#it creates for a lot more complex feelings and emotions later down the line

[darth-grips]

this is just me engaging in fandom wank but i think it's really reductive and not true at all to the source material when people decide to make Owen like, abusive to Luke just for the angst factor. Like, that boy can still have intense daddy issues all while still having a father figure raising him through his entire childhood who loved him very much. Imo the sheer fact that Owen is explicitly not his father and doesn't claim to be would be enough to give him issues, especially when you consider that while Aunt and Uncle are their actual familial titles, they're only reflective of a legal relation and not of an actual blood tie, all while presumably living in a culture where explicit blood relations are considered important due to slavery reasons.

Meanwhile his actual blood father existed as this nebulous figure with a cool job who was able to leave the humdrum of Tatooine and never come back, and who everyone claims Luke takes after but otherwise isn't spoken about in any great detail. And since nobody had any clue who his mother was, of course Luke would want to know everything he can about that guy and be like him, fixating not only on his desire to be someone's son, but his desire to specifically be that guy's son, especially after he learns that Anakin was a Jedi. Compare this to Leia who lived her entire life (even though she knew she was adopted) calling her parents her parents. While she might have had questions about her birth parents, having parents who explicitly claimed her as their daughter was nothing she ever wanted for.

So idk Owen being this supportive and loving figure while also shying away from explicitly calling himself Luke's dad to me is far more angst-inducing than an Owen who's like, a cartoon abuser, especially when you consider how Luke's relationship with Vader ultimately turns out. Owen is quite literally just Doing His Best, and I don't even think there's reason to believe he's even that stingy with his affection toward Luke, beyond just sort of being of a gruff farmer guy (I come from a long line of gruff farmer guys, so I get it). However, unfortunately even when parents do their utmost to give their children the lives they deserve all while still letting them know they love them, oftentimes they do fuck up in ways they're blind to and fuck up badly enough to leave their children with lasting issues, though through no real explicit fault of their own. That's just the tragedy of being human and having relationships, unfortunately. Anyway this is just my screed to say it's okay to write Owen Lars as a decent-to-good father to Luke even if you want to go all in on Luke's daddy issues. They're not mutually exclusive, I swear.

[bluedandylyon]

I think I took for granted how good She-Ra is. Like it is a MIRACLE that a show like this exists, you know?

Idk, watching the Arcane finale and seeing it fumble the things it set up for itself in season 1, ditching complex and complete set-ups and pay-offs for cheap parallels that don’t always make sense; it made me realize how fucking lucky we got with spop.

There are a lot of incredible things about the show, about how pretty much every character in the show is queer, how trauma is represented, complex themes interweaved beautifully in a TV-7 rating show.

BUT

I feel like we as a ~ society don’t talk enough about the set-ups and pay-offs in the show. The fact that nothing in the show comes out of left field and how every piece of dialogue serves a function and sets the characters up. The characters in spop will never act out of character for a line, or to further the plot. Their consistency is incredible.

Let’s take Jinx and Catra for example. Jinx has complex mental health issues that were at the center of everything in szn 1, so she had a lot of symptoms and she was able to be messy and frustrating and realistic in her disorder. Then szn 2 came around and somehow her symptoms are mostly cured - which ok, we can chalk that up to Isha’s presence in her life, which yeah, her hallucinatory symptoms partly come back when Isha goes missing. Although, this would mean that they’re setting up that if Isha is not in Jinx’s life, then her symptoms would come back full force no?

Isha dies and there is absolutely nothing that pays off in terms of this little set up they did. Jinx becomes suicidal, but her other, more complex, more “able to ruin plot plans” symptoms disappear in its entirety. This is a character whose complexity is determined by what the plot needs to do.

Catra also has complex mental issues, and those NEVER go away for the sake of plot expediency, in fact, the plot baked Adora and Catra’s conflict in the center of it all from the very beginning. This means that Catra gets to act realistically all throughout the show and that furthers the plot. Catra doesn’t get rescued and all of a sudden her trauma goes away for the sake of redeeming her faster. Catra has not been healed at the end of the show, she is beginning to heal. She is allowed to explore the depths of her trauma and symptoms and instead of speeding through it, the show says - here, go down to rock bottom, get rescued and be unable to say thank you, get re-triggered by your abuser and run away at the very end of the show. And also, here are some characters that will call you out on your behavior, here is an emotional support animal, here, the person you love and have pushed away from, never hated you!! Her healing always feels like it’s a deliberate choice from Catra bc of what tools the show is giving her, not bc the plot needs to move forward now.

And in terms of set-ups and pay-offs. I mean…. It’s actually nuts. Characters’ dialogues literally bake themselves into other characters. Shadow Weaver tells Adora “Catra distracts you, confuses you” and Adora later tells Bow and Glimmer (after calling SW out btw) “I am distracted and confused and I cant be any of those things if this is going to work” which creates the final moments of the show.

Angella tells Adora “take care of each other” and Adora internalizes it as “I have to take care of Glimmer” bc of her trauma, and that leads her to be very controlling with Glimmer, which creates conflict in their relationship, which creates the heart of Etheria situation, which creates the Horde Prime situation.

SW tells Catra that she abused her bc Catra reminded her of herself. In that same episode, where SW’s past is explored, they both say “it doesn’t matter what I do, my authority figure doesn’t trust me”, we can see how Catra begins to emulate SW’s authority style throughout the show.

The show starts with SW telling Adora “isn’t this what you’ve wanted since you were old enough to want anything?” and it ends with Catra asking her “what do you want, Adora?” which sets up the conclusion of Adora’s entire arc.

Even little things, like Entrapta telling Wrong Hordak it’s ok to make facial expressions and Wrong Hordak being animated copying character’s facial expressions for practice after that.

ITS JUST SO GOOD THE WRITING IN THIS SHOW IS RIDICULOUS.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Do you think the Peacock Miraculous would be better if it had a better power. Before Season 2, I thought it would have some kind of "sight" like can see things from far away or never missing their target.

I think that the peacock would be so much better if it had a truly unique power. I'm incredibly biased about what it should be because of my own rewrite passion project, but I'll try to set that bias aside and just give you some general thoughts on the topic.

Here are some ways that a different power would drastically improve both the peacock and the overall narrative that the writers are going for, but failing to land.

Improvement One: Audience Sympathy

As-is, the peacock makes the Agrestes look unhinged and selfish. Even fans who love the later seasons think that Emilie was probably a terrible person in spite of the fact that canon clearly wants them to think otherwise. Changing the power to something else allows Emilie to be this better person by letting her use the peacock for less blatantly selfish reasons, making her fate less an instance of karma and more a true tragedy. This new power could still be something that ties back to Adrien, but it could also not. She could have just been a generally good person who liked helping people.

Improvement Two: Audience Investment

In terms of how the miraculous are used in a fight, the peacock and the butterfly are extremely similar and that's not very interesting story wise. I've found that stories with heavy magic use tend to be more interesting when you create limited powers and then force your characters to work within the confines of those powers. The less restrictive the rules, the less invested the audience is as they don't have any way to anticipate what's coming and anticipation is something you generally want your audience to feel.

Season five was a great example of this. I think that a lot of people were excited to see Miraculous pull a Cardcaptor Sakura by having our heroes hunt down each of the missing miraculous. That anticipation vanished with the arrival of the alliance rings. Suddenly our heroes had no idea what to do and the season quickly devolved into ignoring the missing miraculous in favor of shipping nonsense. Imagine how much more fun and engaging the season would have been if every episode had the potential to end with a miraculous being recovered!

Improvement Three: Audience Understanding

Most of the miraculous are pretty straightforward. The tiger is a magic punch. The black cat is destruction. The rabbit is time-travel. But the peacock? I cannot explain it to you. In fact, when I first started watching the show, I asked the friend who got me into it what sentimonsters were. She had no idea how to explain them and she was not a casual fan!

We're told that they're an emotion brought to life, but what does that even mean? Who picks their form and special powers: the person whose emotion is being brought to life or the peacock holder? Why are they somewhat immune to the power of pure destruction? What kinds of emotions overwhelm the creation process and create things like Feast? I can't tell you. It's not in the show.

We're three seasons into dealing with sentimonsters and people are still using the head writer's Twitter feed to justify their stance on this major part of canon. There is no reason to introduce such a complex element to your show if you don't care to engage with it.

This is extra true because it's not a fundamental part of making canon's story work. Canon's official line is that Emilie had no idea that the broken miraculous would kill her or anyone else, so they didn't need to make her use case be some major thing like making a baby. She could have just wanted to play with magic and we'd get the same story.

And if they did want her to make her death an active choice? Then we're back to improvement one where her use case needs to be something that's a relatable sacrifice. As is, she doesn't feel even remotely sympathetic. She's just a privileged, wealthy white woman who used that wealth to get magic in order to create her perfect child because she's too good for the kind of suffering and hard choices us normal people deal with. (Like come on writers, at least make the Agrestes middle class. You went the least sympathetic route possible here.)

In another post, someone mentioned using a sentimonster as an artificial heart for Adrien and that's a perfect example of a relatively small change that makes a world of difference for how people view Emilie. Using forbidden magic to save a real child is so much more powerful than the route that canon took.

Improvement Four: Thematic Consistency

I was a huge fan of the initial idea that every miraculous required a specific type of person to weld it. It's something that I lean on heavily in my own writing when I do stuff that focuses on the magic. I want the fox to feel like it belongs to Alya and Alya alone. Similarly, I want the peacock to feel like it belongs to Nathalie or like Nathalie is totally botching its use. Because the peacock is so nebulous and ridiculously overpowered, it doesn't feel like it belongs to any of its holders. Nathalie, Emilie, Gabriel, and Felix have nothing that ties them together and yet I can't say which of them were a true fit and which of them were failing to use the peacock to its full potential. It seems to fit all of them because there's nothing special about. It just makes you a minor god. Huh, maybe that's the theme? Ego of a god? It certainly fits.

So, what should this new power be?

I won't bias you by telling you what I did, I'll just give you my starting point and let you make you own suggestions. The original seven miraculous are largely designed around myths (tricky fox, bad luck cat, etc) so go look up mythology around peacocks and come up with a power that fits! Or don't. That lovely theme was dashed to pieces with the zodiac miraculous as far as I can tell. After all, Fluff is pretty clearly designed around the ancient myth of Alice in Wonderland. 🙄

[rivetgoth]

I’m sure I’ll add more on this later but as I think on House of Leaves (finished it, loved it, listened through all of Poe’s Haunted and loved that too) I think the conclusion I’ve come to (and this isn’t a wildly novel conclusion, but ah well) is that it is at its core fundamentally an exploration of grief, and specifically grief of the loss of a family member. This is especially obvious because… Mark Danielewski has literally said that it was inspired by the death of his father. Poe’s album as well. So like, this is no secret. And I think this is invoked in the very obvious way of the fact that a house that should feel like a home but instead feels unsafe, surreal, and literally larger and emptier on the inside than it naturally should be is a very clear metaphor for grappling with the loss of a parent, right? But I think it goes deeper than that… I think House of Leaves also spends a lot of time dwelling on the weird, impossible to untangle intricacies of trauma, childhood and generational trauma especially, mental illness, and genetics… the things you carry with you and the things that loom over you from your family, especially those deceased who you no longer have direct contact with, left only with this awareness weighing down upon you.

I think Chad and Daisy are pretty clearly functionally author inserts of Mark and Poe, right? And Will Navidson then is their father? Both are even filmmakers. But I also think that Zampanò himself is Mark as well… his middle initial is literally… But complicatedly I’m not saying that Chad is Zampanò, I don’t think HoL is straightforward like that, it’s more like that’s another embodiment of the grief. The child experiencing that, the adult retelling it, grappling with it, imagining and reimagining it, and I think I believe that Tom Navidson is functionally an author insert of Zampanò into The Navidson Record, functioning kind of like a guardian angel to his childhood self, this sort of stand-in hero character who sacrifices himself to protect the innocence and life of the child self. I think the slippage of “me” within that one line, where he refers to Tom in first person, alludes to this, as well as his emotional outburst over his chapter where he tries to write about the relationship between Will and Tom. And in the very back of the book, there’s the fragment of a typed page where Zampanò considers an ending where Chad and Daisy die instead, are killed by the house, with this much more pessimistic tone (similar to when he gets upset about writing about Tom and Will), than what’s shown in the published/Johnny’s version of The Navidson Record.

And would it complicate things too much to say I think Chad, Zampanò, and Johnny represent a sort of trinity of different stages of Mark’s life—the child experiencing it in real time, the young adult trying (and failing) to cope with it all, and the elder now looking back and engaging with it from an aged perspective. I think Johnny represents that crushing weight of this impending, unknown genetic fuckery, constantly feeling the weight of this figure who died long ago but who you know lives within you, and you’re trying to figure out what’s traumagenic, what’s just this completely unavoidable tumbling towards fate—his mother died severely psychotic in an institution, is this unavoidable? Can he escape this future? How much of what he deals with is her, her influence, her fault, and how much is caused by trauma inflicted upon him. I really don’t like the theory that his mother/Pelafina “was” Johnny all along or that Johnny never existed or that he was a stillborn baby like in the story and she’s functionally created a Johnny headmate. I think it’s sort of silly, like I can see some interesting merit in it (there’s clearly a bizarre Oedipal psychosexual complex going on between Pelafina and Johnny and her writing these detailed accounts of her basically stillborn son’s sexcapades is a pretty fascinating idea), but I’m more interested in a sort of backwards-reading of that theory where the end represents Johnny kind of embracing or succumbing to his mother’s identity, for better or worse, and the idea of this baby in critical condition that maybe just maybe had a slim chance for life but dying the moment his mother asks him to revealing instead his relationship to her, the helplessness of those genetics and the control and power she exerts over him even in death. When Shilo Wallace says “You, I've mistaken for destiny / but the truth is my legacy is not up to my genes” at the end of Repo! the Genetic Opera, House of Leaves says… terrifyingly… what if it is? What if your genetics are your destiny? And then you lose that genetic lineage, it becomes just story, infamy, legend, but you’re there and alive and trying to grapple with it?

I kinda like the theory that Johnny rewrote the end of The Navidson Record to have a happy ending, or maybe Zampanò did. I think they both desperately want the story to have a happier ending. And honestly, I love the ending of The Navidson Record as published by Johnny. Though maybe cliché on paper I love the idea that there is a hopeful answer to all that emptiness and fear and a way to silence those endless inexplicable winding hallways and the answer is to replace that emptiness with genuine love. Like, to overcome that fear and embrace the ones you’ve loved for all that they are and that this love can fix all of that… It can make all of the fear and uncertainty of the empty, insurmountable, nightmare house literally dissolve... I think the end of Poe’s album (“If You Were Here”) speaks to that too.

Uh there’s obviously way more to it than that. House of Leaves is a lot of things. Duh. But I do think right now my primary takeaway is just how informed it is by the crushing helpless grief of the death of an immediate family member with which you have an extremely tenuous or strained relationship and the weight of family history.

[rogueddie]

Movie AU Steddie Fics

Important: READ THE TAGS! Also, leave a comment and kudos! These fics are amazing and I love them and I hope y'all do too 📼

Free Hawkins

CassieWater354, Dandyfello

It started as a simple passion project. A discovery of what was possible with simple code. Eddie had been the one to bring it up to Steve. "The AI could be like, ALIVE dude!" He explained excitedly. Steve looked on in confusion, "Like they simulate emotions and personalities and are like real people but they're code!!"

A few more hours of erratic explaining later and Steve agreed. Well, he agreed to begin with but it was nice to see Eddie so excited. Steve loved his computer science class and it didn't fail him as Eddie rang off ideas, Steve created them and Eddie made it all look good. A well-oiled machine. It was hardly near completion but with the complexity and beauty of it they realized it to test and build interest, and funds wouldn't be so bad either. It was a hit, a huge hit. They did interviews, got a lot of hype and attention and it was mostly positive feedback. Mostly.

Words : 12,015 Chapters : 10/10 Rating : Teen And Up Audiences

AO3 : x

Who's Sorry Now

BatCatMooney63

Hawkins is like any place in small town America, quaint, quiet, and full of secrets. Murders, disappearances, unsolved cases swept under the rug of normalcy for the sake of security.

But it all gets ripped away one night when Chrissy Cunningham answers the phone to find herself talking to a mysterious voice. Which sets off a chain of events that truly reveals the line between good and evil.

Words : 51,160 Chapters : 8/8 Rating : Mature

AO3 : x

Asking You to Love Me

chattrekisses

Steve is a famous actor. Eddie runs a game store. After an incident involving orange juice, an unlucky romance blossoms between them. Notting Hill AU.

Words : 22,397 Chapters : 1/1 Rating : Explicit

AO3 : x

Fate's Fool

callcalliope

Sometimes true love is interrupting your own concert to chase the hot vampire watching in the audience.

Words : 1,285 Chapters : 1/1 Rating : Mature

AO3 : x

Episode I - Something happens and I'm head over heels

vaderstheme

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Words : 6,773 Chapters : 1/1 Rating : General Audiences

AO3 : x

Saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts.

Imnotcreativesotakethisname

After winning tickets for the R.M.S. Titanic in a very "lucky" game of poker, Edward "Eddie" Munson and his friend because third class passengers on Titanic.

Words : 18,449 Chapters : 10/10 Rating : Mature

AO3 : x

Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner

beetlesandstars, witchjeons

“It’s a feeling, a heartbeat,” Eddie murmurs one night, pressing a hand over his own heart. “Like this. Gu-gung, gu-gung.”

Steve snorts, before copying Eddie.

Tapping away, Eddie steps closer. “Don’t try so hard,” he says softly, taking Steve’s hand, moving it to rest over his own chest.

Words : 27,880 Chapters : 6/7 Rating : Explicit

AO3 : x

A Shadow Is Cast Wherever They Stand

BritChick91

“You should think more about whether you’d survive a horror movie. You never know when you might find yourself… in one.”

When the phone rings for Chrissy Cunningham in October 1996, it starts a wave of murders in the sleepy town of Hawkins. Who is Ghostface? And who is their next target?

Words : 23,713 Chapters : 9/9 Rating : Mature

AO3 : x

Sincerely Yours

WickedVixen

When a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal are forced to spend a whole Saturday in detention together, there's no telling how horribly wrong the day will go. Tensions are high, especially with the added stressor of power-hungry Principal Higgins breathing down their necks. Will the teens manage to make it through the full nine hours unscathed? Will they come to resent one another, even more so than some of them already do? Or will they become unlikely acquaintances? Will new friendships be forged? Perhaps a few...more-than-friendships?

Who's to say? After all, stranger things have happened.

Words : 41,252 Chapters : 10/10 Rating : Mature

AO3 : x

[aimfor-theheart]

cielo you're smarter than me or at least more eloquent

can you explain why jjk upsets me to no end but csm doesn't at all?? I feel like I can trust fujimoto, even though heinous stuff happens in csm too

anon hfkjdksja i am not quite sure but i can endeavor to answer!!

gonna put this under a cut in case it gets long!!

jjk and csm spoilers below the cut!!

mostly, i think it’s because csm is very precise and thoughtful with its story, even if the story is sad. in csm part one, no panel is wasted. even their “down time” serves to further relationships, plot, or emotional ties. i think jjk at one point was pretty thoughtful, though not quite as laser-focused as csm. mostly, i chalk this up to writer experience. jjk is akutami’s first published manga. fujimoto has had a couple other works published previously and is a pretty seasoned writer.

i think, at the end of the day, few stories are as clean as csm has been so far. jjk was always written quickly, similar to csm, but i think at points it lacks finesse. i think especially as we enter later parts of jjk, like the culling games, where we lost track of our main protags for an insanely long amount of time to give room to many characters who were only recently introduced and we had little connection to as an audience, only to get our protags back and then effectively…lose them again in many ways?

like sukuna moving into megumi’s body, getting gojo back and then killed, etc.

not to say every moment in jjk is bad, but it is sloppy at points. and that is something csm is rarely, if ever so far. there are also a ton of strange plots that akutami introduced and then has done nothing with? or plots lines akutami has effectively done away with.

more than that, jjk has (in my eyes) officially fumbled the “best female characters in shonen” lol after losing nobara, though maki’s arc is compelling, it’s pretty much trashed all the rest. csm, on the other hand, has only doubled down in part two in making asa its protagonist and creating a very complex, emotionally compelling female lead. nayuta/makima is also interesting and well written. i also think this is why csm is not as popular/as beloved or as talked about as jjk. i think a lot of people are subconsciously or consciously not interested in women or their stories and therefore find csm “more boring” but that’s another conversation.

overall, i think jjk is so frustrating because it does not feel planned out, thoughtful, or intentional at points so it’s deaths or ‘tragedy’ feels a little hollow. wasted, if you will. whereas csm, even if it’s sad or we lose our favorite character, we can tell, even just instinctively, that it had purpose and drive to the story, themes, and ideas csm is presenting.

(i also have another conversation entirely on this whole ‘jjk is a tragedy’ spiel because i kind of disagree…or think it’s a very poorly written one as tragedy is a genre in and of itself. but i won’t get into it now—if you’re curious, i can talk about it in another ask or something!!)

i didn’t get into specifics too much—but if you wanted, i could also do that!! i hope this answered your question somewhat haha but ultimately, what you feel is for you to say!!

[doomerpatrol]

Comic Log: Wonder Woman by Greg Rucka

I read a few different Wonder Woman runs of the early 2000s, and none of them particularly landed for me before Rucka came on board. They all felt like they were being purely imitative of George Perez's classic time on the title, as the compassionate warrior in an alien world, without meaningfully adding to what he'd developed.

Not so with Rucka! Rucka manages to toe the line between innovating and honoring, by having a strong concept, consistent and progressive characterization, and compelling emotional and thematic stakes.

The concept here is Diana is running the Themysciran embassy to the US, which introduces a charming staff as her supporting cast, and establishes a tension between her roles as hero, Amazon, and diplomat. It also gives her so much more room to breathe as a character - she has substantive relationships with her embassy staff (who are generally charming if a little underbaked), but unlike Perez's imitators she no longer feels primarily like an outsider trying to adapt to a new world. She's a lot more down-to-earth. Which makes sense - she's been here for years at this point! This setup reminds me a bit of Dan Slott's She-Hulk - office hijinks with a colorful supporting cast - but less pointed towards comedy and more towards political drama with some light comedy. I think that's a good genre meld for Wonder Woman, and a unique direction to take the character beyond mythology punch-ups.

Meanwhile, the overarching thread of the narrative centers on a new antagonist, Veronica Cale, who is basically Lex Luthor if he read Sheryl Sandberg. Cale is a pretty interesting if detestable character whose hatred of Wonder Woman springs from a sense of envy and desert, and a cold willingness to treat other people as purely means to an end: allying herself with the detestable rapist Dr. Psycho, upgrading Silver Swan with brutal cybernetics that will kill her, tossing her friend and partner Leslie aside after being caught for that last one. She makes a pretty strong foil to Diana. She's my favorite new addition to the cast aside from Ferdinand the minotaur chef, but unfortunately, she drops out of the narrative a touch awkwardly. More on that later.

As all this is going on, mythological conspiracies are playing out behind the character's backs, including the resurrection of Medusa, and Athena and Ares (now in kind of goofy, contemporary dress) jockeying for power against Zeus on Olympus. I liked how this created parallel politicking between the mortal and immortal worlds. @radiofreederry pointed out to me when she read this run that it was within a wave of sort of "hip," millennial takes on Greek mythology in the early 2000s - American Gods came out two years prior, and The Lightning Thief would be released while the run was ongoing. I like, conceptually and textually, what's done with that idea here - it's just that the designs are a little silly. Athena playing chess with her owl is really funny, though.

Aside from that nitpick, I quite enjoyed the artwork of Drew Johnson in the run's first half. Johnson's layouts are generally utilitarian, rarely going for huge splash pages or especially complex or creative paneling, but this dovetails nicely with the more dialogue-driven writing relative to other superhero books of the time. His designs and artistic tics remind me a little of Mike Wieringo in their cartoony qualities, though where Wieringo's characters were often very rounded, Johnson's are a bit sharper and leaner (see below). It's later taken over by Rags Morales and a couple other alternating artists; I don't like any of them on the book quite as much as Johnson, but they're all fine.

Unfortunately the story goes a little off the rails at around the two-thirds point to make way for the Infinite Crisis event (sigh). Not disastrously so, as there remains some sense of cohesion compared to how so many other comics lose their way as they wind down or feel the hammer of the dreaded crossover event. But it definitely feels more constrained, as we pivot from Diana navigating the thorny political situation around Themyscira/US relations - juggling the manipulation and antagonism from Cale, different factions of the Olympian gods, Circe, and the obligations of her relationships with her support staff - to Diana as representative of her people after she executes Maxwell Lord. Some of this stuff is a little played out, but Rucka manages to at least justify its more cliche moments - noting that it's not about whether she did the right thing but rather the perception of the act - "optics" has kind of been a major theme of the work, the ways in which the powerful will try to sink Diana's mission of compassion, and so although the Infinite Crisis elements are crowbarred in, they still *fit*. Just stiffly.

The book wobbles a bit here, and certain elements like Cale, or the arcs of the supporting staff, don't get resolved in an entirely satisfactory way - if at all. But, as far as Diana's character arc goes, I think the book still recovers some of its footing in those last few issues. It's unfortunate that it got cut short by editorial nonsense for an exhaustingly bad event, but at least it doesn't totally lose its way.

Favorite Arc/Issue: Sort of a toss-up for me between "Down to Earth," which sees Diana releasing her book and then having to navigate the conservative backlash engineered by Cale (which is shockingly pointed for a 2000s-era cape comic, honestly), and "Stoned," which sees Medusa unleashed on the White House.

I'm hoping to read Rucka's "Rebirth" era Wonder Woman as well, see how that stands up in comparison!

[zorilleerrant]

So I read the First Test graphic novel adaptation, and, as with the vast majority of graphic novel adaptations, I kind of feel that... it simply didn't need one of those. It got across the gist of the story, but, you know, so would a wiki summary or even diving into fics and assuming you'll figure out what's going on eventually. The fact that it managed to cover most of the basics is not really a resounding endorsement for the book to be written.

There's nothing egregiously wrong with it. It takes quotes directly - sometimes I think more changes would've worked better, honestly - and covers the same story with the same timeline. At no point did I go, "hey, fuck you! That's not right!" Well, except for the panel with the Lucky Cats. No excuse for that.

That's about it, though. It's missing a lot of my personal favorite scenes, as well most of the ones that follow Kel's emotional growth, or set up later story elements about her growing up. The sparrows are relegated to secondary cast, which I feel really strips down the driving thematic elements of wanting to protect the small. I also feel like it's sort of ignoring the gendered element of the story; it feels like Just This One Dude has it out for her, and mostly everyone else is fine, something I find especially troubling since the complexity of him becoming a reluctant ally is important.

I feel like condensing it makes the whole story seem like it's moving too fast, as well as making it seem like all of this is essentially a breeze for Kel, when her struggle is, at this point, most of the story. There's a lot of parts where I go, well, I know why that's important, because I know (and recently reread) the book, but would a new reader know what's going on? Would they understand why these different parts are important, and what they're relevant to? I'm not even sure all of the actions scenes are clear if you don't already know what's happening in them, because of the lack of setup. It's followable, but I think many parts of it might be confusing.

I think it was a mistake to prioritize her tasks towards knighthood. Yes, that's the plot of the story, and the backdrop against which Kel's story is told, but it's also the most recognizable part of the genre. If you implied or summarized those parts, readers would be able to follow: oh, here she must have exercised, there she must have gotten better at jousting, and in between she must have practiced hand to hand. Imply them, create a montage page, or put insets in the upper corner of each spread. Then focus on the parts that are more unique to her journey, rather than her knighthood: finding out people are in trouble, debating with herself how to handle that trouble, struggling with protecting herself. Also, importantly, the fact that the system was arrayed against her and her concerns over whether it was selfish or brave to stand up against that injustice, and where the line was between disrespect and injustice.

The art is also... very functional. And while some stories need to be told visually, or their very point is that they're told visually, this was a print novel first. It certainly got itself across without any visuals. So serviceable art in a recognizable style isn't adding anything to that; I really feel that, for a true adaptation, it would need to have an art form that added something to the story, instead of just faithfully illustrating what's there already, with nothing in particular to latch onto or get excited about. They render the scenes fine, but they don't add anything that wasn't in the book, or even explicitly show anything that was only implicit originally.

However! Peachblossom is fantastic. Not for people who have a visceral reaction against horses making human expressions, but if you're a fan of that sort of thing, he's great. The faces are hilarious, really convey everything he's feeling, and are wonderful to look at. A shame he's relegated to such a background character, because an entire book of watching him get mad at people would be hilarious. I just need to see him bite someone.

[turtlesaus]

A Proper Leadership Style

My headcanon on how Leo leads in my AU.

---

In my au Leo became the unofficial Leader when he was much younger, but it was officially decided that he was the leader when they discovered he was the eldest. As soon as he was officially declared the leader, he ran straight to the internet to read up on how to be a good leader to his little brothers.

Using the tips and tricks he found online, he slowly developed his leadership style, which has several levels to it.

First, Communication. Leo holds a daily brother-meeting/hangout, ranging anywhere from ten minutes to two hours, in the mornings and nights where he gathers the whole team to talk about dreams, experiences, issues, and overall team well being. If there's something happening, he tells them during the meetings.

When there's a mission, even if only one person knows about it, by the end of the day the entire team knows of the issue, and what needs to happen to fix it.

Second is Delegation. Instead of deciding what happens all on his own, Leo gathers his team together and starts a plan. Depending on the available timeline, this can be a quick, five minute idea, or a highly fleshed out two-days-of-planning plan, but he (nearly) always makes sure his brothers know what's up, and that they are okay with the plan. (Exceptions include the Kraang sacrifice and some other small things.)

When planning, Leo usually first outlines the end-goal. He updates the team on what they want to happen in the end, so that they have something to build on.

He'll bounce ideas off his brothers, letting the whole team pitch in about their thoughts and ideas, and using that creates a map, or plan of what their plan of action is.

Then, he delegates what each person will be doing, giving each member a job.

Third is Leo's trust. He completely trusts his team to do exactly what they need to do, when they need to do it. He doesn't mind particularly how they do it, he isn't one to clamp down on their creative geniuses, but he has his preferences.

On top of all that, he has weekly training sessions, where the team is fine-tuned on their skills, taught new skills, and shown practical medical skills that Leo has deemed necessary.

Now, you may be asking 'but that means he's too OOC!'

buzz off, my au, my rules.

But on that note, personality wise he really isn't too different. He has an occasional inspiring speech, but usually he's an absolute disaster when it comes to speeches. He's still the face-man, does the talking and the other face man things... IDK u get me

He knows that he can't get too cocky or the team could suffer, and his love and devotion to his brothers overpowers his mild inferiority complex. His place in the team isn't a question, but he does have some anxiety over if he's leading right, like any leonardo ever.

He's learned to weaponize his anxiety and faux confidence, using it to fake out his enemies and give his team confidence.

He still has his terrible puns, and has some problems with showing his true emotions, but overall he's really the same dumbass. Pls don't be too mad at me lol

A Quick look into the rest of the teams feeling;

Donnie trusts his brother completely, and if he smells bullshit he says it straight up. With the communication within the team, and the training, he's much more comfortable sharing his feeling about something, and has become a lot more confident in his role extending from just tech.

Raph's anxiety makes him worry a lot, and he gets confused on what needs to happen sometimes, but with open lines of communication and clear plans/delegation, his anxiety has been at an all time low.

Mikey is the one who has been flourishing the most within the team. With the emotional open-ness, the daily meetups, and the weekly training he has been learning new things and has been allowed to explore whatever he wants to.

April is decidedly happy with the way that things are. While she came in a little later, she quickly found her place in the team and found the leadership style very nice and easy to understand. She has no complaints.

Casey is much more happy about the leadership than April is. His family isn't the best about communication, and every team he's been in has had trashy leaders, so when he joined the team he was pleasantly surprised to find how awesome the leadership style was, and due to the way the team functions, would much rather stay with the team than go home.

[catblgog]

Topic: AI

In a reading for my science fiction class I found an interesting excerpt that details how emotion informs the technology that humans create. I found it relevant to my own considerations of how AI art is missing something.

“An educational system that teaches us only about our tools—the how-to of them, their creation, their maintenance—and not about their function as facilitators of our desires, is, in essence, no more than a school of toaster repair. You can be the best toaster-repair person in the world, but you will cease to have a job if toast is no longer a desirable food item on the human breakfast menu. “The arts”—as we’ve come to term them—are not a frill. They are the heart of the matter, because they are about our hearts, and our technological inventiveness is generated by our emotions, not just by our minds. A society without the arts would have broken its mirror and cut out its heart. It would no longer be what we now recognize as human.” (Atwood - Scientific Romancing)

I looked an an article about AI art and the issues of copyright, but I got a bit bogged down in the details since it got complex. I thought this line was interesting though. “Under traditional copyright law, creative works are granted protection based on the principle of originality, which requires human authorship and a modicum of creativity” (link to full article)

That article also had a list of AI artists who were using AI in ways that I found to be more intentional / creative and less the blatant theft type of digital art.

I also found a wonderful forbes article that pointed out a lot of issues with AI art which was a good find. (link to article). It brought up an interesting point of how Google searches are getting bogged down with fake AI images (misinformation and general internet ruining vibes). Another good point was how water wasteful ChatGPT is. This was one of my favorite lines from the article, “The technology is a solution to a problem that never existed. Artists, as much as they like to complain about the struggle of the creative process, enjoy making things. The creative process is incredibly rewarding, even if the final piece doesn’t match up to the original vision." This was another great line, “When we immerse ourselves in art, we experience a touch of the unique perspective that an artist brings to their work, the smeared fingerprints that makes art worth talking about.” And there was mention of an event that I saw another article talking about, which was when the renouned Studio Ghibli guy, Miyazaki was shown AI art and in response said, "I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."

I tried to find some info on AI misinformation / how it's changing memes but didn't have a lot of luck. But those are topics that I would want to look into more later.

I looked into AI art and issues with theft and found some interesting things. My favorite lines from this article were “There is no transcending of the source material, just a mechanized “blending together,” and “It kind of boils down to: what is art? Is art the process, is art the human component, is art the conversation? All of that is out of the picture once you’re just generating it.” I also saw a blog post that had found a website where you could tediously opt out each image of your art that had previously been used in something, but only for future use. So anything it was in already, was too late. And they also mentioned the big idea that if artists aren't getting rights for their work, they won't get paid for their work either. It makes me think that in the future if AI art is stealing too much maybe people will be less inspired to bother making new art. So a stalling out in creativity may happen. Or not. Maybe people will use AI in a good way to supplement their ideas instead of just stealing.

My favorite thing that I found in researching was that a random subreddit had voted 2 years ago to totally ban AI art from it and when I checked the current rules, it was still banned. So there is hope somewhere at least.

My mind map from class

Overall there are some interesting avenues for this topic, but I found research a bit tedious due to how many clickbait type articles that come up whenever I try to Google anything about it. Also it was hard to wade through the rhetoric since everyone has such an opinion with what they're saying about AI art. And even though I had a lot of ideas on my map thing, I had a hard time approaching how to research them and find relevant information that was related to them.

[shiningpoultryno1]

Music holds some crazy power for me, so in that regard when i create a new playlist its sorta like a new chapter in life. Ive got about 3 right now. The first, going from middle school to halfway through freshman year. The second, when I got into my first relationship to when it ended. The third, from then to now. What i find most interesting is that i can look into these playlists and just by the names of the songs feel the overwhelming emotions tied to them. I can also see the decline in my mental health during my relationship, just based on the music in the playlist. I cant listen to those songs anymore, due to the emotions tied to them.

Upon revisiting the first playlist was a throwback, a lot of anime music and some dragonforce. I had just had a major switch in my life, going from normal to covid to highschool in just 2 years and a minecraft server with friends. I didn't have a lot to worry about, and the rapid changes in music taste show this. Trying everything to find a style that fits me. Nostalgia abound, another shift was gonna occur without forsight.

Listening to the relationship playlist again and its quite strange, all of the songs are outside of what id normally listen too, and all have a similar tone of extreme depressive emotions. It was a complex time in my life, this shows in my music taste. It might be crazy talk but i fully believe that the change to a better mental state started when i created a new playlist.

The third and most recent playlist is from May 2023 to now, remarkably new. The beginning suffers from the same problem as the previous playlist, a lot of emotionally charged songs that i cant listen to without some irepressible thoughts of sad. There was a lot of the same mysic as the second playlist, but i ended up removing a lot of it because it wasnt my style anymore. The mysic shifted from sadboy to rock, with a lot of queen and rush, signifying a push away from negative thoughts to something a little more positive, open minded and powerful. Then theres a semishift back, to calmer (relatively) slightly mundane music, as the relationship attempted, and succeded in rearing its ugly head. The music, however, only got more rebellious, with themes covering rebellion, breaking away from the system and just a little bit of greenday, showing that i would not stay down forever.

When the relationship ended for a second time, the music was celebratory and modest, but almost immediatly shifted towards queen, joe walsh, and huey lewis and the news, daft punk and thin lizzy. Now completely out of the toxic relationship and seeing it for what it was, i was looking towards a brighter future, which arrived as soon as i had hoped it would. Things continued on this line, positive music and upbeat tunes, until the end of the playlist.

A total of 114 songs, 7 hours and 8 minutes later, the playlists end, Take Me On by a-ha the last addition to a playlist that has taken me from toxic relationship to self confident badass. No one knows for certain what the future will hold, but if theres one thing i know for certain, its that there will be more playlists, with more music.

[thenarddogmeister]

Lady Bird. Dir Greta Gerwig. 2017

Okay SO I already watched Lady Bird a couple of years ago and I remember loving it and deeply resonating with it but after seeing what Greta Gerwig did with Barbie, I HAD to revisit Lady Bird.

First of all, on a personal level (and also not, because a lot of people who were once teenage girls relate to this film) I thought it was so interesting because the titular character Lady Bird goes through her character arc of starting off as a selfish, escapist but funny character to a mature, thoughtful and grateful character and it felt like I was watching me grow up. I don’t think it’s wrong to learn certain skills or traits as you grow up, and without getting too philosophical I think we do live in a world which cultivates selfishness so we can’t fully blame Lady Bird (or myself) for being that way. However, she does learn better and it is an emotional, enthralling and honest journey. You can tell Gerwig is coming from experience and using her adolescence as a starting point for a lot of the moments in this film.

The performances from Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird) and Laurie Metcalf (Marion, her mother) were incredible and so natural. Their relationship was so real to me and even though my mother isn’t exactly like Marion, I still felt as if I could relate to the conversations and experiences they were sharing. They go from arguing and disagreement to crying together over a book and admiring a perfect dress. These ups and downs of their relationship are very adjacent to how the film is structured, there are some extremely joyous scenes such as Lady Bird and her boyfriend (played by Lucas Hedges) running through a starry, almost mystical field to some extremely despairing scenes like Lady Bird comforting her heart broken ex boyfriend as she promises to keep his sexuality a secret from his religious family and peers.

The whole film feels personal and intimate, which can be emphasised by the frequent use of low key lighting to create cozy atmospheres and skilful dialogue, which is very reminiscent of teenage angst and experience. And just like I said before about the film oscillating between happy and sad, it also does this between genre. The film flows seamlessly between drama and comedy, I found it to be a funny film, thanks to the excellent line deliveries by the actors but this didn’t diminish the dramatic elements of the film at all. If anything, it amplified them because the characters felt like real people so I cared so much about them even if they weren’t the focal point of the story.

I loved following along with Lady Bird’s journey as she discoveres herself and learns what her loved ones mean to her. I also really liked a little detail (maybe I over analysed it but anyways) where at the beginning of the film, Lady Bird sees Lucas Hedges’ character (Danny) perform for the first time. Her reaction is to turn to her best friend and blush over him. She gets jealous when her best friend earns a bigger part in the play compared to hers and doesn’t want her sharing that much time with Danny - this highlights Lady Bird’s selfish tendencies early in the film; she dismisses her friend’s success to focus on her own desires. Then later, after Lady Bird learns Danny is gay and comforts him, she watches him perform again. Her facial expression is almost half sad and half proud, it feels like she has more emotional complexity and she has more compassion and love for the boy on stage, even though he isn’t her boyfriend anymore. This portrays her growth as a young woman and it is anchored by a sound bridge of clapping which is used to transition from Danny’s performance to Lady Bird’s graduation. This links the two successes together and implies that now, she sees her loved ones successes equally as important and significant as her own.

Lady Bird learns how to be herself and also show love and compassion to those she loves. She endures the hardships of being a teenage girl and contributed to a movie which I find relatable, cathartic and deeply personal. I think Greta Gerwig is very talented and I can’t wait to see what she does in the (hopefully near) future.

[maridotnet]

Hi!! I was just thinking about your Very Sad piece for day 23 and wondering about your drawing process, particularly because of the complexity of the water - do you sketch in pencil first? If you have the chance and feel comfortable, do you think you could share a couple of in progress shots of your beautiful art? <3

ARGHRHGH okay i had MOST of this answered and then my page suddenly crashed, so I'm very frustrated, but I'm DETERMINED to type it all up again! First of all thank you for the ask! :D I don't usually take very many in-process photos, although I might do that for today's so I can give you a better look. :) For this piece, I started off filming myself dragging around a body pillow as reference footage for the pose. Meet Chat Noir!

(My room's a mess because I still haven't finished unpacking, don't mind it lol) If the poses I want are very simple, or don't interact with each other, or I've drawn similar ones, I don't always need a reference. In most cases though, I'll either spend some time on Google Images or photograph myself to help. I went through my footage and found some frames that I liked, and sketched some of them out in a different sketchbook. It's bigger and I like using it for planning and reference practice. Here's that page!

Because I draw with traditional media, and I'm trying to do all of these pictures back to back in one sketchbook, I try to plan it out in a fair amount of detail before starting on the actual page. Once I get going, it can be tricky to shift things around, especially because I always sketch in colored pencil. (I think it looks nice, it's not as messy as graphite, and it also has a subtle bearing on the mood of the final piece. This one is a dark blue-green because I wanted it to look really waterlogged, but I've used pink, purple, or yellow for a lot of Marichats so far.) The pose here was something I put a lot of thought into because I wanted it to be close enough to show how protective and intense Marinette was, but also with enough distance that I could clearly show the strain on her body and his weight in her arms. The story is also important to all of this, especially in the sketching stage. I knew Chat would be floating partially, so that would affect his weight. I knew Marinette had been looking for him for a while, so her hair was plastered to her face - and she'd gone out in a hurry, so her raincoat was unbuttoned. Chat had been slumped in an alleyway for a while as the rain fell, so the blood was diluted and darkened. etc etc I picked the Place des Vosges for the background because a) it was simple b) trees and fences are pretty easy to wreak havoc on! (this is so long sorry) I sketched the people first, to make sure the pose fit into the frame, then added in some background markers, and a few directional lines to remind me of the water flow direction (I knew I wanted her fighting against the current to bring him home). I lined the people first too, leaving out the pupils and mouths til later, because those are the main indicators of emotion, and I wanted to make sure they would still work if the mood of the piece shifted. From there I lined the people in ink, added more detail to the background sketch to make sure it fit around them well and was still clearly readable, and then inked that. For the water...idk what to tell you, I was winging it which is funny because that's the part everyone's commented on the most sdflkjdf I did use some references (I googled like, "water moving past rocks") to see how water responds to obstacles, but water is really difficult to draw, so I just kinda...wung it and tried to create something genre-appropriate! I steered clear of realism bc I knew I wouldn't be able to pull it off very convincingly and would get bogged down in all the deatil it's possible to include. (@davey-in-a-minivan of the very big brain pointed out that the water looks like peacock feathers) After that, I think I lightly colored the people first, then the background, so I could keep a handle on how they affected each other. Again, the story is important here too, because it makes the clothes shiny, and darker if they're absorbent, and the water darker and with more debris because of the turbulence. I do have a picture I sent to a friend part way through:

After that, I just kept going until I was happy! I like dramatic shading, so I added in a bit more as I went, but because light on a foggy day is pretty diffused, I didn't do as much as usual with that. I added more detail to the trees and sky behind because it didn't fit well with the rest of the piece, and eventually I got here!

And voila!! I hope that offers some insight hahaha - thanks again for the ask :))) (I might take more progress pictures of today's project for the future)

[coolfire333]

OK ALSO I think that Adel deserved so so so SO much better in terms of his storyline in under the knife 2, ESPECIALLY when you look at Naomi’s progression from second opinion to trauma team. Well, maybe “deserved better” doesn’t quite describe my feelings because I don’t think they actively did him wrong, I actually like his character in under the knife 2, my main issue is that I think they didn’t explore it deeply enough...like the starting ideas and execution of his character arc is good, I just think it needs more

There is just so much potential there...I wish they’d done a similar storyline where you could play as Adel with the hands of asclepius in between playing as Derek with caduceus, I think that was a really successful part of Naomi’s storyline in second opinion because it gave a lot of insight into someone on the “opposite team” and it also created some really interesting tension because in liking Naomi and rooting for her, you entered into this weird grey area where you personally liked her but also disagreed with her villainous actions

And I feel like Adel’s story could have been so much more impactful if you got to play as him when he was working for the hands of asclepius. Looking again at Naomi, her reason for joining delphi is understandable but it’s still a pretty cruel decision on her part with how she’s willing to toss aside her morals so that she can keep working as a surgeon. But with Adel, he joins the hands of asclepius with good intentions, albeit ones also somewhat based on envy: he wants to be the best surgeon possible so that he can help his country, but he thinks that the healing touch is the only way to do this, and the hands of asclepius promises him that only they can help him achieve this

Naomi’s complexity comes from the fact that she doesn’t really have any strong morals at the start of second opinion. She very much knows that what she’s doing is wrong, and to a certain extent Navel will let her push back on certain boundaries when she feels that delphi is REALLY crossing a line (like when she convinces him to let her try to save the photographer who crashed his car trying to stalk them instead of just driving away to leave him to die), but at the end of the day she KNOWS she is not working on the side of good when she’s with delphi.

And it’s a decision that she comes to eventually regret, and she struggles with this aspect of her past a lot in trauma team (Little Guy also seemingly shares this conflict, although we don’t get to see much of his transition to “good” or his low points in struggling with his past actions like we do for Naomi...but talking about him is its own post entirely)

But Adel has always been interesting to me because I think his complexity comes from the fact that he DOES have very strong ideals, but his obsession for perfection and his jealousy warp his sense of morality to the point where he ends up no longer doing the right thing. He doesn’t seem to know how dubious the hands of asclepius is until he’s already in too deep, so deep that he either doesn’t realize what they’re doing isn’t right because he’s fully consumed by his emotions, or he ignores the bad things they’re doing to focus on honing his abilities as a kind of “net good” scenario, again very similarly to how Naomi acts

Derek immediately forgives Adel’s behavior after his surgery, saying it was just the neo-guilt affecting his mental state, but Adel corrects him in saying that although the neo-guilt did cause him to behave irrationally, he really was mad at Derek for his percieved slighting of him earlier, and he was geniunely envious of Derek’s abilities, and he now sees that his behaviors were unhealthy. 

Like, it would have been so easy to dismiss all of Adel’s standoffishness and later hostility as just being a result of his illness, but he flat-out admits that no, he was sick and that explains how extreme his behavior became, but he really did have these same feelings deep down.

There’s also the parallel between him slowly falling into evil and Naomi slowly exiting out of it that really could have benefitted from him having his own playable missions. We start off seeing Naomi in delphi, and although she is also working for the side of good during this time, it’s hard to get a sense of how she works as a hero here since she’s still heavily allied with evil. 

But we see so much of her regret and commitment to atonement in trauma team, and that’s really the best character arc in all of the games imo, and one of the reasons she’s my favorite character in the whole series (and one of my favorite fictional characters period), because she’s done an equal number of good and bad deeds and seeing her able to get her life back after she fully turns herself around is incredibly moving. 

So, we get to see basically her full transformation from evil to good, but other than a brief mention of her backstory in Japan, where she was presumably an honest doctor, we don’t get to hear much of her initial good deeds and we certainly don’t get to actually see how she initially gets involved with delphi and turns to evil in the first place. 

BUT we do see that more with Adel’s joining of the hands of asclepius, which is the perfect opportunity for having the reverse of Naomi’s story, where we get to see Adel having a shaky and troubled start as a doctor, much like Naomi, before slowly getting involved with evil, before he eventually is made aware of the harmfulness of his actions, at which point he realizes that he needs to redeem himself. 

We do get to see Adel’s change of heart at the end of the game, but it’s much less than we see Naomi’s change of heart, considering that we not only had the last half of second opinion to see her finally doing good, but the entirety of trauma team to fully show how far she’s come. And I don’t necessarily mind that Adel’s redemption isn’t shown in as much detail, because I think that seeing his decent into evil as a foil to Naomi’s storyline could be much more interesting and novel. But that’s my main issue, is that I REALLY think there’s so much unexplored potential in his storyline

Basically I just really love Adel and I think he’s severly underrated...he has a pretty good character arc in-game and it’s something that I think can really be expanded upon if you acknowledge the potential he has as a complex, troubled character

[ciaran]

where can i find more info on your ocs?? i'm intrigued ;o;

there's nothing officially written down but i can give you a quick rundown of the oc verse we (myself and @checkers-dance) are currently working on! we do this stuff for fun, without any intent of writing it down or turning it into something more, so our documentation is rather poor and mostly for our own benefit.

but i can tell you about them (i love to infodump).

content warnings: consent issues (just, in general), abuse, some violence, suicidal ideation, dehumanization, medical abuse/torture, and so on.

citycomet is a setting where, for certain reasons, sometimes people receive or are born with a particular superpower (most people receive them). the origins of these powers is unknown for most of the plot (i use this word loosely). some people with powers choose to use them for the public good in whatever way they can - others decide to wreak havoc and create mayhem - others still may decide to do nothing. these individual choices have ramifications for society, though, leading to superheroes and supervillains and their little factions and groups. additionally, technology has progressed to a point where two sufficiently wealthy scientists were able to create a line of artificial humans with limited intellectual and emotional capacity (marketed as being not much more intelligent than rabbits) but greatly increased endurance. these dolls were to be sold commercially, with usage up to the purchaser. the plot deals with the consequences of the worldbuilding setup, as well as the question of how these powers came to be in the first place.

there are 5 major characters in citycomet (and 3 minor ones + miscellaneous abusers who do not have to be named)

Tristan, the prototype for the dolls and a near-superhuman genius. he is incredibly anxious, plagued by a savior complex and a martyr complex and saddled with truly horrific amounts of trauma. his superpower is being able to turn into smoke, but the downsides of this are so debilitating that he almost never uses it; he can't be smoke for more than a minute, and it's very, very painful once he turns back. he is a medical prodigy, adept at most fields of medicine and pioneering research into superhuman physiologies.

Jonathan, Tristan's eventual partner and all-round chaotic bastard. his power is being able to draw water out of the environment and control it. he is very good at it and very strong, and he's a superhero. at one point, he was being abused and used by a supervillain, but Tristan got him out and he's worked for Tristan ever since. he's got pretty severe alexithymia, and he is very suspicious of Tris for half their relationship's runtime while also, simultaneously, being almost absurdly devoted to him. he contains multitudes and he refuses to reconcile his contradictions.

Francis, a later model of doll than Tristan. he was a freak happenstance, a doll that developed a personality and differentiated itself from the rest before it could be sold. he was therefore trained as a combat doll before Tris learnt about him. he's in love with Tris: their few meetings led Francis to hero-worshipping him, and the fact that Tristan eventually got Francis away from the scientists who created them solidified his place in Francis's heart. he's passionate to the point of obsessiveness, and a lot of his character arc is learning that being a doll doesn't mean being Perfect or safe from harm. his power is his ability to control the temperatures of living beings.

Viktor, Nate's best friend and Francis's (eventual) partner. Viktor is a gentle, careful guy, but he starts out at the lowest point of his character - he's just gotten out of an abusive relationship a while prior, and he hates himself so much. he wants to kill himself, but holds on out of guilt and a feeling that he should at least try to make up for all the wrong he's done. he was abused as a child, and in trying to hurt his abuser with his powers he ended up killing his entire family. he blames himself completely for this and is bitter about an existence he sees as irredeemable and poisonous to those around him. his relationship with Nate is rocky because at this point, Nate doesn't actually consider them friends, and his relationship with Francis starts out awful because Francis is trying to quit Tristan.

Minnow, a doll. it came to them by accident, but it has a fascinating story. it developed telepathic communication at some point after being bought as a companion doll for a young deaf boy (it could sign to him, but the powers were a result of its desire to communicate more and more deeply than it could find the vocabulary for). the boy was extremely close to Minnow, and treated it with a respect and gentleness it had never previously experienced - so when the boy was abused by a tutor, Minnow used its telepathy to tell his parents. this experience damaged Minnow for a long time, during which it came into the hands of the other characters and started, slowly to recover. it's curious about the world and people and determined to assert its individuality, and it loves to paint.

I'm leaving a lot of stuff out, and I mean a lot - the way their relationships & characters develop, Tristan's organization (which is pretty central to the plot but difficult to effectively put into a brief summary), the fact that all of them are in a polycule by the end of their arc and how each of those relationships & the polycule in general Work. there's a lot to say.

citycomet has a bunch of thematic throughlines: it's a lot about the guilt of one's childhood, about trauma that runs so deep it robs one of the ability to speak or think about it. its about being healed by the way people who love you see you. its about what it means to be a person, regardless of origin or humanity - and its about the significance of what you choose to yourself, and to others. all of the characters are, for various reasons, dehumanized: Tris sees himself as a fundamental failure, a doll striving eternally and never quite managing to be a complete and accepted person; Nate sees himself as a weapon, and longs to be wielded well; Francis takes pride in his lack of humanity, but finds himself being the most willingly human of all of them; Viktor sees himself as inescapably and inexcusably damaging to the world, but learns to let himself exist anyway. Minnow is not, and doesn't want to be, human, but it wants to be respected and heard and loved, and it wants to look at the world and communicate with it.

feel free to ask me about any part of this! i love this verse so much.

[object-show-analysis]

Why does MePad lie?

This is a question I was asked to answer a while ago. So let’s talk about it.

Now it is a fair question. Why would MePad lie to MePhone about where Marshmallow was if he doesn’t have emotion? He claims that he can’t feel anything, so why’d he make the choice to lie to MePhone

the answer to this one is pretty simple, (and most people I’ve talked to seem to agree with this, I’m just here to put things into words the best I can) but the main reason MePad chooses to keep where Marshmallow is a secret (despite the fact that he cannot feel anything for her) is that he’s a liar.

Marshmallows whereabouts aren’t the only lies he tells in episode 11. Kick The Bucket parts 1 and 2 are the only instances in which MePad mentions his inability to feel emotion. And I am positive that this is also a lie.

Let’s go over the facts

Season 2 Episode 2 we are introduced to MePad. Right away he is established as very different from MePhone in many ways. Mainly through his friendly demeanor, and his compassion. In his first episode, MePad is incredibly friendly. We see him “smile” throughout the episode and he seems to show compassion towards the contestants

As early season 2 goes on we continue to see a wide range of emotions from MePad

He shows sadness or anger when arguing with Toilet. He becomes sarcastic and sometimes even rude towards MePhone. Which, while unkind, is still an emotional response. But he’s also shown to be incredibly compassionate. From the start he applauds MePhone for caring so much about the contestants, though MePhone shuts him down.

One of the biggest indicators of this sense of compassion comes from his behavior towards his fellow assistant/cohost, Toilet.

MePad and Toilet are both hostile towards each other in the beginning of the season, though MePad doesn’t understand exactly what Toilet has against him. Their talk in the falling balloon opens MePad’s eyes to the reality of the constant workplace abuse that Toilet experiences. From that point there is a very obvious shift in MePad and Toilet’s behavior.

MePad takes time to give credit to Toilet, even when it isn’t deserved, in the name of trying to get MePhone to recognize him. He works with Toilet in an attempt to get MePhone to let him read the votes. And when MePhone shuts Toilet down again, MePad appears angry with him.

It is important to note here that MePad is not one for open confrontation. He never actively stands up for Toilet but he takes steps to ensure that Toilet gets the recognition he deserves. When MePad is upset about something, he dwells. Never directly asking for answers but trying to figure things out on his own (we’ll get back to this point in a moment)

Episode 13 and 14 give us a lot of insight into many characters, and MePad is no exception. As episode 13 comes to a close, this unwillingness to actually stand up against MePhone becomes his greatest downfall. MePad tries at first to insist Toilet would never mean any harm, but when push comes to shove MePad stands with MePhone. As Toilet turns to him for help, MePad can only look away.

MePad clearly has some inability to directly fight back against MePhone, even when he really wants to. It’s a limitation of his.

We see in this scene and in future scenes how Toilet leaving emotionally effects him. MePad is visibly distressed when Toilet leaves, and later becomes angry with MePhone for trying to get rid of his memories again and abandon the contestants. Just another example of MePad responding in very emotionally driven ways

But I’m rambling now. Back to the topic at hand, MePad and emotions. I do believe his emotional expression is very clear, but also lore wise it would only make sense for MePad to have emotions.

It was confirmed on tumblr that the Meeple products ability to feel emotion has been on a decline since MePhone4. MePhone4 being the most capable of complex emotion, and the phone that attacked Toilet (commonly assumed to be MePhoneX) being the least emotional that we’ve seen so far. We see MePhones be capable of emotion up until MePhone6 (though they could still be capable of it. As we don’t see much of them, or 6+)

Timeline wise, we know MePad was created somewhere between MePhone4 and MePhone5 (he was most likely built before MePhone4S as well, though we aren’t entirely sure). But this means that MePad should be even more capable of feeling than 5, 5S and 5C (who we know can all feel emotion.)

Case in point: MePad Does feel emotion. He absolutely must in order to line up with the confirmed lore, and what we’ve seen in the show.

Now with that out of the way we can circle back to the original question: why does MePad lie to MePhone about where Marshmallow is.

I don’t believe it was his original intention to do so, as he seems concerned for her well-being at first. And doesn’t seem to have any intention of lying when he first confronts MePhone about it.

However Marshmallow doesn’t leave his mind. Even though he tells Toilet that he’s been watching the competitors, we see he’s also got Marshmallow’s drawing of Bow with him. He’s been thinking about her, and the other contestants as a whole.

MePad is unsure why Marshmallow would choose to leave, but I believe this is the moment where he comes to his own conclusion. MePad notes to Toilet that he’s realized how miserable the contestants are. He sees their struggles and how much the competition is ripping them apart. Toilet re-solidifies this idea, as he shows he relates to the contestants in their need to please someone without ever getting anything in return, which MePad knows makes Toilet miserable.

When we see MePhone and MePad together again after this conversation, that’s when we learn MePad has lied about knowing where Marshmallow is. Because he knows why she never came back. He understands now that this was a bad environment for her.

So he makes the decision to let her be. It’s unclear what he thought would happen if he told MePhone where she was, but it’s possible they’d try to bring her back. And he understood that wasn’t what she wanted.

But there’s still one question that remains: why does MePad lie about not having emotions?

MePad’s ability to feel is mentioned twice in Kick The Bucket. Once in part 1 and once in part 2. Though his story changes throughout the two parts

In part one he claims that he can’t feel Much. Which isn’t a complete lie, as I already stated his emotions aren’t as strong as MePhone or the contestants. Though there isn’t much of a visible difference.

But in part 2 he states that he can’t feel Anything. Which surprises MePhone. It’s also important to note in this scene he appears very distressed Until he claims he can’t feel.

It’s unclear exactly what he hopes to achieve by claiming he has no ability to feel. But as I’ve already discussed, there was a clear shift in MePad’s understanding of the game in episode 11. He now sees Inanimate Insanity for what it really is, and all the pain that comes with it. We don’t know his exact reasoning. But it’s clear that this realization is what caused him to begin to lie about his ability to feel.

I hope this answer was satisfactory