#so I went on a bit of a tangent

[yoyo-s-coffee]

AY YO WHO THAT GUY

[starrynightsxo]

at this point suzanne collins should just take my money. writing the hunger games trilogy is one thing but a prequel with the main villain of the original as the main character? I was SAT. then, to rob me even more, she writes a book about the mentor of the original games who, most of us, if not all, end up feeling some sort of, if not a certain, likeness towards him which is developed in that book, of course. I'm basically throwing money at her at this point. there's so much scope here and I will be SEATED each and every time I kid you not.

so what's next? because I sure as hell am waiting for it. finnick's games? certified banger. mags' games? forecasted success. annie's games? absoloutely yes. even wiress who has more mention in sotr?? the way suzanne collins gives us a trickle of someone's games, leaving room for her to create a whole new book (or more!) if she pleases is just incredible.

take notes everyone, take notes. I know I am.

"thank you suzanne" we all say in unison 🙂‍↕️

[mimiri22-6]

This has probably been discussed before, but the way Nani was animated in the surfing scene seemed So much more professional compared to David. I've never surfed and haven't watched real surfing probably ever BUT

We see David on the waves first and he has this stutter in the water, a trip to put it. It's So subtle, but the moment Nani took to the waves it was like she Was the waves. Effortless looking, smooth but also Walking on waves, with Power. I noticed that difference and went back to David and I noticed his "trip."

Everything in animation is Deliberate and honestly I think this attests to that. Nani was set to "ride the waves" of her surfing career while David does it as sport, just to catch them when the opening comes. She Lit Up while riding, she worked on that water but she also Loves it like a 2nd skin. I may not surf but when I swim, I swim. I understand that feeling with water, maybe not salt water but water and the waves sometimes nonetheless, the way it just feels like nothing else. A hug, a home, a 2nd skin. The rush of swimming till I'm breathless, seeing what I can do This time in This pool. I had the entire deep end to myself last year at a pool because, for some reason, No One wanted to be in it. Kids adults, teens. The only people with me were my friends because we were antisocial and it was Barren. When I say I couldn't help myself I mean I did Not want to get out for any jumps or want to even hold onto the ledge that long. I full sended myself until we had to leave for food.

It was my Best experience swimming and I imagine Nani has felt that freedom almost every time she's surfed. Maybe one Really good day in the water, but even in slightly crowded pools or a good creek and I feel at home again. And I imagine That's what she feels every time she gets on a board with the intent to catch a wave.

The way she's animated in her body and her face makes me believe she's in her Element in that scene. It's so So well done.

[magentagalaxies]

finally downloading the footage from my interview with the kids in the hall at the rivoli and long story short get someone who looks at you the way mark looks at scott here

[butter-the-spark]

Shout out to Barry the Quokka from The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, it's technically their birthday so happy birthday to them (I don't care if they're not real I WILL be wishing them a happy birthday by posting about it online)

I do not have a better picture of them, I would have drawn them but my motivation to draw recently has been zero and I also don't know how to draw sonic characters yet😓

[enjoyvoidblack]

our big post was getting long and it won't let me message so I thought I'd just come bother you here asldkfjsad I am like. so 1000% certain there is mention in the text that the initial purpose and efforts of Jonah and the Institute were to research the fears and prevent their many catastrophes, and that somewhere along the line he came to the conclusion that this wasn't viable, that the world and the fears simply didn't function in a way that was conducive to meaningfully stopping them from doing anything. which was how he settled into the position of 'well then I am going to use the instruments of power to save ME and build a ladder to free myself personally from their clutches forever' I def don't know when he started to turn from that, but i'll have to go back through the transcripts and find it again.

I do get that the narrative is written with Jon as the focal point, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for Elias to be sympathetic--he certainly doesn't make himself sympathetic TO Jon, or any of the Archives crew (beyond what I find to be an interesting amount of patience, understanding, and restraint he shows for them), but I still think like. Part of the beauty of Jonny's storytelling is that there is a kernel of completely understandable humanity to most everyone that's presented with any depth in the series, even the people we DON'T like. The "people here don't have excuses, they have causes" is again really excellent wording. There isn't really a lot of the usual karmic style reasoning or justice in this series; it isn't about Good People doing Good Things or Bad People doing Bad Things, it's just. People Doing Things, while under the influence of powers that are at once cosmic and beyond us, and inherently OF us.

adsfkjas this is getting long too I'm so sorry you activated a trap card here but idk. He absolutely is both manipulator and victim. He did all that shit, and all the while it's being done TO him, and he's walking this incredibly razor thin line between feeding his god/being empowered by it, and bc of it's nature knowing in intimate detail every nasty thing that awaits him should he fail (and I think being deathly afraid of it). That gif from Knives Out lmfao, compels me.

(apologies this probably isn't hugely coherent but there we are)

Thank you I am chewing on this ask violently. You Get It.

Unfortunate that tumblr killed your paragraph breaks, because I now can't find the section easily, but that thing about Jonny's character work in this series entirely consisting of aspects of "completely understandable humanity" is SO deeply how I feel about it. This is part of why I love horror of this kind so much. The horror being the fact that no one can really do anything to stop it opens up a space where the characters don't need to be presented along clear lines of good and evil, or even helping a cause or hurting it. It's a lot closer to how real people react in a natural disaster, if anything. There is love and selfishness and incredible acts of violence and cruelty and understandable failings and greed and fear, and pretty much all of it has a root that you can see, if you know enough about the people doing it and the circumstances to really feel where their mindset must be. I'd say Elias is functionally the closest thing TMA has to a narrative scapegoat, but that doesn't mean he is one. I almost feel like he's there as a pressure valve for the story, to be a villain if people need one to make sense of what's going on without having to constantly confront head-on the horror of the way the setting traps everyone in it. He can be made that kind of scapegoat, but only really by ignoring the parallels to Jon and the letters sent to him in older statements, and the way both show how the Fears drive the people who learn about them into more and more desperate straits.

It's kind of like that with all the older avatars. Simon Fairchild throws people off of stuff for a joke, because he's had more than 400 years of being steeped in the knowledge that humanity is both insignificant in the span of the universe, as well as utterly incapable of stopping the course of the Fears as they exert whatever influence they will by the force of sheer bulk. Peter Lukas never had a chance - he was born into this, isolation was his family and religion and paradoxically from childhood his only possible road to belonging. Adelard Dekker thought he was helping, as did Gertrude, even as they both fed the things that claimed them alongside those efforts. Nikola Orsinov was so far away from having an identity anymore that she couldn't go back if she wanted to, if she had even had enough left to want. Her world would have just been a home that was more like herself, and who hasn't wanted that? They're easier to vilify because their outlooks are harder to understand until the very end of the series, but looking back it's so clear that they were also just people once, and the writing never really lets you forget that.

If I said I'd tried to make all of these replies short, you probably wouldn't believe me. And Yet. I am not NORMAL about this show and the way Jonny writes people.

[pynkhues]

https://www.tumblr.com/pynkhues/769329551222472704/im-a-canon-vers-loustat-believer-but-sometimes

This is a great point you make. In Paris Louis really is in a similar position to Lestat when he came to New Orleans. Louis is grieving Lestat, Lestat grieving Nicki. Both are protecting secrets about their pasts and looking for a way to keep living. I would even say that both are putting forth a bit of a performance with their new partners, though for different reasons. To some extent I even think Claudia has some parallels to Lestat in that way too. In trying to leave and escape her restrictive family life she ends up finding a companion that she gets to choose for herself. The cyclical themes are so fascinating

Thank you, and yeah, it's a really interesting parallel to think about. This feels a bit of a tangent, so please bear with me, haha, but I remember going to a lit event many years ago that had selected readings based around the theme of home, and in the introductory speech, the curator had said that they'd expected a lot of variation from the submissions to the theme, and there was in a lot of ways, and yet a central throughline appeared that home is a place you leave. It's something I've thought about so much over the years, especially as I live in a different state from the one I grew up in now, and it was one I thought about a bit while watching s2.

It's really interesting to look at in that context of the unholy family because as you said, there is this drive to escape home for both Lestat and Claudia (and Gabrielle) that Louis just doesn't really have. I think you feel that in what they do to escape these places that they're from, but I think the show also underscores that really in what a homecoming means for the three of them.

Claudia experiences her home in Rue Royale as a place of powerlessness and volatilty that can lead to violence, and returning to it steps her straight back into that ten-fold, just as Lestat experiences his home in France as a place of abuse, loss, and violations of his agency and autonomy, which he experiences again, ten-fold, at the trial in Paris, and for Louis, New Orleans has always been, despite everything else, the place where he had a family who he loved, and so of course he goes back and finds the only family he has left - his husband and the ghost of his daughter - there waiting for him.

It's tragic in a lot of ways, because I think there's this sense thematically in the show that the place you're from can change, but it probably won't change for you, no matter how many years you're gone, or the circumstances in which you return to it. Home is a place you leave, and how it held you when it had you will always be the arms you find yourself in when you're back in reaching distance, for better or for worse.

[basketobread]

Has Lunara gotten the Wyll dance scene yet? It just happened to me and she was my first thought. I imagined her coming around the corner with some bread in her mouth or something and stumbling upon his little ballet routine, and hes just like "oh hey" like it wasn't super obviously intentional. But she's so overcome with social anxiety that she just starts staring at ants or something. Meanwhile, Wyll is just like 😑

SIAHAIDSUHDSIDA NOT YET!! she's still in act 1 so we're gonna have to get her to act 2 for that one. BUT YOU'RE SO RIGHT SHE WOULD JUST STARE AT HIM WITH THE BIG OL EYES... fun fact: even though lunara INSISTS on traveling with ONLY WOMEN!!! she likes to keep wyll around cuz she thinks hes just the sweetest dude ever and if i could, i wouldve added him to the team but the party limit is 4 </3

[pyro-madder]

wanting to show positive interactions between the hunter and various npcs vs wanting to stick to canon writing (nobody gives a shit about you)

Like... the Doll is "preset" to care for any dreaming hunter. Gehrman is introduced as your guide but after telling you the basics, only directs you towards optional stuff (the sheer betrayal i felt upon realizing that lmao) and fucks off to take a sad little nap for the rest of the game. I thought it'd be funny if, being part of your subconscious, you'd hear his voice in your thoughts sometimes à la Cruller in Psych0nauts - but also, you're just another hunter to him.

A few citizens are openly nice to you without ulterior motives, and most of them are outcasts like you ; Gilbert who's a fellow outsider, the Dweller ostracized for his disability (edit : his general appearance moreso and possibly his link to an abandoned place of worship as a whole), and Arianna who deals with the general stigma that comes with her profession (+ her link to Vilebloods, for those who Know). She and Adella are also grateful for you guiding them towards a safe place, nothing surprising.

Now for other hunters. I live for Gascoigne's friendly tag-along across Central Yharnam but agree with the hypothesis that it was cut to make the player feel more isolated and alone, and we know how it would end either way.

Then Djura. I raise an eyebrow whenever I see the term "befriend" for taking his deal ; yes, you'll pacify him and he'll give you cool stuff, but then will tell you to fuck off with no additional dialogue. I also wanna mention he doesn't sound the tiny bit surprised/betrayed if you break the deal, which says a lot ; to him too you are just another hunter and he knows how it usually goes with hunters. I could go on about Dju in particular but his detachment towards you is extremely understandable from his position in-game.

Eileen and Simon are recurrent encounters who are amiable by default, but even then running into them comes across as "oh hey you aren't dead yet, good for you lol" to me.

Alfred is... Alfred ? Also amiable by default, open to the point if feels out of place, and though he thanks you for getting him to the end of his questline he (supposedly) offs himself immediately afterwards, his obsession faith prevailing upon anything and anyone else. i'm at loss here sorry

This is non-exhaustive, we could speak of Valtr and Patches and Annalise and so on. but these were some characters I like to depict along the Hunter ; Gascoigne, Eileen and Djura as mentor figures, Alfred as a comrade, Simon as a companion in misery, and so on - stuff you can expect in my fanart basically - while still meeting the fate they meet in-game (except dju who's just chilling if you don't go out of your way to make it otherwise).

But in-game, you have no name that matters, and almost no ones gives you their name either, you only know them from item descriptions when it's not from a boss' health bar. You're all strangers to one another fighting and surviving from the same mess, and you - Good Hunter - are the latest wedge thrown in the gears, with no previous connection to anyone like the different members of the many factions you meet in the giant chessboard that is Yharnam and its surroundings. Still, you get those small moments of respite, and they're enough to hurt when they're taken away, sometimes by your own hand in a final act of mercy, no matter how predictable the end becomes.

[candyredappledragon]

Does Furret participate in Pokémon battles or are they moral support?

both actually! furret is a support pokemon! he has a moveset to help others and- ah sorry i got a "little" into competitive but you know for fun! florian inspired me to make a team that involves with pokemon i love and build it from there. though furret prefers to be my moral support. i grab him, hug him tight and i forget about my loss.

though some of my pokemon do enjoy the quiet and relaxing life so its a win-win for us! i leave some of them with my grandparents to help them around the house or do activities. i am very grateful for them!

[clarabowmp3]

fave things about where you live?

this is so funny because complaining is literally part of our national identity LMAO but things that i am grateful for:

the warm climate, like the humidity is still terrible for allergies or overall health but at least i dont live some place where it snows, I fear the cold and darkness would finish off my mental health in 1 winter

safety + corruption-free + mostly non-discriminatory: i know I take this for granted sometimes but it is soooo safe here, our politicians are (supposedly) paid high enough to prevent them from being susceptible to bribes etc. so its not a perfect govenment but i would say that its better than most. In terms of racism etc, I think they try their best to minimise its effects but there are so many times when im the only Indian at an interview or in a class or certain teachers/professors will pass some joke in Chinese/Singlish which, let me just say, is incredibly humiliating??? not only does it go over your head while everyone laughs you are essentially the butt of some inside joke that 70% of the population gets BUT NOT YOU ughhhhhh i hate teachers like those

citizenship benefits: this was based on my academic performance but I think its a pretty big deal that i had the opportunity to even receive vouchers (or cash if my household were in a lower tax bracket) yearly + instead of me paying for college I am getting paid to go to college (my scholarship is enough for me to save some of it) so not only will i graduate without any debt I will have a net positive balance which is such a blessing

so while I'm very lucky to live here, I feel like im caught in a weird place where I both am and am not a minority. Like indians are still considered one of the main races here but 1) its the lowest percentage (like 7-10%? i cant rmb) 2) its alwyasss south indians theyre talking about which is fine but also you cant blame me, a north indian, for not having much of a vested interest in a national identity that i dont recognise at all. so its just frustrating that technically I am not labelled a minority but there are certain practices and attitudes that result me in being treated like a minority booooo

[queer-omens-in-the-archives]

🎱🐇

hiii!! thank you for the ask :3

🎱 ⇢ post your AO3 total stats

(we have been on AO3 since 2012!!)

fun fact: our lifetime word count according to our writing project tracker is literally four times that. most of that is NOT upcoming WIP -- we've got so much written that will literally never see the light of online!!

🐇 ⇢ do you prefer writing original characters, reader inserts, or a mix of both?

reader inserts!! though this was actually a tough question (see thought process below, ended up heavily reflecting on why/where we write OCs lol) because we don't do much of either dsfhsdf. put under a cut because it did get real long

[writers truth or dare ask game]

reader inserts are only an occasional thing for us, but like. they are a fun challenge in and of themselves!! how do we write the reader in a way that will allow actual readers to see themselves as Reader, how do we minimise author bias? how do we make Reader work with the characters in the universe we're writing in? what does it take for our story to feel believable, how many liberties can we take before suspension of disbelief breaks? etc.

they're a really fun way to 1- explore canon characters in different contexts and dynamics than you'd usually see them in, and 2- engage with other people in the fandom (reader insert fic is possibly the only type of fic for which we actively think about the audience reaction, and take it into consideration, while writing. usually the extent of our minding the audience reaction before publication is when we reach the editing/polishing stages, like, "okay we wrote this for ourselves and we're pretty happy with it. did we word things in a way that makes it all reasonably understandable to other people? is there prerequisite information that the reader needs to know / be reminded of, that we thought was obvious but maybe isn't outside of our head?")

meanwhile we're really not OC guys, in the sense that "making up our own guy" isn't quite as fun for us as exploring/remixing character material that already exists. and in a writing context we tend to think of characters as "tools to tell our stories and/or explore the universe" first and foremost. so we'll make up characters if/when/where we need something specific for the story, and that's that. so for us OCs are not fun to write per se because they're really just one part of the overall mechanics of writing!!

and like. sometimes our OCs really grow into their own, but it's not a "omg I'm having fun with my blorbo" thing. we don't explore our OCs, they remain attached to the story they're in. even in our original writing we can be very fond of what we do/did with our OCs, but they're still just tools for us to tell those specific stories, writing them is just furthering our exploration of the story (and its themes and concepts and worldbuilding and etc), we don't do it for the OCs.

(thinking in particular of our OC Turisa whom we made up for to escape an empire (Mello/Near fantasy crossover AU). she started as a very one-note character, because none of the canon Death Note characters really fit BOTH the empty space we needed someone to fill in the plot AND the dynamics we wanted to show empire!Near having with other people. and then as we kept writing, she ended up being Conveniently There And Suitable for other places in the story, so we developed her further, and she ended up taking up way more room in Near's and Matt's lives than we'd initially planned for, but like... that's it. it's logistics. she's not fun to write per se, she's just... part of our fun writing the story. if that makes sense lol)

[polar-iced]

Just want you to know that I just read the first two chapters of your vampire fic and gaughh I'm loving it so much. God bless you for spreading the lieutcule agenda and the Jirving Shame Complex agenda at the same time and also having him be a vampire. Absolutely inspired. Can't wait to see where the fic ends up going :)))

AAAAAA thank you this means a lot to me 🥹🫶

TERROR LIEUTCULE FTW!!! they have taken over my brain. send help

also you wanna know what's funny. the Jirving Shame Complex™ is definitely the main motivator for the fic. the vampirism? entirely secondary lmao. when i first came up with the idea my brain went hah wouldn't it be funny if jirv turned into An Actual Literal Monster. wouldn't it be funny for that to happen to the guy with the HUGE shame and guilt complex? and then i thought about vampires being hurt by religious items and i was like 👀 whump jirving time!

[tortoise-teapot]

when i'm ill with migraines one of the only things that relieves it is a hot shower directly to the forehead. so i spend a lot of time in the shower when im ill, whether it's on or off. with the water off it's the darkest room in the apartment and nice and cool. i lay so my face is next to the drain so i can just hurl if i need to

what i never expected was for my cat to emulate that in his final hours. face right next to the drain for convenient puking and everything. i was assuming he would pick his favorite hiding spot in the closet. but no. he went Where You Go When You're Sick--The Shower.

my point is it's made my migraine shower reprieves oddly bittersweet. he was so smart and he loved me so much 😭 a CAT went in the coolest, wettest part of the apartment, instead of warmest and dryest, because it's what i do when i'm sick 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 my baby

[madaqueue]

hai quinn ^_^ i must rant about this since me and my friend have talked about this au since they’re writing it and I MUST rant about it (using the title reader for this since it’s easier) .. greys anatomy au w dazai + reader, dazai being derek shepherd and reader being meredith grey (we have no idea who will be addison and mark so if u have any ideas then tell hehe) ANYWAY reader as meredith and dazai as derek, basically following the greys anatomy timeline. they meet as a one night stand, reader finds out dazai is their boss later in the morning, and just following up the timeline..

oh my gosh and this au my friend was also talking about as a one for fun; college au except the bsd cast (+ reader) works at different popular fast food places or cafes maybe and like it’s practically rivalry between the places, but reader and dazai go through the slowest slow burn to ever slow burn of the slow burns 🙏 okay had to rant about these to someone else have a good day quinn :3 — 🪷

AAAAAAHHHH MY DEAR LOTUS I LOVE THESE IDEAS SO MUCH???????????!!!!???? OKAY ALSO YOU MUST FORGIVE ME ….. I HAVE NEVER SEEN GREYS :(((((( BUT !!!!!!!!! i do LOOOOVE a little medical au :3333 oooooh okay okay i DO have thoughts on the diff specialties they’d be though!!!!!!!!

to me i feel like i could see dazai as palliative care OR peds CKSKCKDKDK (like very comfortable with death, maybe even peds onc???? i think he would just get along well with dying people but also kids too idkidkidk :333)

chuuya hmmmmm ….. my initial gut reaction was cardiology for some reason like they just have a Complex about something CKDJCJDJD (sorry cards i love you i promise) but at the end of the day they are willing to sit down and do the work and save lives yknow??????

kunikida is EM i will not be taking notes at this time HAHAHAHAHAHA that man locks in during a crisis 🫡🫡🫡 OH and everyone thinks ranpo would do something like radiology where he doesn’t really have to talk to patients BUT i think i could see him as peds rads which actually involves a lot of talking to kids - i think they really like him too :333

[sargeantsarmy]

Crying because I saw someone(a h a ckearney shipper) say that Max seems manipulative towards Laura in the prologue and their relationship is toxic, but like, bro Laura getting with the guy that locked her up for two months and can brutally kill her with no hesitation ISN’T toxic????