lot of exposition, and that gave me time to think about what what Luffa had been doing right before she got to this place. And slowly, I started to iron out what I wanted to write.

Her costume was just a convenience, really. I went with short hair because the long hair doesn’t “float” when you go Super Saiyan in the game. I wanted some sort of old-school looking armor, but everything in the game was based on costumes from the show, and the “Saiyan” armor in DBZ was Frieza’s thing. It wouldn’t have existed a thousand years earlier. I might have gone for something like Cabba’s outfit in Dragon Ball Super, but that wouldn’t be available until a few years later. So that left me with a choice between a baggy martial arts dogi or the skin tight Pilot Suit. The Pilot Suit is kind of... distracting, since it’s just a skin, and the developers make you stare at the character’s ass the whole time. On the other hand, a baggy dogi kind of made her look like Cell Games Gohan. So I went with baggy pants and fitted shirts.

The black and yellow color scheme was mostly so I wouldn’t confuse my character from the others appearing on the screen during fights. That ruled out purple, orange, and blue, since the Z-Fighters wear those. I resisted yellow, because that’s my favorite color, but later I realized black and yellow is perfect, because that’s the color scheme of the giant ape in Vegeta’s flashback.

Playing the game helped motivate me to actually sit down and write the story, because I finally had a fleshed out character that I could see and do things with. And making her fight DBZ characters got me to consider how she would react to those concepts. Would she respect Vegeta’s royal bloodline, or would she be unimpressed like Goku? How would she feel about Frieza’s destruction of their home planet? Would she even recognize it as her home planet? How does she feel about the fact that no one remembers anything about her?

My goal for the first 141 chapters was to build a world and a backstory that would set up the answers to those questions. The villains in that part of the story are all misogynists of one stripe or another. They view women as tools to be exploited, or as enemies to be eliminated, or as distractions to be ignored. They see Luffa doing her thing and they all say “She can’t do that,” and then she does it harder.

Now that I think about it, I suppose the appeal to the character, and the thing that frustrates her so much, is that she’s just trying to be herself, but all these buttholes in the universe are outraged by it, and yet they just can’t stop her. They want her to die, or go away, or become something else, something they can accept, but she just refuses to do that, and she’s got the raw power to tell them all where they can shove it. This whole thing is my ham-fisted attempt to write a feminist allegory with Saiyans in it, and I’ll never be good enough to get it exactly right, but you know, it’s not as hard as I thought it would be. Along the way, some LBGT stuff started to get into the mix, and I thought “Well, I’m really in the deep end of the pool now.” I’m sorry if I got anything wrong, but I think I did okay. I’m not breaking any records, but I managed to avoid drowning, right?

Anyway, that’s why the Saiyans hate her guts, because all the Saiyans in DBZ resented Goku as being weak and worthless. Even when Goku surpassed Vegeta, Vegeta still thought he lacked the killer instinct to be a “““true”“““ Super Saiyan. Luffa’s got plenty of killer instinct, but the Saiyans hate her out of jealousy and fear. Vegeta accused Trunks of lying about being a Saiyan, because his hair wasn’t the right color. I wanted to make a whole population of Saiyans who would quibble over those kinds of details. “The stone the builders have rejected has become the capstone.”

This is also why I made the Saiyan King the main villain, because I wanted to echo Goku’s conflict with Vegeta, and King Vegeta’s conflict with Paragus and Broly. If there’s a Super Saiyan every thousand years, then what happens to the second strongest Saiyan whenever that day comes? Does he stand aside like John the Baptist, or does he refuse to accept the changing times?

The purpose of all of this was to explain why Vegeta remembers the legend of the Super Saiyan, but nothing about the person. Why doesn’t he know Luffa’s name, or what color her pants were? Because his ancestors hated her, and suppressed the parts of her story that they didn’t like. Even as Vegeta recalls what little he knows, he thinks “I never actually believed it.”

Okay, but Luffa had friends, right? Wouldn’t they have left a record for future generations? Well maybe, but how long would it take to fade into obscurity? And Luffa’s kind of a private person. Everyone in her inner circle avoided the spotlight. There’s a move about her, but it’s filled with wild inaccuracies. Eyewitnesses to her battles can only describe a glowing blur. Close-up footage just shows an irritable Saiyan woman with a strange dyejob. Most civilians find regular Saiyans to be pretty extraordinary as they are. A Super Saiyan doesn’t seem that much more impressive.

What you wind up with is this legacy of battles that were fought and won by a single, mighty warrior, but no one can agree on what that warrior was exactly. At some point, enough time passes where the Saiyans are willing to reclaim the legend. “Yeah, that guy had to be a Saiyan. Who else could do all those things?” But the things she stood for and learned along the way, that’s all lost.

I just didn’t think it’d take me 647,471 words to explain all of that. But now I can finally write the part with all the popular characters in it. Right now, my big problem is that I have to slap together a few more OC’s and I need to figure out just what the hell Towa’s deal is. The Dragon Ball Wiki attempts to explain whatever happens in those Dragon Ball Heroes games, but it doesn’t seem like they wrote any of it to fit a coherent narrative. I’d like to use as much official Demon Realm lore as possible, if only because that’s what Towa and Demigra’s fans would be familiar with, but I’m not sure how this is going to look. I mean, they’re gonna get an ass-whoopin’, I know that part, but I’d like to flesh out their characters before the beating starts.

Anyway, I got my work cut out for me. But at least the soundtrack will be epic.

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#luffastuff #get lost orange crayons #yellow is so much better than orange #like #i know colors can't fight #but if they could #*if they could*#i'm pretty sure yellow could kick the shit out of orange #like if a lady wearing yellow fought a dude in orange he'd probably get wrecked #i think you see where i'm going with this train of thought #yajirobe and gt bulma are in deep trouble #wait

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mittensmorgul · 5 years ago

Note

Do you think Chuck made Sam and Eileen like each other? Are you sure? Because that is not exactly the truth. They had a legitimate attraction since s11, when they met. Chuck just manipulated the situation, using a spell and helping her to reach the bunker. He didn't need to do anything else. Chuck knew that the two of them together in the bunker would undoubtedly result in a romance. Because their attraction is real. Their feelings are real. Chuck didn't manipulated it.

*sighs heavily and then looks into the endless depths of your sunglasses and wonders why we’re still doing this three months on*

If you see it that way, more power to you, honestly. I wish I could.

but also, and perhaps most importantly:

The fact that I am incapable of seeing it that way has no bearing on whether or not *you* see it that way.

Seriously. You are free to carry on with that cheerful and unproblematic view of events. Please feel free to continue to enjoy the ship as you see fit. You do not need the permission of randos typing on the internet to enjoy the show in whatever way pleases you best.

Here’s where I’m personally hitting a wall with it that nothing in canon has enabled *me personally* to climb over. To me, this isn’t something I can personally engage in a debate over, because everyone attempting to debate me on this point insists that the only satisfactory resolution to a conversation here is my unconditional acceptance of Sam and Eileen’s relationship as incontestably pure and free from the stain of Chuck’s influence. And I’m gonna put this next bit in its own paragraph, because I really, really need people to understand this, because it’s not about *you* it’s about *me*:

Because of experiences in my own life, I am incapable of seeing it that way.

Please reread that last sentence, and really, really think about what I’m telling you here. And then reconsider this campaign to convince me that I’m somehow wrong here. If I’m wrong, if canon is headed toward a Sam and Eileen happy endgame scenario, that will play out on screen in a way that I won’t be able to deny, with both of them making choices out of their own free will, untainted by Chuck’s control going forward.

If you can truly see them as already romantic, then please consider yourself lucky. Understand that some of us do not have that luxury.

As to your other points, I have never said that Chuck “made Sam and Eileen like each other.” Of course Sam and Eileen liked each other before. That’s literally what I said in the post I made about this *yesterday*:

On the surface, it’s different because Sam and Eileen actually LIKED each other before, years in the past before her untimely death.

You can read that whole (long) post here, because pulling statements out of context doesn’t serve anyone:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/190972379710/mad-as-a-box-of-frogs-mittensmorgul-i-just

But canon has also informed us that despite having LIKED each other when they met in 11.11, Eileen did not become a major part of Sam’s life until we saw her again in 12.17. That’s fanon. The assumption that when we did see her again, that she and Sam had been carrying on a year-long relationship offscreen. We WANTED it to be true, because how many times has Sam had someone in his life like that? But canon has told us that despite that initial chemistry, they had not had that sort of relationship. Between 11.11 and 12.17, Sam never once mentioned her. And within a few episodes of 11.11, watching in real time, most of us accepted the fact that she was-- as a hunter and a legacy MoL-- a potential future ally, but like every other one-off episode hunter, not someone who had become central to Sam’s story. The vast majority of us... accepted that and moved on.

There was a LOT of excitement over the potential for her return in 12.17, but with the power of hindsight, and s15 literally doubling down on the fact by literally making Eileen’s return a direct manipulation by Chuck for this exact purpose, when she died in 12.21 for Sam’s pain, we took our outrage at that ending for her and began writing fix-it fic, headcanoning that she couldn’t really be dead, and inventing a mythical romance between her and Sam filling in that entire year between the two times they’d actually interacted in canon. Because we were ANGRY. Rightfully so.

But canon has told us again that this did not happen. That wasn’t real.

Did they like each other? OF COURSE THEY DID!

Did they have the potential to have become a romantic couple? It really seemed possible back in 12.17, yes.

Did it actually happen that way? Canon says it did not. Sam himself repeatedly said it did not. That their relationship wasn’t like that. The fact that Eileen felt she had to leave after the events of 15.09 confirms it did not. If she knew for a fact that her feelings for Sam were real, if they’d established a romantic relationship before she died in 12.21 and therefore already had a solid foundation for their feelings for one another, she wouldn’t have felt conflicted about staying.

Look at it this way, and try to understand why--in addition to everything else I’ve written about s15, about Chuck’s manipulation, about the specific story he wants to unfold, about all the rest of what canon has been working through this season regarding Fate and Free Will and Chuck’s Will controlling the events of the story, how Chuck not only had Eileen stashed in Hell for two and a half years but then brought her back and arranged it so she was literally the only soul to escape hell to also escape Belphegor’s containment spell AND Rowena’s death spell, only to show up at the exact right moment after Chuck’s previous “lessons” to Sam and Dean had brought Sam to his lowest moment of hopelessness and tormented him with horrific visions only to give him a moment of reprieve, and then orchestrated the entirety of 15.06 specifically to give Sam yet another false sense of hope before ultimately breaking him in 15.09-- I can’t ignore these facts, or convince myself that they somehow don’t apply, or can be overlooked for the convenience of insisting that there aren’t any seriously complicating factors in this singular case.

Again, if you’re able to do that, seriously, please, consider yourself lucky. And maybe try to understand how the phrasing of your message feels like it’s doubling down on the gaslighting.

I don’t know how many times I need to reiterate that I have zero objections to Sam and Eileen together as an endgame couple, but I can’t see them as already having established a romantic relationship. They literally had one kiss, and in context it was a “goodbye, but please know that I actually do like you, that part was real” on Sam’s part.

I mean... Dean canonically gave Jo a similar kiss in 5.10 right before she died. I don’t really see Sam and Eileen’s kiss any differently. I can’t. Because of ^^^ all of that. Dean and Jo’s kiss wasn’t the acknowledgement that they’d been carrying on a romance up to that point. It didn’t prove a canon romantic pairing here. It was a “if only this had happened differently, maybe we could’ve had a chance.” The difference here is that Eileen... is no longer dead. They do have a potential chance in the future, and I have never denied that. I have no idea what you believe you need to convince me of here, but until canon actually has Sam and Eileen express their desires and intents to pursue a romantic relationship in a way that isn’t inextricably tied to Chuck’s plot manipulations, I’m gonna stand on what I’ve already said. Please stop trying to convince me that Chuck’s manipulation isn’t very, very real. Because in my personal experience here, the manipulation is very, very real. Waaaaayyyyyyy too real for comfort.

And that is EXACTLY all the truth I need.

#spn 11.11 #spn 12.17 #spn 12.21 #spn 15.09 #spn 15.06 #chuck's process #spn s15 speculation #Anonymous

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jewpacabruhs · 5 years ago

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hi guys! so this post is gonna be a rambly mess but fuck it, here ya go. if u dont wanna read all of it, u dont have to; skip down to underneath the tl;dr in bold text for the important bits :)

(there’s a brief & non-graphic mention of a triggering topic in the next paragraph. please be sure to skip this next paragraph if the thought of suicide is going to upset you.)

alright. so i didn't share this originally, but i spent some time in a psychiatric unit this month. suicidality related. 1000% unrelated from anything online, i've just struggled with depression for a very long time & shit happens. i didn't intend to share that at all & i certainly don't want pity; i'm telling u guys bc my time in the unit was extremely eye-opening, and i have some insight to share. since i've gotten out, with the help of my newest anti-depressant (fourth time’s a charm lol), i'm seeing the world in a better light & i finally have the energy to and the interest in exploring what it has to offer, which frankly i've never had before.

with that has come the realization that i’ve come to do something very unhealthy, and i want to break out of it. and that’s how much i’ve come to rely on my fandom life. i don’t want to get too candid publicly, but mental illness took a lot from me, and i lost most of my life, my future, and my options in the last few years. next year will involve a lot of working on rebuilding things. but in the time that i let things fall to pieces around me & i absolutely couldn’t get out of bed, i had a phone and i had a laptop. so when i couldn’t get up and physically face the world, i built up a new world online.

and i don’t think that’s a completely uncommon experience. most people are able to better manage things, and evenly juggle real life with an internet life (like i did back in middle school), because most people can’t abandon their real lives entirely like i managed to; but i do think a lot of people nowadays rely on their fandom life and their fandom friends when their irl situation isn’t ideal. and that’s an excellent coping mechanism in theory, but i think it’s debilitating in the long run.

forgive me for sounding like an old person, but i’m a heavy nostalgist and a bit of an anarcho-primitivist in that i resent modern technology's influence on society - but that hasn't stopped me from letting it be a big part of my life out of accessibility. the internet kept me occupied during my low points, and i became dependent, but i've realized i don't wanna live like that anymore. i’m vaguely grateful that it usually kept me busy enough that i wasn’t thinking the bad thoughts as frequently, but more than anything, i’m resentful that my grasp on reality got lost somewhere along the way, and i let time get away from me, too. because, again, an internet life should be a fun hobby, but when it’s a lifestyle and it becomes an excuse to avoid dealing with our real lives, bc our real lives aren’t as rewarding or as exciting, then it’s unhealthy.

everything’s at our fingertips these days, but i deeply believe human interaction, fun, and fulfillment shouldn't be spoon-fed to us through a screen. it's easy access, sure, but at the end of the day, is it any way to live? compared with how much world there is to see, i’m no longer satisfied with the thought of sitting behind a screen for another five years. i used to be, when i had no hope and no drive, but not anymore. i’m not gonna let myself settle for staying busy with the thing that takes the least amount of work & movement. not only because i’m a whole ass adult who needs to start sorting my shit out for the long run, but also because i deserve better.

and it’s fucking hard! especially for those of us who are neurodivergent. i dropped out of school three fucking times due to crippling social anxiety and utter lack of ambition and energy. i lost all my friends through that (making friends post-school is hard af); the thought of having to go out and remake friends makes me wanna fucking cry. i have a hard enough time making friends online, i’ve even come to struggle with correspondence thru text & email. phone calls? outta the question. but that’s therapy shit, and i know i’ll get there. i just have to stop putting life off by staying in a comfort zone.

and it’s interesting; depression and anxiety really took everything from me, and while i was dwelling in my own misery, my adhd worsened and decided to make my entire brain revolve around my fixations, so i didn’t have to deal with my own life. can’t think about how much you wanna die and how much you can’t function in society if you’re busy thinking about a ship you like or a character you find interesting. so i latched onto the safety of that. aggressively. problem with that is that once you let your “happiness” (as much of it as you can feel in the midst of your depressive episode, anyway) revolve around an interest, that’s all you have. so you become dependent and reliant, and that’s never good, especially if you’re someone like me who feels pathetic & ridiculous when you realize it’s all you can bring yourself to care about.

and i think that’s what i realized in the psych ward (where there’s legitimately nothing to do; i did soooo much more thinking than usual, and i already think too much haha); mental illness will try to fuck up your lifestyle, so you have to eradicate the things that’ll let that happen in the first place. for example, like i said, my adhd tries to counteract my depression by making me hyperfixate and/or hyperfocus on something else to protect me from bad personal thoughts, and that’s good in theory (doing something you enjoy when you feel bad, to distract urself, is the number one most basic coping skill you learn), but i can’t do it in moderation, i let it run my life, and that’s made me worse in the long run. so i have to force myself out of that completely and not let myself fixate on things that make me happy in the short term, but don’t ultimately further me as a person. having fixations helped me through some awful times, but now i need to force myself to grow up, you know?

and while tumblr and other social media is an excellent way to indulge those fixations, it’s an aggressive enabler, in more ways than one. what i mean by that... okay, so while i’m the type of person who self-destructs while unhealthy, i do occasionally lash out. and i know some people completely explode rather than implode when they’re not doing well. and that’s how you get discourse, i think. because when mental illness makes us care much more about our interests than we ought to, and someone has a differing opinion about that interest, the instinct is of course to attack, if you’re that kind of person. i don’t think i am, but depression and boredom go hand in hand, and i might be inclined to care more about discourse than i would if i were healthy, purely because it’s entertaining and something to do.

that’s a long winded way of saying, while i stand wholeheartedly by my past positions, i do regret starting shit in the first place. i’m not the kind of person who genuinely cares about much and i have little to no sense of morality (im a chaotic neutral bastard), so the fact i was bored enough to start shit really goes against my character and says a lot about how bad i’ve been. so i apologize for all that. but, again, i think that's just what happens when something is truly your everything. and i think the chronic negativity of modern fandom is a result of how damn seriously we all take it, because we care so much and we’re so dependent. fandom’s supposed to be fun, but it’s just too damn stressful this way.

idk my point in sharing all this, but i do think it'd be cool if this kinda got yall thinking. even if you don't engage in discourse, if fandom is just one of your only consistent sources of happiness, that's not healthy either. we all gotta break out & exist more & louder & more positively. and unfortunately i think tumblr fandom (and maybe all modern fandom) is no longer a place that encourages positivity and health.

but for all my criticism, i do just wanna say how eternally grateful i am that i was fortunate enough to meet the people i call my best friends through tumblr. they're my family, truly, and all the bullshit in this fandom has been worth it simply because it brought them to me. i love them to death and i always will, even if interests change, even if we grow apart, even if we quit speaking entirely in the next few years, i love them with my whole heart in a way that transcends a simple fandom friendship and i'm so glad we bonded over sp in the first place. that’ll never change.

i will also always love south park itself. now that the cat's outta the bag about my hospital visit, i can brag about my most pathetic and obsessive accomplishment; the fact that i've never let circumstance stop me from watching a new south park as it airs, and i've now watched sp on 1) an airplane, and 2) in a psych ward. i win for most dedicated fan tbfh. dsjkf & i'll keep that tradition, and i'll still watch this stupid show til it ends! it'll always hold a special place in my heart, & kyman's still my most meaningful & long-term ship. i'll never stop loving it.

tl;dr

so, to recap; for 2020 i'm making myself step back from fandom (not just sp fandom, but fandom in general) and quit letting my world revolve around my fixations so i can enjoy the outside world a little more, mental illness be damned, and the first step is gonna be quitting tumblr. this blog won't be deleted and i may occasionally post (maybe when next season airs) but you're absolutely free to unfollow bc this'll be a mostly inactive blog. i’m also unfollowing everyone, so mutuals, please don’t take that personally.

i will, however, try to write more prolifically, bc fic writing is something i'm able to do in moderation & enjoy, and i hope to get back into it. so if you'd like, you can keep an eye out for any upcoming fanfic i may post - my ao3 is leere. i also have snapchat, instagram, & twitter my mutuals can ask for asap (bc ill be logging out for good by the afternoon of the 31st, which is tomorrow) - though i'm not very active on any of them. still, if you wanna have access to me, i’ll be there.

i want some connection to the fandom still, albeit without letting my life revolve around it, so i'll be starting a new open-to-the-public kyman discord server! the post with the invite for that will go up soon. nvm im too anxious

thank you for reading, thank you for the good times (thnks fr th mmrs), and i hope everyone has a good 2020!

#txt #mine

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darklingichor · 5 years ago

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Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell Ramble Fest Part 5. *Spoilers*

Day 5: finished it. Okay, lots of things. Rowell's writing is absolutely addictive, I would have finished it faster if it weren't for my job and bills and stuff. Stupid responsiblites keeping me from reading.

I think I'll take each plot thread and follow it to the end.

With Levi, I sort of expected him to be Reagan’s brother, possibly twin (just by the way she reacted to the identical twin thing). Anyway, what college class allows you to read and test on The Outsiders? Can I borrow anyone’s time machine and go take it? I literally (and I actually mean literally) read that book twenty times in a row when I was fifteen. I wrung every bit of context, subtext, and not-even-in-the-text out of it. I felt like I knew Johnny and Ponyboy better than I knew some of my own family members. My best friend and I also took turns reading it out loud to each other (we did this with a lot of books, actually). I could have taken that test in about five minutes and would have been the easiest A I ever got!

Anyway, can I just say that I love the fact that Cath sees audio books as reading? Some people don’t and it annoys me to no end.

So I do like the Cath/Levi pairing, but what is it about romance in fiction? One half of the pairing doesn’t answer texts so the other half makes out with someone else? Does this happen in real life? I’m aro ace, this is completely foreign to me. I mean, I understand the concept of demiromantic and demisexual. Someone you feel connected with makes you want to do the romance or physical thing with them. But then you wouldn’t just kiss someone else because you didn’t hear from the special someone for a couple of hours, right? How does that connection happen in the brain? Not judging just wondering about something that makes no sense to me, personally.

It was sort of interesting how the relationship progressed. I get why she was so reluctant to really go there. Cath is the embodiment of fool me once, you will not get a twice.

I like that Levi really is a nice guy. Not a guy who plays nice and then expects something because of it. He legitimately felt horrible for the kiss with the other girl.

Also often, in the stuff I watched growing up, the love interest had to "look past" the geeky stuff that the main character liked. It is cool that Levi likes Cath for everything that she is, including the stuff that Wren tries to downplay. Same goes for Cath liking Levi. Niether one of them change to make themselves "better" for the other. That seems more real to me.

I like the slight struggle they had with Reagan being Levi's ex and how they all moved passed it. The only thing I can't figure out of I like is how once the relationship solidified, Cath's anxiety seems to have, if not disappeared, then greatly reduced.

I can't figure out if that's because she had more in the way of support in the form of Wren, Levi, and Reagan, more confidence because of the reactions she got to both forms of her writting, less stress because her dad had more support from her grandmother, and all of the other things that came together for her... Or the "Got boy now, what is mental illness?" Trope.

I would say it's the former because it would make sense, but we spend so much time in Cath's head and see her struggle and overcome, in the little daily battles that are always there even with changes made in the form of healthy coping mechinisms, medication or counseling. And suddenly it just drops away... I don't know, that bugged me.

Speaking of struggles

Arthur’s episode was handled really well, and I’m completely on Cath’s side. Family comes first. I don’t care if they are uncouncious, I wouldn’t be able to consentrate on a final if a close family member were in the hospital and I wasn’t there.

The part of my brain ruled by the anxiety goblin completely agrees with Cath wanting to leave the school. The part of me that is closer related to the turtle than it should be. “This is scary, uncomfortable, painful, ect. Time to hide.”

The more reasonable part sort of agrees with her when she said she didn’t choose the school, Wren did. Why stay at a school that you didn’t want to attend in the first place? I also understand the logic behind wanting to stay home to take care of her dad. Is ot the eighteen year old kid's job to take care of the parent? Not really, but what do you do when someone you love needs help?

The more rational part also says: You have a scholarship? Stay put, kid, loans blow!

During this whole thing? Wren is still a dick. The You and dad are crazy because you let yourselves be crazy argument...

"Got a broken leg? Walk it of wussy!"

Now, is that to say that Cath's way of letting her anxiety cope with her rather than the other way around is right?

No.

But it's a lot more complicated than "Just don't let it bother you." Bitch, if she could do that she wouldn't have anxiety now would she?

I don't know a lot about bipolar but I know enough to say with confidence, that just willing the chemicals in your brain to behave is not going to cut it.

So Wren's alcohol poisoning. Can I say that I loved how it was handled? The writing got around every tired thing that can happen coming out 0f a plot element like that.

Wren and Cath did reconcile, but Cath didn't cut her a lot of slack and was matter of fact about how stupid Wren's behavior had been. Her dad didn't do the whole "I'm just glad you're okay" thing, he laid down the law. One of my favorite lines from Arthur was when he told Wren that she had to go to AA meetings.

"I'm not an alcoholic."

"Good. It's not contagious. You're going to meetings.”

I honestly wouldn't mind a story from Wren's perective over the course of this year. It would be interesting to see her partying, her relationship with her boyfriend and her thought process while she let some of her personality blaze through while hiding others.

After she and Cath make up it becomes clear that she thought that she couldn't go to parties, make new friends, have new experiences and be close with her sister and still openly love nerdy things.

Professor Piper, writing, Laura, and Simon Snow.

I get the feeling that Professor Piper is suppose to be subverting the Mary Sue stereotype. When Cath first starts the class she is in awe of this teacher. Piper is wise, talented and compassionate. She's perfect. So when she first talks down fan ficton, I thought, well if the story were to follow the Mary Sue, Cath would "realize" her folly and abandon Carry On, Simon. I knew that wasn't going to happen.

The more she bad mouths fan fiction, the more she just... Acts like nothing touches her, I thought: She's the Mary Sue... But she's almost the villain (and almost is important here because she doesn't continue down that path). I mean, she can do whatever she wants with her students' grades? What university is this? Professors have to get their grades submitted by a deadline. She couldn't hold Cath's grade just cause she felt like it. She'd have to submit an incomplete and I'm pretty sure that it would have to be made up long before it actually was.

She calls fan fic "Stillborn" as if the only ultimate reason to write is to make a living off of it, that was bitchy. She likely would have been surprised that a good number of her students probably dabble in it, because I haven't met many people who write (post Harry Potter) who didn't read some fanfic, if not write it, and that's just one fandom Yes, it is a wonderful thing to make your living doing something you love, However, Cath is also right, you can write like some people knit or scrapbook. You can do something you love simply for the love of it.

Further more and most importantly, no writting is "stillborn" you put effort into it, it lives, if only for you.

Now, Cath is trying to not write her final project because she's scared, she's afraid that she doesn't have it in her to do with her own characters what she does so well with Baz and Simon. That doean't mean her reasoning isn't sound, it's just not sound for her.

Nick... I don't have a lot to say about Nick. I knew he was going to end up being a tool, and he was.

Same goes for the Laura thing. I agree with Cath, you don't get to walk out of being a parent and walk back in to be a fair weather friend.

Simon Snow. As a framing device first the "original" books and then Carry On, Simon was very effective. I had a hard time listening to many of them though because of the narration. Don't know why they had the narrator switch when we were in Cath's story.

Having read Carry On before Fangirl, it was interesting to see the differences between the stories. And it simaltiously gave and took away hope for the Anyway the Wind Blows.

That fantastic part where Wren tells Cath that she can't kill off Baz, that she'd always said that Baz deserved a happy ending because of everything canon and all the fics they'd written and read, had put him through.

I thought: That bodes well for Baz in the next one.

But Wren also says that Cath has to give him a happy ending because Gemma T. Leslie never will.

Then I thought: Well shit, that doesn't, does it?

And all of this means nothing, really. Carry On and Wayward Son exist outside both this book and the fictional series...

Gah! This universe is like a Russian nesting doll crossed with a rublix cube!

The little bits we get of Cath's final project were lovely, and yes, painful. Writing something personal is painful but, but cathartic a lot of the time.

I had a lot of emotions reading this book and while I like Carry On more, I think Fangirl is fantasic. Just from the two books I've read, Rainbow Rowell's speciality is to take expectations and expertly either defy them or bring them to fuition in a way that is more satisfying than what the reader might be expecting. This means I might break from my escapist reading trend a bit more often.

#book #books #fangirl #rainbow rowell #spoilers #eight #book blogging 2020

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