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hellsquills · 4 months ago

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Disclaimer: I know about the duffle bag Filbrick threw at him, but you can ignore that if you want

My thoughts below the cut! (this turned into a whole ass fic lmao)

My personal headcanon is that Filbrick is as much of a coward as he is of an asshole. Therefore, he wouldn't have kicked Stan when he did in canon. Probably not for a while after that.

However, he does try to send him to military school. He keeps talking about how this kid needs to learn discipline and respect, and if he's not gonna bring money to the house, then he should at least bring some honor to his family.

Stan obviously does NOT want to go. Not only because it's a pointless war ("what've the vietnamese done to us anyways?") but because he remembers his mother's face when Shermie got drafted and he will NOT make her go through that hell again. Also, he doesn't wanna die!!!! Hello?????

He talks it out over the phone with Ford, who's obviously just as against it as he is. He tells Stan that, if he gets into a PhD program, he could skip military. Stan laughs in his face. It'd be easier to jump off the plane without a parachute.

And so, he comes up with a plan. When he goes to take his physical, he tries his best to botch it. If he is bad enough, if it looks like he can't do it, maybe he won't have to. Unfortunately, the recruiters are far too used to this by now, and they don't buy it. Stan goes home with a recruitment letter hidden in his jacket.

Everything goes downhill after that. He runs away from home, changes his name several times, does some crime here and there... The military is after him, and it doesn't take rejection kindly.

Stan stays out of contact with his family for a few years. He can't risk getting them involved in this mess. They don't deserve it. So he just leaves, without saying a word, in the middle of the night. No phone calls, no notes, nothing. Not even he knows where he's going. But if it just looks like he abandoned them, maybe they'll hate him. That will make them sound more believable with the police. They aren't covering for him, because they genuinely have no idea where he is. It's the best way to keep them safe.

In that time, Ford doesn't stop looking for him. He finds him every once in a while, but only his phone number, and he knows that could give away his brother's location and get the family in trouble. So, against his deepest instincts, he doesn't call.

One, three, five, seven years pass. Stan has been around almost all the country, and is genuinely considering leaving it. Maybe going to Mexico, or Colombia. Those sound nice. Maybe they'll be nicer to him.

He's passing his time and thinking about this in a small town restaurant in wherever he's in (somewhere he's not banned from, yet), when a family enters. He doesn't make eye contact, but he can't help but stare at them: a man and a woman, probably in their 50s, with 7 kids; one must be older than him, the second one around his age, the third one a little younger, the fourth one a teenager, and the last three between 10 and 15, no more. Except for the last three, they're all taller than him, even the mother, and they have various degrees of blond hair. Their clothes (overalls and plastic boots) suggest they must work in one of the farms he's seen around the state. They don't wear any accessories, except for the glasses that the father and four of the kids have. They're talking loudly and laughing. They look exhausted from a morning of hard work. They seem happy. They... look nothing like his family, and yet, he can't help but think about it.

He can't help the sob that comes to his throat. It's loud and messy from trying to suppress it, which obviously makes it worse. He covers his mouth immediately, and at that point he notices the tears that have run down his cheeks. "Great", he thinks, "that will make it easier to hide, for sure".

He doesn't move. He wants to escape, but that will draw even more attention to him, and he hasn't even paid for the food yet (normally he'd leave without paying, but the old waitress was kind enough to give him some extra food when she saw how little he ordered). He settles for not moving, lowering his head and covering his face, hoping that no one heard (unlikely) or cared (very likely).

"Ya'lright, son?"

The voice startles him. I wasn't very deep, but it was close enough to send his body into immediate danger mode. He looks up at the man towering over him, who's standing in front of him at a prudential distance.

"Y-Yeah, yeah, no worries."

He hates how broken his voice sounds. He's spent more than enough time sweet-talking his way out of trouble, he should be better at this by now. The man looks about as convinced by it as he is himself.

" 'lright then. Can I help ya?"

Damn villagers and their welcoming demeanor. If he wasn't a wanted man, he would appreciate it. But right now, it couldn't be worse timing.

"Come get ya food, kids!" The waitress' yell yanks him out of his thoughts.

"No", he blurts out, and he turns to the man. Least he can do is show him some respect and look him in the eyes. "I'm fine, thank you."

The man smiles lightly and nods. "Okay. Welcome to the town."

Stan watches as the man goes back to his table. He wishes he had been more polite, the guy was just worrying about him, but he can't afford it. They already know his face, he can't risk anyone else recognizing him-

"Sweet Mother of God almighty."

Stan turns to his right. One of the kids, the one about his age, is looking at him like he just grew a second head. He's frozen in place, his eyes wide as plates behind thick glasses. He doesn't say a word, and it's getting increasingly unnerving. Was the bruising on his face still visible? Maybe it's more apparent in broad daylight than in the shitty light that last motel had in the bathroom.

"I'm sorry, I- Can I ask your name?"

The fuck?

"No", answers Stan. Considering how nice his dad was, this guy is pretty rude.

"Son, leave him alone." The mother seems to have manners too, good to know.

The guy does pretty much the opposite. He comes closer to him, until he's right in his path, blocking his exit. That can't be good. Stan feels trapped.

"Are you Stanley Pines?"

Well, that's about it.

Stan tries his best to stay still. This guy doesn't look like a cop, not even an undercover one. But he knows his real name, so maybe someone in his family or friends works in the police; or worse, in the military.

"Listen man, I don't know who you're talking about, but that isn't my name. See?" He reaches for his wallet. He pulls out an ID, with a very clear Jackson Cage on it. He makes a mental note to change it soon, just in case his hunch is right and this guy has connections. "Now, if you excuse me, I'd like to pay for my food and leave. Move."

Stan is already on his feet, but the guy hasn't moved. Stan looks him up and down, trying to appear threatening despite his face probably still being a little red from before. He also gauges how feasible it'd be to escape if things turned bad; the dude is taller than him, sure, but he's also as thin as a toothpick, and by the anxious look on his face, he doesn't seem eager for a fight. The real problem would be evading the restaurant's staff and the other costumers, which include eight carbon copies of the guy in front of him. Probably better to try to de-escalate the situation.

"I- I can't let you leave. Please. I know who you are."

This man is making it really difficult to believe he's not a cop.

"No, you don't. I'm new in town. Move."

"Listen, I-"

"Move out of my way."

"I know your brother."

The words are like a bullet between his eyebrows.

"You look just like him-"

Against his better judgement, he quickly grabs he guy and pins him to the wood in between the booth benches, arm to his throat. If he knows Ford, he knows too much. God he just wanted to have lunch.

The commotion is immediate. He doesn't break eye contact with the guy who's grabbing his arm, whose strength is frankly surprising. He can hear, however, the screams from the dad and the siblings, as well as a couple of gasps from the other costumers. This is not going to go well, but fuck that. He's escaped worse.

"Stop!", the guy shouts as he keeps Stan's forearm from blocking his airway. "Don't hurt him! Don't get closer!"

It takes Stan a second to process what he said. The first part, sure, who wouldn't shout 'stop' when you're being attacked? But the second half doesn't make sense. Is he protecting him? The attacker?

Whatever it is, it works. The family stops in their tracks, still very ready to attack if needed. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the three younger kids moving closer to their mother. For a split second, he feels a pang of remorse for the scene he just caused.

"Hang up the phone, Clarisse, it's okay. Please."

Stan looks in the direction the guy was talking to. Right behind him, the waitress reluctantly puts the phone down.

He looks back at the guy. He looks a little shaken up, probably from the impact his back (and his head?) made with the wooden plank, but he doesn't look scared. He almost looks... sympathetic? Stan is confused as hell.

"I know who you are", the guy whispers, low enough for Stan to hear alone. "You're Stanley Pines, and you have a brother named Stanford. I know him, okay? He's my friend. I met him a few years ago in a quantum physics congress and we've been talking ever since. He told me about his family in New Jersey, and about you. About how he hasn't seen you in years, and how he was trying to find you, to no avail."

Stan is gradually loosening his grip on the guy's neck, who takes a deep breath. He should know better, but- shit, hearing that Ford was looking for him was not what he expected. Even if he doesn't know yet if this guy is lying out of his ass, it's enough to make him doubt.

"I know you were called to Vietnam. He told me. I spent a week with him in his place when he found out, he was unconsollable. When you ran away, he called me. He knew what it meant for you and he thought he'd never see you again, whether you got caught or not. All because of that stupid war." Stan is now trembling a little, he knows it. This guy must know it too, with how close they are. If he stays here any longer he'll break down, but he can't move. Anything to hear his brother's name a little longer. "I know what it's like. Three of my cousins were drafted last year, and I know at least one of them won't be coming back home. Please... let me help you."

Stan meets his eyes. They're green and brown-ish, not unlike the immense fields he's seen in his last journey, the one that led him to this town. With the years, he's learned not to trust beautiful eyes, because they are better at hiding. These ones, however, seem serene and honest, just like his words, and he can't help but believing them. This guy, whoever the fuck he is, knows just about enough.

Stan lowers his right arm. The guy still has his hand on it, but this time is much less defensive and much more comforting. He doesn't complain.

"My name's Fiddleford McGucket, and I'm gonna help you find your brother."

______________________________

Essentially, after this Fidds calls Ford as if nothing happened (per Stan's request, since he's still paranoid about the police tracking his calls) and asks him to come to Tennessee. Ford argues that he's very busy and all, but Fidds convinces him in the end.

Obviously the twins have a dual breakdown and cry their heart out. In this AU they're much less emotionally constipated lol

Ford tells Stan that he's gonna build a house in a small town in Oregon as a part of his research, and asks him to move in with him once it's finished. Stan, of course, accepts.

In the meantime, Stan stays in the McGucket farm and helps them out as a way of laying low. He has a great relationship with his family, and they're very proud of him for what he did (i believe that the McGuckets are hippies at heart, and they're VERY anti-war, especially when it already took three of them)

I don't know how much of the canon storyline would this AU follow, but it's pretty much your average Mystery Trio AU with some different backstory

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thanatika · 3 months ago

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yeah i agree with your point about survival mechanics and i feel the same way about the lack of combat mechanics. "why would an educated city doctor need a weapon" because shit is hitting the fan in every way impossible and pretty much everyone is walking around armed... also why am i supposed to believe the the fact that he's a man of intellect will somehow provide him with food? i don't think anyone is going to be too eager to share food during an outbreak intellectual or not...

+ follow up for the previous ask but actually my favorite quest from the original pathologic is the day 11 bachelor quest that involves shooting down soldiers. i think it really drives the point home about how this random fuckass guy who is supposed to be battling a plague doesn't even have the time to do that anymore because the people in charge are asking completely irrelevant things of him now and he's at a position where he cannot refuse what is being asked of him. like i think it was good storytelling that even as the guy who lowkey wants to deal with the plague and solve its mystery you still have other, more pressing, less interesting and or pleasant tasks to complete

i agree! honestly, i feel this way about the combat mechanics even more than i do about the physical survival (food, health, illness, sleep) mechanics. because sure, i can see how it makes sense for daniil's position of authority to mean that his basic needs are somewhat provided for -- although i don't think it makes more sense than what we got in the original game. i've never seen anyone bring up "isn't it kind of unrealistic that the bachelor isn't given lots of food during a massive food shortage?" as a plothole that needed to be resolved. the townspeople generally don't like him much, and most of the people with power don't either, except for the kains. sure, maybe it's kind of weird that you can go see the kains while broke and on the verge of keeling over from hunger, and they won't do anything to help you, but... the kains are pretty self-centered, and they're so goddamn weird that maybe they forget that you need to eat food to live anyway. and it's half-implied that the powers that be are ultimately giving daniil this role as a convenient way to kill him, so it makes sense that they would put no pressure on the town authorities to keep him alive.

(and honestly, artemy is taken under the olgimsky's auspices as much as the kains take daniil's under theirs! which is to say, selfishly, with ulterior motives that are more important to them than the well-being of their healer, but... the olgimskys are set up as the wealthiest of the 3 families financially, as well as the ones with the most access to food, given their control over the meat industry. so if anything it's "weirder" that artemy isn't more materially provided for, though to be clear i don't think there's an actual plothole there either way.)

but anyway, you could handwave it and say that daniil's position of privilege and authority gives him more perks than he got in the original game, but the amount of fighting you have to do to get through town is... kind of an unavoidable physical reality? like you're given so many sidequests that you often wind up walking around town after dark, and that's when the bandits come out. is the idea that the bandits would be too scared to attack him because he's so important? because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and even pathologic 2 establishes that he's seen as a valuable target by the bandits:

and then there's the quests where combat plays a more direct role in the story itself, like getting involved in saving andrey from the firing squad, or killing guards to break artemy out of prison, or the quest where you have to kill var in attempt to stop the arsonists (which i include on the same tier as the other ones because i really like the quest journal entry he has if you complete it where he blames himself for willow's death. it's a good character moment.)

hell, even in pathologic 2 itself, one of the biggest Bachelor Moments is on day 11, when you have that big dramatic convo with him after he killed a soldier for the papers he was delivering. plus one of bad grief's idle dialogues in patho 2 is commentary on the bachelor being "quick on the draw" and that he "already shot someone". like he just straight up is not living a combat-free existence. and overall, combat isn't just a good tool from a mechanical perspective, heightening the stakes and placing pressure on the player (though it is), it's also pretty important for him on a thematic level imo, almost as important as artemy and his "rivers of blood". in patho classic, daniil has this early interaction with the inquisitor:

which, thinking about it from a doylist perspective, was probably the writers' attempt to make it sound more plausible that this random medical researcher from the big city was competent with multiple types of guns. and i appreciate them coming up with that hint of backstory to cover their bases a bit, but with those bases covered, i think the fact that daniil ultimately spends more time shooting people than he does prescribing medicines for them actually does a lot for him thematically? i mean, if his whole thing is that he's this "tempted destroyer", someone who frames his career as a combative battle with death rather than a quest to save people's lives, whose "default" solution is to raze the town with artillery because he's too limited by his rationalist worldview and military upbringing (and bitterness over being manipulated and sabotaged) to come up with a solution that saves the any remaining infected survivors on his own. plus the way that clara frames artemy and daniil as two sides of the same coin in being violent destroyers and killers, who without player intervention will immediately devolve to running around chasing each other down in what's either an insanely dedicated tom and jerry LARP or some really elaborate foreplay. imo, that whole dichotomy (which is pretty core to the game, as the idea of dichotomies are core to it in general) works so much better with the way they're both presented in classic, stalking around with gun/scalpel in hand. hell, not to mention the effect that spending 12 in-game days trying not to starve and getting killed by bandits or guards or worms or soldiers every day would have on the player, and the way it would make them feel about the town and their natural projection of those feelings onto dankovsky, who is a perfectly fitting vessel for them as the avatar actually undergoing those virtual experiences.

ultimately i think they are mainly going this direction out of a desire to do something more creative and original, which is fine... it just seems a bit silly to me that they keep saying "well obviously that doesn't really work for the bachelor's scenario", when, well... even as recently as patho 2 in 2019, they seemed to think it fit his narrative pretty well! i'm also guessing that a lack of combat won't be that bandits are just no longer roaming the streets at night. it sounds more like pathologic 3 is set to be more of a nonlinear experience, where you'll probably fast travel from place to place instead of having to walk across town so much? so you'll be avoiding bandits just in the sense that the gameplay will be avoiding them. i guess i'm hoping that at the very least, there's still the implication of the crunch of not getting enough sleep or food and the threat of being stabbed to death while trying to get through town occurring to dankovsky in the background, even if those mechanics are deemphasized in favor of more macro-level town resource management, time control, and sherlock holmes fruit ninja or whatever the hell they were on about back in 2022 lmao.

#pathologic 3 #i probably sound insane talking about pathologic 3 i'm like pleaaaaase let there still be violence in it 🥺#and tbf i dont think thats going to be a major lacking area; they're stringing up 12 year olds like party streamers in the fucking trailer!#but even before the trailer came out i was like i think its important that he still has to kill some people honestly...#my other wishlist thing is that i hope there's still moments where he gets btfo'd and it fades to black.#like the moment with the guards in the cemetery when you try to desecrate a grave or with the termitary on day 8 #or with the soldiers on day 11 if you try to talk to them about andrey instead of reading a walkthrough and killing them in advance LOL #there's like 1 similar moment in artemy's route (when he gets put in jail) but i think its funny how much more often that happens to daniil #bro keeps getting his ass beat. and i hope it continues #on an upside i guess if they really are removing all combat it might bring a wider audience who hadnt played until now?#like i play plenty of combat-heavy games but a lot of times i get bored of it and a game having none of it is a selling point to me #like when i first heard about disco elysium it was marketed as this really cool game that had no combat and that's half of why i picked up #and tbh technically that wasn't true about disco but yeah...#also thanks for the ask!!!!#patho meta #mine #asks #pathologic

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commsroom · 1 year ago

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mission launch for minkowski's crew was in march 2013. ostensibly, they were put through some mission training, though the extent and effectiveness of that is kinda dubious. pagliacci takes place in 2013, exact date unspecified. but it has to be early. let's say... mid-january.

eiffel thought he had ruined the rest of his life before he'd even turned thirty. he probably spent his thirtieth birthday in jail. and then... for some number of days, weeks, maybe even a couple of months, he exists in this state of, well. of limbo. cutter gets him released from prison, and flies him out to canaveral. he doesn't speak to his family, obviously. they don't want to hear from him, and don't even know. he's still a prisoner, but no one around him knows that, either. at some point in this time frame, goddard first exposes him to decima, before hilbert even knows who he is. and he lives wherever goddard is accommodating him, and he has to go about his day-to-day life in this transitory state between a 26-year sentence he'd just started really grappling with, and the very immediate reality he's now about to be sent into deep space instead.

they give him a certain amount of freedom; it's not like he can go anywhere. he doesn't do much, anyway, is not feeling appreciative for his momentary second chance at life, given the circumstances. he blows off most of his mission training, and they're surprisingly lax about that, which in retrospect probably should have been a sign. he sits around and smokes, mostly. gets takeout food. but he goes to see movies, as much as he can. as much as he wants to punish himself, he needs to do something, or he'll go crazy, and it's not like he'll get a chance to see a movie in a long time. he was already resigning himself to maybe never going to a movie theater again.

the film adaptation of les misérables was released in december 2012. it's entirely feasible it could've been one of the movies he saw in this time period. i think the idea adds some resonance to his shared reference with minkowski in the finale, at least, in the way it pulls things full circle. intentionally or otherwise. and, incidentally, the 2012 film adaptation of les misérables, a story that notably features an ex-convict protagonist seeking redemption, was released on december 25th. call that serendipity.

#wolf 359 #w359 #doug eiffel #i don't know. just a thought. just some coincidences i think are kind of neat.#and @ beth hephaestuscrew i'm so sorry i asked if i could reference our conversation and then reworked the post #but in spirit i want everyone to know that this thought came from a conversation with her a while ago #when she was writing her minkowski musicals essay. go read that also. putting this part in the tags but #i think it would be funny if minkowski never got around to seeing it and actually gets mad at eiffel for it later like #THAT'S what you were doing? instead of learning basic safety protocols or how to Operate Our Space Station??#you don't even like musicals!! and i was busy!!#i don't know what her opinion on the movie adaptation would be but i am sure she has strong opinions about movie adaptations of musicals

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corvidaerook · 4 days ago

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The masculine urge to write about the side character to a side character because you've read most of the existing fics about them that aren't just one-line mentions and need more despite them having maybe 20 minutes of total scene time in the actual game

#“how does he only have 242 works” dude you should be asking yourself how DOES he have 242 works #that's about 200 more than I would've expected #there are so many characters that I could go read fics for and instead I'm pointing at the loser at the very back of the shelf #datv #tarquin

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carlyraejepsans · 1 year ago

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Do you enjoy underfell? I thought you disliked aus /genq

i don't dislike the concept of AUs itself, I'm just not a fan of like... the subculture that spawned around them in the UT fandom specifically and how it eventually took over almost all canon content (especially when it limits itself to the bros)

i like aus visually! i am an artist at heart after all. it's just that, if I'm going to care about them as stories and not just fun design ideas, my bar is uhh almost impossibly high the further you move from canon lolol.

#uf being one of those! the story is centered on certain characters (mainly asgore) behaving very ooc #so as a stickler for canon I don't have much interest in it #but there is a very clear visual idea and motif in the redesigns that ties every character together very efficiently #and also fucks like a rabid rhino #so i can appreciate its visual/aesthetic aspects instead #i mean you can't understate the impact that good *artists* specifically had on the proliferation of aus back in the day #good writing is almost inseverable from good characterization because dialogues and characterization ARE an integral part #of what makes writing good. while good art (as much as it too is tied to its own conventions) is free-er from the bounds of accuracy #as was as being easier & faster to consume. writing has to be read first. you can just look at a piece of art and go ''wow that looks sick''#without thinking about logical details/accuracy #you can show a pic of sans to an artist who's never touched the game and they might draw you the most gorgeous piece of art you've ever seen #it's significantly harder to do for writing #swap aus are a fun design challenge to see how you'd incorporate different aspects of some characters visual signatures into another #it's a game of translation of sorts. but if you want to treat it like a story well... the matter becomes a lot more complicated #answered asks #au tag

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kanerallels · 1 month ago

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(rant incoming)

#okay. let's process together #why did i feel so annoyed when my mom said that the pictures i was posting on insta looked a little boring?#(it's not like a picture of me it's just some book and crochet stuff(#but here's the thing. i have no idea how i'm supposed to do better than that #sometimes i'm actually enjoying myself on insta and othertimes i really feel like i am not cut out for it #cause if i'm taking a picture of something it's so people can see the thing i am taking a picture of #i 100 percent understand the mindset of wanting an aesthetic picture that looks really nice #but i usually don't know how to execute that #sometimes! but not always #usually not.#and like. in that case i would ask the people in my family who are actually good at this stuff for help?#but i want to be able to do it myself because i don't want them to have to do even more stuff for me #and yeah okay fine YES it is another taking up space thing #but like #ugh #i don't know how to fix this #instagram is kinda fun and cool but it's so not me when it comes to posts #i hate videos and pictures of myself #and visual art is not my thing #and i feel a little lost and confused and i just want people to read my book so i can make enough money that i don't have to get #a horrible normal job #and i don't want my stupid relatives to be right and i never wanted to do instagram in the first place #and the money i saved up from my old job is running out! and i'm a little scared!#and i have a wedding coming up #and stuff is just. ugh. it's not the worst but it sure ain't the best #probably i need to pray and ask God for help instead of posting on tumblr #(in my defense i wanted to process my emotions)#anyways if you made it this far pray for me?#i've been trying to not freak out about all of this for a while but it's kinda pushing its way out now #which i hate. it's just all a lot

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gingermintpepper · 5 months ago

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hi, i haven't read the iliad and the odyssey but want to - do u have a specific translation you recommend? the emily wilson one has been going around bc, y'know, first female translator of the iliad and odyssey into english, but i was wondering on if you had Thoughts

Hi anon! Sorry for the somewhat late response and I'm glad you trust me with recommendations! Full, disclosure, I am somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to translations of the source text of the Iliad + Odyssey combo wombo, which means I tend to prefer closeness in literal verbiage over interpretation of the poetic form of these epics - for that reason, my personal preferred versions of the Odyssey and Iliad both are Robert Fitzgerald's. Because both of these translations (and his Aeneid!) were done some 50+ years ago (63 for his original Odyssey tl, 50 flat for his Iliad and 40 for his Aeneid) the English itself can be a bit difficult to read and the syntax can get confusing in a lot of places, so despite my personal preferences, I wouldn't recommend it for someone who is looking to experience the Iliad + Odyssey for the very first time.

For an absolute beginner, someone who has tried to read one or both of these epics but couldn't get into it or someone who has a lot of difficulty with concentrating on poetry or long, winding bits of prose, I fully and wholeheartedly recommend Wilson's translation! See, the genius of Emily Wilson's Iliad + Odyssey isn't that she's a woman who's translated these classics, it's that she's a poet who's adapted the greek traditional poetic form of dactylic hexameter into the english traditional poetic form of iambic pentameter. That alone goes a very very long way to making these poems feel more digestible and approachable - iambic pentameter is simply extremely comfortable and natural for native english speakers' brains and the general briskness of her verbiage helps a lot in getting through a lot of the problem books that people usually drop the Iliad or Odyssey in like Book 2 of the Iliad or Book 4 of the Odyssey. I think it's a wonderful starting point that allows people to familiarise themselves with the source text before deciding if they want to dig deeper - personally, researching Wilson's translation choices alone is a massive rabbit hole that is worth getting into LOL.

The happy medium between Fitzgerald's somewhat archaic but precise syntax and Wilson's comfortable meter but occasionally less detailled account is Robert Fagles' Iliad + Odyssey. Now, full disclosure, I detest how Fagles handles epithets in both of his versions, I think they're far too subtle which is something he himself has talked at length about in his translation notes, but for everything else - I'd consider his translations the most well rounded of english adaptations of this text in recent memory. They're accurate but written in plain English, they're descriptive and detailled without sacrificing a comfortable meter and, perhaps most importantly, they're very accessible for native english speaking audiences to approach and interact with. I've annotated my Fagles' volumes of these books to heaven and back because I'm deeply interested in a lot of the translation decisions made, but I also have to specifically compliment his ability to capture nuance in the characters' of these poems in a way I don't often see. He managed to adapt the ambivalence of ancient greek morality in a way I scarcely see and that probably has a hand in why I keep coming back to his translations.

Now, I know this wasn't much of a direct recommendation but as I do not know you personally, dear anon, I can't much make a direct recommendation to a version that would best appeal to your style of reading. Ideally, I'd recommend that you read and enjoy all three! But, presuming that you are a normal person, I suggest picking which one is most applicable for you. I hope this helps! 🥰

#ginger answers asks #greek mythology #the iliad #the odyssey #okay so now that I'm not recommending stuff I also highly highly HIGHLY suggest Stephen Mitchell's #Fuck accuracy and nuance and all that shit if you just want a good read without care for the academic side of things #Stephen Mitchell's Iliad and Odyssey kick SO much fucking ass #I prefer Fitzgerald's for the busywork of cross-checking and cross-referencing and so it's the version I get the most use out of #But Mitchell's Iliad specifically is vivid and gorgeous in a way I cannot really explain #It's not grounded in poetic or translationary preferences either - I'm just in love with the way he describes specifically the gods #and their work #Most translations and indeed most off-prose adaptations are extremely concerned with the human players of these epics #And so are a bit more ambivalent with the gods - but Mitchell really goes the extra mile to bring them to life #Ugh I would be lying if I said Mitchell's Apollo doesn't live rent free in my mind mmm #Other translations I really like are Stanley Lombardo's (1997) Thomas Clark's (1855) and Smith and Miller (1944)#Really fun ones that are slightly insane in a more modern context (but that I also love) are Pope's (1715) and Richard Whitaker (2012)#Whitaker's especially is remarkable because it's a South African-english translation #Again I can't really talk about this stuff because the ask was specifically for recommendations #But there are SO many translations and adaptations of these two epics and while yes I have also contributed to the problem by recommending #three very popular versions - they are alas incredibly popular for a reason #Maybe sometime I'll do a listing of my favourite Iliad/Odyssey tls that have nothing to do with academic merit and instead are rated #entirely on how much I enjoy reading them as books/stories LMAO

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waywardstation · 2 months ago

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hi! i havent been on tumblr in a Hot minute but i wanted to come here JUST to tell you that hfbe might be my fave pla fic ive read ao far! the worldbuilding and the characterization of everyone just feels so so right i fall in love

i reread it on ao3 and even tho its not completed its still a joy to reread everytime

Hello hello!! Anon you have no idea how much it meant to me to get to read this. Knowing I put something out there that you wanted to back to and reread means A LOT.

I’m glad you like it so much but man I have been editing the first two chapters (fixing errors, making characters say and do things that are more in line with how I write them now, and just adding scenes in between to help things seem more clear or hit harder), and I’m like man this really isn’t that good haha.

It’s fun to see how much I think I’ve improved since I’ve started trying to write fanfics (I wasn’t aware of how obsessed I had been with commas and run-on sentences at the start lol)

So reading this nice message really gives me such a boost of motivation. I’m so glad you like the worldbuilding, and it makes me excited to get more out because later chapters are when I really introduce specifics on a lot of things. Namely the Pearl Clan’s hunting parties, that has been my favorite.

Now I just gotta get more out! Hoping to put more out for you to read soon kind anon, I really appreciate that you find it’s something you like to reread!

For now, here is a snippet below the cut; I am unsure if I have shared this before, but it’s a scene where Ingo is preparing to advocate for the Clan to use pokeballs to store their pokemon in, so that there is less food consumption (as in HFBE, it’s emphasized that pokeballs put pokemon into a stasis where they don’t need to eat, drink, sleep, etc. for as long as they’re in them. Ingo does it with his pokemon, and he wants the clan to do it too, for their own sakes).

Wording is subject to change (VERY MUCH SO), but enjoy!

—————

“Excuse me Miss Irida, but may we talk for a moment?”

The Pearl Clan leader turned back to see Ingo – he was trailing behind the group, purposefully so. He had been waiting for the right moment to approach her.

“Right now?” Irida’s eyes flickered back over the tops of people’s heads, up towards the communal hall at the top of the hill. “I’m sorry, but can it wait until after the meeting?”

“It is actually about the meeting.” Ingo’s grey eyes were unwavering, waiting — he wanted to ask her something. And Ingo was not one to usually ask for things.

“Ok,” She relented, pausing in the snow both so he could catch up, and they could have their conversation with some privacy. “You have until we reach the hall.”

“Thank you, I assure you it will be quick.” Ingo fell into step beside her, shuffling through the snow as they now both trailed behind the group heading towards the warm hall. He kept his head tilted down just like her, using the brim of his hat to protect against the wind and snowfall. “I, well… I am planning to re-propose a proposition at this meeting tonight. I’d like to make another attempt at advocating for the use of pokeballs.”

“Tonight? Are you serious?” Irida lowered her voice for his sake, looking back between him and the group. How could he possibly think about proposing that when this meeting was for them to discuss how to prepare for this famine? “I’m saying this not as your leader but as your friend, Ingo; now is absolutely not a good time for that. Everyone is already going into this meeting angry. And if you try and start this again, they’re going to-”

Irida took a deep breath; she was already getting stressed over it.

“You know how people are going to react to that. You know who it’s going to upset, Ingo. Especially after last time. And you said you’d let it go.”

“I am well aware of what I said and I intended to stick to it, but these circumstances have changed our tracks, and I believe this may save us from derailing!” Ingo whispered back. He kept throwing quick glances at the nearing hall, gauging how much time he had left to persuade her. “Pokeballs can help us much more than the clan realizes – I’m confident that this can bring us closer to a solution, if not at least be a part of one!”

Irritation and confusion were replaced with genuine curiosity, but a fleck of doubt hesitantly followed after. Irida shook her head, not understanding. “How could they possibly help with all of this?”

“I will explain that in the meeting.” Having conquered the snowy hill, the two reached the warm light that spilled through the hall’s windows to project onto the snow. “But to do that, I need to actually present my proposal, and I’m afraid that will be difficult with the elders tonight. I am trying this for the fourth time now, and I’m aware of how this will most likely be received. I expect they’ll call to send me back to my seat before I even start.”

Ingo paused just outside the doors, waiting for Irida to go in first — she could do so and end the conversation right now if she wanted to, but she didn’t. Instead she stood there, staring at their fading shoeprints in the snow.

Irida could see why he approached her about this now, and a part of her felt sorry for him. “So you want me to vouch for you.”

“Not the proposal itself. Just the time to talk.”

#wayward’s asks #sorry for the late response I am still having stomach problems #so I still feel like I have no energy #to do much of anything #doing my best to get energy to do things I wanna do!!!!#instead of blowing all of it on things I NEED to do and having nothing left to have fun!!!#and that includes wanting to write more HFBE and my other fics oughhh #RANT ABOUT EFFECTS OF FOOD DEPRIVATION BELOW IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THAT #I talked about this last time I got sick too #but going through what I’m going through has made coming back to HFBE… certainly an experience #I don’t have it as bad as Ingo obviously and never will I know that much #but man I had wondered at the time if I was pushing things too hard with him #about how he’s cold and tired all the time and wants to sleep all the time #and can’t focus or hold conversations and being shakey #and that people even comment on him #it’s weird coming back to that and reading it and thinking ‘that is me’#it’s just. weird reading stuff I wrote during a time I was much healthier and never even thought I’d go through the same thing #and I’m dealing with all this while my situation isn’t nearly as bad as his #now it makes me wonder if it was not bad enough #but I don’t want to go harder on him #Not unecessarily #Akari would not let that happen anyways #ref for fic

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helldritch6211 · 1 month ago

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If i re wrote red hood outlaws + arsenal n red would you want to see snippets of that or would you roast me on a pike?

#btw it would be a lot more roy and kori run this show jason is literally only here because they wont let him leave #dc fandom dont roast me on a pike for wishing outlaws was good omg they had so much potential together #mfs out here acting like you can own a person #bro people got so mad at me for liking jayroy but fucking come on #outlaws sucks?? okay so does every comic released by fucking scott #outlaws does not suck in any special way I CAN TELL YOU THAT BECAUSE I ACTUALLY READ IT INSTEAD OF BLINDLY REGURGITATING WHAT I SEE ONLINE #AND YES BEFORE YOU ASK IT WAS HELL AND IT SUCKED BUT WE OUT HERE ACTING LIKE ITS WAY WORSE THAN IT ACTUALLY IS #We have runs out here that ruin litteral decades of characters building making characters do the craziest shit #outlaws was so fucking weird about koris ch like if you wanna make a smart comment make it about that #roys main problem was that um they okay yeah they ruined his character by removing a crucial part of his identity (lian) so we where doomed #but if we isolate just his characterisation the main problem was how selfish and money driven roy was #that has never been bro he only did contract work so he could give lian a stable life..#ALSO FUCK ANYONE WHO SAYS IM NOT A ROY FAN FOR MOURNING LOST POTENTIAL #OMGOD I AM NOT A JASON STAN ABOVE ROY I JUST DONT HAVE A WEIRD FACINATION WITH HATING ON MENTALLY IL PEOPLE #seriusly its fucking weird how many people spesifically hate jason when he’s clearly got a fucking mood disorder #yall need to fucking chill w how you view mentally il people.#fucking @ me if you want to debate me #dc comics #jason todd #roy harper #koriand'r #kori anders #red hood and the outlaws #starfire #red hood #arsenal

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pilferingapples · 8 months ago

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the real tragedy of the Amis chapters is that Marius is clearly terrified of asking questions about any of the genuinely baffling multitiered punbased conversations the Amis are having, when they would all VERY DEFINITELY be beyond delighted to get a new audience to infodump on

#they're NERDS Marius #they're deep end NERDS #nothing would endear you to them more than asking about their Topics!#Source: I am also a nerd and know the experience here #instead he's gonna be Bold and Assertive and Wrong in 3 2 1 --#as with so many things. I blame Gillenormand #also like. you can tell Marius thinks these guys are Intimidatingly Cool #and they are the biggest damn dorks in Paris #every read through I am more impressed with how ridic they are #Gillenormand you have a lot to answer for

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rxttenfish · 9 months ago

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Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#monster prom #asks #vanillabeenflower #this is. so long i am so sorry.#and its still not my entire thoughts because i have so many thoughts #this is an unedited ramble tbh and im very sorry for that #i have more complaints like #how fucking snide and condescending the narration is to its own characters #which it already had but gets even worse in the later games #which is why despite loving aaravi i dont want to play moncamp at all #where a character says they like something or feel something and the narration has to be so. sarcastic about it?#like how i mentioned about how it feels like how its looking down on them as people #instead of whats probably the intended read which is #more jokingly calling them dumb in an affectionate way like how you might do with friends #and ofc theres the whole miranda rant #i hate what theyve done with the merkingdom and i HATE adrien as a concept i wont lie #just. cool. this female character is too stupid to count as a lore character. we obviously need a MALE character to fill in instead #we cant just have miranda talk about this or center any of the other female characters #and how they feel about this and whats going on for them #no we need to make up a new man to talk to instead #im. im still really bitter about it i wont lie.#like i said i could go on and get way more specific about it #i just feel like any and all emotional weight to this has died and the characters are more and more obviously actors on a stage #for your own self gratification rather than their own people living their own lives #this is so bitter and i really shouldnt put this in the main tag #i am so sorry everyone who will see my rant. but my peace must be made.#dont worry im already asking myself if im just making all this shit up myself #what if some of us liked that the characters were so mean to the player and had no qualms about aggressively rejecting us #because it gave some illusion of them being able to make their own choices and decisions in what they wanted

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corviiids · 7 months ago

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THANKS @kimdokjafan you are so kind and generous. ok im cashing in the first of three blank checks to talk about faith trust and pixie dust (most recent chatfic) because the last two directors commentaries were too serious so let's do a silly one.

some p5r spoilers, and this is mostly about sumire, and it's long again. do i need to keep disclaiming that these are long? you should know me by now.

i had this written for a while before i started formatting it because i wasn't really sure if i should post it? i feel like silly chatfic is something people go to for predominantly lighthearted nonsense so i was like, maybe there's too much plot and dramatic misunderstanding and i should just keep this one for myself. but then i was like well nothing matters and maybe someone will have fun with it. it's kind of terrible how much fully or mostly completed fic there is my docs that just doesn't see the light of day lol. write for yourself etc but i like sharing! too bad it comes with the mortifying ordeal etc. anyway that was a tangent

potato counter is a neopets game. there's no deep lore i just like neopets. i guess in this universe ryuji doesn't play neopets? or maybe he's just never played potato counter specifically. i also have a different fic where ryuji DOES play neopets. it's about neopets and ryuji and goro talking on neopets.

i think this might literally be the first time ive written sumi in a fic because i haven't actually written that much fic for royal, like, now that im looking, literally almost none? and none that had a group dynamic. so it was kind of fun to find her voice for the first time in a silly groupchat like this. i was worried people would find her exclamation marks annoying but i personally thought it was endearing so i added it in there.

every time i do a gag where a character corrects their own typo i have to code more stupid little bubbles to make it happen but i think it's worth it. all the effort that goes into making tgis look as much like a real chat as possible

this obviously doesnt take place in the canon p5/r universe, but im imagining sort of a postcanon sumi personality where she's more comfortable being herself and isn't borrowing kasumi's brand of confidence, but she's visibly a really anxious person without that kasumi veneer. i also think in this universe sumire is a fairly recent addition to the friend group, and while everyone likes her a lot and she really likes them, i kind of wanted to emphasise that feeling of being in a friend group where everyone's established and you're sort of a plus-one? you don't really fit yet. part of that is her being new, part of it is her anxiety, part of it is just the kind of person sumi is where she's so polite and self-conscious she ends up taking herself out of things with her own good intentions. stuff like her interrupting the flow of an existing conversation by greeting everyone instead of jumping straight in because she doesn't feel comfortable inserting herself, which means everyone else stops to greet her even though that doesn't normally happen in a friend group, or making a point of thanking everyone for being invited to events while the others take it as a given.

idk i love that she feels a bit out of place with the phantom thieves in p5r. and part of that is a natural consequence of being a new addition in royal who can't be naturally integrated with an existing dynamic but i honestly feel like the writing team realised that and acknowledged it, and really leaned into it, and that made it work incredibly well for me. like, it's part of her character that she's sort of an outsider. it's not like p4g's incredibly clumsy integration of marie and subsequent attempt to shove her down everyone's throat as the canon love interest in p4ga (knife). sumi has that outsider vibe on purpose and it makes me really like her dynamic with the thieves as an individual

goro also feels slightly out of place in these chats, but his conversational style blends more naturally with the other thieves at this point and he even uses their codenames sometimes. i keep saying my chatfic series isn't a real Series because the lore keeps changing, but if we accept that they're all kind of following a General Continuity, assume this takes place some time after the last fic in which ren added goro to the groupchat and they made an effort to integrate him into their friend group. he's kind of there now and has settled into being the weird boyfriend. that's his role.

every time goro says something like "ren and i" assume it's the text equivalent of him talking to the group with his arm around ren's waist.

ok i got really fond of this silly running joke where sumi brings up the weather when she's feeling uncomfortable. she's so polite. i like this thread because setting it up meant i got to tie it off like this:

this just made me happy lol i liked writing this. i tried to use it to demonstrate that despite goro's abrasiveness he obviously knows sumire pretty well, he's attuned to her quirks and knows how to tell when she's having a bad time with her anxiety, so he uses her little weather habit to ground her.

i honestly dont think goro and sumire could be considered close in p5r and as much as i like the "royal trio" in canon they're not really... like... friends? with each other? they're both attached to ren, so it' more a V shape than anything else. but that said, i really LIKE goro and sumi's canon dynamic. he takes a really grouchy but politely attentive supervisory role to her during their few forays into the palace as a trio where he doesn't really know her well but clearly identifies her as a harmless little tryhard who needs some guidance and steps into that role grudgingly, and she immediately looks up to him despite being very wrong footed by his ruthlessness, which i find incredibly charming. i think given time they could be good friends, they just didn't get much chance to know each other very well in canon. so i tried to kinda do that here.

once goro stops being evil and joins the group they all kind of tiredly accept that his role is to occasionally push a cup off a bench while smirking and refuse to clean it up. emotionally, i mean.

wait i need to backtrack chronologically to talk about akeshu.

in this scene they're in the same room lol talking and snickering while typing. im trying to get at that vibe of the annoying couple who is flirting with each other, via you. you know? like ostensibly they're talking to you (sumire) but everything they say to you is part of their stupid game. sumi is incidental to goro and ren teasing each other about flirting with someone else, goro is reporting everything ren says because his boyfriend is so eye-rollingly foolish in a cute way. they're very tickled by how amusing and charming they are. gross. disgusting. sumire im so sorry for putting you through this

anyway here are too many of my favourite jokes from the fic

#futaba gets a lot of my favourite punchlines because i love her. i think she's an incredible vessel for comedic timing #once again you can see how much i overthink everything #given the amount of thought that goes into character shit for what LOOKS like a stupid 3 second chatfic #but is really. a stupid 3 second chatfic with twenty years of overthinking behind it #it takes time and effort. to be this stupid #anyway i love sumi. i think she's so cute. i like her dynamic with the thieves so much #ive said it before but i think chatfic is one of those mediums that looks so deceptively simple because #you know it's just silly dialogue and memes. it's very accessible. anyone can write a funny chatfic #but i think it's such a character-forward 'genre' that it's really really difficult to do well in the sense that it feels like the characte #s you know and not just mouthpieces for memes with familiar names attached. so im kinda obsessed with the genre #it relies so heavily on every character having a distinctive voice without trying too hard to be unique #ideally you should be able to read one of these with no names attached ands till get a general sense of who's talking #without having to rely on liek (sorry) homestuck style quirks which make it visibly obvious #that' skinda hard because irl people's typing styles aren't THAT distinct you know. theres only so many variations #you can make to a person's use of grammar punctuation capitalisation etc before it becomes a gimmick instead of an idiosyncrasy #but hopefully if the character voice is strong enough their identtiy should come through more subtly anyway. idk .idk if im there but i lov #to work towards it #wow i wrote anothr essay in the tags about my love for Modern Epistolary Fiction (chatfic)#after already writing a whole essay in the post #i mgonna shut up guys thanks for having me #rookfic #asks #p5 #rookthots

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