#like this went through so many iterations. i was originally going to be really mean

[callisteios]

in my new uquiz i ask the question in all your hearts, are you even good enough to have imposter syndrome?

[getonite]

hiiii! seen a couple of people do this, plus i realized i don't appreciate my mutuals as much as i should. and since the year is ending (literally today), i thought i'd appreciate y'all for a lil bit.

→ if the tagging irritated you, i apologize 🙏🏾. if i missed you, lmk, i was 100% half asleep while making this! (this is actually so embarrassing ngl. but i luv yall 🫶🏾)

(🎧 : avian) → @sensivs

starting off with my pookie with a beautiful (horny) brain. im dead fucking serious i have zero idea how we became mutuals (🧍🏾‍♂️). i just remembering talking to you one day, and the we were having full conversations in dms lmaoo. an emoji ring, helios, an unborn baby (??), and multiple fic ideas...now we're at the end of the year. i really appreciate you and all of your chaotic energy, it made me laugh! and all of your prompts are immaculate (🤌🏽). i await the days you post more fics or drabbles so i can support you the way you have me! :) luv u pooks, i def wanna ramble u more about hcs!

→ (i sound like im about to die omg)

(🎧 : snail/seraph) → @flimsyichigo

again, zero fucking idea when we became mutuals (i don't remember shit). we don't talk too often but i be seein you likeing my horrendously down bad and chaotic thoughts...i appreciate you bro (🙏🏾). i love your fluffy blue lock sruff, and your overall vibes are (yes, through the screen) amazing! thank you for dealing with my bullshit.

→ (as i type this, i realize just how many mutuals i have jeez, (half of which i barely talk to but still))

(🎧 : ame) → @pastelclovds

ameeeee, number 1 ive always loved your writing (iterally giggling and kicking my feet as i press the like button). your themes r so fucking gorgeous omg. we don't talk as often, but i love when we do interact. i hope we can more (im just easily embarrassed).

→ (i sound like a teenager leaving a love letter in a locker. omggggg)

(🎧 : ace ) → @acefantasyy

another person who puts up with my horrendously down bad bullshit takes. i applaude you for dealing with my ass lmaoo. but, on another note, i smile when i see you in my notes (no, i didn't originally mean that 2 b a joke). i really appreciate the reply you made when i went on a little break, thank you! i hope you continue to deal me, and i hope we interact more!

→ (i really gotta start talkin 2 yall more)

(🎧 : riri) → @pynkkgeto

we're friends irl. i don't have 2 say shit 4 u (luv uuu 🫶🏾)

(🎧 : rome) → @satocidal

yet another person who delt with my nonsense lol. you're quite busy, so you won't see this for a second. but thank you for being awesome and making me laugh with your naobito jokes. thank for the reply you left when i was the one going on break. hope all goes well for you!

(🎧 : idk ur name TvT) → @infrunamie

i feel so bad omg. but i wanted to appreciate your writing for a sec. whether its a drabble, headcanons, a fic, or just 100 words, your brain is miraculous when you write cuz it always leads to me wanted more. seriously, i love it. i was actually shocked you followed me, literally looked up to your writing ong (🙏🏾). i love it when you show up in my notes even if it's just a like. thank you for your reply when i went on break, trust, all of them got me through those shitty ass exams! ty!

→ (im sure this isn't what my therapist meant by being outgoing but im gunna do ts anyway)

(🎧 : spirit) → @spiritfrvr

literally the best vibes on earth i swear. your blog is like a fluffy hug omg. and (imo), you kinda bring that over to other blogs. i'd really like to talk to you more and ramble about random shit! :)

(🎧 : arlan) → @asuyaka

your drabbles r so cuuutee! i love them so much omg. especially the taking care of suguru one! i was surprised you liked my writing sm, and i love yours the same! i really appreciate the little reply under the break post and the christmas tree! seeing notifs of u makes me smile!

(🎧 : qi) → @yaekiss

i don't think we've been mutuals for too long, but omg we reeally should speak more!! i loved your message on the christmas tree! i love the vibe and look of your blog omg. i hope we can interact more!

(🎧 : juno) → @arlertdarling

hi junooo! ty for the message on my christmas tree, and i agree! we really should interact more! you seem like a realllly cool person, plus im on my fucking knees for your writing, dead serious. hope we can talk more, i hope you have a great 2024!

→ (srsly, y tf do i sound like im moving far away or smth TvT)

(🎧 : najma) → @honeybleed

ilysm ong. number one, we cousins (😔✊🏾; im joking pls help), number two, your theme was downright gorgeous (still is), number three, your writing it delicious. i haven't had too much time lately, buuut, i love how you post content that isn't completely smut (as a smut blog that fails at angst lol). its nice to get a break and see fluffy or angsty stuff in the tags instead of the same repeated material. you know you what you like and you stand firm in what you say (i need 2 b more like u fr), and your overall vibes are amazing! i love seeing your anime takes omg. i hope we can interact more in 2024!

→ (that kinda rhymed...and unrelated, but im listening to the mean girls soundtrack or 4 hours of sleep writing this)

(🎧 : yoru) → @dilfverz

number one, thank you for the messege on my christmas tree. number two, your so cool (😭). i love your themes and your writing, how you interact with ppl and anons is funny lol. literally look up to your writing ngl. i super appreciate your for explaining genshin impact to me, cuz im definitely not playing that damn game lol. your reblogs and likes in my notes make me wanna cry ngl. thank you for being so cool! (🙏🏾)

→ (am i over using emojis? i am so tired omg)

(🎧 : sy) → @wrizzesley

we just became mutuals like a week ago lmaoo. but i love your writing so much. and your themes?!?! (:O). i know damn well that shit is time consuming and exhausting, i applaud you, i could never lol. but anyway, i hope we can interact more in this new year. i think your really cool!

(🎧 : astro? idk im so sorry) → @astroknottt

i love your writing holy fuck. but other than that, i love it when you reblog my stuff! esp with those little comments, they've given me a bunch of motivation. and seeing you write such toe curling shit, that gives me motivation too! hope we can interact some more in the new year!

→ (pls ignore my silent pleas for help in these notes, but my vision is wonky. i promise im going to sleep in a second)

(🎧 : ) → @naee0

your probably locked out of tumblr again lol. but if you see this, thank you for your chaotic energy! and even if it was one sentence, what you sent on thr break post, i really appreciate it! even if you or me aren't on tumblr much, i hope we can interact a bit more! you're pretty cool! and i loved those drabbles. i hope your doing great!

PRODUCER MESSEGE: "i think that was all. again, if i missed you, please lmk. i might have been blind (my eyes prolly look like that squidward meme). but i appreciate all of you! thank you, and pls dont hate me 🙏🏾"

[corishadowfang]

Fallen Stars Fic Notes

So, Fallen Stars has officially come to a close. It's been a pretty wild ride, haha; as per usual, it spiraled out of my control, length-wise (surpassing Dandelion Seeds...remember how I said I hoped I'd never write anything that long again? Yeah. That worked out.), but I'm happy (and pleasantly surprised) that so many people came on the journey with me.

So! As seems to be tradition now, I have some notes for the fic. Some behind-the-scenes stuff, some thoughts about post-canon--stuff like that! Putting it under a read more, because these tend to get long.

So as usual, we'll start with the playlist! This one I ended up doing a lot of playing around with, haha; there were several songs where it's like, "The vibes are right...but do they fit this moment/this character in the story? Does the order work? Should I use song x or song y?" I eventually ended up with something I'm relatively happy with, haha, even if not every song fits perfectly. There are actually a lot of honorable mentions for this one (since I, you know...played around with it so much) but probably the biggest are: Guilt by Nathan Wagner, Monster from Epic the Musical, Fight the Tide by Jonathan Young and Colm McGuinness, and Southern Star by Gregory Alan Isakov.

(Seriously, Fight the Tide was put on and taken off the playlist so many times--)

I know I've mentioned this places before, but: sometime circa summer 2021, I was thinking about doing a story following Brain through his time in Scala ad Caelum. Basically, it'd be a short (like--nine-ish chapters) series that explored Brain's grief and guilt and how he eventually adjusted to being in Scala. The story would've been called "May We Find Our Happiness," and was planned to be worked on once both On the Edge of Daybreak and Dandelion Seeds were finished. ...And then Missing Link was announced, and I went, "Oh! That's going to be explored in canon! I don't have to write it myself!" and the idea was shelved.

And THEN. Fast forward to winter 2023. It's...without going into too much detail, my mental state was Not Great. And I tend to process/cope with things by...well, writing. And...well, what better way to work out things than by using two of my favorite characters? The thought for this "proto-Fallen Stars" was that it would be a what-if AU for what would've happened if Skuld had ended up in Scala, and that it would follow Brain's and Skuld's entire lives through that time period. Despite the premise, this was also intended to be a relatively short series--roughly four to five chapters. It was intended to explore the idea that like--sometimes you don't heal fully from things, and your life doesn't turn out the way you wanted it to, but that doesn't mean you can't find happiness despite everything. ...And then I started writing the first chapter. And ran face first into Plot (i.e. the corrupt council). And very abruptly realized, "Oh, no. Oh, no, this is going to be LONG. And...probably not focus entirely on the time period I want it to." And so I shelved it. Again.

AND THEN. The Missing Link impatience was getting to me, haha. And there were a lot of ideas from both of the "proto" versions of the story that were genuinely very interesting to me from a writing perspective. And then I made this post (and a couple of follow-ups) with the hopes that it could satisfy the writing demons. ...It did not. So I went back, finished (and revamped) the original first chapter, and posted it. And, well--here we are!

The current iteration of Fallen Stars really does take a lot of inspiration from its predecessors. Darkling!Brain was actually the planned end for "May We Find Our Happiness" (though he wouldn't have died in that version; his new-found friends would've pulled him out of it, though he'd keep the gold eyes, like in Fallen Stars), the corrupt council's been a staple since the beginning, and obviously, the AU takes the same basic premise as proto-Fallen Stars.

I knew Fallen Stars was going to be longer than the initial ideas I had, but like...I still didn't expect it to be this long. Like--roughly 30 chapters, and about half the word count. Let it be known that I cannot accurately estimate a story (or chapter's) length, ever.

While there were certain Big Things that I had planned since the beginning (ex. Brain's death and resurrection), there were also things that ended up getting made up on the fly and/or cut because it seemed like it'd work better for the story. One of the big things is that, originally, Master's Defender was going to be used to help create the Land of Departure; essentially, during Darkness's attack, one of the abandoned islands would've split off from the world, and Brain would've used Master's Defender to chain it back together, so to speak, and give the Scalan refugees somewhere to go. That was cut because it felt like it would make Brain a little less desperate to make his sacrifice, and after that, it ended up feeling...kind of out of place? Plus, I felt like I hadn't done a good enough job foreshadowing that (though you can find some hints, if you're looking).

(The world they end up does still end up becoming the Land of Departure, though.)

Also, Luxu was originally going to be possessing Lodur. (Which is why time seems to slow down around him whenever things get intense! And also plays into the "narrator" thing--Lodur is a storykeeper, after all.) I'll leave it up to all of you guys to decide whether you want Lodur to be Sigurd's deceased brother, Sigurd to have been wrong about Luxu taking his brother's body, or for "Lodur is Luxu's vessel" to be non-canon.

While I finally decided to leave it out, I did think about doing an epilogue. I played around with a lot of different ideas for how that'd go, but it generally fell into three basic ideas: 1) Skuld, Brain, and the rest of the crew roughly a decade after the end of Fallen Stars, 2) Xehanort and Eraqus (as like...five-year-olds) interacting with the remaining crew, or 3) Ven and Lauriam finding stories about Skuld and Brain in the distant future. I do like all of these, but I ended up feeling like it kind of...glossed over how much time it'd take for them to repair Scala and heal, so I ended up going with the current ending instead--which is hopeful, but still leaves room for the struggles that may follow.

THAT SAID. There's a non-zero chance some of those epilogues may show up as one-shots. I like the idea of exploring some post-canon scenarios in the Fallen Stars-verse (in particular, the first year after everything, since there's...a lot that the main crew go through). That said, I'm also not going to promise anything on that front, since it'll largely depend on my time/energy levels/inspiration.

(Also, feel free to ask me about post-canon stuff, in case I never get around to writing things; a lot of stuff changes around, haha, but I do have Ideas.)

"Do you want to hear a story?" has been planned as the final lines for a long time, haha. One, because it acts as a nice book-end for the story. Two, because it's kind of like...symbolic. Skuld is the one who said it, and is the only character besides Luxu to (kind of) break the fourth wall, so this was like...representative of her taking control of her own story. (This is also, for the record, why the "Do you want to hear a story?" narrator parts don't show up again after chapter 40; Skuld is the narrator now.)

The title was actually going to be the name of the first chapter. I was struggling to find a title I liked (I didn't want to use "May We Find Our Happiness" since, uh...that ended up as a chapter title for On the Edge of Daybreak, when I still thought I wouldn't do a story in Scala), and ended up brainstorming ideas for the chapter title instead. I'd landed on "Fallen Stars" because like--Brain and Skuld were "fallen stars" in the sense that a lot of people who are displaced from fallen worlds in the KH series tend to, uh...fall out of the sky, but also in the sense that they were legends who were, very suddenly, being made human in the eyes of Scala. And then it hit me that, "Wait...that'd work great for a fic name." And then it was repurposed, haha.

And...I will probably cut off the notes there, haha. Fallen Stars has been fun to work on, and it's weird to think that it's finished (unless, of course, I end up doing those one-shots). Thank you for coming on this ride with me; I hope you've enjoyed it!

[acoraxia]

I was wondering if you had any headacanons for Xiangliu or any interp ideas? I was hoping to write this in anonymously but yeah! I was curious about your ideas for him or what you think his impact to the next season will be 👉👈 He didn't feel like a filler villain for me because this season was heavy on the life cycles and the disruption of it and I've seen a couple people reference his story as the origin of Plato's Allegory. I think if the last life cycle was JTTW then he must've been from one previous to that one with Wukong and maybe the original brotherhood or with the original JTTW group..? I'm unsure! It's fun to speculate though

hooo boy i had to really sit down and think about this one because i did not like the theme they had going on for this season... spoilers ahead for those of you who haven't watching LMK S5 yet

So Xiangliu is interesting to me because he first appears in Shanhaijing, an older classical chinese mythology book. He doesn't really appear in JTTW at all? The only nine-headed beasts we get are the Dragon King's son in law and a nine-headed lion. So they essentially plucked him from another mythology book which is interesting to me because at least Nuwa appears in Investiture of the Gods which serves as a nice little "sequel" to JTTW.

Anyways.

He really didn't feel like a filler villain but he suffers the same effect as Azure Lion where we get quickly introduced to his character and then he's gone. And we get like, what?, one or two little tidbits about him and that he's involved with Chaos but Chaos is evil and apparently might be Pangu but that'd be a little fucking insane and fuck with my head as a mythology loving nerd - it's a weird little thign to introduce a character so quickly and then have him vanish before we even learn what his favorite color is.

if he does come back for s6 i think it'd a waste though considering he seemed pretty... complete? he went back to the chaos (?) and was satisfied with his ending so?? gg?

I also don't like the western ideas being thrown into a show that centers on Chinese mythology but hey the show was animated by an australian company and then passed on to a canadian company so sure whatever. I also don't like the fact they make this out to be a repeating cycle because that's... that kind of defeats the purpose of JTTW to me? I understand that JTTW has so many iterations and interpretations and different ways to go about it (this is why there's so many movies, shows, series, etc.) but to have it be an actual thing in the canon of Monkie Kid feeeeels... off?

You mean to tell me SWK goes through getting bashed by a group of people over and over again? And he doesn't remember it? no one remembers it? that's a little fucked up (and i do not like how they had nuwa be the one to start said cycle because wtf) i mean it could be fun!! just the way it was executed felt rather rushed and a little bit... empty? idk how to describe it

TLDR; Xiangliu was an interesting character but due to poor execution and the rapid way he was handled I cannot form a proper opinion on him it's like asking me to try and describe a flavor of ice cream i've only had a spoonful of once 10 months ago

[xenomorphicdna]

SooooOOO Hi im about to go on a rant about ancients, guardians and then the uh before ancients

Copy pasting a lot of this from a discor A

Was on tumblr and then @soaricarus said what if the depths weren't made by the ancients? (Get tagged- you have no idea how much thinking I've done since you made that post)

And got me thinking, is there evidence to support such a theory?

And,,, perhaps yes

The base theory is that the depths and all that is there come from a civilization before our ancients, they simply stumbled across it.

The subterranean echo - two sprouts, twelve brackets - says "so down into the depths you go as so many others before you, drawn to the void again and again, an endless drip drip drip. Much like these tunnels and caves that amuse me so. The bones of forgotten civilisations, heaped like so many sticks."

And I'm thinking why be so amazed by caves and tunnels and such if you made them yourself, right? Bones of civilizations,,,like the buildings that are down there?

We also see statues there and I ran off to my favourite interactive rain world map aaaaand the depths were actually pitch black and uh I went and got screenshots myself-

So these statues, clearly some person right, but they don't look like our ancients. There's no fancy masks you see on their stuff, the whole of depths is weird and odd and different from the rest of the game.

And then we have the guardians with their think rings which are completely unlike anything else

Now the thing that bothers me in all this is our good ol' karma ten symbol

We see that one everywhere, from the guardians, all over the depths statues and ancients. I could say that the karma ten symbol originates from the depths and the ancients just sorta adopted it,,,if you'd like

Back to the guardians um, why have guardians if they're gonna stop you ascending if your karma's bad - I mean yeah safety feature

But clearly the ancients didn't care if they ran through and some got echoed

And the architecture in the depths is different too, you don't really see designs like that anywhere else

And since we find the karma ten symbol there then the symbol is like old old.

The more I think about it the more this makes sense

The ancients dig around make train tunnels, weird dreams, yo let's dig deeper, holy shit caves with weird buildings omg whats that thing with the weird halo.

They go in check it out find the void take a dip in the kfc deepfryer, there's ghosts now. So if 2+2=4 then a correlation must have been made between all the x's everywhere and the void. And we got ourselves the spread of the ascension symbol.

And the iterators- they got a halo.

Not a fancy think ring but it too spins around and changes shape much like if you piss off the box with the rebranded twitter for a face

There's something goin on here

And I know I sound crazy and perhaps I should have rewritten this to make it sound less insane but we this is just what we got so I'm goin with it

I managed to climb onto one hehe look

Ok ok, but guardians??? Why do they have four arms?? What's the point??

Now the statues, yeah they got two legs and a head but what is up with the torso. I actually don't know. BUt if you reaaaally wanna stretch it a bit then I guess maybe some four arm structure silhouette is there perhaps maybe?

[cipheralreviews]

Game Review: Tetris Effect: Connected

General opinion: Positive.

Tetris Effect: Connected is, obviously, a tetris game, with a modern graphical twist. It has classic and VR modes, both of which have their own pros and cons, but are also both worth checking out if you have the ability to. With several different modes, Tetris Effect: Connected offers a lot of different styles of gameplay for varying skill levels.

Starting off, I want to give the game devs credit where credit is due: this game absolutely slaps for it's visuals. A tetris game in the Unreal engine is certainly a choice to make, and they pulled it off really well. Sparkly particles, glowing animations, and surreal visual effects bring a magical experience to a classic arcade game, no matter if you play it in VR or on your screen.

It has both a main campaign where you play through different levels in a story-like sequence, as well as other, more casual AND more intense gameplay options. Marathon modes through themed levels, gimmick modes where you clear "corrupted" blocks or deal with mind boggling effects, and calm modes where you have no game over are all available to play, giving variety for any kind of player.

On top of this, they have colourblind modes of various kinds for the game stages themselves. You can play with classic colours, custom level patterns, or modes that add patterns and colours that make it easier to distinguish the blocks from each other. There's also multiple difficulty levels, ranging from beginner to hard, so you can adjust how many lines you want to clear per level.

The final point I want to praise is the audio experience. It's amazing. There's unique, original tracks made for the game, and the "title song" (used colloquially because it's not actually the title screen song, but it is the one from the first level in the story mode) is ABSOLUTELY incredible in my opinion. Heavy beats that are influenced by the ways you turn, flip, and drop blocks paired with each level having individual themes to them that inspire and match the music playing make it both engaging as well as good to listen to on its own.

And now the negatives...

One major issue I have with this game is that the story mode does not have options for speed, nor do they have a "no game over" setting. This means people like myself, who have visual processing issues as well as mobility issues, have a harder time clearing levels and unlocking the next theme in line. Some levels have rapid speed ups and slow downs that are a bit jarring, and while I understand the fact they might not be able to give the option to not change the speed, I'd have really liked if they'd given an option to have no deaths. It meant, for me, that I got stuck on several levels that I otherwise would have really enjoyed because they went from speed level 3 to speed level 8 or higher all within one lines difference. Having this option for the story mode would have improved the experience immensely for me, as I'm still stuck on the last level in the easy mode.

The only other thing I'd add as a problem is that if you're photosensitive, it could get painful very fast, especially in VR mode. They do have options to turn down or off particles, change graphics settings, etc. but that doesn't change the fact that there are strobing lights on some levels that you cannot turn off.

The above limits the people I can truly recommend the game to, which is genuinely unfortunate, because I know several people who would LOVE this game, if it had the accessibility features mentioned.

Final notes

Overall, it's a great game that brings a really nice, fresh twist on a game that's a decade older than I am. It really justifies itself as an iteration of tetris, much like Jacob Geller has said.

If you liked this review, please go and check out Jacob Geller's video Tetris Effect And Other Games With Immaculate Vibes! It's the video that introduced me to this game, and he makes some really interesting observations on tetris and marble games, and how they interact with their history.

Additionally, I post these in my free time, but if anyone has movie, game, or series recommendations, please feel free to send them in! I really do love reviewing media, and if I can turn this into an actual job it would be incredible.

[king-mera]

What are some fun facts and headcanons for the Peoplebusters? Or would it be canon...

(I feel like I should've asked this earlier or even yesterday, but better late than never.)

There aren't really any fun facts or trivia about the canon Peoplebusters beyond what you can glean from their page on the Ghostbusters wiki. I can give you some tidbits from my version, though!

In the original "Flip Side" episode, the Peoplebusters don't have names. The IDW comics gave last names to their equivalent of them, (called the Collectors) but me and my friends came up with the full names. So that's how we got Igor Specter, Grey Stiftz, Worston Deadmore, Pyre Deman, and Gangrene Mortis.

Phobia's design went through a few iterations before I settled on her final look. I first considered making her a wooden puppet, then later changed her to a ragdoll to be more flexible and expressive. I almost had her be made of rats and speak with a New York accent, but decided leeches were a more interesting and unique animal. Her snake-like speech came about by accident when I was roleplaying with a friend and typed "Yesss."

Tremor's design is inspired by the Demogorgons from Stranger Things and Pennywise from IT. His color scheme is also based on Egon's outfit in RGB. The extra gums and teeth on Tremor's neck are meant to emulate Egon's pink collar.

In my version of "Flip Side", Winston got sucked into the tornado along with the rest of the original Ghostbusters and they encountered his Peoplebuster counterpart. Both teams also acknowledged that they were mirror versions of each other.

Dopplegangers are unsure of their own origins. Some theorize they were created by an alchemist with a cursed mirror, others think they were formed from the blood of a dead Sloar. They debate endlessly about this, and their stubborn refusal to work with human scientists means they'll probably never find the answer.

Romance can be complicated for dopplegangers. There's always the question of whether their feelings for one another are genuine, or if they are simply replicating the relationships of their human selves. Igor and Gangrene don't seem to worry about it, Pyre and Flip Dana on the other hand…

They can't reproduce the same way we do, instead resorting to growing clones in laboratories. They keep their methods shrouded in secrecy to avoid letting their enemies learn how to make an army of clones.

Cities in the Flipside are organic and sentient. Many of the buildings are adorned with eyes and mouths. The landscape is always changing to match the real world. Most technology is made of flesh and bone too, like the Peoplebusters slime packs.

Technically Dopplegangers can't die since they're already "dead", but they can gradually fall apart and crumble to dust if they lose the will to go on. No one knows what happens to them after that or if there is any equivalent of an afterlife for them.

Dopplegangers aren't very religious, the closest thing they have to a deity is "The Void". "What in the Void?" and "By the Void!" are common sayings.

The Flipside holds alliances with other ghostly dimensions. Different beings and monsters from all around are welcome to do business or take up residence there.

[twin-books]

I got sick and so I finally got some free time to finish Ben 10: Alien Force and Ultimate Alien. I am finally on the last season of Ultimate Alien (like half way through it) and I can safely say I enjoy it far more than Alien Force. I have no idea if that's actually a hot take but there it is. Now that I have finally watched this stuff and am nearly finished... I am still kind of shocked this is like considered top tier for the franchise. I find more issues with it than I did Omniverse. Not to say Omniverse is better because, aside maybe for my tastes, it isn't. To me they're pretty equal if I put my personal bias aside. It's just shocking in a sense because... I expected with how hated Omniverse was and how beloved these two were (besides season 3 of AF) that this would be amazing. It's not. I suppose I should learn that I can't take everybody at their word, especially when it comes to nostaglia. I still think the Og is top tier and these three other shows can't really compete with it. They each bring their own fun and frustrations to the table though. I can finally tell you my favorite versions of each character based on all I've watched. My favorite Gwen is Og, I think the following franchises didn't do her any justice. My favorite Grandpa Max is Og. I find every other iteration of him a pain. My favorite version of Kevin is obviously AF/UA. He is literally the best thing about those two shows. But my favorite Ben is in Omniverse. And I think this mostly has to do with the fact he's the most like Sonic (one of my most favorite fictional characters of all time) in Omniverse. Obviously he's still his own character but I can't ignore the comparison. I enjoy him the most in Omniverse as he's not quite as annoying as in Og (though I still love Og Ben), he's actually entertaining compared to Alien Force Ben who was kind of boring to me, I'm sorry. And while Ultimate Alien Ben was better his whole "I have a big ego and saved the universe dozens of times" jokes felt very inappropriately timed and wrong? Omniverse really gets that right for me, for whatever reason. I also feel as if it remained the most faithful to his character even in the poorly written episodes whereas in Ultimate Alien there's like this whole plot where Ben is ready to just kill a friend he’s known for a while now simply because they went a little insane with power which I wouldn't normally take issue with if this hadn't happened before and Ben wasn't like vehemently against hurting anybody originally. They even go as far as to point this out in the episode and Ben kind of steamrolls over it with, "Well, it was my fault so I should take this more seriously" despite the fact he never acts like this again so I don't get the point of it. It was actually really depressing, to be honest. Also, the amount of digs at Og Ben in Ultimate Alien is honestly frustrating. It's not huge or anything but it's enough to annoy me. It fundamentally misunderstands what Ben 10 Og was to prove some sort of point about their Ben. Look, I get it. They changed a lot so I'm sure so many fans at the time were complaining about how AF/UA Ben is nothing like Og Ben but do you gotta be this gosh darn insensitive about the source material your show is based off of and inspired by? Like in the episode Duped Ben splits into 3 different Bens and the rude and obnoxious one says, "I'm Ben 10 classic. Miss me?" Am I the only one who finds that mean? And then that episode where they have Og Ben actually show up and he's just an obnoxious asshole the entire time except that one deep moment they give which was to justify why he was an asshole as child which they didn't even need to do. He was 10. Of course he would be a brat. But he wasn't always a brat in the original and he did actually understand he could hurt peoples' feelings. Omniverse actually has a similar episode to this except big Ben and Og Ben switch bodies and in that he is not as a big of an asshole as Ultimate Alien made him out to be in that episode. I do not understand why it was necessary to make him so gosh darn mean. I really, really like Ben 10 so to constantly have these digs at the source material is frustrating. Aside from this Ultimate Alien is pretty great. I find Julie much less frustrating as a character, the episodes are fun, I have actually laughed out loud more than once, and, again, Ben is actually fun to watch. I cannot stress enough how much more fun it is that Ben actually seems to act like the teenager he is rather than some mini adult. I know realistically after all the hell he's been through he would have matured a lot but that doesn't mean he doesn't still have a teen mind and won't act like a kid sometimes. Also, Ultimate Alien actually killed a character on screen. Like no cut aways or some kind of logic to explain it or off-screen shenanigans. An alien just flat out died on screen and that took me so off-guard I laughed. I'm having so much fun enjoying an old cartoon I loved, despite my frustrations. This has been great. I couldn't recommend the whole of the Ben 10 franchise more. Aside from the reboot which I still have yet to watch in full but considering how upset the first two episodes made me, I'm a little scared to give it a chance again.

[physalian]

(decided to throw this ask here since ur last post encouraged me to lol)

tl;dr: going thru a breakup with my current WIP so I'm in limbo and can't move on to a new one

I'm actually not working on anything right now because I'm going through a form of breakup with a WIP I had worked on for so long (6+ years).

My beta readers (3) deemed it uninteresting and full of plot holes from the start. I thought the amount of editing and rewriting I put it through helped with that, but now I believe the problem runs deeper. Maybe it's the plot itself that's too underdeveloped or something.

Long story short, I decided I didn't want to give the trilogy more time (I've given it enough already) so I'm moving on. But it's kind of hard to pick up something new when all I've known for so many years is this one WIP. I even had noncanon fanfic about it just for fun.

Any thoughts, takes or advice is welcome really! And thank you for your time ofc 🌸

I actually had this happen. I had a WIP I started in 2016, unofficially abandoned last year—mentioned it a few times across my posts as the sci-fi WIP with multiple POV. What had happened was that I started writing it my freshman year of college, and the person I grew into through college had completely different goals from freshman me, which meant the very foundations of my world and my characters were no longer meshing no matter how many times I tried to fix the plot.

It didn’t have any holes and my betas said they were interesting enough, but it was a five-book series and upon starting book 3, I just could not figure out how to move on. I had too many characters with conflicting arcs, too many directions I wanted to take it, and it was deeply political (shaped by the 2016 election year) and I just got exhausted with the tone and the parallels to the real world. It wasn’t fun anymore, and a couple of my characters were my therapy stress balls, and I put them through hell that I wouldn’t be comfortable publishing today.

So it sits there, mostly abandoned, while I steal names and themes and a few monologues that fit in Eternal Night. The breath of fresh air I had when starting Eternal Night, a brand-new world with brand-new stakes and brand-new characters that could be whatever I wanted? 100k word first draft was written in 31 days and went straight to beta readers. That sci-fi WIP had multiple magic systems, was deeply political with a lot of moving parts, a rather large ensemble cast that had nearly doubled by book 3. I designed my own alphabet and language, I had cover art and maps done for the first book, I was writing fanfic crossovers in my head with my characters and other media I liked. It was my writing career, everything centered around it.

Eternal Night actually began as me ripping my two favorite characters from that WIP and tossing them into a kind of ‘fanfic’ and seeing what happened. To this day, I still accidentally think of my protagonist and deuteragonist using their original names from the old WIP, and my protagonist's name was only updated like, last week on my character excel sheet, because I never noticed. Whenever I need a new fantasy word in my much-less-robust fantasy languages for Eternal Night, I consult the language matrix I made for the old WIP and change some letters around where needed so in a way, it lives on.

It took me until about halfway though Eternal Night to start actually caring about the new iterations and the rest of the new cast of characters, going through the motions with zero plan, until it kind of hit all at once. Suddenly I could imagine their faces and how they sounded and what dreams and aspirations they’d have. I was rooting for them to succeed and daydreaming about different ways I could take their arcs, what themes I wanted to explore with them.

And now Eternal Night is due back from my editor, today, and it’s about to go up for preorder on Amazon.

So, advice? Just because you abandon a long-running WIP doesn’t mean it was a waste of time. That’s six years of practice, six years of trial and error trying to make it work. There’s no reason you can’t take your favorite aspects and blend them up into something new. Write your own ‘fanfic’ with your favorite characters. Hell, make it a coffee shop AU, and see what happens. You might find yourself onto something to reignite that spark.

[navree]

Wait what happened to Bruce wayne

In...In general or?

Listen, a lot has happened to Bruce Wayne, this is a character that's been around since the 30s and has Peter Parker levels of "writers will not allow you to be happy for longer than two minutes" syndrome so he has suffered more than Jesus by now, but I'm assuming this is in response to this post about Bruce and his bad track record of movie theaters.

So, for the only person I have ever met who does not know this story (no shade anon, this is like finding someone who doesn't know about Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, I feel like Howard Carter discovering King Tut's tomb, I love it), when Bruce Wayne was eight years old, he went one night with his parents Thomas and Martha to go to a movie, at a movie theater in their home city of Gotham, which is like what conservatives think San Francisco is in terms of crime and quality of living (I'm of the belief personally that more projects should actually use SanFran as a filming location for Gotham but that's a rant for another time). After the movie, while leaving to go home, they take a shortcut through an alley in a rough part of the city known as Park Row (soon to be colloquially renamed as Crime Alley), where they are confronted by a mugger who wants Thomas's wallet and Martha's pearl necklace. In the chaos, the mugger ends up shooting Thomas and Martha dead and fleeing into the night, leaving little eight year old Bruce Wayne standing alone in an alley with the corpses of the parents he just witnessed get full murdered right in front of him. In most iterations of the story, the killer is never caught and the justice system in Gotham is so laughably awful that this moment is what drives Bruce to become the Batman in order to deal with the crime that the police really are not equipped to handle and make sure no one ever has go through what he went through that night ever again. It's a formative event in his origin and left him with a host of psychological issues that make him impossible to handle, and I imagine also that a healthy wariness of movie theaters is probably one of them, cuz trauma is whack like that.

(you know, this story gets retold often enough that the punch has kinda left it at this point but that is a very horrifying thing to happen to a small child, Bruce's ten million issues in his head make a lot of sense if you try to imagine something like this happening to a real kid)

Other things that have happened to Bruce Wayne, because a lot has happened to Bruce Wayne (this is not a comprehensive list I'm very sure I'm missing four dozen other traumas):

His Batman training was very intense and included some stuff that definitely wasn't good for the psyche

It's implied in a comic (I don't know if they've ever done anything with this since) that he might have been molested as a child by a teacher??? DC between this and Dick and Jason and Barbara we really need to discuss your habit of having the adult members of the Batfamily be victims of assault, it's weird at this point

He's never had a relationship that's ended well, and he's been in a lot of relationships. Best case scenario, they leave him. Worst case scenario, they die. Because everyone in this man's life dies

Case in point he had a girlfriend who I think got her throat slit in front of him and I don't know if we've heard from her since so she might have been full on murdered in front of him too

His close friend and civilian partner in crime fighting, Harvey Dent, was attacked and disfigured and the trauma of that and other elements of his life turned him into a supervillain who keeps trying to kill Bruce now and no matter how many times Bruce tries to help him the cyclical status quo nature of comics means he never gets better and these two are dancing a miserable dance of pain and lost friendship

He and his first son spent years on the outs and full on not on speaking terms

His pregnant long term partner faked a miscarriage of that baby and then immediately left him in order to raise the baby herself and not tell him for ten years (I don't know how canon this is anymore but it is a story that happened)

His second son was tortured and murdered at age fifteen by his greatest nemesis via extended and brutal beating with a crowbar and subsequently being blown up as a direct result of Bruce's actions (I know Jason doesn't blame Bruce and what happened wasn't his fault but there is a line of culpability that can be drawn)

Bruce found said second son's body in the wreckage after having arrived seconds too late to save him and the entire event fucked him up so badly that he was actively suicidal and dangerously close to killing people for months

That second son came back to life and made it clear that he doesn't hate Bruce for the things Bruce hates himself for, but in fact hates him for not doing the one thing that Bruce cannot do (killing the man who murdered him). It's very tragic, we all cry about it

His greatest nemesis also attacked his friend, the police commissioner, and his son's girlfriend, the police commissioner's daughter, as part of their cat and mouse game

He thought that his closest maternal figure since the death of his mother full on let a child under his care die of her injuries from being tortured in order to teach him a lesson

He was presumed dead while actually being trapped in the time stream for a really long time and nobody knew about it

He got left at the altar by his fiancée

His fourth and youngest son was killed (for five minutes but it happened) by being stabbed in the chest at the age of, like, twelve

His best friend died on live television which, combined with the ongoing trauma of his second son's murder, sent him into a slow motion psychological breakdown

After being kept awake for, like, three days straight in order to fight every supervillain ever (including a guy who makes him hallucinate his greatest fears) he is beaten to a pulp in his own home by a man on steroids and has his back literally broke in half like a Pringle

His greatest nemesis planned a massive attack on his entire family (which includes at least two people who have been very intimately personally scarred by this guy and what he did to them) in order to physically torture them and psychologically break them, which they all believed is Bruce's fault because he kept a secret from them and it broke their trust in him for a long time

His first son also got shot right in the fucking head, which resulted in him losing all his memories and rejecting the family for like two years (Ric Grayson my nemesis)

His longtime father figure and the man who raised him and loved him following the traumatic murders of his parents was killed and is currently dead

A longtime childhood friend of his secretly hated him the entire time and also attempted to psychologically torment him for days in a convoluted supervillain plan that fucked up another of his relationships and also increased his paranoia

A group of his superhero allies, including people he's known for nearly all his life and people he considers genuine trusted friends, decided via popular vote to forcibly wipe his memories in spite of his protestations (the mindrape also made his paranoia worse, and he's very paranoid)

Really he's paranoid, has OCD, severe control issues, horrible PTSD from a myriad of other things, a tragic inability to communicate, and this routinely strains his relationships with the people he loves, including and most especially his children who have all full on hated him at one point in their lives in spite of how much he loves them

A secret cabal of evil rich people who control Gotham are obsessed with him and trapped him in a labyrinth to drive him insane and also might have either killed his brother in utero or are being run by his brother who is secretly alive (this is up for debate) Thing is this entire story is kinda stupid and has a lot of problematic implications and only has one good moment, which is the ending of Red Hood and the Outlaws #9 so shrug dot emoji but it is part of the canon

Really a lot of his supervillains are obsessed with him and kinda wanna fuck him, which isn't good for anyone's mental health

He's been to Hell a few times

I think he's currently trapped in a nightmare realm as of the writing of this post, or dealing with a nightmare realm, I haven't had the opportunity to read DC Knight Terrors yet but I believe that's what's happening

He's been to multiple different universes and in them he's either a complete monster or the murders of his parents (and possibly his second son) are a fixed point in nearly all of these universes, which just has to suck to know

Worst of all, he's been around for nearly one hundred years and has spent most of those hundred years having his character misinterpreted in almost every way it possibly can by people who don't know a thing about him, Bruce honey I'm so sorry

You know, what hasn't happened to Bruce Wayne at this point.

[burlveneer-music]

Thandi Ntuli with Carlos Niño - Rainbow Revisited

Liner Notes by Thandi Ntuli: I travelled to Los Angeles and the USA for the first time in 2019. Although I had not met Carlos in person, we connected via Instagram where he saw a video of me playing a piano motif (titled ‘The One’ in this sequence) that he really liked and expressed a wish to record. This was around 2017. We tried a few times to get me over to Los Angeles, but the timing was always off. Through a performance organised by a creative collective called The Nonsemble at The Ford Theatre we finally got the opportunity to meet, play together and subsequently go into studio to record some improvisations as he guided the recording process. Having been aware of some of his work – in particular his collaborative projects as Carlos Niño & Friends, as well as with his friend and long-time collaborator, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson – I knew that, with Carlos as producer, the artistic direction of the album would likely take me to a place I’d never considered going. A fact that had me both curious and terrified (as one tends to be when stepping into the unknown) Lol! Initially keen to record the song that he had seen/heard me play on Instagram, our performance a few days before the session drew him to the song Rainbow off my sophomore album, Exiled (2018). On that zen-like California afternoon in Andy Kravitz’s cozy studio in Venice Beach, he encouraged me to play around with various iterations of Rainbow. “Try it this way”, “How about adding that?”, “Can you breathe into the mic?”, “What if you focus on the last section?”, and many other explorations that eventually went through a few cuts, edits, yays and nays to become this body of work. Rainbow Revisited was birthed through that session, another session a couple of days later, and a series of many small synchronicities that led up to that moment. A particularly special moment for me was when he invited me to play something from home, which lent itself to me recording a song originally written by my grandfather that we often sing when at family gatherings. The song is called Nomayoyo. So much has happened since that session in late 2019. Many changes in our personal and collective universes. Losses and gains, births and transitions into the next life, Mother Nature’s ever-constant cycles reminding me that through all the chaos there remains, just beneath, this perfect order in Her ebb and flow. And most importantly, reminding me to feel for Her and to listen. She speaks! If Rainbow in my initial birthing of it, expressed a discontent with what we have accepted as freedom in South Africa and, possibly, around the world, I’d like to think that Rainbow Revisited is some kind of a response. Where the idea of ‘the rainbow nation’, with all the baggage it carried, had hijacked the innocence and mystical nature of a rainbow, I now reclaim its meaning through going back, going inward, healing, and rebuilding with the hope of a less heart-breaking and more fulfilling tomorrow. Lihlanzekile!  Thandi Ntuli: Piano, Synthesizer, Tongo, Voice Carlos Niño: Cymbals, Percussion, Plants Recorded by Andy Kravitz at Studio 4 West, Venice Beach, California, August 2019. Cover Art by Shabaka Hutchings. Graphic Design and Layout by Craig Hansen.

[c-schroed]

That "The Flash" movie makes a lot more sense once you realize that it's not about time travel

I watched the new "The Flash" movie, and I really liked it. Ezra Miller does a great job playing a double role, it's always great to see Michael Keaton (especially when he reprises one of the best Batmans ever), and, most importantly for me, the film introduces a version of Supergirl that I now have some serious crush on. Almost broken, full of anger, but slowly regaining trust. Such a marvellous work by Sasha Calle, and I really hope to see more of this character!

But there's one thing that bothered me for quite some time: Time. (Ha ha.) Because the movie does some terrible job at explaining why exactly Barry Allen running fast enough to travel back in time and saving his mom would exchange Batfleck with Tim-Burton-Batman. We're told that changes in the time line work in two directions. By Bruce Wayne. With a bunch of spaghetti. Seriously?

I think we shouldn't trust Bruce on this one. I mean, he's a genius detective, but why should he know time travel shit? Exactly. So, please allow me to propose an alternative theory. Which avoids problems like unexplainably changed Batmans and grandfather paradoxes, while providing terrible new problems like vanishing Barrys and an almost infinite number of dead Supergirls (I'll try to keep spoilers at a minimum, I promise). Ready to go? Good.

Barry did not travel through time. When he entered the Speed Force to travel back in time, he indeed traveled through lots and lots of universes, each universe a bit more out of sync with his original universe. And he finally crossed over to a parallel universe whose main difference to our world, at first glance at least, is that it's years out of sync with our time. In this universe, Barry's mom is still alive. And whatever Barry does here has always been part of this universe's history. So he does not change the past, he just plays his role as a visitor in another universe.

Then he tries to get back, but can't because another being also messing with the Speed Force throws him out and he lands in another universe, where it's 2013 and his mom also has survived. But it does not necessarily have to be the same universe that he just visited (that would be one heck of a coincidence), and it definitely is not the universe he originally came from. Because this universe is the world of Tim Burton's Batman. Or one of many iterations of it. And this is one of the worlds where mommy Allen has survived. And where no Superman exists, but where a marvellous, marvellous, marvellous Supergirl is waiting somewhere to turn from almost broken damsel in distress to an abso-smashing-loutely gorgeous goddess of revenge. And so the movie's story unfolds, with two Barrys ending up trying to find a way of saving Supergirl from dying in the final battle, visiting world after world where it did not work.

Gosh. Be it time travel or inter dimensional sliding, that is always terrible: Seeing a heroine you just develop a crush on die. So. Darn. Many. Times. It's just terrible. I was an emotional wreck. Great job everyone, would go on that ride again anytime!

Oh, and of course "our" Barry does not return to his original universe, he returns to another one with a slight alternation that he wished for (filling a gap there, because this universe's Barry also went away via Speed Force, trying his luck in just another parallel-but-out-of-sync universe). Which universe our boy landed in? Finding that out made me smirk quite a lot.

So. That's my theory. Sorry that I can't offer any spaghetti to explain it like Bruce did for his theory. Might I instead offer a nice bubble bath? That might be close enough to my idea of traveling the multiverse.

[the-golden-ghost]

multiples of 5 for davy bc he’s my fav(y)

5. What is your OC’s first memory?

He's 5 years old and it's one of many hideouts. It's dark. Agatha is keeping watch nearby and Davy can smell the scent of her cigarettes. Usually his job would be to keep quiet and stay out of the way and be ready to run or hide when they tell him, but tonight Osric's in a good mood. He asks Davy if he wants to hear a story, and of course, Davy is more than happy.

It isn't often he gets to sit next to one of his guardians and be spoken to like a living being, but tonight he does. He has no idea that such a thing is normal for most children. To him, it's something rare, and awe-inspiring.

10. What deadly sin would best represent your OC?

Wrath, possibly? He's not violent but he can get intensely angry, he just tries to keep it under wraps.

His main flaw is that he holds grudges which I guess would fall under wrath? He's just a bad communicator who doesn't know how to let things go

15. If your OC could have any pet, what would they choose? Why?

He has a ferret! Her name is Smudge and she's 3 years old and trained (but doesn't always listen!) He carries her around in one of his coat pockets a lot. Never leaves home without her <3

Why did he choose her I'm not sure yet! I don't know how he ended up with her, only that he did. Actually my first thought is that she was given to him as payment for a favor and he was like "what is this and what do I do with it" and then ended up loving her more than life itself, as you do

20. If they came from their world to ours (if not already in our’s) how would they react? What would they do?

He would not enjoy:

Cars (I mean the amount we have now)

The Internet

Cellular Phones

Okay he'd like wikipedia but he wouldn't like social media AT ALL

Advertising that's in everything all the time

Modern music

Actually I don't think he'd like anything. He'd be very annoyed and immediately want to go back to the desolate magical hellscape from whence he came, cause it's a far cry better than this

25. What inspired you to create them / how did you create them? Were they originally a fancharacter? What was their personality / design like when you first made them?

He went through a few iterations.

Version 1: Faith's second in command. Dull. Basically just a shy unassuming yes-man with no personality other than doing whatever Faith says and having no will of his own. Pretty much created just so she'd have someone to back her up

Version 2: PIRATE this is probably his most known iteration to date. Cold. Abrasive. Not even very good at being a pirate. Very little in the way of Piratey Charisma and Swashbuckling Yo Ho Ho Energy. He could fight but didn't want to. He didn't even really like stealing things why did I make him like this

Version 2.5: Wizard Pirate. Funny, but I lost the plot. This was where he was when I dropped it and did the reboot. He was a bit more fun in this version and less of an ice-hearted dickbag (loved his crew) but it just didn't work. My skills at combining Wizard Piracy were simply not there, and simply didn't work for Davy. He wanted to kill a god though, that was hysterical but again, Didn't Work.

Version 3: Thief and conman. Early reboot version. Didn't really work either. You really think this unassuming nerd is going to con anybody? Give me a break. He still kind of works as a thief but

Version 4: EX-THIEF just trying to find a place in the world and not die. I like this one since instead of trying to pick a trope and force him into it I'm finally just letting him exist and just be what he is. Which isn't really anything specific; he's just a weird, shadowy guy with weird, shadowy goals

30. Do they want to get married? Why or why not? Would they ever want kids? Do they have kids? Why?

He doesn't want to get married; he is aroace and understands that marriage is usually a romantic endeavor. He wouldn't want to make his spouse sad by not being what they want or need him to be.

That being said I did have it that he and Faith briefly got married for plot reasons and then divorced later? I may take it out but I think it's funny. But as to a Real Romantic Marriage, no, he wouldn't do that.

I don't know if he wants kids. He'd be a good father, but he doesn't believe he'd be a good father so he considers it out of the question. Funnily enough he had a daughter named Lydia in one of the earlier installments, but she didn't make it past the update.

35. How is your character’s imagination? Daydreaming a lot? Worried most of the time? Living in memories?

He's not very imaginative in the sense of creation or storytelling, he's a problem-solver. He figures out what needs to be done and how to get it done as easily as possible.

He does worry but it tends to be action-oriented, not just meaningless distress. Sometimes it can be too much, though. He will get an idea of something horrible that can happen, work to prevent it, get another idea, work to prevent that, and get stuck and exhaust himself trying to prevent anything from going awry rather than moving in a direction he actually needs to move.

Living in memories? God no. He forgets as much as possible. And he's good at it, too.

40. Your character is getting ready for a night out. Where are they going? What do they wear? Who will they be with?

He doesn't go out much and when he does he sticks close to Faith for the most part, or else hangs back as much as possible so as not to be observed by anyone.

He dresses well, but simply. Nothing flashy, nothing that would get him noticed. Usually he might slightly underdress just so people will think of him as not worth their time and ignore him. And, always, he is with Faith or Lilah. Very few other people have his trust.

45. If your character was given a slice of pineapple pizza and they HAD to eat it (or something bad would happen), how would they react? Do they even LIKE pineapple pizza?

He would uhhhh probably throw up. No he doesn't like pizza, pineapple or otherwise. I mean he'd eat it but he would not enjoy it

50. If your character was presented with imminent and unavoidable death/fatality, how would they react? Would they try to avoid death anyways? Would they try to make their last days count? 

He'd be... depressed? He's spent his whole life trying to avoid death and has gotten himself out of more scrapes then he can count and to him it would feel like all that fighting for survival was just... meaningless.

On some level he knows it'll happen eventually and he's kind of always been expecting it, but he's only in his 20s in the story proper so that's not an especially long life. He'd try to make his last days count, sure, and he'd absolutely do everything he could to dodge fate, but it would mostly just make him sad.

[alecatmew]

Rainbow Eagles

A Fire Emblem: Three Houses fan piece that took me over a year to take from concept to final painting.

I’m documenting this one here now because all the WIPs are in a Twitter thread and actually a blog post is probably a better medium for chronicling things and adding some thoughts.

I’ll start with thoughts on the final piece. I’ll admit, I’m not fully happy with how it came together. The colours are nice, but looking at it three years later, many of the faces are a bit weak. I think I was torn between how much detail to put into various parts of the image when working with watercolours, which can be temperamental – and I was trying to deliberately incorporate unpredictable elements like paint splatters to boot. I was probably too afraid of messing things up further with the faces to work them much more, including adjusting skintones. Some of this fear is justified – watercolours are not a medium that afford a lot of flexibility for adjustments or fixes.

Still, I think it’s fair to say the final piece suffers for my fearful approach.

I’m going to take you through all the test pieces that went into this piece and I think you’ll understand my disappointment after you see them – when there’s great elements in a test piece, their absences in the final artwork feel like a letdown.

We’ll start with the very first scribble, which apparently was the product of insomnia. I think it was pen scribbled straight over a watercolour gradient.

After that, the idea for the full painting quickly formed – a circle to span the whole rainbow.

I was torn on whether to include Byleth or not in this – partly because I was unsure whether I’d try my hand at the other Houses as well. In the end, they didn’t make the cut.

After this, I did a ton of experiments for the colour bleeds.

I LOVE how this one was coming together. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough space on the test paper to continue it. I think I spent the entirety of the rest of this undertaking trying to chase what I’d done in this piece. Argh!

Some style experiments. The paint splatters came out great in this one and the one below.

I think what I didn’t appreciate in my test pieces was how little space there’d be for splatters to not collide in the middle. I then tried to lean into it, placing the eagle logo in the centre where all the colours converged.

There was a lot of time between the test pieces and before I was finally ready to undertake the final piece. I think in the intervening time, I considered doing the entire painting digitally, and experimented with how that would look.

But eventually, I got back on track to do things in watercolour. That didn’t mean throwing out the digital tools! Instead, the composition was drafted digitally for tracing. Of course, it went through a couple iterations too.

I think this tracing has made the sketch feel quite rigid as a result. Byleth was officially excommunicated.

Here was how things were looking after the paint splatters were done. I definitely went into that scared.

Looking at this progress photo, I think I definitely oversaturated the scan. Maybe things could be helped somewhat with a colour retweak… ok, let’s look at these files.

Hang on a moment… what the heck? Looking at the files in my art folder… I already did a re-scan! It’s dated February 2022, about seven months after I originally posted the painting online. But I never posted the rescan? Or at least, not in the Twitter thread. Another reason why using Twitter as a digital archive is a bad idea…

Anyhow, here it is. I think there’s some definite improvements in the colours, and it looks like I adjusted some of the skintones. I wasn’t able to fix Dorothea’s dark blotchiness, but at least Petra doesn’t look so pale in comparison. I think one of the issues I had with the original painting was how dark the paper scanned, so when trying to eliminate the paper textures and shadows I ended up really pulling the colours in weird directions.

So I’ll present this version without trying to wash out the background to white. Still not perfect, but an improvement, I think. Maybe I should go in for a third try, sometime…

"Rainbow Eagles" was originally published on Proairesis

[azenari]

in retrospect | 10.24.20

originally written on Instagram it may surprise some of you to know this, but today was actually the first time I listened to LIGHTS all the way through (other than when I literally had to because we were in the middle of completing it). yep. we finished it, performed one last time, graduated, and I just... never circled back. I don’t really know if this was a particularly conscious choice. I don’t remember explicitly AVOIDING it, per se. one theory I have is that my body kind of automatically does this when I’m grieving over something really important - it compartmentalizes for a while, so I can pick myself up and move on. I remember being a little relieved when my time in Voices ended, but more so than that, I remember being in a lot of pain. because no matter how hard it had been to go through that journey, it felt much harder to reconcile myself with the fact that it was over for good. so I didn’t listen. not when we left campus for the last time. not even when we won a CARA for Best Mixed Collegiate Album, which multiple generations of Voices had aspired to do for years and years. not when I returned to Chicago meet the next iteration of the group, not when I hung out with old friends... (I listened to “Begin Again” a lot, though). it’s been more than four years since I graduated college and left Voices behind, meaning I’ve finally been out of the group for longer than I was in it. I’m still not sure how to describe that experience. looking back, we were so dramatic about what was actually such an inconsequential thing, logically speaking. no matter what we might’ve told ourselves, in practice, it was LITERALLY just a collegiate a cappella group... but to those of us who were a part of it, I can’t deny that it felt like a lot more than that. that’s probably why I was in so much pain when it ended; because it felt like so much more than what it was. and lord knows we - and most notably I - made a lot of mistakes. I actually think I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to evolve into someone better than I was from remembering the consequences of those mistakes. four years later, I can only say I wish it had been a little less pressurized, mostly so that we could’ve taken a few deep breaths and really ENJOYED the precious moments we had together. most of us don’t sing or perform anymore, let alone take the time to create something of our own. whenever I talk to someone who went through it with me, we freely admit how much we miss it. “it” being the parts of that experience that seem to matter the most in hindsight: the adventures we had together, the meals, the opportunities to perform on a stage and share our voices with others, the road trips and late nights, the rehearsals or after parties where it REALLY felt like something locked in the way it was supposed to... the solidarity of growing up. now that I’ve had enough distance to genuinely forget most of LIGHTS, I can say without regret or remorse that I think it’s an amazing work of art. I’ve repressed so many of my memories from that time, but listening to it after all these years, everything suddenly came flooding back. and the things I thought about while I was listening weren’t the awards we won, or the outward perception of our value, or even the mistakes I made, which haunted me for so long afterwards. instead, I experienced what felt like a time capsule of one of the most joyful eras of my life; four years of making music with a group of people that I genuinely considered to be my best friends. to everyone who believed in us, supported us, and empowered us, thank you. and to those of you who did it with me: thank you, most of all. what a privilege it was to have this experience. how privileged we are to have made something that will outlast us - telling and re-telling this messy, wonderful story of our friendship for as long as there are people around to listen to it.

[paranoidpoltergeist]

Starscream is genuinely such a tragic character because as much as he's just kinda crazy every iteration has something that just makes u feel so bad for him.

IDW Starscream is something I couldn't scrape the surface of if you gave me 107 days. G1 Starscream's is not only mainly just used for comic relief the poor guy, but he lost his partner who then turns around and in his eyes betrays him. I mean Skyfire had every right to go "what in the fuc" and dip but the fact he went with Starscream in the first place tells me that somewhere along the way something happened to make him go coocoo.

In prime he was seemingly manipulated into joining the Decepticons and then constantly talked down to. From my perspective it honestly just seemed like Starscream was after praise or recognition which he never gets, now if this is because Megatron's a dick or because of the dark energon idk. I mean he kept the Decepticons afloat the entire time Megatron was gone chasing what was by all accounts a myth and did more then we saw Megs do THE ENTIRE SERIES. He managed to kill an Autobot, we never actually see any casualties and they've got a steady flow of energon.

I mean even in RID his main goal was to just kill Megs and tbh if I'd been beat down over everything I did, even if it was wrong bc I personally thought it was the right way to go about it, I'd be majorly pissed too. Yeah he wants control of the Decepticons but(and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong it's been a very long time since I've watched prime) I only remember him actually attempting to kill Megatron once or twice. Sure he was self serving but just bc he wants respect.

Bayverse Starscream was just the saddest thing I've ever seen. He could breathe and Megatron was drop kicking him off a building, didn't even get to be the treacherous sic jeez💀

Dude the WFC Trilogy was so wild idek how to word it so kind of a take on his character as a whole here. It was weird and characterizations were way off but I actually liked Starscream. He was still the guy we know and love but with a neat twist. He still had that tragic feeling to him especially getting traumatized and all but Dinobot telling him everything he went through wasn't an excuse to hurt other people was just *chefs kiss* bc it's really not. As tragic as Stars character is it's not an excuse for him to hurt the people around him. I mean no matter how bad I can feel for Prime Screamer he still used and manipulated everyone around him(Knockout for one). This is in no way me trying to justify or make him a good guy, a character can be tragic while still being a bad person. Somebody get him in therapy lol.

Oh man and don't get me started on the Unicron Trilogy Starscream. Probably the most tragic of them all, poor guy did not deserve any of Megatrons abuse. Allow me to let him speak for himself "I tried to gain favor from you, but nothing was ever good enough. No matter how many battles I fought, you always found fault." He really just wanted recognition, he literally sacrificed himself just so Megatron could get it through his thick head he needed to team up with the Autobots, and I recently had someone point out to me Starscream probably could have done some damage to Unicron with Swindle but he knew he was gonna die and he didn't wanna drag his mini-con down with him. Just ow.

Animated Screamer was just wild idek what he was on I can't defend him lmao bro opens the show trying and almost succeeded in killing Megan. I'd comment on Cyberverse if I could but I haven't actually got to watching that yet whoops. I feel like I remember seeing a clip of him talking about wanting the respect he deserved which honestly could have been his ego talking or really sad idk, but back to what I was originally saying.

Almost every time he shows up and you pay him any attention besides comic relief he's a super tragic character and it's not only what makes him one of my favorite but it makes me sad when I see people completely disregard everything but whats on the barest of surface levels. I feel like that's all Micheal Bay did he remembered Star being comic relief and so thats all he was. He's like an onion for lack of a better analogy, got a million layers, might make u cry, and you either love him or hate him. He could be such a compelling interesting character like with IDW but no one wants to look below the surface AND I GET IT 9/10 were literal children's shows so they're forgiven but Micheal Bay is on my hit list for that one.

edit: bro if this makes absolutely zero sense I literally wrote and posted this at 3am and then just scheduled it at a normal time for reasons I'm not actually 100% on so sorry💀