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Grand Arcane S2 review
because I really need it to move on
Remember how I mentioned I could write an entire book about everything that went wrong with this season? Well, this is what a little excerpt from it would look like.
Let's start with a personal note to clarify my relationship with this hell of a piece of media.
S1 was this miracle show that was able to break through the several years of depression and anhedonia and make me interested in something, make me try to get back into making art (or at least try to try), to put myself out there on the internet a bit, to try be a part of something and not ashamed of enjoying it, which I never allowed myself before. Coincidentally, I've been at what I thought then was the worst place in my life when it aired and it helped me a lot to get through it. I didn't even think I would make it to see S2, as thee years felt like forever then. Taking all that into consideration, I think you can already tell where this is going.
I honestly thought I was prepared for S2 not being good, as no show could be this perfect. Turns out I wasn't prepared at all. Act 1 made me very happy, so happy I watched it two times, but the rest is something I would've never watch again and rather forget about.
The characters I wanted to see the most were Warwick (body horror, The Wrath of Zaun haunting the streets - got just a glimpse of that, but it felt like nothing) and Viktor (cyborgs and cyber gore, misunderstood idealist, Blitzcrank - got basically nothing; the idea was kinda there somewhere, but got changed so much it didn't matter at all).
I can't believe they took a godforsaken champion like Viktor and not only ruined his story completely, but also managed to fuck up everything else by all of a sudden making him a center of all of this mess. The center being the arcane/hextech/magic, which never even gets resolved/explained. Still no idea why it got corrupted and what was the nature of it; the void was never taken anywhere despite being heavily hinted - everything was evil because it was, but luckily the magic of friendship saved us!! (I'll get to that)
Speaking of crucial plotlines that weren't taken anywhere.. Basically every character got screwed over and made empty. Let's use Vi for a quick example (may not actually be the best example, but hopefully you'll get what I mean) - when I saw the pit fighter scene released early, I expected to see it have a continuation in the show, but instead it ended up just being the exact same music video, nothing more. And that goes for some more events - they get compressed into music videos that make it all incredibly hollow. Fight scenes are fine like this, sure, but not something that was supposed to be a bit more emotional and serious. Anyway, they successfully made me hate most of the characters. Either hate or just straight up not recognize them, and in a bad way.
Long story short the pacing is awful (it only gets back to normal in ep7, as it resembles the structure of S1) and the writing sucks ass. I can't for the love of god believe it was written alongside S1. There's no way in hell - it's literally all the worst fan theories I've seen come to life and get mixed with fanservice. *puts on a tinfoil hat* Maybe this is the real why they needed an extra year or two, as S2 was initially supposed to be released earlier. No way in hell the same people who wrote S1 and cared so much about the characters would do anything like this. Riot must've gotten heavily involved, making us believe they cut the story short (I think 5 seasons in Piltover/Zaun were planned initially?) for the benefit of it, but all it really was is greed - let's make a bunch of bullshit happen and quickly move to another region to sell more skins for new champions.
Now let's get back to the ending. Man, it really had it all - the nonsense, the multiverse bullshit which basically makes nothing make sense anymore (if there was anything left), the (yes, I'm going to say it, because that's exactly what I felt) cringe and embarrassment. Never seen anything more hollow trying to convince me it was deep and emotional (sums up the whole show perfectly).
How the hell the only thing that was supposed to save Viktor from himself was Jayce telling him he's perfect the way he is? Sure, don't try to cure your illness (that my city caused, but "fortunately" another crucial part of the plot, which is the sister cities conflict, ceased to exist), it makes you beautiful, this is who you are (miserable, unwanted, feeling meaningless and like a burden, dying). I am at loss of words.
Now buckle up jayvik fans. I wasn't a fan of the ship as I'm not a fan of any ships in general, but now I despise it. I wouldn't mind if they actually went on with it, which no, they didn't. We don't want two men kissing (women making out is fine tho, won't make the gamers too angry), so let's play extra safe to make sure it could be explained as any type of other close bond (and that's exactly what Christian Linke does when asked about it). You disgusting cowards, either you show me this in plain sight and I wouldn't give it a second thought, or don't even try bring it up at all (and you can't deny it wasn't implied in S1 with all the Viktor's looks and parallels to Mel).
Where do I even begin? Because I don't think you have any idea on how many levels it actually sucks. If you read it as romantic it's basically telling me that if I was a gay man struggling with my feelings and not being able to confess for years, because I'm convinced I'm unworthy of love as something is inherently wrong with me, then the best I could get after surviving all this (what honestly seems like hell) is a hug, because you're ashamed of me and thus I should be ashamed of who I am till the very end.
Something equally bad is Jayce finding out (or rather we finding out) how wonderful the world could look like if he let go of his beautiful dream, his life's work, and killed himself - it never gets denied, as the corruption of hextech doesn't get explained.
Long story short, if you're struggling with your mental health, trauma issues, disability or any of the problems the characters you related to deal with, this show spits you in the face.
I could go on forever about everything that's wrong (even Jinx got played dirty), but let's finish with the few things I liked: act 1 was promising (it's when I believed they could still make sense of Viktor), fun Sevika's arcade arm fight, the epic fight at the Janna's temple (Woodkid goat), Jayce killing Salo (I felt something) and Jayce's glitchy madness in general, young Vander flashback (felt something), ep7 and Singed's story (the only one that makes any sense).
Other than that the show left me with nothing but void in my heart (I guess that's when it all went). The saddest thing being the masses love it anyway, as it seems they'll watch anything that's colorful enough. And Riot will make lots of money of off it, because in the end they never loose. I'm not denying Fortiche absolutely outdid themselves with the art, it's just heartbreaking nothing else even remotely stands up to it.
#hor.txt#it'll probably take me a few days to fix the spelling; pardon me#arcane#arcane spoilers#arcane review#arcane season 2#arcane critical#arcane rant#anti arcane#jayvik#viktor arcane#jayce arcane#mental health#arcane league of legends#league of legends#riot games
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I need to scream about Arcane S2 (spoilers for the whole season)
Alright, it's been 2 days since I've watched the end of Arcane, and I'm still in a bad mood over it, so I am going to scream into the void about it, and hopefully it will allow me to move on.
I do not like the second season of Arcane.
Season 1 ? Absolute banger, still love it. I love it even more after recently watching it a second time in preparation for season 2.
Season 2 though ? ... I will not go into the details (because I feel like I would need to rewatch it again to be more accurate, and I don't want to do that), so I am just going to write about how I feel about it now that it is over.
Season 2 has left me deeply unsatisfied, to say the least. I think this feeling comes from the fact that most characters' arcs look like they were either cut short, or didn't really go anywhere. This makes the entire story feel pointless; an undeniable marvel of aesthetics and animation put in service of nothing.
I could talk about a lot of the main cast, but I'll only talk about Vi, her relationship with Caitlyn, and the Zaun vs Pilltover theme.
First off : Vi, the character who fought tooth and nails for those she loved and always tried to do the right thing. Accepting responsibility for everyone who looked up to her... and got nothing for it in the end but pain. From the start of the serie, she is set up to be one of the protagonists, along with her sister and Caitlyn. Yet the story feels pervert in the way it insists to both :make Vi suffer without giving her any sort of confort or moment to express her feelings ; and make all of her actions be pointless.
In episode 8, when she says "I always make the wrong choice and lose everyone", we have to admit that from a narrative point of view, she is absolutely right. For the first time, Vi is self pitying. She's shown as vulnerable, doubtful, almost sounding like she's giving up by saying that all she ever does is useless or worse. This is incredibly out of character for her, and yet the story proves her right. Nothing she does matters in any meaningful way. She doesn't even contribute to the final battle : she gets stranded in the defence of the artillery tower (which turned out not to be a key asset in the battle), then go 1v2 Warwick with Jinx, and Jinx ends up sacrificing herself to kill it, but only AFTER the battle is over and all the narrative tension has calmed down. (Sidenote : yes yes I know it is hinted that Jinx is still alive, but still. Let's agree that it's in bad taste for a suicidal character's triumphant moment to be a reckless act of self sacrifice, independently of the outcome.)
Vi gets mistreated throughout the whole storry and gets nothing in the end despite her bravery and efforts. No matter how hard she fought, she still ends up separated from her sister and she still loses Vander. The only thing she gets in the end is a girlfriend with whom she basically had no tender moment since their breakup, making Vi feel like a rescue dog at Caitlyn's house, but let's talk about her relationship with Caitlyn in more depth.
I'll say this first : I love the sex scene. It's tender and passionate. It's a bit awkward, but in such a relatable way that it only makes the moment sweeter. It does an excellent job at showing us how the characters feel about each other. Taken on its own, it's perfect. Two people that love each other so much they just need to have each other right here, right now... I just wish their relationship around it was more fleshed out.
From what we get to see on screen, they get a really messy break up in episode 3, and then never interact again until crossing paths at the commune. In the meantime, Caitlyn has allied herself with Ambessa, declared martial law on Zaun and is oppressing it with the full extent of her legitimate violence... but upon seeing Vi again, she instantly switches side to go against Ambessa with a rushed plan.
We get absolutely no other insight into their emotions or thoughts at this moment. No scene to show that despite their conflicts and standing on opposite sides, there is still tenderness and affection between the two of them that could hint at them getting back together. Instead, Vi calls her a petname once, and it's done, no further convincing needed. (Sidenote again : this makes Caitlyn look impulsive and irrational, when everything that comes before shows us that she is smart, collected and patient. Here, she instantly abandons everything she was previously fighting for, even at the risk of putting her entire city in danger. This includes abandonning her vandetta against Jinx, which is the reason why they split up in the first place, but this isn't adressed between Vi and Cait ever again either.)
After that, Vi holds her accountable for her actions for the time of 1 dialogue.
Then they barely interact again until the jailcell scene. Hell, once the battle starts, I don't think the two of them interact AT ALL until the epilogue.
The lack of substance in the portrayal of their relationship makes this sweet and tender sex scene feel like a spur of the moment thing. An almost self-destructive action from Vi trying to scrape at any possible source of confort after being cut out by her sister. A good thing happening for the wrong reasons. (Mind you, a hate sex scene would have worked wonders in my opinion, but that's not what we got.)
So yeah, given all of that, I'm struggling to see how Vi ending up with Caitlyn is supposed to be a meaningful and happy resolution to her story, when this relationship is barely shown on screen during season 2.
Finally, let's talk about the Zaun vs Piltover situation : it goes nowhere.
An entire 5 acts showing us that Piltover treats Zaun like shit, turning it into a ghetto and leaving it to rot in its own misery . The promo campaign for season 2 teased us a revolution... and in the end, we barely see any change. The way the story resolves implies that now that Zaun and Pilltover have triumphed over a shared ennemy, they grieve together and make peace because they have learned that war comes at too high a cost, and Zaun gets to be represented by ONE councilor.
I'm sorry but either the show tried something and missed, or the show was just incredibly shallow from the beginning. This conflict was set up from the first second of the show by having the main characters be orphaned by cops in a popular uprising which only looks more and more justified as we learn more about Zaun. That is to say that Topside doesn't care about Zaunites. From what we can tell, Heimerdinger has been leading the city for 300 years, and he discovers just now that Zaun has problems ?? Piltover prides itself for being the city of progress and equality, while exploiting the misery of the people that are LITERRALY BENEATH THEM. It's the final shot of THE FIRST SCENE IN THE SHOW, the topside people are sitting ON TOP of Zaun, reaping the benefits while throwing their wastes at them.
I think there's no better illustration for how Piltover considers Zaun than the scene where Jayce announces to the Council that Silco has demanded independance. All the councilors lose their shit. They are OUTRAGED by the demand. Clearly, Piltover considers Zaun its property. People to exploit, whose need and misery they can ignore, and ultimately, a problem to be solved through the police by having them arrested/beaten up/killed.
So either the show was indeed trying to tell a story about class struggle and oppression, and failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion; or the show was only interested in the appearance and flavor of class struggle only as a vessel for the cliché of "the cycle of violence". Which hmm, yeah it's 2024. I don't think anyone needs me to write an entire section about the necessity of fighting for human rights and resisting oppression.
I could have talked about how pitfighter Vi was 60% of the promo for Season 2, and yet was done and gone in a minute, which was also what we got with the promo, or how a French animation studio decided to call an independant, pacifist and egalitarian community " The Commune" (if you know you know); I could have also talked about Jinx's character, and how the show portrays her self healing from her devouring guilt, but I'll stop rambling here. I hate that I have wrote this, because I don't want to spread negativity. I'd rather spend this kind of energy on things I love.
The thing is, I really really wish I enjoyed Arcane season 2, because season 1 means a lot to me. Vi's character awakened something in me. It is representation I never knew I needed and it changed me. I know this sounds silly. It's only a fictionnal story after all, but it helped me grow into a better and more hopeful person. In the end, I just feel like season 2 went too far too fast, and left me behind to try and pick up the pieces of my expectations. If you've made it this far, I sincerely thank you, and I hope you have a beautiful rest of the day.
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I finished the rest of Save the Cat almost in a single sitting, not because it was particularly riveting, but because I had time to kill, so this pseudo-liveblog is at an end.
Chapter 6 and 7 are basically the same, collections of small tricks and tips. Neither of them are terribly helpful, and all the tricks have terrible shorthand names like "Pope in a Pool". There's very little in the way of any thematic cohesion to these bits of advice, and no grand theory of the Laws of Storytelling emerges, in spite of the laws being invoked a number of times.
The advice itself is, I think, generally good:
give the reader something to root for early on to kickstart investment
spice up exposition with something entertaining
only one kind of magic per plot
don't tell a story that requires too much setup
don't tell a story with too many moving parts
include a ticking clock
have character arcs
keep the scope limited to the characters we care about
make the hero proactive
show, don't tell
make the bad guy very bad
the plot should go faster the further in it goes
use the whole spectrum of emotion
make sure each character has a distinct voice
make sure desires are "primal"
give characters something that makes them stand out
I don't endorse this whole list, and I especially don't endorse the way that Blake Snyder talks about them or the examples that he gives. And if I endorsed the list, then I would include a lot of caveats, and some general principles of storytelling that should be followed, rather than these specific pieces of advice, which are all conditional. Like ... okay, here's an example:
Exposition is a broccoli that the audience doesn't want to eat. There are very different ways of dealing with this, but we can start with "minimize exposition" as the first "law" of storytelling, and from there, we have different strategies:
Spruce up the exposition, making it into a mini-story, delivered in an entertaining way, so that people aren't bored.
Run something alongside the exposition so that people aren't bored, like sight gags in a comedy or an action scene in a thriller.
Have the exposition delivered through implication and clues, rather than stated outright, like having a character limp rather than explaining to the audience that they were wounded in the war. This is show, don't tell, and it's harder than it seems.
But while Snyder lays out some of this advice, it's all in different sections even though it's dealing with the same fundamental problem, and I'm not sure that he really understands that. If he does understand it, then he's not making that clear for the reader.
My thesis is that to understand storytelling, you want to understand root issues and classes of solutions. I have not written a book on writing, nor do I think there's a market for that, nor do I think I'm qualified, but it's the kind of thing that I would strive to deliver. There are a lot of writing problems that are parallel to each other, and there are a lot of structural elements that are mirrors of each other, so why not try to put it all together that way?
But Snyder makes basically no attempt to put even very related problems together, it's just little bits of advice to gnaw at the most common problems, and ... maybe that's fine, but it felt lazy to me.
Chapter 8 was the final chapter, and was mostly about trying to sell screenplays. This was irrelevant to me, but kind of interesting, and also made me feel like Blake Snyder is a better marketer and salesman than a screenwriter, and also maybe just got lucky to be working at a time when scripts were getting huge bidding wars for no good reason. The efficient market hypothesis gets clowned on again, I guess.
I'll probably write up some overall thoughts, a short review: I think I am unsuited to liveblogging because I go long. But the even shorter version is that I think I picked up a few things that were interesting to think about, and while Blake Snyder is a hack, he's an entertaining writer.
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WATCHED SEASON 2 ACT 3 INITIAL THOUGHTS BELOW
Pros: Jayce has a bad time during his trip through the arcane, Jayce's gorgeous black outfit, Mel's badass mage powers and gorgeous gold mage tattoos, JAYCE AND VIKTORS ARCANE LOVE CONFESSION, Ekko being awesome and adorable and badass, eldritch space Jayce and Viktor, Viktor desperately wanting Jayce to join him, Cait and Vi live (they didn't kill my lesbians thank christ), Zaun showing up at the eleventh hour in a needless but fantastic entrance, Caitlin letting Jinx go for Vi and to stop the cycle of hate
Cons: Jinx not getting to actually have a redemption without being killed needlessly at the very fucking end, Vander "dying" 4 fucking times omg let him rest jfc, Jayce's final outfit design, The face designs on the sides of Viktor's mask in his final design, Singed's dumb daughter plot they stole from another LOL character and didn't do anything with
I'm sure a lot of Jayvik people will be upset how they went out but thematically them ending hextech together like they started made a lot of sense. Also they gave me an amazing ending scene of them together so I am very pleased by this.
I am LIVID that they killed Jinx like it was the final step on their writing to do list. It was unnecessary and like the whole point of stopping her killing herself was about continuing on even when you've made mistakes and trying to make things better. And then you just have her kill herself at the end. FUCKING LIVID.
Overall I didn't like the last two episodes that much but the final fight and the end, minus Jinx, were pretty satisfying. And while I'm bummed they went the full arcane route for Viktor instead of tech I at least like some of the interesting things they did with it.
I'm very excited for all the aus that will hopefully come out of this!
(Please talk to me about Arcane, my dms and askbox are open)
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I'm trying to parse through why I don't like Jayvik as a romantic ship, and thought I could type it up to maybe offer a counterpoint to people who are writing this viewpoint off as homophobic or ableist. Yes absolutely those are reasons people might not love this ship, but I don't believe either of them is a reason I don't.
So. Heads-up for some Jayvik negativity and some other general criticism of the energy in the fandom (I'm not gonna try to be nasty but I am, by the very conceit of this post, going to have opinions), and a disclaimer that if Jayvik makes you feel seen or happy or anything else that's not bad and I'm not saying this ship is bad and you need to stop talking about it and liking it. I'm just saying I, an individual person, don't particularly care for romantic interpretations of these two, and I don't interpret their interactions as romantic or sexual.
Actually before I talk about anything at all I really like this post and this person has said things a lot of things smarter and better than I will about sex and sexuality and Jayce and Viktor https://www.tumblr.com/ohnoitstbskyen/768136874376232960/asking-sincerely-do-you-see-a-romance-between?source=share
I feel like I'm within the Jayvik demographic. Viktor is my favorite character in Arcane, despite quibbles with how he was handled. For over half my life my major OTP has been KuroFai, which has a pretty similar vibe (storywise, not characterwise) to Jayvik in the back half of the series they're from. The are-they-aren't-they discourse surrounding them was also quite similar for many years. I'm not gonna talk about them really, but here they are.
[image: an illustration of Kurogane and Fai from the manga Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle. Fai is a light-haired man with blue eyes, waving at the viewer with a relaxed expression. He has an arm around Kurogane, who is a grumpy-looking dark-haired man with red eyes and Fai's arm covering his mouth]
I'll admit to not having an incredibly good story reason that Jayvik SHOULDN'T be a thing, and I'm not going to present a good analysis really because I think I need to rewatch Arcane more than once to really have a solid grasp of it or a good read of the things that went "right" or "wrong" with the storytelling. This is literally my feelings-based opinion.
I like the idea that Jayce and Viktor have a deep-running love for each other that maybe defies attempts to define it as just friendship or brotherhood or romance or anything. I personally thought, in their final scene together, that the forehead touch was a far more heart-tugging, raw display of intimacy than a kiss would have been, and I genuinely didn't want them to kiss. I hope I've established that this is not because I don't like the idea of men kissing.
This may derive from the fact that I, like everyone, experience attraction in an individual way. For me, to extant, not-fictional people, almost never. I'm not uninterested in the idea of a life partner, and in fact would really like to have a person who I love more than anything in the world to go through life's hardships with, but I have rarely found an individual who I was interested in "romantically." I didn't experience adolescence the same way many of my friends did, and don't experience attraction to others in a way that seems "typical," if we can really define anything or anyone as typical. I have not been in a romantic relationship, not for lack of chances and not because I don't care about people - I have family and friends who I love very very much.
I think it is beautiful, the idea that two people can love each other, and support each other, and be soulmates and die together --- and not be in what mainstream society defines as "romantic love." If you want them to fuck nasty on the lab table that's okay too.
The second reason/cluster of reasons I don't really like romantic Jayvik is a little bit bitter and jaded and I'm sorry. It's the energy in the fandom and I can feel myself being pushed further into a stubborn opinion by the fact that I find this frustrating.
(I am putting on my "hypocrite" shirt)
Arcane has a really diverse cast. There are lots of women. There are lots of nonwhite characters. There are multiple prevalent, plot-important, kickass black characters. There is a canon wlw couple who make out on screen and then definitely fuck offscreen.
I know Jayce isn't necessarily meant to be white. Other than that. I think the fact that the Arcane tag is overwhelmingly Jayvik is just a little suspect. I told you it was a little bit bitter and jaded. I am not seeing the same level of fanart and analysis of specifically women and black characters, and I think that's an interesting energy this fandom is bringing to the table. I am not exempt from this criticism.
The longstanding argument that the reason we don't see more obsession with sapphic ships and characters who aren't (white) men is the lack of them in source material is feeling really hollow right now.
Anyway that's my two cents about Jayvik and if people care, cool, and if they don't, that's also cool. Please refrain from speculating about my sexuality in the comments. Peace and love.
Go donate to a palestininan, sudanese, congolese or lebanese family if you're able. Consider a donation to the Native American Rights Fund or another reputable organization, this week and always. In the wake of this election, you might consider mutual aid programs to help people in and around your community. It's cathartic to get drawn into fandom discourse, but there are bigger fish to fry.
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hey i feel like we're really sleeping on that time Danny possessed Vlad & framed him for assaulting a minor
Editing with the clip because people don't believe me. Episode is 41: Eye for an Eye.
#Danny Phantom#i think this ties into my other post i made a long time ago about Danny siccing the GIW on Vlad#like we KNOW in CANON that if Danny was even a tiny bit more like Vlad he would literally become a supervillain#villain is such a stupid word i hate how it's spelled. why is it like that#anyways i need to like. rewatch DP cuz i remember shit & then i'm like#did that actually happen. because that sounds too insane#but like. he Did That. didnt he#i think that's what i love about this character. but a lot of people ignore it#Danny is like. gritting his teeth going ''do good do good'' it isnt effortless it isnt easy he doesnt even want to do it half the time#& sometimes yeah he WILL do crimes or get back at people who've been assholes to him or whatever#he WILL use his powers for bad sometimes#he'll be like ''dont do that it's bad'' but like. he WILL do it himself#the whole ''i'm a hero'' thing he's got going on is like. more of a. how do i put this#it's like when you're drawing or writing & saying ''it doesnt have to be perfect it just has to BE''#like Danny isn't a hero sometimes. he's got morals & has a general understanding of good & bad#but also he's 14 & being attacked every day#i would start saying bad words & threatening people that annoy me too man#okay i glanced over the scene again for the first time in years & Danny was literally in the middle of outing Vlad to the whole town???#hello?? are we really ignoring this?????#VLAD TORNADO VLAD TORNADO VLAD TORNADO#this show is so stupid i love it#love how Sam & Tucker immediately backed him up yeah fuck Vlad all my homies hate Vlad#okay you know what. maybe i will do a DP liveblog. i think it would be fun#on daddyplasmius. only posting this on pa-pa-plasma cuz it's kind of just a. weird rant post? kind of? idk
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I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears
I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!
The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.
More:
Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.
Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)
Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.
Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.
Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.
The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.
They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.
And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.
I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.
#and then. and im putting my most controversial opinion in the tags bc im scared lmao. but like... then... you have the fans..... doing......#the same fucking thing.#the amount of times I have seen Wriothesley used as just a side prop for Neuvillette to feel bad about shit. While Wriothesley is just.....#portrayed as having the inner peace and acceptance of a fucking monk. I was shocked when I read some fics I swear#they really said this man has no trauma at all! the stuff in his past? he's over it!#i hate that passivity when writing victims. like ok if One is written like that#sure. but MHY write all their victims like this#I mean look at fucking Lanoire#and Neuvillette sentenced him to prison after he killed his parents who were never confronted by the law. That's canon.#that's more canon than WRLT itself.#why weren't they confronted? did wriothesley try to talk to someone about it? why did he feel like killing them is his only option ?????#at least have there be some sort of conflict and friction there. How does Wriothesley feel about the court and Neuvillette when#this is the literal system that allowed all that shit to happen to him in the first place???#are you Sure he won't be at least a little wary? the fact that some people think he's Grateful to Neuvillette or even idolises him is crazy#because the man literally subjected him to prison. and if you want to portray his prison life as easy breezy and trauma free#you undermine his entire shitty little 'prison reform' narrative#and if you think he'd be completely 100% accepting of the justice system. Then why the fuck would he kill his parents himself#don't you see that the whole 'I'll accept whatever sentence in order to kill my parents' thing in itself is an act of defying the system#and I Hate#this idea. about being some of the most powerful men in the nation. and yet they can't fucking TRY to set up a better system or smth#i can't believe I read a fic where leaving starving street kids croissants is the most they (the characters and the writer) want to do#like. what the fuck. the whole point of that scene is just to make neuvillette feel bad and be like aw......... poor people exist.... OK???#this is literally how MHY would portray him though.... tbf..... This is what ppl would argue as 'in character'#I just think the character they're in is bad.#I will say I'm giving the fic a lot of grief. there's more to the scene than that. and. ultimately.....#fanfic is (saying this through gritted teeth) ........ recreational....................and free........... in the end.................#i dont think this is reflective of the writer. I do think it is reflective of the way the canon material (genshin impact)#presents in the audience who consumes it. most fans only want these guys to fuck anyway. not think about systemic injustices#canon doesn't make it about the systemic injustices either so why should we. the aesthetic of slums and prisons are just there for fun guys#IM JUST CRAZY OK. I SHOULDNT EVEN BE HERE THIS IS NOT FOR ME . I DONT CARE THAT MUCH FOR PEOPLE FUCKING AND I CARE TOO MUCH
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something I keep repeatedly realizing, and then not writing about, is how wiki summaries and meta usually end up focusing on completely different things, and not even in the sense of "your wiki summary should be as neutral and factual as possible whereas meta is inherently making an argument" nor "wiki summaries tend to focus on the story itself whereas meta on actual play frequently, though not always, incorporates analysis of mechanics" but rather "meta is, 99% of the time, about a conversation that can be summarized in a single sentence if that."
#this is specifically about how i'm writing up the Sean Finnerty episode 3 summary#and the break in the cenote is absolutely crucial to understanding all the characters but sean especially#but also it's like one line in the summary bc it's not a plot scene.#same though with the essek and caleb tower scene like that's NOT the focus of what is a jam-packed episode#and also it's the most important thing of all time for meta purposes.#anyway it's a GREAT exercise and i think it's genuinely informed a lot of how I engage with fiction as primarily a meta writer re: works#and also tbh is why I have been side-eyeing people who consume primarily through shipping; they're bad at both of these.#candela obscura spoilers#cr tag
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ur post about queerbaiting and the dismissal of people in fandom to critical analysis is so incredibly true thank you. i feel like marcille's writing in the anime has been super misogynistic a lot of the time and every time i bring this up all anyone wants to say is "well maybe this isn't for you! and you shouldn't watch the show!" like. i don't think this is about taste lmao, i am analyzing the text in front of me and coming to conclusions about the craft of it.
[This is in reference to this post]
YES!!! THANK YOU!!!!!
It is so so frustrating!!!!
It's like being at a restaurant and being served a bunch of delicious appetizers, but then one of the bread appetizers is literally just a plate of crumbs; and then when you're like, "Hey, uhh, why are we being served literal crumbs?", a bunch of the other folks eating at the restaurant are like,
"WELL HOW ABOUT YOU JUST DON'T EAT HERE THEN??!? YOU MUST NOT BE THAT HUNGRY, SO JUST FIND ANOTHER RESTAURANT AND DON'T EAT WITH US!!"
And maybe they say it politely, but "Aw, sorry, maybe this restaurant just isn't for you 💖" is just trading out an aggressive dismissive tone for a patronizing dismissive tone. It's the same message.
And it's like! I was honestly happy to move on from the crumbs once my complaint was acknowledged because the meal overall is still delicious, but then all these folks got SUPER WEIRD AND DEFENSIVE ABOUT IT, so now I find myself double-checking all the other dishes -- and, actually, you know what those eggs DO look a Iittle misogynistic undercooked!!!!
#original#queerbaiting#dunmeshi#dungeon meshi#falin x marcille#marcille x falin#marcille donato#delicious in dungeon#dungeon meshi marcille#listen i like marcille but u r right she is basically there to be a wet blanket a LOT of the time and that is a sexist trope#i think the bar is super super low for female characters in adventure anime and the lack of constant ogling maybe makes the female#characters feel better written than they are. i mean falin basically has no personality. she's got an innocent heart but that's nothing.#and i think these conversations are worth having bc no piece of media is perfect and this is how we learn to do better#also like. I've seen media criticisms that make me go 'oh you straight up should reserve commentary bc you#haven't watched the show and you're wrong' or 'i see what you're saying but you are simply incorrect' but like#i don't think I'd tell someone to just NOT watch Hazbin Hotel bc they have a bad take - and certainly not bc they have accurately#pinpointed a real flaw about the show (of which there are more than a few but frankly not what became the biggest subject of Disc Horse)#Angel is actually an amazing character & i think people mistook a criticism on the way abuse is glamourized as actually glamourizing abuse#like his song about abuse is called Poison and he's trapped in an abusive performance contract - bringing to mind Britney Spears#i think it is a wildly triggering and painful scene but i think a lot of people took the pain it gave them to mean it was bad art#but tbh they are still allowed to eat at the table if they so choose!!!#sorry i got sidetracked - as an abuse survivor Angel just matters a lot to me. i have a couple serious criticisms of vivziepop's work but#Angel is very much not one of them#also in regards to the actual subject of this post i think the most audacity of the responses i got was the one that said#that by complaining about queerbaiting I was 'de-incentivizing writers to write any interaction b/t women that could look even a little gay#and I'm just like. good. I hope they stop writing entirely. if the takeaway from 'please don't sell me bread and then serve me crumbs' is#'WELL NOW I JUST WON'T BAKE ANY BREAD PRODUCT' then that person is a bad chef. they should find a different job.#or at least do a whole lot of work on themselves. but either way i wouldn't be too broken up to know i won't be getting any food from them.#'just leave then' is so obviously a gut reaction defense mechanism & it implies media criticism should only be for things you don't like
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i don't make resolutions, but if i did
it would be to finish this fic
(and to be kind to myself for however long it takes to actually do so)
#i'm finishing it if it kills me#i know i've been writing this makeout scene for 3 weeks but baby that can't last forever#if we want to get deep and dark and serious for a second i do think a lot of my struggles to write lately have to do with engagement#and how incredibly low engagement has been on the last few things i've written#which like. is what it is. i'm not entitled to anybody's time or comments or kudos.#but when you write stuff you're proud of and it feels like it's barely getting read it's hard to keep momentum.#this isn't intended as a woe is me or whatever it's just kind of like. there. hovering.#happens enough times you start to wonder if it's you. am i just writing for the wrong fandom/ship?#(too bad if so. they're in my bones i'm writing for them and no one can stop me.)#but yeah. if you ever wonder if authors do care or notice about hits. comments. kudos. buddy i am here to tell you#not only do we care and FLOURISH we also notice when those things drop off and readers vanish#and it is a giant bummer. and sometimes makes us wildly paranoid about why that might have happened.#so if you liked a fic today--not even one of mine. just. anybody's. share it. comment on it.#kudos at the VERY least (cuz frankly kudos is there to be an 'i got to the end and this was nice' feature.#so when you get 500 hits and only like 30 kudos? it feels like 470 of those people hated your work)#anyway. that got out of hand. lil' too raw lil' too honest. happens when you let yourself ramble at 11:30 instead of sleeping#to sum: let your local fic writer know if they've made you happy#and as we go into 2024 i am swearing to myself that this fic (and probably several others) are getting finished#come hell. high water. or dishearteningly low engagement numbers.#(and then maybe we...actually work on something original. cuz why not. new year same old me but i'll do my best.)
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Just saw the fnaf movie and I am literally so glad that my favorite stupid fucking bastard was in the movie and we got a springlock failure scene like was the movie the greatest no but I got exactly what I wanted so goddamn it I'm gonna be happy about it
#genuinely that portion w/William at the end was the best part of the movie hands down#like there were some things that I wish could be different and Vanessa being all cryptic to Mike was kinda frustrating#but honestly its about what I expect out of scott bc to be honest he is not a good writer#i very desperately need the next two movies like I need air#they better do mangle right in the second one and if I hear even one gender joke I'm burning the entire theater down#bc unless its a trans person making a gender joke they are not funny#and I just know it isn't going to be a queer person writing that line so it will not be funny#I do hope we get to see mark in the second one and I mean it fits since out of the first three games the second is his favorite#also the matpat scene was literally so fucking funny#also I dont watch Cory x Kenshin but he was good for his cameo in the movie#I do also wish that there was a portion that was a bit more like the traditional game#I was a little disappointed at how little we actually saw the animatronics much less them being an actual threat#like mike was able to take them down with the tazer pretty easily#which like yeah they weren't The Big Bad but like y'know#also somebody LIED bc someone said that there was a character that hadn't been revealed yet in the movie#and like everyone we saw was accounted for#so a lot of people (myself included)#thought it was going to be the marionette#SAD!#not the end of the world though#someone else also said the characters were going to talk which they also lied about but im actually glad they didn't talk#I do like how mike and abby seemed like actual siblings though with their dialogue#overall id give the movie 3.5 out of 5 stars#about what I expected#some things could have been better but I got the main thing I wanted#I mean the springlock scene I wish was a little more dramatic but I mean there's only so much you can do in a pg 13 movie#so I'm not too disappointed#overall pretty satisfied and awaiting the second one#wonder when it'll come out since like I don't think it'll be as fast as the time between like scream 5 and 6#cuz 6 came out really quickly after 5 I feel
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megumi 🤝🏽 yuuji
dying even if it’s only for a good minute only to be brought back to life bc fate realizes if they died for real then they would need to find someone else to fuck over. those two are like fates favorite barbie dolls.
apologies if this post is going to seem all over the place, just bear with me. i don’t even know if you’re going to see this BUT it’s okay bc i need to get this out my system 😭.
starting off — god, imagine the chaos that will ensue when megumi tells nobara & yuuji about his very tragic history with the zenins. but like he wouldn’t even tell them straight up, he’ll just make a little deadpan joke (my sarcastic, sassy son) & the others would look at him like : ??? wtf do you mean by that sea urchin head???
like imagine itafushikugi going shopping for like traditional japanese clothes for a little festival or some shit (megumi was dragged by his spikes to come along) & nobara is having the time of her life finding outfits for her & the boys. like it got to the point where she’s dressing them herself & she shows megumi an outfit that looked similar to the robe he was forced to wear bc of the zenin (it’s obviously not the same) & megumi just refuses to wear a robe with similar color patterns to the zenin robe.
megumi: that looks like the outfit the zenin forced me to wear. i wonder what happened to it, cause the last thing i know, i got blood all over it. so as the second member of the zenin hate club, im not wearing that….
megumi: wait that blue one looks decent. i’m going to try it on.
nobara:
yuuji:
nobara: …did he really leave without giving us the “ getting blood on a zenin’s robe” story?
imagine maki complaining about naoya in front of the first years, & maki just brings up naoya’s onesided beef with megumi & her stories of how naoya was so petty back in his childhood made him remember who tf naoya is (megs have selective memory, it’s okay)
megumi: ugh, he was so annoying. i remember when he came to my middle school back when gojo was busy dealing with the aftermath of his evil ex boyfriend evil plan & he basically kidnapped me. i was stuck in a car with that man for 40 minutes..you would hate him nobara.
maki: yeah you would hate him nobara.
yuuji: i’m sorry he kidnapped you??? why did you say that so casually?
nobara: fuck that. megumi is a disney princess, we know this already. BUT we’re just gonna gloss over gojo had an evil boyfriend?
& imagine when megumi finally tells his friends about the zenin clan was when yuuji just came back from the dead & they were asking how tf that’s possible. & somewhere in that conversation megumi just let it slip that his heart stopped beating once & itakugi looks at him in silence:
megumi: yeah the zenin clan basically forced me to exorcise some curses & complete a ritual to get a snake — that snake fucking bit me. it was my least favorite. but yeah i basically died. then yuuta brought me back. then i was blind for a good minute.
nobara, yuuji, & even sukuna:
megumi: it was a terrible time for me. gojo was even more clingier & protective. it got to a point where he started treating me like i was 6 again… reading me bedtime stories, singing me lullabies & describing the pictures in the stories since i was…yknow blind.
cue itakugi & even sukuna wanting to burn down the zenin but ofc they can’t do that…so they settle for pulling pranks on the members & traumatizing them ofc.
IM ALSO imagining how funny it would be for yuuji to be jealous of yuuta. like bro is basically living yuuji’s fantasy world. i’m giggling at the idea of yuuji fighting for his life to be either megumi favorite or nanami’s favorite.
you also opened my eye to the potential of maki & tsumiki… like i also like to imagine that in a happier world, they would understand each other on such a deep level. but they would also find parts of the other that they wished they had. but on a happier note i like to imagine that megumi would suffer whenever it was brought up that his aunt is basically dating his step sister. like maki would be a menace to megumi. every little thing he do? maki is texting tsumiki in a corner.
maki watching itafushi cook together in the kitchen: i can’t believe megumi has a boyfriend. it’s so cute that he thinks that he can hide this from me. lemme go snitch to tsumiki.
maki listening to megumi describe his fight with sukuna, a cursed spirit who apparently has a stripping problem: oh my god. megumi is truly yuuta’s boy. they both got cursed spirits obsessed with them…i need to tell tsumiki.
maki to megumi after witnessing his suicidal tendencies: don’t make me tell tsumiki.
i honestly love your story. the way you added so much more to megumi childhood is beautiful. it just make soooo much sense. but also your characterization of gojo is so precious to me. i’m waiting for gojo to go apeshit on the zenin. i’m also giggling in anticipation at gojo finding out about yuuta attachment to megumi. i like to imagine him to be kind of worried about it actually, bc that’s not fucking healthy. but i imagine him getting used to it since megumi will have a protector in the form of yuuta & his power of love.
i’m also curious to see mai’s role in this story since.
*sighs in disappointment at gege writing choices*
since she had a crush on megumi…yeah. but imma just interpret that as she wants to be his family. it keeps me sane
i also wanted to ask if there’s a chance that you would write a megumi POV of what happened in the zenin clan? ofc i would understand if you wouldn’t since it leaves a much more ominous feeling to the events. plus yuuta running commentary is a good mix of angst & humor so ofc i understand.
Yuuji: man fushiguro almost checks the boxes for a Disney princess. except he was never kidnapped or enslaved
Megumi, sold to the Zenin clan, who later kidnapped him: *sweating*
Nobara and Yuuji would be the co-vice presidents of the "fuck the Zenin clan" club if they knew what happened. They would be the presidents but yuuta and maki are already in a death match for the position and they're trying to avoid the bloodshed. they are not allowed to be treasurer because neither of them know how money works.
megumi is unaware that a formal club has been formed.
Megumi is suffering SO HARD in any world where maki and tsumiki are together. they won't stop ganging up on him when it comes to his love life and general wellbeing and holding hands where he has to see it. maki lectures him about his suicidal tendencies in the field, holds up one finger, calls tsumiki, and lets her pick up where she left off. maki tries to talk to him about relationships one (1) time and he tries to drown himself.
see i'm pretty open to writing a megumi POV but it, like most of my stories, falls in this nebulous category of "if i have the time." like, i've thought about writing megumi's pov before, there's a lot of stuff that happened that exists as like, background knowledge for me that will never make it through yuuta's pov because it doesn't make sense for yuuta to find out about it. It would be very tonally different, but if i did write it, it would be a different work entirely and i'd be making sea glass gardens into a series.
i'm eternally tempted by the siren call of making my works into a series. If i did it with sea glass gardens, i would want to add a one shot of Megumi's pov during the time leading up to sea glass gardens and a short multi-chapter of the gojo, nanami, shoko teen parenting trio. If I have the time, it will exist; if i don't, it won't.
#ironically the one thing that WOULD endear yuuta to yuuji is finding out about all of this#yuuji would instantly love him for all he did for Their Boy. it's the only way i see megumi actually fessing up to what happened#i think megumi's just someone who's really private and uncomfortable with people knowing a lot about him and he would try to hide this from#itakugi for as long as he could. it probably eats at him that the second years all saw him like this. i think he just hates feeling vulnera#megumi gives him the /extremely/ abridged version of events to get yuuji and nobara to chill about yuuta and how he acts (yuuji is convince#that there's no one who could be that perfect nobara keeps looking for homosexual explanations) and they instantly veer hard into finding#out everything there is to know about the zenin and how to hurt them and also yuuta's like. beloved in their eyes. megumi is their boy.#they love their boy. yuuta saved their boy. ergo they love yuuta now. it's simple math.#tonal shift is a huge sort of struggle with me as a writer just because i change my styles with every narrator#which is why it's kind of hard to flip between works if the tone is too different. i was trying to juggle sea glass gardens and toy rosarie#and i was just internally screaming b/c yuuta and jack could NOT be more different with narration styles and i was like 'fuckkkkkkkkk'#with yuuta i structure sentences with a lot of 'space' in them. i don't have a better word for it i'm not actually trained in writing so#it's all just whatever shit i made up along the way i have no officially terms. anyway. Yuuta's sentences are structured to have this sort#of detached distance between the actual message and the start of the sentence. So we end up with a lot of sentences that start w/ structure#like “yuuta thinks” and Yuuta feels“ b/c I think of yuuta as a very detached person because of how he lived. it's a survival mechanism.#a lot of the meat of what he feels has to come in almost absentmindedly. So you end up with Yuuta's suicide scene and losing the knife and#him having a line like “He swears he never meant any of the bad things he did” and the fact that he thinks his own survival is a bad thing#/he's/ to blame for is almost backdoor'd in as a given premise. it's assumed. it's not even the point of the sentence. he's been living wit#jack murdock meanwhile is an intensively retrospective character that's meant to make you almost feel claustrophobic from how “close” his#narration style is. a lot of the actual message is conveyed through imagined scenarios and emotional recollection. he's a character steeped#in regret who has been torturing himself with it for years. yuuta's survival mechanism is isolation but jacks been yearning to get back wha#he lost for so long and dreaming of it that he's steeped in really vivid internal imaginings.#with jack you have multipage lamentations remembering his son buying cereal with him but yuuta drops the fact that his parents stopped#loving him at some point and it's not even the most important thing in the sentence. it's included as a qualifier because yuuta has accepte#so much of the bad things that happened to him when he shouldn't have whereas jack hasn't accepted ANYTHING that happened.#Yuuta uses a lot of very clean cut grammatically correct narration and jacks is riddled with a bunch of “ain't's” and grammatical errors.#he has an accent for lack of a better term. so you end up w/ two characters who convey information in different ways prioritize different#info in their sentences use different sentence structures etc. so megumi would have a /very different/ style and tone from yuutas that woul#sort of shape any fic that came through him because all of my fics are primarily shaped through the narrator's voice. it's also why I set#kind of hard lines about whether a fic can have any narrator or just specific narrators b/c it determines the whole tone.
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not to be a horrible shipper all over your plotfic but what would the ships look like in your ageswap au?
The sample I posted does rather invite the question!
I should put out there, as a general rule, I'm not all that interested in Mike/Will and I don't have plans to write it anywhere. I don't really vibe with it, generally, and I believe I've mentioned previously (but maybe only in tags) that I really hate the way the Duffers conceived of and have been handling the possibility that Will might be gay. And many of the ways parts of the fandom have acted in response. I get that it's important to some people, and I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, but I've seen so much bad behaviour from the showrunners all the way down that it's pretty firmly put me off.
With that said, though. This fic was undertaken before I'd had much exposure to the fandom, and also, the roleswap plays...well, a role. I'm a sucker for a good triad relationship, especially the Monster Hunting Trio, and in this version of things, that's Mike and El and Will. So this is probably the only time you're ever going to see me writing reciprocated romantic feelings between Mike and Will. It's just that El is also there. And the entire context of their previous relationships with each other has changed. It feels different. I don't know. I'm operating on vibes, here.
Also because of the roleswap, this is one of those rare places where I'm not mashing Steve and Nancy and Jonathan's faces all together. Nancy and Jonathan are the Hopper and Joyce of this fic, and Steve is the Karen Wheeler. He'll be fine in his loveless marriage while the other two are off having fantastic post-saving-the-world sex. Maybe he'll have an ill-advised affair in the future. Who can say.
(Also Nancy and Barb had a brief on-again-off-again fling post-Nancy's-divorce, which has been over for some time as of the action taking place. Long enough for Barb to find a more stable relationship with the other local lesbian...)
I'm pretty sure that's it, as far as romance goes. Apart from the teen squad, it's pretty secondary to the plot in season 1, and I'm sticking with that. (Also, I need lots of time and space to fully mine the hilarity of Steve being Mike's literal actual father.)
#chatter#ships. plots. triggers. character deaths. whether there will be a banana appearing in a scene. it's all fair game#so long as everybody's respectful about it i love talking about fic whatever shape that takes#and i absolutely don't mind giving warnings or heads up if there's something you're particularly concerned about appearing#(or not appearing)#also it's genuinely nauseating how people want to give the duffers backpats for taking the stephen king route#and using their fiction as an excuse to use every slur they know#'oh the one who's been the target of vicious violent homophobia the whole time is the Only Gay One' try the fuck again boys.#(i have not forgiven them for what they did to robin as soon as she was Canonically Into Girls)#sorry I have. a lot of feelings on this topic.#i'm also most interested in reading will as aro-ace and the duffers' bullshit has only made me double down on that#but i don't want to talk about it like i'm only doing that reading out of spite because i do genuinely think it's interesting in itself#so if i'm going to talk about that i'll do it in a separate post#bc I also don't want to imply that it's an either-or and you can Only have One True Sexuality Headcanon for a character#(they're fictional your honour. this stuff depends on the reader and can also differ in context.)#(like how in the context of this one AU i'm interested in a triad relationship i won't be writing in any other contexts)#also I absolutely don't want to fight anybody for the dubious honour of getting shittily canonized by the duffers' bad takes lmao#'is it/will it ever be canon' is the least interesting metric by which to measure a ship/headcanon/etc to me
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ugh. tfw u figure out what you SHOULD HAVE done to write your fic's main/first sex scene but only realize it AFTER you've already posted it with mediocre smut.
#ax rants#Like okay yeah the actual sex is secondary to the role that it plays in the narrative and character development.#which probably sounds deranged to say.#But that doesnt' mean it has to be BAD#and yes Im aware that some people liked it but I think it's depressingly bland and being carried by the dialogue which is only doing so muc#anyways I realized that while the overarching story is more interesting from Roy's PoV#The sex is more interesting from Jason's bcs there's a LOT going on in his head.#Also bcs I the writer am more attracted to Roy so like writing it from the perspective of ogling him is an easier mindset.#So I guess I'm going to rewrite the whole scene From Jason's PoV and then go back and use that as a template to improve Roy's side.#It's not like a major priority esp bcs I've been chomping at the bit to push the story along & bring Jade & Damian back in.#But Ive already got 950 words of the next chapter so Ill probably work at that off an on while doing the rest and go edit whenever its done#Oh well. It's good to realize now bcs it's not the last sex scene in this fic so I can use this later.
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tips for getting people to like your ocs
*disclaimer: this is based on what’s worked for me, aka an artist that likes to make comics/storyboards. so this advice is directed at people who do that
you can do things like this:
Which is fun! Character sheets like this are great, especially for personal reference! But frankly, I don’t think most people engage with this (at least I personally don’t). You could have the coolest character in the world, but it will be harder for most people to feel invested when they’re presented so neutrally like this.
My main piece of advice is: get better at writing.
That might sound harsh when said like that, but let me explain what I mean! (Not trying to imply you’re bad at writing either!)
What I tend to do is just throw characters into situations with as little handholding as I can. Give enough context that readers can follow along, but don’t feel like they’re being explained to.
what can you learn about the characters through their designs alone? (age, personality, economic status, occupation, etc)
what can you learn about the characters’ relationship though their interactions alone? (are they close? familial? romantic? is there hostility? are they tense/relaxed?)
what are the characters currently doing? what were they doing previously (how long have they been talking)? what are they going to do next? can you convey this without dialogue?
how do they feel about what they are doing? are they content? focused? over/understimulated? would they rather be doing something else?
where are they? does it matter? would establishing a setting in at least one panel clarify the scene? is there anything in the enviroment that could tell some of the story?
what time of day is it? what time of year is it? what is the weather like?
Now, with all this in mind, I'm going to give you another example. I'm going to use completely brand new characters for the sake of the experiment, so you won't have any bias (aka I can’t use Protagonist from above, since you already know all about him).
Did this get more of an emotional response from you than the first example? Why do you think so? Who are these characters? How do they know each other? What else can you infer about them? What happened? Who is "she"?
Now, you don't have to actually answer all those questions. But think about them! You can tell people a whole lot about your characters without ever showing them a list of their likes and dislikes.
Obviously, comics aren't the only way to get people invested in your original characters! But regardless, easily digestible formats will grab people's attention faster than huge blocks of text, and comics are a lot less work than doing wholeass storyboards.
Now go and share your ocs with the world!!!
#edit: I rephrased some things in this post for better clarity!#my art#art tips#original character#writing#comic
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crazy when people say they like my writing because my editing is me desperately trying to make clunky sentences flow a little bit better and then at the end going "oh wow I wrote the words 'just' and 'probably' like 30 times in ten pages i should probably weed some of those out" and then after that I go "can I fit like, one single metaphor in these ten pages?" and the answer to that is usually "no"
#i've gotten some very kind comments from people but i think i'm good at writing in a 'knows how not to be bad' way#i edit out adverbs and try to pace things appropriately.#i read a lot so i know how to write certain kinds of scenes and what kind of things i find engaging
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