#like genuinely some of that stuff was so creatively horrifying i remember several moments that like genuinely shocked me

[goldiipond]

regardless of how you feel about modern paper mario leaning hard into the 'THE WORLD IS PAPER' thing for their gimmicks you do gotta admit its kind of impressive how much wild cartoon body horror the origami king devs managed to stuff into an e rated game simply because all of the characters are made of paper

[alirhi]

If I wrote Loki pt 5

(Missed one? Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4)

Woo. Coming up on the end. It's been so hard to keep the same stupid storyline and just give Loki a bigger part to play (in his own motherfucking show) rather than just rewriting the whole bloody thing, but it's almost done! And trust me, guys, this has been deliberate (and painful), not a sign of lacking creativity. If I'd really written this thing, there would be no Mobius, no Sylvie, no TVA. It would have been properly about Loki and would not just be a six-hour commercial for the multiverse. Of course, it almost definitely would have also involved Loki in a poly relationship with Sigyn and Bucky if I was allowed to truly run wild 😂 so I'm not saying I'm perfect lmao

Alright. Let's get on with this, shall we?

Episode 5! Almost done! We start with the TVA side of things. Mobius is struggling to calm the other agents and keep them from killing anyone else, not an easy task when enraged, grief-stricken Sigyn is trying to kill them all. He manages to get close to her just long enough to whisper He's not dead; not yet. He slips a Tempad into her hand, winks, and then steals a weapon and prunes her. Happy now? he grumbles at his coworkers, tossing the thing (seriously, what were those called? I keep wanting to call it a melty stick, but this show isn't worthy of a Grandmaster reference XD) back to the stunned agent he'd stolen it from. We have the psycho Variant. Job well done, right? Let's get her processed.

So much for friendship, Sylvie growls at him, horrified by how casually he just murdered Sigyn. I never said I was their friend, Mobius points out, though there's a quick flash of fear and regret as he glances back at the spot where Sigyn once stood. He doesn't know her well enough to care how things go for her, but he's praying she can help Loki. There was no way he could have sent Sylvie; she's feral, she doesn't trust anyone and can't be trusted, and there's no way she and Loki can work together.

Cut to Loki appearing in the pruned dimension. Again, can't remember if it had a name. I only watched these episodes once each, which was more than enough 🤮

Anyway, he doesn't fall out of nowhere; the orange sparks that he disintegrated into on the other side are what come together to recreate him here. He meets a few other Lokis; at least two of them are his age and blue. One is wearing Jotun clothes, and he smirks at OG Loki's look of surprise. "I went straight to Jotunheim after killing Laufey. I only had my throne for a few moments before those wretched TVA people showed up, but it was still mine."

"Did it make you happy?" Loki asks, a tired, resigned smile on his face. He knows the answer before King Loki says anything, and only smiles a bit wider when he says "No. I never wanted any throne." Loki nods and picks up King Loki's train of thought: "Only ever wanted to be seen and valued. But the only thing the house of Odin values is power." They take him to the underground bunker.

His interactions with the other Lokis aren't played for laughs. There's some lighthearted stuff (I'd keep Croki and his reaction to him, because that was genuinely funny) but mostly Loki meeting other Loki variants (several of them female and no one bats an eye) is to show that he was never evil. Self-serving and a little weaselly at times, especially when he was younger, but not evil. King Loki is horrified that OG Loki tried to destroy Jotunheim. OG Loki, in turn, can't even look at Feral Loki who never deluded himself into thinking Odin would ever love him and ran away as a child. Like Old Loki, he kept himself hidden for years before he got lonely and sloppy and the TVA found him.

Each new story more heartbreaking than the last; each new Loki variant reveals more of the horrors they've suffered in service of the TVA's "sacred timeline" before being sent to this place to die. But Lokis don't die; they fight, and they survive. They're all tired. They're all a bit broken. A few have had idle passing thoughts of finding a way out, a way home, but what would be the point? After all, they'd only be sent back again. Princess Loki quietly illustrates this point by revealing that she did get out, once. She ran to her husband and wife - Baldur and Nanna; she loved Sigyn, every Loki who's ever met Sigyn has loved her, but like many of them, she never had the courage to tell her, so she latched onto the pair who would have her - and they didn't recognize her. Their connection had been erased, and her once-partners only knew her as the Trickster who'd once almost gotten Baldur killed. She was captured and sent back to this wretched place, and with nothing left to hold onto on the other side, stayed.

"Then there is a way out," is OG Loki's takeaway. He remembers the prank that had nearly killed Baldur, and he cringes a little, but quickly moves on. He needs to get out, get home. "Where is 'home', Loki?" King Loki challenges him, and that makes him pause. He'd only learned about his Jotun heritage a year ago, Asgard was slated to be eradicated... "Sigyn," he murmurs. "Sigyn is home."

"Then I suppose this is home now." Loki spins to face the source of the snarky voice behind him, and throws his arms around Sigyn, overwhelmed with joy to see her. One of the other Lokis had found her and brought her to the bunker, and all the Lokis are staring at her, missing their own connections with her, but this isn't their Sigyn, so they stay away. She smiles and backs up, holding out the Tempad. "Or we can find a new home."

He takes it, and glances at the others. "Our greatest failing is that we've always done everything alone. Look where that's brought us - all of us, no matter what path we try to take, we're all here." One of them points out that the TVA is why they're there, and he nods. "That's my point. Alone, not one of us can stop them. Our sister tried, and I brought her into their clutches." He points to Princess Loki. "She tried to escape them, but they made sure she was alone. This is not my fate. I refuse. If I can't count on myself, well..." A mocking smirk at his other "selves" turns into a fond, nervous smile as he turns to Sigyn. "I suppose I'd better start counting on someone else for help."

"There is not a single Loki that's ever existed who wouldn't die for that woman," King Loki points out, giving Sigyn a shy smile. She laughs, blushes, and turns to OG Loki, who only shrugs and nods with a sheepish smile of his own. "We can address that later," she assures him. "For now, what's the plan, Loki?"

"If Sylvie can enchant, so can I. We're twins." He grins, putting the Tempad away. "That's a handy failsafe, but I'd like to be done running. I say we enchant the guard dog outside and find out what it's guarding."

Meanwhile, Mobius and Sylvie (I'd be happy to forget about them both, but y'all like them, so...) are discovering the truth behind the "Time keepers". Finding out the whole thing was a sham, Mobius is 100% done. He and Sylvie work together to remind as many agents as they can who they once were, trying to dismantle the TVA from within. While the small army of Lokis (and the beautiful Sigyn ❤) march right up to the hungry murder cloud, Mobius and Sylvie wake up as many variants-turned-agents as they can.

Episode 6 (season 1 finale)

[ladyofpurple]

GIRL ITS BEEN MONTHS SINCE YOU UPDATED TPOY!! please tell me you haven’t given up on it )-:

I KNOW IM REALLY SORRY OMG

This took a bit longer to answer than it should have because I was trying to figure out how to reply, I guess?? The short answer is basically that writing bits of fic during my exams when I didn’t actually have the time to was super productive, mainly because I Didn’t Want To Do The Thing but my entire future hinged on Doing The Thing and anxiety-driven avoidance is excellent creative fuel, apparently. The problem is, of course, that once I finished and started getting my results back and actually had time to breathe again my brain kinda fizzled out and I never wanted to look at a Word document ever again in my life. Writing is really hard right now, for some reason. And not just TPoy — everything I try to write either gives me a headache, makes every idea I’ve ever had go flying out the window like magic, or looks like absolute garbage to me. (I’ve been trying, though, I promise!!!) There is more TPoY, though!! I swear to God!! It’s just coming along a little slower than anticipated.

The long answer is... a little more complicated and probably more than you’re interested in, and the main reason is the short one anyway. But I’ll put a long answer under a cut just in case (aka the entire history of TPoY lol), since I’ve lowkey wanted to post about it for a while now but didn’t quite know how to? May get a little very personal, I suppose.

Basically, TPoY is and always has been a garbage fic. I don’t say that to disparage my own writing or attempt to elicit praise from anyone: I have always considered it a glorious dumpster fire of experimentation, a ridiculous Frankenstein’s monster of all my favorite ML tropes as a practice run, since it had been so long since attempting to write anything at all. I’m thrilled that people like it, of course! Whenever people send me asks about it my answers always involve a lot of exclamation points and variations on “I AM CURRENTLY SOBBING ON THE FLOOR IN GRATITUDE” because I honestly have no idea how to express how genuinely teary-eyed I get when someone tells me how much they like it, or post a comment. That being said, it was always intended for my own amusement and/or therapy, and that it’s gotten so many bookmarks and kudos and comments is incredibly surreal, even after a whole year.

When I started writing it, I was working through a lot of stuff. My first boyfriend had broken up with me, and as we lived together in his hometown I was stuck there on my own for another year before I could move back home. 2016 was filled with a lot of horrifying shit that kept happening one after the other and I eventually almost had to drop out of school because I couldn’t handle it all. The relationship was pretty toxic but all I knew at the time was that I was scared and alone and heartbroken. 

When I started writing, it was after 8 months of the worst bout of depression I’ve ever experienced, and I still wasn’t well, but I functioned passably enough to start hyperfocusing on things. I had an idea about a fic I suddenly wanted to write, and it would have a happy ending and all, but I could work through my feelings in a way I hadn’t tried to since before my ex and I got together. I pulled a lot of the start of the fic (the rejection, the miscommunication, the avoidance) from my recent breakup, yes, but also from my first rejection, aka the only other boy I’d liked enough to confess my feelings to. We were 17, and he admitted that he knew, and then suddenly we weren’t friends anymore. A year and a half later, I got together with my ex, and suddenly after three years of dedicating my life to “us” on his whims he was ghosting me without explanation.

I see a lot of myself in Marinette at that age. The awkwardness, the enthusiasm, the incredibly obvious lovesick obsession with a cute boy who’s nice to you. I wondered if maybe she would react the same, if put into similar circumstances as I had been. Focus on the self-doubt that would follow, based on insecurities she’s already shown in the show — coupled with your standard teenage hormone-fest —and you’d have a fabulous starter for angstfic and a free therapy session all in one.

The problem with that is nobody knows this backstory but me. People focusing on Marinette’s insecurities is nothing new. Other people are annoyed it’s such a popular trope. And the fact that I’ve chosen to focus on certain aspects of the main characters’ identities for the purposes of a story I started on a whim has been making me insecure for a long time because people in the fandom are tired of those characterizations. I’ve never gotten hate comments —I don’t even remember ever getting constructive criticism on TPoY. But I’m well aware that the plot is far from original and definitely lacking in certain places, and as the comments roll in and the hits go up my anxiety mounts because oh my God I’m that guy in the fandom.

I always intended on focusing on different aspects of their characterizations in different fics to suit the plot, y’know? Not ignoring parts of their personalities, but just... emphasizing other parts. But TPoY is the one most people have read. I have a couple one-shots where I tried to do something like that, with different aspects of their characters, but short one-shots can’t really compare to a 100,000+ word WIP, even if they even slightly compared in popularity (they don’t). So my only notable contribution to the fandom is TPoY. And that makes me anxious.

Then there’s the Frankenstein-like obsession with adding every trope I’ve ever wanted to write in a fic like this. I’ve mentioned before that the original plan for this was, like, 10-15 chapters at most. But every chapter I write I’m like, “But what if I did this???” Like I said, I never intended it to be even remotely popular. The only other fandoms I’ve written for are microscopic in comparison. I had no frame of reference for a pairing this big — all my previous experience was from Fanfiction.net, for Christ’s sake. I assumed I wouldn’t finish it, and even getting to chapter 6 was a surprise. But that hyperfocus somehow held on for dear life and I was banging out chapters like nobody’s business. And people were responding to it. And I think that kind of went to my head a little? Not like in an “I deserve all this attention” kind of way, but more like a “People like?? This thing I’m doing??? I cannot squander this opportunity, I must give them m o r e” kind of way. It was the best I’d felt since the breakup and I didn’t really think I deserved it, so I kind of wanted to... prove I did, I guess, by writing everything I’d ever wanted in a lovesquare fic in hopes that people would keep liking it and me and I’d keep feeling nice. (I mean, I’d planned to add in a ridiculous amount of tropes anyway, I just ended up adding a lot more than I’d planned.)

On the one hand, people go nuts for that shit. On the other, it’s getting harder and harder to justify cramming all this shit into the same fic. This compulsion keeps fucking me over by giving me spur-of-the-moment ideas for sub-plots I never wanted and certainly didn’t properly think through before posting the foreshadowing or setup for — yet at the same time they’re usually thought of and integrated several chapters in advance so I can’t just... leave them out? And part of me kind of doesn’t want to?? And I’m trying with every fiber in my being not to rewrite just the first 3 chapters, let alone the entire fic. A side-effect of my FF.net history at 13 was Never Edit Anything. Yeah, I’ll do some spell-check. Maybe some rewording here and there. Sometimes I’ll post a chapter and come back sporadically over the next few days to change out some punctuation or whatever. But if I don’t like a section after writing for a while? Throw the Whole Ass Chapter out. After it’s posted? This Is Your Life Now.

let’s not talk about how everything after chapter 27 was supposed to go very differently

Never mind that, after writing a hundred thousand goddamn words in a year, one’s writing skill tends to evolve and increase over time. Not just in regards to vocabulary, but with consistency and pacing and structure. This means, of course, that I can’t ever reread my own writing without the Evil Writing Goblin in my brain telling me to start the whole thing over from scratch. It’s fine.

I suppose I could get a beta, but I’m very bad at taking critique and as I’m even worse at talking to people than I am at posting on time I don’t think that would work out very well.

The point of this goddamn novel is that TPoY means a lot to me, probably a lot more than people realize. It’s kinda dumb and very cheesy and absurdly long, but it was the first real thing I did for myself after my whole life fell apart. I will finish it!!

But it’s hard to write it right now. I’m trying— I’m writing four chapters at the same time right now (a bit less than 10,000 words combined at current count). I don’t want to try to rewrite the whole fic or keep “mischaracterizing” the characters or lose the suspense I’ve tried to build (or, God forbid, try to keep interest so hard it hurts the rest of the fic) and risk alienating readers. I can’t stress enough how much these supportive comments mean to me, even on something as silly as a fanfic. But I also don’t want to force myself to write it or write something just because other people might or might not like it and risk alienating me. So I’m stuck at a kind of anxiety-induced impasse with myself that’s just made worse by the fact that I’m having trouble writing anything at all at the moment.

Jesus Christ this was longer than I meant it to be. Please don’t take this as a pity-party or anything. I don’t want sympathy or, I don’t know, reassurance or anything, I just wanted everything to be Out There because it really is the most in-depth response I could give and y’all deserve an honest answer. Some of you guys have been reading since the beginning and I can’t express how much that means to me. I feel really bad when I haven’t updated in a long time, because I know my fic makes some people really happy!

And PLEASE don’t take this as a “STOP ASKING ME ABOUT TPOY GODDAMMIT” because this is the opposite of that. I FUCKING LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME ABOUT TPOY. I L I V E FOR IT. But it sucks when the only answer I have is “I don’t know when it’ll be up, sorry :( ”

I mean, that’ll probably still be the answer I give, unless I by some miraculous (heh) stroke of luck) start hyperfocusing on writing again.

But at least y’all kinda know why now.