#just write different fucking characters at that point!

[un-pearable]

the folks “he wouldn’t fucking say that” was about missed the point that large sections of fandom intentionally ignore fundamental character traits and backstories just to make them more palatable and less challenging to write bc they’re relatively new writers. which isn’t inherently bad but is an entirely different issue than what their reactionary “okay but in what situation would he say that” posts are saying

[brian-kinney-apologist]

What are your thoughts on s5? And on Michael?

well here we go I guess, my big hater moment has come 😈

(this is going to be a very long post, buckle up everyone)

personally I didn't like s5 because the writers did dirty EVERYONE:

I hated how they massacred ted's personal growth, he was at his lowest in s3 and he managed to overcome the obstacles in s4 and finally gained some healthy self-esteem. his s5 plot line was AWFUL, in what world was ted (and scott!!!) old or bold or fat (the last one especially never made sense to me bc he literally looked the same as in the previous seasons?????? like they didn'teven try??? (and the excuse of well ted hated himself so he saw himself worse doesn't work bc we dealt with this issue in s4!!!!!!))

I was annoyed with watching melanie and lindsay constantly fighting by the end of s4 but somehow they overdid themselves in s5. like we already had them breaking up over cheating and sharing a child in season fucking one, why are we doing yhis again??Plus this is s4 related but picking michael as the father of their future child was the stupidest idea EVER because mel and linds had a fit every other time when brian tried to be here for gus and they for real thought michael (and debbie) would just idk hang out with the kid once a year or what??? and yes I know the writers wanted to talk about the guy divorce™️ but once again: already happened in s1

and speaking of michael and ben, I really liked their final moments with hunter and I definitely teared up when they asked him to be their son 💔, HOWEVER see the previous point. the fighting over the baby that was never supposed to be theirs was INSANE. I hated them both during this time sooo much

now let's talk about brian and justin.

justin and randy did not deserve s5 writing. it was so painfully obvious that they simply didn't know what to do with him. imo s5 should've focused more on justin trying to figure out who he was and what he wanted from life. he went through a lot for someone in their early 20s. he had so many job opportunities too and now he was back to square one. I think that should've been their main disagreement with brian in s5 too: brian hovering over him and justin refusing to go in the direction brian wanted him to. maybe by the end of the season justin could've decided to go back to pifa for his own personal reasons, not because of brian. or we could've watch him fail a couple times because barely anyone becomes super successful when they're young and just an ordinary person. that's another reason why the ending of s5 looked super unserious to me: justin going to new york because of 1 (one) article from some random guy...........bffr rn 🙄 + this ending was literally s4 ending in a different font. moreover, justin wanting a child as a 21/22 gay man here and now was literally so funny, like this would work for a female character of that age because women are conditioned by society to want children/family from a young age. men on the other hand.......

now about brian: imo the whole s5 plot line of him fucking other guys happened only because in s4 brian had cancer and thus wasn't fucking that many people on screen, thus they just came up with the most random idea of why suddenly will fuck a million guys per episode again to bring back the viewers. imo this change of behaviour was similar to ted's where they just started to write as if these were the characters from s1, not s4/5. AND if they wanted to have some conflict between brian and justin so they'd have their big reunion after the bombing, there was a plenty of reasons to make them have a fight about something new. it was tiring to see them breaking up for the 3689044th time for the same fucking reason. like come on, it's a tv show, write something new. imo they could've made them argue about something else and justin be like I'll go sleep at daphne's tonight or something and then have the I love you scene with the same reactions from the audience

(forgot to mention how everyone tried to insert themselves into britin's relationship as if they had any say in it 🙄)

overall, I think that the main issue with s5 was that it was too repetitive, the writers clearly didn't know how to wrap up the show

now let's talk about michael. I understand why some people may like him but he's not my favourite. I don't hate him overall but he has his moments. I think his best scenes in the show were with ben and hunter, I really liked them together (also when he was hanging out with the gang™️). however I do find him annoying at times and I will never understand his crush on brian because you are a grown man, STAND UP. I understand that it was the premises of the show but it became concerning very soon. maybe i just look from a perspective of a person who walks away from any type of relationships the second anyone looks bad at me and I just can't imagine loving someone who dgaf about you (in a romantic way) for 15+ years....... also michael beefing with a literal teenager was something else 😭 like wishing death upon justin was INSANE, the craziest thing anyone has said on this show. michael didn't even know the depth of britin's relationship and dared to insert himself in it????......also brian having to apologise every single time even when michael was the wrong one pissed me off so bad. like in s5 when brian tried to end their fight and michael made it even worse...... I also dislike how michael never faced any consequences for his actions just once (jutin was an icon for snapping back at him lol), considering the fact that brian was blamed for everything all the fucking time for no reason but whatever I guess

I think I'll end this here because this post is already too long 😅

[nyehilismwriting]

project hadea is so good and feels so well thought out every single run through its so amazing!!! how did you come up with a plot after you had the broad outline?

my secret is i'm bad at coming up with plots - the storyline of hadea is fairly straightforward, with all the twists coming from the characters and interactions, rather than the events. my outline for hadea is just a few pages of bullet points, with variations for different chapters and scenes, and a lot of it is essentially reverse-engineered from the premise ("wouldn't it be fucked up if you had an AI chip in your head and someone stole it?") - I like to leave myself a fair amount of room for improvisation when I'm writing, with only the major plot points sketched out before I start a chapter.

one issue i do have with that approach is that i do sometimes add in/come up with whole branches that I then realise don't make sense and have to take out😔it's a fair amount of trial and error, if i'm being honest, but a lot of hadea's plot came to me as a fairly logical sequence of events (believe it or not), with more complexity coming as the characters developed.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

I went back and looked at these scenes before writing my first reblog, because I couldn't remember exactly who knew what. The only person we know for sure has been in the lab with Jayce and Viktor is Mel. Their conversation implies she's been there more than once. Is she visiting in part to keep an eye on Jayce's mental state? Yeah probably. Did she have a "Jayce wtf. Jayce are you SURE about this" moment the first time she saw Viktor in the goo? Yeah probably. Sure, we could've seen that conversation, but that's not the emotional/narrative beat the writers chose to emphasize. (And like, even if she'd made the argument that Jayce isn't a medical doctor and Viktor should be in a hospital, do you think Jayce would've been receptive? Absolutely the fuck not.) And out of all the people who know Jayce, other than Viktor himself, Mel is probably the person most confident in Jayce's ability to pull off some insane unprecedented scientific feat AND she's willing to keep a secret for him if that's what he wants.

Caitlyn does ask about Viktor so she seems to know some of what's going on:

I highly doubt she's been to the lab, though. She's absorbed in her own grief and it's implied that she and Jayce have barely spoken since her mother's death. Neither of them is in a state to pay much attention to the other at that point.

I also think there are some genre/worldbuilding conventions that have to be taken into account here. We're in a steampunk world with strong Gothic elements. We're in "Viktor as in Frankenstein" mad scientist territory. They're scientists who work with magic in a world that seems to still have more or less 19th-century medical norms. (Paramedics, ambulances, advance directives, any kind of electronic health monitors, the modern concept of protected health information, and talk therapy are among the things I think they have never heard of.) So YES IT'S WEIRD for Jayce to have his maybe-dead bestie floating in the magic sourdough starter in their lab. But it's in a different context than our modern world; people aren't going to react to it the same way.

There is also just a general motif in season 2 of fracture and chaos. Almost every interpersonal relationship that's strong in s1 gets broken. Jayce and Mel, Jayce and Viktor, Cait and Vi, Vi and Jinx--they all have fallings-out and/or spend significant portions of the season apart from each other, often alone. So I don't think it's particularly surprising that we don't see a lot of the character interactions we might expect, and I don't think it's sloppy writing. It's consistent with what the rest of the season is doing.

crazy to me how everyone in jayce & viktor's lives are bad friends because if i found out my pal was keeping the refrigerated corpse of his dead-in-a-terrorist-attack boyfriend within a mysterious and unexplained suspension of holographic goop. i'd say SOMETHING

like, mel, vi, and cait all knew jayce was doing the nonconsensual necromancy thing and were cool with it. like didn't question viktor's agency in the matter, didn't recommend a therapist, just dealt with their own plot stuff. vi came in trying to get some gloves, saw a suspended glowing cadaver, went "ok" and moved on with her day

[spliqi]

this is unrelated to the higuchi post and i did not want to derail but also ur comment about the way you'd be willing to hear people out re:akutagawa and misogyny if they approached it in a more comprehensive way wrt irl higuchi and her experiences with misogyny made me go !!!! bc first of all u are so correct always second of all it made me go YEAH u get it. in that i have said before that i do think there are valid criticisms that could be said about how few women are in bsd and the ways in which their characters are handled + the differences in f/f interpersonal relationship as opposed to m/m characters, but it never actually feels... insightful nor productive, because it feels like a war b/w whether asagiri is a misogynist or not, rather than an actual attempt to ask the questions: why is it written like that, and is asagiri saying something by writing it like that, and what does it mean beyond a 2d analysis based purely on screentime of minor characters in the main manga (-> which is part of why something u said in your louisa post about asagiri's choices with the female cast being intentional based on their irl history has been sticking in my head, like. spliqi u get it...). anyway this is mainly open invitation in case u would like to talk about intentional choices asagiri is making with the female cast of bsd, but simultaneously it is me sending u like. a thousand exclamation points going ur takes are always so good.

— @blackwaves (if that was not obvious)

kavi!!!! thank you <3 and hmm. yes. so. putting this under a cut

i have a lot of thoughts about this. it’s something i rotate all the time but struggle to come to any conclusion because none of the main bsd women takes sit completely right with me. it’s either people don’t give a single fuck about the female cast and are shameless about that in a way that feels iffy or they act really performatively feminist about characters (and associated authors) they don’t care to look at beyond a surface level. while i completely understand the complaints about wanting more women, more female focus and stronger f/f dynamics in bsd (i do also) we have to consider that bsd isn’t just any series with characters the mangaka made up - they’re real people from a time when women were not allowed to be self-reliant main characters. expecting a girl power narrative about characters inspired by real women who didn’t even have the right to vote just feels like setting yourself up for disappointment imo

i imagine this is a problem asagiri has to tackle while writing, because there’s likely an element of faithfulness to the classic lit world he wants to maintain. is he the one at fault or is it an existing problem that he hasn’t corrected? and would it be a kind of erasure to pretend the oppression these women went through didn’t exist and write them all as independent girlbosses who don’t need no man? and sure, i’ve seen the argument that there are a lot of female authors asgr has chosen not to/has yet to include, but to act like the classic lit world was anywhere close to a 50:50 gender split would be a lie. even out of the women writers who did make it big, many had to change their stories to be more palatable (e.g. higuchi and louisa) or take on male pseudonyms (-> i find it quite interesting that bsd has two female characters that disguise themselves as men for no discernible reason. i’ve been wondering if they’re a reference to this)

also i have. Opinions. about sei/shounen fans and their expectations of female characters that will probably get me jumped so i’ll say this with a fun analogy: it seems a lot of people hate fish but will still choose to go to the aquarium every day. if you get what i mean. it gets to a point where it’s like do you actually even care about this or are you just looking to let everyone know how Woke™️ you are

but yeah i do think about asagiri’s intentions a lot in many ways but especially about tsujimura and the fact that she’s a modern writer + a protagonist in bsd and i also have thoughts about his different portrayals of american vs japanese female writers which i didn’t really expand upon in my louisa & higuchi post but just know it’s in there. cooking. i need to read more author biographies before i feel confident getting into the meat of it but it will come. i also do wonder about internal bias + asagiri not in the sense that he’s straight up misogynistic but rather because so many female classic lit authors were expected (and sometimes forced) to stick to writing certain themes and catering to certain audiences. it’s completely possible that asagiri just hasn’t read the completed works of a lot of these authors who’ve written 50 500-page romance novels targeted at young women 😭😭 and that’s not a crime imo. i mean damn neither have i, and as we know he does a LOT of research into the authors he portrays and i’m sure that includes reading the majority or even entirety of their bibliographies. (that being said if the brontë sisters and/or jane austen aren’t in the order of the clock tower he will be answering to me)

tl;dr i totally agree about the conversations around this being unproductive. i think it’s a shame the women of bsd don’t play a bigger role but i also don’t think it’s surprising given the context of the series. and i think it’s something of a self-sustaining problem - i.e. women are mostly restricted to being supporting characters, perhaps as a social commentary -> their lack of focus means they’re less likely to become fan favorites -> asagiri caters to the fans -> more male character content -> female characters stand out even less -> they’re even less likely to become fan favorites -> and so on

[snowshinobi]

insightful boyfriend take on Andor Season 2 is "all the characters get what they deserved" and no one does that apply to more than Bix.

[Spoilers for Andor Season 2 below the cut!]

Across the series, Bix has so much taken from her. Her peace of mind. Her information. Her home. The respect she is owed as a talented mechanic, not a piece of meat. Her sense of safety in the new homes she builds. Her friends.

When she chooses the rebellion, she's choosing it in a different way than Cassian has and will again. He is directly carrying out missions. Bix is back in the wheat fields of Mina-Rau, doing her craft -- fixing the machines, dodging the Imperial inspectors, forging connections with the farming communities. She is one of many agents of chaotic freedom pushing against the Empire all across the galaxy. As Nemik writes, freedom is a "pure idea" that "occurs spontaneously" ... Just like Bix's disappearance from the faux-normal life Cassian, with all the good intentions and lack of foresight in the world, tried to carve out for them -- at the safehouse in Corusant, in the lush flora of Yavin.

In her goodbye message to Cassian, Bix admits if she "was a brave person," she wouldn't have snuck away in the wee hours of morning. She's right -- her decision wasn't brave, but it was hers. It was what she needed to do. For the first time in a long time, she acted entirely on her terms. Nemik's full quote reads "Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction." The Rebellion has to balance acting quickly on new information with acting cleverly with thought-out plans. There is no playbook. They work with what they have and do what they need to do.

Bix had to weigh making an easy painful choice with a tough painful choice. Staying with Cassian, a partner and friend she loves, means letting him turn his back on the rest of the world to preserve their life together -- a decision that weighs heavily on both him and Bix. "Whatever the next mission is," a frustrated and miserable Bix told Cassian back at the Corusant safehouse, "I'm coming." And she did. Being together isn't enough for Bix; she is driven by a larger purpose. Being with Cassian, who has at this point ended his involvement with the Rebellion in favor of a peaceful life, cuts her off from that purpose. They can no longer be partners in crime, a dynamic that goes all the way back to the shady parts sales Bix ran back in Ferrix. Now, Bix and Cassian can only partners.

Leaving Cassian means they can both contribute to the Rebellion on their own terms without the beautiful and terrifying weight of the responsibility to come home to one another.

I am so fucking mad at Bix for ditching Cassian like that. At the same time, I am so fucking proud of her. My resolute girl. Grabbing onto your life with both hands and moving it where you want to be is what you deserve. And you got- no, you took it.

[cosmicsproutcake]

This is the dumbest thing to get annoyed with, but I saw a PoncleProphet fic a while back where the writer couldn't figure out the logistics of their relationship with Issun being only an inch tall, so they upsized him to 5 inches and that made me, unreasonably, blood-red mad.

If you can't figure out the size difference logistics, then just don't write giant/tiny stuff!

[max-nico]

A moment of acknowledgement for the mutual domestication trope. Just two characters who are absolutely feral and batshit crazy until they're reunited with the other person, and then all of a sudden they're both sweet and gentle like a dog lounging in the sun after a long hard day of doing nothing

[vaguely-concerned]

seeing people claim that lucanis is 'bad representation' is hilarious to me because in so many ways he's really the closest anything has ever gotten to capturing my own personal experience. sorry for being bad real life queer and mental health/neurodiversity representation folks 😔 I'll take time to reflect and do some work on myself and try to do better in the future

[bigskydreaming]

Imagine looking at a character whose entire premise is that in every stage of his life, he's made every version of himself into someone that inspires people to such a degree that EVERY SINGLE VERSION OF HIM has people wanting to literally follow in his footsteps in some way or another.....

And coming to the conclusion that like.....the most important things about him are the sum of all his trappings. His entirely homemade developed from scratch could not exist if not for what he already was and brought with him BEFORE crafting this newest version of himself trappings, with his greatest trait throughout all of it being his adaptability; his ability and willingness to roll with the punches and not try to simply weather any opposition or changes to his life but instead reshape himself as needed to better fit INTO whatever new shape his life and the world around him takes. All while managing to carry the most innate, fundamental and necessary aspects of himself from one version to the next. Thus every single version of himself is different but simultaneously every single version of himself is also undeniably the same person.

The strength of this character, to me, will always be that he can be so many versions of himself, he can become so many things, all without ever actually losing or discarding any of the aspects of himself he considers most essential, the things he's not willing to lose or give up just to keep going. Finding that road not taken by most, usually because most never even think to look for it as an option. But one that he's always able to find because the one trick he's mastered in his tumultuous life is threading that needle of not just digging in his heels in an unproductive way but rather being selective about when and where he makes a stand and decides "this is not a thing I'm willing to compromise about" but here are places and ways I can and will change and evolve and adapt in order to make it possible for me to hold onto these parts and keep them as they are.

And that's why its always so mind-boggling to me that so many writers can't seem to think of anything else to do with Dick Grayson other than invent some new reason for him to just....not be that person, or to like just take the character whose most basic fundamental trait he's NOT about to compromise on is willingly giving up his spot in the driver's seat of his own life.....and make him just a passenger in his own life and stories.

Dick Grayson at age nine....at age nineteen...at age twenty nine....the one core thread running through all versions of him is the only way he's standing back and letting you call the shots for him or putting him on the sidelines in some way is over his dead body.

HOW he goes about that, what that looks like, who he becomes and what aspects of himself he plays up at some times and what traits he lets fall by the wayside at other times when they offer less in service to his primary goal here....that changes constantly. He changes constantly.

But those changes are almost always (or at least they used to be/should be IN MY OPINION) made with the intention of keeping certain things about him or his life as consistent as possible.

That's the duality of Dick Grayson that I'm here for. The inherent contradiction of him that COULD allow for endless conflict and breaking new narrative ground in all sorts of ways if mined properly:

His eternal willingness to compromise....but only ever in pursuit of doubling down on the ways he's not willing to compromise.

Forever walking that tightrope in ways that only a kid born and raised in a circus could ever hope to.

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

I'm kind of obsessed with Blackwall's idealized ideas about the Wardens. He was once picked up by a Warden and lulled by the promise of atoning for his crimes and turning his life around, only for that opportunity to slip away when the Warden not only saved him, but sacrificed his own life to do it. This whole experience makes our Blackwall become a Warden in heart, if not in blood, but with his own ideas of what a Grey Warden should be - noble, brave, inspiring, heroic, self-sacrificial. Everything he now wants to embody. He knows well that he's not there, but he wants nothing more than to start from scratch and be that.

In his beliefs, he reminds me a bit of Wynne in Origins who tells the Warden at some point that the Grey Wardens are supposed to be more than killing machines and weapons against the blight.

“There’s more to being a Grey Warden than killing darkspawn and saving the world from the Blight. Ultimately, being a Grey Warden is about serving others, about serving all people, whether elves or dwarves or men. As a Grey Warden, you are a guardian of men. And you guard them because their continued existence is more important than you are.”

However, we know that's not exactly how it works. That's what they want the Wardens to be. The light against darkness. The shield against monsters.

Although it's not entirely wrong, either, I suppose, all things considered. The more darkspawn they obliterate and push back, the more people are protected from them. Of course, sacrificing their lives to fight literal monsters, which means those same monsters don't eat everybody's kids, ultimately is heroic, and it's something that must have been born out of the need to protect the world and its inhabitants (from the Blight). But to have idealized opinions of the Wardens to this degree, you have to ignore all the other shady stuff and the mentality we, as players, also know the Wardens for. The fact that the Wardens are primarily weapons to slay darkspawn, prevent and end Blights, by any means necessary. The last part is important. After all, they are the Grey Wardens, not the White Wardens. They recruit from all walks of life and are famous for taking in criminals. Not to redeem themselves and get a second chance at life, but because they usually have nowhere to go and nothing left to lose. It's not a coincidence that each of the Origins gets chosen by Duncan, not only because he sees them as capable, but also because they are in a situation they can't escape from. Either they join the Wardens, or they're done for.

We know the Wardens from a few games now, but does the public in the setting even know? Does the average person have any idea how far the Wardens are willing to go? Besides grand stories of slaying monsters in the dark and preventing the end of the world? Probably not. The order is very secretive. And it explains a lot. The Wardens end up sounding almost romantic, when being a Warden is anything but. Is it ignorance talking out of these characters? Perhaps.

It once again shows us this aspect of Dragon Age where you can't take everything a character says as a fact, because the setting is full of people who have no idea what they're talking about, but who are absolutely convinced that they do.

And yet, I can't help but also like Wynne's and Blackwall's romantic ideas about what the Wardens are or should be, almost knights in shining armour and all that. They're fairy tales, but they're beautiful fairy tales. And I can't fault the characters for wanting to believe it or even live it. Especially in case of Blackwall, who sees it as a way to make up for the crimes he committed, somewhat. In the end, this might actually be a bigger draw to join the Wardens than, "Got nowhere to go? Come suffer horribly and probably die gruesomely with us!" It all sounds great on paper, though. I can't fault Davrin for trying to find purpose in life by becoming a monster hunter, either.

And maybe a little bit of idealism doesn't hurt. Not only it's good motivation, but in the end, doing things by "any means necessary" doesn't always pay off, either. It led the Wardens into all kinds of trouble, like getting tricked into employing dangerous forms of blood magic and demon summoning, basically into doing their enemy's work for them. In their determination to win at any cost, they helped trigger a cataclysmic event. Maybe having some principles isn't so bad after all.

In the end, I can appreciate that we get to see the clash of the old and new blood in Veilguard, where there's hope for the order to transform into an organization that's less secretive, less exclusive, and hopefully less prone to letting corruption spread through its ranks and make other devastating mistakes. Duncan once said that letting people join the Wardens isn't an "act of charity", and I like how Evka and Antoine go, "Yeah, you know what? Fuck that." And that likely inspires more loyalty. I imagine Blackwall would like that.

[honestlyvan]

Y'know, I don't think it's accurate to say that you can do fandom "wrong", but I do definitely think that there are people out there doing fandom things that are totally cromulent, except they're based on a blatant misreading or at least directly contradict aspects of the texts, and unless they're explicitly labeling their doing of fandom as "adversarial" or otherwise, I would feel comfortable saying they're doing fandom "incorrectly".

[the-golden-mango-of-discord]

if i could maybe get on my soapbox here for a moment i think what ppl get fundamentally wrong abt wulian is that it is built on unequal grounds and it can never reconcile that by nature of where both of them are at in their respective narrative arcs. any story about xie lian recognizing wuming’s devotion and trying to do better by it is explicitly rejecting xie lian’s actual character at that point in his life and projecting his future self onto the narrative, when that xie lian doesn’t exist yet and can never exist at this point in the story bc he hasn’t experienced that outside act of kindness. he can only see wuming’s devotion as trivial and misguided at best, repugnant and mocking at worst. wuming means nothing to xie lian until his sacrifice, and ironically enough it took a random stranger’s secondhand kindness to even awaken that realization in xie lian. wuming’s devotion is just not what xie lian needed at that point in his life and was actively spurring on his self-hatred and jaded apathy toward the world. the huge chasm between xie lian’s utter disregard for himself and wuming’s devotion, which is entirely dedicated to the exact person xie lian despises. thus the more wuming devotes himself to xie lian, the less he thinks of him. of course that’s very unromantic and not conducive to fluffy fanfiction, so ppl make up a xie lian who actually has the capacity to care about wuming and by extension himself

[slayerdurge]

the brainrot is telling me to do an evil karlach origin play through

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[askthebadkidz]

some of you are just saying you headcannon Riz as Demi-romantic and Demi-sexual because you want to ignore that he’s aroace while pretending that you’re not ignoring that he’s aroace and it’s painfully obvious to actual aroace people.

-mod Riz