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mandalorianchronicles · 2 years ago

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While I’m not a dinbo fan (din/fennec all

The way) I do have to say your positivity of this season is refreshing. I feel like I’ve been defending this season all by myself. Dave and Jon are excellent writers and I trust them with my whole heart. This season has really focused on the subtle plot choices that are going to come clashing together and make sense.

Nice to see another fan enjoying the show. 🧡

I love this! Thank you so much for sharing these thoughts. It's so nice to hear from other voices who are not so quick to jump on the negativity bandwagon. The Mandalorian tag has definitely had its ups and downs over the seasons. I can remember when the chief complaint was that there were too many episodes with canned plots that were "filler" or "slow" or "side quests" and everyone kept asking "where is the plot?" Of course, the overarching plot (that all those canned episodes contributed important pieces to) always came crashing down in the last few episodes of the season and they complained about that too.

This season has seen a lot more world building and has been incredibly focused on character development. The chief complaint I've heard now is that Din's character is "regressing" or being "sidelined". In the first two seasons, Din's priority was a) keeping Grogu alive and b) getting Grogu to a permanent home. Since The Book of Boba Fett, Din has accepted that Grogu is now his responsibility for the long haul. That has shifted his whole world. He can't keep dragging a baby on bounty hunting missions and even if he could, he wants something better for Grogu. He wants to give him a home and people, a stable lifestyle. Bo-Katan can make that happen and he is willing to support her in any way possible to help her succeed - not just for his and Grogu's benefit - because he truly believes in her.

And though I understand and respect that Dinbo is not everyone's cup of tea, I do believe that is the direction the writers are taking their relationship, especially in light of the fact that Bo has voluntarily (with zero prompting from Din) assumed a motherly role with Grogu. For me, I just really want to see these characters find some peace and happiness. I know that in Star Wars peace is always temporary, but it would be very satisfying for me to see Grogu, Din, and Bo (three characters who started this journey utterly alone) become a family. They have each grown so much over these three seasons and the writers have spent the most time focusing on them for a reason. I believe their story can be told well without detracting from the bigger picture of restoring Mandalore and pushing back against the restoration of the Empire.

We know that Star Wars fans are a toxic bunch who aren't happy unless they're complaining. I'll be the first to admit, I went through a phase where I really hated on the sequels (even though I was actually enjoying them until TRoS). We've all done it. And let's be real, there are legitimate reasons to be critical of some of these shows/movies. But I really do believe that a lot of the negativity over this season of The Mandalorian has been predominantly from fans who were just salty that their hyper specific headcanons weren't coming true or because they jumped the gun and judged it before they got to the end. If I had a nickel for every complaint about loose threads, I'd be rich. Even before the season is complete, the vast majority of those threads or pieces have become relevant and now everyone can clearly see why those were important. Patience is a virtue, y'all. Let the season play out and just learn to enjoy the ride. Save your criticisms for after it's done - you'll probably have a lot less of them and you'll undoubtedly feel less stupid when that plot thread you thought was just dropped actually became relevant (looking at you people who thought they went through all that trouble with IG-11 for no reason). Maybe we should all start meditating on my new favorite Mandalorian proverb:

"One does not speak unless one knows."

It sounds a lot like this other favorite of mine:

"Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; When he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive." Proverbs 17:28

#the mandalorian #din djarin #bo-katan kryze #the mandalorian spoilers #dinbo #grogu #the mandalorian season 3 #i'm not saying ALL the criticism of this season is unfounded #However - a lot people's objections are truly foolish

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wutheringheightsfilm · 33 minutes ago

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yes i completely agree with the tonal clashes! i actually watched the first few seasons on cbbc (the children’s bbc for preteens i suppose) and i remember the final 2 seasons were bbc only because i guess the material got a bit too dark? i really want to look into more behind the scenes stuff because it seems to me that nobody had fully planned out what the whole series was going to look like because there was so much going round in circles, loose ends (gwen being posessed by that bracelet never getting revealed to everyone is my biggest gripe, they did my girl dirty), character development and plot potential that went no where… i can’t wait for your rewrite you are doing god’s work 🙏

Omg I hadn't even realized the first few seasons aired on CBBC... I just knew it aired before watershed so there wasn't really a chance of much Dark Stuff happening.

And definitely the behind the scenes stuff is very telling... it seems to me that a lot of the main cast was at least aware of what the original Arthurian myths were like because I do remember either an interview or a BTS clip where Bradley James had explicitly talked about the fact that the show really couldn't have much dark or mature stuff like the myths had going on in it, and from what I've seen it really doesn't seem like they even expected to get more than 3 seasons approved to be honest.

Also the loose ends... god I could talk about the loose ends and plotholes all fucking day long!! I HATED that shit with the bracelet and gwen being possessed--- it was incredibly unnecessary. I also don't like how they handled Mordred at all (also the way time passes in BBC Merlin makes little to no sense; how was he at most like 9 in season one and like 21 by the time season 4 or 5 rolled around? the fuck?)

Some things I think under the cut cus this will be a mile long:

Uther should have died earlier. We hardly got any time with Arthur running the kingdom, and I would have actually liked to see court politics happen with him at the helm more often than once every 3 or 4 episodes when they're not out on some quest

If they had wanted a female villain that badly they should have just made it Morgause. I actually think this could have been really compelling with Morgana on one side and Morgause on the other

I don't like how they handled Nimueh, especially knowing her original story

One of my biggest gripes actually is how they took away Merlin's gift of prophecy. from his INCEPTION in Welsh myth, he was a seer. I don't mind that Morgana has this, but I don't like that they took this away from Merlin. If Kilgarrah was removed from the show entirely, they could have had Merlin having visions, coming to camelot because of them (or because his mother still sends him, either way) and you could have even kept the show the exact same except instead of it being a dragon causing him to mess up, it's him causing his visions to happen via trying to prevent them. That's compelling!! That's really compelling! But no

Gwaine didn't need to die like, at all

I wish we could've had Gwen as Queen and Court Sorcerer Merlin. but they don't care about me . that dynamic is compelling after Arthur's death

It would've been cool if more Arthurian myth was involved like, at all

LOLL thank u for coming to my tedtalk anon!

#vero.txt #t #asks

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project1939 · 6 months ago

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200 Films of 1952

Film number 187: Francis Goes to West Point

Release date: July 1952

Studio: Universal

Genre: comedy

Director: Arthur Lubin

Producer: Leonard Goldstein

Actors: Donald O’Connor, Lori Nelson, Alice Kelley, Gregg Palmer

Plot Summary: With the help of Francis the talking mule, Peter becomes a hero by saving an atomic plant from a bomb attack. His heroics capture the attention of the US Government, and he is offered a spot at West Point. But can this bumbling hero really make the grade there?

My Rating (out of five stars): **¾

By making my list 200 films long, I’ve included a lot of things I would never purposely choose to watch. So, I’ll be real- I hate talking animal movies. I can’t stand them. I love animals, but I loathe when real live animals talk in movies. (If it’s a cartoon animal, that’s a different story.) If they are older films, I especially worry about how the animals were treated on and off set. So... I did not want to put this film on my list! I finally gave in because it was a hugely popular and culturally significant series of movies right dab in the middle of 1952. Hell, Francis was even a guest on an episode I saw of What’s My Line? I like Donald O’Connor too, so hearing he starred in these helped push me to give it a try.

The Good:

Donald O’Connor! He is utterly charming and impossible to hate. He can always make me at least giggle or smile.

For once we got a moderately realistic portrayal of a military school or basic training! All the other films I've seen from 1952 made joining the military seem like a summer camp or a class trip. Here there was tough discipline that characters could not talk their way out of.

The real life footage of the military drills was wowing.

I also loved the bona fide footage of a college football game. Seeing a real stadium filled with thousands of people... even seeing the parking lot teeming with vintage cars and buses was a weird nerdy highlight for me! Those snapshots of the actual world at the time are so fascinating. Still.

I was kind of ambivalent to Francis, but I did find it amusing that he seemingly randomly knew everything there was to know. When he was tutoring Peter in French, that did make me smile.

The Bad:

I didn’t find the film terribly humorous. I smiled a few times, and maybe there was a giggle here and there, but was it funny? Not to me. But I also know I am not the audience for this.

The whole premise was so ridiculous, sometimes it was too hard for me to set aside.

The plot was relatively loose. A lot of these kinds of comedies can turn into a succession of gags bound together by the thinnest of threads. This movie wasn’t that bad- it did have a rough plot at least, but sometimes it was still too erratic.

I try not to be mean to actors, but the actress who played Cynthia, Peter’s possible love interest, was not good. Her line delivery wasn't too bad, but her expressions were off. She kept her eyes so wide open it looked like she was having an eye exam, and it was just kinda weird. I’m sure she was a lovely person, though. ;-D

And speaking of the possible romance- what happened at the end? We never found out anything about Peter and Cynthia being together or not.

The characters were not developed at all. I know that is expected from a comedy geared toward kids, but it made it hard to actually care about the people in it. For example, I kept getting Peter’s two roommates mixed up because they were almost indistinguishable.

Who designed that horrible horrible poster?

#1952 movies #100 films of 1952 #200 films of 1952 #donald o'connor #200 films of 1952 film 187

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mccoy-holland · 2 years ago

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Hi @autumngracy - Homage to Javert Space Comic Inquiry

Hello @autumngracy @le-loup-et-lion

I ask your forgiveness because I genuinely have no idea how Tumblr works 😅😅 I reached out to you via DM a while ago but have no idea if they're easy to see or if you need to be mutuals for someone to read your messages, so I figured just in case I would do one last ditch post to try and reach you. If you have seen my messages and I'm further inundating you, I genuinely apologize.

In a small amount of words I wanted to express how much A Reflection of Starlight has meant to me. To put it simply, your story and characters were there for me in a dark period of my life and brought me nothing but comfort, hope, and joy. I've reread the story countless times and continue to go back to it to as a safe and familiar place to rest my heart.

Your story also inspired me to start being creative again after a period of grief and detachment from engaging with that part of myself. Over a year ago I got the idea for a sci-fantasy comic following the crew of a small traveling ship, and have based some of the character's backstories on Hugo's characters. None of the plot has anything to do with Les Mis, but four of my characters play homage to Valjean, Javert, Fantine, and Cosette in different ways. Our Valjean inspired character is named Colm in honor of Colm Wilkinson, and we hope to name our Javert inspired character Ferkó in honor of your story and the name you chose for Javert. In the comic Ferkó is a former Starman (in-world name for an ultra prestigious universe-wide policeman) turned bounty hunter and she has been living aboard the comic’s ship with my Valjean-esque character after failing to turn her in 7 years prior to the comic’s beginning. I'm including some photos of the characters and their designs in this post so you can see them as well :) They are both women in the story and (spoiler alert) a couple, in their own unique way. I also attached one photo of the whole crew together (the father daughter duo are the ones loosely based on Fantine and Cosette).

After over a year of workshopping we've finally decided to start sharing our development process with others and have made an Instagram. I think I'm going to try navigating Tumblr as well :)

However, before we move forward any further, I wanted to try and reach out one more time to see if you felt comfortable with us playing homage to the name you chose for Javert. After reaching out a while ago via DM on Tumblr my artist on the comic encouraged me to start posting some of our work to Instagram while I waited for a response but before we go any further or post any more material on Instagram, Tumblr, TikTok or anywhere else- I wanted to reach out in one final way. If you feel at all uncomfortable with us using the name I completely understand and am happy to switch the name for the comic and all future posts. Your work has meant so much to me and I would never want to repay your efforts with any unwanted or hurtful behavior.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and I hope to hear from you :) Your work is so beautiful and I'll continue to be a faithful reader.

-Chase

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birb-tangleblog · 3 years ago

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What's your issue(s) with 7k? /gen

Okay so, if you scuttle around in my negativity and salt tags, you'll find a few other posts I've made on why I dislike it and my personal issues. I'm always happy to ramble on anyway, but full disclosure there's a good chance I might end up repeating myself a bit. Fair warning for criticism/negativity here too!

My biggest issue is honestly that 7 K bears zero resemblance to the original source material, and feels like it wasn't made with a lot of love for it. Where are the series' locations and lore? Any of the characters? The new cast, their designs, and the setting(s) they come from don't fit the worldbuilding and aesthetic that I love.

Like there are so so many loose ends and plot threads you could choose to expand on in a sequel or spinoff, and 7 K ignores absolutely all of them. Along with being written/conceptualized before S3, it feels incredibly disconnected and dissonant to anything T T S to me.

It seems like the creators wanted to take Var and pair him off w/ an OC they ported from elsewhere- and at that point, just retool him and make the whole thing a standalone/original project? Nothing against canon/OC either... but I wouldn't go and pitch my self-indulgent fanfic as a sequel to the original series to actual Disney execs, either?)

Overexposure and saturation in tags and fandom spaces is the other biggie. It's not quite as prevalent as it was when it came out, but it's still popular and hard to ignore- ex. Hugo is tagged in almost 500 stories (and counting) on Ao3. It’s... a lot. I really like Var himself, he has so much potential- but it’s hard to find content w/ him now that doesn’t somehow include 7 K, and it’s a bummer.

And the dynamic with Hugo... it's really not my cup of tea, and from what I've seen, Var's characterization suffers from it? Lot of him getting pigeonholed as this sassy uwu disaster baby gay/bi with varying degrees of angst/badboy mixed in depending on the take and idk if I think that's true to him.

And I'm just really, really over the white twink ships that are popular in fandom, man

I've heard the 'coming of age' and 'Var finds a group of peers his age' as selling points or a big part of the appeal, which makes sense, but both of these fall flat to me b/c the gang... ISN'T his age. Y/ ong is 6 years younger than him, Nu/ ru is 2- literally the only one his age is his love interest (how convenient)

Re. 7 K as a coming of age story, I feel like much of Var's arc in the show already went in that direction, with him learning from exp, growing up and maturing, making his dad proud, and becoming responsible. He's undergone the development 7K's premise sets him up for, and it makes it feel extraneous or like a step backwards.

Honestly, I think there's a lot of overlap btwn 7 K fans and fans who are extremely critical of the orig, who welcome the 7 K cast b/c they believe Var's friends in the series let him down, didn't care for him, acted unforgivably, etc- and I straight up diagree/don't feel that way, so I don't feel a need for him to have a new or better friend group. It doesn't compel me.

Idt I've mentioned this, but I really dislike the handling of Var's mother in particular. She's revealed to be alive, then turns out to be evil as a 'twist', and is killed off to further Var's char development. It's defrosting her from the dead mom fridge only to stuff her back in it at the end. I also have a problem with her abandoning her husband and young son and the timeline wonk of, 'why didn't she decide to follow her old dream BEFORE settling down'.

I've got more smaller gripes re. the AU itself as well as attitudes and trends in the fandom surrounding it- like, the elemental kingdoms feel generic and video-gamey, momification/supportive ‘shipper on deck’ treatment of the only female main, and children being little clones of their parents with every trait being inherited bugs me (seen in Var’s extended family and his mom being an alchemist like him)- but those are my big issues.

#I feel like ships are quite personal and extremely subjective #snobby attitudes and fans acting like there's such a thing as objectively good or superior #when it comes to shipping/dynamics peeves me #so I don't want to yuck someone's yum but given how the orig AU is v much a platform for V / rigo #and how synonymous 7 K and that ship are #Idt I'm wrong to focus on it b/c it's hard to separate them #text post #my post #negativity #salt #ask

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blackknightgargiemoviephile · 3 years ago

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How To Train Your Dragon Saga

In the beginning, I was never really interested in watching the movie and never even bothered to watch the trailer, since we thought it was one of those cliche failure movies (and Dreamworks hasn't really had a very good track record of good animated movies at the time), but after being bombarded with tons of Toothcup fanfics and fanarts and after very high recommendations by my friend Jello13 from dA, I finally got down to watching the movie. Boy, was I glad I took my friend's recommendation to watch this movie, and the subsequent sequels after that, because after 3, 4 friggin' times, I still fucking LOVE this movie!!!

Here's my findings of the saga:

Apparently this movie was based on a children's novel written by Cressida Cowell which focuses on the 2nd book in a 10-volume book franchise. There are certain deviations between the real Hiccup and Toothless and the storyline as a whole, but after reading the summary of the original story, I think I like the movie version better. In fact even the writer said so in her blog that she likes the deviation as the movie captured the core essence of her story and it was amazing to see her story to be interpreted this way.

The storyline and the pacing is very good, and the sarcastic humour and slight optimism of Hiccup despite people thinking he's anything BUT a Viking is very intriguing. I love his catchphrases like "I'm way too muscular for their tastes. They wouldn't know what to do with all...this" and "Thank you for summing that up" and his famous line "You just gestured to ALL of me!" is just some of the LOL-worthy lines the talented Jay Baruchel who voices Hiccup does.

I was totally shocked to find out that Gerard Butler plays the role of Stoick, Hiccup's old man! I have never expect him, who is known for his brawniness and action-packed persona, made famous in the movie 300, would actually play a voice-over for a cartoon character. After finding out, spotting his voice and hearing the familiarity was much, much easier.

And of course, the creme de la creme of the entire movie: TOOTHLESS!! He is just so, so, so, soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo uber cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute~~~~!!!!! When I read about him in fanfics and caught glimpses of him through fanarts, I was thinking, "Hey, this dragon is quite cute." Now amplify that feeling by a gajillion times more. That's how I feel about Toothless. He started off a little vicious with his snake-like slit for eyes, trying to act strong and tough like the dragon he was, but the moment he let his guard down a little, he got these pair of big doe eyes that is just so MOE and SQUEE-worthy. And of course I finally learn how he got his namesake: with retractable teeth that he can materialize at will

My most favourite scene of the entire movie would be this scene where Toothless finally was at peace with Hiccup and allowed him to touch him. The way Toothless tried to copy his drawing, and then growled whenever Hiccup stepped on his drawing, then Hiccup moved to avoid the lines in tune with the music until finally they were so close they were allowed to touch was just so AWW-worthy. And the music score was perfect too, especially the title of that score: Forbidden Friendship. Isn't that just sweet?

The part where Hiccup and Toothless slowly develop that bond while trying to get Toothless back on his flight feet again was also very interesting as they slowly worked together and forget each other's differences to reach a common goal, while at the same time trying to learn about each other, and Hiccup using that knowledge to good use (the eel and the scratching of the neck part was really epic), making him the life of the team, much to his crush, Astrid's chagrin.

I also love the part where Hiccup tries to convince everyone during the final exam of killing a dragon that dragons are not what they think they are, and tried to pacify the Monstrous Nightmare only to be interrupted by Stoick and having Toothless coming to the rescue (damsel in distress much, Hiccup? XD) and revealed their relationship. It felt really sad and my heart just broke when Hiccup shouted Toothless for him not to kill Stoick and Toothless looked at him with his doe eyes, then Hiccup tries in vain to stop everyone from hurting Toothless, and that argument which led to his disowning, and earning back his role as a son by proving his worth and Toothless' reputation, though a cost of his leg. I was wondering where would be the scene where he looses his leg, since I read that he had a prosthetic in fanfics, but turns out it happened in the near end of the movie, and literally mirrored Toothless' missing left tail fin.

Ending is a bit cliche where he gets the girl, he is lauded as a war hero and gained the respect of everyone including his father, the dragons made peace with humans and all that, but still it was a very heartwarming cliche scene. One that leaves a smile on your face and a sigh of contentment in your heart.

Speaking of Astrid, not really sure it's because of that yaoi in me, but I never really saw Astrid as a suitable pairing for Hiccup. I know, I'm not usually one for bestiality, but seriously, can't you just FEEL the love between Hiccup and Toothless to the point where you can consider them as lovers? Toothcup (Toothless/Hiccup) pairings are in the rage right now since the movie has been uber popularize, and you cannot deny that sort of relationship exist, right?

This one, personally I feel, is almost as par as the first one. Not better, not worse, but more or less par. Hiccup and Astrid are still together, but the Toothcup shipper in me just don't feel like they match somehow. Moreso, suddenly out of the blue, Snotlout and Fishlegs were heads over heels with Ruffnut, which I ABSOLUTELY have NO CHEMISTRY feel whatsoever! Even after I've watched their TV series that led to the second movie, I STILL don't get the vibe or the chemistry between those three people. It's like "Wait, what?" moment.

Although that moment when Ruffnut was just totally thirsty for Eret was absolutely hilarious though. I couldn't help laughing and cringing at the same time.

When the moment Hiccup's mom Valka showed up, I was not expecting her to be so... skinny. Stoick said that he made helmets out of Hiccup's mom's breast plate, and it seemed pretty big, but looking at her, she didn't look like someone who was close to being a big bosom woman, but what is continuity anyways? LOL Though Hiccup definitely has inherited her knack for dragons. Guess it's in the blood after all.

I teared up a little when Stoick died, and I felt so bad that their bromance was threatened by this, but thankfully Hiccup still loves Toothless and is willing to forgive him and try to bring him back to his side. Goes to show how deep their bond is, and Toothless ended up becoming the Alpha Dragon was one of the most epic moments in the whole movie.

It also kinda interesting that Hiccup has somehow became pretty hot in this movie. Was pretty surprised at how he transformed from the awkward tiny little runt of a boy to a strapping man LOL

Plot feels similar to the 2nd one, but the ending was so so SO bittersweet. A fitting ending, but sweet yet painful for me to watch.

My heart broke at the scene wen Hiccup was complaining about Toothless being in love n said "Am I not enough?" and I was like internally screaming "YES! U ARE ENOUGH!! U TWO ARE ENOUGH!! FUCK THAT LIGHT FURY!!"

Throughout the courtship scene btwn Toothless and the Light Fury i was like internally screaming "NO, SHE'S A TRAP! SHE'S A FUCKING TRAP! HICCUP, WHY ARE YOU OKAY WITH THIS?! I'M NOT HAPPY WITH THIS! I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS!!"

I cried like a fucking baby, especially at the end of the movie. It was like I knew it was happening, that they were gonna break up, but I was in denial, then when Toothless hugged Hiccup goodbye, I lost it, waterworks all over. In fact, waterworks all the way to the end at their final reunion ugly-cried like a fucking baby.

It did ended perfectly; perfectly bittersweet and perfectly heartbreaking and I was like "This is it. It's official. It's over. My Toothcup ship has fucking sank!!"

Fuck you, DreamWorks, you have killed my bromance!! Gahh!! I hate and love this movie at the same time!

Overall rating:

HTTYD: 9/10

HTTYD2: 7.5/10

HTTYD: 9/10

#httyd #how to train your dragon #hiccup and toothless #movie review #toothcup

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heckolve · 2 years ago

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hiii omg its been so long since ive sent an ask... ive loved seeing ur ocs and their universe evolve over time and i was wondering if u have any tips on developing stories and characters? i have this story idea in my head and i have the gist of it planned out but like. idk i need MORE u know

aww hi leo <3 hmm honestly my process is not super structured or straightforward lol. ive been working on them for years and years so its not streamlined at all... as far as working from scratch i'm not really sure since i havent made a New story in a longggg time. i'll put the rest under the cut since it got long <3

my best piece of advice might not be that helpful but what has been the most successful for me the past few years is to just let the story develop naturally.... it definitely helps once you've sort of established the general setting & characters & dynamics as well as genre/themes/what main points you want to hit in the story so that you have a defined area to play around in but ive found that after i've set all that up there is always a Next Logical Thought that comes along to develop the story.

with all good things, i wiped that story's slate almost completely clean a few years ago to start fresh and fix it and pretty much my only direction was "i want arrakis to have a more active role in the story" and the rest is history. i immediately was able to find a bunch of loose plot points that i could tie to her and i more closely examined and revised each character's relationship with her and played around with how that impacts them in the story both in their character development and actions. i'm not sure if this is the case with your story yet but for agt i also had a Ton of little things i wanted to happen in the story that needed explaining, like blaire's scars, the breakup, arrakis dying, etc etc. the whole Next Logical Thought process really came in for those points especially where literally all i asked is Why Did It Happen and then using the setting/story points/characters i already had established i was able to fill in those blanks pretty naturally.

why did arrakis die? someone killed her. why did someone kill her? because she knew something she shouldn't have. what did she know? did anyone else know? would anyone else even be able to know? how did knowing effect them? etc etc etc until i not only had one fully fleshed out plot point but suddenly had a way to connect multiple other plot points. anselm's development was the same way. i'd been playing around with a ton of ideas for years and years and had never found anything that worked Just Right and then literally in like the last few months of 2020 i had this one passing thought that ended up being THEE piece the story was missing and set the entire tone and structure of the narrative going forward. i'd definitely played with a Ton of ideas trying to fix the story but it was really just a matter of waiting for my brain to sit on it long enough to be "well obviously this happens" and well obviously yeah that was the right version of the story to tell 🤷‍♀️ its definitely helpful to actively work at a story to figure out exactly what you Want from it and narrow down the directions to go in but all i can really say is that eventually i always just get to a place where a story makes sense to me and theres always a next logical thought to go off of.

as far as character development goes its sort of the same process for me? but its a lot of thinking about like. what would happen if these two characters interacted. how do their worldviews and experiences influence how they interact with other people. what can they offer in a certain dynamic that other characters cant. and then especially in agt i'll sometimes just make a character to fix or fill a certain dynamic that seems lacking, like inez in the eliseyev family. like blaire and belladonna wouldnt necessarily be super close save for the fact that they have traumatic experiences revolving around the same subject that none of the other characters have. it makes them close but not in the same way that friends with similar dispositions and hobbies are; they have the same burden. ave is close with abel in a way he'd never be with most anyone else because abel's empathetic powers don't allow him to repress or hide his true emotions. it also helps to just think about silly things too-- not always huge life changing relationships and events LOL. delphi gets cat hair everywhere. belladonna can play peekaboo with the twins using her wings. memphis steals blaire's clothes 'cause his parents know to keep their closets on lockdown. thinking about how specific character attributes and dynamics makes them act in casual settings and circumstances just always makes them seem more fleshed out... but also i always try to explore dynamics that i may not have considered at first. like in the past arrakis' perception of the dovokov family didn't mean anything and so i never thought to consider it but now theres just SOOO much untapped potential to work with there. i also just tend to decide things at random and without precedent for my character's if it feel's Right 😭 like bell being a mechanic or jude an EMT. or that memphis & inez like winx club. or ila having an ex wife. i think any little specifics details and trivia regardless of how much or little they effect the story also help make characters feel more... human for lack of a better word.

i guess the last thing i'd say is to talk about it with someone else if you're comfortable with that and get the chance. or honestly it doesnt even have to be another person but just to have some way to verbalize or write down what you're thinking about. i don't usually have anyone to talk about my stories with but i can't tell you how helpful its been just Pretending that i do even... i do it all day every day where i'm like. "well what if someone wanted to know about X? what would be the answer?" and sometimes its big picture stuff and other times its just random character trivia but for some reason facilitating development that way helps me think about things i may not have thought about before or work through a tricky plot/character point 🤔

i hope any of that was helpful... like i said my process isn't exactly structured lol. and ive only just recently started moving past set up & big picture narrative development towards the specific start to finish story events which definitely takes a little more active development work over the Next Logical Thought process LOL. a lot of it still is just asking the question and figuring out which answer makes the most sense within the circumstances i've established though 🤷‍♀️

#ask #parasocialz #agt #tct

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solivagusdraco · 3 years ago

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From the Depths of a Lab: Boundaries Between Nonhumanity and Creativity through the Journey of a Potential Silvally 'kin

I'm a dragon.

That's a fact I've known for over a decade at this point. It was pure chance that I ever even learned of otherkin - somewhere along the line, one of my best friends mentioned being a therian, and so I asked what that was. If I ever had any doubts about my draconity just being something developed because I heard this new fascinating thing… the fact that I still feel my wings and get sense memories when I search for them, even after this long, would eliminate those… we'll call them worries. Perhaps a poor choice of words, but it's what fits in my experience - I'm firmly in the spiritual otherkin camp.

And perhaps that, and my continued journey to understand psychological 'kin, is part of the "problem" that spurred this essay.

Again, perhaps a poor choice in words.

This isn't some discussion about facets of the community, or debate on origins. My experiences aren't another's, just as theirs aren't mine. This is an essay on personal exploration, and the adventure of trying to confirm or deny a kintype whilst sifting through muddy water, years after I've last done any serious introspection on such topics. But if you're still interested in the personal ramblings of this dragon, then I welcome you and will pull up a nice rock for you to sit on. All I ask is patience, for words are hard for me. Talking about myself is even harder.

I awakened as a Dragon in 2010. I found a hearttype in Painted Dogs in 2014. Both of which were… simple.

I found my dragon in meditation and introspection, finding memories of both sense and the more traditional kind. The senses persisted, and still persist. Perhaps one day I'll wake and realize I'm not a dragon, but that doesn't change what I am now, nor how I feel. I am a dragon, and I found that through soul searching.

I found a home in painted dogs during a chance trip to the zoo. They had just recently finished a new exhibit for those fancy canines, and for some reason I just felt so excited to go see these creatures I'd never heard of before that moment. And then I saw them and while I didn't feel like looking in the mirror… It felt like looking through a photo album. I'm not them, yet still they're so familiar.

But this isn't an essay about dragons or canines. Or perhaps it's an essay about them both, just in a different, chimeric form.

Pokémon has always been a part of my life. As of writing this, I'm 27 and the franchise is 25 - the only part of my life without Pokémon are years I don't even remember. I learned the TCG, my first video games ever were Gold and Silver, I had plush and played pretend with my friends. I had favorites… but I never made a character. Not a trainer, not a Pokémon. Rather, it was literal decades before I made a proper Pokémon OC.

Sev the Silvally was made out of a desire to try and run a Pokémon ask blog as a means to improve my art skills through regular practice. I don't even remember the thought process that made me choose a Silvally over any of the other hundreds of Pokémon - I just knew that I'd started drawing and suddenly I had a crime against Arceus with a broken RKS Drive. Granted, Type: Null and Silvally had been my favorite Pokémon of that generation, and my inspiration for the blog was a Type: Null blog.

Later on, Sev would become something of a comfort and coping character for me.

I had been abused by someone I considered one of my best friends in high school, and while I had since recognized it as abuse by the time of Sev's creation… It still bothered me. So I decided to have Sev's escape from the Aether Paradise be that he was stolen by an abusive trainer, and his evolution happened when that trainer turned her abusive hand to a Rockruff pup - an evolution not through love for his trainer, but rather through a desire to protect. Sev escaped his abuse and got the chance to learn how to live without the shadow of his trainer looming over him, just like I hoped to do. Escape that shadow. Let Sev be my guide through the nightmares and hate scrolling that still persisted.

He stopped being just a character.

But what does this all have to do with otherkin?

As I mentioned, Pokémon has been a part of my life for effectively my whole life. Yet despite that… There's never been a Pokémon that gripped me with the intensity that Silvally has. I've hungrily looked for merch, official and unofficial. I'm in the midst of making a fursuit, complete with electronics. One of my Tumblr usernames is multi-attack, and oftentimes now when making an account on a website, the first thing I check is if 'Silvally' is taken as a username. The design I painted on my mailbox is of my dragon and Sev, in a sort of "coat of arms" reminiscent style. This chimeric Pokémon latched on to some part of my mind and refused to let go.

And yet it wasn't until this past year that I even considered that Silvally could be something other than a "mere" favorite character.

Perhaps it's a hearttype. Perhaps it's a kintype. Perhaps it is just a mere favorite character. Introspection is the answer, regardless. My way to find just what Silvally is to me. But then there comes another question. Another problem.

With my dragon, the hunt for memories was clear cut. I had no existing thoughts to sway the hunt, and what memories I eventually found… They had little comparisons to various dragon media I'd consumed. But I start this investigation with Silvally at a disadvantage - I've made a character with crafted backstory, and consumed what little canon information exists on the species. There's no blank slate for me to start from - whatever search I do will always be colored by Sev and his tale.

So then I have to ask myself:

Is Sev his own character, or is he me?

I've never had a character that I was able to just write. Perhaps it's akin to soulbonding, but what I've read on that experience just doesn't quite taste right for the circumstance. I'll create a path for my characters, a baseline for their personality to grow on… but all too frequently, they end up bucking those guidelines and becoming their own person, as it were. They don't keep me company in my mind, but they still make their own minds clear should I try to direct their story or actions in ways they don't agree with.

Where does one find the boundary between self and other, when those "others" make their own decisions yet aren't their own entities?

To say nothing of my tendency to dole out my flaws and traits to each of my characters. Each little facet of myself being the seed from which a character will grow. Sometimes as the simple fact that the familiar makes creation easier. Sometimes as a means to work through a problem. But regardless of reason, it doesn't change the fact that almost every character I've ever made has had some piece of me in their core.

But… When every character you make is a facet of yourself, the moment you consider that they might be more than just a character gets muddy. Is it a hearttype, born from a facet of yourself that your subconscious decided you needed to care for more? Or is that facet just a part of you that recognized what you were, long before your consciousness connected the dots? And if kintype it is, then how do you determine what memories are real? Were the plot points and character biology you designed mere fabrication of the mind? Or were they flashes of another life, fleshed out, recorded, and/or adapted in the name of writing?

As if the discovery and determination of memories wasn't already complicated enough.

Sev's name was the only decision I consciously made whilst creating him - shortened from 'severance', as his creation was for the partial purpose of finally separating myself from old memories. Everything else just… happened. There was no rhyme or reason or choice to anything. Not his color, not the reason he and the other Silvally of his world were created. Every plot point, every musing on his biology was a simple moment of "Oh, so that's how it happened".

In what way is that different from how I found my dragon, with her quiet nights of meditation and introspection until the memories and feelings fell into place?

Now don't misunderstand - this isn't me saying that discovering a kintype is nothing more than making a character. That couldn't be farther from what I'm saying! Rather, I'm musing on the question of where the boundary is between the creative process and the discovery process. If Sev (or just Silvally in general) isn't a kintype, then it's still fascinating to me that his creation was so similar to me discovering my dragon. And if he is a kintype? Then is that particular creative process something to be mindful of when contemplating "original character" kintypes?

Perhaps this question would be easier to find an "answer" to if I knew what Silvally was to me… but I don't! That's almost the point of this essay - a vague attempt to knock some solid feeling thought loose from my mind.

It just happened to lead to a fascinating line of thought.

#otherkin #otherkind #alterhuman #heraldic speaks

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pretentious-librarian · 3 years ago

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Book Review: Gilded - Marissa Meyer

*I'm trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible. there is a warning before each spoiler*

I already tried to write this once and the entire thing deleted. So.

I finished this book just a few minutes ago so my thoughts and feelings are still fresh. Marissa Meyer's books and writing style has always appealed to me. When I was in middle school, I read her very popular series, The Lunar Chronicles, and was enchanted immediately, so I got my hands on her new book, Gilded, as soon as possible (Although, I was not able to read it as soon as I would have liked for many reasons). However, I will admit, because of my continual disappointment after finishing BookTok recommendations, my expectations for this book were slightly above mid. But thankfully, this book well exceeded those expectations in so many ways.

Overview: This book is a loose retelling of the fairytale, Rumpelstiltskin. Serilda is a teen village girl who is known for storytelling and lying. In her world, there is a veil separating the living from the undead people of the evil Erlking's castle. These souls are trapped and unable to ascend into the afterlife. However, this veil only lifts on full moons. One evening during a full moon, Serilda comes face to face with the Erlking as he ventures into the realm of the living and, fearing for her life, tells a lie that changes everything for her.

Review: Overall, I loved this book. I haven't truly enjoyed a book like I have this one a long time. I've always loved Meyer's writing and she continued to dazzle me with her skills in this book as well. Her writing was nicely paced, engaging, smooth, and easy to read. The plot was nothing short of wonderful. Everything was paced almost perfectly and the plot twists were beautifully executed. No plot twist was out of pocket and each one actually made sense. I love a good fantasy book, and this book was exactly that; the book incorporated all the best parts of the fantasy genre while actually making sense. The characters were nicely developed and had meaningful traits, backstories, and interactions. For the first time in a while, I was able to actually care about the book and what was going to happen next to the characters.

And the ROMANCE, OH THE ROMANCE! It has been such a long time since I've read quality romance (excluding some pretty good fanfics i've been reading ofc). The tension was perfect, the pacing was perfect, the interactions made sense with the circumstances and it was so PERFECT! (slight nsfw warning: I think Meyer would write the best smut, but being a YA author she can't exactly publish that. [and {spoiler:} when the MC and love interest *did it* together, it felt right, not forced, genuine, happened at the right time, and was used as a plotpoint to accomplish something in the story and best of all, deepen their relationship). You could feel the attraction, the pure energy, and chemistry between the characters. It was enjoyable to read about and it also felt plausible.

I really only have a few criticisms for this book. The main character spends most of her time trying to save, find, rescue, and help the people she cares about. However, at one point in the book (minor spoiler?) she is faced with the loss of someone close to her. What I find to be problematic in the writing is that the main character spends a good bit of the book mourning a person she has never met yet the loss of this person who is close to her has almost no effect on her emotionally. Personally, I didn't love one of the tropes but it was necessary for the story to follow the fairytale which it was based off of and it was used in the perfect way to further the plot. There was also a scene that may have been a sort of political commentary (or maybe it wasn't and I'm overthinking), but I just wanted to enjoy the story so I didn't read into that scene a whole lot.

So yeah, I really liked this book. Fantasy books are often not plausible but this one was in almost every aspect. I loved this book. Almost everything was well written. Gilded was a plausible, balanced, and intriguing book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

4/5 stars

#reading #books #young adult books #book review #bookworm #booktok #books and reading #fantasybooks #fantasy #novel

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funsizedcrow · 3 years ago

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i am asking you about your ocs. i need to know Everything about them (or just talk about any oc that you'd like)

Okok so i've got a whole google doc about them but its basically incomprehensible without the extra context thats only in my head so here's the (hopefully) more coherant version: (under the cut because its kinda long)

So basically these are all from an original story that i've been developing for like. a while now. I dont know how long.

First off: some basic worldbuilding. So there’s a mortal realm and a spirit realm. Basically when someone dies they’re given five years as a ghost to tie off any loose ends. The only people that can see ghosts are people connected to said loose ends. After the five years are up, a ghost can apply for an extension if the loose ends still aren’t tied up, but they are rarely accepted.

Spirits are immortal beings that live in the spirit realm. Their job is to watch over the ghosts in the human realm, and run the real afterlife.

Anyways those are the basics now its time to talk about my kids. I’m sorry if this doesn’t make any sense I’ve got a lot of thoughts

First: Cat (they/them) my beloved. My firstborn. They win the award of most doodles in my sketchbook. Cat only dresses in big jackets and long pants even in hot weather. They go to arizona one time and they almost die of heatstroke. They’re a bisexual disaster. Contrary to popular belief they’re actually the only reason the squad hasn’t been arrested yet.

Ellie: (all pronouns) Ellie is not her actual name, but their real name is incomprehensible to mortal beings. Ellie is a Spirit, sent to the mortal realm as punishment for accidentally bringing a human back to life. They are very clearly Not human but yet somehow no one seems to notice. Anyways when he’s sent down to earth Ellie lands right in Cat’s backyard.

Caleb (he/they): caleb is my son. Also the more i develop him as a character the more he turns into simmons rvb but that wasnt on purpose these characters have been in my head since before I watched rvb. Anyways caleb claims to be the brain cell of the group but the data disagrees with that. Inside of school they're the teacher’s pet and never do anything wrong but outside of school he is just completely insane. (like me). He has moral values but no one can actually figure out what they are. Oh also they're trans btw. (all of my ocs are trans unless explicitly stated otherwise)

Emily (she/her): she’s the actual brain cell of the group. However this does not make her any less of a disaster, it just means that when it counts she stops them from getting killed. Most of the time. She has her charisma stats maxxed out, which is how she avoids detention. Fun facts she has two dads and one of them is a professional pastry chef and so she gets the squad free desserts all the time.

Nathan (he/him): nathan is the ghost that haunts the squad’s high school. He was killed by the higher beings in charge of the spirit realm because he saw things that he wasn’t supposed to see. But they still gave him the five years thing. And so he’s stuck as a ghost until either a) five years pass, or b) he figures out his loose ends.

But then caleb and emily and cat are hanging out in the school basement for reasons and they find him. And they can see him, which they aren’t supposed to do. But they decide that he’s their friend now and part of the squad. And they use nathan to pull a whole bunch of pranks on the student body.

And nathan understandably doesn’t trust ellie at first, but eventually he warms up to her. Eventually.

So basically the whole plot thing is they go on a quest to stop corruption in the afterlife because theyre like. Huh this whole thing is kind of messed up. And half of the plot is high school shenanigans the other half is murder mysteries and ghost hunting.

(btw nathan and caleb are in love. Its a whole tragic love story thing but i Will give them a happy ending)

also if i ever do make this into a webcomic like i want to it would be titled "Teen Spirit"

And now for some various drawings of them:

(I keep meaning to draw out some character sheets but i’ve never gotten around to it. But here are my most recent drawings of them)

In order: cat, ellie, emily, nathan, caleb

#thanks for sending me this btw i love talking about my ocs <3 #my writing #hnmm i should make a tag for them #oc tag: teen spirit

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sketchguk · 3 years ago

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It's great to see you're relaxing after ☺️ what are you watching on Netflix??? And yes I'll keep give her my scarf and keep her warm 😭😭😭 hhhhhhhh I might slip and say I love her too 😭😭😭 and my house is Hufflepuff eheeee what's your house?? I was thinking about questions to ask about the au 👉🏼👈🏼 Can you say things about gryffindor soonyoung that makes mc angry and things mc does that makes soonyoung angry? I'm excited to know what makes soonyoung angry 😭 - 2am anon

Thank you !!! My break is much needed ;n; I've been watching Single's Inferno and Our Beloved Summer !!! I've also been watching Bad and Crazy on iqiyi because Lee Dong Wook is so hot..... Whenever he's on screen, my brain is empty, but my coochie is thinking 😵‍💫 are you watching anything ?? Let me know if you have recs 🥺 even if they aren’t kdramas, haha I’ll check them out !

No wayy, I'm a Hufflepuff too !!! 💛 I'll be your wing woman when you're ready to confess to mc hehe. If you need help sneaking her into the common room, I gotchu 😌

Oh God, let me start with things that mc does to piss off Soonyoung, that beautiful man..... Upsetting him comes easy because of how passionate he is. He's competitive as hell, especially when it comes to his girl

Very early on in the plot, it wasn't an unknown secret that mc had a puppy crush on Hufflepuff Mingyu. He's warm, reliable, always willing to listen, and he's got the biggest dick heart. So naturally, they developed a friendship. Somewhere along the line, she caught feelings for him, or at least she thought she did considering Soonyoung is in the picture. However, she would flirt with Mingyu very openly, and her heart eyes would not go unnoticed. Of course, Soonyoung's jealousy would rile him up like no other, and he'd be fumingggg

Mc didn't mean to do it on purpose, at least not at first. And she definitely didn't mean it when she fell into bed with Mingyu that one time..... lol (all hell breaks loose, but that's a whole other story). After all, she's convinced that Soonyoung isn't serious about her. She thinks this is all part of his game. He wants to break down her walls, but emotionally, she thinks that she's strong enough to withstand his charm. So who is she hurting by liking Mingyu??? (Literally every character in the story LOL), but ignorance is bliss, ya know?

So yeah, as smitten as Soonyoung is, he's also possessive 😔 That's his toxic trait, but I think I can overlook that LOL. Nobody's perfect right??

Okay, likewise, Soonyoung is a popular guy. He's the star quidditch player, and people can't decide whether they want to be him or be with him. His classmates gravitate towards him like the force of gravity, and mc can't help but get jealous as well further down the storyline when she develops feelings ;n;

Girls practically swarm him, and all she can do is stand in the crowd and watch. She'd stomp away, pretending as if she isn't upset, but Soonyoung would follow her anyways because she's the only person he cares about 😭 His eyes have always been on her ! Since he pays so much attention to her, he can read her like an open book :-( He's the only one who truly understands her because of that ksljdkal. I feel like we talked about this aha. But still, she doesn't drop her facade, so she continues to act indifferent as if Soonyoung doesn't have a chokehold on her heart. What is this ache in her chest? Why is it pounding so hard? Why does it hurt so much?

As for something that is in Soonyoung's control, mc gets annoyed when he interferes with her studies. She's all business when she hits the books, and she would honestly bite off his head if he doesn't stop his nonsense. There's no eating in the library, so what is he trying to do by stuffing a whole burger in his mouth?? What does he have to prove?? Any other day, it would be funny, but at this point in time, he needs to read the room because she is STRESSED.

Sometimes, she'll go a little overboard and say something hurtful. You're wasting my time, go away and leave me alone. Stop being so fucking annoying, can't you see I'm busy? You're embarrassing me. And Soonyoung would take it to heart :-( He just wants her to loosen up and relieve her stress :-( She's the smartest girl he knows, so why does she need to push herself soo hard when it's hurting her?? :-(( (sorry, I got sentimental loll)

And to this day... the headcanon where Soonyoung and Mingyu fight lives in my head rent free. Have I mentioned it already?? LOL sorry if this info isn’t new 😔

#ask #anon #2am anon #you’re an angel for entertaining my silly head canons 😭 xie xie ni 😔💛#horanghae agenda

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pinnochiro · 3 years ago

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pinn reviews - final fantasy xv

a long ramble about final fantasy fifteen that sort of looks like a review, as written by someone who finished the game fifteen minutes ago and needs to get these words out of his head. spoilers inbound.

i'm a pretty big fan of video games. i don't know what my first was, but it was probably either banjo and kazooie or mario kart 64, at my cousin's house when i was very small. i think that video games as a medium are so interesting, since the fact that video games are inherently interactive changes the way that they tell any story. it's a shame that despite loving video games so much, i'm absolutely terrible at them.

i'm absolute dogshit at video games. whenever i boot up something new, i always play on easy mode because. i'm that bad. unfortunately, this means that a lot of video games are simply. impossible for me to beat. that's fine, as at the moment i live with my good friend lizz, who is certifiably Good at Video Games, and so we've been playing video games together for a little bit now. typically this means that she will actually play the majority of the game while i sit with her and watch, but occasionally i'll have a go, but she'll end up with the controller as soon as a boss fight or puzzle or a mechanic i just can't seem to grasp shows up. we recently played through the entirety of the kingdom hearts series together, and this was an absolute blast of a time. i'm glad to say that i adore kingdom hearts now, and it's become one of my hyperfixations, which you might be able to tell from my icon. but we'd finished the kingdom hearts series, and we were left to move onto something else. we'd also played final fantasy 7 remake, so in my wisdom, i suggested that we play another final fantasy game.

we looked through the ff games that were already purchased on our consoles thanks to lizz's uncle, and eventually, we decided that we should play. all of them. however to start, we were going to play final fantasy xv, 15, and work our way backwards through the mainline, single-player games.

i'd heard that xv wasn't very good, but honestly, i was still quite curious. one person who i'd been following on twitter for years was pretty obsessed with the main party members, to the point where i knew their names and what-not even though i didn't have much of an idea what the game itself was about. i remember watching a video by supereyepatchwolf a few years ago about how the game sucked, but i couldn't remember much of the details, and i knew, based on my obsession with kingdom hearts, that xv had started as a different game called final fantasy versus xiiv. i don't know all the details about versus thirteen, but i do know that it was originally helmed by the creator of my beloved kingdom hearts, mr tetsuya nomura, and that after many years, the vast majority of the game was thrown out, nomura wasn't in charge any more, and the whole thing was rewritten and reworked, which sounds like a fairly rough development cycle. but so what, i don't care about gameplay. i want to play the video game with those cute guys that i see fanart of on twitter, and lizz seemed happy enough to play through it with me.

and so we started final fantasy xv. i've been told that since the game was practically dead on arrival, they threw in a bunch of new content and reworked a lot of the early game before i got my hands on it. so my gameplay started with a scene of the four guys fighting some demon dude on fire and they're all old and grotty. whatever, that cutscene ends and we're put into a combat tutorial. that's over and we're on the road in what looks to be central america, pushing a car.

our four leading lads are noctis, the prince of the lucis empire, his best friend prompto, his bodyguard, gladio, and his chef and other things, ignis. i do quite like the main four members of the party in xv. prompto is quite easily my favourite, voiced by robbie daymond of goro akechi fame and with a bunch of fun little animations and quips that make him very likeable. he gets extremely excited at the idea of riding chocobos and has what i considered the best scene of the game, where he and noctis meet on a motel rooftop and discuss prompto's imposter syndrome, since he's only part of noctis' official retinue as his best friend. noctis is a fairly typical main protagonist, he's in love with a woman he hasn't seen in eight years and needs to go marry her or something, i don't care. gladio is a tough macho man with a mullet who wears leather jackets and wields a greatsword, and is apparently only 22, which is at least 10 years younger than i assumed. ignis is a strategist and chef, who takes on the most authoritative role and constantly tells noctis to not drive his car at night. i was not a fan of ignis at the start, but he grew on me, especially with how hard the game hit me with his personal arc. the four boys are off, driving to noctis' wedding in a different country across the desert when their car breaks down. we then run into the first issue of the game.

cindy is a mechanic. she also has her ass and tits out constantly, like your sleazy uncle's shirt with a naked woman was instead semi-alive as a video game person. she fixes your car and acts fairly sexual and it's just like. why do we have to do this. aren't we over overtly sexualised women in video games who have no reason for the way they dress other than the character designer was horny? whatever, i like women as much as the next guy, but cindy's design just. makes me feel so uncomfortable.

anyways you get to do a little driving around with the boys, until you stay the night before catching the boat to your fiance. overnight, you find out that noctis' kingdom has been basically destroyed by an invading empire called niflheim, and practically everyone noctis knows, including his father, are dead. you learn that noctis and his bride to be are also assumed dead, with noctis hearing his own death announcement on the radio. the game has a bunch of added cutscenes that are actually footage from the three-hour-long prequel movie that came out after the game, are extremely hard to follow and honestly i had no idea what i was looking at. anyways, noctis' family is dead, so it's time to do some hunting sidequests.

that brings us to the combat, i suppose. rather than the turn-based or even active turn-based combat that the series is known for, xv opts for more modern action rpg-styled combat. i was, naturally, terrible at this, but i managed to get around it with the fact that. it is almost impossible to die in this video game, provided you have enough items. the game allows you so much time to heal yourself that there's practically no way to have your entire party wipe unless you're doing absolutely terrible, and even then, your party members will probably try and heal you themselves before that happens. lizz tells me that the combat is boring, you just push the same button over and over and then you win. i do appreciate that, for someone like me who is terrible at reading enemy movements, there is a giant button that pops up on screen that tells you when to push the block button, but even then i was prone to fucking it up. whether that's the bad game design or my terrible gaming abilities is up to you to decide. anyways, the game is fairly easy but has annoying combat, your teammates limit breaks will only land about 50% of the time (or never, if you are gladio) and i was still bad at it, so i didn't have all that much fun.

instead of an active levelling system, the game will only tally your character's level ups when you either make camp or visit a hotel. camping is, in my opinion, the only saving grace of this game. each time you make camp, you get to see the characters doing fun little camping activities together and just hanging out, ignis will cook up a new meal in a dramatic fashion and everyone will compliment him and eat it off their coleman's branded plates, it's just very fun. you also get to see what pictures prompto has taken, which is one of my favourite gameplay features. prompto's passion is photography, and while i support him in this wholeheartedly, his picture taking skills are, quite frankly, awful. the game will randomly take shots while you're on the move, which leaves you with a delightful selection of awkward poses, characters hidden behind bushes, pictures taken while someone is half-dead in combat, and snaps where the natural lighting absolutely makes it impossible to tell what's going on. it's hilarious and going through prompto's collection of photos each night is honestly the best part of the game. we managed to wind up with a few shots that, even despite being scripted events, turned out absolutely terrible, and i will cherish those forever.

anyways, since noctis' father and fiance are dead, that leaves him the king of lucis. the only important person to make it out of the capital alive tells you to drive to the middle of nowhere, where he randomly springs on you. hey. go into a bunch of these dungeons and absorb a bunch of swords, this is your destiny as king and how you will defeat the empire. noctis goes, uh, alright i guess, and you're set loose again to wander around for a bit collecting the 'royal arms'. this plot point wasn't explained well but hey, whatever, we're collecting the glowy swords and that's fine.

you're introduced at some point to ardyn, the main antagonist. he's old, kind of groady and wears a fedora. he's a dick to you and talks about his automobeeel. apparently my friend miri thinks he's hot, she is wrong.

i can't remember what happens specifically but you're told that your fiance is still alive and in fantasy venice, and she's talking to the gods on your behalf to borrow their powers. there's a mission where you follow some purple trees that are electric, and you do that i guess. i enjoyed riding the chocobos around, but couldn't care much for the plot at this point. ardyn leads you to a volcano, where you fight a giant lava god. he tries to step on you and i, a denizen of the internet and with an active fear of foot fetishists, was extremely uncomfortable. noctis becomes friends with foot man and a lightning god who lived in those trees, and ardyn steals your car.

very upset by this, noctis and his gang risk everything to sneak into a military base and steal it back. because this is a video game, this works out fine.

there's a little mining city which is all about Girl Power, because all the Women run the Mining Industry like Girl Bosses, and you hang around there for a bit. because all the women are so Empowered, they wear bikinis all the time with overalls over the top. gladio decides he needs to fuck off for a bit, i have no idea what he does since i haven't played the dlc, and then he comes back with another scar. you hang out with his sixteen year old sister, who has a crush on the engaged and 20-year old noctis, and then you drive her to a lighthouse. when she's in your party, she can't really fight, but she gets a pink chocobo and i thought that was very cute. we turned out own chocobo white and lizz named him 'jones' after a mount she has in ffxiv.

eventually, you have a long boat ride over to fantasy venice. this is the part where the game stops being 'fun with a few issues in combat and a rushed and poorly told story.' the open world, which was a main feature with a bunch of little areas to find where noctis can fish, little hunting sidequests and random photo spots where prompto takes touristy photos, is now gone, and it will not return for the entire rest of the game. you can 'go back in time', but the open world was the most enjoyable part of the game, and it kind of really sucks that the main story doesn't let you have any more freedom like that.

after arriving in fantasy venice, you have a talk with fantasy hillary clinton and beg her to let your girlfriend summon a god into the middle of her city. hillary agrees, and you don't get to meet up with your fiance, because even if the game is constantly telling you how much noctis loves her, there is. barely any interactions between the two in the entire game. from what i can tell, they met when noctis was a child and they haven't seen each other in ten years but are still fantasy dog pen-pals. noctis marrying her was supposed to make an alliance or something like that, but her brother has betrayed her to the army. noctis' girlfriend is also an oracle, which means she can heal people, i guess? everyone talks about how important she is and she's constantly telling people that she needs to use her powers to help noctis but she's practically a non-entity.

as can be expected of most female love interests in a game primarily focused on men, noctis' fiance is killed while summoning a god for noctis to befriend. noct gets very mad about this, and turns super saiyan and kills the god back, but his girlfriend is dead and that's super sad you guys. there's a beautiful prerendered cutscene where she says goodbye to noctis but since we barely know her, and we've only been told over and over that they're in love without anything to actually well, show this, it didn't have much of an impact. fantasy venice is destroyed, and ignis is blinded while trying to help calm the giant raging god.

iggy's blindness and how the game makes you account for this and grow to care for him was one of the highlights, in my opinion, as well as crushingly depressing. while i'm not disabled and have no right to say if this was 'good disabled representation' or anything like that, i believe that the game handles it decently enough. the group falls apart as noctis is upset about his girlfriend, gladio is extremely mad that noctis won't care for ignis, and prompto just wants everyone to get along. there's a mission where gladio constantly yells at you passive aggressive things to noctis about how he's a cunt for running, which is obnoxious, but the character arc itself is fairly strong. when you make camp, ignis can't cook anymore, so everyone eats cup noodles in a depressing ass cutscene. ignis remains in your party for the rest of the game despite his disability, and he doesn't magically regain his sight like other fantasy media would do, which at the very least i think is good. i'm not sure what the opinion of actual disabled people is of the character, considering how often disabled characters are either turned into misery porn to make the abled audience be glad that isn't them and if ignis' arc falls into this trap, but i hope that it wasn't handled too poorly, as that would just be another terrible mark in this game's list of bad moves.

the characters eventually make it to the evil empire's capital, which is abandoned and filled with daemons. the characters learn that ardyn is super evil and taught the king of the empire how to turn humans into daemons, which has now happened to the entire city. the 'magitek suits', presumed to be enchanted armour that fights as the empire's infantry, actually house the souls of the human-turned daemons. honestly i like this as a plot point but the game handles it pretty terribly. there could have been more lead up to this, the explanation is pretty lacking, and prompto's Big Plot Twist is. terribly handled. turns out that prompto was born in the empire and was going to be one of those empty soldier daemons, but he was rescued by people belonging to noctis' empire. not that the game tells you that. instead, prompto goes 'turns out i'm one of ... them' and Does Not Elaborate. The game doesn't tell you shit, not about prompto's past, not about how he feels about this, not about how anyone else feels about this either because the other party members just go 'oh that sucks, good thing you're not evil' and the scene ends. robbie daymond tries so hard to sell these terrible, terrible lines, and it almost entirely fails, i'm so sorry prompto. fortunately because i'm a nosy ass, i read prompto's wikia page and knew the plot twist ahead of time, because i don't think i would have even registered it if i didn't.

anyways everyone in the evil empire is dead and ardyn starts talking about how he's immortal and an ancient king of noctis' country but the gods thought he sucked because he's too evil. i missed most of this because the cats got the zoomies and were dashing across the couch right in the middle of his speech so i can't tell you anything else. noctis tries to get a big magic crystal to fight him and instead. gets schlorped inside.

TEN YEARS LATER

yes then ten years actually pass while noctis is asleep. the game shows this by switching the head on noctis' character model to have a beard, but that's it, no changes in animations or whatever. the sky is permanently night and only one human civilisation remains, the rest destroyed by daemons. as a plot point, this ends up feeling. extremely worthless. why was noctis asleep for ten whole goddamn years? so we can wake up and go 'damn it sucks out here'. but it's barely even a like, incentive to fix everything, because you have a long talk with a former child you were friends with where he talks about how humanity is still going fine and everyone's okay and the world has moved on without you. it feels. pointless. when you meet up with your party members, they are exactly as you left them, only with slightly different character models. there is no change in the voice performance, the character's movements or how they talk to show that they've been without you for ten years. they barely mention it. i'm just. so confused as to why they decided that a ten year timeskip was the way to go? since nothing really changes, couldn't you have made it like, two years? one year? six months?? have the characters react a little more? something??? at least if it was only a year or so i wouldn't have to deal with the fact that noctis looks like norman reedus with his shitty facial hair now.

anyways after that there's a bunch of long and boring boss fights. you fight some dead kings for some reason, your party members get a little bit to talk about how cool they are and how much they love noctis, and then you meet up with ardyn. there's another boring boss fight and god this was only a few hours ago but it's already gone from my head. you summon the gods and the old kings to beat the shit out of him after you both go super saiyan again? there's incredible music but it feels barely earned and just kind of eh. anyways, noctis dies, which was the price of using the crystal of light or whatever the fuck. his ghost marries his fiance's ghost finally, and they smile as they look at one of prompto's pictures. you can pick any picture you want to go here, and then the credits roll, showing all of the pictures you saved of prompto's shots. showing me all the pictures at the end is honestly lovely, but it really only served to remind me of how much more fun the game was in the first half. and that's the end, of final fantasy xv.

so what did i think of the story? it's terribly cobbled together and struggles to get you to feel anything and play out all the plot beats. you feel awful for the countless employees who spent years working on the beautiful cutscenes only to have them be in this game, which sucks and the story barely gets through. there were parts that i enjoyed, mostly the thing about the daemons being people, but honestly the rest of it is a mess. it's hard to follow at the best of times and just awkward and terribly written at the worst. the ending is cheap, and it doesn't feel like you've actually accomplished anything. i left that game feeling numb and empty, sad that i'd wasted so much time to end up with such a colossal failure of a conclusion.

i had fun with the game when it was my four little guys running around doing sidequests and camping together. after the midway point of the game, there's none of that, and you're bogged down into a plot that just pushes you from point a to point b and boring overlong bossfight to boring overlong bossfight. the character moments between your party are a lot of fun, but the second you hit fantasy venice, everything is pretty much on rails and you can't do anything except what the game tells you explicitly to do.

should you play this game? no lol. if anything i've mentioned about the story interests you, you'll be better off watching a lore video or reading the wiki. if you do want to play it after all that, just don't proceed after the myrthril refining quest, it's pretty much all downhill from there. will i play the dlc? unlikely, i think lizz and i will just watch a cutscene movie of those.

this game left me feeling empty and numb and not in a fun way. i wanted, so, so hard to like this game, and it all crashed around me in a beautifully overproduced and confusingly written cascade. i love you prompto, but even your cute little freckly face and terrible photography can't save this trainwreck of a game.

tl;dr - final fantasy xv sucks. i hope that 13, our next ff game, will be better.

#ramble #review type thing #did you read all of this? im impressed #i did not proofread #so if its a mess #just pretend thats a meta commentary about the game itself #i wrote this for like an hour trying to understand the feelings this game gave me #final fantasy xv

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astramachina · 3 years ago

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Just got back from watching No Time to Die and well. Hm. At least I looked cute.

A kinda ramble-y and nonsensical rant riddled with spoilers below the cut. Beware, I am typing this in nothing but my button down, boxers, and a bottle of beer.

! ! ! SPOILERS FOR NO TIME TO DIE.

Coming from an old-time Bond fan, I've always been hesitant about the Craig-era having an overarching plot of sorts because it defeats the purpose of what James Bond is as an icon. One-shot romps where each Bond was different even when portrayed by the same actor. The issue with Craig!Bond is that now you have to worry not just about story continuity, but emotional development. These movies did pretty okay with keeping a story together mostly because they were very loose to begin with, but having the plot with Madeline tie back to Vesper the way it did and attempt to wrap it all up in 2.5 hours was a bit too much when this was meant to be Craig's final hurrah as Bond. But no means was it bad, but you can see that this movie had no space to breathe.

It was okay.

It didn't have the visual appeal that Skyfall or even Spectre did, and this is coming from someone who isn't overly fond of the latter. The action sequences were nice to look at, and I adored the homages to previous Bonds all throughout--both visual and style-wise.

Ana de Armas can fucking kill me and I'd thank her. Though, honestly, that whole sequence was easily one of the best because, even if she wasn't technically a Bond Girl TM, she's probably the most relatable characters, female or otherwise, I have ever seen in a Craig!Bond movie ever.

Also, we got to meet Q's cat and we almost, almost, got to see his boyfriend. Listen, I knew that man was not straight from the get-go, but the little "blink and you miss it" nod towards one canonically queer character within the Craig!Bond universe was cute. (No, I'm not counting the Silva and Bond "moment" in Skyfall.)

With that out of the way:

Idk, personally I do not care about the "adding a family for the sake of weight" nonsense. It's such a cheap narrative copout that's cliché as all fuck and I'm a little miffed that they holed Bond into that. Local Fuckboy Develops Emotional Maturity Because He Now Has A Wife and Daughter. It's old. Overdone. Boring. Craig deserved better but I guess that's the pinnacle of growth a man can achieve in the eyes of society.

This reminds me of when The Martian first hit theaters, and one of my students at the time told me she didn't like the movie because "the protag didn't even have a family to get back to on Earth, why should I have cared for him?" Heteronormativity and gender roles once again ruin the day, congrats. I am once again begging for Hollywood to do better, but alas. And it's funny because normally I think in the terms when I'm faced with shit like queerbaiting, but for once these two things are at fault for robbing a character of an ending he deserved rather than the "lying down my life for my family" bullshit. "Craig brought Bond into the new age," did it tho?

Obviously, this is no fault of the actors. Craig did a fantastic job, and those close-ups near the end when facing Safin were stunning. Everyone acted their hearts out (Lashana Lynch can call me whenever she wants I'm literally always free) and these performances were undoubtedly the glue of the film.

At the end of it all, Craig deserved a better ending. He really did.

So I raise my bottle of Stella Artois in toast to James.

It was a wild ride, to say the least.

#mitch watches films and talks about it #text.#NTTD spoilers

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graaythekwami · 3 years ago

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20 Questions: Writer's Addition

Thank you @steelblaidd for the tag! This was fun to do. :D

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

56.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,122,771.

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Ao3 says nine, but six of them are variations of Pokemon. xD I've written for Pokemon, Miraculous Ladybug, Fablehaven, Harry Potter, Calvin and Hobbes, and a few others on various platforms.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. The Investigation with 3876 kudos. 2. A Good Actor with 3070 kudos. 3. Chat Got Your Back with 2142 kudos. (I did not realize this one was this far up on the list.) 4. Shipping with 2099 kudos. 5. Cheaters with 1902 kudos.

5. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do, but not as often as I would like to though.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Probably my most recent one-shot, Blanc Lie, which is a darker fic focusing on if Chat Blanc had won.

7. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Of my completed stories, I'll go with Are You Kidding Me?.

8. Do you write crossovers? If yes, what’s the craziest thing you’ve written?

I haven't for Miraculous, but I do have ideas for a Miraculous and Pokemon crossover one day. :)

9. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I've gotten a handful of negative comments before, but I honestly don't pay them much attention, if someone doesn't like my story that's fine, because everyone has their own taste in stories.

One comment that always has annoyed me though was on a non-Miraculous fic, where the commenter said they didn't finish the whole fic, didn't like it, and then proceeded to explain why the story was wrong because canon had said otherwise.

Why this frustrated me was because if they had actually finished reading the story, they would have seen that the "missing" element of canon was actually included, and was one of the main aspects of the entire fic!

It was several years ago, but it's funny to look back on. xD

10. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

No.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Several times, actually, both were Pokemon stories and took place several years ago. My Amourshipping story "Memories" has been stolen twice, both times just a reposting on Wattpad. Fortunately the website took them down as soon as I reported it.

The other story that was stolen was one me and my friend had written together, a PMD fic called "Team Rival". Not only was it stolen, but the person who stole it continued writing it and even brought in another author who didn't know it was stolen. It was a longer and frustrating process to get them to take it down because they kept acting like they were in the right even though they had stolen my work.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I've had a handful translated. :)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Yes, but not with Miraculous. However I do have plans to collab on a Miraculous fic in the future. :)

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

The Love Square! LadyNoir being the best corner, of course.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

All currently published ML WIPs of mine I plan on finishing. As for WIPs I've started but I haven't posted there are two that stand out:

Soulmate Seer: This was an AU where only certain people can see red strings of fate, Alya being one of them. This fic would have been from her POV, and I had the world fully developed and a basic plot line planned out, but I don't know if I'll ever finish or post it.

Aladdin AU: An AU based loosely off of Disney's Aladdin, with Marinette taking on Aladdin's role and Adrien's with Jasmine's role. I had a lot of the world planned out, including how the kwamis were tied in to everything, but I haven't had motivation to work on it for a long time.

16. What’s your writing strengths?

World building and character building. Backstory, lore, all the small details... it's just so much fun! I always find myself going way in depth when planning these kinds of things out, even if it's not central to the plot, and it's a lot of fun, and I'm usually very happy with what I come up with.

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

Pacing, and by extension, flow. I have a lot of ideas but sometimes I find myself lingering too long on one scene, or trying to put a transition where it doesn't work, or having fics turn out way longer than I thought they would be (looking at you, Withered Wings), or having parts of the plot that are rushed when I look back at them.

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in fic?

I like including other languages, especially when it makes the most sense for the character. Like in "Crimson and Noire" I have Master Fu's use Chinese for his transformation phrases and to activate his powers, because I imagine that's what he's been saying his entire life, and I don't think it would make sense for him to switch to French after 100+ years just to transform, especially when it isn't necessary for those around him to know what he's saying.

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Pokemon! :D

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

How am I suppose to only chose one???????

Overall, probably Crimson and Noire, as I put a lot of time and effort into planning it, it's going to be my longest fic ever, and it includes a lot of elements I've always wanted to use in an ML fic.

Honorable mentions would be my Waiting series, United, and Withered Wings.

-------

I'm going to tag: @celestialtitania, @agrestebug, and @knitting-fairy-marinette. :D FayBugMomoJJ!

#i got tagged #miraculous ladybug #my fics #this was fun

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starfleetholmes · 5 years ago

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🌟 fic of the week 🌟

The Lost Special: Family Matters (As Do Relationships) by ShirleyCarlton / @shirleycarlton

(M, 144k words, 40 chapters. Tags: S4 fix-it fic, nothing was as it seemed, Unreliable Narrator, John's alibi theory, Sherlock and John were in cahoots against Mary the whole time, Villain!Mary, TFP was John's coma dream, John's Mind Bungalow, Eurus is a liar, she's not The Other One, there is an Other One though, sherrinford, Redbeard - Freeform, Redbeard was a dog after all, Misunderstandings, alternating povs, Friends to Lovers, Missing Scenes, Happy Ending)

Sherrinford is not really the name of some high security prison. That was just a figment of John’s frantic coma dream. And Eurus is not actually Sherlock’s sister. That’s just something random she said to John before shooting him. Sherlock and John were never actually estranged. That was just their act to cover up what really happened to Mary – or Rosamund Moran, as her real name has turned out to be. Sherlock does have a secret sibling, though, and his name is Sherrinford.

After finally eliminating Moran – though in a rather dramatically different way than they had envisioned – and exposing the truth about Eurus, John encourages Sherlock to delve into his past and to find out whether the reasons to keep Sherrinford away from Sherlock were the right ones, and to discover what really happened in 1981. Along the way, Sherlock and John gradually, finally, stop keeping each other at a distance, and eventually become a proper family of their own.

When I first came across with this fic two years ago, the idea of an s4 fix-it based on all the theories that tried to find an explanation for the plot holes in the show made me really excited but I got the opportunity to read it only now and I must say I'm quite happy with the timing because I happened to read the tfp related chapters on the day the episode was released three years ago, I just love this kind of coincidences.

There's so much I want to talk about this magnificent fic that I don't even know where to start. Firstly, I'm not going to turn this post into a rant about series 4 but you need to know that I deeply hate it and even thinking about it makes me shudder. The author takes the disaster that was s4 and fixes all the plot holes of it with clever ideas, gives all the characters their well-deserved developments and actually convincing backgrounds and most importantly let the characters repair their relationships by communicating properly. By the end of the fic “everything is resolved and there are no loose ends”.

One of my favourite things about this fic was that Sherlock and John promised to never hold off any information from each other, they trusted, respected, loved and protected each other at every situation and always worked together to defeat their enemies. (This is what I love the most about their relationship but sadly, s4 took it away from us.)

I loved how none of the characters were superficial and each of them had their own story and motivation and they all got the endings they deserved.

I especially want to thank for Sherrinford because he was one of the most unique and beautiful characters I've ever read. I've always thought the idea of a third Holmes sibling was unnecessary but Sherrinford in this fic makes the story even better and this way we got a painful but believable backstory for the Holmes family, especially for Sherlock. The way Sherlock found out what really happened between him and Sherrinford in the past and then found a way to communicate with Sherrinford was beautiful and tragic at the same time.

By the way, I want to thank you for the thing you did with Rosie's name, you fixed even that, you're amazing. @shirleycarlton

In conclusion, I might be bitter over s4 for the rest of my life but this incredible story certainly made me feel better about a lot of things. And I must admit that the ending notes made me so emotional I actually cried. (Thanks for the nod to the Contact accounts on Twitter, I'm a big fan of them since the beginning.)

Please read this masterpiece if you were disappointed with series 4 and you want a much better version of it, I promise you won't regret it.

Snippet from Janine and Sherlock's little chat in chapter 18:

“You love him, don’t you,” she suddenly said. It was not a question.

Sherlock looked up at her, shocked. She’d teased him about John before, implied things in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. But now she was dead serious. Her eyes were even sadder than before.

Sherlock swallowed and said nothing.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay to love him and to be scared. But you’ve been scared for such a long time, and it breaks my heart. You’re so afraid to lose him, that it’s almost like… a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t lose him to this bullet, then please don’t let yourself lose him by keeping your distance, as you have been doing, and killing yourself slowly inside.” She looked at him intently. “I hate to see you like this. I wish for you to be happy. Both of you. If he wakes up, please tell him.”

#fic of the week #sherlock #johnlock #fic #johnlock fic recs #moodboard #the lost special #mine

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