#story: she unintentionally fucked up the narrative for love

[musical-chick-13]

...So I (finally) just finished Edgerunners..........

[chaifootsteps]

I used to dislike blitzo back in season 1-early 2 cuz he was a jerk and abusive and the story tried to justify it with "womp womp he has trauma and he only wants to tough moxxie up so it's okay". And i was supposed to feel bad about his ass? After he verbally abused moxxie throughout all his work life and threteaned to rape him and his wife? Used verosika and stole from her when they where together? Disrespected barbie's boundaries and feelings? Dissmissed fizz's feelings and unintentionally said "hey i lost my mom bitch, you aren't the only one who has problems" WHEN FIZZ WAS FUCKING BURNED ALIVE, LOST HIS LIMBS AND HORNS AND WAS TRAUMATIZED FOR LIFE. ALL BECAUSE OF YOU I MIND YOU.

To be clear, i don't hate asshole characters. I hate when asshole characters are being coddled and excused by the narrative, it's insufferable to watch. Blitz was this. An asshole character who was excused by the writers and you are expected to feel bad about his ass when he got humilated in the club. Thanks i hate it. And it sucks because i love the concept of an abusive asshole realizing he is an abuser and trying to do better to people who he wronged. But i couldn't handle the awful execution.

And guess what?

FUCK MY ASS I'VE CHANGED MY MIND. I feel so bad for blitzo now lmao. The 2 times when blitzo isn't at fault THE WRITERS TRY TO PUT ALL THE BLAME ON BLITZO AND EXCUSE PEOPLE WHO ABUSE HIM JUST WHY. Loona physically assaults him when he respecfully asks her to be nicer to their clients because IT'S HER FUCKING JOB BITCH THEY WILL LOSE MONEY IF YOU DON'T AND IT AFFECTS YOU AS WELL YOU LITERALLY LIVE WITH HIM. And then she kicks him in nuts when all he did was apologising and attempting to hug her? What's funny? What's funny about this 22-years-old grown ass woman physically harming her adoptive dad who provides her a linvinghood, job and unconditional love when she is an adult? And saved her from a toxic and dangerous enviorment? Are you trying to say *he* is in the wrong in this situation and *deserves* to be beaten up by a person he has never wronged in his life? Are you kidding me? Why am i supposed to hate stella, who is abusing stolas, but expected to like loona, who is abusing blitz and moxxie, and to find her abuse "funny" and slapstick? You can't have both, pick one vivzie!

And speaking of stolas...i don't even want to talk about it. I feel horrible for blitzo. Yes, he was an asshole and was only using stolas to get the book, but it was stolas who made their relationship transactional. It was stolas who reffered to blitzo as "his impish plaything". It was stolas who only ever asked from blitzo sex and sexually harassed him on daily basis. He even put a cigrette on his horn likw wtf? It was stolas who made the deal when blitzo couldn't even consent because he, you know, WAS ABOUT TO GET MURDERED BY THE CANNIBALS? AND STOLAS WAS FULLY AWARE OF IT? And the list goes on and on...

"You think so low of me?" GO FUCK YOURSELF LMAO THIS IS SO BAD I CAN'T. ARE YOU REALLY THIS DELUSIONAL?

Okay, even we pretend none of the above happened and was retconned, blitzo *owns you nothing* stolas. If he doesn't have feelings for you it's not *his* fault. He shouldn't have his buisness tied to your bird ass to spend time with you (and in case if he doesn't, he will lose his job, how fair) if he doesn't love you. Get a life please, you only known this guy for *less than a day* and it was *25 years ago*. And he was completely disinterested in your hobbies and was literally only there because he was manipulated by his father and *sold to you like an object or a toy*. And you still obsessed over this random dude who doesn't even like you and love him more than your own daugther whom you known for 17 years??? Wow, such victim fel bed for him he so pooor :((((

And it doesn't help how not only the writers, almost an entire fandom thinks blitzo is abusive towards stolas or deserves to be kicked out by stolas or be beaten up by loona ("for comedy*) it's not funny. It makes me sick. It's the same as blitzo beating the shit out of moxxie and people praising *blitzo*. But not it's stolas abusing blitzo and people praising *stolas*

Fuck it.

I used to hate this guy, but now i can't feel anything but pity him. It's tragic how everyone blames him for things HE ISN'T EVEN AT FAULT HE DESERVES BETTER.

You're preaching to the choir, Anon! Blitzo is a tremendous asshole, multiple characters' lives are worse for knowing him, but he's a victim here -- and a chilling reminder of just how far people will go to defend a charming, attractive abuser that knows how to play the sympathy card.

[chickentendrsanfries]

Misia and Pampinea's relationship is so toxic but I think it's actually the best portrayal of a trauma bond I've ever seen portrayed in media (and I am referring to the actual definition of trauma bond, meaning "a bond formed between an abuser and their victim", not the common usage meaning "people who bond by experiencing the same traumatic event together")

Like you see Misia's love for Pampinea, and worse, you see why she loves Pampinea. Pampinea uses a very common but very underrepresented form of emotional manipulation to make herself look needy, pathetic, and dependent upon Misia's help. The audience genuinely believes the few moments when Pampinea acts loving and kind towards Misia, and I think sometimes Pampinea actually intends to be genuine, but using Misia is so second-nature at this point that she's, either consciously or subconsciously, always doing it.

Pampinea fluctuates constantly between being Misia's loving friend, holding her, stroking her hair, and then being distant and cruel to her, always with a soft, pitying voice and a smile, to punish and manipulate her into doing whatever Pampinea wants. She makes Misia genuinely believe she (Pampinea) needs, loves, and would be lost without Misia, that for Misia to exit this relationship would kill Pampinea, a person Misia loves. Nobody can take care of Pampinea like Misia can, least of all Pampinea herself. You can really see how emotionally dependant Misia is on Pampinea, especially after her girlfriend dies in the first episode. This story takes place during the fucking P L A G U E. Everyone is losing everyone they love constantly, and for a while Pampinea is all Misia has, to throw her love and energy into. You can see that her forming a relationship with Filomena is the first step to breaking free from this emotional dependence, but even that on it's own isn't enough.

I mean for fuck's sake, Pampinea offers Misia to mourn her dead girlfriend together, she does a whole little funeral with her and offers her support, friendship, and comfort as a noble to Misia, a lowly handmaiden, and you almost think "wow, maybe on some level she really does care about Misia" only to realize she only did it to coerce Misia into murdering someone, an act which traumatizes and wreaks psychological havoc on her already fragile mental state.

It's a portrayal of a kind of abuse that isn't often shown in media, which tends to lean towards the angle of "look at this stupid pathetic sad sack, their (always romantic, usually heterosexual) partner beats them up but they still think they love them because they're so manipulated into thinking they're worthless on their own, and I, the narrative, despite portraying this as a bad thing, am also unintentionally corroborating that by giving them no characterization beyond "Battered Victim in need of rescuing by Other (usually male romantic interest) Protagonist."" Misia has a character outside of her relationship to Pampinea, and more importantly you see why she loves her and why she stays. It's like she says, "Love isn't just one dimension. Love has long claws." Her love has ensnared her in Pampinea's grasp.

When I first watched it, I thought Misia murdering Pampinea was overkill and I was shocked and felt it out of character for her to have done that (especially considering how she did it, fucking WOOF) but upon reconsideration, it's a perfect culmination of everything we've seen of their relationship. Pampinea, for years, convinced Misia that she needed her, that she would die without her. So, when Misia finally decides to sever that relationship, it makes sense that she thinks Pampinea couldn't live without her, so she might as well kill her. Additionally, I think there's an implication that Misia would always be tethered to Pampinea if she were alive, that those claws were sunk so deep she could never guarantee her own emotional safety if Pampinea was around. Further, Pampinea at this point tried to make Misia burn an innocent woman to death in order to kidnap her child and lay claim to her estate, so for Misia to burn her to death instead is poetic in a way, a fitting end. And lastly, Pampinea used Misia's trust and love her whole life, and in her last action, Misia flips the script and uses Pampinea's love and trust to end her life.

"What would I ever do without you?"

"We'll never know, viscontessa."

[jackoshadows]

It's baffling how this fandom keeps theorizing that Arya's subplots and role in the story can be replaced by any Stark, specifically Sansa, and it would be just the same when the show did replace fake Arya with another character - and then GRRM specifically refuted that change several times and pointed to that change on the show as where show canon diverged from book canon!

This is a fandom talking point that GRRM himself has refuted and said 'Nah, you can't do that. That plot specifically needs Fake Arya. The story needs fake Arya in the North and when the TV show replaced her with another character, the TV show then diverges from the books and becomes different canon' .

Also GRRM is not talking about the writing for show Sansa in season 6, 7 or 8 and the direction D&D took her character on the show where the only support she gets is from Littlefinger and the Vale army he rallies to help her. In fact GRRM does not even mention Sansa in this interview. He is talking specifically of 'Fake Arya' and how Fake Arya is important to that plot point in the North.

They (D&D) started making changes even as early as season one. And I remember I had discussions with them back in season one. When I was more involved in the process, when we’d discuss things and the fact that they removed Jeyne Poole was a very early thing. They actually said, oh no, Jeyne Poole is in it. You see the girl that’s sitting next to Sansa in the one scene in the feast at Winterfell. Yes, that’s Jeyne Poole, but you never hear a name and she’s not in it, but I did tell them. ‘Yes, but there’s the butterfly effect’, as I called it, deriving from the famous Ray Bradbury story, A Sound of Thunder, crush a butterfly the Jurassic and suddenly you changed all of human history from that point forward. Unintentionally. A little change in a long narrative can have big changes further on. And now, Gone with the Wind didn’t have to worry about that, cause those two children that they removed never had any impact on the story. And Margaret Mitchell didn’t go on to write 6 more novels in which the children grew up and became the leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Whatever the hell, you know, she might have done with those two boys.

And I think they were both boys, and Rhett’s daughter was a girl. So she didn’t have to deal with the butterfly effect there. You know, when we remove Jeyne Poole from season one, then you don’t have Jeyne Poole to be the fake Arya, as happens in the book. So what do you do then? The butterfly effect has done that. (---)

The butterfly effect can have that, but getting back to the whole issue of canon, the butterfly effect affects the canon. But there’s also sometimes deliberate changes in a show where the showrunners or the writers or the studio, the network, or wherever it comes from, goes in a different direction. So what we’re doing at this point in the history of A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones, Westeros, whatever you wanna call it. Yeah. We have two canons. We have the show canon, the Game of Thrones canon. And we have the Song of Ice and Fire canon.

GRRM thought Fake Arya was so important he was insisting to D&D way back while filming season one in 2010 to cast Jeyne Poole.

And even D&D realized that the Jon/Arya relationship is so sacred that they didn't even attempt to replicate that with Sansa in the North. They even had show Jon Snow make a suicidal attempt to save his little brother Rickon Stark - which show Sansa advises against because fuck family - but we never got the whole Jon breaking his NW oaths to attack the Boltons for Arya Stark happening on the show with Sansa.

The asoiaf fandom loves appropriating book Arya's plots for Sansa. Jonsa shippers love appropriating her relationship with Jon for their utterly absurd crackship all the while dragging Arya down as 'ugly' 'violent' and 'masculine'.

Non-shippers love to give away all the politicking around Arya to Sansa, take away Arya intelligence and know-how of the North because their sexism only allows them to see one Stark girl as political and leader of the North. It's not about what the author has actually written for these characters, no, it's about which character passes their standard for femininity.

So yeah, one is free to replace Arya with Sansa because one is dissatisfied with Sansa's canonical book story that GRRM has written for the character and instead prefer Benioff and Weiss' show fanfiction or want Arya's book story for Sansa's character because she's conventionally beautiful and a 'real girl' according to the tradfems.

However, keep in mind that GRRM thinks 'Fake Arya' is very important to his story and that's a Northern political sublot that revolves specifically around Arya Stark in the books.

Once again, the Stark sisters and their book subplots are not interchangeable!

[calina12]

Also, holy FUCK, was episode 4 massive for Charlie's character!

Yes, she REALLY needed that reality check about how bad the lives of the sinners are she tries to help, but it also lead to Charlie taking her proper role for a solid second when she get angry at Valentino.

It's quite obvious to me that Vaggie will be the one to actually run the hotel, so it's Charlie's job to not only use her unique position as princess of hell to deal with heaven for her people's sake, she's also supposed to be protective mighty force her guests can find the save haven in they desperately need to escape their circumstances.

When any of their powerful abusers dare to enter the hotel it's HER job to put them in their place and away from their victims.

Her place isn't running the hotel, SHE'S supposed to be the hotel's and people's protector, and I'm so fucking hyped to see her growing into that role. To see her rip open that portal between hell and heaven for good to free her people herself if she fucking has to.

But episode 4 is also so important for Charlie because it showed us just how massive of a toll it took on her that her mother just up and left 7 years ago, and we were already told that Lucifer ain't the dad of the year either.

Angel forgiving her at the end of the episode meant so much to her because she feared so fucking badly that she ruined everything, he would hate her and leave forever, into a life she would have had had a hand in making worse.

Obviously she has massive abandonment issues and as Husker correctly stated: she's a bleeding heart who wants to solve everyone's problems except her own.

And she does that because very clearly she was highly neglected by her parents in her emotional needs, even if I don't put into question at all that they love her.

She desperately tries to help and find in others what she didn't get from her parents, to get a group of people she can finally trust and who won't abandone her, so she tries everything she can to solve everyone else's problems because that way she thinks she will "earn" being worthy of being loved and not abandoned.

So when she just showed up at Angel's work place to talk to Valentino without checking with Angel beforehand what she has to do to NOT cause him hell, and caused an absolute fucking disaster HE had to pay the whole price for and NOT her because of her privilege and immunity as Princess of Hell, that was literally one of the worst things for her she could have caused.

It hit all her insecurities in the worst ways possible. And I'm so glad that they had Angel say "thank you for caring about me" and not "thank you for trying" because that's not the same and what Charlie needed was indeed the former.

She really desperately needed to hear from him that the reason why he forgives her is that he understands that she did all of this because she CARES for him. That his reason for forgiving her has nothing to do with him prioritized anything else she can GIVE or provide over seeing HER.

Mind you, of course this whole disaster she caused can't be justified and it has no business ever happening again to such horrific degrees, she NEEDS to work through her own problems ASAP because the people who depend on her as the privileged and basically untouchable person in power who promised them protection can't continue paying the price for her actions

But this is a fictional story, so I'm talking about the narrative when I say that both Charlie's and Angel's characters needed this to happen for their development.

Just, good fucking God, let this have been the peak of Charlie's naivety and the incident she needed to start healing a deep scar in her heart. I love Charlie to pieces, please give us the pay-off now from the emotional development and what she learned by now so she can grow into the mighty mama bear she is meant to be without her unintentionally continuously hurting her adopted hurt cubs.

Because thats a factor I can't and won't ever ignore in her type of (main) character and in her leader role and privileged position/ status in all of this.

Fingers crossed, cause I'm so fucking ready to love this sweet broken girl with the heart of a lion, with every inch of my being.

[arcadiabaytornado]

Some Different Fandom Topics I Could Talk About Forever:

Life Is Strange

1: How Max wants to save Chloe over Arcadia Bay, and how the final choice isn't actually about what Max wants to do. It's about what she feels like she needs to do.

2: How Nathan was developing his own victim MO that was different from Jefferson's.

3: How the storm is coming in the alternative timeline, and how Rachel's parents look for her if she doesn't know Chloe.

4: How William's death is the first butterfly effect that really kicks off the plot of Life Is Strange, and how William's changed not just Chloe, but Max too.

5: How Rachel noticed Chloe before the events of Before The Storm, and how Chloe noticed Rachel.

The Walking Dead Game

1: How Sarah was both neurodivergent and a victim of her Father's overprotective nature, and how she could have had fantastic character growth if the writers weren't so weird about her character being "weak."

2: How David is not actually a (metaphorical) solider, he is a wanderer who can't find peace no matter where he goes.

3: How important it was to the narrative to have Clem lose her leg and have Louis/Violet lose their speech/sight. And how neat it is to see disabilities symbolized as a good thing that represents having a home and a good community.

4: How Lily was completely lost the second she killed Doug/Carly, and how that moment foraged who'd she become in Season 4.

5: How Jane and Kenny are both negative examples of how Clem could have ended up if her trauma consumed her. And how she almost turned into both of them in Season 3 when she lost AJ. (She had the rash explosive temper of Kenny, and the cold survivalist mindset of Jane.)

Telltale's Batman

1: How Bruce and Selina have a fundamental understanding of each other that they may never get with anyone else, yet that's exactly why their relationship never works out.

2: How John stains Bruce's shirt with blood when he hugs him the vigilante route, and how symbolic it is.

3: How John is turned into Joker by Batman in the vigilante route, and turned into Joker by Bruce in the villain route.

4: How if you tell John you weren't his friend then the tragedy of the game is that Bruce never cared, but if you tell John that you were his friend then the tragedy of the game is that Bruce did care.

5: How well Harley Quinn is written in the second game, and how much I loved this interpretation of her.

Arcane

1: How Vi chooses Caitlyn over Jinx at the tea party by trying not to make a choice, and how Jinx chooses Vi over Silco by actively shooting him. (The thing Vi refused to do to Caitlyn.)

2: How Jinx tied everyone down at the tea party so the literally couldn't leave her.

3: How Vi was going to turn herself over to enforcer's to protect her family, and how Vander changed the course of her character development by taking the blame instead.

4: How Silco likely wasn't trying to manipulate Jinx. The way he likely fully believed the things he was saying. The way he fucked Jinx up because, despite doing it unintentionally, he fed into all her worst thoughts about herself by projecting his trauma onto a child.

5: How the weapons each character fights with (Gauntlets for Vi, A hammer for Jayce, a gun for Caitlyn, guns and bombs for Jinx.) represents their personality.

BG3

1: How Astarion's disapproval for a lot of Tav's good actions comes from a place of "Well, a hero never helped me. Why do they get a knight in shining armor when I didn't?" Instead of a place of pure evil. (And how little your approval with him actually goes down when you do something good.)

2: How Lae'zel is actually incredibly kind and open-minded when you meet her, as she takes it on herself to get the party cleansed of the tadpoles even though normally the solution in Gith culture would be to "kill the istiks to stop them from becoming mind flayers."

3: How badly Wyll was robbed in terms of content and autonomy in his story.

4: How thematically fitting it is for a Tav to be a Seldarine Drow.

5: How much happier Shadowheart seems if you save her parents, even if it means her soul will be the victim of a tug of war between two God's in the afterlife.

Supernatural (Full disclosure, I've only watched to Season 7 Episode 10 so far.)

1: The way neither brother could have ever fully left the hunting life if the other one was in. They both had to be all the way out to have a chance of an "apple pie" life. (I'm a full believer that Stanford! Sam would have gotten drug back into the life eventually, even if John had never gone missing and fate hadn't intervened.)

2: How much wasted potential Bela and Agent Henriksen had.

3: How Sam was always going to forgive John, and Dean was always going to resent him. (Sam's heart is often torturously kind even when it bleeds him dry, and Dean always wanted to be so much more than the weapon John tried to forge.)

4: How Madison was the first love interest who truly had a chance of understanding Sam, and how Cas was the first love interest to fully understand Dean.

5: How Bobby didn't try to have Karen go with him to find the door to his worst memory, he had Rufus go with him instead.

[wetcatspellcaster]

hi! i just wanted to say that I absolutely love Pieces and I greatly admire your work and also how you write dialogue? Writing witty and interesting dialogue can be a bit of a struggle for me but you write the banter between Rosalie and Astarion so well, it's truly incredibly delightful.

I had a question about something in chapter 20 of Pieces. Specifically, when Rosalie asks Astarion if he likes her fancy glow in the dark bed. This may be a misinterpretation of her character but I never got the impression, based on your other works with Rosalie, that she was the type to really gravitate towards expensive or lavish things but as Rosalie herself has stated her house is atrociously fancy now.

I was wondering if this was a "i'm an extremely powerful archmage and have the money so, might as well" type thing. OR if she made those choices for herself with the, maybe subconcious, thought of "these are things astarion would have liked/appreciated/wanted." Maybe as a way to unintentionally bridge the gap between the life with astarion that she actually wants and the life that she had no choice but to have.

The way she asks Astarion if he likes it, and her reaction to his response, to me made it feel like these choices for her living space weren't just for her own enjoyment but also because she wanted to create a house Astarion would want to live in and his opinion on it matters to her not just because he's now living there but because Rosalie always wanted him to.

I just reread the chapter with the fancy garden and the maze and thought that Rosalie, subconciously creating a fancy house with the idea of Astarion one day living in it, AND the Ascendant, conciously creating this whole fancy ostentatious garden with the idea of one day seducing Rosalie in it, both as ways to make up for the one thing both of them want but don't, and can't, have would be an interesting parallel.

If i'm completely off-base and Rosalie just bought herself a fuck off fancy wizard tower complete with heated floors and glow in the dark canopy beds just becasue she could and wanted to than that's cool too. She deserves it honestly.

Also this ask is so long I am so sorry. Your work has given me brain worms like nothing else and I am forever and always an english major at heart, if I had the time and drive I'd write you a whole mulit-paged essay in which I analyzed each house in Pieces, their significance in the narrative, and what they tell us about each character. I am sosososooo normal about you, I promise.

hi lovely. never apologise for writing something at length, I'm very touched that you thought this much about the story and that you took the time to send me this message! :) i love a little bit of literary analysis!

As an English major, you know that any and all interpretations and reader responses to a text are valid, so if this is how you want to read these moments, please go ahead and read it this way!!! There are some things that you say that touch upon future storybeats I've already drafted, so when we get to those chapters hopefully you'll feel rewarded

But in response to your question, yes, the house *is* out of character :) there's a reason why, in my two timeskips, one Rosalie ends up with a cute little flat and a vault worth of diamonds she bought for Astarion, and the other in a massive fuck-off wizard's tower that is, as we'll find out in future chapters, fancy as fuck. But the logic behind it at my end was slightly different than yours, although yours isn't exactly wrong and as I say, I think you'll find stuff in future chapters that makes you happy!

For me, I see Rosalie's wealth in this timeline as an extreme symptom of how lonely and unhappy she is. As the fic has established, Rosalie felt the need to isolate herself, and also buried herself in overwork to both fund her research into Astarion's cure and distract herself from the realities of her life. So the more and more unhappy/workaholic/lonely Rosalie gets, the richer she becomes - for in this timeline, she has nothing other than work, and no one else she wants to spend all that money on. And so she has this massive house bc she needs to spend that money she's accumulated on something, and if that makes her look happy or comfortable from the outside then that's good because then she's not burdening anyone - exactly the same way that the Ascendent's mansion looks decadent and debauched from the outside, to compensate for his true feelings as well.

One really interesting thing about drafting Act 3 currently, is how much Rosalie's issues are now coming to the fore because Astarion, unlike all her friends, hasn't seen a gradual decline in her character/mental health and happiness. For him, it is sudden and abrupt: he has the bubbly hero from the game timeline, and then this strange reclusive hermit ten years later who, to him, is clearly unhappy. And the tower and the way she lives is one way that becomes clear to him.

I hope that makes sense! :)

[jamestaylorswift]

I have complicated thoughts about atw10. I go back and forth on it - sometimes I hate it, sometimes I love it. but I think I always end up at those extremes because I can’t help but compare them.

first you have the og atw. perfect, no notes, whether or not you agree it’s her magnum opus it does deserve every bit of hype it gets because it’s a great fucking song. (the magnum opus conversation is intertwined with the lore about the song - that taylor wrote it all in a vent sesh with her band; that it wasn’t a single but became a fan favorite because it’s a great fucking song; that there’s A Scarf™️; that taylor recognized all this history and played it up; that by rerecording her music taylor gets the opportunity to carefully prune, as one would a bonsai tree, narratives and how her eras are remembered and how this is the one she’s cemented in history; that now the focus on a song’s lore has intentionally and unintentionally become integral to its endurance and popularity….) the original song has extreme dynamic peaks and valleys despite its nearly unwavering four chord progression. it has lines about autumn leaves and repeat phone calls so insightful that you marvel at how anyone could have been so talented as to string those precise words together. but its emotional punch is twofold: the details are just clear enough to make you recall one of your own experiences and just hazy enough to prevent the writer’s experience replacing yours. the whole thesis is about remembering all too well, forever. you can’t get rid of it. because you remember it. you remember it all. the song is a tour de force and taylor’s skillful manipulation of emotional/musical tension in this song is something that will be appreciated and studied for years to come.

then on the other hand you have atw10, which not only sounds and reads differently but could even be considered antithetical, or at least a foil, to the original song. the zeniths and nadirs are less pronounced and she expands the story with new verses largely interpreted to be about a toxic relationship with an age gap. the musical arrangement is more modern and features an expanded palette of instruments: tension and release comes from subtle harmonic differences, staccato background vocals, or a wild violin. the new verses - were they really part of the original song? or do they clearly betray the perspective of someone who’s 10 years older? the short film - it hammers home this exact expanded story and was admittedly written as a retrospective, with the insight that being 10 years removed from a toxic relationship provides. the ultimate effect is that atw10 is not about remembering it all because you can’t get rid of it. it’s about taylor remembering it all, even though she can finally get rid of it. the “it” is clearly her own experience (though this is not to say the atw10 story is not a relatable story or that it’s not a valuable story to tell or hear.) “I was there, I was there….” the memories and the pain all trail away with time. but, these memories are very clearly not yours, the listener’s. atw10 may be an expansion of the original all too well story, but this expansion does not simply intensify the same emotions from the original song—it explores a rather different emotional profile. musically and lyrically, and whether intentional or not, atw10 argues that the pain of remembering is dulled and even remedied with time.

and thus the ways that atw10 excels and fails are quite different than the ways the og atw does. whether one is “good” or “bad” depends what we value in a song, and more generally, why we enjoy the songs that we do and the extent to which we value an artist’s interpretation of their own experiences. have we been in toxic relationships and can relate to the specific story of atw10? are there traumas we can’t heal no matter how hard we try? are we moved by brash drums and isolated guitars or playful violins atop chords that chug on and on? does taylor swift’s word supplement or supplant our own connections with her songs?

I know that I personally would find atw10 less confusing if I stopped comparing it to its shorter relative. but the various lengths and mediums in which the all too well story is told make it seem destined that we’ll all be comparing the versions until the end of time. and yet just as there are shades of red for every possible intense emotion - burning, cherry, so scarlet, maroon - so are there reasons to love all too well. just as it will endure in the popular zeitgeist as one of taylor’s best, most famous, most impactful, most beloved songs, so too must all too well live on in every listener because of (and only because of) each and every one of us loving it for unique reasons.

[dangermousie]

If the first episode showed us how wounded and screwed up Qi Luo is, this ep shows us that Ling is every bit as much a mess. It's such a nice twist that the confident popular "bad boy" is really really fucked up. Not only is he a former resident of a mental institution but he is not altogether all there even now. When his bike is getting fixed and the mechanic asks him why doesn't he (Ling) go back home to stay with his father, Ling says that he's go insane if he moved back in. But it's not all a snarky remark. There is a grain of truth there. And when the mechanic snarks back that he already is crazy anyway, you can see that for Ling, that unintentionally hits home. He is a total seething mess under his cool mask.

I mean, the scene that opens ep 2 is his seeing his image in a convenience store mirror and losing it so so so badly.

I am not a doctor but this sounds sus. This said, it's manga medicine so whatever.

This is here for the pretty...

I'd say the fact that in his mostly unconscious state, he grabs on to her sketch of a mother and child, is kinda a foreshadowing of a lot in their relationship: her bringing him peace and stability. But of course, he helps her quite a lot as well. Not only does he drag her out of her shell (after all she is comfortable enough with him to ask him to be a model for her), and offers to protect her (I love how pleased he is when she offers him the painting and then offers to pay by protecting her. He really has a protective streak. Of course then he has to make the crack about lending her his body heh), but more importantly, he helps her grow a spine (I love the scene where he's exposed the molesting teacher and he walks by her and tells her to give him five and asks her 'isn't it fun to strike back?' and she smiles). I just love that they are two people neither of whom is great dating material (I'd stay far away from either) but who really work for each other.

This is sort of a tangent but I love that while their problems get better with each other, they never truly go away. Neither of them will ever be "normal." It's an oddly realistic take on trauma wrapped in a manga wrapper. It's the same with the narrative about their parents - both of them have been horrifically abused by their parents/parental figures (except for their fathers who just died) and I love that none of these parents magically transform. Ling's mother tried to murder him (and even if it was a product of mental illness, that is still not good in the least) but what really is interesting to me is the unflinching way the drama handles the surviving parents. Qi Luo's stepfather was a rapist, a child rapist. When we meet him again, he did not in the least repent, nor did he suffer much. Nor does karma get him. He ends the story still employed, still free, still with Qi Luo's mother - because yes, Qi Luo's mother takes her and runs when she finds out back way when but it's no redeeming narrative; when the man comes back into their life, Qi Luo's mother all too quickly jumps on the "he's sorry" bandwagon (wtf!!! is that enough?) and takes him back because it's hard as a woman alone (!!!!) And Ling's adoptive father does not get better either - he wants Ling in a certain mold or not at all. He is willing to hold his life hostage (and I do mean, a jail term etc) to get what he wants; it is the same man who had Ling stuffed in a series of far away schools and then eventually a psych ward. But then, the drama seems to say, how realistic would it be that monsters get punished or fail adults get better? I always found it so fitting that at the end, both Ling and Qi Luo are irrevocably estranged from their families - but they have each other and they have their friends and it's gonna be enough.

[eradicatetehnormal]

I feel like when it comes to Sora and Kairi in particular, people will shut down any interpretation that attempts to add nuance to their characters. Even their biggest fans.

I remember talking about how I think CoM made Sora's precious person ambiguous and how that represents the parts of Sora's heart that's pulling him in different directions. The part of him who wants to give up, go home, and live the rest of his life in peace, and the part of him who wants to keep adventuring, helping others, and find Riku (and I guess Mickey).

And then someone responded to that and said "Oh actually, Kairi's a false light, and that "ambiguity" is actually just the darkness." Hey, we're both interpreting the story. They could be right. It'd be really lame if they were, though. What's the point of Sora and Kairi's relationship if the entire time Kairi is just a vampire that constantly leads him down the wrong direction? To represent how friends can unintentionally lead you astray despite their best efforts?

Why take so long to reveal that if that is the case? What has ever implied that Kairi has led Sora down the wrong path? The fact that her light "allegedly" saved Sora in 3, but that he had to sacrifice himself anyway? What makes you think Sora wouldn't have done that for any of his friends? You'd have to go through mountains of theories to even get to the point where you could entertain this thought.

Would Kairi being a false light serve as a subversion to the idea that boys have to always get the girl? That she was actually turning Sora's head from his true destiny in Riku? Okay, let's roll with that. Sora and Riku are destined for each other and Kairi confused poor little Sora. Now what? Where does this leave the relationship between Sora and Kairi now that he realizes where his heart truly is? If their entire relationship was just a commentary on heteronormativity, why does she have formative moments with Sora as shown in CoM? Why does Sora choose to spend the last of his time showing her around different worlds, how his allies are doing, and gazing into her eyes? I feel like this person would say they aren't implying that Kairi means nothing to Sora, but they totally are!

If the ambiguity of CoM is just the darkness fucking with Sora, then that means that in the end, Sora has no genuine strong feelings for Kairi that are comparable to his feelings for Riku, when he clearly does!

Interpreting Kairi in a false light removes the nuance of said ambiguity in favor of telling a straightforward story about heteronormativity. Here's the thing, even under my interpretation, the idea that Sora is suffering from heteronormativity still works to some extent as it can be argued that Sora is incapable of seeing how valuable Riku is to him despite the fact that he's going so far out of his way for him. It's through that lack of introspection that Org 13 sends in Namine, a lonely, vulnerable, girl to distract Sora. It's almost like the literal interpretation of the game is not only leagues more charitable to the characters but works perfectly fine all on its own as a queer narrative depending on how you want to read it.

People have a similar problem with throwing away interpretations of Kairi's nuance in favor of reducing her to some sort of pseudo-antagonist or a prize to be won. The most glaring example I can think of is the scene in MoM where Sora shows up.

Many people have theorized that this is Kairi's head summoning its own Sora as a coping mechanism to show how reliant she feels on him, but the most common interpretation is that Sora just showed up through the connection of their hearts. TBF, Xehanort does literally say that that's what happens, but this is all taking place inside her head, and that's not always reliable. Also, how come Sora hasn't been able to reach anyone else through their connection, Riku or "Stella"?

Once again, it's an idea that removes the nuances of her character to tell a straightforward love story between Sora and Kairi while ignoring the obvious similarity they're sharing in that scene if the former interpretation is true. That the two of them feel as though they're worthless without their friends.

Then again, 85% of KH theories are just thinly veiled ship fodder. That's not a bad thing, but it can get really irritating when you can't look past a certain perspective

[dcwnthercbbithcle]

Doe unintentionally traumatizes friends/adoptive family & partners with the full extent of what she’s gone through and the full ambivalent cruelty of her caregivers and surroundings. Doe doesn’t mean it! She’s not waving the red flag of ‘they’ve never cared,’ to hurt her loved ones, it’s just factual truth to her and it’s hard for people to understand!

Doe’s friends/family & partners try to help her make things better, to make up like a Disney special or get a happy ending and answer to her story, but the fact of how the narrative is woven WILL shake them to their core in a way that’s not preventable. Sometimes good people are fucked out of the gate for zero reason, sometimes people who are lovable just aren’t loved, it’s how the cookie crumbles. It’s a harsh truth, Doe has accepted it, it’s why there’s that nihilistic jaded aspect to herself, but the others: people with good families, good friend groups and good luck. They just can’t get it until they see the failure, rejection and rebuttal for themselves!

[motheatenscarf]

Okay, hit a road block in Dark Knight story stuff, it needs me to go into new expansion areas I haven't unlocked yet, so I went to pick up Reaper, and

HELL YEAH!

Your trainer is a fuckin grizzled ex-Garlean battle-axe, I LOVE her!

Also, god, I know the game can't acknowledge your dumb headcanon backstory, but it makes me happy that I accidentally lucked into picking the right idea when I decided Talia would be a disillusioned ex-Garlean runaway hellbent on undoing the harm her awful fascistic home has caused.

This woman is TALL, just barely taller than Talia, and I think Lucia was just straight up a human head on an elezen body she was so tall and willowy. So making Talia a Highlander was unintentionally good on my part. Also in deciding that Reaper would be my DPS class, I managed to pick the only discipline I'm aware of so far that's just FROM Garlemald, so that's neat.

I can't give Talia the third eye, but I think I might start trying to give her headbands and things since yeah, apparently that's something they just all have. I also gave Talia the patron deity of Rhalgr, because her thinking was that if she can't bring change to her home, then burn it all. So. Heavensward and Isghard specifically was a good experience for her and gave her hope that maybe people CAN surprise you and change and be better than you thought. So now that the narrative is dragging us to Ala Mihgo to liberate it and potentially push to take the fight to Garlemald, I'm excited, because lol.

It's literally giving me the ONE thing I wanted from playing a Light-Side Sith Warrior, which was all about reforming the Sith Empire, but the writers were shackled to the faction conflict by the game's design so nothing meaningful was ever allowed to change in the status quo. So even though the LS Sith Warrior storyline was actually really good and had moments of genuine humanity to it, none of it fucking mattered because the narrative couldn't follow through and the themes wound up being hollow lipservice and empty promises.

So, yeah, uhhhh, FF14 is gonna manage to tell a better story for Talia than even SWTOR, the game I MADE HER FOR, got to tell and she literally can't even speak here.

Soooo...

yeah, SWTOR's a bad game just... through and through.

[chronologer]

🤥🌈🔥❤️📏👻for the oc ask game! Any oc, I’d love to hear about them!

hehehehe >:3 it’s oc posting time!!! i have many more ocs now and i am v happy to talk abt them, so ty for the opportunity!! i’ve been swamped with stuff so sorry this took like….. over two months haha! <3333

so first a little rundown of four of my new ocs!!!!!!

first i’ve got reynie!! (he/him)

reynie got reincarnated into a book he had read when he was younger but also not really???

the book that he thinks he got reincarnated in was a story about these two siblings discovering this hidden magical world after staying with their distant relatives over the summer

and he got reincarnated as their older brother but again. not really. i’ll get into it later.

but for now he’s desperate not to ruin things bc of his presence

i’ve been on a bit of an isekai/reincarnation kick lately so this is largely inspired by those concepts haha

then there’s the boy (he/him, but eventually she/her(?) <— i decided to trans her gender like… ten minutes ago so my thoughts abt this r kinda incoherent rn,,, but she finds out she’s a she/her over the course of the story, but i’ll use he/him to refer to her sometimes to indicate that those moments are specifically before her big gender realization)

she’s a sad, depressed, overworked high school student who is so lonely she unintentionally ends up creating a ghost/god/cryptid/monster/???????

then the monster is. v angry abt being created then abandoned. so she gets terrorized by them.

she doesn’t have a name bc i honestly just couldn’t think of one haha. calling her ‘the boy’ for now bc it’s what she thinks she is,, but her lack of a name parallels the monster’s lack of a name too so it all works out in the end 👍

and the monster (she/her at first but then eventually they/them <— they were created to essentially be a mirror of the boy’s innermost desires n stuff, so she’s a she/her at first, but then they like…. slowly branch out from that and become their own person and get their own pronouns (?) or smth?? idk.)

they’re the monster that the boy accidentally created. and even though the boy didn’t realize she created the monster, the monster is still angry so they’ve hatched this whole plot to torment her

and plot twist!! they gets attached and the two become weirdly codependent n overall just have. kind of a weird thing going on.

is it platonic? is it romantic? is it familial? idk but it’s definitely kinda fucked up!!

and finally there’s labyrinth (no pronouns??? idk……. they/them for now)

they’re also from a world where there is secretly supernatural shenanigans, but labyrinth has magic powers so they get recruited to go to this boarding school in like… massachusetts or smth, but they couldn’t care less.

as in it literally could not care less. it is physically impossible for them to care about anything bc they are like. two steps away from being fully catatonic at all times. and is also almost completely incapable of forming new memories

yeah they’re like totally dissociating at all times.

(it’s bc they have so much grief over the past that they cannot let go of it and cannot participate in the present)

but they gets better with the help of their very good roomie daniel. yeah 👍

also doesn’t have a name. also bc i didn’t wanna think of one. but smth smth it emphasizes their disconnect to the world and their life, blah blah blah plays into the themes n narratives smth along those lines.

tbh im not supppperrr happy w how i’ve characterized labyrinth??? so i might end up changing everything abt their personality. idk.

so now…. onto the ask game!

reynie is pretty decent at lying, largely out of necessity. he’s trying to hide his knowledge of the plot as much as possible, so once he figures out he’s in a book he starts lying as much as possible so people don’t find out that he knows the future. and he gets away w it, not bc he’s like… a master of lying, but moreso bc his family has no reason to think that he’s lying so they don’t suspect him of anything.

the boy is,,,… okay at lying... she’s good at the things that matter to her, but she’s bad at lying to anyone who knows her well enough, or when taking to certain topics. but also she lies all the time sooo idk.

the monster is the Liar™. biggest liar in the world and also the greatest. if there was a lying contest, they would win it. they are the most gaslighting lying faker of all time. but also tbh it’s lowkey kinda omnipotent and sometimes changes reality so the lie is no longer a lie??? still loves lying tho, especially to the boy to like. psychologically torture her.

labyrinth doesn’t lie. like. at all. tbh they really don’t understand the concept of lying. well, they do, but they don’t really see the need for it?? idk how to explain it. ig they’re not really present enough to lie. sure, that makes sense if you squint really hard. 👍

tbh it depends on what time they are in each of the stories and all bc they r all very different at the end of each of their stories than at the beginning.

for reynie…. hmmm….. he’d probably tell his younger self to not ignore the crippling migraines that he gets and also pay wayyyyy more attention to his dreams. like… get a dream journal or smth. (it’s bc he can see the future in them) also he’d definitely just tell his younger self a complete list of everything that goes wrong and how to fix it

(although this would inevitably end up making other things go wrong and probably worse but reynie would be too obsessed with fixing things to realize this fact)

the boy would probably tell her younger self to not apply to the fancy boarding school bc it’ll murder his health. or maybe she would tell him to apply bc it led to the monster being created??? tbh i think she regrets every decision she made that led her to the monster but after all’s said and done she wouldn’t change any of it. She’d probably tell her younger self that it’ll all work out in the end.

wait actually nvm all that she’d tell him what snacks to buy at the grocery store for the best price-to-flavor ratio. yeah. 👍

the monster would… uhhhh… kinda be the same ig???? idk they might try to speed the whole love-hate-overall-just-weird thing they have with the boy along by telling their younger self that the boy’s actually lowkey kinda funkalicious. groovy mcgroovical. coolio. and that they should maybe not psychologically torture her and pretend to be a ghost n all. or not. they’re whimsical like that.

labyrinth would only give their younger self advice after they start actually moving on from the past and become more present, but it wouldn’t really do anything bc younger labyrinth would not hear any of the advice at all. so it really doesn’t matter what the advice is bc both labyrinths know it wouldn’t change anything. i think they’d just hang out together and braid their past self’s hair :]

hahahhahahhahahahhahhah self destructive tendencies…… hahah hahaaha where do i begin….

reynie….. martyr complex + imposter syndrome + hates being vulnerable so will never reveal anything to anyone ever + huge perfectionist riddled by anxiety so he’s terrified of changing the plot (and doesn’t realize that his very existence has changed things) + has no regard for his own health and safety. overall just really self destructive, especially later on when he realizes that he no longer knows the plot of the story bc he’s inadvertently changed too much, making him,,,, kinda unhinged????

the boy’s mentally ill af!!!! she has crippling anxiety abt everything, which that and combined with her fear of being vulnerable causes her to be very lonely and have no support system to help. she will not reach out for help even if she needs it, which is lowkey the root of all her problems, especially the monster, since they were literally created bc the boy wanted a friend/support system so bad she ended up accidentally making one. also,,, super duper closeted and repressed.

the monster is just kinda of a huge asshole tbh which gets in the way of them forming any genuine human connections. they also hold grudges for ages and ages even when said grudges are completely unjustified, so they get so focused on revenge that it’s difficult for them to grow past it. plus they’ve got a god complex but they kinda are one??? so it’s maybe a bit justified.

labyrinth is literally so overwhelmed by their own grief over the past that they are physically unable to interact with the present most of the time. they can’t even remember their dad’s name most of the time bc they cannot process the present and their current life. they’ve got a lot of trauma and unresolved issues but they’re subconsciously repressing it and refusing to move forward which…. really screws them up…..

had to search up what all the love languages were bc i forgor lol

i’m not super sure abt any these?????? so they’re all liable to change at any given moment lol

reynie likes to do acts of service/give affirmations, and he likes to receive quality time (not that he’ll ever ask for it…)

the boy likes both giving and receiving physical touch and quality time

the monster likes giving gifts and quality time, and is above having human desires like a preferred love language to receive (it’s quality time and words of affirmation.)

uhhhh it’s kinda hard to know labyrinth’s love language??? i think they like giving gifts, and receiving… quality time??? i don’t think they care abt receiving tbh….

reynie’s pretty educated. in his past life he went to college, and in his current life he’s a high school student again, although he’s mainly just cruisin’. he was pursuing more advanced education outside of school, reteaching himself what he learned in college through self-study, but then he found out abt how he got reincarnated into a book and the existence of the supernatural, which caused most of those plans to be put on hold.

the boy goes to some fancy schmancy boarding school for smarty farty kids, although she’s not doing great there, although that’s more of an executive disfunction/the school’s way of teaching isn’t the way that works for the boy/unrealized neurodivergence/etc. type of thing. but she’s still getting a funky education.

the monster’s is super educated but that’s cause they’re omnipotent and omnipresent, so they literally do know everything (at least most of the time [when they feel like it]). they also go to the same school of the boy, but it’s not to be educated, it’s to screw with her.

labyrinth is…. okay???? they do well on tests n all that bc of,,,,, reasons??? but they actually know anything. they’re currently going to the magic boarding school in massachusetts or whatever.

ok so tbh…. they all live in worlds were ghosts are real (or could be real in the case of the boy and the monster) so tldr; yes.

reynie, once he learns abt the supernatural, absolutely believes in ghosts, although that’s largely bc he knows for sure that they exist cause they were in the book. i’m actually planning on having him become a ghost hunter later on, bc he’s going to go on a road trip to do supernatural stuff for plot reasons, and he’ll do ghost hunting stuff for cash (this entire part of his storyline was created when i finally got phasmaphobia a while back haha)

the boy and the monster,,,, uh technically the monster is a ghost??? kind of…. it’s like if god were a ghost but also a building and the boy’s future n past self,,,… it’s complicated. but the monster also gaslights the boy into thinking that they’re the ghost of some dead student from the 60s. the boy definitely believes in ghosts tho, while the monster doesn’t, or at the very least they know that ghosts aren’t naturallly occurring in the world.

labyrinth believes in ghosts, but only bc they were taught abt them in their magic massachusetts school. that’s abt it. they were told ghosts were real, n just kinda went along w it.

thanks for reading and thanks for the ask!!!! i’ll probably end up making some more posts that explain these ocs more, and introduce some of my other ones sometime soon!!!!!!! hopefully…… i also want to draw my ocs soon too but my brain just won’t let me :( sigh….

[bonesandthebees]

We saw Tommy, Ranboo, Puffy, and Technoblade all going somewhere together.

Tommy must be scared fucking shitless right now. I would bet a lot of money that there was something else going on. Either the four of them were heading into a big important conversation, or they just had a big important conversation. While I expressed in my last ask that I think Phil cares for Wilbur, on some level, it’s not out of the question that Phil’s still doing manipulative stuff.

So I think that Techno and Phil have both noticed the brothers acting strangely, and they’re both addressing it with their respective narrative partner. Phil does so with much more tact. Before the revelation with Ranboo, Phil’s scene with Wilbur would’ve come off as really sweet. It’s only the context that makes it so problematic.

Now this is obviously all speculation. But I think Technoblade was trying to have some sort of conversation with Tommy. Maybe he was asking Tommy if something was wrong/something changed. Maybe he was trying to help Tommy with Wilbur. I’m wondering why Ranboo and Puffy would be there. Techno would probably pull Ranboo in for emotional support – either that, or he told Ranboo his plans to talk to Tommy, and Ranboo convinced him to let him in on the talk. Puffy though? I don’t know, maybe it’s similar to Jack? Is she being Tommy’s escort now? Or is it somebody else? I forget if you mentioned that

Regardless, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that come up again in tomorrow’s chapter.

In other news, I’m loving the feel and tone of this chapter. Time for me to nerd out about writing techniques. You really changed up the structure and pacing of this chapter and it works so well. I know some of that has to do with the chapter being split, and I think it unintentionally makes the chapter even better as it would’ve been as half of a whole. The shorter than average wordcount and impactful scenes really picks up the pace and signals that shit is happening.

This chapter was so unique in so many ways. It was the culmination of one of the major arcs of the fic (Wilbur’s trust issues), it changes up many relationship dynamics, it gives the reader hope while simultaneously cultivating a sinister fear that things are about to go down.

I’m a nerd. I’m a huge nerd. This fic makes me want to start doing video essays. When Stars ends, prepare for the essay. Because once it’s all over, I need to talk about structure and pacing and character development. Those three things are very intertwined, and nailing them all makes for a truly amazing story. You’re nailing them all. I know that I give a lot of compliments but I just have to because damn.

Stars is lowkey my hyperfixation right now. Maybe highkey

-🔥

hmm a big important conversation could've happened... or maybe tommy is just spending time with the people he's supposed to be closest with in the palace. we don't know. but either way, phil and techno have both noticed something is going on with the brothers, i'll confirm that. also, puffy is tommy's escort now. I believe I mentioned that back when jack told wilbur that he was just his escort now? maybe I forgot, if so that's on me. but puffy was only there because she's tommy's guard now like how jack is for wilbur.

aaaa I love when you guys point out details about the writing techniques I use!! yes I changed up the structure of this chapter a bit. I wanted it to feel kind of movie-esque while also keeping a layer of mystery for the readers. you find out about the plan as wilbur goes to the different people involved. you don't know what he's doing until he's asking jack or asking quackity for their help.

I do wanna say though, even split, this chapter was over 9k words. it was by no means a shorter than average chapter. I can see how it might've felt like that or you just assumed since I had to split it, but it wasn't shorter lol.

this chapter was so fun for me to write because it felt like so much was culminating all at once but it was also kind of an interlude chapter. just preparing everything for the escape. the calm before the storm.

aaaa I would be extremely excited if you wrote a whole essay about stars because I've put so much effort into it and I'm so so proud of how it's turning out. it makes me so happy to hear how much you guys enjoy it so thank you so much flame anon. pacing and plot structure and character development are definitely the elements I focus on most when writing a story, so tysm for telling me I'm nailing it

[summonerluna]

For the fanfic writer ask, I'll go with my date of birthday: 2, 11, 80 🥰

2. Talk about a notable time a narrative or character has looked you dead in the eyes and said "fuck your plan, here's what we're actually doing."

Fifteen Minutes Old. It was supposed to be about Squall trying to learn more about sorceresses and learning that he didn't need all the answers to be supportive, and the pregnancy scare thing was going to be a brief note that just led to more research. I had zero interest in ever writing them as being parents and it wasn't what I saw for my post-game headcanon. Instead Rinoa decided she was GOING to be a mom, dammit, no matter how hard the journey to get there was, and it led to a follow up longfic and the creation of two characters who went on to live in an original novel because they just demanded to exist.

11. What's something neat you've learned while doing research for something you were writing? Also, how much do you worry about doing research in general?

On the "I promise I'm a writer and not Planning Crimes" line of things, I did a lot of research into neurotoxins while working on The Successor, specifically tetrodotoxin. I don't remember all the science about it anymore but it was cool to learn. Same with drowning and hypothermia and what the human body can actually survive. Recently I've learned more about the actual process of knighthood; who even would typically be considered, the training (having to run/ride/climb/SWIM in full armor was part of it), education, and social status. LoZ plays VERY fast and loose with the actual history of knighthood, if anyone was wondering.

I care VERY much about research while writing. I have had to train myself to leave placeholders while writing with a note of what to come back and research later, or else I will end up in a rabbit hole with absolutely zero words written but I'll know a lot more about George Washington's favorite bible verses. (True, recent story.) While working on The Successor I kept a tab open for moon phases and tide tables. I'm not going to promise I didn't miss something, or swap a scene around in editing and forget to correct for it, but for the most part the moon phases should correspond exactly to the passage of time, and the tides should line up to whatever month I decided to base things on (October, I think), based on the Bogue Banks tide chart. I'm a nerd, I love this shit.

80. Do you try to put themes, motifs, messages, morals, etc... in your writing? if so, how do you go about it?

Yes, but not intentionally. At least not at first. When I start a new project I get an idea and see where it takes me. If you look across my writing in general, there are a lot of themes of grief, loneliness, and motherhood, and there's no real reason for that other than they are extremely personal subjects for me so it makes sense I explore my own feelings about them in writing. If I notice I have unintentionally started adding something though I will pay more attention to it, start doing research, and make notes so when I am editing I can look for consistency. The zelink longfic I'm working on right now for instance, I realized I multiple times referenced birdsong as background noise so I started paying more attention to when, and looking up what the birds I had mentioned symbolized and looking for other ways I could maybe incorporate birds. A friend did point out to me once that I am constantly coming back to the idea of choice in my writing, which I didn't even realize I did. So I guess in terms of themes or morals I do place a lot of value on my characters having freedom to make their own choices--or trying to gain that freedom if they don't already have it. I also mention the moon a LOT, so that's a motif I suppose. I use it to denote the passing of time, and probably lean a lot into the moon as having yin energy since a lot of my storytelling is more internal and about the place and characters, than it is the yang energy of plot and action.

These are REALLY thoughtful asks! I would love to get more, and to see more of y'all reblog that post so I can see your answers!

[tomyo]

Admittedly there’s a struggle with making a whole “sub brand” of me becoming autobiographical comics. I struggle a bit in a few ways; one being that it can often feel like my stories are things my peers don’t want to hear and another being people not necessarily liking being a part of those stories. In general it can be hard to navigate between censoring yourself and being fully raw as there’s a fine line between something that will resonate and something that will become morbid. In a lot of my circles, My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is basically this well loved narrative of Nagata Kabi being in some sense pathetic. To be clear I relate to that story so deeply on a personal level and I love its obsessive examinations on self but from the perspective of the people in her life, she was probably not well looked upon. And my frustration comes because I can see how people could read and love that and then turn around and not feel the same for me. It’s not as fun to know the artist personally, the magic of their narrative isn’t as infallible. I don’t even think I’m necessarily making stuff that’s going to grip people deeply, they’re just my experience and examinations on how I feel. But there are points where I want to be really honest on my suicidal feelings or negative emotions involving others and it’s like yeah that’s unpleasant. Healing often is unpleasant, not everyone is you life contributes towards that if not sometimes damages it unintentionally.

Part of me is hyper aware that it is trauma from art school. That it was this hell pit where I just felt like I didn’t have the secret ingredient. It was frustrating as hell, to watch my classmates get gushed over and praised while feeling like I was just 60%, something that was fine but not noteworthy. It can sound like I needed to be told I was special but it was more about watching classmates get away with things that you know if you tried or did similar you’d get chewed out for. I probably could have taken that easier if not it being a little depressing if it weren’t for DK literally being a god damned menace. Telling me to quit school, refocusing all my attempts to get proper feedback on how mentally unwell I was, ignoring if I showed up with fully new work for my thesis, saying in front of everyone he didn’t understand why I bothered to show up today, and goading others to give the critic because there was no point in him saying anything. That last one strikes something in me, the way it felt like standing next to my work with my back to the wall was when he wanted others to throw stones at me. It didn’t feel like he was asking others to give me input but to further push how worthless I was in his eyes. No one spoke while we sat in silence for a solid minute like they were children afraid to get caught in the crossfire (I don’t mean that in a way to insult them, I can’t think of a better analogy for keeping your head down to not get in trouble by proxy). I have been fucked up for years because of those 3ish months of my life. Knowing that something is wrong but all the efforts you make to talk to the system or your peers to change what everyone knew was a problem only led back to him finding out you snitched and him getting angrier and meaner towards you. And every week you end up displaying your progress next to the classmate with the special ingredient that makes him spend a whole hour of crit where it’s just praised only to give you less than a minute when he turns towards yours. Suddenly a “what I’m about just didn’t mesh well with the school environment but school isn’t life” becomes “You were just made not good enough if you never make good work and no one wants to believe in you”.

Even down to my emotional moments on my private accounts, my brain just grapples with “You look pathetic in their eyes”. The more I want to make less vague comics the more I think “they’ll resent you and tell you how awful it was for you to make these.”. And I juggle a lot on that, that sometimes that the “breakups” weren’t because I think the people where evil or even in the wrong but that I, a fucked up person, had to make less than stellar decisions to survive. When I tell my mum how I miss people I chose to stop talking to, she said that I was too extreme and even after taking that moment to finally tell her I was diagnosed with BPD I don’t think she fully connects that it was survival. That she would have either had a dead child if I kept trying to do things “the mature way” or I had to sever ties before I made them all reflect about it at a funeral. That yes I have an inclining that my brain is overclocking but it still stands that my self value will struggle if I’m in a friend group that made a big deal about every other person’s birthday but didn’t even remember mine for 5+ years or if another seems to give weird vibes if you’re around and you try to say it’s cool if you just don’t work with them anymore but are left between people who keep you around while partially annoyed that you still are. No one wanted to own any reflection on the dynamics I had with them and it felt like the idea that even partial responsibility was needed was a crime. It felt like the ideal solution for people was that I slowly faded out from vision and died quietly rather than have to confront any bad emotions.

No one wants to know about the noose in your room. The moment you force that knowledge upon them is a sudden burden they didn’t want. “It’s okay to tell us you’re depressed uwu* but don’t actually talk about the nasty parts because that’s you’re responsibility to deal with yourself far away from us and possibly without therapy because that can be inconvenient.” They don’t want to know about the noose because you shouldn’t have a noose to begin with, a noose is a symbol of something being wrong and possibly bearing others to be responsible for you. If there is no noose then nothing is ever wrong in their sphere and all the bad things belong to you alone. The noose forces them to have to think beyond that, why it exists, how to get rid of it, is it properly gone, will you use the noose? I’ve seen what happens after the noose, they cry, they feel all this responsibility that they didn’t take in preventing it, and they hate that there’s a loss they have to feel now. And after that, they still never want to know there’s a noose in your room.

Getting back in the rails rather than typing out what’s probably now its own comics in the works, it’s just….its just hard to think that when I do these things that it feels like others look down on me for it. In reality I have become thin skinned if not always have been so despite being someone more than willing to dish it out. I talk about how I intend to be a problem, worse™️, in my villain era this year. That medicating and trying to let it go felt more like desperately trying to ignore the problem until I purged the emotions in a less productive way. When I think about Bojack and Bad Damage, I couldn’t relate. Throwing all my struggles into comic pages, small narrative snippets, allegorical artwork has felt cathartic despite sometimes chaotic. It’s like untangling a thread by looming it into a tapestry. Vague uneasy feeling get filed away properly. But the flip side of it is how I know I’ll have to mask some my choices not to be chastised or given a speech how everyone always thinks they don’t need their medicine until they do. I am not doing it because I think I feel good enough without it, I want to take it to feel bad again. To feel like the pain that comes from working out the scaring in physical therapy, to let the emotions hit as raw and terrible as possible and not try to be delicate in the way I feel about them. It was a lie to say I want to loose weight it be healthy, I want to loose weight so I can be thin again because I know all the thin body fashion is eating at me and my boobs getting bigger makes me dysphoric. I want to get a good body in some sense of revenge. I want to sell successfully at cons because on one side it is fulfilling and community building but on the otherside I do like the idea that it puts me in a place of visible success with something that makes me happy. And at the same time in all the ways I’m doing the post breakup improvement rounds, I am also still so vulnerable that Olivia Rodrigo hits too good and I do download tinder when I’m close by enough because I miss them all that much. If I had it my way, truly truly truly my way, I want them to come find me and tell me that they miss me, that I did matter and that they’d be open to listening how I felt under appreciated and even thought that wasn’t their intent that they can recognize that it did trigger me into horrible places because BPD is specifically a personality disorder triggered by social dynamics. I wanted them to at least ask or be curious when I had first told them but it felt brushed off even when they said they didn’t know what it meant. I don’t want them to be persecuted or the bad guy but I want them to at least recognize some ownership over how they make me feel even if the end result is they can’t match my needs. I wanted them to miss me and want to put enough in to try and keep me in their lives. Part of all of this is almost certainly a cry for comfort, to see I’m here and still sad and here’s specifically how I felt sad and what helps me not be sad. And it’s delusional because a different part of me knows the call will never be answered, that I may get solace from strangers connecting to my art but colleagues who become resentful of the work.

I’m achy and overthinking it all because some recent stuff just wants to scoop out those more direct narratives about absolutely simping for someone who didn’t even acknowledge you as a viable partner and kept talking about other women as they were face first in you clevage BECAUSE ITS FUNNY. It’s funny that I knew the situation, I could see that it was a fools marathon and yet my undiagnosed ass still took the jog because what queer doesn’t jump into hilariously terrible romancing choices. I don’t think they’re bad for that situation, I think I’m a clown that put myself there in the first place and really just should’ve spoken up at some point rather than romanticize the idea of having a shojo style plot unravel over 50 excruciating chapters. It’s funny all the cringe narratives we form in our heads before they actually start. And I’m just scared no one else will see mine that way or that I’ll cross a boundary I didn’t notice in the pursuit of that.

Ultimately I think that’s what I have to get comfortable with, that being worse™️ for my own sake will likely kill reconciliation, that I think I’m going to burn bridges and loose friendships this year, that I might move forward rather than attempt the hard and long convo that was the other option. The question comes of when it’s okay to finally use what you had been bottling up for this, do you wait for people to be dead or long gone, for the road to fully get cut off before you talk about these things. And I think I am tired of civility that just makes me carry all of it in me. It’s the trauma I haven’t cleaned house on because removing it puts it out in the world. I still envy the people who have done it, who have partners willing to support being in that limelight with them, or how some seem to escape the recoil of throwing this type of stuff out there. I don’t feel like I’ve ever been given the grace to get those things and I just keep telling myself to get comfortable will that.