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swordsandarms · 2 years ago

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Saw this post by @queenaryastark and just wanted to add my two cents in spite of the problem always having been that people just want things to be what works better for them and "to make sense" in a simplified way and don't want to hear otherwise-

There are a very few things known about Elia Martell - that the author finds relevant enough to even share with us about a small background character - and yet one of those few things is that she had a good relationship with her arranged husband (political, non-romantic and all, "complex", but he took the time to outline that it was not one of those cases when these things have negative connotations). The only other relationship I can think of that he finds relevant enough to be known the quality of is that with her brothers - because it is a key element to the Dornish plot, no less. And he places her dynamic with Rhaegar beside it!

# No, we do not know that she was best friends with Ashara and depended on her and that she would have done anything out of love and how she was angry because her life was actually awful because of her husband! (she's merely one of a dozen ladies in waiting - a political position meant to benefit one's noble family - who just happens to be the only named one, and that for other plot reasons than Elia)

# No, we do not know that Rhaella loved her dearly and hated her son and thought he was so awful and they both see him as awful and (a silly puerile little fic that made me laugh once) wanted to make her "Crown Princess" ...instead .... somehow! We don't even know if they had a relationship. They didn't live in the same city, and Rhaella's day to day life is heavily monitored and controlled at ths point in her life. It's questionable whether they could even be in any amount in eachother's confidence, hence, even through letters, even if you take out the distance.

ETC.

We don't even know what kind of relationship she had with her own mother. People just want it to be good. They don't want details like putting a daughter with frail health in a very dangerous situation no matter how "responsible" Rhaegar turned out to be for ambition and spite against a political adversary to speak of anything negative. And I'm not saying it is a must for it to have been negative. What I am trying to get to is people are trying to write any other relationships of hers we know nothing about, or might not exist, or might actually have negative correlations from as much as we know as definitely deep and good and rewrite the only other relationship we are given other than her brothers that we are actually told what it was, and make it bad and weak instead. We don't know her dynamic with her own mother to be good, yet we know it is with Rhaegar.

It is a noted fact in the story, and the fact that the author cares little or not at all about others on the other hand but this was noteworthy to write makes it significant, too. And it isn't even a matter of being isolated and lonely and making do because she has no one else to have a pleasant relationship with. She is surrounded by men and women alike, Dornish no less, loyal to her, and they also get along with Rhaegar.

And if we are to take most of Dany's vision of them as real (as there are details like him seeming to talk to her at the end that may be skewy) then they are on good terms until nearly the end. If fanon that claims she hated him/thought herself as slighted and humiliated after the flower crown were true, then this would actually do characterise her as a simpleton/'doormat' instead, which there being an understanding behind his action would not and it doesn't seem to me that the author wants Elia a simpleton.

Yeah, yeah, consequences of his actions ultimately hurt her, though. And so people walk backwards then on the apparent idea that if someone's actions hurt you in any circumstances, then it can only be willful, and someone doing something that ends up hurting someone can only be an 'abuser' and such. All over the place, there are dramatic fanon theories about these two to rewrite what is canon of their dynamic as 'abuser' and 'victim', so that it would simplify the concept of his actions indirectly hurting her.

Canon doesn't support that. Canon gives the fact that he removes his arranged wife from the capital where there is the danger of his father, although that means the removal from the centre of political power, during a very tense political dynamic (literally described as 'like before the Dance'!). Canon says that when Aerys' cruel actions start a Rebellion, and he removes Elia and her children from the relative safety of Dragonstone (with authority no one can undo), Rhaegar comes forth to lead Aerys' armies. And fanon (against previous signs) paints it as him being a one-dimensional evil creature (from the author praised to write things complex) who cares not about fighting Lyanna's family or his lawful spouse and children being in danger near that man... rather than the fact that he is known as looking out for Elia's safety from his father, told to have had his last straw after said father rejects his daughter that he seems to have inspired love and trust in - hence the likelihood of him being caught in between and having no more choice than Dorne. Less, because he also has to go against the family of the girl the author says he's 'lovestruck' about also, because Aerys is dangling Elia and the children, that the author cared to give hints he cares about. Or the fact that he hints of having reached THE breaking point about his father as a follow-up fact at this point through Jaime's memory.

"Are you saying she was complicit in endangering herself? On purpose?"

It is very exhausting to hear such a train of thought from people who supposedly read books, and understand how conflict works, and that being a 'realistic story' with complex characters it means they don't know/understand everything and things are out of their control and happen unexpectedly.

That's how you get ridiculous theories such as "Rhaegar then planned it all to go exactly how it went and knew each thing that would happen and it was for some magical mass sacrifice or whatever!!" Because this is how things work. People make plans and it happens exactly as they expect, bullet points and all. And you'd have millions claiming that's a good writer who does well foreshadowed 'shocks' that the character would not know about and needs to be re-read to fully comprehend and appreciate.

Yeah, it doesn't mean that the plans and goals they may have had would be summarised as 'choosing Rhaegar mistresses from a catalogue' the way I saw it put somewhere. Yeah, that is dumb. But if we don't have the information on characters' train of thoughts from a point in time we don't fully understand, it doesn't mean it is fine to change base facts (the relationship of the two) to make a simple version that explains it away.

"Are you saying she is dumb to think this or that would work certain ways, whatever they thought they were doing/going towards for whatever reasons?"

Again, are we even reading books here? Have we not seen smart characters (sometimes older than these 2) making certain sound sounding choices with certain predictions at the time, and in the end none working out and everything falling apart? Don't we applaud it as good writing? Isn't Varys for example cathegorised as one of the BIG manipulators of history and planner, yet what we hear from people working for Young Griff is the frustration of plans changing all the time because what he predicts/wants/plans doesn't work as intended multiple times?

And since we're on the topic and fanon has mythologised characters like her into ridiculous heights, let's stop for a second to think who Elia Martell would be as a (actually honest) baseline. Young, inexperienced, sheltered by privilege as anyone of her rank and more so for her own health (according to her brother), very optimistic sounding, etc. Yes, most likely intelligent (described as witty), but it doesn't change the implications of the previous qualities. Rhaegar is also most of that (at least idealistic if not optimistic) - though I would say he would at least have the perspective of "harsh realities" due to his family situation, while hers was a loving one as far as we're concerned. So, yes, she could have even made/agreed with "naive plans" as well as him, and they could even have been intelligent about it too, as they both seemed to have been, but it being beyond the point because the world works chaotically and there's no smart enough character that never had plans go wrong ever in ASOIAF.

Another thing that I mentioned but want to emphasise again, though it is hard to believe that a fandom that wouldn't give a break even to characters 16 and younger for 'miscalculations' and not having it all figured out and not doing everything perfectly is... they are both young, too! I don't know what's the overall age demoraphic in this fandom, but it always baffles me that this is not addressed - early 20s is clueless, young, and inexperienced. If one is past it they should know it. There are way too many young characters I guess to conceptualise that (but, again, it is not like this fandom give the VERY young characters a break also so I don't know), but it is very odd when these two are seen as 'very adult' who should have known better (Rhaegar) or knew 100% everything like some 'hit by godly visions' Cassandra (Elia), especially, again, when you account for both being inexperienced and privileged. The 16 and lower characters we know would rank above them both (especially sheltered Elia!) simply by actually being forced into learning experiences.

All in all, whatever the details are or how things can be explained from that point on, people have to accept the fact that the writing makes it more understandable that they would have been 'in cahoots' rather than a cartoonish evil being and a young woman without agency whatsover that is cutie pieing with the man who she is also angry at for doing some great misdeed against her.

Would she think otherwise by the end, when all fell apart? Would there be targeted hate and blame? We can theorise either way, but I am thinking how Lyanna is theorised as such in spite of the author writing roses in her hand when she dies in the same wavelength as writing her brother's hand holding hers - just like we only know of noteworthy positive relationships in Elia's life being a brother and Rhaegar, to the writer.

Sorry, but we're reading a story, and if you don't like what the author writes and implies it's fine. But at the same time you are wrong by default in 'predictions' as to what he would write next instead.

"You are victim blaming if Elia thought or did anything ever than being a silent perfect victim who just had things happening to her while having the foresight of a God and the wisdom of a 100 years old and if it were up to this sheltered inexperienced early 20s woman she would have REAISTICALLY Mary Sued her way through it and everyone would agree and kiss her feet. REALISTICALLY!!!"

No, you are. This fandom is famous for victim blaming (young) female characters most of all who have no control over circumstances around them, not being able to predict the future, not having experience, or just mean well and think better of the world, as long as they are anything but 'perfect victims' whose whole act is expcted to be being pitiful stoned mummies that things happen to, and are held up to unfair standards by the heavy in expectations pedestal that's supposed to be a compliment.

#elia martell #asoiaf #rhaegar targaryen #lyanna stark #rhaegar x elia

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snackara · 6 months ago

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UaS!Asha’s Character Arc

Please keep in mind this all just personal opinion. Despite what I may say I don’t hate the movie Wish. If I hated it I wouldn’t be making this Rewrite/AU in the first place.

Hello everyone and welcome to my TedTalk. I’ve had this ruminating in my brain for a while, and now that I’m back to writing in Asha’s POV I feel like I need to talk about it.

I’ve said before how I don’t like Asha’s personality and character arc in the movie. There’s nothing wrong with the adorkable leading woman trope in Disney films, it’s just that they’ve done it so much throughout the 2010s and 2020s. So sort of as a joke, I thought “Hey, what if we subverted that trope and made Asha a sword-wielding badass?”. (I blame watching The Mask of Zorro around that time.) And so that’s what I did.

As I began my rewrite and started taking Asha’s character more seriously, I realized there was a lot of potential for a really interesting facet of her character arc. One that I haven’t seen too much in Disney films. Not having to bear your burdens alone, which ties into her arc about trusting people. Let’s dive into it.

Canon Asha and Strong Women

I have a few problems with how the writers went about portraying Asha. As I’ve said before, she has little to no character arc in the movie, and she suffers from it.

Now, it is possible to make a protagonist an audience can root for who doesn’t have a character arc. My favorite example is Cinderella. However, there’s a key difference between her and Asha. Cinderella was in an abusive situation, but remained kind and caring to others. It made the audience root for her and want to see her go to the ball. On the other hand, Asha lives a perfectly content life. Her family isn’t struggling to get by or act abusive to her, and the most people would kill to live in her home of Rosas. She can come across as very annoying and selfish, so you root for her less. It also feels like Asha was meant to have a bigger arc, but in the movie she changes her mind about Magnifico and Rosas in the first twenty minutes. It just makes her feel flat and less compelling.

Something that pops up a few times in the Deleted Scenes of Wish is how they wanted to be her own hero and feel like a stronger protagonist. Hence cutting Starboy (R.I.P). And it really frustrates me for two reasons.

1. There are several instances of Asha’s problems being solved for her or things just happening to her

2. Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is ask for help.

I’ll only focus on a couple instances of Asha’s problems being solved for her because this post is long enough. Early in the movie, she has the interview with Magnifico and gets to see the wishes. But it feels unearned. She doesn’t demonstrate any knowledge of magic or qualities that would make her a good fit for the position. She just gives Magnifico a short sob story about her dad and he just lets her see the wishes. If she had shown an unusually high knowledge of magic or a deeper desire to protect the wishes it would have felt more justified. But no, she just bumbles around like an idiot. The second instance in the climax. Asha starts singing “This Wish (Reprise)” before Magnifico stops her. Then Dahlia starts singing, and all the other people in Rosas join in, which starts to break Magnifico’s magic. Asha only sings again during the last verse, which feels really dull and underwhelming. (Which goes for the climax in general). There was nothing stopping her from continuing singing, she was just laying there. Hell, Dahlia gets knocked over once and immediately gets back up to continue. It just doesn’t make sense to me why the person who does the least in taking down the movies villain is the hero, especially after saying you want to make them stronger and more independent.

Going back to Cinderella, a common complaint I hear about her is that she did nothing in the movie and needed the fairy godmother’s help. It boggles my mind, because…how do you expect her to get out of her situation? She has no money and no one to turn to. She’s practically a slave. Without the fairy godmother she would have stayed in an abusive household for the rest of her life. Sometimes in life there’s no other option but to ask for help. It doesn’t make us weaker, quite the opposite in my opinion. This is what the writers of Wish seemed to miss. It’s not an inherently bad thing to have Asha solve all of her problems on her own, but it sort of reinforces this stereotype of “strong women don’t need help from anyone”. Which really sucks, because you can make a good female character who’s strong but still has flaws and needs help. Just look at some of the woman Hayao Miyazaki writes. Someone Disney could learn from in those regards. *cough* Star Wars *cough* Marvel.

There’s quite a bit to fix when it comes to Asha’s arc. It feels at best flat and at worst nonexistent. Which can work, just not for this story. So, how did I go about writing UaS!Asha’s arc? Well first, we need to look at a certain fearless hero and his character arc.

Puss in Boots and Vulnerability

(Who knew the Spanish cat from Shrek would have such a huge influence on my rewrite?)

Okay, now for the stuff I really enjoy. I’ve joked before about how similar UaS!Asha and Puss are, but I think there really is something to be said when it comes to their arcs. A smaller part of Puss’ arc in The Last Wish that I wanted to expand upon in this rewrite is vulnerability. There are a few scenes in particular that highlight what I’m talking about. Spoilers ahead of you haven’t seen The Last Wish.

In the opening song of the film Puss sings about how he’s "Never been touched by a blade". Then in the scene where Kitty shaves him, it's shown as a moment of vulnerability as he's asking for her help, and she uses a blade to cut the beard. While the first encounter with Death is definitely the intention for that line, you can also interpret it as he's never allowed himself to be vulnerable on that level before. It’s a nice scene and from that moment of vulnerability Puss gains something: the gatito blade, which saves him in his final fight against Death.

The next scene is obviously the panic attack scene. This one is a little different, since Puss has no choice in how vulnerable he is in the moment. But it does lead to Puss opening up to Perrito about his fear of death and and how he regrets leaving Kitty at the altering Santa Caloma. Kitty happens to overhear this and reconsiders her view of Puss. It also results this exchange, which I think perfectly encapsulates Asha’s mindset in Upon a Star:

In Puss’ mind, he has to be fearless no matter what. He’s a legendary hero, he can’t afford to be vulnerable.

The last scene I feel is worth going over is the tree scene. In this scene Puss apologizes for leaving Kitty at the alter and admits he was afraid that day. And she forgives him, admitting she didn’t come to the wedding either. Through this moment Puss is able to mend his relationship with Kitty and get that day off his chest.

The main takeaway from these scenes (moreso the panic attack scene the the others) is that it’s okay to be afraid or vulnerable, as long as you can get back up and move forward. This is especially true in the final fight with Death. Puss is still afraid and even falters, but pushes past it. And in the other two scenes, it ultimately helped him to open up. This is what I mainly wanted for Asha’s arc. Speaking of which, let’s take a look at her. She is the main subject of this post.

How Does UaS!Asha Tie In?

I’ll try to spoil as little as I can here. Like I said, my message through Asha’s arc is that you don’t have to bear your burdens alone. Part of why I made her a sword-wielding thief is to emphasis this point.

At first, she seems pretty formidable. She takes down several guards and gets away from the remaining few easily. Later she continues to show her battle prowess and cunning. Until she meets with our antagonists and…well, you can imagine it doesn’t end good. Think back to the first fight with Death in The Last Wish. A couple scenes prior, we see Puss take down several guards and a giant 100x his size easily. So when Death comes in and absolutely wrecks him, even drawing blood, it makes it so much more impactful. It still works without the giant fight, but there’s a lot less weight to it as a result. As well as the scenes I’ve already talked about. That’s the effect I’m trying to achieve with Asha.

It’s also worth noting that she doesn’t mean to call down Earendel. I mean, I don’t think any of the Asha’s meant to, but they were still seeking guidance. In my version of “This Wish” however, Asha is just trying to gain some confidence and makes a wish for good luck. So when there’s suddenly a random glowing kid in front of her insisting on trying to help her, she’s a little frustrated. Because in her eyes, she shouldn’t need help. She’s the Alondra of Rosas! She’s the one who’s supposed to be helping other people. It’s also why she turns away from other people, fearing they’ll think less of her if they realized how vulnerable and insecure she is deep down. Through a new pseudo-sibling relationship with Earendel and a blooming romance with Flazino however, her walls start to finally come down.

Final Thoughts

send help

If you’ve read all the way through to this point, thank you so much! I enjoy talking about how I develop ideas for my creative works a lot. It helps me break down and understand aspects of my work better. The problem at this point in time is spoilers. Like I have a whole backstory for Manuel and Tomás, but talking about it messes up the big reveal later in the main story. Most people will probably have guessed it by then but still.

@rascalentertainments @hopeyarts @chillwildwave @wings-of-sapphire @tumblingdownthefoxden @oh-shtars @annymation @uva124 (+others)

I hope you all enjoyed my rambling :) One day I’ll I more of these, I swear.

#disney wish #wish movie #wish rewrite #wish au #asha #wish asha #wish 2023 #upon a star

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velvet-vox · 8 months ago

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An analysis of Doll on a Roleplay battle setting.

Here's a little something to remember in regards to the things discussed in this post:

Tank beats Melee

Melee beats Support

Support beats Critter

Critter beats Tank

I head canon that Doll is (in an RPG setting) a Critter/Tank but mostly a long distance damage dealer that relies on dealing critical hits (metaphor for her plans) with tanking features and talents that allows her to take in a lot of damage (metaphor for her incredible survivability) in line with these stats:

And the funny and interesting thing about it is that her life trajectory probably wasn't this; in fact, I believe that originally Doll was expected due to her behaviour, personality type, and attitude towards situations to become a Tank/Melee (but more specifically an high damage dealing Tank) but after the death of her parents and the hands of V she took a forceful nose dive into rewriting her class trajectory in order to accommodate for her new goals, because it makes perfect sense:

Uzi is definitely a Critter/Melee but not a straightforward one; for context, a Critter/Melee in the language I am using is a long distance damage dealer that gains advantages from actually getting up close, it's a super rare play style that jives well with Uzi being an unconventional protagonist, but it doesn't stop there as Uzi also doubles down as an all-rounder by also having a blunt, defensive personality and being fairly resistant and resilient like a Tank but also having an understanding, highly empathetic and forgiving personality like a Support that allows her to help her teammates in battle and shrug off some of the trauma caused by her situation.

N on the other end is a Melee/Critter (opposite attract each other:) but not a straight up assassin like V in the sense that N is mostly a regular Melee that has counterplay for Tanks and his capable of getting through other people defenses (metaphor for penetrating the bunker at the start of the season) and he's not a glass cannon like other damage focused Melee and Critters tend to be, (although I don't think he has Tank like qualities in the same way as Uzi, rather he has a moderately high base health pool) and has on top of that the qualities of a Support like Uzi to help his teammates by cleansing debuffs and giving bonuses.

(Side note: even though Uzi and N have the qualities of Support, none of them are healers, they are only buffers and cleansers, they heal themselves and only themselves once they kill, hence why they are the most dysfunctional main trio of all time. Nuzi still works by the way, in the same way Wall-E and EVE works).

V instead, arguably the most complex character of the series, is your typical glass cannon Melee/Critter assassin that deals massive damage up close but can't take back said damage. But where it becomes interesting is that V, much like Doll, wasn't initially projected for this play style as we can clearly see from her original timid maid persona that she was probably more inclined towards being a Support, but unlike Doll, she was fully capable of making that transition because she was motivated by the desire to protect N while keeping him distant, while Doll never fully managed to let go of her Tank origins because she was motivated by hatred and not love.

And as you all can clearly see, the problem with Doll being a Tank becomes self evident: all of the protagonists have the characteristics of Critters, the one class who counters Tanks, meaning that each and every single one of them could have easily mauled her like her family had been if she didn't change her ways; which is ironic, since Tank counters Melee, V main class, so even if Doll couldn't defeat V in a combat situation, she would have hard countered her on a narrative level, so in committing to the Critter play style, she lost an important advantage on that front and, narratively, allowed V to destroy her like her parents were.

And it all comes together to bite her in the ass in episode 7 when she faces Tessa/Cyn who I believe, despite what the colour scheme might imply, it's a Melee/Support who stacks attack buffs on herself; you know, Melee who's the class countered by Tanks (of the which Doll isn't anymore) and villainous Support, the class that counters Critters, aka the class Doll traded Tank for.

As to why I believe fake Tessa is Melee/Support, there are a couple of reasons, but you can mostly get it by their personality and play style; Cyn in their dialogues doesn't try to get under N skin to then deal as much damage as possible all in one go like a Critter would, instead, she slowly destroys his sense of security like a Melee would, also, the Absolute Solver is definitely a Support type of villain since they give their abilities to Uzi and Doll, even if inadvertently, which would make sense narratively to have an unstoppable Support force against our 3 Critter protagonists and to have N and V, our 2 Melees working for him, be the ones who can stop him through Uzi's help.

And lastly, the main reason why Doll even manages to reach Uzi inside the chapel is thanks to that Tank characteristic that she chose to forsake and neglect, and now, that characteristic is not strong and trained enough to allow her to survive, but it has just enough of a presence to allow her to get a final warning out, much like her redemption was always possible despite not being reachable anymore.

Want more?

#murder drones #murder drones doll #murder drones uzi #murder drones n #murder drones v #murder drones yeva #murder drones doll's dad #murder drones tessa #murder drones cyn #murder drones absolute solver #@melissa-titanium this is the most bat shit insane analysis of doll ever pulled of on this site I hope you get a kick out of it #character analysis #rpg

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seyaryminamoto · 1 year ago

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When you posted the first chapter of Gladiator how far ahead were you in terms of planning the path the story would take? Are there any great changes from the original outline?

Uuuuuh... X'D

For me, planning stories isn't a linear journey. I DO write linearly as best as I'm able, because if I don't, I'm going to fuck up the continuity of my stories. I really am not good at just writing the big moments first and stuffing the rest of the content in later. All the power to the people who can do that, but the few times I've tried, I fucked up so badly that I always end up having to rewrite the scene I wrote beforehand anyway! So, yeah, I build up on things and try to have all cards on the table by the time I write the big stuff.

But planning? Oh boy, planning is WAY messier than that.

Let me see if I can illustrate this properly:

The core idea for Gladiator was suggested to me by a reader over at FF.net back in February 2013. One day, a month later, I gave the idea a little more thought than I had when he first offered it and my brain went into overdrive when I concocted these specific concepts that, at the time, were the very core of the story:

Azula and Sokka as partners with thicker sexual tension than anything I'd written in my life until then, in a will-they-won't-they situation that, of course, results in "THEY DID". In this setting, the war didn't end on time, meaning that a lot of things changed, including that Azula's got a blank slate in a lot of regards, so both her and Sokka need to be developed from scratch. Initially, I wasn't sure of where exactly I'd take the relationship aside from knowing that they'd obviously get together, but the specific concept of what I'd do with their relationship only arrived sometime later (as in, when I realized I was too addicted to this story and had too much to do with it to "cut to the chase", unlike what certain people wanted me to do). Also, of course, major potential to make them an epic battle couple, something I'd never gotten the chance to write them as until then, so big plus there!

Their biggest rival throughout the story would be Toph, banking on a very different portrayal than the fandom usually likes in Sokka and Toph's dynamics: she would be the big enemy inside the league that he struggles the most with defeating because, let's be real, it feels like no one could have ever imagined that Sokka could ever beat Toph in a fair, one-on-one battle until I outright wrote it in the final arc of Part 2 X'D Hence, I figured that giving him that HUGE initial goal to pursue (defeating Toph) would give us a solid story thread to follow for a long time.

Iroh as Toph's sponsor because of The Chase and their canon bond, with Toph basically being Iroh's biggest fan in the Gaang due to their bonding scene in that episode. I would then be expanding on a bond that, back in the day, was a fandom favorite and that, these days, seems to have gone completely under the radar because it feels like nobody even TALKS about it anymore. It's kinda taken for granted, I'd say?

Combustion Man as THE TOP DOG of the Ranking. The final hurdle both Sokka and Toph need to outdo to become the best gladiators in the league. Why are they trying to do that? In Toph's case, she loves fighting, this story basically gave her a chance to go wild in that sense and measure herself against all kinds of enemies. In Sokka's case? As proposed by that reader's initial pitch, he'd be forcefully taken from the Fire Nation and would want to go home: his deal with Azula solidified then as the reason why he wants to be #1. Once he wins and beats Combustion Man, Azula will consider their contract fulfilled and she will let him go back to the Water Tribe.

Zhao as Combustion Man's sponsor because I needed someone relevant to do it, it didn't feel right to just make an OC for a role so important, back in the day, and in this setting, Zhao wouldn't have died/vanished in the NWT so he was available for my needs -- all of which then led me into building a backstory where Azula held some manner of resentment towards Zhao that pushed her further in her need to find a gladiator and become the best sponsor in the league.

These five story elements were the first things that came to mind. As I liked the idea of Azula and Sokka having an immensely conflictive relationship at first, where they couldn't trust each other 100% but they LIKED each other way more than they wanted to, I switched the "Sokka gets captured by randos" from the original pitch to "AZULA captures Sokka", and that resulted in a LOT of extra chaos than what was part of the story's original concept :'D I'd dare say the main positive element about this was that the story felt more dynamic in the second chapter (when they meet for the first time) than it would have if Sokka had been caught by any other Fire Nation military officer. It even puts forward the deepest layer of rivalry in the story too: the one person in the Fire Nation settlement who could have outdone Sokka is Azula. If he had faced anyone else. he might have had chances of success... but not when he faced her.

This, then, means that Azula HERSELF is a big goal and hurdle Sokka has to overcome. Partly, their relationship would've granted Sokka the means through which he could achieve that goal, but the point is that, from very early on, I realized that I wanted the story to chronicle the gradual journey of how Sokka went from... uh, a hundred to infinity X'D because no, he wasn't a zero, he just wasn't THAT good just yet. I wanted this journey to become a full exploration of Sokka's potential as a warrior until he was strong enough to go toe to toe with Azula and defeat her one day...!

... And once I realized that, one of the first core scenes of Gladiator came into shape. As in, the day Sokka finally defeated Azula.

Also known as chapter 96 :')

On the day Sokka beats her, EVERYTHING changes. This change is primarily fueled by the fact that he DOESN'T want to defeat her, at that point. He is so done with their frequent conflicts when the one thing he REALLY wants is... her. And Azula wants HIM. So when he impulsively kisses her instead of dealing a killer blow...! Yeah, uh... pfft. God, I had done so little plotting of their character arcs that I ACTUALLY thought, back then, that there'd be tension in terms of the readers thinking "omg, is he going to kill her?!" ... yeah, that was dead in the water so fast x'D I sincerely doubt ANYONE ever imagined that he'd do that when that scene came around, but you asked about how the plotting went in the initial stages of the story, pretty sure this specific hilarious tidbit illustrates that fairly well x'D anyway, Azula surrenders and the whole underlying theme of a war between them finally gets resolved in the best way it could! :'D

But... how would THAT particular fight sequence come about?

And that's where the lead-up to the scene started to take shape! Sokka has been trying to beat Toph, but he can't! She beats him when it FINALLY looks like he might win. When that happens, Sokka seems to be ready to give up on everything, and Azula lashes out at him because she won't let him quit on her just like that. BINGO!

... And that, dear asker, was the first genuine scene and arc plotting that I did for Gladiator.

After this? I thought Sokka would go on to fight Combustion Man after a final fight with Toph in which he finally beats her. This fight with Toph, back then, was bound to take place within maybe a few months of his last defeat at her hands, I thought, but with the power of getting laid, Sokka was totally going to kick ass this time and then go on to defeat the BIG DEAL, COMBUSTION MAN HIMSELF.

And then he'd kill him. Paying a bit of homage to canon :')

It slowly came together, however, that a fight against Combustion Man quite so soon after defeating Toph was probably not going to be... well, completely reasonable unless the situation REALLY called for it for... some reason. While I'm not entirely sure that I came up with this right away, it probably wasn't over a week after I started plotting the story that I figured that Iroh would vindictively tell Ozai about Azula and Sokka's relationship after witnessing what he shouldn't have witnessed when they celebrated their triumph over Toph a little more enthusiastically than would have been appropriate :'D Then, since Combustion Man would be serving, in a sense, as Ozai's executioner of bad gladiators for sponsors who need a lesson, he'd be the one tasked with killing Sokka only for Sokka to kill him right back (?)

At this point? There was no Xin Long. The idea of Sokka killing Combustion Man through a volatile bomb predates Xin Long! I boldly snuck in a reference to how Sokka would defeat Combustion Man as early as chapter 2 because I'm crazy and wanted to make it a useful callback in future chapters, unaware that "future chapters" meant ALMOST 250 CHAPTERS LATER! X'D Anyway, point is, I wanted Sokka to defeat Combustion Man through different means than in canon, seeing how in canon he had advantages he wouldn't have had in this story (this is a controlled environment, a one-on-one fight, there's no cover where Sokka can objectively hide, he wouldn't have the opportunity to just fuck up Combustion Man the exact same way, he's not going to fall to his death, for there's no abyss nearby...). So, I came up with the volatile bomb for that purpose, and that tells you that I spent around 7 years with the image of Combustion Man burning to his death living rent free in my head before finally writing it :'D

OKAY! So! What else did I come up with...?

I think Sokka and Azula's first kiss was relatively early plotting too. The idea of Sokka carelessly flirting with Suki in the ring came to mind, and Azula being Azula, she wasn't going to appreciate that at all, so she would have kissed him recklessly in a very inappropriate and territorial bid to stake a claim over him that she really shouldn't have... but Sokka would've thought it was hot and gone with it anyway (?)

Funny reveal time here: back in the day, I was determined to ensure that they wouldn't kiss again after that first kiss, not until they were ready to bang in chapter 96. Can you believe I thought I'd have the self-restraint to pull that off? x'D I laugh at my innocence in those regards to this day.

The second kiss I planned, probably MONTHS later, was actually the one on the way to the Slate. I wanted them to go out of control at one point and for them to be like "omg that was very inappropriate of us! How could we! But omg does that mean you like me tooooo?"

And isn't it HILARIOUS that my plotting was soooo naïve that I STILL didn't realize how far the early chapters would take them in their relationship? x'D

This, in a nutshell, is the exact reason why I CAN'T write out of order: if I'd written the Slate's trip situation as early as when I first thought about it? You can bet it would've made zero sense with all the character progression we saw through the rest of the story. And then I would have had to rewrite it anyway :')

Xin Long, I won't lie, was a bit of a whim on my part, no doubt motivated by my frustrations with canon and how Azula seemed to only get screwed over. So I said "she gets whatever the hell she wants in Gladiator because I hate the world" and once the idea of helping her find a dragon came to mind, I just rolled with it (?) It took me a while to actually integrate Xin Long with the Rough Rhinos arc, I wasn't sure about when I'd introduce him once the idea came to mind, but there was no better chance than to do so while Sokka and Azula were lost in the forest.

About other stuff, I liked the idea of Piandao training Sokka more extensively than in canon, but I didn't want him to be Sokka's host FOREVER because that meant less chances for Sokkla interactions. So... I had to get rid of him.

Believe it or not, I didn't sort out the in-world reasons to explain why I'd gotten rid of him until well around 3-4 years into plotting the story :')

Piandao's connection to Ursa felt natural after I really started thinking about it, but that took AGES to properly plot. Initially? I just needed him to go away. And in a sense, the excuse was that Iroh was on his way home, meaning, there was a Grand Lotus near the Fire Lord's court, way closer than Piandao ever was, so he didn't NEED to be there anymore.

... And that kind of led into Zuko.

While I was absolutely overtaken by the wild plotting involved in soooo many other aspects of the story, my good friend @jordanalane, no longer active on tumblr or the fandom, put up with my rambling about ALL THESE IDEAS and went "Yay! This story sounds fun! What's going on with Zuko here?"

Me, internally: "... Well shit I forgot about Zuko."

I won't say that she singlehandedly set up Zuko's journey in Gladiator, but saying that she gave me about 65% of the ideas for what I'd do with him would probably be fairly accurate, unless the percentage is larger than I thought. I actually toyed with the idea of setting up Zuko and Aang on a way bigger, political journey that we'd only occasionally glimpse while we focused on Sokka and Azula's partnership within the Fire Nation culture and all the gladiatorial chaos. Very early on, the plan seriously wasn't for Sokka to become... well, what he is now xD So I was genuinely going to leave all the heavy lifting of the war to Aang and Zuko because, ultimately, the Fire Nation has to be defeated and they're the ones who usually get up to that, right?

I think I've mentioned that, post Combustion Man's death, I had no idea wtf I was going to do. Like... I knew that was far away. I knew I'd have the time (or at least, I faithfully believed I would) to figure out what I'd do before we got to that point. I absolutely knew the story could not possibly end there.

So at this stage of plotting, I toyed with Blue Spirit Zuko joining the Gladiator League briefly as a destabilizer within the system (and then I started writing Zuko in the story and realized that... no. There was just no way this guy wanted anything to do with the Gladiator League as a fighter or even as a sponsor. Nope). Then, I thought he should go south (though I had no idea how I'd get him there!), where he'd find Aang eventually! There was a veeeery small window of time in which I considered keeping Aang at 12-years-old, which would've made Kataang waaaaay too unsettling since Katara would've been over 20, and I thought maybe Zuko and Katara could be a thing? But the idea never really solidified into anything I wanted to write between those two, it felt like an older Katara would've focused even more on protecting Aang (becoming the actual mother figure the fandom and even canon are obsessed with adultifying her into at 14) because she'd be too aware of how young and fragile he was...!

... But then? I thought it would've actually made sense for Aang to be more than just the little boy who saves the day and everyone protects:

Why not make him an opportunity for Katara to learn her Tribe's traditional and lost waterbending styles?

If I aged up Aang, and made it so he had been frozen in the South Pole, not out of sheer chance but out of him actually BEING IN THE AREA when the storm struck him? That could do the trick! If his journey as a waterbending master was already underway by the time he was frozen, then he'd have two elements down... and he could be Katara's teacher instead! While there were downsides to this decision, of course, it actually made a ton of sense to me mainly because I don't love the way it feels like Katara, in canon, never truly reclaimed the traditional southern style of waterbending. This, then, meant that Aang could provide her with a connection to her own people and their past, something he can't offer her in canon.

So! With that in mind? I aged up Aang and made him 19, and Kataang could be preserved and be developed this way. Part of it is also motivated by my genuine confusion, when I first watched the show, over the old Air Nomad leaders deciding that Aang, already declared an airbending master, "needed to master more advanced airbending techniques" right after revealing that he was the Avatar. I mean... if he's already a master, doesn't it make more sense to send him to the next element he's supposed to learn? Especially considering it's water? And considering that the storm clouds in the horizon were coming from the Fire Nation, so the more water to fight them, the better? :'D

So yep, that was another reason why I made the choices I made.

Lo and behold, slowly and surely, the core bones of Gladiator were starting to take shape: Azula and Sokka start as contentious allies, joining forces for a common goal and very different motivations, all of which would lead them into falling in love over time. Their biggest threats in the league are Toph and Combustion Man, but perhaps bigger still would be Iroh, who would rat them out to Ozai (I'm 100% serious when I say this specific element of the story has been part of Gladiator's DNA since the very start, the whole journey I threw Iroh into was basically "how do I get him to the point where he would be THAT pissed off as to do something like this with no regard as to the consequences of his own actions?"). Zuko, Katara and Aang would more or less stick to being involved in fighting the war, they wouldn't be all that connected to the Gladiator League or anything to do with that.

Worth noting that my friend started to come up with ideas for Zuko and Suki to get together and make sense as a couple in the story, and while at first it was just a casual thing that I figured would work alright, her ideas became... so much more poignant than I ever imagined they would be.

About one year, maybe a year-and-a-half, after I started plotting Gladiator, I actually figured out what my endgame would be.

At that point, I actually knew where we were going and I started to focus my attention on plotting how to get there. New concepts started to pop up, things that I absolutely hadn't thought about from the get-go: I DID have my alternate idea on what was going on with Ursa since ages ago (the swamp concept, as you'll likely have read already...), and after The Search thoroughly disappointed me, I chose to stick with that path without looking back. But while this was in the background, something I knew had happened but that I doubted I'd be able to work into the story productively, I realized it would actually be something I could explore IN the story once Part 3 stopped being a big nebulous blob of mystery for me. I decided that Sokka and Azula would be torn away from each other, that HE would be the one leading the war faction out of the South Pole and into the chaos of war, that Piandao's tile for Sokka, mainly done as homage to canon back when I wrote that, could actually represent something FAR GREATER if Sokka joined forces with the White Lotus to fight the Fire Nation and return to Azula...!

... And one of my most evil advisors of those years also very casually inceptioned into my head the very wicked idea of pregnant Azula in the middle of this mess :'D

I could go on and on, honestly! I have one funny thing to bring up, and it's that the scene from the Northern Air Temple arc, where Sokka tells Azula his true fears and feelings about his family, how he doesn't think he's worthy of going home and is genuinely apprehensive of returning because he thinks his dad will be disappointed in him? That... was repurposed from a very early idea I had for Sokka and Azula, once they were properly together, traveling to Whaletail Island, and spending a casual day/night in bed talking about a lot of things, which then led into Sokka talking about his family and what he actually felt about them, which Azula wasn't supposed to know about until then :'D That was, ironically, the origin point for the Whaletail Island arc. The scene that originated it just... never happened x'D

As you may be able to tell... the progress of their relationship, the evolution and development of the characters, caused a LOT of things to move forward way faster than I thought they would. Hence, Sokka wound up telling Azula about all those things WAAAY sooner than I originally envisioned. By then, Whaletail's scene was kind of broken down and spread into other situations and arcs instead! Again: this is why I can't write out of chronological order xD

One funny thing to look back on was my confident belief that Sokka and Azula would spend the bulk of Part 1 doing a mutual pining thing where neither one realized the other felt the exact same way about them... when I was in the middle of their best conversations in the Rough Rhinos' arc, the THIRD ARC of the entire story, I was like "yo... they're 100% aware of the fact that they're down bad for each other already. There's literally no mystery about how they feel, THEY OBVIOUSLY ALREADY KNOW." And that hilariously changed A LOT of how things developed later, because I sure as heck didn't plan for them to kiss in the Rough Rhinos arc at all (it kinda happened on a whimsical plotting session, a few days before writing it :'D). I did NOT plan for them to kiss at Ty Lee's backyard, either (oh, this one was basically them getting out of my control and doing whatever they wanted, same evil advisor I mentioned earlier told me to go with it while I cried to her about how I apparently just COULDN'T STOP THEM FROM MAKING OUT???)...

Ember Island's arc, so poignant and crucial and such a KEY element in their relationship, was probably plotted well after... six months since the original idea of Gladiator came to my head. I did not think about this one until A WHILE into writing the story already. I was probably almost done posting the Rough Rhinos by the time the full concept of that arc materialized in my head! The beloved Pairs Tournament arc? That was 100% a reader's suggestion, from an ask I got one day! x'D I told them that sounded like a fun concept, and then, once I pondered it some more and fleshed it out, it ended up becoming a highlight for me, it's gone on to become a fan favorite arc of the entire story, as well as The Arc where Toph finally became friends with Sokka and Azula properly!

So. Yep. Basically... I do not plot anything linearly. I can't. If I did, I wouldn't have a clue of where I'm going and I'd lose my steam so fast that I would just crumble under the weight of not seeing the point of what I'm doing. I think I can write without a huge endgame, to a fault, with less demanding stories... but Gladiator was ALWAYS so much bigger than anything my brain could wrap around back when I first started to plot this story, and it's no joke to say that it's really taken me ten years to not only write it, but actually plot the story as thoroughly as I can (hell, only a few months ago I got struck by lightning with A PLOT TWIST that I just wrote yesterday! A crazy development I absolutely HAD NOT thought about, and that I fell in love with completely when it came to mind!). The amount of threads and possibilities and ideas that I've been juggling for AGES is probably a little crazy, honestly.

But yeah, in short, it's wild to think that even though I absolutely planned several things YEARS before they came into fruition, ultimately, the final arc of Part 1 came together before the first one, in many senses. It came together before every arc, basically, and all the material in between was just a matter of building a huge, solid bridge to the point where Sokka and Azula would finally act on their feelings. The process through which I got there absolutely changed me in a thousand ways, my ideas and my plans often wound up switched up whenever a random, crazy idea came up, and I thought to myself "... and why not?" after a few moments of indulging it and being on the brink of discarding it.

As another fun tidbit of information? That's kind of what happened with something as vital to the story as Rei has been, throughout Part 3: she is a character I came up with, not really on the fly, but at relative random once I was planning on having Azula seek Zhao for help over Toph's predicament back in Part 2. I loved the idea of a teenage, dorky maid who had NOT expected to meet the Princess, but initially? She's nothing to make a fuss over because we've been seeing heaps of people who are starstruck by Azula by then. She only stands out for having the dorkiest reverence ever x'D and part of why she stands out too, instead of getting written off, initially, as Zhao's nameless, aimless home staff, is because I had thought about the potential of making her Zhao's illegitimate daughter at this point in time! But I DIDN'T go all in with it on her first appearance... because I wasn't sure. Because I didn't think I could juggle ANOTHER plot point and new character on top of everything I had to set up (at this point I was particularly preoccupied by figuring out how to establish Shaofeng and Renkai as important characters for my future purposes with both of them :'D). So I said "nah, you know what? She's just the cute and quirky maid. We like her. Zhao is decent to her. He doesn't need to be her father."

... About two weeks before going all in on the Hahn's Gambit arc, I was pondering Part 3. The idea of Rei being Zhao's illegitimate daughter returned to mind. My impulse was dismissing my own thoughts, frankly, along the lines of "I mean, wtf would she even do once Zhao becomes Crown Prince? She'd be abandoned in the estate anyway, like, what, she would inherit it or something?" and then... then it struck me. I realized that she could very well just come with him. As his maid. And then, she could become Azula's maid...

... What followed was about three days of plotting that suddenly brought LIFE to Azula's Part 3 early storyline and I suddenly could not BELIEVE I had ever let myself think I could let go of this character and make nothing of note with her x'D

The situation with Rei is, indeed, something that happened often throughout Gladiator. Some ideas I've clung to, some ideas I've dismissed, some ideas have terraformed the groundwork I'd already set up... and instead of panicking about it? I've done what I could to work with it. Hence, that the will-they-won't-they did NOT include the agony of "but would he/she return my feelings?!" wound up being a result of the build up, something I didn't plan all along but that worked perfectly for my purposes. The idea of making Sokka and Azula's relationship not be just some powerful high, the be-all-end-all of the story once it was crystallized and once they were together? That wasn't immediate, either... but it certainly came along as a result of my greed, I'd dare say x'D

When I realized how long this story was going to be, I told myself this fic was basically the landscape upon which I could very well turn all my Sokkla dreams come true. And it wasn't ONLY the Sokkla dreams related to their fluff, or smut, or angst... no, it was even the fact that, for ONCE, I could build a story where Sokka and Azula were NOT the B-story to Zuko and Aang's A-story, unlike how it might have felt in most any other story, hell, even in my long defunct plans for how to conclude the story (and thank God that I dismissed that mess, honestly). Suddenly, I realized I could bring the ENTIRE Avatarverse together, reconfigure every character, repurpose as many of them as I cared to... and create a scenario where the story, every single major beat of it, was connected to THEM. Where the battle against Ozai was no longer some distant conflict with unexplored emotional stakes, it's a PERSONAL one, not only for Azula but for Sokka as well. And while I'm not going to pretend that I'm the only person who has ever rewritten ATLA to this extent without centering the story on Aang or Zuko, I can certainly say that I've never seen anything of this scale elsewhere (... which can be kinda literal too, considering this is, indeed, the longest fic in the fandom...).

But I REALLY didn't start out with that idea in mind. Back when the concept came to me... I really didn't know where I would be going, honestly. I knew this would be a HUGE commitment, but I didn't know how big, exactly. Now that I do know, that I have the full scope of the story in my grasp... I can tell you that yeah, I had no idea what I was getting into and I'm glad I jumped in anyway x'D

If anyone gets all the way through this long post and wants advice on how to cope with ridiculously long stories that are that difficult to plot? I think that my advice would definitely be to give it time, let it simmer, find the moments, the scenes you REALLY look forward to writing. Don't settle for powering towards the endgame without advancing the story beforehand: push things at other points of the story and if, when you reach your big story climax, you find that the leadup is different from what you were expecting you'd have in your hands, once you got there? ... Roll with the punches. Reconfigure the scene in your head. Improvise, to a fault, and build up FURTHER on what you already had... because the likelihood is that the outcome is going to be a thousand times better than your OG plans were. Don't let yourself get lost in enforcing a plot stubbornly: nothing makes a story come to life as vividly as surfing along with the new highs and changes that hit you at the spur of the moment, figuring out how to make your story the best it can be. I won't pretend Gladiator is anywhere close to perfect... but after just looking back on everything that has led us to where we are? I can definitely say I'm very proud of this story's journey, very proud of having jumped into this madness even when my vision of it, at the time when I started plotting, could have never informed me of every crazy thing I'd end up achieving with this story. While some important elements of the story 100% stayed true to my OG concept... I'm really glad that I let myself change certain aspects because it enriched everything I was doing well beyond the scope of what I could grasp back then.

Anyway. Sorry for the long rambling. I got a little hyped haha. Thanks for the ask!

#anon #gladiator #this is a LOT of words too #look this is break day #I finished arc 23 of part 3 #... I only have 10 left to write #*panics*#*hyperventilates*#*gets hyped*#so yeah I answered a few asks and I have a bunch more left #I am sorry to everyone I haven't answered yet #I'll try to get to it soon!#but honestly anon thank you for that chance to ramble about the past #that was a real fun trip down memory lane

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alethiometry · 2 years ago

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what's this aco himym fic huh!!

kate i don't know how much you know about ac odyssey from whatever the hell i or anyone else you follow has posted about the game in the last however long it's been since it came out, so i am very very sorry if none of this makes any goddamn sense.

OKAY FIRST OF ALL i need to say that i have literally never in my life watched a single episode of himym and i do not intend to and i know nothing about it except i'm aware that people have Opinions on how it ended. it has barely fuckall to do with this fic, except that i just cannot think of a fitting title.

the short summary is that this is a kassidas fic where for some reason (have yet to figure this out) brasidas ends up with custody of elpidios and tells him all about how he and kassandra met, how their relationship developed, and how they came to be where they are now (hence the filename).

the long summary is i got WAYYYYY too ambitious with this fic and it mutated from being like a cutesy little wish-fulfillment love story to a full-blown fix-it fic where i want to address most if not all of my most vexing plotholes in ac odyssey, ranging from plot points that make no sense, to character interactions or lack thereof that had zero closure, to a complete rewrite of the very bad no good comphet dlc. and although i hated how the game handled the forced romance between kassandra and natakas, i do think there is/want to see if i can find a way to make their relationship more complex and messy and interesting by removing the romance of it but just making him a more fleshed-out character. part of my worry is that the dlc is so reviled (with good reason) across the fandom that this premise is dead on arrival anyway and no one will like it, not even myself. but at the same time, i still want the endgame of this fic to be kassidas-focused, because they are my everything and to me there is no ac odyssey without them*, and so i have to figure out a way to write some kind of weird love/parental triangle between the three of them even though i fucking hate triangles**

i waver back and forth between the himym-ness of it being due to the fact that for whatever reason kassandra is no longer in elpidios' life (thus bringing it closer to official game canon), or just waving a gigantic middle finger to ubisoft and letting kassandra actually be a mother to her son whom she loves so so much and barely got to spend any time with, but she's understandably pretty tight-lipped about her past because she's aware of the heaps and heaps of generational trauma that's plagued her family and wants to break that cycle, so it's up to brasidas to spill the tea.

another layer of complexity/difficulty in writing all of this is that i imagine elpidios to be around 7 when the story starts, because that's the same age kass was when she lost her family, so then that age becomes sort of symbolic as a milestone. which means there's also the issue of not a whole lot of ac odyssey being appropriate for a kid of that age. like, graphic violence and dark themes aside... i can't really have it be like "yeah and after decapitating korinth's biggest meanest crime lord your mother flipped me over and pegged me six ways to [whatever the ancient greek equivalent of sunday is]" and just... yeah. i don't know. i still think about what i want to do with this fic often, but i think there's a very good reason why i have barely even opened it in almost 2 years.

*this made me giggle as i typed it out bc actual historical spartan general brasidas has like 15 minutes total of screentime in a 100+ hour game. but it's also not a joke because despite all that (and also getting fucking killed at the battle of amphipolis) he still had more chemistry with kassandra than any of the other like 15 actually-romanceable characters in the game.

**another tongue-in-cheek joke/double entendre because it's revealed in the game that pythagoras who did all that triangle math equation stuff is kassandra's biological father and an absentee, deadbeat one at that. fuck that guy fr

#thank you kate!!! i hope you enjoyed this can of worms <3 #this wip is truly such a mess and idk if it will ever see the light of day but tbh i am proud of myself for not deleting it yet lol #ask games

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a-tale-of-legends · 5 months ago

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So Beryl's family is once again catching my eye and I'm going to try and either 1) flesh them out or 2) rewrite them entirely.

One of Beryl's mom was a cop before getting fired after looking too deeply into the connections that her station had - turns out they had connections to Team Rocket, or what remained of them anyway. She knew too much, so she got fired and she is very bitter about that.

The reason I had this plot point for her is bc I wanted Team Rocket to feel more like a threat in GSC? The most harmful thing they do is cut off slowpoke tail ( while it's kinda silly now, given how slowpoke don't feel it, and the tail is still eaten nowadays, I think it was a big deal bc 1) I think it was pretty much the town's property? And TR was taking that and 2) They were doing it illegally at extremely high prices. But even with all that it's not. The Worst thing), and use the radio signal to force the Magikarp to evolve. Which. I don't think they do anything with after that. And of course they try to call Giovanni. All in all, this version of TR is. Honestly pretty pathetic in my book. Like I don't really care for team rocket in general, but this was honestly a bad showing for them. Hence why I wanted to show that they still had some semblance of power after Giovanni left. It's still a shadow of what it used to be, but they're still threatening. Having control over the goldenrod police specifically helps keep their dealings in the goldenrod tunnels/ basement away from prying eyes. At least that's what I want in theory??? I think I need to re-examine the entirety of the TR plot in Johto to make sure all of that makes sense. I think it does, between the access to the basement and later the radio tower.

Anyway I say all of this bc I can't help but feel Beryl's mom gets more of an arc than Beryl themself? Ex-cop who desires justice so much that she ends up being more concerned about the criminal organization than her child who is actively going against them. Learns that she has to chill the fuck down and prioritize her family's well being before her pursuit of justice( also letting go of the copaganda she was fed for years). Beryl is. A kid who wants to complete the pokedex and become a professor. Ends up babysitting two rascals while also helping save Johto. This isn't inherently bad, but you get my want to just rework the family ( including Beryl but I'm kinda already working on it).

I dunno, I'm rambling to try to get my thoughts in order. I defo need to replay the Johto games but again. Taking my time. I'm nowhere near done with the post games I need to complete.

#r rambles #legendverse #oc: beryl jewel #Beryl's ex-cop mom ( as of now anyway) is named Jena

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writing-for-life · 2 years ago

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The Light of Stars (WT)

Okay, after much agonising, I’m finally doing it:

The ginormous (well over the 50,000 words-goal) fanfic I wrote “for fun” last NaNoWriMo and never wanted to touch again, never mind publish, has been haunting me for over 6 months now, and I need to bless and release it so I can get on with my life 🤪

So I've pledged to myself I will publish it, chapter for chapter, tidy it up along the way, maybe rewrite a few things that really weren't thought through when I "just had fun", and quite possibly add bits that I've thought about ever since (November 2022).

I’m aiming to publish one chapter weekly on a Friday, but that might change here and there (might be more or less frequently), so bear with me. You will get an excerpt here, but the full chapter will only be available on Ao3 via the link provided.

A word of warning: This is a full-length romance novel and hence a slow burn. If you’re into shorts that have their MCs f*** within the shortest amount of time, you won’t find much joy in this. I occasionally write those, too, but this is not that. However, good things come to those who wait, also in this one 😉

I will tidy up the posts as I move along and create a masterpost, but this first one needed a bit more of an intro.

And don’t forget that creators really appreciate your likes, but that we’re even more grateful for comments and reblogs.

Here we go…

The Light of Stars (WT) by Writing-for-Life

Chapters: 1/?

Fandom: The Sandman (Comics), The Sandman (TV 2022)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus & Original Character(s), Dream Of The Endless | Morpheus & Original Female Character(s)

Characters: Original Female Character(s), Dream of the Endless | Morpheus

Summary:

This is a story about traumatic pasts, deep empathy and healing, but also one of sacrifice. Most of all, it is a story about choosing love despite knowing it has the power to break us…

Artist Thalia Callaghan has strange dreams, but it soon turns out they are more than just dreams.

Night after night, she enters Dream’s throne room, much to her confusion and his dismay. They reluctantly agree to embark on a quest to find out why Thalia has abilities that are usually not granted to mortals - unless there is a greater plan at work.

Chapter 1 - Juxtapositions (1898 words)

“You can’t be here.”

His voice was soft, and yet, it had startled her because she thought she was alone in this vast hall – she couldn’t even remember how she got there. She turned around, and he stood halfway up white marble stairs that seemed to go nowhere - or did they? It was hard to tell - cascades of light flooded the room through seemingly endless stained-glass windows behind him. She could only make out his shape, but none of his features.

All she could say was: “Who are you?”

He slowly walked down the stairs, his long black robe brushing them with every step. Heavy, yet light. The closer he came, the more his face came into focus. Hard, yet soft.

When he stood right in front of her, she noticed the intense brightness of his eyes. The palest blue, or maybe grey?

Silver.

They seemed cold, and yet they were burning with an intense heat – just like stars.

If she had ever seen someone full of juxtapositions, he was standing right in front of her now: In all his unearthly verisimilitude, all his ethereal physicality.

She had never seen anyone so beautiful. Even so, she caught herself thinking that “beautiful” was the wrong word. He wasn’t beautiful in the usual sense of the word: His features were sharp, his skin pale, he was tall and slender, almost wraith-like. An air of haughtiness surrounded him, but he seemed to radiate serenity at the same time. And it enveloped her within an instant.

Surprising. Unexpected.

She felt the irrepressible urge to touch his face, framed with hair so dark it made him look like a black-and-white photograph. However, her hand stopped midway, or rather: It felt like something, or someone, was stopping it, like an invisible wall.

He looked at her closely, his eyes full of inevitable certainty.

“This dream is over…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thalia gasped and opened her eyes…

Keep reading on Ao3

#sandman fanfiction #dream x oc #morpheus x oc #morpheus x original character #the sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #sandman #fanfic #fanfiction #the light of stars #ao3 fanfic

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spc-rambles · 10 months ago

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Hello, firstly pardon my use of language. I kinda interpreted ‘debate’ as having a civil discussion about opposing views, as opposed to having full on arguments. Twitter landscape for you I suppose.

Secondly I’m so sorry for being so late to reply. I’ve let fanfic plans, personal life and sporadic laziness get in the way of truly reading this reply all the way through until now.

Onto the post itself, you bring up very valid points on how Sodor’s economy has affected the promotion of steam engines and thus the jobs diesels are given, and yes Diesel feeling overlooked because of his significance to Sodor’s history is worth pointing out, but I suppose people have been saying this is casual racism because of the moralities of the engines in this era in general.

Granted ‘James and the Diesel Engines’ hasn’t happened in this timeline so in the context of this episode it’s fitting for him to drive the point home about how diesels can be viewed, however this might not have been viewed as such by as many people had series 14 not had that infamous scene in ‘Misty Island Rescue’ come into the world in the same year.

The one scene where Thomas, the engine who’s worked with multiple diesels for the longest and got a long with them for the longest, on what would be the most popular branch line on Sodor, says to Diesel that diesels aren’t steamers so they’d never be useful. I’m not quite saying that they interpreted the steam v.s. diesel conflict as a racism parallel.

What I kinda feel people mean when they say this is that the Hit era produced seasons kinda were made as their own show entirely. A show with its own, more simple rules as a preschool show. With none of the history and ties to real railways to keep in mind. That’s sort of how they marketed series 8 onwards initially. So unnerving to them with the context of the 65 years beforehand, it was sort of unintentional, with the ‘racism’ being another way to say “Hey little Jimmy, that man who runs the bin lorry has just as important a job as your dad who runs a big company.”

I do love the intention behind ‘Diesel’s Special Delivery’ hence why I didn’t change it too drastically in my rewrite, but yeah context matters to many fans.

By the way, looking at the post you linked when using the ‘cotton candy economy’ term I love how you interpreted the increase in parties. It kinda makes sense if it’s all little events for the public who know Sodor through the children’s books, like those Santa specials or teddy Bears picnic trains on heritage lines. This has really earned a follow. I’m so glad I came here.

🔥 free space

Y'all gotta stop lettin' Tug tell you how to think. Or at least think of him more as a jumping off point than an unassailable authority. I mean, shit, this is a guy who didn't understand why people like Duck until last year.

Tug himself has come around to a lot of things in the last year actually. Admirable of him! Which means if you are one of those people who didn't give certain aspects of the show a chance based on his opinion, maybe its time to reevaluate too.

That said, even now he's still wrong sometimes. That Diesel video is still missing, like, half the picture. And "Diesel's Special Delivery" as an allegory for racism? There's a dicey conclusion to reach.

#ttte diesel #ttte james #thomas the tank engine fanart #thomas and friends

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rainybyday · 2 years ago

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Thought Ramble Time!

(Also, this is, like, biology class time so unless you know what happens to a body when exposed to chemicals you might not get this. Good Luck! :D )

I suggest that those who do not what a biology lesson with a long post should leave to save themselves the headache this was.

Ok so here’s the thing. The fandom likes to make the Lazarus Pit and Ectoplasm as one of the same things with the Pit being a corrupted version of Ectoplasm. The corruption of the ectoplasm is the reason why Jason is always in a Pit Rage or something of that sort.

Let me lay this out.

Danny is a Halfa who is both a human and a ghost. Jason, while different for everyone, will be a Liminal since that's the most common occurrences that people like to write him as. (No, I’m not saying he isn’t a ghost or halfa or anything like that, this is just an idea ramble from the au bin, ok?!)

Jason was dipped into the Pit/Ectoplasm while Danny was ripped apart and put back together in multiple secessions in seconds.

What I am trying to say is how different they both are in means of creation and the different sub species there can be.

Ok so let's start with the easiest - Jason.

Jason was dipped once into the Pit which is ectoplasm. That means he is contaminated with ectoplasm in his body and rewriting his DNA from the exposer of a chemical that no living being should touch. Ectoplasm is for the dead but, while brain dead in a sense, he was very much alive. Think of how someone might get exposed to a nuclear bomb and having their body changing and dying from such occurrences. That right there is what is happening to Jason’s body. Jason is technically dying yet still very much alive, so the question is, how is Jason still alive?

Well, it might be because he is immune or has something in his body that is preventing that. If we look at the history of the Pit, only the al Ghul’s and a selective few are able to leave from the Pit alive while everyone else dies. I think it's because they have a gene or something rare in them, like being the one in a billion kind of rare that makes them immune/prevent them from dying from ectoplasm exposer. Thats like saying someone has type O blood or such.

If that was the case, then Ra’s would also count as well from the millions of times he used the Pit yet still come out alive.

However, exposer doesn’t mean no mutations. I think they both do have mutations that either affect the brain or nervous system (which can explain some of their actions honestly) because of the violent and instant exposer they both had. Such violent methods will have consequences on their bodies even if their bodies are keeping them from dying.

Now what if someone is exposed to the ectoplasm but not skin to skin exposer? Well, that's how we have the Fenton’s.

The Fenton’s are scientist who study ectoplasm and worked hard on their research of that area but based on how unsafe and lightly they seem to take from being exposed by ectoplasm, much less a house hazard of open chemicals, they are being exposed in a slower degree.

Jason was out right exposed to ectoplasm right off the bat in a violent clash while the Fenton’s had years of exposers on them including Vlad Masters. They study the substances, while careful at first, are way more carefree in handling ectoplasm though the years to come. This gradual exposer of ectoplasm is what will mutate their bodies for years so that they, too, are immune to ectoplasm. Not naturally mind you, by a biochemical change of exposer that could have lasting effects on them such as change of eye color of disfiguring or brain damage.

As of right now, Jason Todd, Ra’s al Ghul, Maddie and Jack Fenton are the Exposer Group. They are the people that got exposed by the ectoplasm/Pit and were either mutated or biochemically changed in a way.

Now for the off springs.

For both Ra’s and Maddie/Jack Fenton, they are already exposed and adapted to the ectoplasm, hence, the mutation in their bodies. This mutation is designed into their very DNA, which would also be passed down if given to an offspring.

Namely Talia al Ghul, Damian al Ghul nee Wayne, Jazz Fenton and Danny Fenton.

While Talia, Jazz and Danny are of direct offspring, Damian is an offspring of an exposed offspring. Please keep this in mind.

Ok so since these four are offsprings of those who are exposed and consequently, had their bodies biochemical mutated, that means their bodies also have the mutation that is of the exposer of exoplasm. Originally, this can either mean they have the same mutation their parents have, but since having DNA from unnatural mutated donors is still a half on half chance (because a baby has half its DNA from mom and half from dad) that would mean that Talia would have half of Ra’s mutation while Jazz and Danny have a full mutation in their bodies (because both Maddie and Jack has it) with Damian inheriting 1/4 of that mutated DNA.

Reality would show that mutation is a bad thing to have and for your offspring, however, it would seem that having the mutation might be a good thing since there is not many flaws, unless natural human flaws, are displayed by both the comics and the shows.

This inherited mutation can explain some things like the four’s more intelligent minds or maybe immunity to some diseases. The mutations can be identical for all four or it can be different for each one. However, it has to show that Jazz and Danny will have the most mutation compared to Talia, and Talia compared to Damain.

Originally, the four were going to be called the Inherited Mutated Group, but that's wrong since these four are continually getting exposed to ectoplasm as well.

Danny and Jazz are self-explanatory if you look at the food they fight and the house they sleep in. This version of their house can explain that either the LOL is contaminated as well or that Talia and Damian are making constant trips to visit the Pit. Either way, a constant exposer of ectoplasm will enhance their mutation and potential affects to this as well. Their affects won’t be as harmful since they are all from the mutated line, meaning they are born to adapt to the mutation rather well, but that's doesn’t mean they won’t get a mutation that is at a disadvantage to them either.

Another thing to note is that both Damian and Talia were instantly exposed to ectoplasm as well, as in skin-to-skin exposer.

So as of now, Talia al Ghul, Damian al Ghul nee Wayne, Jazz Fenton and Danny Fenton are all part of the Mutated Group.

Now to the last group which features Vlad Masters and Danny Fenton.

While both are from two different lines, they both do end up in the same subgroup which is to be recreated with the ectoplasm in an instant creation exposer.

When both Vlad and Danny were zapped by the Ghost Portal, they were ripped apart molecule by molecule and put back together forcefully before being ripped again and put back together. Again. In an endless cycle that was too fast for the human eye can see, yet lasted seconds for both of them.

Now here’s the things.

Vlad was part of the exposed line who was recreated, which means his body was not made to take in ectoplasm but was forcefully adapted to do so. This would cause mutations to his body to be less efficient and more harmful on his persona since his body was original not meant for a reaction of ectoplasmic chemicals.

Danny, on the other hand, was born to accept the mutation in his body unlike Vlad. So, when Danny got zapped, his body was far more adaptable, and if I was to go as far as to say, wanting the need of ectoplasm in his body since his body was born mutated. This would mean that his body is more accepting to the mutations and changes his body will undergo and at a faster rate (hence why Danny was able to gain his ghost powers faster than Vlad).

Ok, so now that I said this, Danny and Vlad are of the Recreation Group.

And you would think that we are done but no, we are not.

Danielle. Uggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I- I was going to say she is more mutated and grown backwards or something like that but my brain hurts so I'm a stop.

But yes, that's my biological mutation DNA brain ramble.

So list time!

Exposer (Instant) - Jason and Ra’s al Ghul [Bodies are immune and exposed]

Exposer (Gradual) - Maddie and Jack Fenton / Vlad Masters [Bodies are mutated]

Mutated Line - Jazz and Danny Fenton / Talila al Ghul and Damian Wayne/al Ghul [Direct line of those exposed, DNA mutated]

Exposed Mutated Line (Gradual) - Jazz and Danny Fenton / Talila al Ghul and Damian Wayne/al Ghul [Continues exposer even when natural mutation / Enchanted mutation]

Exposed Mutated Line (Instant) - Talia al Ghul and Damian al Ghul nee Wayne [Mutated line that is violently exposed to chemical, hence, instant mutated change.

Recreated Exposed Line (Gradual) - Vlad Masters [Recently mutated and recreation of biology]

Recreated Mutated Line - Danny Fenton [Mutated and recreation of biology]

#dp x dc #dc x dp #danny fenton #Danny Phantom #danielle phantom #jazz fenton #Maddie Fenton #jack fenton #Jason Todd #Damian Wayne #Talia al Ghul #Ras Al Ghul #batman #ectoplasm #brain rot #literally #ugh my poor brain

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oceanspray5 · 4 years ago

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UMBRELLAS VS SPARROWS PARALLELS AND CONTRASTS

So I already wrote this post but then tumblr decided to eat it and so I'm rewriting it but I am incredibly intrigued by the contrasts between the Sparrow kids and the Umbrella Kids cuz they're VERY striking.

No. 1 - Luther vs Marcus

Luther is NOT a good leader. He's a follower: specifically Reginald's follower. He is very insecure and any semblance of confidence he has is misplaced because his family does not listen to his authority mostly because he is the least experienced out of all of them and hence makes terrible decisions. The actual leader of the Umbrellas is Five or Allison even if Luther likes to pretend his status as Number One gives him any authority over his family.

Luther is also the cause of his family falling apart in S1 and had the most hand in Vanya resorting to going feral and causing the world to implode. Furthermore, Luther doesn't LISTEN to his family which further pushes them apart because for every good leader, communication is important to gain your Team's trust.

In comparison, Marcus is his direct opposite. From what we see in the description, he keeps the family together where Luther tore his apart. He's charming and confident and a good leader and it may imply that he is a good listener if he is also a good leader. His power seems to relate to a "Colossus" because I definitely believe the Sparrows powers are hidden in these descriptions but where Luther resents his Giant appearance due to what Reginald did to him, Marcus might naturally have that power to begin with which means he is confident in it as well, unlike Luther who resents his grotesque appearance and the additional strength it brings.

In essence: we know that Luther's priority is his duty but Marcus' priority is his family which means he probably puts them above duty which is a pretty huge difference which I'll explain more in the next section.

No. 2 - Diego vs Sparrow!Ben

This is very interesting because Diego and Umbrella!Ben, as far as we know, were fair opposites however Sparrow!Ben is definitely not unlike Umbrella!Ben at his core.

The Diego we know is impulsive and hyperactive. Sparrow!Ben is described as pragmatic and scheming along with hyper vigilant. He thinks before he acts (which is like Umbrella Ben) and appears is tactical and cunning verses Diego's "act first, deal with consequences later".

The rivalry aspect is also very interesting to me. Diego and Luther always fought equally for the upper hand. Diego didn't respect Luther's authority and Luther didn't humor Diego either. Their rivalry is two sided. It's too soon to say and I may be reaching, but I think Sparrow Ben and Marcus' rivalry may be one-sided and if that is the case then it changes dynamics significantly.

If Marcus is wiser than Luther, he'd probably give Sparrow!Ben the opportunity to act as Leader (or allow him to think he is). He's defense while Sparrow Ben is offense (which would make sense also because its Sparrow Ben who approaches the Umbrellas and not Marcus who is Number One). Sparrow Ben may possibly resent this because his description strongly implies a rivalry but unlike Luther, Marcus' priority is not his own status of leadership and duty but his family and so that would dictate he tolerate Sparrow Ben even when he's fighting him for no reason.

Just this minor shift in a two sided to one sided rivalry also changes the dynamics between Number One and Number Two significantly.

No. 3 - Allison vs Fei

Allison and Fei are easily very similar in that they may be the smartest person in the room but Allison hesitates because of her experience with her powers. Fei "won't stop until she gets the job done" which implies she does not feel any fear or hesitation. To her, the ends justify the means unlike Allison who has lost too much to justify using her powers for no reason.

Also Allison's powers are auditory and Fei "seeing the world in a different way" gives me the impression of her powers being optical. My guess is Fei works with illusions because both are a form of manipulating people.

As a side not, the quote "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil" comes to mind when contrasting these two. While Allison cannot in good conscience manipulate the ones she loves, who's to say Fei has any reservations about it?

No. 4 - Klaus vs Alphonso

This is a little less clear but I strongly believe that the distinction between Alphonso and Klaus lies regarding how they deal with their trauma.

Alphonso "bears his scars proudly" which may be a result of whatever powers he has. He kicks back with pizza and a couple of beers which are pretty normal habits. Contrast this to Klaus who drowns out any sign and semblance of his powers with drugs and alcohol and tries to forget they exist the best that he can. He hides them even from himself where Alphonso doesn't feel the need to.

Also Klaus, as far as we have seen, has no hands on role during the Hargreeves crime fighting even when they were kids. He may have had training but we never see him use it. Comparatively, Alphonso is described as a direct combatant. Alphonso apparently also enjoys berating his enemies while with Klaus? He's just chilling no matter the situation.

Finally, Alphonso's sense of humor is said to be "biting" which is very different from Klaus. Klaus has a sharp and blunt sense of humor as well but it is never malicious. I would describe Diego's sense of humor as "biting" because he does sometimes goes to far to the point of cruelty but the one thing we can all agree about Klaus is that he never intentionally harms using his words. Even if he snaps, he apologizes or adds a "said with love" at the end so as not to offend.

No. 5 - Five vs Sloane

Hoo boy do I love this one!

Any and all dreams Five had died in the apocalypse. There his one and only goal became to save his family and the world from the apocalypse. His only romantic relationship has been with a mannequin and that is not the healthiest (or sanest) type of relationship.

Five's family is what grounds him and gives him purpose. His power is Teleportation and Time Travel/Time Manipulation which means he can literally travel the world at an instance but that's not exactly his priority after spending so long alone.

Sloane is his direct opposite in that she has dreams and desires and feels stifled by her family despite her love for them. Five's family gives him purpose but Sloane's family infringes upon her individuality.

Her power is harder to guess but I do feel it's a very self contained power that she can use but not in a way that can give her escape. Someone suggested she might have Levitation or Flight and I do believe that can work because like Five's power, it gives her autonomy and movement but definitely not enough that she can leave her family behind and do as she desired the way Five did with his even if it was a mistake.

No. 6 - Umbrella!Ben vs Jayme

The Ben we all know and love was afraid of his power and afraid of being alone. He stayed by Klaus' side even in death and hated the ability he was forced to use. He was so happy just to get a hug from his brother and sister (cries).

Jayme is opposite in the sense that she seems to be an intentional loner. The fact that she has a "snarl you want to avoid at all costs" gives me the impression that she will never hesitate to use her power. She revels in it and that she does not fear it at all.

In the most concise way possible, the difference between Umbrella Ben and Jayme regarding their powers is that: Ben will avoid YOU but YOU should avoid Jayme.

Furthermore, the fact that Jayme's snarl is so threatening has me thinking it has something to do with her power. Maybe something akin to Medusa?

Finally, Ben is smart. We know this. But we also know that he's not the type to use knowledge as a weapon. Jayme's "smart and sharp as a knife" descriptor reminds me of Five in that she WILL use any knowledge she has against you but unlike Five, her morals are debatable because Five has humanity even with how he uses the knowledge he has. We need more info on Jayme before any definitive deduction can be made of how far she will go with what information she can glean but it's safe to say, she definitely doesn't use what she knows passively the way Ben did.

No. 7 - Vanya vs Christopher

Now the most painful comparison is obviously that Christopher, being a CUBE, is still treated by the Sparrows a sibling where Vanya was treated as less despite being human but there's more to the comparison than just the obvious.

Christopher's powers seem as intense and terrifying as Vanya's but also: He's described as "trustworthy and loyal". This is a VERY important contrast because Vanya literally sold her siblings and their lives and traumas in the form of a book and while she may have been justified in doing so, it wins her absolutely no awards in the Loyalty and Trust departments.

Anyway that's what I got. These are all mainly guesswork and my interpretations and analysis is based solely off what we currently know so I may be majorly off but I definitely can't wait to learn more about these new characters but also about what other people think about the Umbrellas vs Sparrows parallels.

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narukoibito · 4 years ago

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St. Mungos, since feeling is first who pays attention and Muggle FWB for the WIP Game?

Thank you for the interest, Anon! This took a while because things in my personal life are in chaos, but thank you for the request.

St. Mungos

This is my Healer!Ginny story that has been lurking in the back of my brain since last year. I’ve written a good amount of words, but then an entirely different plot appeared and now I may have to rewrite most of it, hence it’s lack of progress. But I still really want to finish this one day.

Ginny is a Healer on the 4th floor of St. Mungos. Her first patient is someone named Harry Evans. (This is a Harry never to Hogwarts story.)

The first thing Ginny notices is his eyes. They’re the most vivid, bright green that she’s ever seen. It’s unnerving how unseeing they are. A pressure builds up in her chest, an aching pain and nostalgia she can’t place.

The morning light from the window washes over his face, dancing off these round wire-rimmed glasses. His dark hair (black like a blackboard) appears to be on some ineffable scale of entropy — tousled and pointed in every which way, yet somehow it’s charming and works well with his sharp, unconventional features. Some of that hair spills over a bandage wrapped around his forehead.

But it’s also the pleasant, vacancy in those eyes that strikes her, like she’s looking at the embers of a once bright flame. He looks like an innocent, half-lost child, his lips curled in a ghost of a smile.

Her clipboard and supervisor tell her his name is Harry Evans. The name creates an itch at the back of her head, something she wants to scratch at, but the odd sense of nostalgia must be misplaced significance. He’s her first real patient.

He must matter to someone important to have his own room on the fourth floor of St. Mungo’s Ward 49. Usually they lumped all the long-term spell damaged patients in one place, let them wander under the supervision of one Healer. But this room is spacious and private, protected by complicated wards and concealing charms. Someone really cares about Harry Evans, and for some reason it causes a subtle burning behind her eyes. Maybe it’s because he looks like a newborn fawn.

Who wouldn’t want to protect him?

“You’re new, but he’s not difficult. It’s mostly maintenance,” her supervisor says. “He makes it easy, don’t you, Harry?”

Harry’s gaze drifts toward the window.

Ginny scans his file. It’s actually surprisingly thick, but a lot of it has been redacted. The summary page sums it up though: he’s twenty-one; he has been here for three years; the diagnosis is vague (severe curse damage); there’s a long slew of attempted cures, none of which were successful obviously; now it’s about making sure he’s comfortable whatever that means.

“All right, let me know if run into any trouble.” Her supervisor is already starting for the door.

“Um — what about — I know his treatment is maintenance, but can I…?” Ginny’s not sure what she’s trying to say exactly. Harry Evans has seen a lot of Healers if the list of attempted cures is any indication, but she gave up Quidditch to become a Healer in the long-term spell damage ward specifically because she wanted to do something.

Her supervisor gives her a rueful smile.

“Stick to maintenance. Harry Evans is a special case.”

Ginny turns back to Harry, who is facing her again, looking painfully innocent.

Somehow she doesn’t need convincing that he’s special.

since feeling is first who pays attention

This was a gift for the Harry/Ginny Discord Incognito Elf exchange. I managed to finish in time to gift it, but I want to take some additional time to rework it before posting. It is missed moments over the years as Ginny and her feelings for Harry evolve.

Ginny presses her face against the wall, peeking between the stair spindles. Her bright brown eye lands on the two boys hunched over a chessboard. Her brother Ron and Harry Potter, who, despite appearing to be losing, doesn’t look the least upset.

Harry Potter.

The Harry Potter is in her house. Looking comfortable on their couch despite the faded, mended cushions. His face crinkles in laughter at something Ron says, his green eyes bright with contentment. Ginny doesn’t miss the occasional look of awe at the things she’s always taken for granted. It’s almost as if he can’t believe he is really here.

He isn’t what she expected – isn’t what she imagined he would look like after all those years listening to Mum recite her favorite bedside story, about the heroic Savior of the Wizarding World. She had pictured neat hair, a dashing smile, someone who would recognize a comrade in her and take her on all sorts of adventures. He would be different, he wouldn’t discount her dreams of flying and doing everything her brothers could and more.

Instead, Harry Potter has the messiest hair ever, a sheepish smile, and clothes that he nearly swims in. Oh, and he has somehow missed the memo and found the comrade in her brother Ron instead.

Her fingers curl around the spindle. Not for the first time, a spike of envy shoots through her. If only she were a little older or a boy. Then maybe she would be the one playing chess with Harry. Maybe she would be the one to hide under his invisibility cloak and battle trolls and face You-Know-Who with him.

Ginny presses her face a little closer and lets out a sigh.

But Harry Potter is kind. He ignores all the times she has made a fool of herself. And he has the greenest eyes she’s ever seen. They are as green as those glowing jars of pickled toads at the Potion ingredients store Mum had taken her to. Pretty and kind and not dismissive of her patched clothes or her glowing red face.

Harry Potter. If he likes Ron, if he looks like he actually likes the Burrow, if his face grimaces at the attention at Flourish and Blotts, could it be possible that one day he could like her too?

Muggle FWB

Hah, so this was the first idea that I rambled off to my beta, which ended up with long, long emails back and forth on this idea that I never wrote! Here’s a snippet of that exchange:

Harry thinks he only see Ginny as a little sister, so when she suddenly proposes that they become friends with benefits in uni, he’s floored and says they’re practically family. Blinded by her anger over the rejection, she kisses him so that he knows what he’ll be missing. Of course, he then realizes his attraction to her. As their physical relationship progresses, they develop feeeeeeelings (gasp!). But Ginny thinks she only wants a physical relationship and once they have sex, it'll get out of her system. Harry has to work to convince her that she actually wants more.

But the backdrop is that Ginny doesn't think she wants more than sex is that when she was 11, she was kidnapped by Tom Riddle for as a kid (they met at the park a lot, and none of her brothers/Harry/anyone realized he'd been "befriending" her). Kid Harry figures out where Riddle took her and saves her.

Ginny wasn’t molested but she/Harry/everyone else is deeply affected by this event even though they don't realize it. Ginny thinks she's overcome it, and she's still a BAMF some the books but she's not fully over it as shown by her fear of being emotionally involved with Harry. It's why Harry refuses for a long time to think of her anything else outside of a brotherly way.

Ginny has a really bad sexual experience (though it doesn't go all the way), and as a result she's disgusted by men (not scared), but doesn't feel any revulsion with Harry. After not being able to get close to any boy for a long time, she decides to proposition Harry. Harry, being noble, absolutely refuses at first, but she kisses him, he's very attracted to her, and is convinced by her that he's helping her get over this tick. So it's FWB but it fits their personalities, and still stays true to the Ginny is subconsciously afraid of a real relationship/intimacy with Harry, who realizes he wants more but doesn't know if just getting to be physical is more than he'll ever deserve and he wants what he can get if not real love from her - until, of course, he realizes he can't do it anymore and she has to decide if she's brave enough to actually let herself feel.

HAHA omg I’m reading over my emails and I talk about getting into The Changeling and only sleeping 4/5 hrs a night and then the exchange ends with my coming up with my alternate dimension idea of Harry getting thrown into the BWL!Neville universe. So you guys can see why this story never went anywhere despite several thousands words between me and my beta.

–

Whew, long post. Hope that satisfied your curiosity!

I’m honestly not sure there are any left, but let me know if you have any other wip asks! Though note that I will be rather absent in the near-future because of life.

#wip title game #anonymous #healer!ginny story #st. mungos #since feeling is first who pays attention #muggle au fwb #languishing wips #i'm not gone for good but will be gone for a little while #just popping my head in now and again #because life #hinny #harry/ginny

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heraldofzaun · 3 years ago

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what are your thoughts on viktor and being neurodivergent? though like, obligatory disclaimer that if riot ever did come out and say that "hey! viktor is canonically [something]" that would be catastrophic but i think it is a little bit of fun for consideration

Oh! Well I like to think he's autistic, which is partially because I am too. (Of course in canon it would be catastrophic because haha, oh man, look at how they've treated Blitzcrank's biographies ever since they gave him an updated one. There's some coding in there, alright, and I am... not a fan...)

I’ve posted a lot of long posts recently (this is no exception) and this is also on a kind of tricky subject, so I’m readmore’ing it.

So anyways, while I have to admit that some of the reason why (my) Viktor is autistic is because I am - I think that you can make a general semi-convincing argument. Or I'm so wrapped up in my own interpretations that I can, at the least. Anyways, from here on out when I say Viktor I mean my personal take. Your mileage may vary on applying this to other interpretations.

(Also, thoughts on new lore Jayce's being kind of coded to be like, a stereotypical autistic dude? (If you have any I mean.) I don't like that Riot is doing it, of course, but I've seen a few good rehabilitative takes on it in fandom. @hamartio's Jayce springs to mind, because their Jayce has been developed over the years and also written by someone who like. Cares. Anyways, I have my own personal Jayce ideas that rely on his old lore so he's not really an asshole there, at least in those regards, so I don't really have many thoughts on new Jayce. I think new Viktor is... pretty coded as well, but it’s also insanely stereotypical. The whole “always working, always wants certainty, gets into automation not because he (primarily) wants to help those injured by catastrophes in Zaun but because the catastrophes interrupt his work” thing makes me uncomfortable. Maybe I’ll write sometime on why the rewrite of his lore fails, in my opinion, to hit upon the same themes of his first - would that be of interest to folks? Anyways, this parenthetical is too long.)

I think that autistic Viktor is cool and makes sense, somewhat because of the fact that the ways he goes about solving his problems are, er, unorthodox. (Of course I am not saying that the GE is because he’s autistic, because that’s stupid. This is why I’m kind of squirrely about talking so openly about what I think Viktor’s got going on, and why I don’t really trust if a non-autistic person headcanons him as autistic. There’s a lot of room for that headcanon to just reinforce the “autistic people are supergeniuses with no emotions that work based off of Facts and Logic” trope, and I hate that.) Since a lot of autism is about feeling adrift from/at odds with neurotypical society, I think that Viktor’s general solutions and also his idealistic leanings in the face of everything Zaun is tracks for that. Roboticization makes sense as a way to stop suffering and death, because it’s more achievable than individual feats of immortality through magic or whatever. Viktor doesn’t really get why people would be so opposed to it - he’s made it clear that while he dislikes his own emotions and wants them gone, he doesn’t expect others to cast off theirs. (Maybe he expected that when he was in the thick of his emotional pain, mostly because he couldn’t imagine others choosing differently than he at the time, but not in the current day.)

Of course, externally, when the scary cyborg man who admits to cutting off his own limbs says “no, being a robot is cool, you can keep your emotions even”, any Zaunite (or any person) is going to interpret that as “he is definitely lying”. Viktor doesn’t quite make that leap. (I have thoughts on the whole Theory of Mind concept and I don’t mean to say that Viktor can’t empathize - he does, and does too much - with others, but I think that in this instance he just can’t quite understand sometimes why people don’t believe him.) He also doesn’t quite get why people would be so attached to the bodies that they’re currently in, especially if he can make a mechanical replica. Or why people might want to die and pass into non-existence after a life well lived. (To him, personally, there’s always more to do. Also he’s terrified of death but that’s another topic.)

I also think that Viktor’s empathy is of the hyper- rather than hypo- kind, partially because I feel like outside of self-advocacy groups the mere concept of autistic hyperempathy is seen as like... impossible? It’s also because he generally seems to be kind of an emotional guy in canon before Stanwick, what with the lore saying that “almost no trace of the original man remained” in reference to Viktor reemerging as someone without emotions. That, combined with the fact that he was described as having a “hope to better society” before everything went down, kind of makes me believe that he was a naive idealist type. (Again, not that autism makes you naive, but...) But yes, hyperempathy. Hence "no pain, no wars, no suffering, no death” being part of his ideology for the Glorious Evolution. He gets pretty ripped up about people being hurt, and it’s really only gotten worse over the years as he’s grasped the full scope of pain in the world.

Personally, I write pre-Stanwick-incident Viktor as someone who is still somewhat awkward with expressing emotion, but it’s not due to him not having them. It’s due to the fact that the ways in which he naturally expressed them and in which he interacted with the world were just... seen as odd/different/etc. (I don’t think Runeterra has an autism diagnosis or particularly excellent psychology, even in Piltover and Zaun, so he just gets the “you’re a weird dude” treatment for his entire life.) Stimming or smiling a certain way or talking a lot about his interests or, you know, the general autistic existence is weird to most people around him, as it unfortunately is in real life. So he’s more reserved until you actually know him, because he’s just masking all the time. (Fun fact about my Viktor: he’s pretty expressive under that actual mask of his. It helps to not have to micromanage expressions all the time when he isn’t experiencing a bout of flat affect due to [gestures vaguely at everything else going on with his mental state], although he sometimes feels poorly about not being able to manage himself. But that’s his issues, and I think it’s good for him to show emotion.)

Side note - Stanwick was able to do such a number on Viktor due to: a) Stanwick being very charismatic and manipulative, on top of being an actually smart man and scientist - he’s really a great example of a “good Zaunite”, in the sense of being good at being what the culture rewards, b) Viktor actively dealing with the death of his parents and Stanwick being an older adult who’d treated him kindly and had never seemed put-off by Viktor’s oddities, and c) Viktor not realizing that he’d get backstabbed, because yes he knows that that happens in academia but Stanwick’s nice. Whether or not the outcomes would have been the same if Viktor were more competent at being “a good Zaunite”... well, probably not. Viktor ended up where he did because of who he is.

(Secondary side note: Viktor has a very strong and very black-and-white sense of what’s right and wrong, as well as general black-and-white thinking. You can see how that would have... not helped in the situations he was put through.)

This is getting kind of rambling, but I guess the point of this is that Viktor’s wanting to remove his emotions may be cloaked in the language of them being “inefficient” or “unhelpful”, which would feed into autistic stereotypes, but it’s really more of a matter of them being too painful and raw for him to process. He feels too much and hurts too much, and no amount of positive emotions in the world will (in his mind) make up for the pain he’s felt and will feel. So it’s better to not feel anything at all, isn’t it? At least then you aren’t overwhelmed by it all.

Viktor just hasn’t fit in with Zaun for all his life, really. Not as an odd child who can tell you all about science-fiction and techmaturgy, not as an odd and reserved teenager/young adult, not as a bright young doctoral student still dealing with grief but trying to make the best of it, and... not as the Machine Herald. But now he’s given up on trying to fit in, for better or for worse.

(Other miscellaneous and less serious autistic thoughts on him: generally a pretty fixed diet, partially due to being autistic but also due to what’s easily available in Zaun + what agrees with his stomach. A fan of weight and pressure - I like to think that the reason his outfit is like that is that he finds it comforting, and also that he has a weighted blanket or two around. Special interests of general techmaturgy, robotics, and science-fiction. He can talk for hours about any of those, and has. Both his parents were mildly spectrum-y, his mother a little bit moreso, so they just kinda assumed that him being him was out-of-the-ordinary and a bit strange but not something “horribly wrong”. Oh! And his third arm, which is under a little less conscious control than the rest of him, still stims sometimes when he’s working or otherwise not paying attention to it.)

This was very long and jumped around a lot, because I find it hard to give a convincing paragraph-by-paragraph argument about exactly why I think that Viktor is autistic, or rather why I headcanon him as such. But hopefully it was interesting! I just have a lot of thoughts on him, as well as the general state of autistic-coded or perceived-as-autistic-by-individuals (both allistic and autistic) characters in media and so it’s very hard to do anything concise without branching out into discussing other topics.

#anonymous #headcanons | beneath the mask #//preemptive remark that these are my own thoughts on autism which are filtered through the lens of my life experiences #//as well as that of some aspects (emphasis on some) of academic research. baron-cohen can choke with his theories #//also i did not explain some terms here under the assumption that those reading would probably already know them. feel free to ask if not!

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natsubeatsrock · 4 years ago

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Should Hiro Mashima die?

My answer is no.

Though, this isn't about actually killing Hiro Mashima. Kinda got you with the title, though, huh? (This was originally going to be titled “Is Hiro Mashima dead?” and released on his birthday. You’re welcome.)

This post is about a widely debated topic of analysis known as the "death of the author." I've talked about this a few different times in passing in a few posts over the years. You could argue that this belongs in my series rewriting Fairy Tail and I considered placing it there. However, I feel that it's better that I keep this detached from that series. This topic concerns criticism of any series. Naturally, being a Fairy Tail blog, I plan on engaging this with the context of Fairy Tail's author being dead or not, hence the title. Still, this is helpful to think about for analysis of plenty of other series.

Again, though, my answer is still no.

Let's start with the origin of this term. The term comes from an essay by Roland Barthes called "La mort de l'auteur". Use your best guess as to what that translates to. I highly encourage you to read the essay as it's pretty short. It's about six or seven pages, depending on the version. There are three main points to his essay.

Creative works are products of the culture they come from and less original than people expect.

The idea of the author as the sole creator and authority of creative works is fairly modern.

The author's interpretation of a work shouldn't be considered the main or only interpretation of a work.

Of these three points, I'm sure you recognize the last point. But first, I want to talk about the other points. I believe it is important to understand the arguments being made as a whole.

The first point should be fairly uncontroversial. The vast majority of creative works use established language, tropes, and elements to create a new thing. I wouldn't go as far as Barthes does in this regard. Not to mention, this is somewhat weird to know considering his third point. However, I agree that creative works should be considered products of the culture and genre they come from.

The second point is a bit trickier for me. To be clear, the point is true. You only have to look at various cultural mythologies as an example. There isn't a single version of the Greek myths. There are several versions and interpretations of the various stories and myths.

Even recent popular fictional characters have had several different interpretations. This is especially true with comics. There have been multiple different Batman interpretations, Spiderman runs, and X-Men teams that fans love. Fans even love and appreciate numerous forms of established characters like Frankenstein's monster and Sherlock Holmes. So, as a consumer and critic of art, I can understand this.

My problem is as a creator of art. I understand this being contentious when it comes to something like religious myths. But, if I create something, I want to get the credit for it. I want people to love my music or writing. But I also want people to recognize me for my skill in crafting it.

This is true even if you hold to the first point Barthes made. Even if you believe that no art is truly unique, isn't the skill of synthesizing the various tropes and influences around a person worthy of credit in and of itself?

Then again, I am not without bias in this. Barthes says that the modern interpretation of the author is a product of the Protestant Reformation. As a Protestant myself, I get that my background plays no part in my view of this. Barthes also blames English empiricism and French rationalism, but personal faith is the biggest influence on me that Barthes lists.

That being said, there's also something Barthes completely misses in his essay. In the past, stories were passed down by oral tradition. As the stories were passed down from generation to generation, they slowly evolved and became what they are known today. Scholars today can gather a general consensus of what a story was meant to be and some traditions were more faithful about passing traditions down than others. However, you can't always tell the original author of a mythological story the same way we know who gave us stuff like the Quran or the Bible.

As time passed, stories were written down. With this, it was easy to share single versions of a story and identify its creator. We know who made certain writing of works even before the 1500s. For example, we have the Travels of Marco Polo and Dante's Inferno and know their authors. We could tell the authors of works were before the Protestant Reformation.

By the way, the Reformation happened to coincide with one of the most important inventions in human history: the printing press. Now you can easily make copies of an individual's works and you don't have to rely on word of mouth to share stories.

I can't stress how important an omission this is. The printing press changed the way we interact with media as a whole and might be the most important invention on this side of the wheel. And yet Barthes doesn't even mention as even a potential factor in "the modern concept of the author"? In his essay about understanding written media? That’s like ignoring Jim Crow in your essay about Birth of a Nation bringing back the KKK.

Now, we get to the final point. The author's original intentions of their works are not the main interpretation. This is understood as being the case after they create the series. Once the work is written and sent into the public, they cease to be an authority on it.

It's worth recognizing how this flows from the other two points. Barthes argued that works of fiction are products of their culture and our current understanding of an author is fairly modern. Therefore, the interpretation of the reader is just as valuable as that of the author. As Barthes himself wrote, "the birth of the reader must be at cost of the death of the author."

At best, this means that a reader can come away with an interpretation of a work that isn't the one intended. With Fairy Tail, my mind goes to the final moments of the Grand Magic Games. My view of Gray's line "I've got to smile for her sake" has to do with romantic feelings for Ultear. I don't know of a single person who agrees with this. Mashima certainly hasn't come out and affirmed this as the right view.

It's good to recognize that a work can have more meanings behind it than the ones intended by its creator. Part of the performing process is coming to a personal interpretation of a work. In many cases, two different performances will have different interpretations of the same work, neither of which went through the creator's mind. At the same time, both work and are valid.

That being said, there is an obvious problem with this: readers are idiots. Not all readers are necessarily idiots. But enough of them are idiots. The views of idiots should have as much weight as that of the creator. Full stop. Frankly, I maintain that idiots are the worst possible sources to gauge anything of note. (At the very least, policy decisions.)

I know this as a reader who has not been alone in misunderstanding a work. I know this as an analyst who has had to sift through all kinds of cold takes on Fairy Tail. (Takes that are proven wrong simply by going through it a second time. Or a first.) And I definitely know this as a creator who has to see people butcher my works through nonsensical "interpretations."

At the same time, the argument Barthes made comes with an important caveat. He also argued that works are the products of the culture and surroundings of the author. Barthes isn’t making the argument that author’s arguments don’t matter.

As far as I can tell, Barthes doesn't take this to mean that those influences are worth analyzing. Doing so would be giving life to the author. However, there should be some recognition that a creative work didn't come to exist out of nowhere. There's a sense in which Fairy Tail didn't just wash up on the shore chapter by chapter or episode by episode. It came to be as part of the culture it came from.

Now, you'll never guess what happened. Over the years, the concept of "death of the author" lost its original intent. Nowadays, people usually only care about the third point. "Death of the author" is only brought up to dismiss "word of God" explanations of work, after its release. I'd venture to guess that most people using the term casually don't know anything about its roots. I honestly don't know how Barthes would feel about this.

I can understand what might fuel this view. A writer should do their best to write their intended meanings in a work. It would be wrong of a writer to make up for their poor writing after the fact. I don't love Mashima's "Lucy's dreams" explanation for omakes. I know Harry Potter fans don't love the stuff J.K. Rowling has said over the years.

At the same time, my (admittedly Protestant) understanding of "word of God" and "canon" is that they have the same authority. After all, the canon IS the word of God. It is a small section of what God has said, but it isn't less than that.

Of course, it's worth recognizing that nearly every writer we're talking about isn't even remotely divinely inspired or incapable of contradiction. This understanding should cut two ways. An author should never contradict their work in talking about it. Write what you want and make clear what you want to. On the other hand, writers can't fit everything they want to in a work. I'll get to this soon, but their interpretation should be treated with some value.

By the way, people will do this while throwing out the other arguments made by Barthes in the same essay. People will outright ignore the culture and context that a work comes from in order to justify their views. Creators are worshiped and praised for their works or seen as the sole problem for the bad views on works.

What worries me most about this modern interpretation of "the death of the author" is its use in fan analysis. People seem to outright not care about the author's intent in writing a story. They only care about their own interpretation of the work. Worse still, people will insist that any explanation an author gives is them covering up their mistakes. Naturally, this often leads to negative views of the work in question.

This is just something I'll never fully understand. It's one thing if you don't like something. If you don't get why something happened, shouldn't your first move be to figure out what the author was thinking? Instead, people move to the idea that it makes no sense and the writer's a hack.

If all of this seems too heady, let's try to bring this down to earth. Should Hiro Mashima die so that his readers can be born?

Hiro Mashima is one of many mangakas who were influenced by Akira and Dragon Ball. He considers J.R.R. Tolkien to be one of his favorite writers. Monster Hunter is one of his favorite game series. He's even written a manga series with the world in mind.

It would make sense to look at Fairy Tail purely through this lens. You could see Fairy Tail as a shonen action guild story. Rather than seeing the guild as a hub for its members, Fairy Tail's members treat those within it as family. Rather than focusing on one overarching quest, the story is about how various smaller quests relating to its main characters threaten their guild. Adopting this view wouldn't necessarily be an incorrect way to engage with the series. (Mind you, I haven’t seen this view shared by many people who “kill Mashima”.)

Though, there's more to Fairy Tail than the various tropes that make it up. If you were to divorce Fairy Tail entirely from its creator, you'd miss out on understanding them. There are ways Mashima has written bits of himself into the series. Things that go farther than Rave Master cameos and references.

My favorite example is motion sickness. I often think back to Craftsdwarf mocking motion sickness as a useless quirk Dragon Slayers have. It turns out that its origin comes from his personal life. Apparently, one of his friends gets motion sickness. He decided to write this as part of his world.

This gets to the biggest reason I don't love "death of the author" as a framework for analysis. I believe the biggest question analysts should answer is why. Why did an author make certain decisions? You can't do this kind of thing well if you shut out the author's interpretation of their own work. Maybe that can work for some things, but not everything.

I've had tons of fun going through Fairy Tail and talking about it over the past seven years. More recently, I've been going through the series with the intent to rewrite the series. I've made it clear multiple times in that series that I'm trying to understand and explain Mashima's decisions in the series. I don't always agree with what I find. However, trying to understand what happened in Fairy Tail is very important to me.

It's gotten to the point that I love interacting with Mashima's writing. I talk about EZ on my main blog. I can't tell you how much fun I've been having. I'll see things and go "man, that's so Mashima" or "wow, I didn't expect that from him." HERO'S was one of my favorite things of last year and I regularly revisit it for fun. It's the simplest microcosm of what makes each series which Mashima has made both similar and distinct.

Barthes was on to something with his essay. I think there should be a sense where people should feel that their views of the media they consume are valid. This should be true even if we disagree with the author's views on the series. But I don't know that the solution is to treat the author's word on their own work as irrelevant.

There's a sense where I think we should mesh the understandings of media engagement. We recognize that Mashima wrote Fairy Tail. There are reasons that he wrote the series as we got it and they're worth knowing and understanding. However, our own interpretation of the series doesn't have to be exactly what Mashima intended. We can even disagree with how Mashima did things.

I know fans who do this all the time. They love whatever series they follow, but wish things happened differently. Fans of Your Lie in April will joke about [situation redacted] as well as write stories where it never happens. You love a series, warts and all, but wish for the series to get cosmetic surgery, or take matters into your own hands.

And who knows? It's not as if fans haven't affected an author's writing of a series. Mashima's the perfect example. I've said this a few times before, but Fairy Tail has gone well past its original end at Phantom Lord (or Daphne for the anime fans). Levy rose to importance as fans wanted to see more of her.

Could Mashima have done that if we killed him?

Before the conclusion, I should mention another way “death of the author“ comes up. People will invoke “death of the author“ to encourage people to enjoy works they love made by messed up people. Given everything we’ve said up to this point, that’s obviously not what should be intended by its use. For now, though, I do think that we can admit that we like the works of someone even if we don’t agree with everything they did as a person. (Another rant for another day.)

In Conclusion:

“Death of the Author” is an imperfect concept, but it’s not without its points. I don’t think we should throw out the author’s intent behind a work. However, we should be able to have our disagreements with the author’s views without killing them.

#fairy tail #hiro mashima #death of the author #i'm back #and what a way to return #i've been meaning to do this forever #fav

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squirrelcrow-po3 · 3 years ago

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okay so descriptions in a human au. incredibly long post lol

btw imma say fuck it and say they have unnatural hair colors to match their fur colors

icestar (bluestar): hmhmhm i imagine her being mixed (most of the characters will be if im being honest). shes middle eastern and south east european! maybe georgian or romanian (like me heh). she has bluish hair, but she is definitely graying. i imagine she dyes her hair, but her roots are gray and all her hair is gray as her mental state slips. she has a pixie bob. shes tall and slender but leanly muscled.

maplestar (firestar): i imagine him as somewhat shorter and muscular, but only buff as an adult. as an apprentice, hes slightly chubbier and soft looking. he is black, maybe mixed with pacific islander. he has curly ginger hair as an apprentice, but probably has locks as an adult. he also has facial hair as an adult. he probably has freckles.

foxtail (redtail): so their whole family line through adderfang is east asian but he is also mixed black. he's on the shorter side but well build muscle-wise. he has curly hair that's mostly black with a ginger streak. he is still trans as a human obviously lmao.

tigerclaw: he's a big fuckin boy. hes absolutely massive, height and muscle wise. i imagine him as mostly south european. as someone whos mom is italian, tigerclaw acts like every fucking italian man ever (/j lmao). he has long, shoulder-lengthed dark brown hair thats usually slicked back.

spottedleaf: again, as foxtail's sister, she is mixed east asian and black. she is also short and is rather slim with a rectangular body type. she usually has braids with bangs. i imagine she has a hairstyle that's half up in space buns. she also has a 'streak' of ginger in her hair.

boartusk (yellowfang): im glad everyone agrees that shes a slavic babushka. i imagine her as taller and plump but typically slouched over, especially during into the wild. shes an old lady! she has graying black hair that's usually partially covered and a very tired face. again, during into the wild shes somewhat disheveled but after she joins thunderclan, she becomes more comfortable and put-together.

lionheart: also a big boy. but more plump. like muscular fat if that makes sense. he's probably a bit taller than tigerclaw. dad bod and very friendly looking. he and his sister are mixed black and south asian. he has medium lengthed curly hair that's golden blonde. he definitely has a lot of facial hair as well.

erminestrike (whitestorm): like icestar, hes also middle eastern and southeast european. but he also is northern european from his dad's side. he has rather straight white hair. he's always very well-groomed and looks nice. he's also tall and thin like his aunt, and has a slightly athletic build. hes a pretty man.

flashfoot (runningwind): he's a lanky lad. got a real runner's build, obviously. hes mixed middle eastern and northern european. he has medium toned skin but is paler than his sister. he has dusty brown hair that's somewhat short and wavy, usually a bit messy. he looks tired most of the time.

mousefreckle (mousefur): shes shorter than her brother and plump/curvy. like i said, she's mixed middle eastern and northern european. and she has darker skin than her brother. she has thick, wavy dusty brown hair that she typically has in a ponytail. she obvious has freckles, hence her name lol.

willowcloud (willowpelt): i think i mentioned this in a post before when describing her sons as humans but she's mostly southeast asian. she's very motherly looking. shes tall and fairly muscular. even if she's kinda buff, she's soft looking and dresses femininely! she has thick, slightly curly pale gray hair. she usually has her hair in a bun.

leopardsmoke (leopardfoot): she looks a lot like her son, tigerclaw. shes incredibly tall and very muscular. kinda scary looking and intimidating! she's also southern european obviously. she has very sharp features. she has short, pin straight, very dark brown (almost black) hair. she usually styles her hair in a half-up half-down ponytail.

rosewish (rosetail): so since she is pretty much mixed with most of the clans as a cat, she is meant to be pretty racially ambiguous as a human. so her race isn't fully known. she has dark to medium-toned skin with short wavy hair. her hair is mostly brownish gray with a rosy red streak. she has sharp features.

patchsong (patchpelt): he is short and somewhat slim. i imagine him as being black with vitiligo. he has dark brown medium lengthed curly hair. he probably wears glasses as well. like foxtail, he is also still trans as a human lmao.

ferretfang (longtail): like his mother, he is racially ambiguous. he is quite lanky and slender. very fucking tall. probably around the tallest in the clan when hes an adult. he has shortish, spiky hair that's is layered. the top layers are silverish, while the bottom layers are sandy brown. she has sharp features and looks angry most of the time lol.

sandstorm: again, she is racially ambiguous like the rest of her family. she is tall like her brother. as an apprentice she is rather thin, but she beefs up a bit as an adult. as an apprentice, she has medium lengthed sandy hair that's very choppy. she probably cuts it herself. as an adult, she has slightly longer, more well-groomed hair. she has freckles.

darkpool (darkstripe): previously described him in a post. through his parents he is middle eastern, southeast asian, and european. he has medium toned skin. his black hair is straight and somewhat thinner, and is medium lengthed. usually he doesnt style it and is very flat. he wears glasses as an apprentice but stops as an adult. he is taller and thin.

flintstripe (graystripe): also described him in a post. like his brother he is middle eastern, southeast asian, and european. he has darker skin that darkpool but he still has a medium skin tone. he has grayish hair that's also medium lengthed, but more choppy and layers. usually, he pulls it into a ponytail when he's an adult. he is shorter and plump.

raven (ravenpaw): he is mixed black and northern european. he is shorter and thin. kinda awkward looking, especially as an apprentice. but he grows into himself after he escapes to the farm. he probably also beefs up a bit on the farm, but isn't really buff and is more athletically built. he has medium lengthed hair as an apprentice, but has shorter hair as an adult. he also probably wears glasses like his dad.

dustcloud (dustpelt): he is also mixed black and northern european like his brother. he is short as well, but is more average built. he probably needs glasses but doesn't wear them. i imagine he has braces as an apprentice. he has short dusty brown hair. most likely in an undercut or something like that.

frostberry (frostfur): i imagine her as north european. very, very pale lmao. she's also thin and flat. she hair long white hair that's straight at the top with slight waves at the bottom. she has slightly sharp, dainty features. i imagine she looks somewhat fairy-like. along with her pale skin, she probably has flushed cheeks most of the time and long eyelashes.

brindleface: again, since shes related to spottedleaf and foxtail in my rewrite, she is asian. but i imagine her as mixed southeast and east asian. she has long brown hair with a blonde streak. she looks very very pretty and feminine... shes the type of ladies who wears pretty sundresses with big bows and big sunhats.

goldenflower: she is very much a mom and she looks like it. she is tall and plump. but i also imagine shes also quite strong. she is black and south asian like her brother. she has a long golden afro. sometimes she pulls it into a low ponytail. the anime mom hairstyle but bipoc edition lmao. she has very soft facial features.

speckledawn (speckletail): old mom! she's black. she's tall like her children lionheart and goldenflower. but she's also more average in body type. she has a curly bob thats golden brown and graying. she probably has freckles.

sparrowpelt (halftail): he is middle eastern. he has short, well-groomed dark brown hair. he is tall and slim like his son flashfoot. since cats' tails help with balance, he might have had a head injury that fucks with his balance.

smallear: he is a short and plump. he is south asian. he has grayish white hair that is cut rather short. idk he probably just has small ears still lmao.

foggygaze (one-eye): she is northern european. she is short and plump like her daughter mousefreckle. she has white hair thats medium length and wavy. and has freckles.

dapplestep (dappletail): she is mixed black and southern european. she has vitiligo. she has brown and blonde hair. her hair is long and curly, but it's also graying.

thrushlight (thrushpelt): he is also mixed black and southern european like his sister. he has lighter, medium toned skin than her. he has short lighter brown hair that's also graying. he has freckles.

ok now to cats who are born or are kits during the arc

cindershine (cinderpelt): she is mixed black, south asian, and european. she has lightish medium toned skin with freckles. she has gray hair thats thick and curly. she has similar dainty features like her mother but is plumper like her dad. she probably wears glasses. she is also still trans lol.

brightheart: she is also mixed black, south asian, and european. she still has the scar across her face. though it is most likely stab wounds in a human au. she has short, straight hair as an adult. her hair is gingerish gold. she is well build and tall. she has freckles.

swiftpaw: he is mixed black, south asian, and southern european. he has small patches of vitiligo. he has curly, dark brown hair thats in an undercut. he probably cuts it himself. he probably has patchy facial hair like the typical teenage boy facial hair lol.

lynxrunner: she is also mixed black, south asian, and southern european. as an apprentice, she has long, curly hair. but as an adult, she cuts it short. her hair is dusty goldish brown. she is tall but surprisingly thin and twiggy, unlike both of her parents.

brackenshade (brackenfur): he is eastern european and middle eastern. he is lightish medium toned skin with a lot of moles. he has short, wavy bluish hair. he is pretty tall but only slightly muscular. has more of an athletic build than being bulky.

thornsnap (thornclaw): he is northern european. he has pale skin. he has gingerish brown hair thats usually slicked to one side and is well-kept. he has a pretty average build but is slightly muscular. he is also average in height. he definitely has thick eyebrows lmao.

mallowtuft (cloudtail): he is mixed black (and maybe pacific islander) and east asian. he is fairly tall and plump. but also kinda like lionheart, he has a semi muscular dad bod. he has very long, white locs that he pulls up into a bun. as a kit and apprentice, he has unkempt curly hair.

ashflake (ashfur): he is mixed southeast asian, east asian, and european. he is quite short and thin, with a delicate build. probably slightly underweight. he has medium lengthed, choppy hair with messy layers. he has dusty brown hair. his hair obscures his eyes sometimes. he has freckles. he wears glasses.

ferncloud: she is also mixed southeast asian, east asian, and european. she is also rather short but more plump and curvy than her brother. she definitely looks more healthy than him. she has thick, slightly wavy brown hair with blonde highlights.

brambleclaw: he is mixed black, south asian, and southern european. as an apprentice, he has medium lengthed, golden brown locks that obscures his eyes sometimes. as an adult, though, he has shorter, buzzed hair and facial hair. he is tall and muscular like his father.

tawnyspark (tawnypelt): she is mixed black, south asian, and southern european. she has vitiligo. she has long braids that she pulls half-up into a ponytail. she has blonde streaks in them. she is tall and muscular as well and has sharp features.

snowspeckle (snowkit): he is mixed black, south asian, and southern european. he has rather dark skin. he rather plump and quite tall. he has medium lengthed, curly white hair. he is deaf and has a hearing aid.

stormheart (stormfur): he is mixed middle eastern, southeast asian, and european (both from his mother and father's side). he is plump like his dad. though he has shorter, messy dark gray hair. he looks kinda messy most of the time and is very comfy all the time lol.

featherbreeze (feathertail): even though she's only temporarily in thunderclan, ill include her. shes also mixed middle eastern, southeast asian, and european (both from her mother and father's side). she has long, wavy silver hair. she is tall and slender. she is also blind in my rewrite, and typically carries a white cane.

squirrelflight: she also is possibly born during the first arc so ill include her and her sister. she is mixed black (maybe pacific islander), and all of sandstorm's mess jfskdf. she has darkish medium toned skin. she has curly dark ginger hair that she usually pulls into a ponytail or into space buns. she has a lot of freckles. she is plump and curvy.

leafpool: yeah so i gotta include her too. she is mixed the same races as squirrelflight. she is tall and thin, and is very twiggy. she has long, straight hair thats mostly brown with a blonde streak. she usually has it half up half down. she is also trans.

#IF IM MISSING ANYONE PLS TELL ME LMAO THIS TOOK ME FOREVER

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houseofsannae · 3 years ago

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A Fistful of Munny - Extended End Notes

Notes for A Fistful of Munny that don’t fit within the character limit under the cut!

Please, read the fic before reading this post

All right! Welcome to the extended notes, in which I go into excruciating detail over a bunch of stuff that doesn’t matter, because I like the sound of my own voice!

Let’s start with some more broad stuff that didn’t make the exclusive end notes space. To do the Fistful of Dollars homage, I needed a place where I could have two villainous factions intersecting for Strelitzia to play against one another. After some brainstorming and asking for help from other people working on the Entwined in Trine Sorikai zine (and ultimately ignoring all their very good suggestions (Sorry, guys!)), I eventually realized that the Wasteland from Epic Mickey was a perfect place for this story, both in the sense of having mooks to destroy without Strels committing actual murder, and in the thematic sense of forgotten characters. There was just one issue.

I hadn’t played Epic Mickey.

And that is how I spent my summer, playing both Epic Mickey games. Both, because I was looking for a good location to set the story in in-world. Since the Wasteland is based on the Disney theme parks, I was hoping to find one based on Frontierland, their Western section. Such a location did exist – Disney Gulch – but only in the second game. Which meant I had to play Epic Mickey 2, as well. (The first one is a better game, but that’s not really the fault of the developers; they were not given the time they needed to make it as good as the first one. Here’s a video with trivia about the series that goes a little into the development.) I also needed to learn the Mad Doctor’s ultimate fate, since I wanted his Beetleworx/Blotworx to be one of the two villainous factions. In the game, depending on whether you chose the Paint (Paragon) or Thinner (Renegade) path, the Doc is either redeemed… or dead. Neither of which was helpful, so I had to invent.

But let’s talk about characters and why I picked them in order. The short version for why these choices, at least on the Final Fantasy side, is set-up for later. Obviously I can’t go into detail why. Before that, let’s talk about the Beanie Baby.

Chi is, as I hope you were able to guess, Strelitzia’s Chirithy. I’ve brought it up several times, but I personally do not like mascot characters. There are a few exceptions, but Chirithies are not one of them. Like I said, KHUx isn’t what happened in this AU, so you’ll have to wait for in-universe answers on why it’s a cat now. Out-of-universe reason is this was the only way I could make it palatable for myself. I arbitrarily decided on a gender for it because as a real cat, it would have a sex. Canonically Chirithies appear to be genderless, and in Japanese refer to themselves with the gender-neutral (but masculine-leaning) boku. I would’ve left Chi that way, save for the fact that he’s a completely normal cat now. (And before you ask, no, not every real cat that appears in KHΨ from this point on is a Chirithy.)

As for Strelitzia herself, it’s hard for me to pick up a character’s voice when they’re… not voiced. Intonation and cadence do a lot for me mimicking the way a character talks, so it’s a bit more difficult when they don’t technically speak. I tried for a mix between Sora and Kairi, while still keeping her defining character traits of being shy, but also impulsive.

You may notice that while she’s started remembering faces, if not names, the Player’s name and face still eludes her, despite her (canonical. Deal with it.) crush on them. There is a story reason for this, and will become clear once Luxu takes centre stage.

The name “Jane” was chosen with more consideration than just “Jane Doe” being the standard name in (at least my corner of) the English-speaking world for a woman of unknown identity. See, the Man With No Name actually has three names. In A Fistful of Dollars, he is referred to (by one character in one scene, once) as “Joe”. “Joan” might have been a more clear homage, but I figure Jane makes sense. And as you might guess, in the next fic, Strels will be going by a different name, still not her own. She’ll remember her name… eventually.

One might think I could’ve picked any old Cid, and one would be wrong for reasons I can’t explain yet. In fact, I can’t explain much of anything surrounding him yet. What I can say is no, Cidney Aurum is not dead, she’s just not related to Cid Sophiar in this fic verse. An unfortunate consequence of where I wanted to put each of them in the narrative; making them not be related was the only way it made any sense, geographically speaking.

Hyperion on the other hand, I can talk about. He’s one of the Gremlins in Epic Mickey, and… wait, first things first. Gremlins are from an abandoned Disney film based on a Roald Dahl book, itself based on the cryptids that supposedly haunted airplanes and caused them to malfunction, the earliest known written-down mention of the concept being from the 1920s. The film never got made, but the designs Disney would have used were adapted into a second printing of Dahl’s book, and they were later used in Epic Mickey. Hyperion is, like the publishing imprint that Disney owns, named after a street that Walt Disney used to live on. In-game, Hyperion is in Bog Easy (based on the Haunted Mansion), not Disney Gulch, but his name stuck out to me as being particularly fun, so I picked him instead of trying to figure out what Gremlins actually are in the Gulch (they have names in the files of Epic Mickey 2, but not in the actual game, so it would have been a hunt).

Regardless of where the setting ended up, for the second villainous faction, I was always going to plop down the good old Don. More things I can’t talk about. For everything FF7, know that I’m always going to be pulling from a mix of the original game, Remake, and Machinabridged. Hence, Corneo’s outfit is a mix of his original and Remake designs (which basically just means he’s wearing blue jeans instead of brown). I didn’t think bringing in his three lieutenants from Remake was necessary, especially since this was supposed to be a kind-of small operation.

Leslie is picked up and dropped from Remake pretty much unchanged. I needed someone to do the murders Strels couldn’t, and even if he’s not a complete asshole, he’s still mostly an asshole. Have we ever seen small, Materia-like balls used to cast magic before…?

Onto the fun bits, which is the Disney characters. We’ll start with Percy, who is from a Goofy short called “How to Ride a Horse”, from 1950. And that’s about it. The conceit in Wasteland is that all of the Toons there were basically actors, and they wound up in Wasteland if they were forgotten (that’s not exactly correct, but I’m generalizing). This is interesting, since two of the Toons in Epic Mickey are Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow, both of whom… are residents of Disney Town in Kingdom Hearts, having shown up in Birth by Sleep. So that’s an interesting continuity snarl that I’m going to just ignore.

Persephone and Pluto, on the other hand, are from an earlier short called “The Goddess of Spring”, from 1934. It was one of the projects Disney tried as practice for Snow White. If you’re about to protest that his name should be Hades, not Pluto, then you’re going to need a time machine so you can tell them back in the 30s. The Goddess of Spring is a musical, in the sense that every single line is sung. Watch it for yourself. There’s a video with better quality floating around YouTube, but for some reason it’s the French dub. And that’s why both of them sing most of their lines. I tried matching the meter of their actual parts, but Persephone’s doesn’t actually follow a syllabic pattern that I could make out. I eventually gave up and just gave her the meter from the start of the short. Pluto’s was easier to manage (and more consistent).

The skeletons are Disney veterans, presumably the same ones from “The Skeleton Dance” (1929), but more specifically they’re mimicking what they did in “The Mad Doctor” (1933), the first appearance of our other villain. They’re fun.

The original Mad Doctor was supposedly named “Dr. XXX”, according to the name on his door. This was before the modern film rating system was put in place; it was a different time. In the original short, the Mad Doctor kidnaps Pluto (the dog) with the intent of cutting him in half and putting his front half on a chicken For Science!, and Mickey follows him to his castle to rescue the purloined pooch. The short wasn’t a musical in the same vein as “The Goddess of Spring”, but… the Mad Doctor’s only spoken lines were a song (aside from evil cackling). While I had already decided to do the “Toons that sang in their short can only communicate through song” with Persephone and Pluto before starting on Epic Mickey 2, I hilariously discovered that the game developers had done the exact same gag with the Mad Doctor, most of his lines in the game being sung. (In Epic Mickey there were no fully voiced lines, so he speaks as normally as anyone else does). Which made it easier to write his songs here, since I could just rewrite his songs from the game. I used to write alternate lyrics for songs back in high school, so this was an interesting trip back in time for me. They were stuck in my head for weeks afterwards, but it was worth it.

I believe that’s everything for the characters. Let’s talk about Keyblades.

It irks me that three people in KHUx have the same Keyblade. Ephemer, Skuld, and Strelitzia all have variations of Starlight. Now, in KHΨ, there is only one Starlight, and it belongs to Luxu, so I’m going to have to decide on different Keyblades for each of them. (Ephemer’s has already been decided, and I haven’t started brainstorming for Skuld yet. No I do not need suggestions, thank you). Pixie Petal bears a noted (by KHWiki) resemblance to one of Marluxia’s alternate scythes, so that tangential connection was enough for me. Both siblings have flower-themed Keyblades – it makes sense to me.

You might notice a few disparities in the magic. These are on purpose, and will eventually make sense. And that’s all I can say on that at the moment. ;)

Oh, yes, one important thing I probably should have said on the main notes: I’m not going for a realistic depiction of amnesia here. Anything I got right was entirely accidental, and I’m fairly certain there’s not much. There might be a story reason for why it works the way it does… and it might be the same reason why other people from KHUx have or had amnesia in the present day…

You know what’s funny? Although Orcuses look more impressive than Invisibles, their stats in Days are actually worse. I’m fairly sure that this is because the only time we see an Orcus, it’s actually an illusion cast over Xion so that Roxas will fight her to the death. There are no other stats for them (according to KHWiki), since they’ve never been used elsewhere.

A friendly reminder that Apprentice Xehanort invented the term “Heartless”, which was why Aqua didn’t know what to call them until Mickey told her. Thus, nobody from the era of the Keyblade War should know the term “Heartless” without being told by someone in present day. “Darkling” was the term they used instead. I’m fairly certain KHUx ignores the continuity on this (so why should we trust its continuity for anything else, hmm?)

I think that covers everything! Or at least everything I’m willing to share at this point. If you’ve read this far, thank you! I appreciate your dedication! ^_^

#kingdom hearts Ψ #fanfic #kingdom hearts #strelitzia #fic notes #a fistful of munny

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