#just a random side character in my main setting/time period

[koboldfactory]

Librarian!

[buckleylove]

9-1-1 Character Birthdays

Okay, so I’ve been going through all of 9-1-1 to create a timeline of when episodes were set etc - I have no intentions to post that tbh, it’s purely for myself like my brain fully latched onto this idea and wouldn’t let me rest until I figured it out.

However, this does mean I’ve found a fair bit of information on birthdates/years of main/side characters so I thought I’d post that here as a kinda comprehensive list with all the evidence I’ve found that supports (or even directly contradicts) these dates for anyone that's interested. This doesn’t include all of the main/side characters, because with some of them there is literally nothing to go from and I wanted to try to stick to the facts we’ve been given instead of just guessing random years from nowhere.

Before I get into it, I just want to emphasise that whilst there are a few moments where the date of certain episodes is clear, a lot of what I’ve had to go off of is when characters reference past events by how many weeks/months/years it’s been. And when a character says “x months since..”, they may be rounding up, rounding down, or they may just have an awful concept of time. So, just take it all with a pinch of salt because even though I’ve narrowed it down as best as I can, I may still be a few months out. 

So, here’s what I found in a table format, and then below is all of my explanations/workings for each of them!

Athena - March 22nd 1967/68

Okay, so Athena’s birthdate is one of the simpler ones, because Athena says she was born on March 22nd in 6x08.

“Can you read his handwriting? Because my birthday is 3/22-“ [6x08 at 20:45]

Now, Athena didn’t say the year she was born in, but in 1x09 she says that she is 50. 

“I’m figuring out how to be single at 50.” [1x09 at 37:15]

1x09 is set in March 2018. The way I worked this out involves a lot of working backwards, but I’m going to list it below for anyone who’s interested.

Firstly, we know 1x09 isn’t set an earlier than March 2018 because 1x06 is the Valentines episode (so February 14th 2018), and 1x07 shows dispatch call logs from February 28th 2018. Now that we know it’s set in at least March 2018, we need to check if there’s been any time jumps that would result in 1x09 being set later in 2018.

So, here’s how I confirmed that there has been minimal time jumps between 1x07 and 1x10:

In 6x15 at 09:45, we see Shannon’s grave and find out that she died on May 6th 2018. 

Shannon died in 2x17, so this episode must’ve been set on May 6th 2018.

In 2x18, after Shannon’s funeral (so not long after 2x17), Eddie says his probationary year is nearly over and at the end of the episode, his probationary period ends. So, 2x18 is still set in May, with the episode likely ending around June 2019. 

Therefore, 2x01 (when Eddie starts his probationary period) would likely be set in June 2018.

In 2x01, Bobby and Athena have been together for “almost 4 months”. [2x01 at 26:31]

This means that 1x10 is set 3/nearly 4 months before 2x01, which would mean 1x10 is set in late February/early March.

We know that it can’t be set in late February because of 1x07 being set on the last day of February, so 1x08-1x10 must all set in March 2018.

Personally, I think it is more likely that 1x09 is set in early march. This would mean that because Athena’s birthday is on March 22nd, she’d be turning 51 that year, which would make her birthdate March 22nd 1967.

However, there’s no official confirmation of this, and it’s still possible that 1x09 is set later on in March, which would mean she turned 50 in 2018, so her birthdate would be March 22nd 1968.

So, Athena’s birthdate is March 22nd 1967/68 (with a higher likelihood of it being 1967 in my opinion).

Bobby Nash - between late March 1965 and early March 1966

Okay, so Bobby is one of the characters in 9-1-1 that has had his age mentioned/shown more than once but both times contradict each other.

In 1x01, Bobby outright says he’s 50.

“I’m 50 years old, I’m taking the elevator”. [1x01 at 11:21]

1x01 is set in January 2018, so if Bobby is already 50 at this point, he either:

Already had his birthday that year, so turned 50 in January 2018 (born January 1968), or;

He’s turning 51 that year, so was born February-December 1967.

However, this is all made redundant because his dating profile in 1x10 says he’s 52 [1x10 at 08:19]. This might’ve been an honest mistake when they made his dating profile because it’s on screen for like two seconds and they may not have thought too deeply about it, but I’m more inclined to believe this as canon than his comment in 1x01. This is mainly because 1x01 is obviously a pilot episode, and a lot of things in shows get changed after a pilot. Normally, I would believe what a character says over something like a dating profile that’s shown for 2 seconds so may not have been fully thought through/fact checked, but in this case I’m gonna believe the dating profile. 

We already know 1x10 is set around March 2018 (from what I wrote about Athena’s birthdate, I’m not going to torture everyone by writing it all out again). Therefore, Bobby either:

Turned 52 in January-early March 2018, meaning his birthdate would be January-early March 1966, or;

Is turning 53 in late March-December 2018, making his birthdate late March-December 1965.

Therefore, Bobby’s birthdate is between late March 1965 - early March 1966.

Chimney - October 20th 1977 but also April??

Chimney is another character that has two mentions of his birthday that contradict each other.

Firstly, we see his ID in 2x10 [at 42:47], which says his birthdate is October 20th 1977.

However, we actually see Chimney celebrate his birthday in 3x11. There’s no mention of how old he turned in this episode, but we can deduce that this episode is set around April 2020. We know 3x11 is set around April 2020 because 3x10 was the Christmas 2019 episode and in this episode, Karen makes an appointment on January 3rd for her and Hen to start the fostering process. In 3x11, they foster Nia “after 3 months of paperwork”. So, this brings us to April 2020 for 3x11.

Therefore, Chimney’s birthday would be in April. 

(Not gonna lie, this is hilarious to me because they’ve given us two months that are 6 months apart which is literally the furthest apart you can be in a year lmao)

If I was to guess, I’d probably say he was born in April 1977, which is a mix of the two dates they gave us. It’s hard to deny that he was born in April when we literally witnessed him having his birthday in an episode (something we haven’t seen with any other main character). Also, the ID is similar to Bobby’s dating profile in that it could just be something that wasn’t 100% thought through or fact checked. 

Hen Wilson - September 1979 to September 1980

Compared to other main characters, there’s very little to go off of with Hen’s birthdate. The only thing I could find was from 4x03, which is set towards the end of 2020.

In 4x03 [at 34:50], Hen says “I’m a Black lesbian that joined the fire department at 30, that started med school at 40”. If Hen is 40 at this point, she either:

Turned 40 pre-September 2020, so was born pre-September 1980, or;

Is turning 41 post-September 2020, so was born post-September 1979.

So, Hen was born between September 1979 to September 1980.

Buck - March 1991 to October 1991

With Buck, I came across three times where they’ve mentioned his age, so I’ve narrowed it down from there.

Firstly, in 1x09 [at 23:56] Buck says he is 26. Therefore, he either:

Turned 26 in January to March 2018, meaning his birthdate would be January to March 1992, or;

He is turning 27 in March to December 2018, meaning his birthdate would be March to December 1991.

In 3x01, Maddie says “Buck is 28 and I still have my hands full.” [3x01 at 35:10].

3x01 is set around October 2019 because in this episode, Buck says he has been fighting for five months to get his job back [3x01 at 22:35], and his leg was pinned by the ladder truck in 2x18 in May 2019. 

So, if Buck is 28 in October 2019, he either:

Turned 28 in January to October 2019, which means he was born January to October 1991, or;

He is turning 29 in October to December 2019, so was born October to December 1990.

Therefore, looking at these two separate statements, the only months that overlap are March to October 1991. If he was born in any other month/year, only one of the statements could be true - this is the only way both statements can be true.

Another time that his age is mentioned is in 4x05 [at 10:42] when Buck says it’s been 29 years. 4x05 is set late 2020, so if Buck is 29 at this point, this supports the theory that he was born March to October 1991.

Considering that Oliver was born on June 27th 1991, they seem to be sticking pretty close to that for Buck.

Maddie - 1982 or 1983

A lot of the information we have on Maddie’s age is given to us around Buck Begins - so 4x04 and 4x05.

In 4x04, Maddie says she promised her parents she’d keep Daniel a secret, and Chimney said that she made this promise when she was 9.

“I promised my parents-” “-when you were 9!” [4x04 at 04:06]

So, the year Daniel died, Maddie was 9.

From 4x05, we know that Daniel died in 1992, because he died when Buck was 1, and Buck was born in 1991.

“He was seven when you were born. He was gone a year later.” [4x05 at 01:54]

Therefore, Maddie was 9 in 1992. This means she was born in either 1982 or 1983. This would make Maddie 37/38 in season 4 (2020) when she is pregnant, which is supported by Phillip saying she’s a high risk pregnancy (over 35).

Eddie Diaz - September 1st 1992 to August 31st 1993

Eddie’s birthdate is an estimate purely based off of Shannon’s. We see from Shannon’s grave in 6x15 [at 09:45] that she was born on October 16th 1992. 

In 6x17, it’s revealed that Eddie and Shannon were in the same grade at school.

“Weren’t you guys in the 12th grade when you met?” “8th, then we lost touch and reconnected in 12th.” [6x17 at 14:22]

So, to be in the same grade as Shannon, Eddie would be born between September 1st 1992 and August 31st 1993.

This means that in canon he is definitely younger than Buck which is insane to me and I might just choose to ignore it lmao.

Christopher Diaz - January 2011 to April 2011

Eddie Begins [3x15] outright tells us that Christopher was born in 2011 from a flashback of Shannon giving birth in 2011. 

There’s a few other mentions of Christopher’s age that helps to narrow down the months.

In 2x02, Christopher is 7. [2x02 at 16:31]

2x02 follows on from 2x01, which is set in June 2018. So, if Christopher is 7 in June 2018, we know he was born in 2011 so that means he has already has his birthday this year. (If he hadn’t had his birthday, he’d be 8 in 2018 which would mean he was born in 2010, which we know isn’t true.)

So, Christopher would’ve been born between January and June 2011.

In 3x03, Buck says Christopher is 8 when he’s searching for him.

“I’m looking for an eight-year-old boy” [3x03 at 12:36].

3x03 is set in October 2019, so using similar logic to before, Christopher has already had his birthday that year. So, this supports the idea that he was born between January and June 2011. 

So, ‘Eddie Begins’ does actually make things slightly confusing when Eddie’s helicopter goes down. We’re shown that this happens in 2015, and then the next flashback says ‘El Paso, Texas, three months later’. So this flashback is either still in 2015 or in early 2016 at the latest. Now, this is all fine until in the flashback, Eddie says “And you immediately want me to get into a car and drive 800 miles with a six year old” [3x15 at 29:31]. This flashback can’t be set any later than early 2016, which means Christopher can’t be 6. At most, he’d be 5. I guess he could’ve turned 5 in January 2016 and Eddie is rounding up, but who would round up their kid’s age by nearly a whole year when it would’ve only been a couple of months maximum since his 5th birthday?? I’m inclined to believe that this is just a result of them messing up the year that Eddie’s helicopter went down, because the next flashback is in 2017 and Helena implies that Christopher is 6, so we’re back to the correct timeline.

In 3x16, Christopher is hosting his first sleepover, and Eddie doesn’t outright say Christopher is 9, but it is heavily implied.

“Celebrate with a bunch of nine-year-olds” [3x16 at 07:39].

3x17 is set May 4th 2020, so 3x16 is likely in April 2020. Therefore, if Christopher is 9 at this point, he would have been born between January and April 2011. Christopher still could’ve been born in May or June 2011 and Eddie could have meant that Christopher is nearly 9, which would have made sense for Eddie to round up because it would’ve been only a few months until he would have been 9. However, I’m trying not to make too many assumptions, so I’ll stick with the January to April 2011 estimate until they do something else in canon.

May Grant - December 29th 2001

In 6x08 [at 20:37], we find out that May’s birthday is December 29th from Bobby’s lucky numbers.

In 3x02, May is 17. 3x02 is set in October 2019, so that means she will be 18 that year. Therefore, she was born in 2001.

This is directly contradicted in 4x10 [at 36:56] when May listens to the 9-1-1 call that Athena made in 1x02 where May overdoses. In this call, Athena says May is 14. But 1x02 is set in January 2018, which means she would’ve been 16 (turning 17 on December 29th 2018).

Harry Grant - February 7th 2010

Ah, a nice and simple one with no contradictions (so far).

In 6x08 [at 20:34], we find out that Harry’s birthday is February 7th from Bobby’s lucky numbers.

In 3x13, Michael says Harry is 10. 3x13 is set in April 2020, so Harry has already had his birthday that year. This means he was born in 2010.

Albert - mid/late April 1999 to early/mid April 2000 

Chimney makes it easier by saying that Albert is 20 when he makes his first appearance in 3x11. 3x11 is set in April 2020, so Albert was born between mid/late April 1999 and early/mid April 2000. 

He’s either turning 21 April-December 2020, so was born in 1999, or;

He already turned 20 in January-April 2020, so was born in 2000

Jee-Yun - January 2021 to March 2021

Before I get into Jee’s birthday, it’s important to remember that she was born in season 4, and season 4’s timeline is weird. Most of early season 4 I have written down as ‘late 2020’, which makes it harder to narrow down Jee’s birth month. A lot of the confusion comes because they messed up the timeline by making covid/lockdown canon for season 4, but they seemingly forgot that they’d already reached May 2020 by the end of season 3. For example, 4x01 has a title card saying it’s September 2020, but they also say it’s been 6 months since Athena was attacked, which was on May 4th 2020?? And 6 months would make it November 2020?? And they say lockdown happened in March 2020, but this would’ve been mid season 3 in 9-1-1?? So, straight away season 4’s timeline is weird. 

Luckily for us, Jee-Yun was born in 4x09, and in the episode before this, it’s revealed that Nia has been with Hen and Karen for nearly a year. Hen and Karen started fostering Nia in 3x11, which was set in April 2020. So, this means that 4x08 and subsequently 4x09 are set close to April 2021. 

Therefore, I’d say that Jee is likely born between January and March 2021.

Denny - October 2009/2010

In the crossover episode, which is set between 4x03 and 4x04, Hen says Denny is 10. 4x03 and 4x04 are set towards the end of 2020, so Denny was born in 2009 or 2010.

In 6x09, it’s Denny’s birthday.

“It’s your birthday. We can do whatever you want today” [6x09 at 08:51]

6x09 is set in October 2022. I found this out because this is the same episode that Wendall dies, and we see in 6x12 that he purchased a camera on the same week he died, and the transaction was on October 19th 2022.

“A $300 purchase to an electronics website. Same week he died.” [6x12 at 08:52]

So, Wendall died towards the end of October 2022.

Therefore, Denny’s birthday is in October, but he could still be born in either 2009 or 2010.

Mara - mid 2014 to early 2015

In 7x07 [at 14:03], we find out that Mara is 9. 7x07 is set some time after April 2024. 

Therefore, Mara either:

Already had her birthday in early 2024, meaning she turned 9 in 2024, making her birthdate early 2015, or;

She is turning 10 in 2024 and hasn’t had her birthday yet, so was born in mid to late 2014.

Therefore, Mara was born between mid 2014 and early 2015.

That's all!

And that's all of the information I found! I may have missed some important bits of info, but I did go through transcripts of each episode and skim through each episode too (looking for stuff like calendars on fridges and call logs lmao). So, I'm hoping I didn't miss too much!

[suncrat]

I forgot that I never posted my P5R ramblings so here they are:

Socra’s Random Ass P5R Thoughts:

-I got emotionally attached to Ryuji and then Ann and then Yusuke and I refused to swap any of them out of my party throughout the entire game and it annoyed my brother (who was presiding over my playthrough) to no end

-(this also made the Okumura boss fight really annoying for me)

-Ryuji and Ann are my kids. My sillies. My beloveds.

-my brother and I referred to Kamoshida’s boss fight as “castrating Kamoshida” so in the period where I was waiting to do the fight (in the real world, not in the game) he’d just randomly ask me “when are you gonna castrate Kamoshida”

-I went from a Makoto hater to a… somewhat Makoto enjoyer? From what I’ve heard I think I’ll like her more in Strikers

-I know Kasumi/Sumire is kinda set up as the main love interest girl or whatever in Royal but I never once wanted to date her (no hate on those who do though), my initial impression of her was that she was like one of those underclassmen who you take under your wing when you’re in school and joke about being your kid and stuff

-also let me romance the bros:((((

-I didn’t date anyone but if I had to I’d probably date Hifumi

-and if Joker wasn’t a fucking kid I’d date Takemi (I am not immune to hot punk doctor)

-and if I could romance the bros then I’d date Ryuji

-I was hoping and praying for Sojiro to take in Yusuke and I was very disappointed when it didn’t happen. Like who the fuck is taking care of him??? Doesn’t he need a guardian???????? He sent a text about eating fucking bread crusts once and I have never wanted to parent a fictional teenager more in my life

-Ryuji will say the gayest shit about Joker and then the game will remember he’s supposed to be the Straight Bro Guy™ and the overall experience is of someone who is very, VERY deeply in denial that he’s a lil bit of a fruit

-Ryuji: Thank you for being there for me dude I’ve never felt this way with anyone before and there’ll always be a place for you at my side

Ryuji, two seconds later: man I sure do love women

-(closeted bi disaster Ryuji methinks)

-Anyways you can pry queer Yusuke and queer Ann out of my cold dead hands

-my embarrassing confession is that I got lost in Kaneshiro’s palace like three times

-apparently I got close enough to having Mishima be my first Maxed confidant that my brother was getting concerned

-my brother told me that “if Yusuke asks you to go on an outing and you don’t commit, I’m never letting you play on my laptop again”

-I kinda hated Morgana towards the start of the game (mostly bc he was a dick to Ryuji) but he did grow on me around the 3rd palace. Then I got to the 6th palace and got back on my Morgana hater arc. My final opinion is that he’s just a lil hater but he’s alright. He’s lucky he’s cute

-I am not really a Mishima enjoyer but I think I have far less negative feelings about him than most of the P5 fandom. It doesn’t sit right with me that the game obviously wants the player to laugh at him even after showing that he went through bullying and abuse- characters like Yusuke have funny moments/lines while also having their trauma be validated, but Mishima isn’t allowed to have that and it feels kind of shitty

-so uhhhh for some reason my game skipped the entire middle phase of the Akechi fight?????

-when Maruki was bonding with the tentacles and said something to them like “I’m yours to use” my brother gave me a look like “don’t you dare fucking say it”

-(I said it)

[ariannadi]

My Now Complete Review of Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I’ve tried to play through as consistently as possible so I could finish the game in a timely manner and still retain everything I’ve encountered, but unfortunately as I get older and wallow through my undiagnosed ADHD I simply can’t sit long periods of time like I once could, even when a game has me hooked.

That being said:

Overall score: 6.5/10 (Spoilers below cut obvs)

I wish wish wish wish wish WISH that the entirety of this game was like the final act. Those five hours of climax were what I was expecting from a game I had been waiting nearly ten years for. I wish wish wish WISH that Solas had been the main focus of the story, and not just some side character. Everything involving him was absolutely stellar, and I just wanna know what the hell happened at BioWare for them to make the decisions that they did.

So anyway, here are the highlights overall, because ultimately I *did* enjoy this game:

The last five hours of this game? PEAK Bioware.

The combat? SUPER FUN!

The graphics and environments? GORGEOUS!

The fact that this game is hella polished and runs perfectly? ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE!

Now here’s where I start bitching, because A LOT of factors dragged this game down for me.

Firstly, this is BIOWARE. They were, once upon a time, the pinnacle of good writing in video games, of companions that made you ache with their plights and that you would literally do ANYTHING for because you became so attached to them. Like I said previously, if this game had been like the entirety of the final six hours, then I would be singing its praises for eternity, but that simply isn’t the case.

First and foremost: Solas should’ve been the focus - I will repeat this until I'm blue in the face. I don’t think it was a wise move for BioWare to make the hunt for him a series of events in their side media - I WISH they had kept the initial concept for DA4 where the focus would be finding Solas from start to finish. He’s a compelling villain, so much more compelling than the cartoony Ghilan’nain and Elgernan that only yelled taunts at me about how I would rue the day and that they could’ve gotten away with everything if it wasn’t for my meddling Rook. It’s the same crap that people complained about with Corypheus during DAI, but they fucking went and did the same thing again and the true threat, that being Solas, was just reduced to a side character. Where was all of the buildup that Trespasser set in motion?? (Why is my Inquisitor only around for the occasional cameo when she's legitimately the driving force behind Varric and Harding recruiting Rook and the others? I did appreciate her showing up to talk to Solas one final time at the end, but it would've been cool to have her consistent council to my Rook throughout the entirety of the story, and not just through random missives.)

The companions are hit or miss. I loved Bellara, Davrin, and Emmrich (whose questline was the closest I came to getting emotional). For the most part I liked Lucanis and Taash (I have some gripes with both in terms of how they’re written but I don’t want the fandom coming after me >>). Neve and Harding, I could honestly care less about. They just… had nothing of interest for me despite how much I wanted to like them (and their voice direction didn’t help). I will say Harding’s death (cause something in me said don’t fucking pick Davrin lol) did shock me, so. There’s that.

Also, Rook as a character kinda sucks because you can’t actually SHAPE how you want them to be. Most of their dialogue amounts to “we can do it with the power of friendship” and the only time I was actually able to piss anyone off was when I was talking to Solas (and I took full advantage of that lol). Companions shouldn’t so readily agree to everything you say, aside from the Treviso/Dock Town choice there isn’t really a moment where any of them protest your actions. Everything is just so linear and, coming from BG3 where you had so much to decide, it sucks.

The story itself is fine (again I would’ve preferred the original draft), but the pacing was odd. The first 36 hours you’re building up to this confrontation with Ghilan’nain and then you just… stop to sort out everyone’s baggage for another fifteen hours?? It’s weird. Like if the companion stories meshed into the story somehow and didn’t make a screeching halt to the actual plot maybe it wouldn’t have been so jarring??

While on the topic of pacing, I wish the romances began earlier and had more content, because they’re kind of bare bones. Like the reason I fell hard for Cullen in Inquisition was because of both the pacing and content of his romance and how naturally it developed over the course of the game. In Veilguard it’s like - oh I like you (40 hours in), kiss, okay let’s bang, and that’s it. There isn’t even an option to connect with your LI or any companion outside of designated conversations.

The world-building, I was impressed by overall. I loved learning more about the Elvhen and Titans and the various factions you encounter. The lore itself was kinda wishy washy in places, because a lot of what made Dragon Age Dragon Age was seemingly scrubbed to avoid mentioning anything that may cause discourse on twitter. The Lords of Fortune don’t steal from other cultures! (Wha. But. They’re… Pirates. Isabela and the Qunari in DA2?) Tevinter has slavery EVERYWHERE, except Dock Town I guess. (Great post on my blog about this + Fenris not being around) The Crows, a band of cutthroat assassins who indoctrinate children, are *actually* a found family that care about each other (I guess Zevran lied). Everyone’s just… cool with elves wandering around despite the rampant racism and enslavement they’ve endured for centuries?? There are just so many edges that are dulled and I don’t understand why. Dragon Age is DARK fantasy. Or was, anyway.

Speaking of lore, the three choice thing is still asinine to me because there is so much that is altered by whatever choices you made in previous games but here it just isn’t addressed or glossed over to avoid specifics. (Well Ferelden is a pile of ash now anyway so I guess your choices REALLY don’t matter anymore lmao)

And now for the most glaring issue I had overall, which is the dialogue.

First of all, the game literally doesn’t know how to shut up. The characters legit explain EVERYTHING that happens as it’s happening and if you took one basic writing course you would know the golden rule is SHOW, DON’T TELL. More than once I was just like, is this necessary to narrate? Why are we narrating this? I can figure this shit out without being told upfront or a prompt showing up in the corner. Yes I know we have to stop the enemy we’re currently pursuing - you don’t need to say it every time we’re going after a new enemy. Thankfully this kinda peters out as the campaign progresses but even so, it can get annoying.

Secondly, the dialogue in of itself is just very elementary. Like I don’t need a Charles Dickens novel but c’mon, you can get a little more intense with your execution than just repeating over and over that we’re all besties and we gotta stop the gods. Cause honestly like 50% of the dialogue is just that in various iterations. Also incorporating real world terminology completely breaks any immersion for the in-game universe, just as a side note.

Again, I did enjoy this game, but for something I had been waiting forever for, and the fact that a studio known for their writing decided this was the best they could provide, idk man. It's awesome in some ways and disappointing in many others. I don't know if I'll do another playthrough because ultimately your choices amount to nothing, and it doesn't leave room for experimenting with other outcomes. Who knows if we'll see a DA5, but hopefully they take some lessons from the success that was BG3 to make something worth playing over and over again in the future.

[autumnalwalker]

Writeblr Intro v3

Updating the pinned intro now that it's been a year and my (now previously) main WIP is complete as it's going to be.

Me:

I write as a hobby. It's something I do for fun and first and foremost for myself. But if other people happen to actually like what I write, that's pretty cool too.

I try to keep this main blog primarily writing-focused. I've set up the side-blog @traversedmiscellany for reblogging/posting any other random stuff that happens to catch my interest.

I tend to prefer to keep my online and offline lives separate so I rarely say much about personal details aside from what inevitably winds up leaking into talking about my writing.

I am open to tag games and ask games. Or just general writing-related asks.

If anyone would like to be added to a tag list (whether for WIP updates or tag games), please feel free to send me a message or reply to this post, specifying what you want to be on the tag list for.

My WIPs:

Completed (Is it still a "WIP" at this point? Either way, it's fully online and available to read for free.):

The Archivist's Journal:

A slice-of-life story about waking up on a fantasy tropical island told over the course of a year in the form of daily journal updates. Mostly fairly chill, just living life one day at a time, but with some occasional angst, social anxiety, and supernatural spookiness.

The whole story (just over 330,000 words) is posted on my side blog @thearchivistsjournal. Or if you want to read from the beginning, here's the chronological posting. Or if you prefer to read in a format other than Tumblr posts, it's mirrored over on my ScribbleHub.

Also, here's the post I made when the project was completed for some more meta background on it and what I mean when I call it "complete."

I may eventually make additional scattered journal entries as a sort of periodic epilogue, but Day 380 should be considered the end of the "main story," so to speak.

Ongoing:

Empty Names:

My current main project. Also freely available to read in full as chapters go up.

A bit of an episodic urban fantasy moster-of-the-week sort of deal that's mostly an excuse to have a cast of OCs that I like interact with eachother. The basic premise is a world-hopping adventurer attempts to set up a sword-and-sorcery style adventurer's guild in a modern world where "adventurer" isn't considered a legitimate profession. Has what I suppose one might call "genre-typical violence" with fighting monsters and such, and individual chapters are tagged with more specific content warnings where necessary.

Here's the masterpost for it with links to chapters and to several standalone side stories set in the same world/setting.

I'm much more casual with my update schedule on this project, but it seems to be coming out to posting weekly chapter updates for a month or two at a time and then taking a month or two off from posting while I rebuild my buffer queue for the next batch of chapters.

Also, while it's not exactly a focus, the five characters of the core cast are all some flavor or another of LGBTA+, if that's a selling point for you.

The Witches' Testaments:

A prequel to the currently-hiatused "Solarpunk Witch Story" below that I wrote the loose framework and beginnings of in a sudden fit of inspiration that I may return to sporadically.

The idea was to focus a bit more on the "punk" side of Solarpunk and paint a picture of the effort and rebellion that went into how that world transitioned from Cyberpunk dystopia to Solarpunk... well, not utopia exactly, but something better than it was and striving toward that dream.

And because that sort of thing is bigger than any one person and I had multiple worldbuilding concepts I wanted to touch on, I landed on the idea of writing it in the form of a series of interviews with various characters who lived through that period of change.

Here's the masterpost for it.

Indefinite Hiatus:

Untitled Solarpunk Witch Story:

A project that I absolutely intend to return to one day once Empty Names is finished, but that's going to be a good long while yet.

The story of a freshly-minted "witch" and her AI familiar traveling from town to town in an ecologically-recovering post-capitalism future, providing highly-specialized tech support and environmental consulting wrapped up in enough mysticism and aesthetics to blur the line between what's purely technology and what might possibly be some kind of magic. I only ever wrote a prologue and five chapters worth of an initial arc/town/problem to solve, but I liked what I wrote well enough to share all that online. Ultimately this project going on hold was a matter of it being one project too many for me to handle simultaneously on the time combined with a desire to get more experience at traditional prose writing (as opposed to the epistolary format of The Archivist's Journal) so that I could better do the concept justice when I do one day revisit it.

In the meantime, those initial rough chapter drafts are all up online here: Solarpunk Witch Masterpost

Miscellaneous other writing:

On most Thursdays I'll post small (couple hundred words at most) pieces based on various interesting dreams that I've had. Being based on dreams, the content is a mixed bag. Those are tagged under #my dreams. These now have a compilation Masterpost that I'll do my best to keep updated.

Alternatively, if you just want to browse semi-random excerpts and snippets from the above works, I post a lot of that under #tag game.

Some Standalone Short Stories:

(Stories that were either written to be standalone pieces, or appear within something else but worked well enough by themselves that I gave them their own separate posts.)

The Tale of the Merchant and the Blacksmith's Daughter: A sapphic fairy tale (and, in retrospect after writing, possible trans allegory).

The Melts: An attempt to shift what would normally be body horror into the genre of slice-of-life. "What if your body slowly melting over the course of the day were treated as no more serious than the common cold and you still had to go to work?"

Kindly Basilisk: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form.

[the-badger-mole]

In Defense of Mrs. van Hopper

It is once again time for my periodic revisit to the novel Rebecca, and I have some thoughts. For such a famous book, with such a great film adaptation, I don't see a lot of discussion about it. So as I do with other random things that I don't have anyone to talk to about IRL, I'm going to post here. I'll be quick, I promise. Please join me in picking apart this nearly century old book about pathological jealousy, set in a society that doesn't exist anymore and featuring a main character who has no name.

Mrs. van Hopper wasn't a bad person. I know that the narrator and the Alfred Hitchcock adaptation wanted the audience to not like her, but honestly, aside from being a bit of a busybody, and a little overly dramatic she doesn't seem like a terrible employer. Had she picked someone a bit less intensely neurotic, she would've been a really good employer, I think. Nothing she asks the narrator to do is that difficult- arrange meals, pick up toiletries, play cards with Mrs. van Hopper and her friends. The narrator seems to have plenty of down time, even before Mrs. van Hopper gets sick and needs to be cared for by a nurse instead of her travel companion. Mrs. van Hopper herself encourages the narrator to get out and meet people her own age.

The worst thing Mrs. van Hopper ever did to the narrator was tell her the truth. Or at least the truth as she saw it. She told the narrator that Maxim de Winter, a man that the narrator had a 2 week long quasi friendship with- a man who was twice the narrator's age, mind you- had only asked her to marry him because he didn't want to go back to his big ol' mansion alone. I think the first few times I read this novel, I was mostly on the narrator's side about Mrs. van Hopper. Now, though, I think Mrs. van Hopper was genuinely trying to look out for the narrator. In any other novel, her warning would've been right. This 21 year old girl with abandonment issues, no self-esteem and who can barely manage making a declarative statement marrying a rich, powerful 42 year old man who hasn't shown any sort of real affection for her after knowing him for 2 weeks is a set up for disaster.

I can't find much on Mrs. van Hopper on my latest read of the novel to really dislike about her. Maybe I wouldn't want to be her friend, but she's not a monster. Even du Maurier's worst criticism is that she's vulgar and blunt, and yeah, Mrs. van Hopper is blunt, but she's a New Yorker. That's just how we roll. We are seeing Mrs. van Hopper through the narrator's eyes, and the narrator is not the most objective person. Frankly, the narrator's telling of the story leaves me thinking she was a terrible employee rather than Mrs. van Hopper being a terrible employer. I feel bad for Mrs. van Hopper. Well...I mean as bad as I can feel for someone who is rich enough to be able to afford to pay someone to be a travel companion.

[transsexualhamlet]

👋 and 👁️ for the TMA ask game!

hi anon!! tma ask game

👋- What characters that don't meet in canon would you like to see interact?

I answered this already with Alice and Tim, but for another pair I think Gertrude and the old woman from Piecemeal should duke it out grandma style. I think the battle would be of such epic proportions.

I also would like to see more of Elias's interactions with other avatars, especially would have liked to see the sort of rivalry between him and Maxwell Rayner. I want to know what the eye's head of affairs thinks of the Guy Who Hates Vision's head of affairs

👁️- Do you have any experiences you'd like to make a statement about?

I have offered one scrap to the Archivist already, however it's basically inedible since it was strange and unexplainable but not frightening. Most of the things that have actually frightened me are very mundane and juvenile or just dreams I'm afraid but I do have one saga which really stands out.

So there's this building which used to exist.

Basically, my dad works as a newspaper reporter which is a profession which barely exists anymore, but it's a local paper whose office has been in the same building for almost 200 years. Note that this is Midwest America so that is an impressive number here. And this place was fucking WEIRD. I entered it periodically since I was a small child but the amount of things about this building that have given me nightmares is... really a concerning number, and not just because a lot of these were memories from when I was a child, my dad had admitted to feeling the same way about it and being convinced it was somehow haunted. I think that's silly, really, I think whatever was going on with that building was Much Less Explainable than that.

It wasn't really a very large building, just a usual small town main street storefront office, but I swear to god it was bigger on the inside, not just because it had FOUR FLOORS of consecutive sub-basements beneath the ground level to fit the paper's archives. (And it isn't just that archives are weird either, because my mom was also a newspaper reporter for a different and much larger newspaper which also had archives I explored a lot as a child. They were NORMAL. These were WEIRD AS FUCK.)

There was a front office which was kind of normal, although perpetually in a state of 70s decor with 90s-00s computer equipment. But to the side, there was a sort of half lower level that was a set of strange and uselessly placed yellow-lit yellow-wallpapered corridors with literally nothing in them save the occasional box of scrap paper and ancient office supplies. No one ever went down here and I'm not sure what it was used for other than as part of the fucking backrooms, and the one time I went in them as a child while my dad was working I got stuck and was wandering through them for istg half an hour before I found another door out. Every time I went into this place it was always late and my dad was always the only person in the building other than me because he never came in during normal hours, and so all the lights would be off and everything (except for the backrooms corridors) would be pitch black save for the occasional fire red computer light and exit sign. There's no place in my life that was more of a liminal space. It had that dingy musty office smell, the constant overhead light buzz, the overlarge massive dark rooms full of nothing but old film and miles of wires and computer banks, the mazes of empty rooms with random office supplies that always looked like they hadn't been touched in months despite it being a functioning office at the time, the fact that in the fifteen years my dad worked in this building I never ever once saw another human being in the building except for him (and he never went to explore with me either), the one specific window that if I looked out of it over main street always always made me feel so disoriented and terrified because the street somehow looked Wrong from that angle like we were wayyy higher up than we were supposed to be (and I never saw people out of it either any time I looked despite it being Main Street, although I'm sure this is just coincidence) This however is just sort of normal. The real weird shit was the archives.

The building was knocked down several years ago. The reasons why were really vague. They said that it had been bought out to build a hotel and the paper had to move, but they never built a hotel there and the lot sat as empty rubble for years. It's still not fully built over. But the stuff that really stuck with me was what I saw when I visited it for the last time, literally one day before they knocked the place down. My dad wanted to bring me with to help him take as much free office supplies as he could before everything was just a pile of rubble, so we went through all the rooms looking at everything all cleared out. It was really strange. I hadn't been there for several years at this point, so I... well, I expected it to look different? Renovated? At least the computers should have been newer? But everything was exactly how it had been when I visited it back in the 2000s, I mean, *exactly*. I suppose that says something about newspaper budgets but come *on*. It was unsettling, of course. Most of the stuff had been taken out, but there was a really unreasonable amount of things that had just been left for rubble. We were confirmed to be THE LAST people that were in that building before it was knocked down, but people had left just... entire systems of Old Ass Computers Still Running and strange lights in distant rooms we couldn't find, even though my dad's job was to like make sure everything was unplugged, I don't think we managed that, because it was really easy to get lost in there. We took out some office supplies, but mostly we got sidetracked bc we kept finding rooms that my dad had never seen before, I think a lot because many large cabinets had been taken out/moved away, but why would that many be covered up anyway? There were plenty old closets that looked like they hadn't been touched for 20+ years. It was really cool but also just started to get freaky after a while. And I uh, couldn't find the yellow corridors? At this point I kind of wanted to because that was the main thing that I remembered about the place (and I knew about the silly backrooms thing by then and wanted to take a picture as a joke) but they were just Not There, and where they had been it just went out to the edge of the street, which yknow. Was always how the building looked on the outside. Don't ask me. But my dad asked if we wanted to check out the archives and I was like well, haven't they taken everything out and moved it already, and he said they had but they Most Certainly Hadn't. The entrance to the archives was this extremely heavy metal door with a ridiculous crank handle (this is a normal archive thing, it's to make sure it's still safe in case of a flood or fire, but still fucking weird) and there were two floors of nothing, because stuff had been moved, but the stairs kept going down. I asked my dad what was down here but he said he'd never had reason to go there before since it wasn't his job. But whatever it was wasn't going to exist the next day, so we might as well check it out.

It was this unfurnished room, half of it was so small that only I could fit inside even with my head bowed, and had an extremely uneven floor with several two-foot drops where the ceiling dropped as well. It went out so far that it would definitely have been under the street and not under the building, but it only had one old ass lightbulb. It made me pretty terrified and I felt like it was going to collapse in on me and leave me like 40 feet beneath the ground, which to be fair it absolutely could have done considering how fucked the structural integrity of this building was. The thing was this place seemed to have no purpose, other than a few pipes that were hanging around. The only thing that was even in the room was some really old archival material which appeared to have been both fire and water damaged. It was all the oldest stuff, from the early 1800s. I don't think I touched it because it was sort of menacing, and most of it was in German, I think? but it was stuffed like in a really far corner. Not on a shelf or anything, like as far as physically possible to reach, in a really tiny fucking crawl space just sprawled on the ground. No one had taken or moved it for some reason and we left that room after being in there even five minutes and didn't finish looking around. Those books are still under main street. I think about that sometimes and I dream about that building that doesn't exist anymore. Definitely the scariest place I've ever been in. absolutely zero explanation for that.

[awritingotaku]

Obey Me Nightbringer

Opening Movie

What we know

We don’t know much about it besides it’s going to be darker with a focus on Solomon and the attic as well as Satan and the brothers. It’s coming out later this year

My guess at the story

I’m guessing it’s going to be a look at right after the brothers fell. That’s the key point that caused a lot of the events of original game. The reasoning for this. A focus on Satan and the brothers is an interesting thing the devs brought up. It was right after the fall that the brothers all had to work to help raise Satan so it makes sense for this time period. When the animation focuses on Lucifer he has pained expressions and when his hand is on the glass, he hand tenses as it rains. Now that normally wouldn’t mean much but his shoulders raise as if he is trying to hold himself together, that if he relaxes he is going to fall apart. People also just tense in general, or at least I do, when I remember something I regret. Also the end of the opening has the lyrics “Welcome to the Devildom” as the brothers are all standing together their backs facing us while quickly transitioning from their angel forms to their demon ones. I’m not sure if they thought a whole lot about camera direction but it’s interesting that they are facing away from the camera. The opening to Obey Me has them facing the camera welcoming players, but here we are facing the same direction as the brothers like we are in their shoes. Also guessing we are also going to see what happened with Simeon and why he was demoted if it does related to the fall.

Now Solomon. SOLOMON! He’s interesting here. Now based on what I can glean the whole game is about the fall, so why is Solomon there? Why is he in this game if he wasn’t involved? I know there is theories that Solomon is connected to Lilith, I may make a post about that and how if that is the case how that can explain some of his behaviors, but I think we are either going to see his rise and first encounters with the brothers as demons, which sets up future dynamics that play into the main game. Or could Solomon be someone that Lilith knew in the human world? I mean, they even included Raphael in the opening and he wasn’t in the original cast but was a key player in the war. Why include a character who isn’t main to the story that seems to have a very strong focus, but then include a random side plot line about another character’s misadventures? So I believe that there may be some connection between Lilith and Solomon. Anyways. That’s enough of my midnight rambling.

[pokepia-eng]

Home page directory

I’m going to go over each of these things from top to bottom! I’ll expand on each section over time if needed, but for now explaining menu 1 and 2 are my priorities.

Energy

Pretty standard; gets used up as you do things, refills over time.

There are two ways to get more energy immediately: 1). Pay 100 “pia” for 100 hearts 2). Go to “Popo’s star”, which is free but limited to a few times a day (more on that later)

Coins and Pia

The two main currencies of the game

You get both for free pretty often, but coins are the most abundant and can’t really be used for much

Pia are also easy to collect but come in smaller amounts, so it takes longer to save them. Pia are used for gacha turns, buying most clothes, and “shipping costs” when trading. Pia are the only things that are purchasable with cash.

Events and notifications

On the left of the screen are circles that serve as shortcuts to certain event pages

On the right side, little icons will appear, signifying a notification. If you tap the icon, it will bring you to the corresponding page. I’ll make a list of the different icons and what they mean later.

Camera mode

I’ll explain more later

Menu 1

There are three different places to purchase items.

Gacha is gacha, duh. Gachas can include both clothing and furniture items. They are bought with pia and gacha tickets. It can be a bit confusing to navigate, so u can find a guide to it here.

‘Brand’ refers to collections of clothing ‘brands’ that are released occasionally for a limited time. These can only be bought with pia. I will have more info for navigating it soon.

The shop is pretty simple and doesn’t sell much. As of now, you can buy the other starter furniture and one simple outfit with coins. There’s also a simple gothic lolita outfit and some background colors for your star, which are bought with pia. There’s another section too, I’ll link a translation of it later but it’s basically just buying extra space for outfits, photos, and stuff.

These two speak for themselves. I’ll explain a bit more about the furniture editor in the future since it can be kinda wonky.

This button will take you to a list of all of the ‘worlds’. Worlds are maps of a bunch of islands/stars that players can explore. Each one has a corresponding furniture and outfit set.

Each world has a limited period of time where, when exploring, a set amount of treasure boxes will spawn each day. Each treasure box contains a random furniture item from the corresponding set. Opening a box requires 10 hearts. There’s also an option to open it with a “magic wand” that raises the chance of getting rare items, but I still haven’t figured out where you can get those

The world’s outfit set can only be acquired through the gacha, but the furniture set is only available through the map at first. Eventually, the map will close, and then the furniture will only be purchasable as a full set with pia.

While exploring the map you can view “doppelgängers” of other players, and leave some of yourself. I’ll explain more in a future post.

Once you’ve visited every star on a map, you earn the ability to always be able to explore that map, even once the event ends.

These are the two social aspects of the app

Parties are basically live rooms that you can start or join. There is a voice chat option and an option to only view the party. I imagine there’s also a text chat but idk bc i haven’t tried one yet. Will update soon

SNS is like a mini Twitter. You can make text posts and also post photos from the games album (so photos are limited to pictures of ur character or objects). This is also where people post trade requests. I will write more on trading later.

These speak for themselves. Visitors will bring up a list of the people who have visited your star and watered your ‘tree’.

Menu 2

This menu has a bunch of other important things. Most are pretty easy to understand but there’s two that I’ll focus on right now.

Inventory has three lists, one with all of the items you have, one with any items you have 2+ of, and your wishlist. I’ll explain how to add items to your wishlist later.

Recipes will bring up a list of items that can be made using the “fruit” of the “tree” that each star has. Each new furniture set has a corresponding tree. Each type of tree produces a different type of fruit. After collecting enough of a fruit, you can craft a secret item.

BUT if you’re crafting the item for the first time, you can’t do it through the recipe book. In those cases, you have to go to Popo’s star and they will “give you instructions”. I’ll explain how to get there later.

[straightbaittournament]

only the option with the LEAST votes will be eliminated. propaganda under the cut (and more always welcome!):

akko kagari and andrew hanbridge:

Very typical hetero-love-interest introduction, rival vibes, aloof rich boy & headstrong "commoner" girl, learning to see each other's point of view, she dresses up for the first time in the series to sneak into his party to try to talk to him. Just classic 'ugh they're clearly gonna get together' but... they don't. Nothing romantic is ever explicit, and by s2 they're friends and that's it. there's no discussion or drama. they're good friends. literally shocked me. apparently a guy and girl who fit a bunch of romantic tropes... can just be friends

sam winchester and eileen leahy:

The last season set them up to be together, and then in Sam’s finale flash-forward, they replaced her with “blurry wife” literally a random blurred out woman rather than having him end up with Eileen Eileen is the coolest Supernatural character: she's deaf and also formerly dead (like Sam)

asuka tenjoin and yuki judai:

The ship name (fianceshipping) comes from the episode where Judai *accidentally* duels some guy to become Asuka's fiance (said guy never asks Asuka how she feels about this, ugghhh greater Duel Academia student body be normal about ladies challenge). Turns out that he *didn't know what a fiance was* and just wanted to have a good ol' time cardgaming. I think that this says more about this ship than anything else I could tell you. During the final season, Asuka almost confesses to him but cuts herself off & they then thank each other for giving each other some clarity of mind because they're both going through pretty rough times at that point in the plot. Looks concerningly like they're about to do a whole "ohh we need to make the main girl and boy romance out of obligation" bit and then they just don't do it. It's great. judai is the gayest guy of all time (subtext) and im like 80% sure asuka was experiencing comphet bc he's the only guy in their grade that treats her like a person. besties 4ever!!!!!!!! [straightmod has been informed that judai is also textually queer because he is canonically attracted to a non-binary character.]

kurosaki ichigo and kuchiki rukia:

Oh man, where do I even begin? So, for some context, Bleach starts when Rukia (a shinigami) gets critically injured saving Ichigo from a monster, and she transfers her powers to him so he can finish it off. Instead of transferring half her powers as planned, however, she transfers all of them, which forces Ichigo to take over her job as a shinigami. During this time period, Rukia... lives in his closet. Yeah. The entire first arc of the manga is dedicated to their relationship, and while a lot of it is playful banter, Rukia's presence in Ichigo's life fundamentally changes it for the better. Rukia then gets kidnapped by the rest of the shinigami who aren't at all happy she gave her powers to a human, and the main plot ensues from there. Throughout the story, Rukia and Ichigo constantly save each other when they're at their worst. When Rukia thinks she deserves to die, Ichigo is there to tell her she deserves to live. When Ichigo is in a funk about his superpowered evil side, Rukia is there to snap him out of it (something his canon love interest explicitly realises she was unable to do). They share a sun/moon motif for crying out loud, and yet like that last sentence said... they don't end up together, but with other people instead. Yeah. No shade to the canon ships, but Ichiruki is peak straightbaiting, honestly. They have a lot of banter/chemistry, fundamentally change eachother's lives for the better, save each other when they're at their lowest, and have a very deliberate sun/moon dichotomy... but they both end up paired off with different characters instead asdfghkl

izuku midoriya and ochako uraraka:

It’s the classic main character x friend who is a girl ship. They have no actual romantic interactions outside of their friendship. Ochako has “feelings” for Izuku, but they are clearly feelings of friendship until one of her friends insists that she must have a crush on Izuku, making her feel confused and embarrassed. Izuku clearly sees Ochako as a good friend, but when they first meet, he blushes and thinks “I can’t believe I just talked to a girl.” On the same day, he also blushes when he sees that a famous male hero is proctoring their exams. It’s literally so boring as a romantic ship. They have no chemistry as a couple.

edward elric and winry rockbell but SPECIFICALLY in the 2003 anime:

literally in different dimensions by the end! they still have a lot of the hallmarks of "ohh endgame childhood best friends" or whatever but fma 2003 just said. naah. winry got the shortest end of the stick and i feel so bad for her!!! continuity specific straightbait. in every other universe they get married and have kids but screw you two specifically 🙏

mako, korra, and asami:

it's that one meme where the guy ignores his girlfriend to check out another girl, only the two girls get to know each other and get together. S1/2 has love triangle drama between who Mako will be with (Korra or Asami). S3 no one is together but Korra and Asami become really close friends. S4 Korra and Asami are together. Mako is single. Like the only example of exes being good friends and Not getting back together, as well as giving the middle finger to heteronormative assumptions when after the love triangle is over, the two girls get together Shipping the two girls in a love triangle together but it actually happens

pat and ink:

Pat has a crush on Ink early on, and it seems possible at first that she may feel the same way. However, it is later revealed that she actually has a crush on his sister and is a lesbian. It's okay though because then Pat realizes he's in love with his childhood rival and they become wlw mlm solidarity! Everyone wins!

maka albarn and soul evans:

Throughout the series, they have a deep friendship with each other which is consistently extremely important to the story's narrative. In order for them to be able to fight, they must get along and resonate with each other, and due to the mechanics of their world, fighting independently of each other is extremely difficult. In multiple instances, they are shown to be willing to put themselves in harm's way to extreme degrees to keep each other safe. They are even shown to live together. They are The Singular Straight Ship I have ever shipped and I love them. Also they are really cool and Soul can turn into an awesome scythe weapon that like only Maka can wield. And they fight really awesomely together.

luke skywalker and leia organa:

The idea of Luke and Leia was used in advertisements but they obviously decided not to do that. IT’S SO FUNNY. Like, I think this is the closest white straight people will ever get to ‘they were cousins’ing a couple. I looked up advertising to see if it was just in the movie proper or it WAS used to sell it and https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5z1SziDPKQw&t=118s&pp=2AF2kAIB ‘Luke and Leia: in danger, in love, in Star Wars’ is going to be one of the things that rolls around in my head for ages. It’s not just the whole ‘het love triangle advertises 2nd pairing that everyone knows won’t happen’ like Twilight, it’s the backpeddaling ‘no no it can’t happen, they’re actually siblings! It’d be weird! Ignore the ‘good luck’ kiss and the ‘I’ll be back’ kiss in the medbay and of course the full on make out session scene that happened! And even our own advertising’ Of it all.

good luck everybody! now go vote!

[galacticlamps]

There's something I've almost made a number of posts about during this Abominable Snowmen rewatch, but kept putting it off because I wanted to make a more cohesive analysis of rather than a bunch of messily related thoughts, but naturally now that I've finished it, it's become pretty long, so I'm putting it under a read more.

Basically, this is mainly about how the monastery setting functions to influence the audience's perception of the other characters & threats in this story, and helps turn it into what I believe to be a really well-executed and criminally underrated serial

To start with the elephant in the room: the monastery is obviously a somewhat exotic location for a Doctor Who serial. It's Earth, but it's far away from the BBC's production & main audience, and between its geographic isolation and religious associations, inherently somewhat shrouded in mystery. It's also the past, though I think it's somewhat easy to forget that this is a historical sometimes, both because it's not that far back in history compared to when it was produced & because of the aforementioned reasons that already distance it to equal or greater extents.

At first glance, the 'audience surrogate' characters would seem both obvious and limited. The Doctor & co are the first candidates - but with this particular team in which 0 of them come from an Earth contemporary with either the production or setting of the story, they're hardly everyman characters here; they can hook us into being visitors to this place but not provide us with a perspective on what life in it is like or should be outside of the strange circumstances that follow them everywhere. Then there's Travers, who's both an Englishman and a native of the time period, even if he’s very much a stranger to the region – and in many ways, he would seem best placed to act as an English audience’s window into the setting, the ‘regular guy’ whose world will be upset by the villain and restored by the Doctor.

But intentionally or not, I don’t think Travers actually fills that role in the story very well at all, and what happens instead is infinitely more interesting and makes for a better story overall.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, for now my point is just that despite all odds & appearances of the monastery being this mystical otherworldly setting that Englishmen traverse continents and mountains or time and space to get to, it’s an exceptionally grounded and lived-in setting that the audience can quickly acclimatize to, which only adds to the fear & tragedy later on in the serial when it’s endangered.

This probably sounds silly, but much like it’s a bit hard to believe the bridge of the Enterprise is actually rattling around in space in the original series of Star Trek, Det-Sen monastery feels overwhelmingly solid, stationary, grounded, & enclosed. I don’t know what it is that breaks the illusion that the void of space is on the other side of those walls or that the courtyard & gates are at least partially exposed to the elements of the Himalayas, but the concrete floors under the carpet and the studio ceiling above seem to have an almost physical presence in these sets that’s hard to overlook. Maybe it’s because we have so much location footage to compare it to in this serial so we know what it looks like when they’re actually on the mountainside, slipping over uneven terrain and shouting over the wind that’s blowing their hair & costumes around at random, or simply a case of visual distinction between the quality of the film they used for those shoots vs the studio recording process. It might even be something about the reverb inherent in the room and the way it affects the audio, or something else entirely – I don’t know. I’ve never tried to put my finger on why exactly, but in both cases I’ve always felt a particularly strong awareness that these are sets - built environments safely sheltered inside a sound stage, pretending to be more fragile than they are. And I don’t mean this as an insult – I think it lends the original Enterprise a sense of homeyness that’s appropriate for its status as a constant, not to mention the nostalgia - much like the Tardis, I don’t think it’d do for them to feel flimsy, even if stories occasionally ask us to believe these environments are in a precarious state.

But Det-Sen is a one-off location, so its underlying feeling of stability affects the narrative in other ways, and this stark and immediate physical difference between the indoor environment and the danger of the mountains that are supposedly right on the other side of those gates makes it a perfect base for a base under siege story. The further away that cave in the mountains feels, the safer the characters are inside – and the harder that it is to believe anything could breach the gates and disturb the implausible peace here, the more effective & disturbing it is when they do.

Of course, it isn’t the physical set alone that’s responsible for this dichotomy – the narrative & its characters also present the monastery as such a strong constant that when the Great Intelligence threatens to destroy it and the world, the two feel almost one and the same.

Far from just being the background this story takes place against, the serial is overwhelmingly populated by characters that sell us on the idea of Det-Sen’s importance and stability even further - not only do the monks outnumber the visitors in terms of named characters, but there are also 6 nonspeaking warrior monks and an additional 6 nonspeaking lamas - all in all, about 20 different people living & working there that really flesh it out as a location. We're even told the Doctor's been here before, centuries ago - they have a very established way of life.

By contrast, the Tardis team blunders in and, as usual, can give no account of where they've been or how they got there - and then of course, there's Travers.

I can’t honestly tell how much of what really works about his character is fully intentional - it would take a certain level of self-awareness from the BBC that I don't want to attribute without some evidence. But at the end of the day, he's an Englishman and an explorer – the kind of guy we’d expect to represent intelligence and progress - and yet his entire life's work, the quest he's already spent 20 years of his life on, (which fans of Web know he'll spend even more on in the future), which has killed his companion already and which he willingly risks his own life for time and again in this serial - is, at bottom, incredibly stupid: he wants to be credited with the discovery of an animal the locals have been fully aware of for centuries.

When the monks talk about the yeti, they do so with calmness, certainty, and authority. They know what they're talking about. The yeti have always been their neighbors, and they're a peaceful, reclusive species. And yes, this is one remote monastery in one remote corner of the globe - perhaps these monks are the only people who regularly see the yeti or believe in them at all (ignoring the pilgrims that are supposed to've been visiting here for centuries), and perhaps Travers as a scientist simply wants to broaden the world's knowledge. But if the way he treats the Doctor when he suspects him to be a member of the British press is anything to go by, it's a bit more than that. He needs to be the one to break the news - and maybe it wasn't always like that, maybe he only became so interested in the credit after the search for them cost him so much – but whatever the cause, by the time we encounter the character, he’s desperate & single-minded enough that common sense can go out the window when it suits him. He doesn't even seem particularly devastated when they find out the evil Yeti are robots - he worries about them potentially endangering the real animals, but the fact that the existence of robotic yeti obviously implies a person or people with enough resources & skills to create something like that who is also acutely aware of the real species they're presumably meant to blend in with doesn't phase him at all, or compromise his need & ability to be the one to 'discover' them.

To be clear, I’m not trying to paint him as a bad person – if anything I think he’s a compelling & convincingly-drawn character, and within the story he frequently does the right thing to help defeat the enemy and save the day. I just find it interesting how his obsession with the Yeti & the leaps in logic it causes him to make prevent him from being the relatable character the audience shares the perspective of, where he otherwise might’ve been by default as the only Englishman - and in that regard he contributes to bolstering up the monks & the monastery as forces of sanity and cohesion. He is, like them, a mere victim of the Great Intelligence, but his presence at Det-Sen still feels like a symptom of a world turned upside down.

On the whole the monks get along fine with Travers, and evidently understand that in his world of Western British science, the yeti are still a “discovery” to be made which their familiarity with the species does not factor into or impede. Whatever fame & significance the discovery would bring him are indeed real prizes within his reach, so he isn’t inherently suspicious or looked down upon for wanting them - but they're also still a ludicrous thing to prioritize, given the circumstances, and the monks can see that, not being worried about proving anything to anyone themselves.

Still w/regard to Travers’ character, neither they nor anyone from the Tardis ever points out this fallacy, so it's hard to tell if it's a case of the producers & writers not noticing how foolish, colonial & hypocritical this goal under these circumstances is, or if it's meant to read as absurdly as it does. But with the monastery & its monks having such a huge presence in this story & being such a large portion of its screen time, that contrast in perspectives is brought to the forefront, whether or not anyone meant to satirize British exploration as a whole.

Nonetheless, Travers is the portrait of western exploration - even the more respectable & noble kind, in the name of knowledge & science rather than power & conquest - and yet his quest exists at such a ridiculous extreme, it takes a toll on the credibility of both him & everything he stands for. By being deadly serious about such a redundant goal, Travers marks himself out - and by extension, these three other apparently British strangers - as belonging to a bizarre world that adheres to senseless values and priorities, which drive him (and perhaps them as well, for all the monks know) to wild extremes, and it's difficult to see Travers as anything more than a bit of a lunatic, an eccentric Englishman and a nuisance of a foreigner here – at least for as long as he’s preoccupied with accusing the Doctor of murdering his partner and dragging the monks into his personal agenda. From this perspective the monks have every right to be suspicious of him and the Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria, even if the only thing they know about them is that they come from a world whose rules make no sense, who would send a man out to die in the mountains on the other side of the globe before it would recognize what to them is a simple fact of nature.

Khrisong in particular comes out as a very strong character, especially in comparison to Travers. Although we first meet him in a more antagonistic context – his introduction might even potentially leave us thinking  of him as the dangerous warrior following Travers’ command rather than thinking for himself – the story is quick to correct that belief & makes it clear that he has his reasons for what he does, not just in that instant but all the time. He turns out to be an extremely principled individual who puts a lot of thought into both the risks he takes & the ones he allows others to take, and here he’s literally trying to protect a monastery full of peaceful monks when some of the strangest foreign white men the world could produce show up on his doorstep talking madness that doesn't concern him or his men at all, and they're followed by a horde of murderous robots framing the local wildlife for their crimes. For arguably being the villain for the first 1/3 of the story, he's objectively a very sympathetic figure.

Of course, it’s not at all uncommon to find characters similar in that regard - especially in these longer base under siege stories with limited casts, where part of the mystery is preventing the Doctor from knowing who the true villains are. But although Khrisong is developed as a character who's both proud and strong willed, he's also more than capable of admitting his mistakes and sticking to his principles at the same time - and even though the Second Doctor himself is particularly good at unnerving and undermining authority figures, Khrisong is willing to work with him to an impressive & perhaps unprecedented degree. Where a more stock character might bear a grudge for being made to look rash or unhelpful, Khrisong is consistently both a strong leader and a good man - he risks his life to save everyone, he deliberates and takes the best course of action he can find in every scene. More than a lot of other characters in this era of the show, he gives us the impression of someone who's in control and authority without being a bully, who's open to listening to the Doctor's frankly ridiculous ideas but who will also put himself at risk before allowing others to do the same if he doubts the merits of what he’s heard. He's a complex and even surprisingly engaging character who we might first have dismissed as a basic security guard type - and his death in the last act a genuine tragedy, and deservedly treated as such.

((Even the question of pacifism vs self defense which the same writers will revisit more famously in The Dominators first pops up here, most obviously in dialogue between Khrisong and Songsten in Episode 3, but also more generally in his ongoing goal of protecting the monastery’s existence. Songsten argues that the monks are peaceful and cannot change their ways, while Khrisong points out that he only wishes to use his strength to defend and preserve the ways of the monks, even at the cost of his own life, because peace and gentleness are not applicable methods against the yeti. It's interesting that this dialogue is delivered over the body of the inert, robot yeti recently after they've been discovered not to be flesh & blood – the context seems to eliminate any possibility of this reading as the dehumanizing argument of a man predisposed to violence anyway and simply trying to justify it, but rather solidifies it as the good sense of someone who would not resort to it if he had any other options))

Travers is typically the only supporting character who gets much attention when we talk about this serial, because of his return a few stories later & the significance that lands him in the wider world of Doctor Who, but in this story itself, everything absurd and dangerous about him is balanced out and grounded by everything serious and sane about Khrisong. But whereas Travers mainly looks delegitimized in comparison with the monastery, the monks don’t need to rely on contrast to make them look better – their own approach to problem-solving & protecting the monastery is time and again reinforced by the serial in other ways.

When Sapan & Rinchen in episode 3 both set up a spirit trap & chain down the inert yeti to prevent it coming back to life & attacking them, and they discuss how odd the strangers are and come up with their own explanation for the metal underneath its skin, it could easily have felt like the kind of scene that, in a scifi show, we should chuckle at and dismiss because we know they're wrong (even if we don't blame them for not knowing they're characters in a scifi show). But the way it’s framed, it's actually quite convincing instead. We know the yeti isn't a devil, but their explanation checks out, the Doctor is inherently inexplicable as a character, Travers is both currently under suspicion & consumed by – if not incomprehensible - at least unjustifiable motives from the monks' perspective, and at the end of the day, is the Great Intelligence really any different than a devilish spirit possessing the yeti? To say nothing of the fact that Padmasambhava is said to've initially contacted the Great Intelligence on the astral plane, or that chanting their prayers is treated as a legitimate way to occupy the mind and defend it against psychic attacks - all in all, despite this being a serial that is set in the past & in a monastery so remote that parts of its everyday life would be canonically regarded as landmark scientific discoveries in Britain, the perspective of these monks feels incredibly grounded, and forms a sound and stable background against which the fantastic elements of this serial can occur in their full horror, rather than something the British futuristic audience (who also know what genre they're watching) can 'know better' than.

And from a storytelling perspective, this doesn't just make the setting of the monastery come alive in a more convincing portrait than many other locations, it also makes the already very disturbing details of this particularly eldritch story cut even deeper. The repeated possessions, the monks being forced out of the monastery into the night, Khrisong murdered by his own Abbot, who is himself in a trance, Padmasambhava begging to be set free after hundreds of years as the Great Intelligence's slave (his death which was not shot as scripted, for fear of being too gruesome for the children's tv rating, the repeated stage directions calling for blood on people's faces or weapons) - it's honestly really heartbreaking, and a very good story.

But crucially, there's also kindness and gentleness here too - not just in the monks as men of peace or even the fact that the head of their warrior branch defies stereotypes to agree with them rather than being a violent individual - but also in the humanity with which all the characters respond to what they have to deal with: the Doctor appealing to Padmasambhava repeatedly as an old friend, the reassurances of safety and return he gives to the monks as they leave, the way the plans for Rinchen's body are discussed rather than brushed aside like many side-characters’ deaths in other serials, the way Songsten is looked after when he comes out of his trance, despite the monks knowing he had killed Khrisong. People in this story are allowed to be driven to extremes by everything from fear to stress to greed to hope and curiosity - but nobody ever abandons humanity entirely. They can accuse each other of all sorts of things, fairly or not, but in the end there’s understanding and forgiveness among the human characters (+the Doctor) and people are generally looked after and cared for rather than blamed and abandoned.

It's that sympathy and humanity that contrasts so beautifully with the truly otherworldly threat this serial introduces. Our characters are small, many of them are referred to as being mere puppets of a villain who literally moves his robotic henchmen around on a chessboard version of their world. But they're weak because they're human (in the broad sense at least) and it's that humanity that allows all of them to fight the Intelligence in one form or another, and the fact that that's what the Intelligence has to fight against which makes it such a disturbing enemy.

[ajsbookreviews]

Because of Miss Bridgerton Book Review

Because of Miss Bridgerton

Author: Julia Quinn

Description: Sometimes you find love in the most unexpected of places...

This is not one of those times.

Everyone expects Billie Bridgerton to marry one of the Rokesby brothers. The two families have been neighbors for centuries, and as a child the tomboyish Billie ran wild with Edward and Andrew. Either one would make a perfect husband... someday.

There is only one Rokesby Billie absolutely cannot tolerate, and that is George. He may be the eldest and heir to the earldom, but he's arrogant, annoying, and she's absolutely certain he detests her. Which is perfectly convenient, as she can't stand the sight of him, either.

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Review: A new, different era has begun…

Decades before Bridgertons another love story took place between the Bridgerton family and the Rokesby family. This first instalment of the prequel books was a great introduction to new characters, new family dynamics and most importantly, a new time period. With Regency shelved for coming years, the Age of Enlightenment is introduced midst of the Georgian era. 

However, despite it being a different time period, much hasn’t changed in comparison to Bridgertons. The dialog, behaviour and events are much the same. The only differences of note were the characters’ wardrobe. This doesn’t affect my rating, but I find it important to note. 

My most common critic toward Quinn’s writing thus far has been that she often has trouble writing interesting beginnings. In the case of Because of Miss Bridgerton I’d have to disagree with myself. The beginning is captivatingly funny. The main characters’ hate/love relationship was well established with the initial rooftop scene. With such good storytelling, the novella got me invested very quickly. 

Because of Miss Bridgerton’s main flaw is its prolonged nature. There’s too much emphasis on meaningless details, making some events drag-out through various chapters. And that’s inherently due to its snail-like pace. Much as I liked the rooftop scene, what came after was incredibly dull, for the story wasn’t evolving anywhere. I understand that character introductions are important, but it wasn’t until almost halfway through that the novella picked up its pace again. 

Speaking of characters, Billy Bridgerton and George Rokesby were a gust of fresh air. Their dynamics together were wonderfully entertaining – their first kiss a testament of that. I particularly enjoyed reading George’s thoughts during, and after the event. However, some of the times their romantic union leaned toward the cheesier side, particularly near the end. 

At one point, I indulged Billie’s positive thoughts for one of the Berbrooke brothers to the point were I was convinced that if Julia Quinn was bold enough to change the romantic interest to him instead of George I’d give the novella an immediate 8 or 9 stars. Alas, that did not happen. But I’m sure it would’ve livened up the story a little. 

Despite my indulgence, there was something that did invigorate Because of Miss Bridgerton, edging it toward an entirely different genre. The spy drama. Now, I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised, but also quite weary. It was just so damn random. It truly came out of nowhere. And, much to my chagrin, it had a complete lack of pay-off. 

All things considered, Because of Miss Bridgeton was an averagely good novella with a perfectly good romance and just the right amount of introductions to set one off in the right direction. The highs compensated the lows, and thus evened out the final score. 

[murderenjoyer]

Honestly? Very frustrated rn.

I come into the group chat, the writing-focused group chat, and ask for help with a character's arc and motivation (he had none). The replies I get are "dont give him any" (unhelpful and essentially just not replying at all), and "force him into a relationship that is totally divorced in every way from the main plot with a character who has been unarguably canonically dead for over 12 chapters."

Obviously I'm like "can I get some real help please?" Person A reiterates that the character should remain flat, boring, and essentially not a character at all, but simply a prop despite every other important supporting character having their own arc, every single one has a planned beginning, middle, and end planned for their subplots. Everyone but this one specific dude. A dude so tied to the overarching narrative that he's 1/3rd of the focal poly relationship.

Person B insists I retcon the death to force this side romance. I disregard A because yes, some people are satisfied writing boring cardboard characters who do nothing but hover around the protagonists like a background npc, but I am not. I tell B that their idea is literally impossible - the dead guy was killed on screen, his corpse was put on display for an unspecified period of time (ranging between a day or two), discovered by the cops, investigated, and reported in the news as being very very deceased. There is no way to twist it so he secretly managed to survive somehow. Person B insists I force it to work somehow (how???? Introduce necromancy into a story that is very clearly set on irl modern earth?). They suggest making it so the killer just imagined it.

1) I'll shoot myself in the face before I asspull an "and it was all a dream!" plot point into my fic 2) nothing about this character implies he would have such a delusion, it's ooc and totally out of the blue 3) why would this one specific killing have been fabricated? It's not his first it's not his last so why would this one single specific dead guy get the Patrick Batemen "was it real or not?!?" treatment? 4) I already stated that it was reported in the news! The protagonists read an article about it and reacted to it and discussed it on screen! How could that possibly work? All of NYC had a collective mass hallucination of this random fucking dude killing this other random fucking dude? 5) even if I could force ALL OF THAT to work somehow, even if it was possible to make that make sense, those characters have no relationship at all, no interaction beyond a 15 minute conversation and a car ride, no chemistry at all, no history at all, literally nothing to base a relationship on, so why the absolute fuck would this dude just randomly fall in love with this other dude he tried to torture-murder?! 6) beyond even that, all of that, if I resurrected the guy and made them hook up, it would be an entirely unrelated in any way to the main plot line, out of the blue, random side story that has absolutely nothing to do with anything! That is not how a competent narrative is structured you don't just randomly veer totally off-topic to some shipping bullshit once every few chapters! Holy fuck I'm not a 14yo wattpad one direction author jfc.

So person A weighs in once again and suggests the flat character totally lose interest in the protagonists (keep in mind his entire motivation for joining the cast in the first place is that he idolizes them) and fuck off to a completely different geographic location to do random shit. Whyyyy would I do that??? That is not how narrative structure works you don't just spontaneously make a character WHO IS INTRINSICLY TIED TO THE PROTAGONISTS FROM CHAPTER 4 ONWARD get essentially a spin-off series that is inserted within the main fucking storyline! You don't veer off course every few chapters to tell the audience what this dude is doing 6 states away that has NOTHING to do with the main plot!

These two don't write multi-chaps so you may feel inclined to blame it on that but that is irrelevant! They read! They watch TV and movies! They have encountered stories before! They understand how competent narrative structure works! They should be aware that these suggestions are quite frankly awful! They'd actively tank the quality of the fic so intensely that it would be mind-boggling.

I say "for being a writing group you guys are piss-poor at writing help." And then Person C hops in to say "just because it isn't the suggestions you want that doesnt mean they're not helpful."

THEY ARE INHERENTLY UNHELPFUL. ANYONE WHO KNOWS EVEN THE BAREST BONES OF HOW TO WRITE A STORY THAT DOESNT SUCK SHIT WOULD BE AWARE THOSE SUGGESTIONS WERE BEYOND WORTHLESS. This is not me being set on own personal goals and hell-bent on rejecting any and all in-put, this is people actively giving me terrible shitpost responses. Do not give me that garbage "their ideas are valid you're just stubborn" shit.

And then Person B says "sex." Simply "sex." The character has already had sex. He's already done that. Porn scenes are not inherently character arcs. Smut in and of itself is not character motivation. That is not an attempt at a real suggestion that is not an attempt to be legitimately helpful. So obviously I shoot it down. She replies with "well you're not going to listen anyway so I'm gonna stop trying." Acting mad at me, like I'm an asshole for not giving her unserious shitpost responses serious consideration.

When other people ask for help with plotting or pacing or characterization or simply just vibes, members come in and try to give actual advice. They brainstorm and throw out actual non-meme suggestions. I ask for help and I get nothing. Worse than nothing.

And then, finally, the clouds parted and Person D arrives. They offer a real suggestion. I take half of it and blend it with the idea I'd been spitballing on my own because lord fucking knows nobody was helping.

Wonderful! Now my character has two motivations - one tied to the protagonists, one focused on himself. He is now connected to the main plot and protagonists in a believable way while also having his own personal goals so he seems like a rounded human being rather than a prop for the mains. Thank god.

Fast forward a couple hours. One of the members posts a screenshot and @'s me. Someone in our fandoms ao3 tag posted a fic where, at the end of the synopsis, it explicitly shouts me out.

Woah! What?! No way! Amazing, shocking, astounding. I'm tickled pink. Chuffed, if you will. A little bit later another member, who happens to double as my long-time best friend, comes into the channel. She responds to a post above the one shouting me out. She talks about something unrelated below it. And that's it. Nothing else.

When she has something good with her writing happen, I'm always like "hell yeah 👏 very cool very sick very rad, you love to see it, congrats!"

She apparently has nothing to say about something that happened for me that's very cool. I @ her like "bro ur silence is deafening." She responds flippantly that I already knew I was a BNF (I'm not) so big deal who cares.

How absolutely invalidating? For just no reason at all? I'm sitting there like damn my own bestie really doesn't give a single shit about my success. She doesn't have even a simple 💯 react to muster about it. Like... damn. Ouch. Okay.

And that gets me thinking - the server has a channel for posting comments we get that made us happy. The last 2 things I posted in there were met with total silence. The people who posted above me have emoji reacts and comments of congratulation. The people who posted below me also have those things. Mine are talked around, like they don't exist.

And then I mention in general that, while I do enjoy doing collaborations, I'm never agreeing to one again. I've collabed with 4 people and every single one of them has flaked on me, leaving the fics abandoned. It's frustrating and annoying and not worth the trouble.

Friend, one of said collaborators, chimes in that I marked our project abandoned in under a year of no progress without consulting her first so I can't accuse her of flaking. So obviously I respond that I waited over a year to officially discontinue it, actually. And throughout that year I regularly suggested we work on it. Dms of "we should write. Let's write. It's been a long time since we updated we need to write. Let's get on vc and work on that fic. Just tell me the jist of what should happen and I'll just write it myself without you at this point." Each and every message was talked around like I never said anything at all, or flat-out rejected. Not because she was always busy or tired or writers blocked. No, just "I don't feel like it, let's watch something instead. Let's game instead."

Fics don't write themselves. If you put literally 0 effort at all into your story for over an entire year, what is that supposed to mean other than you're checked out? What does that mean other than you've abandoned it? So yeah, I marked it dropped. And no, I didn't bother to ask first because it was made abundantly clear to me for over a year that she had no intention at all of continuing the story.

And now I'm just. What did I even come back for? I gave the server to the bestie a couple weeks ago, demoted myself from admin, and exited the server because I felt I wasn't liked or appreciated. I felt ignored. After a while I decided that it was a big mental illness flair up that made me feel that way and it didn't accuratly reflect reality. Surely people like me. Surely I'm valued. Surely that was just the bpd talking. So I rejoined.

And now I'm like, was there even a point? These events definitely haven't made me feel my previous emotional outburst was totally divorced from reality. None of this has made me feel liked. None of this has made me feel valued as a person or a friend.

[quibbs126]

Okay, so I had a random idea for some Evoland 2 thing while I was out today. I do that sometimes, make up random scenarios that could happen in game (but don’t). So like, it’d happen during the game

Anyways, so basically it was an idea for a way to actually see Demonia

We’re told we need this thing or other that was in Demonia (it isn’t really important, just an excuse for this storyline to happen), and so we go to Present Demonia Ruins to get whatever we need. Menos and Velvet leave, as they do when we’re here (I set it here because I need Menos not to be there), and while we’re exploring, we come across this place where there’s another special Magilith, since those exist. We use it, and the pair end up in a new time period, 100 years from the Present, aka about 899, in an actually thriving Demonia

Excuse for the special Magilith? Well this is where the Molecular Research Center once was, maybe they wanted to have their own secret Magilith here or something. Justify it however you like

When I was thinking about it, I came to the snag of the graphics change, since every time period has a different one. Made more difficult because it’s supposed to be in between the Magi era and Past era, so it has to be higher quality than Magi, aka GameBoy, and Past, which is…something else, I think 16 bit? Anyways, I thought this put me in a big conundrum, until I came to the big solution: GameBoy Color. Have the graphics be the same as it normally is in the two Eras (since they have the same ones, just different amounts of color), with there being colors but only a limited color palette. In my mind, it’s like the coloring in the Gen 2 Pokémon games. I felt really smart when I thought of that. But yeah, that’s what we’re using 

So yeah, Fina and Kuro end up in this new time period, and they go around the capital, meeting people and trying to find that item. If you don’t want to do too much work in this new era (as well as just for time and limited characters), have it just be like, a big puzzle/side quest thing around town to get it. And also we aren’t allowed to leave the capital for whatever reason. What we do doesn’t really matter, it’s more about experiencing this place, at least for me

There is the problem of the group current being two Humans in the Demon capital, but this is also decades before the Great War, so maybe they’re a bit more open minded in this era and more lenient. I mean one of the guys in the Demon Camp said he used to have a Human friend, and he’s only 60, so it doesn’t seem too unreasonable

One more thing here (and the main reason I don’t include Menos in the main group), somewhere during this point, we end up meeting a younger version of Menos. I’m gonna say around Kuro and Fina’s age of teenager/young adult. I’m not too sure how Demon aging works, but that feels about right, with him being 50 years younger here. To ensure we don’t have too much timey-wimey shenanigans of Menos’ past self having met Menos, meaning he would have met us before the game, let’s say we don’t see him for that long. Like, he’s only there for a brief segment, like meeting us once, or we see a scene with him but he doesn’t meet us. Or even maybe he briefly helps us out, but not for too long. Enough so that we see him, but not long enough that we’d leave a big impression on him to clearly remember us 50 years later. Maybe after this section when we meet back up, Menos recalls having met two odd Humans once in the Capital but not really remembering them well, and maybe he starts to realize that it was indeed us because he knows time travel exists now, but it’s nothing much

We’d probably get a different main guy from this era that we interact with, probably in order to get that item we need, and Menos is just a cameo

But yeah, we get the thing we need here, we go back through the Magilith, Fina probably says something at the end about she feels even more sorry now for the Demons and what fate befalls them, as well as empathizing with Menos more, and we end this section

I don’t really know where in the timeline it’d fall, but let’s say after you get the Frangment of Earth, you can do this section. Since that’s the Demonia section

Like I’ve stated, it’s just an excuse to see Demonia before it got destroyed and such, as well as see a younger Menos just because I want to. I just think it’d be neat

I get that realistically, something like this probably wouldn’t happen in the game, given that the developers would have to make an entire new era and graphic style just for this one, relatively unimportant and small section. Yeah the Magi era you only need to visit once, but it’s part of the main story and has plenty of lore significance, as well as some foreshadowing of the ending. And again, it’s entirely superfluous in the grand scheme of this and easily cuttable, but I think it’d be neat

If I ever end up actually learning how to make games, at least in some way, maybe one of the first things I’d do is this little fan made extra sections for Evoland 2 (since this isn’t the only one I’ve made up). You know, like the Earthbound Halloween Hack or other romhack games. It’d be neat

[whumpfish]

Hi, I'm Fish, and I'm Blacklist trash.

And as Blacklist trash, I am begging y'all to give your protagonist a defined set of morals, even if they're challenged later.

[Spoilers for The Blacklist under the cut]

I adore each and every character in The Blacklist... except the main character. To the extent that I was genuinely disappointed when her death in s3 wasn't permanent. I was, pun intended, dying for her actress to quit or something, anything, so that she could be written out.

Setting aside the fact that after 8 fucking seasons we know absolutely nothing about Elizabeth's life between the age of 8 and the start of the series, in addition to having no narrative substance, she has no moral substance, no emotional substance, and frankly, no intellectual substance.

She has no loyalty to anyone, not the team, not Red, not the various people who appear and claim to be from her past or know something about it. Her loyalties and values and emotions change drastically every time she's told a new version of the story... and she believes everything she hears. Like an idiot. And nobody registers this as a problem.

90% of the character death in the series is the result of Elizabeth Fucking Keen bouncing around like a human pinball. Every time she ricochets off a plot wall, at least one person dies as a result. A whole goddamn secondary team dies before we're finally rid of her. Red and Mr. Kaplan split because of her bullshit, and ultimately Mr. Kaplan dies over that split, which for me is what pushed Elizabeth and her fundamental instability from annoying to unforgivable.

And yet she's the darling babygirl of the team forever, despite having an in-story body count that rivals Red's. Ressler overlooking it/being oblivious I can understand. Nobody else is that stupid.

It's possible to have distrust fade in and out of relationships without all this ridiculous back and forth bullshit. The writers do it just fine with legitimately every other character. For example, I love the dynamic Red and Harold have.

Every time Elizabeth ricochets off a plot wall, something stupid happens like her standing on a rooftop overlooking the city like she's fucking Batman. And all these aesthetic trappings, and the intensity and velocity with which she pinballs around, is painfully obviously meant to make her look Driven and like A Strong Female Character... but all it actually makes her look is unstable.

Like Elizabeth, Harold has some past entanglement with Raymond Reddington I* Like Elizabeth, he periodically has doubts about whether Our Red is the same person or not, and how sinister or benign or even random that connection might be if he isn't. Unlike Elizabeth, he doesn't believe everything he hears. Unlike Elizabeth, even in the transactional interactions he has with Red, he doesn't switch sides in the middle. Unlike Elizabeth, he recognizes that while who Red "really is" is an interesting question that has personal implications for him, the only Red that functionally matters is Our Red.

You know who has a shifting, sometimes volatile relationship with Red and is actually a strong female character? Alina. Her past is a mystery, but while you learn bits and pieces of it over time, you also learn bits and pieces of the shit that happened in between. Alina would have been a perfect match with Red narratively. She has the training to seek legal, in-bounds solutions, but her temperament can lead her to solve shit Red's way instead. It would make way more sense for Red to choose Alina as a potential successor, and she would have way more reason to be both inclined to embrace it and leery of becoming the next him. My fix-it au is "Elizabeth's first death is permanent and we get Alina starting s4."

Moral of the rant story: Your main character needs to have the most consistency and narrative substance out of everyone, unless it's first person and you're going for an unreliable narrator. If they have the least, you have a problem.

*(Who still may or may not be Our Red, because I don't think the fucking writers know his original identity. I personally stopped caring halfway through s5. I was sick to death of the identity shenanigans by the time s6 started.)

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

i mean, i definitely don't disagree that beren and luthien -- and the rest of the lotr universe if we're being honest -- is full of misogyny and sexism. from the characters to the settings to a good part of the messaging, all of it operates from a patriarchal worldview that reflects the mindset of its writer. everyone who reads tolkien's works should be aware of that and it's absolutely fair to criticize it. (though i will say: a trend i've noticed in fandom is criticizing that the misogyny only in the characters/stories one dislikes and wants to prove as "bad," while ignoring it in others.)

i don't think your particular criticism (that luthien should have easily been able to take on celegorm and curufin, and they never should have posed a threat to her) works with what we're given in-story though. luthien is never presented as "powerful" in the typical action-hero sense. it's perseverance, guile, cleverness, and sheer nerve that pulls her through against sauron and morgoth, not physical power. i also don't think it's quite accurate to reduce celegorm and curufin to random dudes. those two are, if not war veterans, certainly battle-experienced by the time of beren and luthien, and they've seen and been involved in a lot of fighting: the first kinslaying (albeit their side was much better armed than their opponents and received reinforcements from fingon), the initial skirmishes of the exilic noldor with morgoth's forces upon their arrival in beleriand, and the dagor bragollach. i believe in some versions they also help cover orodreth's retreat from minas tirith, which similarly suggests some type of military involvement. and i'm absolutely not going to be the person that goes "uwu let female characters be feminine!!1!!11!" -- the argument can, and should, be made that we should get more female warriors in the lotr verse. that's definitely one of my main frustrations; of course we have women like eowyn, haleth, and emeldir, all of whom we know can fight -- but i could always use more female warriors (and more gnc women period) in my fiction. however, in frame of what we know about luthien as she is canonically, the idea that she should have been able to easily overpower celegorm and curufin doesn't hold up.

regarding her putting morgoth to sleep, what we need to keep in mind is that luthien tricks him first, and tells him she wants to sing to him as a minstrel. then it's morgoth's own arrogance and his indulgence of his desire to corrupt luthien that keeps him from noticing her true intentions, giving her the window of opportunity to put him to sleep. she didn't just open the act by immediately sedating him, and i don't think she could have. her magic doesn't allow her to just put people to sleep willy-nilly; the circumstances have to be right, or it has to be one of those moments of, for lack of a better way to put it, cosmic intervention (like when she put carcharoth to sleep). none of that was the case for when she met celegorm and curufin. what i'm trying to say is, despite how she's perceived (often along with resounding complaints about how she's such a "mary sue"), luthien is not an untouchable powerful demigod with a track record of easily kicking aside everyone that gets in her way. many of her antagonists far outclass her in terms of "might". but she's brave, confident enough in herself that she believes she can pull off what everyone else tells her is impossible, and resourceful and astute enough to optimize what she has going for her to her best advantage despite the odds being stacked against her -- and that's ultimately why she succeeds. which was part of tolkien's intention, imo, as it fits best with the lotr verse's themes: it's not the "big," "powerful," people that pull off the most spectacular feats. it's the people who have estel, who don't give in to despair, who have the courage and tenacity that so many others don't.

also, regarding the "enchantment" idea: another reason it puts a bad taste in my mouth is that nowhere is any magic in the legendarium ascribed the ability to make people fall in love/lust with the user. even morgoth, the most powerful of the valar, can't do that; there's simply no reason to think that luthien should be able to. and i do understand wanting to explore her character more beyond her story with beren, but forcibly shoehorning her into a position -- against all indications given in the narrative about her, about celegorm and curufin, about the extent to which magic in the universe is capable of influencing someone -- in which she's the one at fault for a male character trying to sexually assault her is not the way to go about that. to be frank, the whole concept of making female characters who by all accounts in the source material are perfectly decent people, ~more morally grey~ because it's ~feminist~, particularly when the process of doing so exonerates a male character for his sexually predatory behavior toward her, and in the case with luthien, flips the situation so that she becomes the predatory one... i don't think it's feminist in the least. there are better ways to give female characters more agency and depth beyond their male love interests than making contrived scenarios in which she becomes responsible for the actions of men who victimize her

as blatantly misogynistic as the "luthien enchanted celegorm" theory/headcanon/whatever they call it is, i do think an interesting concept is a celegorm who convinces himself that luthien enchanted him to explain his own abhorrent behavior, because even he can't quite accept how low he's gone -- i.e. he tells himself that the lust and desire to possess luthien that at least significantly motivated his actions toward her was a result of some maiarin enchantment on her part. it doesn't quite align with my personal reading of the character (though it's not wholly incompatible with it either), but celegorm with his own hellfire-adjacent musical number would be a hell of an aesthetic