#sure the stuff they want to do later makes sense but it makes the execution feel clunky and the characters feel a bit out of it bc there's

[t-u-i-t-c]

:/

[northopalshore]

Experimental post: Lunar Return chart observations (complete!)

My lunar return chart is quite interesting this month, so I wanted to do a little run down on my blog. I wanted to try out an experimental post. Let's review together after this cycle ends! See how accurate I got it the first time around. [ It's been a month & I've now passed this LRC. The result of the observation will be added below the initial points]

₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑

₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑

🍰 Leo rising (17° leo)

It's giving It girl lol! I'll be turning a lot of heads this month. Likely for the way that I dress or groom myself. Perhaps I'll be charming a lot of pants off (then put them back on because I'm in no position to be getting freaky rn)

[ Result; I received so many compliments this month, both online & offline. Most of them complimented my aesthetics & face. A lot of people were very sweet & kind to me as well. ]

🍰 Virgo 2nd House, lilith libra (12° pisces)

I'm going to be rather diligent with my money this month because of a splurge I did with my wallet the month prior... Haha.. natal Moon in 2nd house go brr

[Result; I.. definitely splurged lol. I spent most of my money buying things online. Usually, Lilith here (especially w the degree) means loans or debts & even scams. I got scammed out of one item that I bought but I got refunded because I had evidence. & I did loan some money to purchase stuff that I needed but I paid them back after.]

🍰 Libra 3rd House, Mercury (6° virgo), Eros (13° aries)

Looks like I'll be taking & writing quite a lot this month. I'll be a little bit rushed but still have to be careful. Also, teamwork is important here. Makes sense, with group work assignments & deadlines we have to catch.

[Result; definitely a lot of writing. A lot of last minute changes had to be done because of a miscommunication w a lecturer. I'll elaborate on this part later]

🍰 Juno (24° pisces) conjunct Sun (24° pisces)

Op— a potential romantic interest? Even if it is in the 3rd house (communication), I feel like it's rather spiritual or internal because of Libra & Pisces. Could also be someone admiring me from afar or online? Juno also trines Jupiter in the 11th house. Perhaps I'll just be yapping about my husband again online. Or he could be searching for me online? Hmm. Don't tell me my fs will find my blog, that doesn't make any sense to me ʕ⁠ ⁠º⁠ ⁠ᴥ⁠ ⁠º⁠ʔ! Even if he does, he'll probably keep it a secret even from me since, he himself will be skeptical lol :p. Perhaps he found me by Googling himself (his chart placements). Although.. I don't know if my blog will show up yet since it's still relatively "new" so I bet it's still hard to find if you aren't an avid Tumblr user.

[Result; I can't say for sure on this part but I have dreamt about him twice albeit rather vaguely. I don't think it's anything important though. ]

₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑

₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑

When compared to my natal chart, it's more like receiving more admirers or even rivals ʕ⁠´⁠•⁠ ⁠ᴥ⁠•̥⁠`⁠ʔ. This month is self focused (leo rising & lrc saturn in the 1st house) My natal union conjuncts lrc Sun & Juno but because of the degree (24° pisces) & the 8th house influence, it's giving secret admirer. Perhaps I'll get a few new stalkers as well TT.

[Result; I definitely caught a few new eyes lol. Though, it's more of a casual interest than much else. Again, I can't tell for sure what type of attention I'm getting from them since it's being hidden from me (8th house & pisces) ]

🍰 Sun opposite moon in 9th house

There still could be fatigue that follows throughout the month. Perhaps what I want to do doesn't line up perfectly with how I want things to be executed. Either that or I could be having slight issues with my assignments. As in, it's not going to be as great or effortless as I hope it would be (Libra vs Aries).

[Result; fatigue was definitely there, however I didn't feel it hit as hard as the month prior. I could still somewhat function & be in the moment. I could just feel a burnout coming lol. ]

🍰 Scorpio 4th House,

I'll be a bit sentimental about my family. Perhaps there will be some disagreements between me and my mother, either that or I'll feel a closer bond to her. They're pretty far away from where I am right now, so it could just mean being quite attached to them energetically. I wonder if I'll experience some paranormal activity since pisces is in the 8th house here.

🍰 Venus (29° leo) in Scorpio

Yeah, the relationship with my family & close circle will likely deepen here. No fighting, just bonding. My friends & housemates could feel more comfortable around each other. We could be going out & doing a lot of fun activities together as a group. Especially with the 5th house being Sagittarius.

[Result; There was some miscommunication with my housemates but it's nothing big i.e didn't involve actual arguments or anything. It actually made us feel more comfortable with each other after opening up. Also, I've been invited to do a lot of activities w different groups. I went to the city central w my housemates, went hiking w church members & slept over for a game night w them as well. Overall, I was very socially active this month. ]

🍰 Capricorn 6th House, Pluto (29° leo)

I'll be very focused on my health & duties this month. My schedule is packed, but it doesn't look like I'll suffer from it. Actually, it looks like I'll be having a lot of fun with it. I've also been.. taking a lot of health supplements lately, is that related? Probably.

[Result; I got a little sick but it didn't really affect my work much. I took on a lot of new responsibilities. Being a part of a leadership role, & actually being a leader. I had to work w things I wasn't used to but still managed to organise well. ]

₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑

🍰 Pluto trine uranus (26° taurus) in the 10th House

I was planning on doing something special for my blog. Let's call it a little upgrade. I just wanted to further integrate my personal style into my blog since it feels like an attachment to my identity. I'm working on a set mood my blog should give with every post. Since I have strong Scorpio & Pisces placements, I thought I'd have a dark, ethereal yet still romantic feel. Hoho? Seems like the 'rebrand' will be quite successful! Perhaps I'll be trying something new too. My housemates are quite active on TikTok so I'll probably be going on their lives here and there.

[ Result; I landed a position in a club/organisation I applied to, it just wasn't the one I applied for /went to interview for. It's a finance & business role, something I've never handled before in a more hands-on way. Still it's quite exciting. It requires me to think outside of the box i.e creatively]

🍰 POF (13° aries) in aquarius

Looks like I'll be quite fortunate with my work & studies, but also my online presence i.e blog. Does this mean I'll be some sort of trailblazer? With both Aries & Aquarius being standout placements perhaps I'll be the first at something. I just can't put my finger on it yet. Even if I'm in a rush, I'll still be able to do a decent job.

[ Result; I had to wrack my brain in a multitude of ways this month. Thinking of new & exciting ideas but also creating presentation slides (designing them from scratch all on my own). I'd say I did a pretty good job on all of the ones I designed for my team(s)]

🍰 Aquarius (17° leo) 7th House

I'll be working with a lot of different people this month. Makes sense with different groups in different classes.. with different assignments... TT. Looks like it'll run smoothly though. I'd like to thank them in advance for their cooperation!

[Result; I did work w a lot of different people. However, unconsciously I became the head of ideas for my groups i.w the one scripting & brainstorming the work structure for everyone.]

🍰 Fama (29° leo), Starr (22° capricorn) & Europa (26° taurus) in the 7th house

Ooh I guess I will be charming some pants off lmao. Okay Mid October - Mid November me, work. Perhaps a lot of people will invite me into their group or to hang out? Perhaps my involvement in these groups will be quite beneficial for my status? Or just getting more friends in general. Also, I'll likely gain attention for my work (posts) online as well. I could be working with people I adore for example. Or other blogs ? Sounds like fun!

When compared to my natal chart, all of these asteroids are in my 12th house so these collaborations may happen on social media (not physical).

[Result; I interacted with a lot of my mutuals (on Tumblr) this month (most of which I still can't believe are my mutuals because I love their post sm! It feels surreal lol). Also, a lot of the work I did for my group work were listed & shared online]

🍰 Saturn (13° aries) retrograde in Pisces 7th House

I could be reunited with old childhood friends, I feel like this is especially so since it's also aspecting Jupiter (21° Sagittarius) retrograde in the 11th House (Gemini). However, it's squaring Jupiter so even if we reconcile it's just for a brief moment since we'll be quite busy with other stuff.

[Result; Instead of old friends, I think this correlates to a certain ask I got about my FS ರ⁠_⁠ರ iykyk, though I did meet a lot of new acquaintances throughout the month. We won't be seeing each other often, but still keep in touch]

🍰 Saturn also trines groom in the 11th House

..the FS theory may still have legs to stand on. Although I'm not going to pay much mind to it yet.

[Result; again, not really sure. Though I think I did yap about my FS]

🍰 Neptune is aspecting a lot of my planets here,

so there could be this dreamy or idealistic influence with everything I do. Or, there could be a delay in my actions since mars is also in the 12th house. I might be taking the backseat in a lot of activities i.e not leading anything. I could also be doing some things alone. I could also be romanticising things often.

[Result; I think I was half awake for every activity this month lmao, mars in the 12th house manifested as me doing a lot of things alone i.e leading, planning, coming up w things. Though I don't feel like it was a burden. I know almost everyone here is still burned out & overwhelmed. So I made use of my brain as much as I could before it fully hit me too. ]

🍰 Priapus (18° virgo) 8th House conjunct Chiron (21° sagittarius) in the 9th House

Yeah, assignments will be quite tiring TT. Very tiring actually. It could also mean there's going to be a rather uncomfortable interaction within my course mates. Or with professors? They could shame me for my work or I might have to re-do something TT. I'm not looking forward to this. Someone I work with might have ill intentions towards me too.

When compared to my natal chart, my lunar return Priapus & Chiron are in my 2nd house so that bad energy could come from jealousy from my course mates for how I dress or what I have on me. They might think I look 'extra' TT.

[Result; Hah .. I was right. Though, rather than shamed I was cut off by an international lecturer. I did the planning & task division for my group members & we were supposed to update him on our progress but before I could even finish the first sentence — he cut me off & changed the whole direction of our work. Then he kept adding new last minute tasks that differ far from what he first issued. Omg. This was not fun. I was right but at what cost? ༎��⁠‿⁠༎ຶ]

🍰 Gemini 11th House, Jupiter (21° Sagittarius) retrograde

I'll be gaining more friends, being more social & extroverted in general. Most of the new connections I'll be making are with people from a different state or even online. Perhaps it's in retrograde since I moved here about a month ago now so it's not completely "new" to me. But still, I'll be interacting with people from different states & even countries. I forgot, but one of my classes is involved in an online outbound program with students from another country. So, that could be it? Online friends, delayed, studies. We aren't meeting them physically although we will be sharing some lectures together with them. As you can tell, I'll be studying a lot TT. However it also means I'll be posting more on my blog (I think that's already started, compared to last month).

[Result; so the "outbound" program was canceled. A lot of group work had to be postponed, there were just a lot of things coming at once. I've also made a lot of drafts this month, though most of them are either half way done or ⅓.

It just requires more time & effort from my half since I need to shift a lot of my focus on my studies & actual life outside of the blog. Still, I'm very happy w my ideas & what I wrote. I've also gotten the most asks & messages this month but a lot of the questions required too much of my time (the dm questions mostly).

Still, I believe I have answered to the best to my ability i.e what I can manage right now. I'm really sorry, but most of the time I'm not going to be able to get to those really long & complex asks especially when it's from dms since it involves a lot of back & forth one on one teaching.

It would be great if they weren't novices but most of those asking me are beginners. So I usually find myself explaining from A to Z. I do what I can, but I just don't have that much time on my hands.

Also, please refrain from dming me about your questions. I'm sorry if it sounds harsh, but I'm not in the position to help you understand the whole meaning of your chart. I don't have the time to do paid readings at the moment, let alone guide you step by step because it takes a lot of time. I want to share what I know but please don't bombard me with so much to digest at once.

If you're truly curious about something, try it out first. Experiment with it. Refer to different sites & references. That is what learning is. That's also how I learned what I know today. If you find that it differs from what you're experiencing, then ask me THROUGH THE ASKS BOX ONLY since this will be my priority i.e what I'll be answering first. ]

🍰 Groom (8°scorpio) in Cancer 11th House

I could be feeling pretty attached to my FS. Whether energetically or emotionally. Perhaps I'll be writing about more of his personal details. Which is .. very likely. I don't want to get emotional over him anymore TT, high vibrations. High vibrations.

[Result; hah. Iykyk.]

Thus ends this experiment.

₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑

₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑ . ₊ ⊹ .₊๋‧₊ ˚ ⊹ ࣭ ⭑

I know it seems like I'm talking about myself a lot lol, but it's my way of deciphering how certain things work especially when it comes to aspects I don't understand. Thus why I call this an "experimental" post. What's a better way to learn than from first hand experience? ʕ⁠´⁠•⁠ᴥ⁠•⁠`⁠ʔ

Thanks for reading ♡

@northopalshore

@northopalshore experimental lrc 2024.

[ewingstan]

On the End of Claw, pt 1.

So this is gonna cover my thoughts on Claw's final three chapters. I don't think Claw's ending was especially bad, but I do think it picked an odd note to end on, and had to contort itself awkwardly to even reach that note in the first place in a way that really hurt its execution. In this part, I'm gonna talk about the structural problems around Claw's ending. In the next part, I'll focus on the last chapter and Mia's "trial."

Its been noted that Mia has some character similarities to Taylor in terms of a willingness to act ruthlessly and without apparent remorse. Perhaps as a result, it seems like Wildbow wanted to give Mia a similar ending to Taylor: a space where she attempts to explain herself, confront everything she's done, and consider whether it was worth it. It feels like a dark echo of Taylor's talk with Contessa; giving her an unfair audience rather than one who acted much the same way, but similarly wanting the ending note to be her concluding that she her ruthless actions weren't all worth it to her.

But if that was the intent, the surrounding structure of Claw ensured that it wouldn't land nearly as well. Worm's ending is such that its climax perfectly sets up its Taylor's conversation with Contessa. After all, the climax was Taylor doing something truly awful to a lot of people for the greater good—what she'd been doing the entire book, but brought to its most extreme point. It made sense to follow that up with an exploration of whether it was worth it—the book had been asking if what Taylor was doing was "worth it" the whole time, and it was an especially relevant question when applied to Gold Morning.

Compare this to Claw, and the way the ending focused on Mia asking whether or not she was monstrous. That had certainly been a question brought up by many characters throughout the whole story. But unlike Worm, it wasn't a question that was a relevant consideration in the wake of the climax. As the story presented us with the final confrontation of our leads against Davie Cavalcanti, we'd largely moved past the question of whether Mia was monstrous. Sure, Natalie was still concerned with it, but that was framed as a flaw that was preventing her from helping Ripley.

In fact, the thematic stuff surrounding the treatment of Ripley had really superseded anything surrounding Mia's "essential nature" as the key thing to explore. Ripley getting taken by Natalie and ripped away from her happy life got framed by the narrative as the same sort of violation as her later abduction and mutilation by Davie. Natalie's development all centered on her considering Ripley's needs as a person over her status as Natalie's daughter. Ben's chapters had largely been about how his worldview, a belief in the necessity of preserving the parental role, requires him to ignore incongruous observations about how children are harmed when that role is exercised. The permissibility of Mia's actions are still floating around as a theme, but its only a small part of the now much larger theme of deconstructing the parent relationship, and the moral weight of Ripley's agency. Addressing those themes directly (which 6.5 is partially concerned with, if not 6.6) would thus better serve as a satisfactory cap to the climax.

Mia's moral character, in contrast, was not a particularly relevant aspect by the time we reach the end. That becomes clear when you see how much 6.5 had to redirect things to make the question even relevant. In this regard, that penultimate chapter feels like the real weak point in the execution of Claw's finale. Its little substance, all connective tissue, and suffers a lot from none of those connections getting fleshed out. Natalie's revolving heel-face-heel positioning is a big part of this: It's strange to go from her characterization in the second half of 6.4—recognizing that hasn't been prioritizing Ripley's well-being and making a big sacrificial play in response—to her characterization in 6.5, where she's threatening to damn Ripley's chance at a normal life simply to get at Mia. Its a beat that's needed to push Mia towards making the mistake that gets her caught, but because of how it seems to contradict her earlier growth, it doesn't feel like anything more than a a plot-necessity.

The frustrating thing is that I think Natalie's "regression" could have been executed well. After all, its one thing for Natalie to decide to selflessly help Ripley and make a sacrificial play. But after unexpectedly surviving, the difficulty of continually making the smaller everyday sacrificial plays of working with Mia—that's something else entirely. The singular grand gesture is always easier to make than the prolonged effort.

But to sell that Natalie couldn't handle this larger, continued sacrifice, you'd probably need another chapter in her perspective. Let us stew in Natalie seeing that she was still losing Ripley even after everything, see how its more difficult to sacrifice something if she has to live with it missing from her life afterwards. Without that—without anything to explain the jump in her attitude from 6.4 to 6.5—it feels more like Natalie is just behaving however she needs to for the story to reach the intended conclusion.

(Which you know, she is. They all are, that's what characters do in stories. Its not bad for them to behave in ways that serve to drive the plot forwards rather than be perfect simulations. But their behavior still need verisimilitude, dammit.)

Mia, meanwhile, gets the almost self-parodying beat of going for one last child-napping. Again, I think this could work if it was built up more—have her ask herself whether she'd made things worse by helping Ben use the Civil Warriors against the Cavalcantis, wonder about whether she has a responsibility to do anything about it. Have her worry about the kid she rescued from the gunfire—was it wrong to just return her to her parents, when they'd brought her to a race riot? Isn't that much more irresponsible than leaving her in a hot car? Instead, we learn she was doing this only after a chapter of seeing her worry about Ripley drifting away, its explanation coming in conjunction with her explaining her plan to get Ripley away from Natalie. The framing implies that she only acted in order to retain the image of herself as a mother saving children from dangers. It makes sense to position that as a non-trivial part of her motivation, but framing it as the main motivation honestly feels like a disservice to her character.

Again, both these plotpoints could have worked if executed better. But then, what were they executed in service for? Clumsily delivering Mia to her character trial, when the themes driving the story had developed past such a trial feeling relevant.

Still, we have the trial. And there were parts of it I thought were very well-executed for what it was. But the "what-it-was" has issues even above what I covered here.

Continued in part 2.

[jakesuit0]

What Was Missing Review

Finn is revealed to regularly have alone time with the wad of Princess Bubblegum’s hair she gave him in “To Cut a Woman’s Hair”. It’s essentially a PG version of a guy still holding on to their ex’s underwear for personal use. The allegory is pushed forward with Finn checking to make sure he is alone. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t exactly shocking behavior for a thirteen year old boy, but it’s the first big sign that Finn’s crush is getting unhealthy after “Too Young”. It’s time to move on! Unlike “Wizard Battle”, I like the incorporation of Finn’s feelings, despite the arc feeling like there’s nowhere to go after “Too Young”. It’s not the main conflict in the episode, and serves to build to a climax in the season finale.

The Door Lord steals Finn’s gum, Jake’s blanket, and BMO’s controller. It’s hilarious that he only speaks in loud mumbles. He’s supposed to be related to Key-per from “The Enchiridion!”. The Door Lord steals a toy from a candy person and Finn reassures him “I’ll get your kid back, toy!”. The episode wasn’t originally written this way. Adam Muto misspoke when he was pitching the episode and they thought it was funny to keep it like that. Door Lord steals something from Bubblegum and attempts to steal Marceline’s bass axe. With Maja being in possession of Hambo, it makes sense for her bass axe to be her most important item. Finn, Jake, Princess Bubblegum, Marceline, and BMO have to team up to solve the riddle of the door. It’s great getting to see this group of characters together for the first time. It’s the entire main cast minus Ice King, and they get so few opportunities to all be together before Stakes. Their group dynamic is so fun too. The episode is set in Red Rock Pass, which is a really pretty setting to choose for a (mostly) bottle episode. 

Marceline chastises Bubblegum for not executing the door lords, as they kept breaking out of jail. I’m not sure if PB is really above just killing them, considering all the fucked up stuff she’s done in the past. But, killing might be a bridge too far for her. I know she committed robot genocide, but I argue she didn’t see them as sentient beings. Jake decides to pretend to be the jerk in the band. Since Jake doesn’t have a grand emotional arc, this is a funny role to put him in. Marceline starts singing “Just Your Problem”:

-“I’m gonna drink the red from your pretty pink face”. This pretty much gives the game away about PB and Marcy not being platonic. She’s singing about kissing and biting PB. 

-PB calls it “distasteful”, causing Marceline to accuse her of just not liking her. This ties into PB not liking Marceline’s behavior when she got more and more consumed with her princess duties. Marceline became well aware of this by their first mission to the Glass Kingdom (“Oh c’mon, you love it.”). 

-“Sorry I don’t treat you like a goddess. Is that what you want me to do?” She’s calling out PB’s god complex. Marceline assumes Bonnie thinks she’s better than her, like how she sings “you’re self-obsessed and all the rest” in Distant Lands.

-“Sorry I don’t treat you like you’re perfect, like all your little loyal subjects do. Sorry I’m not made of sugar. Am I not sweet enough for you?”. Marceline thinks Bubblegum demands absolute loyalty from everyone as she does with her citizens. She thinks PB would prefer Marceline to be a dum dum juiced moron that never questions her. We don’t know if Marceline is aware of the dum dum juice, but I like to think that she’s partially referring to that. It also relates to Marcy viewing PB as a dictator as she sings in “Woke Up”. She thinks PB wants her to turn down her edginess and be sweeter, like when she wasn’t taking the situation in the Glass Kingdom seriously, something I’m sure wasn’t an isolated incident. 

-I’ll lump together “Is that why you always avoid me?” with the later line “I forgot what landed me on your blacklist.”  Some people question why Marceline wonders this considering her singing “Woke Up” is the obvious answer. I think she’s partially referring to PB’s actions before their breakup. Bubblegum grew more distant as her responsibilities grew, something that confused and hurt Marceline. PB talks about this in “Varmints”. She’s also referring to PB being cold to Marceline for centuries after their breakup. Even when they were around each other in “Power Animal” and “Video Makers”, we don’t see them talking. Bubblegum was very dismissive of Marcy in “Go With Me”. This is partially Marceline’s fault, as she can be really rude and mean to Bonnie, as seen in this episode. 

-“I shouldn’t have to justify what I do.” Marceline doubles down on acting the way she thinks people perceive her. If people think she’s a monster, it's less painful for her to embrace it. This is something she picked up on from thinking she scared her mother away.

-“I shouldn’t have to be the one who makes up with you so why do I want to…” Marceline thinks that since PB is the one who pushed her away, PB is the one who should take the initiative of making things right. There is some truth to this, but as we see in “Obsidian”, they are both more at fault than Marcy is willing to admit. The faces on the door glow brighter and Marceline gets closer to the truth. The truth is she wants to at least be friends with Princess Bubblegum again. That’s the real reason she joined the group here. Reconnecting to PB is something we’ll see her try to do in episodes like “Sky Witch”, “Princess Day”, and “Varmints”. 

The song itself slaps. “Just Your Problem” is super popular, so much so that tons of non-fans know the song. A big reason being that it’s probably the most relatable Adventure Time song ever. A lot of people have friends and lovers that drifted away from them or became downright cold to them due to their differences. Rebecca Sugar even based the song off of her experience with a roommate. Princess Bubblegum’s face during this is also pretty telling. She was definitely having flashbacks to the last time Marceline humiliated her with a song. PB’s face turns to shock when Marceline is on the verge of revealing she wants to make up with her. I don’t blame Bonnie for not realizing this. Marceline’s general nastiness towards her, and of course what she said about her while singing “Woke Up”, would give PB the opposite impression. 

Finn doesn’t fully grasp the tension between PB and Marcy, but is able to diffuse the awkwardness and get everyone (besides Jake) to have fun together. I also like how sweet Marceline is to BMO, gently calling him “baby”. I like PB’s quirky attempt at a science based song, which is more fitting for her than singing her heart out like Marceline and Finn. Her song fails and Marceline uses it to antagonize PB. She fixates on Bonnie’s failures as she feels insecure in her presence. The words “monster trash” are definitely echoing in her mind here. Marceline is still really nasty to PB. A lot of it feels like unwarranted bullying without the context of future episodes, but even with the context, it still feels that way to an extent. Spitting on PB is pretty inexcusable and Bubblegum is totally right to walk away after it. Their conflict boils down to Princess Bubblegum’s ego and Marceline’s insecurity clashing. I also like the detail of Shelby slithering back into Jake’s smashed viola. 

As a final effort, Finn sings “My Best Friends in the World” after realizing the key to the door is the truth:

-“Am I a joke…?” Finn worries that Marceline doesn’t respect Finn, and perhaps only hangs around him because she enjoys messing with him. This is an understandable fear with episodes like “Henchman”. It’s still fundamentally untrue, squashed by the end of “Henchman” and in “Heat Signature”. There is no denying, however, that she loves trolling Finn. She likes messing with everyone, Finn’s young mind just makes him an easier target.

-“...your knight…?” This could be taken to mean Finn wonders if PB only keeps him around, and entertains his advancements, just to use his service to the kingdom. It’s true that Bubblegum employs Finn a lot, and isn’t above manipulating him for her benefit (“The Other Tarts”, “Too Old”, “James”), but she still genuinely enjoys his company whether they are working or just hanging out. He might also just be referring to this positively, as her knight in shining armor.

-“Do you look down on me because I’m younger?” All of Finn’s closest companions are older than him, and it makes sense that this weighs on him. Even Jake, who is often close to Finn’s level and acts as a best friend, also often acts as his parental guardian. This line applies most of all to Bubblegum, given how recent “Too Young” is. The events of that episode are still raw for Finn, and PB’s behavior to him after her age was restored came across as condescending and dismissive. 

-“I just wanted us together and to play as a band. Last night was the most fun I’ve ever had.” Finn loves getting to finally hang out with everyone he loves together and feeling like part of a family.

-“Even liked it when the two of you would get mad at each other.” Finn prefers honesty between friends, and appreciates seeing their more vulnerable side as they are usually more closed off from their true emotions in front of him.

-“You are my best friends in the world. And that’s right, I’m talking about the two of you girls. And you Jake.” With his parents dead, the three of them are by far his closest companions. He’s even grown very close to Marceline in recent times. It’s kinda mean to exclude BMO, who’s right there, but BMO becomes more of a part of Finn’s family over time than he is here. 

-“I’ll forget that I lost a piece of your hair. I’ll remember the pasta that we shared over there”. Very sweet line about how the wad of hair doesn’t really matter, the time he spends with PB and getting to be her friend is what’s meaningful to him. I like how the pasta has a double meaning. He obviously just shared pasta with her, but he also had a pasta dinner with Bubblegum when she gave him the hair. 

Finn’s song is my favorite moment of the series so far, and one of the best scenes ever in the series. I thought “Just Your Problem” was Adventure Time’s best song up to now but it’s then immediately topped. I love everyone participating in the song, especially Marceline singing along with Finn for parts of it. Finn’s song causing even PB and Marcy to harmonize together is great symbolism for Finn helping to bring them back together. Even Jake finally breaks character, he’s too caught up in the moment! Rebecca Sugar drew on her feelings of being a young newcomer when she joined the Adventure Time staff to write this song. Worrying about how your friends see you and if they respect you is another very ubiquitous concern. 

The group realizes that the Door Lord showed them that the real treasure is friendship. It’s very cheesy but the contents of the episode does enough to justify it. It’s cool how well the episode ties two themes into this episode: friendship and honesty. The quick cut from the Door Lord happily seeing they got the message to him being bruised and tied up is hilarious. They get their items back, including the famous rock shirt. It’s not at all PB’s style, going to show how much its pure sentimentality means to Bubblegum. The reveal that PB kept the shirt comes as a shock to Marceline. She realizes that Bonnie doesn’t see her as just her problem. Marceline blushing and PB revealing she wears the shirt all the time as pajamas are heavy hints to their romantic pairing. Their interactions in this episode are very queer-coded, even though they aren’t hitting us over the head with it like they do in season 7 onwards. The episode itself gives enough to figure out the broad strokes of Marceline and Bubblegum having a past and a falling out without giving the details, and it’ll be a long time until they are willing to explore it more at all. It’s revealed that Marceline only joined to hang out with them. Beyond reinforcing the theme of friendship, Marceline and PB now know that the other is interested in reforming a connection again, even if Marceline will have to be the one that ends up instigating it. 

“What Was Missing” is a fan favorite for good reason. The two musical numbers are the biggest draw and they are incredible. Rebecca Sugar using her own personal experiences to write them makes them feel so raw and personal. It’s some of the most direct the series ever is about Marceline and especially Finn’s thoughts and feelings, with them explicitly singing them. It’s refreshing to get some clear cut insight as the show is usually much more guarded. I wouldn’t want the series to always be this direct, but it's nice to have moments like these every once in a while to help provide insight into their other appearances. The episode is essentially a precursor for Steven Universe. You could slot in Steven for Finn, Pearl for Bubblegum, and Amethyst for Marceline quite easily. I also really like PB in this one! Despite “What Was Missing” having not one, but two characters that are in love with Princess Bubblegum, she gets to shine. It’s definitely more Marceline-heavy, but I like PB standing up for herself, getting to see her side of the conflict, and the return of her quirks with her scientific song. PB and Marceline also have pretty great outfits here, and it’s definitely their most iconic looks besides their default outfits. 

Rebecca Sugar has since stated that she wrote PB and Marcy as exes in this episode. She felt their interaction in “Go With Me” read that way. The episode does a great job extrapolating from that brief interaction. According to Rebecca Sugar, she pitched this idea to Adam Muto, who she boarded the episode with, and he approved. They ran this by Pen who also liked it. Cartoon Network forbade the crew from being explicit with it. They still did a good job making it as clear as they could with the restrictions and the fandom picked up on it. Rebecca Sugar wanted to include LGBTQ representation and felt that exploring it through the lens of two exes with a past was the best path to getting it in. Despite it only being subtextual, it was a big deal for 2011. 

This episode stirred up quite the firestorm. It’s possibly not a coincidence that it would take almost two years for PB and Marcy to interact again. The Fredator associated Youtube channel Mathematical! posted recaps after the airing of Adventure Time episodes. After the airing of “What Was Missing”, their recap speculated on the possible romantic pairing between Princess Bubblegum and Marceline, interlaced with overtly romantic drawings of Marceline and Bubblegum from character designer and storyboard revisionist Natasha Allegri. As a result, Fredator fired Mathematical! producer Dan Rickmers, deleted the video, and cancelled the Youtube series. Times were different then, but that’s no excuse for such an overreaction. Fred Seibert offered the following explanation:

“Well, I completely screwed up. There’s been chatter on the internet recently about our latest Adventure Time “Mathematical!” video recap that we created, posted, and removed here at Federator. I figure it’s time to clear up the matter. In trying to get the show’s audience involved we got wrapped up by both fan conjecture and spicy fanart and went a little too far. Neither Cartoon Network nor the Adventure Time crew had anything to do with putting up or taking down our latest re-cap. The episode ”What was Missing” remains a terrific short and will be shown again and again just like any other Adventure Time episode. I let us goof in a staggering way and I’m deeply sorry it’s become such a distraction for so many people.” It’s a really weak reasoning as Mathematical! had always been a fan oriented show and that’s what the entire fandom was talking about. Still, I’d expect this from an executive. What was unexpected were Adam Muto’s comments: 

“If it was just a fan video there would be no problem at all. The problem was that it was made by a production company actively involved with the show. The video took something that was a possible subtext and declared it, in effect, text and made it seem like the production was actively seeking out input on plot development. That's all there is to it.” Considering Sugar said that Adam Muto agreed with that interpretation, it would have been for the best if he just stayed out of the situation. That’s what Pen Ward did ("It’s hard to comment on that, because there were so many extreme positions taken on it all over the Internet, and it happened so quickly. I don’t really want to comment on it because of that, because there were so many extreme sides taken. It was a big hullaballoo.")

Now that we know Bubbline was in fact the crew’s intention, and it’s since been explicitly canonized, the situation is just even dumber. Dan Rickmer is definitely owed an apology. But what’s really important is the series no longer having to keep their relationship a big secret.

Grade: A+

[smokinsid]

Alright, alright, let's talk about SotO. Keep your chin up. This'll be long, but as fair as I can make it. It's not all negative, but it's not all positive either. My hope is to just be real about it. Feedback welcome. Blast me in reblogs if you don't agree, I'm genuinely eager for the conversation.

The kryptis are emotion. It stands to reason that this would be a story focused on emotion. How the commander feels about this or that. How the world reacts when you put your emotions into it. That's pretty cool, and after a decade of more and more personal-feeling dragonslaying, separating us from our friends in order to deep-dive into our Commander's own heart is a really cool move. I have to give credit to what was intended.

There's a sense the entire time of throttled execution that I want to talk about. The story is, at all times, not bold enough to deliver the emotional payload it wants. It's not big enough, bad enough- and it's not a question of stakes, either. I advocated for a lower-stakes jaunt into exciting but less apocalyptic territories at the end of EoD.

Eparch is not a threatening villain. The reveal that he lied about his army and manipulated the stakes was... contrary to what we saw in the map, in one hand- and in the other hand, a deception that undermined him as a threat right before approaching his throne.

I recall when he was first revealed wishing that he was just, physically bigger. Not like Cerus. Like Primordus. I wanted him to be speaking to us from that precipice at the arena and then suddenly loom into view, towering over the columns, taking up the horizon. If he's so full of the strength of others, let him grow huge from it, so I can feel the scope of what he's taken and feel small in his presence. I play Asura- at no point did I feel like I could not beat his skinny ass to a pulp with my own class abilities and absolutely no help.

His timer in the fight still running while he's in his Dipshit Cowardice Bubble did not impress me, and I still beat the clock with like 60% of the limit to spare.

He's weak, he's anonymous- he's revealed only to immediately clam back up in his tower while everyone else continues to just talk about him- and if I'm being perfectly honest, the best parallel for him is our old pal, Zhaitan.

Zhaitan loved to send bits of itself as far as it could reach, while the dragon itself remained in Arah. In some ways I liked that- it was the traditional dragon that hunted goats in the countryside and hoarded treasure, but with a necromancer's minion-mastery twist.

Now imagine falling short of Zhaitan, that much-reviled old lizard, in terms of story delivery. Sure, we fight Eparch toe to toe, but he's weak. If Lonely Tower had released at the beginning of SotO instead of now as a flashback, it might've helped us better understand and respect him as a threat, much like how we had the entire personal story past Claw Island to understand Zhaitan.

But we didn't. So to continue looking at this parallel, we see a relatively short, strained jaunt to Zhaitan, with a couple of hairpin turn deaths to sting us emotionally (they fall flat, alas), and suddenly a Big, Easy Fight against a Guy Who Sucks.

Do you remember the Asura woman in the personal story- if you let her spouse die, she never speaks to you again, even in later expansions? Remember Tybalt, Cieran, and Forgal? That stuff hurts good. This NPC won't talk to you because you let her down and broke her heart. These characters grew to love you in ways that, especially for the time, were uncommon for characters in MMOs. That's the kind of thing that this truncated expac didn't have time for.

And let's reflect on IBS while we're at it. I'm never going to stop laughing at it sharing an acronym with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but it genuinely felt like the best they could do working in Bellevue, WA, in the midst of serious covid restrictions. They even went back and re-voiced a chapter that it wasn't safe to voice at the time, remember that? It spoke to an interest in doing their damnedest to deliver the best product they could. And it was good! The final fight couldn't be what they wanted it to be, and I'll always laugh at "so, this is Pact justice?" but it was compelling, at least.

We spend a lot of time in SotO standing still. Selecting a dialogue option and listening to NPCs read their lines. Now, I love Peitha and could listen to her talk all day, but so much of what you should know as the player in position of Wayfinder is stowed away in text-only books and collections. Maybe that's a budgetary constraint. Voice acting is expensive. I don't mind reading, personally- but I didn't, because I was already spending so much time standing around!

I'm not one of those people that thinks of my player character as a killing machine or some kind of mercenary being deployed by the higher echelons to do the practical job of killing a way to the boss. Sid is a radio DJ. Enid is a physicist. Rucks is a troubadour. These are conversational, curious characters who are absolutely invested in what's happening in the world around them.

But my tools as a player for engaging with that world are the ten buttons at the bottom of my screen. You have to challenge me to play the game using those buttons, in order to hook me in and invest me. Kick my ass! Make me fight back! That's part of a great story, and I play all three cruise control classes- Necro, Engi, and Warrior. I want you to make me break bars and use my control effects and feel like I'm under threat so that when I win, it feels like winning!

SotO taught my foul little chain-smoking radio gremlin how to dab. It let me unlock a skyscale the easy way. It made me feel gay things for a twelve foot tall woman made of meat and nightmares. For these things I'll always be grateful.

With strictly tertiary stakes- a secret war on the fringes of reality- expressed through random invasions not much different from the random invasions from Joko's boys, a pinched story with lots of standing around, and a truly pitiful, downright un-respectable asswipe of a villain that makes Zhaitan look like a properly-told story, I have to say that SotO only delivered on its emotional payload in the small places.

The relationships between members of the Ward. The way Peitha grows close to you and comes to rely on you so personally. The banter, more than the beats- and that's as much a problem as it is something to be proud of. Some games don't deliver on character personality. In World of Warcraft: Legion, you got Khadgar being smarmy and Illidan being awful and hilarious- but these are integrated into the most important story moments. When Illidan opens the way to Argus right in the middle of the fucking sky, he has the biggest shit-eating grin you've ever seen on his face, because he knows that it's funny. He knows that he just did the craziest shit that Khadgar's ever seen, and Khadgar's been dealing with demons since the Second War!

So why not have that in our cutscenes? Something as simple as coming to the throne room to threaten Eparch, and seeing Peitha curl her hand around your Wayfinder's shoulder. Isgarren is basically our Khadgar, and he's also a big piece of shit, and he gets some good lines reminiscent of "A Wizard appears exactly when he means to," but we can lean more into that- rather than ask everyone around us if Isgarren is coming, why not... have him fail us? Have him tell us that we can call on him, and then we do, and then have him tell us no.

It's not about how these characters harm and help each other, is what I'm driving at. It's how they harm us, on the other side of the computer screen. You, the player, should be provoked into an emotional response because it's motivating! And if you think being motivated isn't a big deal, I want you to consider that the thing that provokes Kryptis portals to higher intensities are items called motivations.

Arenanet has demonstrated a fluency in the language of emotion, and made a valiant attempt at getting inside our player character's heart. But my take is that in doing so, they left the actual player out of the equation.

I can read to my heart's content, and there's good stuff to read. But I can do that without the game, as everything's transcribed on the wiki. If you want me to be part of your world and tug at my heartstrings, you've gotta provoke me.

And if you can't do that with your main villain, you need a new main villain.

[presidentdisastraofgallifrey]

I’m just playing around with my headcanons because I like lists, but. The Doctor lies, right? Like, a lot. Especially about his age (the fact that this is mostly because it’s hard to keep track of details across 41 (?) seasons, a handful of movies, and hundreds each of audio dramas and books is not relevant here). I’ve always gone with he must have been very young still as One to make the math remotely work. And he was, relatively. I still like the idea that he only looked old because of a failed experiment. But what if he wasn’t that young and just never factored his non-renegade years in (when he did any factoring at all).

That would make his age:

Pre-renegade: a few thousand, maybe? I mean, he had to be an adult which takes a couple hundred and why shouldn’t he have had a relatively settled life he never fit into? Married the Master, maybe. Left because they got divorced and he was pouting. If you ignore the audios they don’t see each other again until he’s regenerated twice. Is Susan related to him? This is Shrodinger’s time lord biology. Maybe she is the child of his child. Maybe she is his very young house cousin who wanted to run away too. Maybe she’s just a kid he took in because she needed to leave. Take your pick. (Does a few thousand work with my later regeneration standards? No. But maybe this isn’t his first body and he got so used to not counting Before he miscounted that too idk).

One: a few centuries? Presumably they wandered around for a while before settling on Earth, and if you add a few gaps between companions he could have been off by himself for a bit. It does make sense he was still relatively young when his body gave out, though.

Two: I like the idea that he was only in this body for a few decades. Makes the execution more traumatic. Plus, I like him spending almost this whole life with Jamie.

Fugitive: A full spy career, which has to have been like a full career in other areas. I’m sure there was a contract. So let’s call it 900 years because I like making vague references and think I’m funny. Also yes I choose to believe she existed between his execution and him waking up on Earth.

Three: a few centuries again. I think he spent a few, though not many, more years at unit than the seasons would suggest. And then afterwards Sarah was in some ways different from a regular companion because (1) she wasn’t stuck with him and (2) she kept up her job. So he definitely went on tons of adventures, both after Jo but before her and during Sarah’s era.

Four: many centuries. Not only do I think there are large gaps between each of his companions, but seasons 16-17 spanned centuries and season 18 really should have been a few years because as it was it seemed like Romana and Adric hardly got to know each other at all.

Five: idk, a couple hundred? I just started his era.

Six: some number in the low hundreds.

Seven: some number in the low hundreds.

Eight: I have actually changed my mind and decided he should be one of the longest-lived. Maybe he gets 1,000 before having to give himself up to war.

War: It is still literally impossible to know how much time actually passed because of constantly changing timey wimey stuff. He lived for thousands of years and also only a few decades.

Nine: Like a year. He got himself killed as fast as possible. Romana would be impressed.

Ten: Many hundreds of years, with gaps between companions and that long stretch alone at the end. About the same as Four.

Eleven: The first and only time he lives a normal regeneration length. He is an Old Man. Let’s call it 1500.

Twelve: Several hundred but not all THAT ridiculously long. We don’t count the confession dial because he was remade each time.

Thirteen: Barely a century :( no that’s not fair. Let’s say 200 because she takes some off screen recovery time from prison and leaves the fam alone more often than we see.

Fourteen: less than 200, choosing to regenerate when the last of Rose’s grandkids die of old age. But it felt very long to him.

Fifteen: No way to know this yet but since he didn’t show up the second he regenerated let’s say he saw the universe solo for a bit, enjoying being able to enjoy things again, so he’s been around for a few decades now.

All of that works out to (very roughly and not counting War at all)…oh. About 10,000, actually. Which according to my (totally made up) regeneration math makes him approximately middle aged. Which is ridiculous, 10,000 is probably their entire lifespan, but making a species that lives for thousands of years in the first place is ridiculous so they brought it on themselves

I also like the idea that the Doctor and the Master were literally married, and the Master has spent millennia now trying to get back with their ex while the Doctor is like I ADORE YOU BUT WE CAN’T TALK UNTIL YOU STOP MURDERING PEOPLE (except for Five, whose opinion on the matter is you murdered ME, you bastard, I want a second divorce)

[bittrlys]

Season 4 ruined TDP for me and I haven't been able to drum up the interest to watch it since, so maybe this is an out of date take but...

Terry is kind of a pointless character. His role is sort of presented as being Claudia's last tether to her morality, but his actions are otherwise so ride-or-die it seems weird when he calls her out or gets upset about what's happening (especially since they've seemingly been together a while so he should be familiar with how Claudia operates). Plus there was already a character who could serve this role: Soren.

After season 3 I was excited to see their sibling bond evolve as their outlooks were beginning to diverge. And then with Viren resurrected I wanted to see how that affected things. I was deeply disappointed when the established familial relationships fell by the wayside in favor of a timeskip romantic one (and I usually LOVE romantic plotlines).

See, I get Soren leaving his family behind and hopping to Team Hero and thus becoming unavailable to Claudia as someone to bounce off of. I don't love the execution because I think he feels rootless and lacking in significant depth in his relationships with the main cast, but I think it works for his character. He's a prodigal young knight who swore vows to defend his king and his nation, and he's a very straightforward guy. He shares pragmatic qualities with his family, but at the same time, their pragmatism operates on an abstract level he doesn't exactly understand. Once he was forced to choose between family and what he's always known and how he's vowed to live his life, I can see him making the very hard choice to pull away from them. I think him staying as Claudia's morality pet would have been a disservice to his character, though he may have more interesting things to do just because Team Dark Magic are always doing interesting things ... but again, that's more to the execution than the conceit. I don't mind characters moving apart from people they were closest to at the start of the series, and like when they can bond with new people.

I think the limited number of episodes + breakneck pace of the plot does leave their lack of interactions more noticeable, but also more inevitable. Technically, we've seen all this: Soren and Claudia have met again and fought over their differences, and Soren and Viren got their chance to hash it out a little bit. We've been informed of the status of their relationships and their feelings for one another. For a nine episode twenty minute children's animated TV show, this is relatively decent screentime offered to their relationships considering they've been apart so long. I'm not necessarily defending it as 'good' because I'll gladly say this show has very weak screenwriting with my whole chest, but the Magefam would have to be proper protagonists and not just deuteragonists to the Main Three for the screentime to really shift in their favour. But they're not, and you can't even imagine stuff happening off screen because almost everything in the plot happens one after another barring the mid-season timeskip -- and not a whole lot of interesting things happened during that.

(Like, seriously, other than some romantic relationship statuses changing characters are basically the exact same post timeskip as they were before it. It's like ... okay!)

I hope this doesn't sound like I don't get your frustrations because I do; the Magefam are one of my favourite parts of the show and it's always better when some combination of them are on screen together. And it's like, sure Viren and Claudia were hanging out in the later seasons, but he was borderline comatose for most of that, so it doesn't feel like they were. The fracturing of a family is interesting, but you always hope for more of a resolution or at least a sense of poignancy this show is never quite going to master. I'll actually say that my feelings still hinge on season 7 or god forbid the final arc. If we see Soren and Claudia get more than one or two scenes as all our players move into place for the final confrontations -- if Soren were to learn what Viren wouldn't tell him -- if Claudia gets to have a properly satisfying confrontation with Aaravos about the death of her father if she learns the truth ... if Soren and Claudia get to mourn their father together, even if it's briefly -- if we have Claudia have complicated feelings if she were to learn about Soren asking Viren to do the spell -- of Soren offering his heart, but Viren sacrificing himself instead ... I mean, all of that could be really good, and for me it would serve as a kind of epilogue to tie together the seasons of separation and growing apart from each other.

How hopeful am I for any of this? Well, about as hopeful as I am for this show ever pleasing me. But hey! I do think it's possible, with the narrative they've already established.

Anyway, to get to the Terry of it all: I think he serves a purpose as not just Claudia's tether to morality but as someone to work off of, so I get why he's here. I also think Claudia getting a random elf boyfriend is still extremely funny and charmingly quirky of her. As I said in response to a previous ask I think Terry could use more personal development but I like his dynamic with Claudia. People call him an enabler but he does offer her some pushback, generally gently. He's just someone who loves Claudia enough to stick with her, and hey, I love Claudia too so that's nice to see. Honestly, even if Soren were around, you're obviously going to have a different relationship with a romantic partner than you would a sibling, so Terry could easily fit in the group that held Soren as well.

This season Karim (love him) was like "Janai is my sister! Of course I love her! But I'm still going to depose her violently!" and like that is great. That's siblingcore. That's I love you but I want to beat you up. That's no matter how far apart we drift you're still bound to me. Soren and Claudia are this. Meanwhile Terry and Claudia are your first serious relationship. They're young and passionate and desperate to make it work because who else would match their freak quite this way? But if they fall out there's nothing to keep them together anymore. They'll just be forced to move on. Soren can walk away from Claudia and know that on some level they are always close; if Terry walks away from Claudia he may end up meaning nothing to her. So, just like real life, there's a lot of stuff they're willing to overlook and rationalize because they WANT to keep wanting each other ... and Claudia can use someone like that on her side, as we see Soren and Viren both leave her in time.

I think Terry being down to clown but taking issues with some things is fine; he often frames his objections around the harm they will cause Claudia, and that's nice. The one thing I still don't get is his reaction to Claudia threatening the coins. I will preface this by saying I can believe he's more sensitive to elf death after he murked Ibis, and doesn't like reminders of the differences between him and Claudia when it feels very her, a human, against an elf. Yet whenever I rewatch it, I still find his censure unusually stern for him, and it's hard to shake the feeling that this is the writer's doing as they do best, that is not knowing how to write from their own established lore and character motivations.

Like, in-show it says, Claudia was cruel to mockingly threaten the lives of Rayla's loved ones, and trick her into thinking they nearly burned in agony, not offering her the real coins. Is that cruel? Sure, sure. What's the context? Oh? Rayla was THREATENING TO SLIT TERRY'S THROAT? Rayla, the Moonshadow elf ASSASSIN they have every reason to think would go through it, even if we the viewer know Rayla probably wouldn't? Hmm! If Claudia is cruel, Rayla is a monster. Rayla, who was offered the coins in fair trade as she THREATENED TO SLIT TERRY'S THROAT, but refused. Like, Terry? Are you this mad at Claudia because she did an actually extremely reasonable thing to save your life (+ her father's life) in as pacifist a way as possible, or are you mad because the writers need to tell the audience This Was Bad and ensure Rayla gets the real coins while not having to change that emotionally charged sequence they were probably really proud of writing? I still think this was Terry's characterization faltering just so they could get the outcome they wanted.

Ultimately, I see Terry as someone who is lacking in prejudice, maybe due to his own presumed desire to be taken at face value. He can date a human and not have a kneejerk reaction to dark magic, but he isn't amoral. Nothing he's really seen has been enough to push him away but he is cautious that Claudia may stop walking the knife's edge and fall off of it. He's realized even he can do terrible things out of love and this has bound him more tightly to Claudia. He's someone who is CHOOSING to join this life, and wasn't just pre-built loyal as a sibling would be. All of this does give him a role in the narrative that's pretty unique to him and their dynamic, and I like that. Again, I hope he gets more to do beyond just being Claudia's partner, but I really don't mind him existing.

Thank you very much for the ask! ♥ Really don't blame you for dropping the show post season 4 .... if I wasn't Virenpilled I would have dropped it after season 1 I think.

[anarchy-and-piglins]

In the prison break stream where basically all techno cared about was getting ranboo out and then he died, that was sad.

And while I dont have any specific examples i love how he interacted with ghostbur.

And way back when he and tommy teamed and he hid him from dream and the donations distraction and when they did meet he said dream would have to use his favour if he wanted tommy back.

And in hog Hunt when he was more worried for Carl and phil than himself. And the funny rating bit with tubbo

And I know this isnt lore but I find the whole Sam made a puzzle for techno who tricked skeppy into doing it and then them tricking bad into doing it is one of the funniest things to happen on the dsmp.

When it comes to Technoblade's relationship with Ghostbur the two things that always stick with me most both happened during the butcher army stream.

First, when Techno is clearing his inventory and chests and throwing useless stuff, he finds some blue that Ghostbur gave him and says something like "I can't throw this away, chat, it's important" and keeps it. That was very cute. And then later when Ghostbur is at his door and it's raining, Techno brings him inside and offers him shelter. He even seemingly tries to protect Ghostbur from the butcher army by telling him to hide. That second one is a bit curious to me since I'm not sure ghosts can be harmed by others so it doesn't make much sense for Techno to act nervous about them doing anything to Ghostbur.

But a lot of the examples above also are instances of Techno's worry for those he cares about. Like you mentioned, the butcher army is one of the most blatant examples of that because Techno spends the entire stream being more concerned about Phil and his horse than he is about literally being executed lmao.

[yakuzabrainrotlive]

Couldn't play Y4 today because I was studying and taking care of irl stuff, so I'll just write my Akiyama first impressions post now, as promised! I've played up to the first cutscene with "Lily".

This was supposed to be, like, a surface-level thing where I kinda guess stuff and do some basic observations, but according to Microsoft Word I got... around 1200+ words deep. So yeah. Good for you guys who like to read my rablings that I didn't take my meds today! But also... this IS my unmedicated self's ramblings, written at 10-11pm so... (attempt to) read at your own peril!

For those of you who want the short version, TL;DR is provided (and highly recommended) at the bottom!

So, Akiyama! What a guy.

-He's low-energy and has trouble taking care of himself, his work and his surroundings (laid-back or depressed? maybe it's a little bit of both - as a treat. Maybe executive dysfunction?). This is clear in how messy his office is, how Hana reminds him to eat and brought him lunch (implying he regularly forgets to, or just doesn't eat), and how it seems to be a common occurence that she has to encourage him to do his work. And yet, despite the chill vibes and slow pace he keeps, he manages to also be chaotic in the way that he's unpredictable to those around him, in terms of his business strategy, and in how he makes quick decisions on the spot – ones that don’t make sense to people around him, based on what they (think) they know about him.

-In front of most people, Akiyama pretends to be all laid-back and just this… guy who just does his own thing because he’s quirky and doesn’t care, but he's not fooling me at all; he cares, and he cares a lot. About many people. He's literally looking after the homeless in town - so much so that they feel safe enough to let him into their space to have a chat and drink with them, and ask him for things.

^This is probably no small feat, considering how the homeless are treated in Kamurocho (there's literally groups who hunt them for shits and giggles) and how uncertain things are for them in general in that area. They seemed genuinely happy to see Akiyama.

-Now, an argument could be made that he's doing it for his own benefit: having the homeless population on your side can be an advantage (for example: the Florist used them for discreet info gathering), but... I don't see it. I think it’s because he’s been there and he feels a great amount of empathy for them. Now. Why do I think he wants to have a mask of indifference in the first place? Well, to put it simply - shit’s dangerous. He has enemies in the money lending industry, which probably includes numerous Yakuza groups too. Can’t be caught caring, y’know. Both for his sake, and theirs.

-And so. We get to the neon yellow elephant in the room that has to be addressed; the way he handles his loans. I think Akiyama only takes on clients who he sees as either A: having the potential to make it big - the ones he can later maybe benefit from, or who he simply sees as benefitting from his loans the most, or B: - heavily speculating here - good? (decent?) people who are down on their luck. Ones who, he thinks, deserve a second chance, people who don't have anyone else to ask for help. If he was in the business for money and other benefits alone, he’d be charging interest out the ass like all the others, but he doesn’t. He merely tests people to make sure they don’t grab the money and leave the country, or waste it and never pay him back. He wants to see these people succeed – at least the ones he thinks will use the money to get back on their feet or to become successful, that is. People who could be more, who could FLOURISH, had they some extra help from outside. The tests including stuff like volunteering and caring for the elderly further point to a possible more altruistic side to his business.

He can't just go giving money out - he'd go out of business very fast. So he lends, with no interest. Just a test of trustworthiness, and terms that he finds will give him some benefit back, as well. He is running a business here, so him wanting to get something back from the customers instead of them paying interest is fair. Terms will also motivate the lendees keep themselves on the right track AND probably ward off the worst of the bunch, the ones looking for the easiest, quickest money they can get.

-People genuinely think Akiyama is weird - crazy, even - because of how he runs his business, and he seems totally fine with that. Which further makes me believe he’s purposefully built up this a mask of an uncaring and sort of ...unhinged man. He could explain himself and openly state the goals he has for the clients to dispel this negative, 'crazy person' image people have of him. But... that’d just be suicide; he’d openly admit to competitors/enemies that he has people he cares about and that he wants to see his lendees succeed. That’d be like ASKING for extortion and for terrible things to happen to the people who have visited his business in the past or who will do so in the future.

-He's good at keeping his cards close to his chest, too: in one cutscene people wonder why lendees don't ever lend from him twice. And what's the answer to the question that we hear? Something to the effect of "I don't know. They probably wanna avoid interacting with that nutjob ever again". People have NO idea why he does things the way he does. They know he lends money to people he sees as having potential to succeed in the future, but they don't even consider the possibility that some lendees he's simply helping get back on their feet.

-As for his goals? No clue! Besides keeping the business running, I don’t feel like I have enough information on him to parse any long-term goals out of this guy. Maybe keeping Kamurocho as chill as it can be? To prevent unnecessary bloodshed? He did go out out of his way to settle the dispute between the… the uhh… *has to google the name* the Kanemura peeps and Ueno to prevent escalation of the situation? But then again, Arai seems to have been a long-time friend, so maybe it was just to make things easier for him? As of now, he doesn’t feel particularly ambitious.

As for speculation on his background? Since my facial memory (even for fictional characters) is total garbage, I’m not 100 % sure, but I think maybe he was in the photograph that was in his drawer? He seemed quite well-off in that one. So how does he end up homeless? I feel like he either joined the yakuza and the family he joined disbanded, leaving him with nothing. OR he suffered a career- or family-related setback that landed him on the streets? Him being ex-yakuza would make sense since he seems to be quite informed on all the relevant lore and relations between families. But he also DOES work quite close to the... darker side of things with his business being what it is. But... he also fights very well. We’ll see! Maybe they explained it aready? If they did, am sorry! I was playing the game too late into the night so I was kinda eepy towards the end. Gonna re-watch the cutscenes from late chapter 1 and early chapter 2 when I keep playing.

Now, any relation to characters from previous games I wanna speculate on? I don’t see any real reason to think he knows Kiryu; he only referred to him with his DoD moniker and didn’t seem too interested or thoughtful about it. It was just him referring to a famous person. Majima? Don’t see it either. Anyone else? I don’t really have any reason to think he knows anyone from the past games as of now.

TL;DR:

According to my, at-times very faulty, sensors that are prone to overcooking:

Akiyama is a kind person trying to give others the second chance they deserve (as he himself got), while also trying to disguise himself as a chronic IDGAFer at the same time because he has enemies. He's a kind man living in a world that tears people like him apart.

Mans is probably depressed or at least suffers from executive dysfunction or like... low blood iron levels, based on how low-energy he is and how little he seems to look after himself and his office, and how he seems to have a tendency to… go at his own pace at work. Hana keeps (or at least tries to keep) him functional - or that’s what it seems like, at least.

He probably offers loans based on if he thinks lendees will get back on their feet, or if the loan will make them flourish business-wise.

Ended up homeless, maybe because he was ex-yakuza or because of a setback in a civilian career or family life.

Can’t say how he ties to characters from previous games, or if he even does at all. Besides Nishiki unknowingly acting as form of divine monetary intervention, that is.

[oh-meow-swirls]

i love 3's story so much but it is also such a mess at times. like. they tried so hard to foreshadow stuff but it just comes out of nowhere, like there's one scene in chapter 5 as hailey where like. after the whole scene at the end of the quest with dr. maddiman there's just??? randomly some ghoulies watching??? why are they there. it's so random i literally forgot it until i replayed it-

i think my favorite is that you can tell they did not think through having six main characters because after nate and hailey's stories converge there's just occasional extended periods of time where one of them just does not have any dialogue. most notable to me is that the writers seemingly just forgot buck was there while writing the key quest in new yo-kai city cuz he literally has no dialogue during them despite. literally being present in all the cutscenes-

also i hate how you can't play as hailey during any of the plot important stuff after the stories converge. she and nate are both present so it just doesn't make any sense to me. i guess they just wanted there to be some reason to play as nate instead of hailey??? but i feel like there's a better way they could've executed that than just. forcing you to play as nate.

ALSO also this is kind of related to the foreshadowing thing but LITERALLY WHY DO BLUNDER AND FOLLY EXIST. all they do during the main story is show up once or twice during nate's story, go to new yo-kai city, briefly get turned into ghoulies by the ghoulfather and that's literally it. i think there's a quest in the post-game (either after blasters t or the tower of zenlightenment, not sure which) involving them??? but it just feels unnecessary for them to exist. i do like the fby pun though and they are admittedly amusing. they're just also completely unnecessary klsfdjkfdsfjfsksljfd-

3 excels at like basically everything else though honestly. the comedy's on par with 2 and the anime, the characters are great (every main yo-kai watch character is my blorbo <3), the sad moments are great too (and inexplicably mostly on hailey's side despite that being the more comedy-driven story???), i just. i love this game man. i wish i'd gotten it when it first released but unfortunately i didn't find out it released until like a year or two later when. y'know. the like 3,000 physical copies had already vanished off the face of the earth fslkdjfdsfjkskjfdj-

[crystal-cliffs]

Arlecchino’s story quest was a solid 8/10 for me

However there’s still one thing I’m not sure about, spoilers beyond this point.

The fight between Arlecchino and the siblings isn’t an unheard of dynamic, it’s been used in shows like Avatar in the episode Sokka’s Master, the mentor seeming to turn on their apprentice to test them of their skills.

However unlike Avatar, Arlecchino was violent. (it had to be convincing ofc) She seriously harmed all three of the siblings, hell, Freminet mentions being bedridden for two days. Im not against this characterization of her, someone who thinks the ends justify the means as long as they get from point A to point B. She can essentially turn her emotions off to get things done since obviously she cares about the children, we’ve established this multiple times, but she also probably considers this “fight for freedom” caring about them as well since it could be worst, she could actually execute them. Which is all sorts of fucked up but I mean, I’m glad they’re letting her do something fucked up again.

Im also not opposed to the siblings characterization of how they still appreciate her anyways (for the most part, still some stuff that makes me feel off), its all they’ve know, and theyve decided for themselves that they understand and are willing to work past it, hell i guess forgive her. It makes sense for people like them.

However that doesn’t feel like a happy ending like the game might be trying to sell it as. Its sad. Lyney mentions it himself, they don’t know how a real family functions, this is all they’ve known and they certainly aren’t willing to lose it.

I don’t mind how they chose to end things. It’s just i definitely got a more solemn energy than happy even though what Lynette was saying seemed like that’s what they were going for.

Arlecchino’s story quest isn’t happy. Arlecchino is a product of her environment that cannot ever go back to the way she once was, if that person even ever existed. The siblings were seriously harmed in a fight and then seriously thought Arlecchino was about to kill their family, and that’s not okay. Then right after Lyney is back to normal and talking to Arlecchino as if nothing happened. I don’t know about you but family or not I’d be shaken up for awhile if I thought my dad was about to kill the rest of my family in front of me, idk that’s just me.

Again, I don’t have a problem with Arlecchino, they might not even be trying to frame her actions positively, but the way the siblings just return to normal makes it feel like they might be… like “oh it’s okay you did that, we want to stay <3” which just signals the audience that it’s time to forgive her

I didn’t want the siblings to forget, because that’s just boring, but idk it bothered me that he just brushed it off as if it was nothing. Maybe that’s just a product of their violent environment? Or maybe I’m just making excuses for poor character writing.

That’s all, my thoughts are all incredibly jumbled and I can’t quite string them together right😅

I might have something more cohesive later

[himbeereule]

I want to like the demo but I think it needs some work. the intelligence director's introduction doesn't serve it's purpose, we learn nothing about the character and really have no interaction with them. They are just kinda there because you need to introduce a RO. At the house after being executed you go to talk to the people and it pretty confusing. You now get 3 ROs thrown at you without a proper introduction of the characters we learn nothing about them as characters. There is no clear explanation from the characters in that scene of what the situation is like, the need to evacuate, what forces they have available. No one asks how the MC is doing emotionally or physically not even the friend character. It just jumps to what do you want to name your army and all the people in it missing all the important humanizing moments. Also why are there cat ears in the clothing options I want to take the story seriously but I really can't with that

Okay, so... yes, of course it needs some work. That's what "Work in Progress" means.

Since you refer to them as "the Intelligence Director", I'm guessing you didn't get any of Yakov/Liliya's scenes, which... is an issue. As stated in both the release notes as well as in the posts leading up to the release post on this blog, this is the only route that's finished. Which means what's left is the strategic meeting scene, which, due to the other three's routes not being finished, is only like 15% done, and what's missing is precisely the characters' introductions.

So... not sure how to answer you. You're basically telling me "the things that are missing are still missing", which, yeah... I knew that. Everyone should know that, since it was announced multiple times.

Now, about the other things you mentioned:

Strategic situation: it's made clear that a) your own forces are very small, so you have to leave the Capital; b) this is possible, since the rebel forces in the suburbs are even smaller, and ill-equipped; and c) there's reinforcements waiting to link up with you outside. I don't really know what else you would need to know, and getting told in more detail wouldn't make sense story-wise, because all four characters have their own agendas. MC is not in control and holds no power at this point in the story.

Which brings me to the next issue: none of the characters has a reason to ask for MC's well-being. On the one hand they already know about MC's exact health situation - they were the ones who organized your rescue, after all, and you didn't magically recover, there must've been medical treatment organized by, well, guess who - and, on the other hand, apart from Yakov/Liliya (who isn't the type to show concern in a room full of people), none of the characters care about MC as a person at this point.

Cat ears in clothing options, well... I'll consider making a slimmed-down wardrobe selection for this specific scene instead of linking to the general wardrobe (though it might cause people to miss options), but I will not remove any of the silly stuff. Despite its serious themes, this is primarily a romance and dress-up game apart from the later strategy/army-building aspects, so it doesn't need to be that serious. I understand why people would misjudge that considering all the heavy stuff in the Prologue, but they'll have to adapt.

[skyeqt]

I wrote a quine, without strings, in a calculator

Okay so I should probably clarify some things, the calculator in question (dc) is more of a "calculating tool", it is built into most linux distributions, and it is a command line tool. I should also clarify "without strings", because dc itself does support strings, and I do actually use strings, however, I do not use string literals (I'll explain that more later), and I only use strings that are 1 character long at most.

So first of all, why did I decide to do this, well, this all started when I found a neat quine for dc:

[91Pn[dx]93Pn]dx

If you're curious about how this works, and what I turned it into, it'll be under the cut, for more technical people, you can skip or skim the first text block, after that is when it gets interesting.

So first of all, what is a quine, a quine is a computer program that outputs its own source code, this is easier said than done, the major problem is one of information, the process of executing source code normally means a lot of code, for a little output, but for a quine you want the exact same amount of code and output. First of all, let's explain dc "code" itself, and then this example. Dc uses reverse polish notation, and is stack-based and arbitrary precision. Now for the nerds reading this, you already understand this, for everybody else's benefit, let's start at the beginning, reverse polish notation means what you'd write as 1+1 normally (infix notation), would instead be written as 1 1 +, this seems weird, but for computers, makes a lot of sense, you need to tell it the numbers first, and then what you want to do with them. Arbitrary precision is quite easy to explain, this means it can handle numbers as big, or as small, or with as many decimal points as you want, it will just get slower the more complex it gets, most calculators are fixed precision, have you ever done a calculation so large you get "Infinity" out the other end? That just means it can't handle a bigger number, and wants to tell you that in an easy to understand way, big number=infinity. Now as for stack based, you can think of a stack a bit pile a pile of stuff, if you take something off, you're probably taking it off the top, and if you put something on, you're probably also putting it ontop. So here you can imagine a tower of numbers, when I write 1 1 +, what I'm actually doing is throwing 1 onto the tower, twice, and then the + symbol says "hey take 2 numbers of the top, add them, and throw the result back on", and so the stack will look like: 1 then 1, 1, then during the add it has nothing, then it has a 2. I'm going to start speeding up a bit here, most of dc works this way: you have commands that deal with the stack itself, commands that do maths, and commands that do "side things". Most* of these are 1 letter long, for example, what if I want to write the 1+1 example a little differently, I could do 1d+, this puts 1 on the stack (the pile of numbers), then duplicates it, so you have two 1s now, and then adds those, simple enough. Lets move onto something a little more complex, let's multiply, what if I take 10 10 * well I get 100 on the stack, like you may expect, but this isn't output yet, we can print it with p, and sure enough we see the 100, I can print the entire stack with f, which is just 100 too for now, I can print it slightly differently with n, I'll get into that later, or I can print with P which uhhhh "d", what happened there? Well you see d is character 100 in ASCII, what exactly ASCII is, if you don't know, don't worry, just think of it as a big list of letters, with corresponding numbers. And final piece of knowledge here will be, what is a string, well it's basically just some text, like this post! Although normally a lot shorter, and without all the fancy formatting. Now with all that out of the way, how does the quine I started with actually work?

From here it's going to get more technical, if you're lost, don't worry, it will get even more technical later :). So in dc, you make a string with [text], so if we look at the example again, pasted here for your convenience

[91Pn[dx]93Pn]dx

it makes one long string at the start, this string goes onto the stack, and then gets duplicated, so it's on the stack twice, then it's executed as a macro. In technical language, this is just an eval really, in less technical language, it just means take that text, and treat it like more commands, so you may see, it starts with 91P, 91 is the ASCII character code for [, which then gets printed out, not coincidentally, this is the start of the program itself. Now the "n" that comes afterwards, as I said earlier, this is a special type of print, this means print without newline (P doesn't use newlines either), which means we can keep printing without having to worry about everything being on separate lines, now what is it printing? Well what's on top of the stack, oh look, it's the copy of the entire string, which once again not coincidentally, is the entire inside of the brackets, so now we've already printed out the majority of the program, now dx is thrown on the stack, which as you may notice is the ending of the program, but we won't print it yet, we'll first print 93 as a character, which is "]", and then print dx, and this completes the quine, the output is now exactly the same as the input. Now, I found this some time ago, and uncovered it again in my command history, it's interesting, sure, but you may notice it's not very... complicated, the majority of the program is just stored as a string, so it already has access to 90% of itself from the start, and just has to do some extra odd jobs to become a full quine, I wanted to make this worse. I started modifying it, doing some odd things, which I won't go into, I wanted to remove the numbers, replacing it entirely with calculations from numbers I already have access to, like the length of a string, this wasn't so hard, but then I hit on what this post is about "can I make this without using string literals"

Can I make this without using string literals?

Yes, I can! And it took a whole day. I'll start by explaining what a string literal is, but this will largely be the end of my explaining, from here it's about to get so technical and I don't want to spend all day explaining things and make this post even longer than it's already going to be. A string literal is basically just the [text] you saw earlier, it's making a string by just, writing out the string. In dc there's only 1 other way to make a string, the "a" command, which converts a number, into a 1 character string, using the number as an ASCII character code. Strings in dc are immutable, you can only print, execute, and move them around with the usual stack operations, you cannot concatenate, you cannot modify in any way, the only other things you can do with a string, is grab the first character, or count the characters, but as I just explained, our only way to make strings creates a 1 character string, which cannot be extended, so the first character is just, the entire thing, and the length is always 1, so neither of these are useful to us. So, now we understand what the restriction of no string literals really is (there are more knock on restrictions I'll bring up later), let's get into the meat of it, how I did it.

So I've just discussed the way I'll be outputting the text (this quine will need text, since all the outputting commands are text!), with the "a" command and the single character strings it produces, let's now figure out some more restrictions. So any programmers reading this are going to be horrified by what I'm about to say. If I remove string literals, dc is no longer Turing Complete, I am trying to write a quine in a language (subset) that is not Turing Complete, and can only output 1 character at a time**. You can't loop in dc, but you can recurse, with macros, which are effectively just evaling a string, you can recurse, since these still operate on the main stack, registers, arrays, etc, they can't be passed or return anything, but this doesn't matter. Now I cannot do this, because if I only have 1 character strings via "a" then I can't create a macro that does useful work, and executes something, since that would require more than 1 command in it. So I am limited to only linear execution***. Now lets get into the architecture of this quine, and finally address all these asterisks, since they're finally about to be relevant, I started with a lot of ideas for how I'd architect these, I call these very creatively by their command structure, dScax/dSax, rotate-based execution, all-at-once stack flipping, or the worst of them all, LdzRz1-RSax (this one is just an extension of rotate-based execution), I won't bother explaining these, since these are all failed ideas, although if anybody is really curious, I might explain some other time, for now, I'll focus on the one that worked, K1+dk: ; ;ax, or if you really want to try to shoehorn a name, Kdkax execution, now, anybody intimately familiar with dc, will probably be going "what the fuck are you doing", and rightly so, so now, let's finally address the asterisks, and get into what Kdkax execution actually means, and how I used it.

*"Most commands are 1 character long, but there are exceptions, S, L, s, l, :, ; and comparisons, only : and ; are relevant here, so I won't bother with the rest, although some of the previous architectures used S and L as you may have seen. : and ; are the array operations, there are 256 arrays in dc, each one named after a character, if I want to store into array "a" I will write :a, a 2 character sequence, same for loading from array "a" ;a, I'll get into exactly how these work later **I can only output 1 character at a time with p, P, and n, but f can output multiple characters, the only catch being it puts a newline between each element of the stack, and because I can only put 1 character into each stack element, it's a newline between each character for me (except for numbers). I'll get into what this means exactly later ***I can do non-linear execution, and in fact, it was required to make this work, but I can only do this via single character macros, which is, quite the restriction to put it lightly

So I feel like I've been dancing around it now, what does my quine actually look like, well, I wanted to keep things similar to the original, where I write a program, I store it, then I output it verbatim, with some cleanup work. However, I can't store the program as strings, or even characters, I instead need to store it as numbers, and the easiest way to do this, is to store it as the char codes for dc commands, so if I want to execute my 1d+ example from before, I instead store it as 49 100 43, which when you convert them back to characters, and then execute them in sequence, to do the same thing, except I can store them, which means I can output them again, without needing to re-create them, this will come in handy later. So, well how do I execute them, well, ax is the sequence that really matters here, and it's something all my architectures have in common, it converts them to a character, then executes them, in that order, not so hard, except, I'm not storing them anymore, well then if you're familiar with dc, you might come across my first idea, dScax, which, for reasons you will understand later, became dSax, this comes close to working, it does store the numbers in a register, and execute them, but this didn't really end up working so well. I think the next most important thing to discuss though, is how I'm outputting, as I mentioned earlier "f" will be my best friend, this outputs the entire stack, this is basically the whole reason this quine is possible, it's my only way of outputting more characters from the program, than the program itself takes up, since I can't loop or recurse, and f is the only character that outputs more than 1 stack element at once, it is my ticket to outputting more than I'm inputting, and thereby "catching up" with all the characters "wasted" on setup work. So now, as I explained earlier, f prints a newline between each stack element, and I can only create 1 character stack elements, and because in a quine the output must equal the input, this also means the input must equal the output. And because I just discovered an outputting quirk, this means my input must also match this quirk, if I want this to be a quine, so, my input is limited to 1 character, or 1 number, per line, since this is the layout my stack will take, and therefore will be the layout of my output. So what does this actually mean, I originally thought I couldn't use arrays at all, but, this isn't true, the array operations are multiple character sequences yes, but turns out, there actually are multiple characters per line, there's also a linefeed character. And since there is an array per ASCII character, I am simply going to be storing everything in "array linefeed"! So now, with all of this in mind, what does the program actually look like.

Let's take a really simple example, even simpler than earlier, let's simply store 1 and then print it, this seems simple enough, 1p does it fine, but, lets convert it to my format, and it's going to get quite long already, in order to prevent it getting even longer, I'll use spaces instead of newlines, just keep in mind, they're newlines in the actual program

112 49 0 k K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : 0 k K 1 + d k ; K 1 + d k ; 0 k K 1 + d k ; a x K 1 + d k ; a x

now, what the fuck is going on here, first of all, I took "1p" and converted both characters into their character codes "49 112" and then flipped them backwards (dw about it), then, I run them through the Kdkax architecture. What happens is I initialise the decimal points of precision to 0, then, I increment it, put it back, but keep a copy, and then run the array store, keep in mind, this is storing in array linefeed, but what and where is it storing? Its index is the copy of the decimal points of precision I just made, and the data it's storing at that index, is whatever comes before that on the stack, which, not coincidentally, is 49, the character code for the digit "1", then I do the same process again, but this time, the decimal points of precision is 1, not 0, and the stack is 1 shorter. So now, I store 112 (the character code for p), in index 2 of array linefeed, now you may notice, the array is looking the exact same as the original program I wanted to run, but, in character code form, it is effectively storing "1p", but as numbers in an array, instead of characters in a string. I then reset the precision with 0k, and start again, this time with the load command, which loads everything back out, except, now flipped, the stack originally read 49 112, since that's the order I put them on, the top is 49, the last thing I put on, but after putting them into the array, and taking them back out, now I'm putting on 112 last instead, so now the stack reads 112 49, which happens to be the exact start of the code, this will be important later. For now, the important part is, the numbers are still in the array, taking them out just makes a copy, so, this time I take them out again, but rather than just storing them, I convert them to a character, and then execute them, 49 -> 1 -> 1 on the stack, 112 -> p -> print the stack, and I get 1 printed out with the final x. Now this may not seem very significant, but this is how everything is going to be done from here on out.

So, what do I do next? Well now's time to start on the quine itself, you may have noticed in the last example, I mentioned how at one point, the stack exactly resembles the program itself, or at least the start of it, this is hopefully suspicious to you, so now you may wonder, what if my program starts with "f" to print out the entire stack? Well, I get all the numbers back, i.e. I get the start of the file printed out, and this will happen, no matter how many numbers (commands) I include, now we're getting somewhere, so if I write fc at the start of my program (converted into character codes and then newline separated) then I include enough copies of the whole Kdkax stuff to actually store, load, and execute it, then I can execute whatever I want, and I'll get back everything except the Kdkax stuff itself, awesome! So now we come onto, how do I get back the "Kdkax stuff", and more importantly, what are my limitations executing things like this, can I just do anything?

Well, put simply, no, I cannot use multicharacter sequences, and I actually can't this time, because it's being executed as a single character macro, I don't have a newline to save me, and I just get an error back, so okay that's disappointing. This multicharacter sequence rule means I also can't input numbers bigger than 1 digit, because remember, the numbers get converted into characters and then executed, and luckily, executing a number, just means throwing it on the stack, so I'm good for single digit numbers. Then in terms of math (I know, this is a post about a calculator and only now is the maths starting), I can't do anything that produces decimals, since the digits of precision is constantly being toyed with, and I also can't use the digits of precision as a storage method either, because it's in use. I can actually use the main stack though! It's thankfully left untouched (through a lot of effort), so I'm fine on that front. Other multicharacter sequences include negative numbers, strings (so I can't cheese it, even here), and conditionals.

So it was somewhere around here, I started to rely on a python script I wrote for some of the earlier testing, and I modified it to this new Kdkax architecture when I was confident this was the way forwards. It converts each character into a character code, throws that at the start, and then throws as many copies of the store, load, and execute logic as I need to execute the entire thing afterwards. This allows me to input (mostly) normal dc into the input, just keeping in mind that any multicharacter sequences will be split up. So now I can start really going, and I'll speed up from here, effectively, what I need to do, is write a dc program, that can output "0 k", then "K 1 + d k :" repeated as many times as there are characters in my program, then "0 k" again, then "K 1 + d k ;" repeated just as many times, then "0 k" again, then "K 1 + d k ; a x" also repeated just as many times, without using strings, multicharacter sequences, loops, branches, recursion, any non-integer maths, with a newline instead of a space in every sequence above. Doable. The program starts with fc, like I mentioned, this prints out all the numbers at the start, and leaves us with a clean stack, I'll explain in detail how I output the "0 k" at the start, and leave the rest as an exercise to to the reader. I want to do this by printing the entire stack, so I want to put it on backwards, k first, k is character code 107 in decimal, and I can't input this directly, because I can't do anything other than single digit numbers, so maths it is, here I abuse the O command, which loads the output base, which is 10 by default, and I then write "OO*7+a", which is effectively character((10*10)+7) written in a more normal syntax, this creates "k" on the stack, and then I can move onto 0, for which I write "0", since a number just puts itself on the stack, no need to create it via a character code, I can just throw it on there, keep in mind this will all get converted to 79 79 42 55 43 97 48, but the python script handles this for me, and I don't need to think about it. The stack now reads "0 k" and I can output this with f, and clear the stack, I then do the same deal for "K 1 + d k :", the next "0 k", "K 1 + d k ;" but here I do something a little different, because I want to output "K 1 + d k ; a x" next (after the "0 k" again), I don't clear the stack after outputting "K 1 + d k ;", and instead, I put "a x" on the stack, and then use the rotate stack commands to "slot it into place" at the end, this is a neat trick that saves some extra effort, it makes printing the "0 k" in between more difficult, but I won't get into that. For now the important part, is the output of my program now looks something like this "(copy of input numbers) 0 k K 1 + d k : 0 k K 1 + d k ; 0 k K 1 + d k ; a x" this is amazing, this would be the correct output, if my program was only 1 character long at this point, now keep in mind I'm writing non-chronologically, so my program never actually looked like this, but if you're following along at home you should have this at this point:

fcOO*7+a0fcaO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**afcOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**af0nOanOO*7+anOanOO*2O*+aOO*3-a08-R08-Rf

definitely longer than 1 character, you might think at this point, it's just a matter of spamming "f" until you get there, but unfortunately, you'll never get there, every extra "f" you add, requires an extra copy of the store, load, execute block in the program, so you're outpaced 3 to 1, so what do you do about this? You print 4 at once! I want the stack to look like "K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k :" and similarly for the other steps, and then I can spam f with greater efficiency! This was somewhat trivial for the first 2, but for the ax, because I'm using the rotate to push it at the end, I need to do this 4 times too, with different rotate widths, not too hard. And now, I can finally get there, but how many times do I spam f? Until my program is exactly 3/4s printing on repeat, which makes sense if you think about it, and below, is finally the program I ended up with

fcOO*7+a0fcO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**affffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffcOO7+a0fcO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**affffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff0nOanOO*7+anOanOO*2O*+aOO*3-a08-R08-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a082-R082-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a083-R083-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a084-R084*-Rffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

I say finally, but this is actually pre-python script! The final program I actually ended up with will instead be included in a reblog, because it really needs its own cut. But anyway, this was how I wrote a quine, for a calculator, without using string literals.

[joocin-thebox]

what if my g5 headcanons that will ultimately influence the story progression in my "rewrite" of mym?

under cut ofc because bitch we really get into it!!! (aka, long post)

i am one autistic bitch who feels let down my g5 in some aspects but mostly in a sense that it's just... missing some things!

disclaimer? i realy like g5. i come back to watch mym and tyt and the movie because it brings me joy and i like seeing the characters do things!

HOWEVER i personally feel like the story and writing is a bit... lack luster? im not sure if its because we're just missing so much information that's going to be explained later, or if the writers just... are struggling to piece together this lowkey mess of a situation our favs are in!

i just want to make sense of it all, and im a storyteller not a theorist so im not doing that theory stuff :) im just going to spew headcanons and be happy abt what i think could be implied by the writers that we dont actually get expansion on

[4/28/2024 edit] i drafted this way back in december '23 or jan '24 so some of these might seem "duh ofc! Thats canon!" but yeah, i just had it in the drafts for a loonngg time

now another disclaimer uhm,... when i "rewrite" mym im... not exactly going to remove key details? i think my intent is to include some things into each chapter that will make it a bit more digestible to all demographics? i like the sillies, i like the serious, and mym hits some really strong points that i think were executed perfectly! there are some things that are just spot on!

but again i just think mym is missing some elements and my headcanons are a result of that (obv bc thats what a headcanon is omg).

only big different in my rewrite will be opaline because her character is just... i dont know but i dont enjoy her. and i love villains. i am a villain enjoyer, and as many others have pointed out, she just randmly decides to be evil for the sake of being evil which sometimes i get it but before then it seemed like more than that? so im going to stick to "its more than that" and she has an actual solid goal in mind :)

this is more of an autistic revelation turned writing exercise so YAY let's see how this goes!

HEADCANON TIME!

i love sunny!! since the movie she's been such a cutie and one of my favorites! in tyt and mym however, they have a habit of watering down her character to "naive protag who has flimsy and unbased morals" and that doesnt really sit right with me? sooooo headcanons for sunny? (and some others but mainly ones that focus on sunny)

Sunny likes history as a way to connect with her dad, and she collects things she thinks he might have liked, and continues his research partially because of her own ideals of friendship and spreading it, but also because part of her thinks she has to carry on his legacy

Sunny and Zipp have a "likeminded, different methods" leader rivalry

Sunny and Pipp love to spa day together! They're also late risers, and love healthy meals and afternoon strolls

Sunny lets Pipp style her mane and tail ALL the time for inspiration because she likes the pampering a little and bc she wants to help Pipp

Sunny does her best to assist her friends with their jobs from time to time. Mostly because of her admiration of Twilight and her idea of friendship meaning spending time doing things your friends love to do

Sunny invites them to help her make new smoothie ideas too

Sometimes Sunny spends time in the observatory, reminiscing her memories with her father. Typically on anniversaries and holidays. It's her form of quiet time

Sunny doesn't actually like help when she's cooking, not unless shes genuinely biting off more than she can chew. She'd rather her friends share the space with her while she cooks, and maybe grab an item or two for her when her hooves are full

Sunny considered looking to study magic after getting her alicorn powers, (zipp definitely encouraged it) but Sunny decided against it because 'she doesn't need magic if she has her friends'

Sunny isn't actually good at helping her friends emotionally. Her love language is acts of service, so kind words are all she can really offer.

Canonically (comics), Sunny likes to read! I like to think she has her own book nook and really likes books that are about overcoming odds and happy endings

(Based on the movie) Sunny's most noticable character flaw is believing every choice she makes is justified. A “ends justifies the means” type of character. She grows out of this when she learns she can rely on others to find a solution.

When given no option to explore, Sunny is a theorist more than a researcher

She was NOT immune to propaganda (but she knows what she truly believes in)

Sunny acts without forethought, and when there’s a kink in her quick plan, she forces herself to stop and reevaluate. All the same, she's sensitive to failure.

She is also quite intuitive, with her theories (even though help crafted by her dad) tend to be correct in one way or another!

Sunny was reluctant to rebuild the lighthouse because part of her felt like, starting over meant forgetting her father (as it tends to go, with grief of a parent.) [Her friends help her come around and work with her to give her father's stuff a safe space in the brighthouse]

oh man that's a lot! NEXT!! (any hc i have following posting this will be reblogged to here!!)

I care so much about Zipp and the ways she can grow as a character. She was deep from the beginning but we never really got into more of her rather than her detective side. which i appreciate of course, but you know :)

Zipp is a natural leader (which in my rewrite i want to subtly emphasize this difference with Sunny learning to be a leader)

[Sunny and Zipp eventually would learn to work as a team, rather than one person having a more important say]

Zipp would be the one to teach Sunny what it means to lead, mostly indirectly, but sometimes directly

She leans away from leadership entirely and it causes a disconnect between her and her mother :(

She's drawn to puzzles and mysteries (especially in fiction) but prefers them in really fantastical settings

Zipp loves history, and views it as clues to her research about many things. If it's unrelated to current problem or doesn't have one on hand, she's not likely to read any history books

Zipp loves for Hitch to play detective with her. They snoop out clues together, and he helps her loosen up to solve the mystery faster as well as be more open minded

Zipp is wary of new ponies, and isn't quick to welcome anypony she doesn't know already or anypony not already dedicated to a cause (evidence: misty)

Zipp thinks Sunny studying magic and becoming more powerful would just be awesome to see

Zipp has a "problem" of being right all the time (sagittarius things)

After she gets ignored enough times about something she knows is true, she kind of just stops contributing to any conversation unless she has everypony's attention or if they're all out of ideas

She isn't a big fan of change? She prefers not to do new things all the time

But she LOVES a challenge!

Zipp is uncomfortable with being royalty in general. I assume she’d detach from the whole royalty thing entirely, and agree with Sunny’s ideals of democracy and equality to the point of stepping down as heir. Or she grows into her role, and becomes more and more queenlike each passing day

Zipp seems like the type to always be thinking, even during conversation. She isolates when things get too rough for her, and she's very quick to come up with schemes

Zipp is not good at lying. She avoids responses or tells half truths

She's an adrenaline chaser

Zipp starts out especially sarcastic toward Hitch because he's a sheriff and she thinks that's silly. Also because they have different ideas of leadership when they first meet.

Zipp (as well as Izzy and Sunny) love adventure!

i was so iffy on izzy when they introduced her in the show... i feel like she went from being an actual character with thoughts, to... watered down pinkie pie which is not enjoyable lol but anyways i like her actual moments of personality (not implying her lol XD random!! moments ARENT personality, but there are time where she's actually pushing it to the point of it being genuinely irritating with no comedic payoff :/

I BELIEVE IZZY HAS A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY!! it just makes sense!! [she remembers in complete detail, or doesnt remember at all until way later]

Izzy would rather lighten the mood than make serious decisions :) She doesn't avoid action, but she does avoid sole leadership

to me, she's Brave and Direct and will step in if nopony else will. the type of character who isn't the hero, but will get the job done

Izzy in my mind is prone to going off on her own and not running ideas by ponies before acting which :) has its issues but comes in handy!

Along with Pipp and Hitch, Izzy LOVES nature! She teaches them both about Bridlewood's flora and fauna :) eventually they start having plants in the brighthouse and wanna explore all flora and fauna in the 3 locations

Izzy likes plants and is curious to what types of plants there are outside of bridlewood

Izzy learns some kind of multitasking spell, where she can create many things at once if she is making things in bulk :D

she does feel out of place in the friend group (canon to canterlot comic) and has a hard time making friends with the unicorns in other places :( [this is up until Misty, who makes her feel better]

Izzy sees Misty as a best friend :) But also takes on a silly older sister role with her!

She helps Misty grow into herself, and feel more secure with her past bebcause Izzy passes on her "damaged doesn't mean useless" ideals she usually saves for her unicycling

Izzy inspires Misty to use creation to get out her feelings, like making tea or exploring with crafts, just to find peace. She also helps Misty get out of her comfort zone in smaller ways, helping her try new things

When Izzy went looking for Maretime bay, Bridlewood just thought she went missing

Izzy wants close unicorn friends :( someone to genuinely bond with [see: Misty]

Izzy’s creativity comes from being really resourceful, BUT as a unicorn that lives in trees i’d imagine she’d have more respect for the trees of any kind LMAOO

she’s always got a solution to a problem even if unconventional or… surprising... but quick thinker!

Izzy loves to create things she can share with her friends (even when she has none, its the future thought that counts)

Izzy is the tallest out of the 5 of them? At least she’s taller than Pipp and Sunny

Izzy believes in Sunny way more than the rest of them do :) When Sunny has a plan, Izzy is ready to back her up!

now i see so many mixed opinions on pipp, but its mostly bc she's social media pony and i can't lie.... i tire of it... but pipp is great on her own! i dont think there's too much wrong with her, but at the same time i havent picked up much of her character and personality outside of social media (aside from this list ofc)

Bc her sister loves mystery and being a detective, Pipp lowkey has a spy hobby :) it started when they were kids, but it came back once they moved to Maretime bay

Pipp plans extravagant fake cases for Zipp every birthday :)

Pipp got her love of mystery (and by extension: horror / spooky) from her sister

Pipp does not have an interest in being any type of leader! she likes to inspire, but not lead :)

Pipp loves to glamp, and takes Hitch with her! Sometimes she camps with him to "embrace nature"

She likes to hear Sunny's spooky stories of the Everfree Forest

Pipp is a speed reader >:3 Any book she reads she just zooms through it

She's a great liar, for acting purposes but also just to save her hide.

Pipp can also be max sneaky, or by being the younger sib with no real duty to fulfill, its much easier for her to slip under the radar. Could be a reason she adores fame so badly and chases it harder than Zipp or Haven do

Pipp knows the city streets like the back of her hoof

She doesnt take Hitch’s title of sheriff very seriously unless she’s in Maretime bay

Pipp is VERY good at being a hype pony [ She was so happy to hype up sunny i ship pipp x sunny call that star petals ]

ill be so honest, hitch was my favorite from the beginning :D he's my favorite g5 pony ever, he's so cute and i love him to no ends!! i really liked seeing him stand up for what he believed in, and then when sunny was like "look, i told you" he didnt try to make any excuse why any pony kinds couldnt be friends :) he accepted it and was ready to help! i loved his moral code, you dont see a lot of lawful good characters this day and age (as far as ive seen)

BUT they did... do something to change his character in mym and tyt, taking away his love for order and replacing it with "stupid cop" gags and him being extremely silly. I miss his overconfidence and ego :( i dont think it should have left with the movie's end, it would have been so funny is he was still such a hardass

When Hitch gets stressed, he tries to alieve the situation and then calm down

Hitch is a scaredy cat

He has an overwhelming love for Maretime Bay, and typically likes to stay there if he can

Hitch liked not having magic so he doesn't actually use the new magic he gains

Hitch is loved by everyone in Maretime Bay, and he loves to protect him as much as he can, but he doesn't baby them

He makes jokes about a holiday about him where everyone cleans up litter around town, but insists its a joke

He gives good advice!

Hitch wanted to protect Sunny from being alone, and often protected her from bullies

Hitch doesn't put his friends above the law, and insists on fair punishment

After he gets Sparky, Hitch doesn't get to work out as much

Adding onto that, Hitch and Pipp bond over mane care

He's a realist, and knows that he can be wrong. But he'd rather the proof be shown first before he switches his ideals

Hitch is always open to listen

so called "free thinkers" when misty brightdawn is the best character in make your mark by far, solely because she feels (to me) like the only 3 dimensional character in the series :/ otherwise i just love her range and how silly she can be :) she feels real and fleshed out and obv she's just cute

Misty's special talent is actually inspiring change within herself and in other ponies, but whatever mym said is fine too

She's a jack of all trades after being made to be basically a maid of Opaline

She's got an excellent sense of direction

Misty got magic with everyone else, but bc of being in Opaline's castle, it was delayed, and weaker + Opaline forbade her from using it

Misty is more willing to confide in Sunny if prompted, because of all the times Sunny's protected her from pressure + Sunny is just a nice beacon of hope to talk to

Misty and Sunny bond over having to find their place in the world on their own due to absence of parent

Misty likes exploring creative outlets with Izzy

Misty hangs out with Sparky and Hitch n they're like a little family (blatant Histy shipping...)

Misty knows a lot about ancient artifacts

Misty (should) have her own room in the Brighthouse specifically for her, that only she and Zipp know about bc they both like quiet time

Misty and Opaline have a similar was of thinking after being together for so long (even though they weren't close)

Her moral code isnt cyrstal clear, due to her conflicted ideals after meeting the mane 5

She doesn't see Opaline as anything more than a faulty mentor and boss, but Opaline does provide for her so Misty is fine to stay

Misty and Izzy bond over basically being outcasts of Bridlewood (for different reasons)

Misty does not scare easy (vs Hitch who does, and Pipp who loves to be scared)

[da-rulah]

Get to know your fic writer asks: (it was really difficult to pick the questions since I wanna ask you all of them lol). But, for now - 4, 8, 11, 13, 18, 22, and 64.

Thank you so much for asking! Aww if only I could answer them all for you 😂

4: Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?

Simplest answer; I daydream a lot… But a lot of them come from the ghost lore itself or lyrics/song titles, a lot of them are just picking off experience, some are from requests I get that spiral out of control in my brain… 😅

8: Do you prefer the beginning, middle or end of a story?

That really depends on the plot, but there’s something very satisfying about reaching the end of a fic, knowing I’ve completed it and executed my plan always makes me feel good! The beginning can be really exciting to write because you’re setting up the story and you have all these ideas and this inspiration and motivation to get into the storyline. The middle is the hardest to write, because you have point A and you need to get to point B, but you need to figure out how to get there, if that makes sense?

But every fic is different and I enjoy writing every part of it, but long answer cut short? I think I love reaching the end the most. It’s so satisfying and i love the feedback on a completed storyline 🥹

11: Link your three fav fics right now

I’m assuming this means of my own writing, since the asks are directed at fic writers so here’s my 3 favourites:

Confessional - Cardinal Copia x f!reader

Rituale Septem - Terzo x f!reader

The Mayor’s Daughter - Mary Goore x f!reader (Ongoing)

13: What’s a common writing tip you almost always follow?

Plan, plan, plan! I always set out my start, middle and end at the very least and make sure I know where I’m heading so I don’t get off track. Sometimes the plan changes in favour of a better idea halfway through, but at least I will have those guidelines. My next fic is already planned chapter by chapter in depth, I just need to name the chapters and get to writing it! But I need to finished The Mayor’s Daughter first…

18: Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? How do you come up with titles?

Usually before or during the planning phase, unless I get sent a request that gets out of hand… then the title comes later 😂 I usually come up with them based on songs or phrases, maybe a play on words or something? Most of the time it’s inspired by a phrase or significant moment in the fic itself. It’s hard to say how, they’re always inspired differently! But the titles for me always need to be relevant to a key moment or something.

22: Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)

I don’t want to limit myself here to be honest… there’s some kinks I’m uncomfortable with and some dead dove stuff I’m uncomfortable with that I won’t ever write but other than that? Not really.

64: Something you love to see in smut

PLOT. Oh god, I am a sucker for porn with plot. This is why most of my fics end up so bloody long! I can’t help myself, I like building connections, creating storylines… it just makes the smut so much better in my opinion. Give me angst or fluff or emotion or SOMETHING. I’ll eat it up. And as a plus size Queen myself, I do love a good plus size fic. We know the ministry is a body positive space, after all… 🤭

LIST OF QUESTIONS HERE 🖤

ASK BOX HERE 🖤

[xmoonlitxdreamx]

Notes/thoughts/interpretations/critiques on p. 1-7 of the junker short story "a friendly rivalry"

I'm not much of a reader but I thought I'd try to read the junker short story since it's available for free now. I took page-by-page notes on my thoughts/impressions while I was reading, which I'll put below. :0

This is only the first 7 pages because the latter half of the story was kind of confusing for me (a lot of combat that wasn't making sense to me), but I'll try to give those a proper read some time too.

(Please note that I'm critical at times because it's easier for me to write about things that don't work rather than do work, so if you don't like reading critique this might not be for you. I try not to be too negative or upset sounding but idk not totally sure how I come off in these notes. personally I'm like Extremely Neutral™️ about the story because I don't really care much about reading in the first place so lskdfjlsdfj)

This will prob not make much sense unless you have the story open at the same time, just a heads up;;

Page 1

Narration is 3rd person mostly limited to Junkrat’s thoughts/impressions (aka narration is in 3rd person but comments/etc made in the narration is indicative of Junkrat’s perception of things)

The cover art made me think it was gonna be from Roadhog’s POV but nah it’s mostly Junkrat

Narration refers to Roadhog as Junkrat’s “best mate” (implicitly Junkrat’s thoughts, so Junkrat thinks of Roadhog as his best mate)

Roadhog possibly nervous & Junkrat is able to pick up on it OR Junkrat is nervous & projecting his nervousness onto Roadhog (as the story progresses, it becomes clear that it’s the latter)

Junkrat calls Junker Queen “Queenie”; can be interpreted as affection for her or disrespecting her

Junkrat thinks he and the Queen have a mutual respect; Roadhog disagrees; indicative of Junkrat’s inability to accurately assess his relationships with other people I guess

They sell boba at a bar in Junkertown apparently LMAO?? I always interpreted it to be that Junkrat picked up the taste for boba from traveling around the world during his heist spree (tho honestly Junkrat’s boba interest was just a fun thing they added based on a fan question about Junkrat’s canteen iirc so I kinda get not taking an earnest route with this lmao)

Sludge pit = some sort of punishment for criminals in Junkertown I guess. Also Junkertown has a jail. I guess there is some sort of criminal justice system in Junkertown idk.

Footnote on p. 1 is kinda funny (meant to emphasize that Junkrat’s a blabbermouth) but tbh I always took Junkrat’s “secret treasure” to mean “Junkrat has a treasure but no one knows what it is,” not “Junkrat has a secret and it’s a treasure.” (Junkrat telling everyone/bragging about having a treasure is in line with my headcanon though)

Unclear if this story takes place before or after their heist spree. Honestly continuity-wise it doesn’t make much sense either way; it kinda more feels like the heist spree never happened.  (If it was before the heist spree, its weird that Junker Queen would try to execute them here but then just exile them later. If it was after the heist spree, it’s weird she let them back in Junkertown just to execute them since they’re not her problem anymore.)

Page 2

Roadhog’s “worried look” was apparently just him waiting for Junkrat to shut up, cementing that Junkrat’s perception of Roadhog’s emotions was just Junkrat projecting his own worry onto someone else

This is a formatting thing but I don’t like when books have big blocks of text on the page from stuff that hasn’t happened yet LMAO why are they showing me spoilers.

It’s reveal on this page is that they’re here to be executed. Tbh this is kind of tonally weird to me, like I know Junker Queen wants Junkrat and Roadhog killed but it’s kind of at odds with the kind of cartoonishness of how the story’s written. (cartoonishness elaborated on in later bullet points)

Anyway the execution reveal also reveals that Junkrat’s perception of him and Junker Queen having “mutual respect” is something he made up

Junkrat is social in Junkertown and he seems to likes the people there, but he isn’t liked by the people (exemplified in part where someone throws an egg at him); apparently has some sort of sentimentality for living in Junkertown even if no one likes him

Scrumbo Wigley is a ridiculous name.

Scrumbo Wigley’s name & someone throwing an egg at Junkrat = cartoonish tone of the scene

Roadhog taps Junkrat on the shoulder to get his attention -> kind of a light touch from Roadhog which is cute to me, but tbh it’s probably meant to just shift the attention of the scene lmao

Page 3

Idk why “look” was italicized here, it felt kind of unnecessary since “gave him a look” already means “gave someone an irritated look.” (I’m just an italics hater in general tho dslfksdjfsd)

Junkertown has a premium sausage stand

The Outback Bill bit kind of emphasized the cartoonishness of the scene again; entire listing of the crimes bit intended as humorous. (Outback Bill part in particular felt so random to me, like trying to do an “avatar cabbages guy” bit in like 3 sentences)

Outback Bill crime suggests Junkrat and Roadhog blew up some people for fun (I guess the sausage stand was their target but some customers also got blown up; unclear if just injured or killed, but given the intended humor in the scene it’s probably not supposed to be anything serious)

Cartoony tone makes it feel kinda wild that they’re getting executed but I guess it’s more of a Colosseum battle than an execution

Junkrat is apparently not intimidated by Junker Queen given that he banters with her about her not wanting to fight them herself (though later he’s scared of her when she comes down to the battlefield thing so maybe that was just fake confidence.)

Junker Queen apparently finds Junkrat and Roadhog funny/entertaining (biscuit incident) which tbh makes it all the more random to me that they’re getting executed imo

This doesn’t exactly work tonally imo (again, hard to tell if there’s any gravity to this battle or if it’s just supposed to be wacky silly) but Junkrat getting pissy and saying “unbelievable” like a disappointed grandma about having to fight Wrecking Ball is pretty funny

Footnote on this page says that city factions (demolitionist, wrecker, etc) apparently work together or something I guess. Not really sure what they’re trying to suggest with this footnote; I guess it emphasizes the idea of Junkertown being self-sufficient or something. Or that they’re all destructive and violent, but like. In a community-building way.

Page 4

Roadhog pulls Junkrat out of danger (this isn’t new, he did this in Going Legit)

Junkrat eagerly joining in with the bantering/heckling conversation (?) in the crowd -> emphasizes his chatty/friendly personality, wants to make friends

Junkrat largely unaware of what Roadhog does during combat & focuses more on himself; incorporates Roadhog into his plans when it’s convenient for him; possible that it usually works out/Roadhog usually does what Junkrat asks given that it seems to be a regular occurrence (“Roadhog, catch me!” happens at the end of the story too)

Junkrat uses “wicker basket” as a swear. (???????) Again, this kind of just highlights the cartoonish/silly tone of the story

Page 5

Wrecking Ball’s reveal is also very cartoonish/unserious. Personally I don’t really know what to do with Wrecking Ball’s reveal in this story; it’s kind of not cohesive imo but I guess it’s sillay which seems to be the main goal of the story so it’s like fine I guess

Junkrat saying “It’s alright, Roadhog!” is another instance of him projecting his fear onto Roadhog and comforting himself in the guise of comforting Roadhog

Idk I’m not an action story reader (or a reader at all LMAO I never read) but the action feels kind of slow paced. Maybe because it keeps getting interrupted by jokey cartoonish things

Writing kind of too literal at times for my taste (eg: “He threw the grenade.” -> not much rising tension to this moment, almost seems like he does this casually. For example maybe there could’ve been a tense moment between the heckling from the crowd messing with Junkrat’s confidence or something (knowing that he seems to value the approval of people in Junkertown or is at least affectionate to them) but idk the scene ended up feeling very literally like “the crowd chanted -> Wrecking ball started spinning -> Junkrat aimed at Wrecking Ball -> Junkrat threw the grenade” without much investment)

Outback Bill gag happens again on this page (more cartoonish tone) but like he’s not bothered by it so good for him I guess

Junkrat’s scared of Junker Queen on this page; wasn’t much explicit indication of his worries or fears about Junker Queen before this (mostly just the implicit stuff with him projecting onto Roadhog which was very light), so idk to me this felt kind of out of nowhere for him to be explicitly scared especially since he bantered with her earlier. There’s also been like very little feeling of gravity through the whole thing (see: cartoonish moments) so it was hard for me to feel scared with him.

Apparently no one cares about Junkrat’s treasure. This suggests that Junkrat hires Roadhog just to protect him from the Queen’s men who want him dead since he’s a troublemaker. Tbh this is totally at odds with Wasted Land, where the Queen’s men are threatening him to give his treasure to them or something. Personally I think it’s just better drama for Junkrat to be wanted by the Queen and other greedy people in Junkertown for his treasure, with that being the main reason he hires Roadhog. Plus I think it just kind of ties in with his apparent theme of wanting to be liked by people: there’s something interesting to the notion of a guy that no one likes or wants to be around being literally wanted/coveted for his treasure

Junkrat’s kind of hurt when the crowd groans at him in annoyance but acts proud about it; suggests he’s not oblivious to people’s opinions of him and does get bothered when people find him annoying and don’t like him

Page 6

Crowd kind of feels like a studio audience or something at times LMAO kinda just emphasizes the cartoony/silly tone of the story

The reason given for Junkrat finding the final door is kinda wild lmao like he just fell in from holes in the roof??? Guess it’s again just supposed to emphasize his ~zany nature~. Either that or he like maneuvered his way in like a rat, but the phrasing makes it kind of unclear exactly what he did imo.

Junkrat’s “saucy wink” at Junker Queen meant to emphasize the importance of his eye and also make him flirt with Junker Queen I guess

“The crowd considered this” again kind of literal writing; I guess here it’s especially supposed to be snappy comedy but idk if it was working for me

There’s an abrupt free-for-all for Junkrat’s eye, which is kind of at odds with earlier where no one seemed to want or care about Junkrat’s treasure. I guess they’re all that curious to know what’s behind the final door? Idk the free-for-all would make more sense if the previous part about no one caring about Junkrat’s treasure wasn’t included.

Point of the free-for-all idea here that Junkrat revealing his treasure was supposed to be something he used to get the upper hand, but instead became something that gave him the lower hand (?); aka shows Junkrat is not able to read the room, is poor at manipulating/negotiating, and is always flubbing things

Page 7 (last page I read carefully)

“I thought you were gonna say idiot” -> suggests Junkrat values Roadhog’s opinion of him, insecure about himself (overcompensates when he suggests “Junkrat you’re a genius?” because he’s insecure)

Junker Queen saves Junkrat from a knife, so I guess his plan to reveal his treasure to Junker Queen did kind of work as leverage to get her on his side

 Junkrat never told Roadhog what his treasure is or where it is; not sure what’s meant to be implied here, it’s kind of weird that he’d never tell Roadhog especially since this story emphasizes Junkrat being a blabbermouth. It’s possible that he was saving the details specifically for a situation like this so he could use it to his advantage. Initially I thought maybe Roadhog said he didn’t know either as a lie (because he doesn’t trust Junker Queen) or because he forgot (suggesting he doesn’t actually care much about Junkrat’s treasure), but the end of the story makes it seem like he really just didn’t know anything about the treasure.

Roadhog agreeing about looking forward to Junkrat dying was kind of mean-spirited imo LMAO like I guess supposed to be just a joke given the overall cartoony tone of this story + the unserious atmosphere it’s created surrounding execution, and I usually don’t mind when Roadhog’s kind of an asshole to Junkrat, but that was kind of out of pocket for me lskfjldsf

Other misc notes:

2nd half of the story is kind of action-heavy (since there’s no heckling from the crowd anymore) which is kind of at odds with the cartoony tone of the first half imo.

Specific detail I liked: the idea that Junkrat projects his fears/worries/nervousness/etc onto how he interprets Roadhog and that he talks “Roadhog” through his “worries” as a way for him to verbalize his own fears and work through them. Basically this quirk allows him to believe he’s still a cocky, self-confident person when he actually has worries or insecurities. (Like “These aren’t MY problems or worries, they’re Roadhog’s!” but like they’re clearly his.) I guess it is kind of a selfish reading of Junkrat in that it seems like he doesn’t really understand Roadhog but idk for me I think it makes sense for him to be kind of a self-centered person most of the time.

I also kinda liked Junkrat being chatty with some people in the crowd and him being sentimental for Junkertown and its people. Honestly all the details I liked were so minor; I kind of wish they were somehow expanded on a little more. Especially think there could have been a lot more tension between the crowd & Junkrat’s desire to be liked or whatever vs how that might affect (and distract) him in combat. I mean it was literally a crowd, they could have very explicitly made him try (and probably fail) to be a crowd-pleaser. (Like there was a little of this but not much and not in a way that I found super compelling while reading. imo)

I think the main thing for me is that the writing was very straightforward or literal so most of the time was spent describing things that were literally happening instead of writing with a particular theme or goal in mind. Unfortunately I don’t really have a ton of examples of what I mean so. Whatever LMAO;; I think this kind of story just isn’t really my taste in the first place since I like moody/introspective stuff more than combat-heavy stuff. The lightheartedness was like fine I guess but I did feel like it was frequently awkward when couched between the combat scenes. Again I don’t have examples/evidence of this off the top of my head so I may be totally off here but the writing style felt a bit like describing an action movie or cinematic rather than being a work that utilizes writing to portray action scenes. That’s not really a big deal to me because I’m not expecting like amazing writing from Overwatch (it’s primarily a fps not prestige literature) but idk maybe it would’ve worked better for me if it was animated or a comic or something.

Sorry for the Junkrat-heavy notes; the story was mostly from Junkrat’s POV in a way so it was easier to write notes about him than other characters. maybe I'll have more to say about other stuff when/if I try to reread the last couple pages of the story.

Anyway thanks for reading if you did! Hopefully it was interesting to someone!;;;;;