#if it’s not normal then why tf does it exist

[luciferanalyzestar]

"Not a critical/anti blog but all they make is critical/anti posts!" @ that one person. Does that person think you have to blindly defend every type of media you like? Like goodness gracious, people weren't kidding when they say the Hellaverse is cultish, because why tf you hoping someone kills themselves over your previous haha sex, fuck funni demon show? You can still like something and point out the flaws within it. You SHOULD be able to, especially consider this is an ADULT show. Nothing is immune from criticism. The more and more I see of Hellaverse based blogs they gets so fucking angry at the critical blogs or just blogs who critique the show minding their own business, and interacting with fellow criticals or people who have issues with the show. Like, damn, if these people bug you so much, just block them. Sorry y'all are going through this harassment. It's a reason I don't really have a critical or critique blog of Hellaverse, the fans can be so fucking toxic.

That person is the definition of unhinged, like she is just screaming at the void. She is ranting and raving and calling people the r-slur at the big age of 26 because there are people who do not like the “haha sex, fuck funni” demon show. With all the “fucks”, “fucking”, and “shit” it sounds like she is written by Viv herself. /j 😭

Like, do I have to pull out this meme:

You can still like something and point out the flaws within it. You SHOULD be able to especially consider this is an ADULT show. Nothing is immune from criticism.

This is 1000% correct. I still like Hazbin and I like pointing out its flaws. I never seen a fandom full of grown ass adults get full blown angry over criticism about a cartoon and even running critics who are FANS out of the fandom. This is why I do not interact with the fandom on Twitter, it is very mean girl "you cannot sit at our lunch table" vibes dues to the majority of infamous stans following or knowing each other. It is an echo chamber.

Fans are free to block us and blacklist the tags if we kept showing up in the normal tags. The angry stan does have critical tags blacklisted but still views critical posts and accounts, like block the accounts, move on, and forget that they exist.

The fans who harass critical accounts just make the fandom look even more worst and really unwelcoming. I already said, the standom and the hatedom acts the same way.

[chikoyama]

not me realizing i might have accidentally made chiyori mildly neurodivergent, but probably high-functioning. she’s probably masking a fuckton to compensate.

she’s kinda sensitive to touch, so she’d always be careful to touch other people herself unless she feels 100% comfortable around them. if she needs someone’s attention, she’d normally she’d just grab their clothes (like sleeve) instead to avoid direct physical contact. she doesn’t randomly seek physical contact unless it has practical purpose (lovers might be an exception). if the situation isn’t urgent, she’ll ask: “is it okay, if i touch you?” because she thinks they might be as sensitive as her (she’s projecting). for people who are just naturally touchy-feely, she’d probably get startled at first, but might get used to it, or learn how to tolerate and respond to it.

she’s compelled to animals, especially cute ones. she’ll emphasize with them a lot. as a kid, she’d spend her pocket money on buying treats to feed street cats, or her pet rabbit instead of candy for herself, lmfao.

for people who aren’t able to get past her ‘mask’, chiyori will continue to appear timid when interacting, or she might expend a lot of energy trying to not appear unpolite. once it slips, she can be quite mischievous though.

she’s likely hyper-empathetic. she has a lot of compassion, even for strangers. it might be hard to actually offend her, because she’ll reason it by looking at the situation from their perspective. even in her younger years she might have been susceptible to being (ab)used.

a lot of emotional monitoring, which means she’ll be constantly scanning the moods of other people to understand how they’re feeling, so she can adapt her own behaviour. that’s why she might appear intense with her staring and gauging — she’s just analysing the other’s emotions and reactions. people who appear stoic or inscrutable in a way might make her incredibly nervous though.

things that might appear obvious to other people, might not be to chiyori, so she might ask questions that are considered dumb. usually, she’d try to conceal it by asking in an elaborate way. “so, uh, what’s your definition of [insert term]?��

hyper-observant. might be tied to being hyper-empathetic, but she notices small details about people and her surroundings. she’s good at listening, asking questions, noticing subtle social cues that makes it easier for her to appear considerate and blend in. i’m not sure she’d know how to channel it into something actually useful in her younger years.

in a larger social setting, chiyori would probably prefer to be hovering in the periphere to observe people and their behaviours. it’s easier for her to interact one-on-one rather than in larger groups of people, because the sensory input from multiple people might overwhelm her. she only has two eyes — can’t monitor the emotions of everyone at once.

chiyori might be oblivious to flirting or sarcasm, or like she’d understand it but not know exactly how to respond to it, even if she is interested? she’d likely learn as she gets older. in her younger years, she might take a lot of said things literally, but learns the meaning behind eventually.

a lot of these personal ‘quirks’ she finds a way to cope with, or learns how to apply to her own advantage as she gets older. in her younger years, people might just think of chiyori as naive, dumb, or adorable even. she usually gets away with it, because she’s… well, a girl, i think?

chiyori doesn’t feel the urge to share her interests with other people. most likely, she’d just do her own thing, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t crave or enjoy company. she just doesn’t feel the need to share unless prompted, or she knows they’re like interested, or like there’s a specific goal to it?

i don’t really think she questions her own behaviour a lot? mental well-being, neurodivergency etc. isn’t a prominent focus in japan and might be considered a topic of taboo even. i think most people and chiyori herself just accept her as she is, because she’s not being brash or an obvious inconvenience to others. unfortunately, it might be more to her own detriment.

[musical-chick-13]

Again, always very confusing to me when people suffering from The Obsessive Compulsives are Antis™, like these people will not protect you. They believe thought crimes are real. They inherently hate you and WILL throw you to the wolves if they ever come to know about anything related to your intrusive thoughts or the """""weird""""" things they ask you to do in therapy to manage/cope with them.

[cryptidapprentice]

[heavenlyraindrops]

smut writing tips (TW: sexual stuff cause like. Cmon. It’s smut)

I did one for character so now I’m doing one for smut what’s wrong with smut huh so what if I’m writing tips on how to make smut so what SO WHAT HUH

Smut scenes aren’t that different from normal scenes. Probably because they’re normal scenes. Remember that.

Therefore, they should have dialogueeee because boy oh boy the amount of smut I have read where they are just dead silent is insane I could rebuild the wall of china with allat

so… dirty talk

BUT DONT MAKE IT TOO LONG! OR TOO WEIRD…

“Do you think they’d watch?” he asks. “Do you think they’d enjoy the sight of your naked flesh on display? Maybe they would get off on seeing your dripping pussy reflected back at them everywhere they look. Or the pretty flush on your chest when you come. I think they’d even enjoy watching your eyes roll to the back of your head when my cock fills you so fully, you can’t fit any more of me inside you.”

That’s from haunting Adeline… and… just.. no. NONONONO ITS DISGUSTING ITS GROSS…. WHO TF SAYS THAT BRO. Why is tHIS BOOK SO POPuLAR

more gross examples: “You want to know what I’d do?” he questions. “I would let them watch. I would let them watch me claim you as mine and own every inch of your body. They would watch my cock fill every one of your holes and then watch you cry because of how hard you came. And then I’d fucking kill them. My cock would still be wet from your cum as I’d slice their throats for even daring to look at what’s mine.”

dont write like that guys… like ew. Just ew

also.. epithets.. ok idk what they’re called because English = not my first language but

like

”his member” “sword” “love button” “seed” “her peaks/ nubs”

look my dude if you can read a smut scene like “he inserted his sword inside her cavern and spewed his seed inside her while fondling her mounds” then sure pop off I guess but tbh

no.

JUST USE COCK DICK AND PUSSY OR SOMETHING IDK WHY U GOTTA DO THIS TO ME I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO SEE CERTAIN THINGS THE SAME WAY EVER AGAIN

“his member” I’m sorry is his dick joining a club?

anywaysysystst

research human body stuff. Like, dicks need to recharge before they get hard again yk

“Recharge” idk bro yk what I mean

cumming more than once for women do be kinda painful unless there’s an amount of time in between the orgasms

like depends on the woman, can range from a couple of hours to at least a whole day

although this doesn’t apply to everyone and some people do just go for it a bunch of times in one session so it’s a very variable thing

so yeah! Make sure to educate urself on biology

spemd more time talking about how they feel physically and emotionally than what they are doing so that the scene actually does have some depth

consistency! I have read shit that goes along the lines of “he grabbed her waist then with his other hand stroked her cheek and then she wrapped her legs around his feet and he pressed his elbow againts her knee flipping her upside down while she nibbled on his ear” how am I supposed to imagine any of that

they keep sprouting a third arm

or do things that completely contradict the position that they are in.. he can’t slap ur ass if ur in the cowgirl position..well, not very comfortably

so. Consistency! :)

that’s all for now ermmmm so yah tell me if this was helpful guys

edit: this post is super old pls ignore its existence

[j00d]

Octavia, Azathoth's Tears, and What It May Mean for Sinsmas

So... I'll admit, I might've been left in the oven for too long, but I have to ask:

This still of Octavia:

Doesn't this remind anyone else of Azathoth's Tears?

And how the colours in both previous pictures are similar to the colour of Octavia's power?

Granted the colors aren't all 1:1 and could be coincidental, but I can't help but think that if this is, in fact, supposed to be one of Azathoth's Tears, it means that she's holding a symbolic manifestation of, as Stolas said, "tears made of the hopes and dreams of every living thing that never came to be." Specifically... her own.

(But let me cook just a little bit more. I promise I turned the oven on broil and I'm just trying to get some nice kwispy browning on top.)

Based on the (admittedly limited) animation this clip of Octavia provides, I also believe she's singing. Here's the list of why I think that:

The framing of the animation

Octavia's mouth animations are slower than normal talking speed (speculative)

The second half of season 2 focuses on parallels and theme callbacks to the first half

Octavia's mental state last we saw her in Mastermind

The show's emphasis on incorporating musical theater language into the narrative (when emotions run too high to talk, you sing, and when emotions are too high to sing, you dance)

Viv's confirmation there's at least one song (diegetic or nondiegetic) included in every Helluva episode

I'm not 100% saying this is true, just that I think it's a decent argument to make, given what context we have.

Okay, let's assume there is an Octavia song in Sinsmas. What does singing have to do with the connection I made between the clip and Azathoth's Tears and the color of Octavia's powers?

If Octavia does get a song, it'll be about how her hopes and dreams concerning her own family are never going to exist and how she needs to let that go.

"You never loved Mother, and you don't love me. You love him."

If this quote is real and not a fabrication, then it also supports this idea due to how definitive it is. Compare it to her previous speculative tone in S2E2 when asking Loona, "Why does [Stolas] hate her more than he loves me?" The definitive nature makes me believe that she doesn't need to speculate anymore.

Regardless of whether she's actually correct or not, whether Stolas hates Stella, loves Octavia, and/or loves Blitz, she's already made up her mind about what's going on. Her letting go of this familial hope manifests as this definitive statement.

It's up in the air about how sympathetic or unsympathetic she'll be towards her father by the end of season 2, but if my theory crafting is true, we gonna get a pretty fucking huge character moment for Octavia one way or the other.

Or I need to get tf out of the oven.

Idk.

Maybe Stolas' brain is being a bitch and hurting our already hurting birdie babe.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's past 4AM, and if I don't get to bed in the next 10 seconds my fiancee will absolutely slaughter me worse than a goddamn D.H.O.R.K.S. agent.

[erenfox]

RANKING SBG SHIPS BECAUSE LOKI GAVE US ALL FREE WILL 🗣🗣🗣🔥🔥🔥

Aidlyn/Ashden: good lord the chemistry. the 'he fell first but she fell harder' trope. the lil gestures by aiden. him annoying tf out of her but also becoming very caring when she's hurt. I'M SO CALM RN GUYS. and the fact that them ending up together is inevitable lmfao XD 9/10

Benlor: FUCKKK IM SERIOUSLY NOT OK THESE TWO ARE JUST SO PURE AND SWEET TO EACH OTHER. ESPECIALLY TAYLOR TOWARDS HIM, cuz he kinda suppresses his feelings and is a sad boi :( dw ben taylor's gonna make you feel happy again fosho lmao 😭 the lil blushing ben always does around taylor! her supporting his ideas even tho they flop! her helping him calm down from barron through music! her always cheering him up whenever he's gloomy! her being the first to thank him for opening up! THEY'RE LITERALLY THE DEFINITION OF SHE FELL FIRST BUT HE FELL HARDER! GOD IM SO NORMAL ABOUT THEM 😭😭😭 10/10

Tylenol/Tylo: i never thought of the prospect of them together, but post tumblr i must say its interesting. not just them being the single ones in the team, but i like the way tyler defended logan against barron, and his general protective aura around logan. but then again tyler was kinda rude to logan in the start. but then again it gives nerd x jock vibes which to me r pretty cool 5/10

Tyden: LMAO the continuous saga of them pissing tf out of each other. it would be fuckin hilarious if they somehow end up together. but apart from the general hilarious bickering, there's not too much to it 5/10

Tayden: goddamn their friendship is so precious!! her painting his nails? her carrying him on his shoulders in dat one artwork?PURE BESTIE VIBES they just match each other's freak lmfao. 8/10

Logden: meh there are not any significant moments between these two. would definitely be cute, but i can't see it happening lol 2/10

Loglor/Taygan: no but why can i actually see this happening lol. the way theyre both so gentle around each other! then the way she was the first to help him when he got slashed by the phantom? and also the way she stood up for him when tyler was being rude? Cute! 6/10

Benlyn: ooh the two quiet people of the gang! they could work out really well bcoz they definitely understand each other's struggles with muteness and phantom hearing respectively. plus that panel of ben braiding ashlyn's hair was so cute lmao :> 7/10

Loglyn: AAA they have sm potential!!! before the events of yk the whole ✨sAvAnNaH✨ mess, i feel like they wouldve been each other's only existing acquaintance they may call friends (ik it's not canon but it's very plausible lol) 6/10

Benlo/Logben: theyd definitely be good together, it's just that my sbg memory is failing to recall any significant moments b/w them ;-; if y'all remember pls do tell 4/10

Tyben: what is with the hernandez siblings always ending up being bens biggest supporters lmao XD it's a cute dynamic honestly 5/10

Taylyn: now this is one freakin adorable ship TvT. the way taylor always had a slight pang of concern for a friendless lonely ashlyn when they were kids? and the way they quite frankly became besties after enduring all the phantom world shit? very sweet lmao 7/10

Tylyn/Ashler: i have been usurped into the tylyn propaganda by @tragedry honestly I DO NOT COMPLAIN. like holy fuck they're so enemies to lovers! them "loathing" each other, fighting for leadership, but then immediately becoming possibly the biggest protectors of each other in times of danger??? extremely wholesome lmao i love them smmm 9/10

SO THE TOP SHIPS ARE:

3. TAYDEN (the crack ship) 😈🔥🥉

2. tie b/w TYLYN and AIDLYN (the wholesome ships) 😌👌🥈

1. BENLOR (THE PUREST SWEETEST MOST ADORABLE GOOFS EVERR I-) 🥺❤🥇

[aromanticannibal]

Ojiro hate exists??????? Tf did that little guy do... He's just some guy...

I understand why people would think Ojirou dislikes Shinsou to be honest because until season 5 happened, Ojirou did look mad, or at least annoyed, at Shinsou for using him to win during the Sports Festival. The thing is that that doesn't make him evil, Shinsou was in fact in the wrong for not asking Ojirou normally and using his quirk on him without his consent. I don't think Shinsou is evil either, he's a desperate kid who looks like he's been rejected a lot, but he did a shitty thing and Ojirou would be right to dislike him as a result.

Thing is that Ojirou DOES NOT DISLIKE SHINSOU OH MY GOD. LIKE WOW HE LIKES HIM. We barely see them interact but everytime they do interact after the joint training arc (where Ojirou just looks surprised to see Shinsou) Ojirou is SO excited to see him.

Like come on. He's one of the characters smothering Shinsou when he makes his grand comeback before the war restarts, he's literally wagging his tail.

This official art is from chap. 146 which is still pretty early on and Ojirou is looking at Shinsou with a little smile and they're talking to each other. Like this is a nice interaction they r not arguing or giving each other the cold shoulder. And of course.

LITERALLY dying rn. Ojirou wants to be friends w/ Shinsou so bad it's adorable he's literally doing the tailman equivalent of wrapping your arm around someone if this was like Kirishima and Bakugou people would be going INSANE over this (rightfully so).

Anyways to answer your actual question I fear it's not that people hate Ojirou it's more that people need a villain for their story. I personally think it's often cheap to take a perfectly nice character and make them an asshole for the sake of conflict but a lot of people do it. In Ojirou's case it's especially out of character given he is a genuinely nice boy and does like Shinsou.

I do ship shinoji I'm sorry I fear it may have come through my rant

[lalicaism]

Cod mw 2 with a young therapist reader

various platonic cod x g/n reader

Now most of the guys would rather not talk about their feels and their trauma from their missions and shit but now required by their respective bases and nations a therapist is required for each task force and base to exist. With them being grown ass men who probably have been shut out from the world other then their missions and out of base duties, they have no idea how to outside civilian world works now. When you first came to the task 141 base you were greeted with surprised reactions to how old you were, major professionalism and a distrustfulness in the air, The majority of the boys (mostly ghost) are wary around sharing with you even with things that have nothing to do with mission or personal background like their favorite color or hobbies in case you might find a way to use it against them.

Price : probably the second most willing for therapy after gaz, He doesn’t share as much as a normal person would because why tf would you need to know EVERYTHING that has ever happened to him. He’s does warm up to you but as much as a task force leader can, very concerned about your own mental state and health because he once was in a session with you and he suddenly told him you were high as shit and he spent the rest of the day looking after you.

Gaz : the most willing person! He knows that he has seen some shit and that some times that shit need to be talked about. More thinking that you were unfit to really be part of the task force to stay here almost 24/7 365 and only leaving once a month for 3 weeks, that was until he had brought you to the shooting range they had and you had shot a P45 like it was a second joint in ur arm he was impressed. Speaking of the shooting range I feel like it would be gaz’s calming place were he can shoot guns without a care or guilt to creep up on him later.

Soap : unlike how most people would think, I feel like soap wouldn’t like a therapist, not that he would feel like they would bother him but what if they leak information or if they got kidnapped and interfaced by an enemy. So many thing run rapid in his mind like the fact he thinks you’re a normal citizen and that you have zero military training, he thinks that your another person he has to protect and not have people bum rush you. He’s presence around you is like a fed up older brother who is tired but his prospect of you would change when graves took over under the command of general shepherd and you acted as a unknown spy for the now rouge 141 with the shadow company and even them not knowing you were sided with the 141.

Ghost : this is not the first time ghost has met you and he fear wouldn’t be the last. The first time you guys met was when you were a normal cadets and he was a LT in training, you had been assigned to his task force “group” called the '47 flyers.' Or the flyers for short. You had been one of the hardest smart assed mouth cadets he was to this day even worked with, constantly putting in your opinion in final orders or strategies or going rouge on a mission or a house sweep. Though those things did help and/or made the missions carry out easier, you were still a smart ass. The second time you guys met is now when you became the 141 therapist, ghost does give you your credits when it’s due like you have matured and the smart assness of your mouth has toned down a lot. He prays to and thanks whatever or whoever fixed you and your smart ass mouth.

Shadow company

Graves : smart ass moth southern boy, it’s giving he needs young coochie with how he’s acting. Definitely flirting and when you just sit there like dude I’m like 20 and ur probably way over 20, bro laughs and says with a straight ass face “it’s still legal Im gonna make you howel like a beagle” you look at him and walk out of ur own office. It’s giving whistle with josh, grave probably has one of those slide show videos with extra brightness and lots of exposure to the old Apple slide show music…he keeps it hidden and locked up it’s his deepest fear that some one will find it and he will never love that down.

[mazeinthemiroh]

I have a request thats kinda angsty but could I ask for a Stray Kids reaction to catching someone sneaking food you’re severely allergic to into a dish and they are very dismissive saying things like ‘how bad could it really be’ ‘they're just overreacting’ ‘that’s not a real allergy’ ‘I only put in a little’. Thank you!

stray kids reactions to someone not taking their s/o's allergies seriously

genre: general, slight angst?

warnings: mentions of food/allergies, cursing

a/n: it's still so surprising to me that there are people like this that actually exist and still do these things?? if this is something you go through anon i'm really sorry, people should know to have their boundaries and not brush things off as being only a 'minor allergy'. i have a friend who suffers from serious allergic reactions and its something that needs to be taken more seriously :/

bangchan

he just wouldn't let this happen. at all. even if they are persistent or undermine just how allergic you are to what they've brought with them, he immediately shuts it down. chan has made sure to know everything about your allergies, and if you are hyperallergic to something then there's absolutely no way chan is gonna let even one molecule anywhere near you.

lee know

minho is like chan in this way. he is very protective of you and your health is his top priority. he'll give this person one of his signature deathly glares before raising a sharp eyebrow. he doesn't feel he has to say much; just the stern look he gives them is enough to get them to back off with the food. he'll keep an eye on what food you will have for the rest of the night, just in case.

changbin

changbin is glaring daggers at this person. after politely reminding them of your allergies, if this person still is persistent and DARES to call you over-dramatic, changbin feels himself getting hot. "over-dramatic, huh?" changbin would quirk up an eyebrow "well it's time for me to be 'over-dramatic' now. get tf out" and will show them the door. he doesn't usually like making a scene unless it means defending you.

hyunjin

all that's going through hyunjin's mind is how inconsiderate and cruel this person is? he can't tell if they are just joking or whether they really just have that much audacity. he'll be so passive-aggressive with them and reinforce the fact you are severely allergic to the food they have brought with them, something he honestly never thought he'd have to explain so fully to someone.

han

he honestly thinks the person is joking at first when they start saying 'how bad can their allergy really be' because bitch?? it's an allergy get tf out. he's so ready to fight them to be honest like he's done with their bullshit from the minute they shrug off your very serious allergy. he will literally laugh in their face before telling them to either get rid of the food or get rid of themselves.

felix

felix is always mindful of other people and is generally good at adhering to people's needs. he knows of your allergies and, because he bakes a lot, likes making recipes that you can eat and enjoy without suffering?? yk like a normal, nice person would?? when he hears this person defend why they have brought this food in and say it's no big deal, he is appalled and stands up for you immediately.

seungmin

seungmin would peacefully and subtly pull them aside and explain your allergies to them in extensive detail. because lord knows he has thoroughly memorised everything you can and can't eat. and when the person still protests he's stubborn and firm with it; he's not going to let their carelessness hurt you in any way. "they can't have that, end of story." he'll be so stern when it comes to your health.

jeongin

jeongin knows you can take care of yourself but he does get quite defensive and protective with regard to your allergies because he knows how severe your reactions they can be. it's only natural for him to care for you. if this person still brushes it off and acts like they don't care, he takes matters into his own hands and resorts to throwing the food out himself.

[lord-squiggletits]

Y'know the thing about writing feral/unhinged versions of Orion/Optimus, is that you can't go too far into the feral/unhinged direction to a point where OP's core character traits are lost or become too diminished. After all, in a multiple-continuity franchise like TF, part of what makes the stories make sense is that even if details change (sometimes major details), the characters are still recognizably themselves to one degree or another. (Although this isn't always the case due to executive meddling or some characters being such blank slates from their initial G1 appearances that there's basically nothing to model them off of, but I digress.)

It's pretty much another reason why I love IDW1 Optimus, bc he literally is a canonical feral/unhinged Optimus who's unhinged as a direct consequence of who he is as a person and what he's been through. Like, he still has those fundamental character traits of trying his best to be moral and make good choices, trying to be a role model, etc, except after 4 million years of war and untreated depression he's basically holding onto his sense of self by his fingertips. So when he "goes feral" e.g. losing his temper and beating up/killing people or saying hurtful things, he's feral in a way that's directly tied to his normal personality and not just as a random quirk he has.

IDW OP's feral moments arise from the gaps between "Optimus' attempts to be who he thinks he needs to be" and "the reality of the world that he can't fix/seems to only make worse" that cause him to lose hope, or become cynical, or lose his temper. But in this case, the unhinged-ness makes perfect sense because it arises out of Optimus trying and failing to be the best person or to make the most morally good choices he's trying to make. Basically, the "feral/unhinged" label is just another way of me trying to say that he's not just unhinged because he's weird or because he's a bad person, but because it's an emotional reaction (more like an emotional explosion due to pent-up emotions) to the context he exists in.

I'd also say that IDW OP's personality being generally reserved/stoic and (trying to be) noble works in tandem with those moments he has of going feral because it makes him more realistic. His psyche is treated in a way where the writers are like, "Hey what if the pressure of having to be everyone's idol and be the best person in the galaxy at all times actually broke Optimus down mentally and emotionally?" It makes IDW OP far more relatable. Instead of naturally being a perfect Christ-like figure who never wavers in his morals or convictions and is just naturally a nice person who always has the wisest and best answer, being a good person is something that IDW OP has to consciously strive to be. Even when he feels like it's useless, or the cycle of violence will never stop, or any attempts he makes to help only ends up with things becoming worse.

And I feel like this does a service not only to IDW Optimus as a character, but also as a sort of moral/philosophical perspective for the reader to ponder upon? I feel like culture at large (or at least my experience of it) tends to believe that "goodness" in a person is simply an innate feature that people are born/not born with, and that being "good" means that you must be good at all times, both in your actions as well as the way you feel emotionally about yourself and the world. Like, there's a tendency for our vision of "a good person" to be good in every aspect at all times without having to try to be a good person. So I think IDW Optimus' character stands as a good example of how someone can be good at heart but still struggle to maintain those feelings of optimism and hope and justice. It's a good idea to have such a paragon of a character (in-universe and out-of-universe) be so conflicted and to even be mistaken, misguided, or make things worse because it shows that goodness is as much about "trying to behave/act in a way that is good" and not just "existing as an innately good person."

It's way more realistic for a person to want to be good, try to be good, and sometimes/often fail than it is for them to just be a good person. I enjoy the fact that IDW Optimus is both a good person at heart, but also has to strive to be a good person and live up to other people's expectations of what they see in him. I like how he wants to be a good person and change society for the better, but he also spends a good amount of time either feeling hopeless and alone or being angry at/detached from other people because of how frustrated they make him. He's realistically portrayed as someone who wants to be good and hopeful and change things for the better, but is also mentally and emotionally broken by that burden because of how impossible it is for him to Fix Everything and be the Perfect Prime/Leader/Autobot that people see him as. It's this fascinating mixture of "yes, this is who he is as a person" but also "there are things he desires to be that he could never possibly become or live up to."

This got really far off based from feral/unhinged Optimus sdklfjaslkdlfkas. The TLDR is that if people want unhinged OP, I feel like they should give IDW OP a chance because he IS unhinged but he's unhinged in a way that's a realistic/thematic representation of how being an Absolute Good is impossible. And how being a good person isn't just about Existing And You Are A Good Person, but rather goodness is a constant state of flux in which you adjust, you make mistakes, you lose your temper and feel hopeless, but then you pick yourself up and try again.

Also IDW OP really likes climbing in dangerous wilderness and jumping out of flying vehicles which I think is very feral and sexy of him to do.

[sweetlittletangerine]

Why Queenie Exists or something

Hey there! So I don’t really know how to put together this theory in a cohesive way and I made this for fun, so keep that in mind if I jump around a bit.

But I’ve had this theory for a long time now, and the fact Kinger is one of the two characters getting major focus in the next ep has just hyped me up even more. (Guess who my favorite is you’ll never guess it.)

So… as a not-so-normal Kinger fan, there’s a certain someone else who’s been rattling around in my brain for a while too.

Yes. She.

My theory is about why she even exists in the first place from a narrative standpoint. I have many other theories but this one feels like one of my most concrete ones (imo ofc), So I thought I’d share it before ep 3 comes out, even if it won’t come out for a while. I mean, it’s very possible this is the ep we learn about her since I don’t think she’s gonna be very relevant for any other character’s stories outside of Kinger.

ANYWHO time to get to the theory itself.

So let’s start off with one question. (Well it’s two, but same deal.) Why does Kinger get a look-a-like? Why not the others? Hell, Gangle exists and she has the whole ‘comedy tragedy mask’ thing going on.

Well it’s simple, he’s been there the longest. I personally don’t believe he’s the first player to join the game, but he’s been there the longest out of our main cast (Of humans). So naturally, that brings up another question… how did he last so long?

This is where Queenie comes into play. She’s important in understanding why Kinger hasn’t abstracted yet, which would tell us, the viewers, how a person can prolong their abstraction.

So for starters, I 100% believe without a doubt the reason these two look so similar is because they entered the circus at the same time. This means they started off with the same level of “girl where tf am I” When they arrived.

Second, when you compare and contrast their appearances, you realize that their differences… don’t actually affect how their bodies function. (Assuming the bottom half of Queenie is like Kinger.) So, they also came into the game with the same body when it comes to how they work. They had to adjust to the same new features in the same environment.

So when you combine these two factors, they were basically given the same tools to work with to survive (for as long as they can).

But the most important part of this… is their personalities. I love the theory that the chess pieces they became are tied to their personalities, with people connecting how Kinger’s personality relates to the role of the king in chess. (For those that don’t know, the king is the weakest piece and the queen is the strongest.) People have used this as a base to figure out who Queenie could’ve been. But if this is true then that wouldn’t be all. When you think about the role and power of each piece, you realize they’re opposites. So the bottom line here is that they’re very different people.

This impacts how they process and adapt to their new environment. And this is why Queenie abstracted and Kinger hasn’t. Some people truly are more adaptable than others in the circus. Queenie couldn’t handle the place as well as Kinger, making her lose her mind and abstract first.

Hell, we can already see something about Kinger’s personality that could’ve helped him out. I think the fandom (including myself) overestimated how much of a scaredy cat he is. The more I think about it, the more I realize that he’s not afraid of the adventures. He’s afraid of the circus itself, which is probably tied to his trauma.

(I’m aware it’s only been two episodes, but the only time we’ve seen him panic during an adventure is when an abstracted Kaufmo entered the Gloink Queen’s nest, suddenly making the adventure way more dangerous.)

You could argue he’s so chill on them because of experience, learning that at the end of the day if someone gets hurt or lost, Caine can snap his fingers and bring them back to normal. There’s pain, but no serious harm.

However, maybe he learned this a lot sooner than we think, back when he was adapting to his digital life. He internalized the fact that he’s not going anywhere sooner/better than Queenie, and was able to ‘go with the flow’ better than her. Who knows, maybe Queenie avoided going on adventures, (wink wink nudge nudge to a character Kinger is oddly fond of in the group), which gave her more time to think about her situation and mental state. The adventures are a surprisingly effective distraction from all of that.

If the story itself is supposed to focus on why the characters are the way they are, then it’s going to focus on the characters as individuals. And considering the fact Kinger and Zooble’s characters are heavily tied to their identities, that’s probably going to be one of the main themes of ep 3. So it makes sense that the reason Kinger lasted longer is tied to who he is and how he copes with the world around him (both now and back then.) This would, by extension, explore the fact that Queenie was her own person too, and now that that person is gone. The abstracted characters were all people, people who lost themselves as they went mad, leading to their inevitable abstractions.

So uh, I guess that’s all for now. Posting things online scares me so idk if I’ll post more things like this, but I might. If you read through this whole thing, then thanks!

Back into the pit I go

[lun6laveria]

tumblr i would like to properly introduce you guys to my benrey oc, Little B.

ok so first and most important thing if you squeeze him in your hand he makes a squeaky noisethat is his true form, HE IS that small HIS PASSPORT IS EXACTLY THAT SIZE… i definetly didint just think correctly when i was drawing this but now its true not normal sized passport you can squeeze him like a stress toy but if you throw him against the wall it MIGHT crack 50/50 chance of him either becoming one with the wall or it breaking he can posses objects and make them float he choses to walk most of the time even tho hes SMALL and hes been stepped on atleast 6 times he also SCOURS through black mesa vents like the lil rat he is he does this real oftently and yes he has rat friends hes also "accidentally" fallen inside scientist's experiments causing them to fail dont ask HOW. none of the scientist like that lil mf bc he ruins so many things except for OOOONEEEE that i wont be naming.. his fav UNEDIBLE food IS battery acid his fav edible food is strawberry jam sandwich he could eat it entirely and the only reason he hasnt left black mesa yet is bc he does not like his own realm not bc theres something wrong with it, hes just not satisfied ANDDD THIS GUY DOESNT REALLY ENJOY SPEAKING he only lets out squeaks sometimes (rarely) thats when scientists try talking to him he either just..stares at them, ignores them or runs tf away but hes not that fast you can hear squeaky noises when he walks or runs too he flipped one of them off once he really likes chewing on passports his bmsv is like a bunch of distorted black lines that can exist for 30 seconds to 5 mins thats why scientists see weird floating black lines sometimes around the facility you can MOLD him theres time to time where his clothes, his helmet and his body turn into clay-like he doesnt do this by himself he cant control it, but this IS kind of hard to happen and he also becomes like unconscious while this happens but if you do mold him he takes 1 hour to go back to normal if nothing touches him he takes only 2 mins to go back to normal HE CAN STILL CHANGE HIS OWN SIZE THOU but he likes being tiny the only times he'll ever change his size to bigger is to play his cello that he keeps somewhere deep in the facility n he only does it at night only being specific on the last part bc i love cellos. he can't feel pain, and he understands all languages if anyone has any other questions abt him dont be afraid to ask

[boonsmoon]

Hi there! May I please request a Yamcha x reader on their period if you write for him? If not, I'll happily take Raditz instead. (Both of them deserve more love tbh) Thanks if you consider and have a nice day/night! 💕

ur name is SO REAL

yes i'll do Yamcha

i like Raditz so i included him🤭

Request Chungus ML Dragon Ball ML Yamcha x f!reader, Raditz x f!reader Genres: Headcanons|Fluff|Romantic

On Your Period

Yamcha

you aren't his first period experience, that would be Bulma, and to be honest, i don't think you can be as bad as her

has committed your box to memory in case you run out, he's just considerate like that🤭

ok technically it was kinda on accident, Bulma and one of his past side chicks had the same kind

bro lowkey doesn't know what to do about cramps, you got 3 different types of pain meds, a heating pad AND heated plush, bro even bought you snacks

either way he doesn't bother you when he can tell they're being painful, he does NOT wanna get on your bad side

you went back to normal after a day or two, sure, but he still insists you keep the meds on the bedside table or in a bag when you go out

he learned VERY quickly from Bulma that cramps might just hurt worse than dying frfr

we don't speak of the incident between those two, that his hidden lore never to be dug up

Raditz

so i have no idea if saiyan women have periods, maybe, maybe not

but lets say THEORETICALLY that they did, Raditz would still have no idea what to do with you

bro is a GUY, he has been surrounded by men since he was like 5, HE ISN'T EDUCATED LIKE THAT, and no, he doesn't bother doing research on earthling women, because why should he?

so you better hope you explained menstruation to this man, or else this week just got a whole lot longer

now lets say you did tell him, because our boy has gotta be prepared for these things‼️

he will try to argue with you less, key word: try, any sass you throw as him, he WILL throw back, it don't matter how much you're bleeding

regarding pads/tampons, he finds them confusing and kinda disgusting lol

"you bleed on multiple of those for a week and just...throw them out?" "yeah??"

"why the hell are you putting it in there-" "because of the BLOOD??"

you told him about the cramps but he didn't think it'd be this bad, so now he's just confused on how tf a heating pad and some pain meds are calming you down

after the first day or two you got back into your routine and he thought you were crazy, wasn't it supposed to last a week, why are you normal after a day???

now if you DIDN'T tell him, oh boy...are you in for it

AS PER THIS POST, he finds it hot🫦when you're sassy, as such when you start to get irritated more often he thinks you're coming onto him

it took several declines of his advances before he thought "maybe there's ACTUALLY a problem"

was utterly CONFUSED by your pads/tampons, you need these once month for a week? how useless. and yeah, still disgusted

don't even run out, that will be the most humiliating phone call, even if you can look back and laugh on it later

"girl, what pussy size you wear?" "...the purple ones in isle 9...with the flowers..."

now cramps? absolutely thought you were over exaggerating, no way a non existent wound hurts this much

anyways, after your two day recovery, he 100% thought you were cappin about this whole period thing, you said a week, not two days, get real

you were over it at this point and ended up getting a period simulator...yeahhh, maybe he'll shut his mouth next time🤭

so tragic Raditz's is longer, but he's my silly scrimblo i couldnt help it

[physalian]

Timeskips (A Deceptively Tricky Trope)

Anyone remember when we all went to the theaters to see Endgame and the trailers actually fooled us into thinking all the action happened immediately after Infinity War? Then 15 minutes into the movie, the Thanos we grew to love/hate dies and the bomb drops: “Five…Years…Later”

It’s a shame that the movie didn’t properly explore the worldly consequences of losing half the population in favor of a Marvel victory lap through all its greatest hits. That our heroes could do absolutely nothing for five whole years, opening on a shot of a cold and dark cityscape — that was the best use and execution of a timeskip I’ve seen in recent memory, even if the rest of the movie didn’t follow through with it.

Timeskips are an effective way to age up characters or age past the end of an era of peace, or the healing after a tragedy (or the lifeless aftermath of one). Usually, your established heroes do their heroic thing, and anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months to a couple years pass before the story picks back up again. Some may have died along the way, the political climate has changed, couples have had children, or babies have grown into their own characters, relationships have grown, begun, or fallen apart.

These damnable plot devices are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the author gets to skip sometimes decades of meandering plot and development to tell almost an entirely new story in the same universe, sometimes not even with the same characters who are now too old, too dead, or retired.

However, timeskips can also cause some massive confusion, missed opportunities, and fandom wars over whether or not the jaded and grizzled and depressed heroes we see on screen are, in fact, a realistic evolution from the last time we saw them (looking at you, Star Wars).

Sometimes, they’re used in a single episode, thrusting a present character into the depressing dystopian future so they can prevent whatever causes said future before disaster strikes (Teen Titans "How Long Is Forever?"), and all returns to normal by the time the credits roll. Sometimes, the author really wanted the drama and angst of a pregnancy, then got stuck with a baby that needs constant attention from its parents who can no longer go do Plot Things until the baby can take care of themselves (The Originals).

Sometimes it’s the jump between two eras of a series, where our heroes have had a couple years of practice and now we can make the tone a little darker and the action a little more visceral. Or, it’s expected of a multi-book saga that regularly jumps a year ahead with each edition, leading up to the big prophecy (Percy Jackson, Harry Potter).

The Fundamentals of a Good Timeskip

As requested by Anonymous!

Telltale signs of a dubious skip:

Audience is expected to care more about an undeveloped newcomer than the pre-existing cast, because the current cast does without explanation

Audience is “told” to accept Catastrophic Event without being “shown” how and why it happened

Characters die, break-up, disappear, marry, change teams, or change entire personalities for ~drama~ and no other reason

The Book You Never Wrote was way more interesting than the future you brought us to

The new plot depends on Events Unwritten, but never shows or explains Events Unwritten

Timeskip only exists because the author is unable to make the leaps in logic themselves and hopes you won’t notice

The legacy of past heroes is trashed completely for More Story

Signs of a successful skip:

Characters we know and love are still themselves, just a little older and wiser

Characters that do change do so logically, within reason, and could have been extrapolated from the last publication

Radical changes and the new hellscape you threw your heroes into is given ample screen time to show “How tf we got here”

The new world doesn’t disregard or ignore the legacy and victory of past heroes

Absolutely nothing of import or unexpected happened in the interim, except time

Anyone who dies off-screen won the story by dying of old age, or some other respectful avenue (popular with aging mentors and old masters, usually when their actor also passes)

Whether your timeskip succeeds or fails depends entirely on, in my humble opinion, how much story you skip and sacrifice to make the jump, and how radical the changes are from the past to the future. And, to what degree the skip serves as a means to an end or the centerpiece of the new story.

Meaning that since you leave weeks, months, years, or decades unwritten, how interesting was the Book You Never Wrote, and how badly would audiences need to read it to understand the jump from A to B?

If I’m writing a ten-year skip and half my heroes have died, half have ended wonderful relationships, two kids have been born, a known hero has become a villain, and an entire city’s been destroyed… that is a *very* interesting story I wish I had the opportunity to read, because it sounds like every character I fell in love with is about to become unrecognizable and very frustrating to follow now that I don’t understand why they make the choices they do — *if* I’m never shown evidence to support the leaps in logic.

If I’m writing a ten-year skip and all that happens in the interim is a minor child character is now a tween with a pretty average life, or my super-powered heroes have had only mediocre rogues to battle, or a character who began in the mail room is now a middle manager at their boring job, then, yeah, we can skip all that jazz and get to the good stuff. This is usually the setup for your “next generation” skip for any genre.

Good timeskips also depend on how readily the characters accept and acknowledge the changes that have happened off-page, and how much the future story now depends on the information the audience never received. If your plot and your characters constantly reference and argue over the Book You Never Wrote, your audience won’t be pleased to not have read said book.

I’m going to use specific media here because the nature of a timeskip concerns entire plots and my usual vague examples don’t suffice. How you write and implement one is entirely up to you and each of these have their staunch defenders, I just don’t like them and I’m here to explain why. Hopefully if you’ve seen at least one of them, you can use them as a shining example of what (or what not) to do in your own work.

The fandoms in question:

The 100

Star Wars

Percy Jackson

Last Airbender/Legend of Korra

How to Train Your Dragon

The Little Mermaid

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The 100

The timeskips in question are between seasons 2 and 3, and between seasons 4 and 5. The first timeskip is a couple months between seasons 2 and 3. After a huge conflict (and easily the best season of the show by a country mile), shifting alliances, enemy-of-my-enemy, the best couple-that-never-was, the season ends with protagonist Clark unable to let herself enjoy the spoils of war because of the crimes she committed to make it happen. She leaves behind all her friends to go be a hermit, including deuteragonist Bellamy, who is Not Happy about this decision.

The problem: In between seasons, Clark hasn’t changed much, but Bellamy sure has. He gets a girlfriend, develops an entire relationship, only for this girl to get fridged within the first 50 minutes or so of season 3. He takes her death super hard and, with Clark not there, spirals into a bit of a blind-faith fascist turning on all his friends and becoming nigh unrecognizable. Without seeing the growing relationship with the fodder girlfriend, without seeing how hard life has been for him without Clarke, all his choices, all his beliefs, all his pontificating sound completely foreign and out of character and he does not recover until it’s almost too late. As he’s the deuteragonist of the show, you can only take yelling at your TV for all his stupid and OOC decisions for so long, when it could have been done so much better.

The second damning timeskip is five whole years between seasons 4 and 5. Bellamy develops another unseen romance up in space, his sister becomes a bloodthirsty underground queen, and Clark devotes her entire life to raising a little girl she finds.

The problem: Clark cares a lot more about protecting the little girl than anything else, a choice audiences can’t empathize with because we’re still siding with the characters we’ve watched grow and suffer for four seasons, making Clarke an incredibly frustrating character to watch.

Five-year timeskips are fine. I think I’m in the minority in hating this decision by the writers. However, when your characters’ motivations change so radically without you being able to follow that development, making their new choices seem incredibly inconsistent with who they’re supposed to be, the disconnect is super strong. We’re being told at this point to care about these strangers over the existing cast without ever having been shown why.

Star Wars

Timeskip in question: Return of the Jedi to The Force Awakens. Enough time for Rey to look like a 20-something and, I believe, the exact same gap between the movies in the real world. The argument over Luke’s character has been beaten to death by now. We end Return of the Jedi with the promise of a galaxy in peace after decades of civil war between the Rebels and the Empire and the ultimate sacrifice from Anakin.

The problem: We open Force Awakens like the war never ended. There’s still stormtroopers, there’s still the Empire (though, now it’s called the First Order), there’s still Rebels rebelling. The happily ever after one would expect between Han and Leia is shattered because their kid went Dark Side. Their kid went Dark Side because… well, one side, the other side, and the unrevealed truth.

It’s less “Luke would never make these choices” and more “How do you expect audiences to believe Luke made these choices without seeing the pain and trauma inflicted on him to end up like this”. The casual fan only watches the episodic films. Luke ended one movie as a semi-optimistic war hero. He began the very next film jaded and traumatized enough to debate, and nearly go through with, murdering his nephew because of what he *might* do someday.

That anyone expected that to go over well was deluding themselves, but everyone knows these movies are a mess.

There’s also the disappointment in realizing all that Anakin lived and died for fell apart in less than 30 years. Who are these people calling themselves the First Order? Where did they get the funds, the resources, the platform to become as big a threat as they are? How did the Rebels fail so spectacularly at building a functioning government? How do they not have the funds, platform, and resources to buy better ships and equipment? How did no one realize they were hollowing out an entire planet to build another Death Star?

The Sequel Trilogy lost audiences when it refused to provide any explanations at all for *why* these changes happened. The movies don’t care about *how* Ben became Kylo, they just need you to accept that it happened. They don’t care *how* the First Order rose, just don’t look too closely or it all falls apart.

The skip between Empire Strikes Back to Return of the Jedi is also a bit sketchy, because Luke has done all his Jedi training off-screen and can just pull abilities out of nowhere, but the plot of Return of the Jedi doesn’t depend on having seen Luke grow.

Percy Jackson

I feel bad putting this here because it’s not nearly as egregious as the previous two, but because the original series was so good, these choices are that much more baffling. The timeskips in question: Sea of Monsters (2) to Titan’s Curse (3) and Last Olympian (5) to Lost Hero (6).

The books focus on a singular week or two per year, so Percy can age from 12 to 16 in time for the Great Prophecy by the end of the series. This series is filled with timeskips and unseen content, but the jump between books 2 and 3 is the most jarring. I just did a retrospective for both of them so if you happened to read that, I’m repeating myself a little.

The problem: At the end of SoM there is a huge shakeup in the realm of who will actually be the chosen one — a discarded chess piece has been revived and brought back onto the board. In the missing months, Percy has built an entire friendship and rapport with his would-be rival, and so many reunions were left unwritten between Thalia and the friends she left behind. It’s the depth of the missing content that really feels like they forgot to print a chapter in either book, particularly when she’s so important to the story.

Percy references quite a few times how good friends he and Thalia have become. Fantastic, on what page might I read that development, when the author spent quite a bit of time building up the presumption that you two would hate each other?

The other timeskip is the complete opposite. Last Olympian to Lost Hero is, I believe, only a month. Once again, we have a presumed happy ending and ultimate sacrifice completely torched for the sake of More Story. The original five-book saga culminates with the tragic death of a villain we’d watched for five whole books. His argument was the thesis of the first series.

The problem: As with Star Wars, everything that character died for is rendered mostly moot. There is evidence that his death meant something, in the positive changes seen in the lives of those that survived him, but he died preventing armageddon… and a month later Bigger Badder armageddon is on the rise.

I almost wish the timeskip here had been longer. A couple years, at the expense of aging up the heroes to their twenties. His legacy on the story is virtually nonexistent. When you look back at the horrible tragedy that was this kid’s life, all it amounted to, everything he fought for, everything he believed in and died for and lost friends for… bought only a month of peace.

The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra

Obviously, the timeskip in question is between these two series, about, what, sixty years? Last Airbender ends with, once again, the world at peace, ish, with lots of cleaning up to do, reparations to make, and governments to reshape. In the gap between series, almost everyone we knew has passed away, or aged out of being useful to the plot. Aang, of course, had to die so Korra could be born.

In the first season, because I’m reasonably confident all they planned was one season, the 60 year interim sees a lot of radical changes. Fan favorites die, the old ways are lost, the status quo is nothing like it used to be. So how do they get away with it?

Firstly, the show doesn’t begin with the main villains having already conquered Republic City and trashing everything the heroes fought for. The entire season is a crawl, then a plunge, toward disaster. They let you enjoy the fruits of the old characters’ labor, see the world that they built, before the new threat attempts to burn it down.

Secondly, because almost the entire original cast is dead or absent, there are no relationships sorely missing context, and there’s no *subversive* twists to what the audience could extrapolate from the ending of the old show.

LoK did make some radical changes to the world, but, crucially, it didn’t change the surviving core characters — we still have a known point of reference through which to view all the other changes. Katara is still Katara, she’s just older. Zuko is still Zuko, he’s just older. Katara didn’t become a persnickety, bitter bat and Zuko didn’t launch the Fire Nation Invasion II and return to his angsty ponytail-era.

It also helps that Korra is, like us, an outsider to this strange new world, a perfect vector through which the audience can ask questions and get answers on how, why, and when everything changed. LoK, unlike Star Wars, cared and thought about the *how* and the *why*.

If you’re going to write a story about the next generation without compromising the legacy of the old guard, Legend of Korra is a solid example of how to do it convincingly, respectfully, and entertainingly, even if it did drop the ball on some characters *cough*Sokka and Suki*cough*

How to Train your Dragon

But an even better example? How to Train Your Dragon to How to Train your Dragon 2. It’s been five years, a massive risk for your children’s animated fantasy series, but it’s also been almost five years of real-world time. Those who were Hiccup’s age when the first movie premiered are still Hiccup’s age when they head back to theaters. Not to mention the optional Netflix shows to help fill in the gaps.

Once again, there’s no *subversive* choices made with the relationships. Hiccup is still with Astrid and they’ve grown out of their awkward teenage phase. Their personalities haven’t radically changed either, only matured, the main group of heroes have had time to foster deeper bonds.

There’s no surprise children, no important characters who got killed off screen, and the changes to their homeland seem reasonable and logical given the time frame. A place that once feared dragons is now dedicated entirely to their preservation and conservation.

This is a timeskip that took advantage of every benefit of skipping time. The audience can very easily fill in the missing years with their imagination, because the jump from A to B makes perfect sense.

Frozen and Frozen II relied on the same mechanic of the audience growing with the characters with that one musical number. I’m not a fan of the execution of either of these movies, see this post about Frozen’s convolutions, but the execution of the skip itself is well done. All that’s happened in the interim is Elsa getting a little more comfortable being a person, and time has passed.

The Little Mermaid

The gap between Little Mermaid and Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea double-skips. First, it skips ahead to Ariel and Eric having an infant Melody, then about twelve years later to Melody being a tween and the new protagonist of the story.

Why it works: Melody is remarkably like her mother and rides the line between endearing and annoying very well and the plot depends on the skip happening at all – twelve years removed from the ocean and Melody has no idea her mother was a mermaid. Ariel and Eric (and Flounder) have grown to become wizened and worrisome parents and absolutely nothing remarkable happened unseen between the credits of the first movie and the second skip in the second movie. They get twelve years of peace, respecting the first movie’s legacy, and it’s through the actions of characters we see on screen that start jeopardizing everything.

—

Another feature I didn’t touch on earlier is that, by virtue of being a musical, the opening song to the Little Mermaid sequel efficiently catches audiences up on all the necessary exposition, all the old familiar faces, and where everyone is now in about 4 minutes. Frozen II does the same.

The Percy Jackson books also give a “previously on Percy Jackson” exposition speedrun at the start of books 2-5 and notes any important details that occurred in the missing months (save the glaring omissions detailed above).

If your time skip is just a plot device to get from A to Y, a well-handled exposition speedrun to catch everyone up won’t offend anyone, so long as you do it tastefully. If your skip is the centerpiece of the plot and the “how did we get here” is the big mystery, jarring your audience with the unexpected future on the opening pages is the point.

Do your best to avoid awkwardly having your characters state “X years have passed,” in dialogue because it’s always obvious and you can do better. Have somebody reference their upcoming birthday so audiences can do the math, or an anniversary. “X years have passed” cracks the immersion, as your characters don’t know or care that a time skip has occurred.

Or, if you’ve written a narrating style that talks directly to the audience, the narrator can just say “X months ago we did Y in the last book, reader, you remember how fun that was?” 

—

TL;DR, terrible timeskips happen, in my opinion, when the writers are disinterested with the interim and want to get to the good stuff without providing a logical jump to get there. Or, they happen when the time the story skips to jeopardizes where it came from without explanation. Whether that’s undermining the legacy of the original hero, ruining relationships and killing fan favorites for *subversion points* and *drama*, or creating a world so far removed from what audiences expected that they’re left confused watching their heroes make baffling decisions based on development they’re promised did happen, but is never shown. It’s one thing if you take your wide-eyed hero and toss him into a bleak future where everyone’s shocked by his pessimistic outlook, it’s completely different tossing your hero into a bleak future and none of his friends seem to care.

[aemiron-main]

I'm The Only Friend You'll Ever Have: Did Patty Get Agent Smith’d During TFS? Why Is Brenner Everbody?

So, I’ve been working on some other posts re: The Matrix vs ST & the idea that the weird Brenner-esque Henward that we see during the massacre is the result of Brenner pulling a Matrix 3 Agent Smith-esque move where he’s able to possess people/infect them like a computer program.

I’m specifically talking about what Smith does where he possesses Bane and Bane still looks like Bane, just with new parallels to Smith + Smith’s mannerisms, speech patterns etc-

-rather than Smith’s other ability to assimilate other residents of the matrix into himself/take over their bodies & shapeshift into them looking like him (although something like that could also be at play here considering all of the shapeshifter stuff in ST, especially both Brenner and Patty's shapeshifter references):

And so, I’m wondering if Brenner did something similar to Henward during NINA- but anyway, like I said, I have more in-depth drafts on that in the works, but right now, I want to take that idea and also apply it to TFS- specifically, to Patty.

So, I talked in this post about Patricia from Split vs Patricia/Patty Newby, and the Brenner-One stuff and the idea of Brenner with absorption abilities, and how that could connect to Patty in TFS.

And then, also keeping in mind all of the weird simulation stuff during TFS, such as the anachronistic song references the fact that Rachel, Nevada didn’t exist until 1978, and the CONSTANT references to The Matrix during TFS etc, such as Patty being referred to as “the anomaly,” versus Neo getting called “the anomaly,” in The Matrix-

-I’m now wondering if Brenner may have pulled an Agent Smith move with Patty during some of the TFS scenes and possessed her in a very similar way to Agent Smith with Bane, and like whatever’s going on with that weird Brenner-esque Henward during the massacre.

Like a puppet master.

Let’s dig in.

So, like I said, I’m wondering if some of Patty’s scenes are Brenner basically puppeting her- NOT all of her scenes, though, and eventually I’ll go through them all & figure out which ones this does vs doesnt apply to, but the main scene that I think connects to this is the Henry-Patty kiss scene.

So, when it comes to the kiss scene, the visual parallels between the Henry-Patty kiss scene and one of the Brenner-Henry scenes have already been haunting me:

But there’s more.

There’s a dialogue line from Patty during that scene that’s always stuck out to me- when talking to Henry, she says “we’re connected, whether you like it or not”:

Which, first of all, that line stuck out to me because it just seemed kind of odd and out of character for Patty (as does quite a bit of her behaviour/lines during this scene).

But second of all, it’s not only phrased eerily similarly to how TFS Brenner phases his lines, (especially with how it’s more forceful/“whether you like it or not,” versus Brenner always trying to control Henry/referring to Henry as US government property/saying nobody cares about Henry except for him/that Henry’s going to come crawling back to him etc etc) but it’s ALSO got parallels/shared word usage with two of Brenner’s lines:

1.) We have Patty saying “we’re connected,” versus Brenner constantly telling Henry to “connect,” with the shadow:

And 2.) We have Patty saying “whether you like it or not,” versus Brenner saying “you liked it, more even than you thought you would”:

And then we also have Patty saying “let me help you,” versus Brenner saying that he’s “here to help”:

And Patty also has the clasped hands during this scene- just like how we see clasped hands with Henward during NINA and Flayed Billy etc:

And interestingly enough, Patty’s clasped hand poss is basically a perfect combination of the two main hand clasp positions- Billy & Normal Henward’s (not pictured above but his hand clasp pose is the same as Billy’s) hand clasp position vs Weird Henward’s hand clasp position (hes the one in the above pic).

And on top of all that, during this scene, Henry says “it’s not you,” to Patty during this scene:

Which, on the surface, Henry is saying that Patty isn’t the problem/that Patty Herself Specifically isn’t the reason why he doesn’t want to do the kiss- but when we look at it subtext-wise, it connects to the idea that this literally isn’t Patty during this scene.

And that line gets EXTRA suspicious considering that we JUST saw a vision/fake version of Patty/“Not Patty” in the bathroom right before the kiss scene, wearing the same blue dress and everything- and doing the SAME HAND CLASP AS SHE DOES DURING THE KISS SCENE:

And so who knows if the kiss scene even really happened at all but that’s a whole other topic. So whether she’s being puppeted by Brenner or not, and whether the kiss scene is totally or partially a vision or not a vision at all, it still seems likely that this “isn’t Patty” during the kiss scene. Ppersonally, I’m wondering if this “isn’t Patty,” but not in the same way that the bathroom Patty wasn’t Patty, like with the bathroom scene being a vision & “not Patty” because that “Patty” isnt real vs kiss scene “Patty” being Patty physically but with some sort of weird Brenner puppeting stiff going on, esp because while Vision Patty and Kiss Scene Patty do both have the same hand clasp, Vision Scene Patty’s hair/wig is very obviously/intentionally wrong, which isn’t the case for Kiss Scene Patty However, despite what I just said, oddly enough, Patty also has the weird wig during the entire classroom scene that happens right BEFORE that bathroom scene (it might be hard to tell just from a screenshot but I 1000% guarantee that this wig in the pic is not her usual wig and IS the same as her bathroom scene wig):

And while at first I went "hmm, maybe this weird wig thing IS just a genuine "error"/her wig looks weird because she ends up pulling clips of it out and has a whole weird scalp brain thing under that wig during the bathroom scene so maybe that's why this wig looks odd, because they have to fit all that under there" but a.) there's so much 1000% intentional weirdness going on with the TFS hair/wigs (see: things like this post where I talked about Calum Ross' weird brown haired Henry wig versus brown haired 7 year old Henry) and the idea of wigs plays a large role in ST in general (see: S1 El's blonde wig), so they're very particular about how they use wigs/hair & how that connects to the plot, and b.) there's a fair bit of time where we see Henry alone in the bathroom prior to Vision Patty showing up/a fair bit of time where we aren't seeing Patty at all, so it seems like there may have been ample time to swap her wig from her normal wig to the vision scene wig (espeically since they quickly swap from the vision scene wig to the normal wig AFTER the vision scene for the kiss scene, like theres WAY less time between those scenes vs between the classroom scene and the bathroom scene, and it's Ella Karuna Williams in all of these scenes, so it's not just double with different wigs, instead, they ARE rapidly swapping Ella's wig).

So, did any of that scene really happen??? Did the scene before the bathroom scene even happen?? Did the kiss scene even happen??

And also, going back to The Matrix briefly, and what I talked about re: Agent Smith puppeting Bane, Vision Patty in the bathroom has a line that references the exact scene where it's revealed that Smith was puppeting Bane- Vision Patty says "We want the same thing" versus Smith-As-Bane saying "I want what you want":

Not to mention that right after that line, Smith-As-Bane says these lines about "nowhere"- versus Patty being the "girl from nowhere":

And so, I hate to say this, but if Brenner was puppeting Patty in some sort of simulation in that scene, then that makes the Henry-Patty kiss even worse- but it would track with all of the in-show “Brenner’s a creep” subtext re: Brenner and Henry, and would also track with how weird Brenner is towards Henry in TFS- TFS Brenner straight up acts like a jealous husband towards Henry and treats him like a battered wife.

The weird “””””romantic””””” tones from Brenner towards Henry are VERY on the nose, like there’s a parallel between Brenner/Henry and Byler- Brenner is acting all weird and jealous because Henry wants to leave the lab, but instead of assuming that “hey, maybe he wants to leave because everything that’s happening here is fucking horrifying and he also just almost died in here a little while ago,” Brenner instead immediately jumps to “you want to leave because you want to go to prom with some STUPID GIRL,” in a DIRECT parallel to the Byler rain fight scene:

Point is, having Brenner puppeting Patty during a kiss scene where Henry very much did NOT want to kiss would align with all of Brenner in-show creep stuff AND with the way he behaves towards Henry in TFS.

It could also tie into all of the HNL conversion therapy imagery, especially since TFS Henry is painfully gay, and Patty very well might be a lesbian (Lonnie’s line about lesbian vs thespians vs Patty acting in the DOTM play & Patty’s robin parallels & Barbara Holland being a lesbian vs Patty playing Barbara Allen in the play etc etc) and so, there’s definitely conversion therapy vibes when it comes to puppeting a lesbian and making her kiss a boy & at the same time, making a gay boy kiss a girl as a result/Henry didn’t want the kiss, so the forced/lowkey conversion therapy vibes are definitely there for him AND for Patty re: her being puppeted.

And hell, further reinforcing the idea that Henry/Patty were being puppeted here (especially Patty), the kiss takes place on a STAGE, when they’re supposed to be ACTING, when they’re supposed to be PRETENDING TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE- which would connect to Brenner pretending to be Patty when puppeting her Agent Smith style, just like how Agent Smith pretends to be Bane). And also, Brenner later has a line of dialogue that's VERY suspicious in the context of the idea of "Patty" actually being Brenner/being puppeted by Brenner in some scenes- Brenner says "And hell, further reinforcing the idea that Henry/Patty were being puppeted here (especially Patty), the kiss takes place on a STAGE, when they’re supposed to be ACTING, when they’re supposed to be PRETENDING TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE- which would connect to Brenner pretending to be Patty when puppeting her Agent Smith style, just like how Agent Smith pretends to be Bane).

And there’s also all of the weird Vecna-Brenner connections in ST, plus the shadow of Vecna flashing over Brenner at the end of TFS-

-which then brings me to a.) how often Vecna appears as a woman in visions, looking like rotten versions of Chrissy’s mom and replacing Max’s mom with himself and b.) the fact that right before the kiss scene, we saw a vision version of Patty who looked normal at first, but then started transforming and rotting just like the Vecna versions of Chrissy’s mom and Max’s mom AND we also saw the same thing happen to Patty’s mom (which also lmao if Henry is supposedly solely Vecna with no weird Brenner merging or anything else involved, how the hell was he having what’s basically Vecna visions during TFS?).

And speaking of mothers, this whole puppeting may not end at Patty- because I’m also staring at Virginia.

Especially since one of the Virginia-Henry scenes also parallels the Brenner-Henry face holding scene and the Henry-Patty kiss scene:

And Brenner also has a line whre he says "you think you can run back home to mommy and be a good boy again?" to Henry- which, that line implies that Virginia called Henry a "good boy" at some point/saw him as a good boy/tldr they're connecting the phrase "good boy" to Virginia- which then makes it VERY suspicious when Brenner calls Henry a "good boy" at the end of TFS:

Brenner, why are you everybody?? Why are you Henry's mother?? Is it because you're puppeting people??

And also, TFS Brenner has another extremely suspicious line when it comes to this whole "people in Henry's life are actually Brenner"/in the context of the idea of "Patty" actually being Brenner/being puppeted by Brenner in some scenes- Brenner says "I'm the only friend you'll ever have" to Henry, which, Fake Patty also brought up being Henry's friend during the bathroom scene, and the word "friend" was also associated with Brenner back in S1- so while on the surface, Brenner is telling Henry that nobody loves him/that he only has Brenner, there may also be a literal double meaning here, that meaning being that all of Henry's "friends" in TFS (see: Patty) are actually Brenner because TFS involves some sort of weird simulation, and Patty is being puppetted by Brenner:

And again, I’m not saying that in the ACTUAL events of 1959, Brenner was puppeting everyone- I think that TFS Virginia is likely accurate to what actually happened with Virginia, and that Patty was a real person at some poiint, BUT TFS has so many references to it not being real/it being some sort of memories/simulation/alternate timeline/combination of all of those, that I think within the simulation, Brenner is puppeting people around/possessing them Agent Smith style. Like TFS Henry’s likely got actual memories of Virginia and Patty,, but some of those TFS scenes are likely Brenner messing with Henry’s memories by puppeting the memory-simulation version of Virginia around, like when you’re playing The Sims & start actually making your Sim do things instead of letting them do stuff on their own- I think that’s what Brenner’s doing, he’s nabbing various Sims, playing as them to mess with Henry within the simulation, and then letting them go back to “normal”.

Like, imagine if when El was in NINA, we got shown that Brenner was puppeting 002 & pretending to act like he really was 002 while possessing him- that’s what I mean here except Henry’s the one getting NINA’d, and that’s also what I think happened with that weird Brenner-esque Henward during NINA.

Not to mention all of the weird shadow hivemind stuf and the fact that if Patty and Brenner were also connected to the hivemind, who knows what sort of weird possession stuff could be happening…

Anyway! Just some Thoughts!