#the motivations and characters were all super out of plot most of the time and the songs weren't as good as season 1 imo

[kenzdolls]

𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐎𝐒𝐇𝐈 𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐔 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒:

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: 𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐬𝐡𝐢 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐮 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫, 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐱 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐮

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐬𝐡𝐢 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐮 𝐱 𝐔𝐀 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭! 𝐠𝐧! 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 @haikyuubby

MEETING HITOSHI SHINSOU:

the first time you met, he was probably scowling at the sports festival, muttering about the unfairness of it all. you, being the kind soul you are, probably tried to strike up a conversation, offering some words of encouragement. he’d be immediately wary, wondering if you were pitying him.

he’s naturally drawn to you if you're quiet, but for a different reason than most. he wonders if you're also observing everyone, analyzing like he does.

if you're loud and outgoing, he's immediately suspicious. he figures you're either naive or putting on an act. it takes a while to break down his defenses.

he’d be lowkey impressed if you knew about his quirk, but not scared of it. like, you understand the implications of it but aren’t like “OMG DON’T USE IT ON ME.”

he might use his quirk on you, just to test you. just a quick "hello," to see how you react. if you're quick-witted, or maybe even a little rude back, he's intrigued.

constant awkwardness; he's not used to people genuinely wanting to be around him who aren't trying to use him, so he’s constantly on guard.

SHINSOU CRUSHING ON YOU:

he tries to deny it at first. like, hard. he tells himself you’re just another person, that you’re probably faking your kindness, things like that.

he starts paying attention to the little things. the way you laugh, what you're passionate about, how you treat others. the more he observes, the harder he falls.

he catches himself thinking about you when he should be training. This reallyfrustrates him.

he starts hanging around you more, still trying to play it cool. he’ll offer you training tips, or maybe just sit nearby while you study, pretending to read.

if someone is being rude or condescending to you, he might step in, using his quirk to shut them down with a well-placed "shut up." he acts like it's no big deal, but he was totally defending you.

he starts having trouble making eye contact. he’s so used to giving people a piercing stare to activate his quirk, but when it’s you, he gets flustered and looks away.

he would try to leave you alone if he thinks that you think he is weird, but secretly his heart breaks whenever you do not talk to him.

DATING HITOSHI SHINSOU:

he's super awkward at first. Like, painfully so. except stilted conversations and nervous fidgeting.

he loves it when you play with his hair. it’s one of the few things that can get him to truly relax.

movie nights are spent with him analyzing the plot twists and character motivations, always trying to figure things out.

he likes quiet dates. walks in the park, studying together in the library, or just sitting in comfortable silence while you both read.

he needs reassurance. he’s so used to people doubting him, so he needs to hear that you believe in him and that you care.

cuddling? yes, please! he's a big softie deep down and loves the feeling of being close to you. he’s the little spoon most of the time, and he’s not afraid to admit it.

he’s fiercely protective of you. if anyone tries to hurt you, physically or emotionally, they'll have to deal with him.

don’t expect grand romantic gestures. his love language is acts of service and quality time. he’ll show he cares by helping you with your homework, making you coffee, or just being there when you need someone to listen.

he is a good listener; he will give you advice and he will give you comfort when you need it.

he isn’t very good at communication, so you’ll need to be patient with him. it might take a while for him to open up, but once he does, you’ll have his whole heart.

he would love to take naps with you. he would feel safe with you, safe from any kind of trouble.

he is very insecure about his quirk, so if you ever have any nightmares or if you are afraid of him, it might be the end of the relationship. he doesn’t want to hurt you, ever. he just wants to be loved.

his love language is physical touch. he loves to hold your hand, hug you, and just be close to you. especially when he is insecure about his quirk.

he secretly loves it when you wear his clothes. huge sweaters? yes!

He would ask aizawa for help because he is pretty much his dad at this point.

he absolutely hates PDA, but he would totally hold your hand or put his arm around you in public, just to let everyone know that you're his.

overall, dating hitoshi is a slow burn, but it's worth it. he's loyal, intelligent, and has a heart of gold hidden beneath his grumpy exterior. he will protect you at all costs and love you fiercely once he lets you in, and he’s a surprisingly good boyfriend.

© 𝐊𝐄𝐍𝐙𝐃𝐎𝐋𝐋𝐒 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓 —

[comicaurora]

hi red!! i'm doing an analysis of sun wukong's (and journey to the west in general's) impact on modern culture for my world mythology final, and for some reason i'm having a hard time finding sources. is there anything you can recommend?

The fact that Journey to the West has contributed an enormous number of tropes to modern media is very clear when the media in question is examined, but I don't know of a specific secondary source that's already done that analysis for you. However, this IS a very good excuse for you to plow through a metric buttload of shonen manga, since the lineage is basically Sun Wukong -> Son Goku -> like a solid third of all shonen action heroes written in the last forty years.

Dragon Ball kicks things off:

Started in 1984 and almost unquestionably the most influential manga ever made. Its first arc features the weird super-strong monkey-kid Son Goku - which is just the japanese pronunciation of the characters of Sun Wukong's name - meeting up with a wacky crew of thinly-veiled expys of the Journey to the West crew, with teen inventor Bulma filling the role of Tripitaka, Oolong the pig-man filling Zhu Bajie's role and Yamcha the desert-based bandit as Sha Wujing.

Hijinks ensue, and while the story drifts pretty far from Journey to the West's original plot, it actually stays pretty solidly referential in weirdly unexpected ways. Several the villains of the week are JttW references, and even the later appearance of three more Saiyans lines up with the surprise reveal of three more Wukong-like mystical apes in the original story.

The connection between Dragon Ball and JttW is very unsubtle and a frequent reference in the chapter covers and supplemental art.

Not every subsequent JttW reference is the result of Dragon Ball popularizing it or anything, since it was already enormously popular, but I think it's pretty hard to extricate Dragon Ball's influence on anime and manga from the original influence of Journey to the West itself.

One way that a distinction can be drawn is in the differences in characterization between Goku and Sun Wukong himself. A lot of the next generation of shonen protagonists were kind of Goku-alikes - pure-hearted dumbasses who only care for the three Fs: Food, Fighting and Friendship.

But the original characterization of Sun Wukong is not really all that similar. He's a trickster, sure, but he's far from a young, friendship-motivated goober. He's profoundly intelligent, pretty much the most well-educated entity on the planet, and routinely brings up that he's centuries older than most of his peers. The Goku-alikes from the later decades of shonen anime are tellingly far-removed from that original characterization. So you get characters based on Goku's cheerful idiocy, but it's just a small subset of the broader influence of Journey to the West on the space of literature.

In general, Journey to the West frequently shows up in very small, bite-sized tropes in other stories. It's less "this is wholly based on Journey to the West" and more "oh, I know where they maybe got this idea/aesthetic/power/weapon/villain of the week from." There are way too many to list, but some of the ones that tend to jump out at me are-

Sneaky characters with monkey motifs:

Tricksy, highly mobile characters who fight with a staff:

Characters afflicted with a magical restraint artifact that allows a much weaker character to stop them from misbehaving:

Specific esoteric weapons, eg. magical fans, rakes, gourds, namedropping The Sword of Seven Stars, etc.

Villains with prominent ox or pig design motifs:

Characters whose primary combat strat is just making Shitloads Of Disposable Copies Of Themselves:

Honestly it just keeps going like this. It's kinda everywhere. Finding the JttW in things is my favorite conspiracy theory rabbit hole because it's 100% harmless and more often than not completely correct.

[vi-as-in-violet]

i think the main feeling i have about this season so far is that i crave to see MORE, but not in a good way. i love the themes this season is working with, i love the conflicts, i love the characters but it feels like i don't see enough of the story playing out and it leaves me feeling like something is missing.

I wanted to SEE and experience the underground resistance growing, i wanted to actually see how Jinx became a symbol and how that united the underground. I wanted to see the process of it and how it affected her! I feel like the writers really should've gone with the traditional show-don't-tell rule here instead of just showing us the aftermath which left me with exactly zero emotions about such crazy impressive and important events. The entire Underground got united (!!!!) but we saw zero of the unification process and got like two scenes before they were all arrested, released and then the entire revolution idea was completely forgotten and not addressed once in the rest of the act (as far as I recall).

Jinx was clearly struggling with the newfound worship, so much so she went into HIDING. how must've she felt knowing that so many people find hope in her when she sees herself as a literal jinx? how did she deal with becoming people's hope instead of their curse? I wanted to see her work through this so bad since that is what Arcane has always been good at, it's what season one did so well - it walked you through the emotions and motives and therefore, the conclusion to personal plot lines felt SATISFYING and left massive impression. this was completely missing for me this act for most plot lines

Same goes for pitfighter!Vi and her descent into self-destructive hell. We don't get to see the emotional fall out of her being fucking punched and left lying on the ground by the only person she thought she had left - we just got a montage showing the aftermath of her spiraling. which is cool but it left me with feeling pretty much nothing about it all because seeing the conclusion to her struggling without the build-up just fell flat for me. i was looking forward this specific internal conflict of the protector archetype with nothing left to protect and therefore completely losing themselves before finding their purpose again SO much and it ended up being completely brushed over. i wanted to be able to pick Vi's thoughts apart when she was at her lowest point in life since her time in the jail and see how her behaviour and relationship with people/alcohol/violence changes in the process. like later in act 2 when she punches Isha, she doesn't even react (holy shit?). that is SO far from the Vi we saw in act 1 of this season and it feels super out of character because we did not actually get to SEE her behaviour and priorities changing - we can obviously figure out the reason and understand why she ended up this way but since we weren't actually shown how it happened, it still initially felt like it came out of nowhere and majorly ooc for the character we've known so far

and don't even let me start with Cait and her dictator arc. I was getting ready for the emotional fall out and internal conflict and the political powerplay with Embessa but we got SO LITTLE of it. i could go on and on about this but i feel like a lot of people might agree her dictator arc was pretty underdeveloped so I am not going to discuss it further (plus the immediate switch when she met Vi again was just ??? because we can't really see how she feels about this entire thing with the exception of her thinking Embessa is too brutal and that it seems to be weighting on her. PLUS she has at least a situationship with that sunshine enforcer and even tho she is clearly mentally elsewhere, we have no reason to think she is still pinning after Vi?).

I'm not even going to address Jayce because What.

On a positive note, I think Victor's arc has been handled pretty damn well. But aside from that, this season just leaves me craving more and it is quite clear to me the writers absolutely did not have enough time (nine episodes is not a lot) to develop the story they wanted to portray in full.

Now, I watched the latest three episodes while on a plane and since the act is so plot heavy, i might have totally missed or misunderstood something, lemme know if that is the case

i am super interested in how's everyone feeling about this so feel free to add your thoughts!!!

[genericpuff]

Who is your favorite LO character? Who is your favorite LR character?

i feeeeel like my answers change every time i get asked this question JFDSKLAFJSDALK but that's okay because it just means i'm constantly finding new ways to analyze and explore these characters >:3

LO faves: Minthe and Hephaestus.

Minthe because she obviously gets such shit treatment in the comic and subsequently from the fanbase, but she's a lot more relatable than 99% of the characters in the plot, she feels like she has actual depth and a real character arc, even if that arc ended with an unceremonious whisper. It goes to show how great of a character she was that Rachel practically had to nerf her out of the plot, because it was often only ever at its best when she was present. Funny how as soon as she was written out, there was nothing interesting going on with Hades or Persephone anymore - the plot was literally so boring without her that Rachel literally tried to create a Minthe 2.0 through Leuce, and we all know how well that went /s

As for Hephaestus, nothing super specific, I just like his vibes. Maybe it's just my absent older brother issues, but I would love to just like, hang out with him, game in the same room as him, just autistic parallel play stuff, I think he would be into that. Only complaint is the design flaw of giving him running blades as the default prosthetic, that can't be comfortable for his hips and joints. But that's not his fault u.u and that's basically my only complaint about him which makes him a winner in my book, esp compared to the rest of the cast. He might not be in the comic all that much, but that was clearly to his benefit because it seems the more attention Rachel pays to a character, the worse they wind up being in the long run due to poor writing. Hephaestus is in the comic just enough, not too little, not too often.

So yeah, Minthe and Hephaestus are both 10/10 characters written by a 0/10 writer. They did the best they could... not Rachel of course, she did literally the bare minimum of "representation" which often came across as ignorant white knighting at best and blatant stereotyping / stigmatizing at worst, I mean that Hephaestus and Minthe did the best they could as genuinely interesting characters with unique circumstances and disabilities who were being written by an amateur Wattpad-level writer with a privileged white guilt complex lmao

LR faves (within the cast that's currently been introduced): Persephone and Dionysus.

I know, very different from my LO choices, esp considering Persephone herself within LO is literally one of the most insufferable characters by the end, but I'm frankly having a great time rewriting her in my own way, especially in regards to her specific role as the "wrathful side" of Kore. I know I've gotten questions regarding the interpretation of Kore as a DID system, and while that interpretation is totally valid, the angle I always approached it from was that repressed trauma and emotional bottlenecking. Obviously those two things are, in and of themselves, contributing factors to DID, so far be it from me to tell people they can't identify with Kore / Persephone as DID representation. It just motivates me even more to give her the character arc she deserves and never got. It's gonna be messy. It's even gonna be downright ugly at times.

But I hope, in the end, that anyone who identifies with her struggles will find closure and comfort in the resolution of her story. It's certainly a challenging tightrope to walk, between honoring the themes of her original myth, retelling a version of her that almost existed in LO (a version that I was hoping for and never got), and dissecting the implications of my own version of her throughout LR's narrative, but it's a challenge that I've been having a great time undertaking and all I can hope for is that I can meet and possibly exceed my own expectations - as well as the readers - in the end. This is Kore's story - it's also Persephone's.

As for Dionysus... he's just a very, very fun character to write, and someone who I had the advantage of introducing before he was depicted in LO. It wasn't intentional but it sure as shit paid off because even though I'm sure some will assume that this is my own re-interpretation of Rachel's version of the character, myself and anyone else who was there at the time can vouch that Dionysus was aaaalllll me, baby LMAO

All that said, we're obviously going at it from a VERY different angle than how he was tackled in LO, but I'm hoping people enjoy his presence in the story, especially as he becomes more involved (which is very, very soon wink wink) The roles have definitely reversed here with Dionysus taking on more of a "parental" role to Kore rather than the other way around. I feel like his characterization has only grown stronger in hindsight compared to what we got in LO, especially where he's one of the only characters who beat LO to the punch and wound up being in a sort of arms race with Rachel's depiction ─=≡Σ((( つ•̀ω•́)つ

[sapphic-agent]

Trios that would have been more compelling and less obnoxious than the "Wonder Trio":

Izuku, Tenya, Ochako: This needs no explanation

Izuku, Tenya, Shouto: Again, this really needs no champion vouching for it. The Stain arc and the subsequent character work that came with it will never be matched by any other arc in MHA.

Izuku, Denki, Yuga: These three all have self-harming quirks that can be really dangerous and inconvenient during a battle. It was truly a lost opportunity to see these three bond over their issues. Making Izuku and Yuga being close friends right off the bat would've have been really beneficial in sowing the traitor plot point early on and would've have also been far more devastating for Izuku during the reveal. And honestly, Yuga being formerly quirkless and having a self-harming quirk is a much better narrative parallel than the "Save to Win and Win to Save" bullshit that we got. Denki and Yuga just seem like they'd have really good chemistry.

Izuku, Tenya, Momo: These 3 intelligent specimens would've have been extremely overpowered if Hori actually cared enough to develop them. Also, Momo would get to shine because her quirk is powerful as hell (I actually head canon that she has the strongest/most versatile quirk in 1A and maybe enough the BNHA verse as a whole) and it's a crime that her intelligence and OP quirk went underutilized. Also, Momo and Izuku helping each other through their lack of self confidence would have been really touching and maybe have Izuku reflect on his life and how he was treated pre OFA. Momo and Tenya also seemed really no nonsense in the beginning when she ruthlessly criticized Bakugou, so this could help Izuku cut Bakugou off much earlier and allow him to grow.

Izuku, Tsuyu, Mineta: Yes I know, I know. Mineta sucks. But even so, these three were super compelling and interesting to watch during the USJ arc. The ways in which they used their quirks to escape death has way more charm and personality in their hair follicles than post season 3 ShoBakuDeku have in their entire bodies. Also, since Tsuyu was one of the first to call Bakugou out, I feel like her bluntness would be a really good reality check for Izuku to realize that the way Bakugou (and Aizawa) treat him is not okay. Also, Mineta already idolizes Izuku (which is actually sort of sweet) so this could have been used to develop his character rather than the awful and repetitive perv shtick that we're unfortunately stuck with.

Izuku, Shoji, Tokoyami: Like with the above trio, their forest camp sequence in trying to escape dark shadow has more personality and authenticity in their hair follicles than anything having to do with the stupid wonder trio. After all, the whole thing started because of Tokoyami witnessing Shoji being harmed by moonfish, which feels really raw and touching. Shoji also carrying Izuku on his back is super cute. These three also could've been used to address quirk-based discrimination, which is basically that backbone of BNHA's premise (even if it is always glossed over). Tokoyami and Shoji would've had to be victims of heteromorph discrimination (I think it was even confirmed in later chapters) which could drawn the three to each other. No offense to Shouto (and full offense of Bakugo) the two of them could never really relate to Izuku's trauma especially since Bakugou is responsible for 85% of it. They're both rich, they were both born with extremely powerful quirks. While Shouto is tragic because he was abused, he also benefits from the system of powerful quirks being favored which makes the two of them privileged. I also feel like Shoji and Tokoyami finding out about OFA and Izuku's previous quirklessness would just strengthen their bond and would motivate them to help and protect Izuku in any way they can unlike Bakugou who was a total nuisance the entire time.

Izuku, Mei, Ochako: Again, like with the last two, their admittedly limited time on screen together has more charm and personality than the stupid Wonder Trio.

These are the ones that I could think of from the top of my head. Feel free to add anymore.

These are all so cool! I especially liked Izuku, Denki, and Yuga. I always thought Izuku and Denki should have had more interactions anyway. And of course I love Izuku's scenes with Yuga. This is definitely a more unique one.

I would add Izuku, Momo, and Shoto to the list because I love the thought of Izuku being super intimidated by them only to be like, "Oh, oh no they're just isolated rich kids who have never talked to another kid their age and they're mine now" and adopts them.

Also, Izuku, Fumikage, and Shoto. I feel like they're fun.

It's not an Izuku trio but I'd also love Ochako, Tsu, and Momo just because they're best girls

[midnight-mourning]

(Unexpected) Season's Greetings

❄️❄️Midnight's DCA December Day 7❄️❄️

guhhh it's HERE, this got long, it's now going to be ch. 1 of a multi chap fic, I'm going feral over this, pom what have you done-

ahem, anywho, so this is a little something of an au of Confused Spirit (an au of an au if you will) called Holiday Spirit!

Set in a holiday village instead of the plex, reader works as an animatronic technician/blacksmith and encounters a pair of guard bots that are in the village for sceurity purposes (guess who lmao) won't explain the whole plot as this story covers most of it but something to keep in mind is this; the characters here ARE CS characters, but the story is different than CS. As in, the characterizations are the same in how they act, but certain plot points differ as well as the origins for character motivations and such. That is to say, take anything here and in the story that follows with a grain of salt in regards to Confused Spirit. Okay? Okay. Enjoy!

Prompt: I have pondered the orb for a very-super specific scenario, and I THINK!! I have cooked one up that's hopefully fun to tackle... :3c A tree lighting ceremony in a historical town, decorated to the nines as a Holiday village! Its dark, its cold, the world is blanketed in snow-- but there's hot chocolate, a crowd, and beautiful light displays. (Atmosphere, ✓) The DCA is one of the robots/animatronics stationed to interact with guests/assist security. Part of whatever company is in charge of all the lighting/special effects etc that the Town hired. (DCA, ✓) Find a lost kid, or a lost kid stumbles upon them--get them to safety. I keep thinking about hot cocoa & melting peppermint sticks in, so maybe they get the kid a cup to warm up? :3 Whether the kid is the reader's kid, sibling, etc-- they find them, frazzled. (Reader, ✓) Tree lighting, together! Fireworks, together! Could interrupt their conversation, play it all out wherever whimsy takes you (This could be an AU of confused spirit -- AU within an AU, I enjoy the inception x3 Take whatcha want outta the word salad here, dont worry about adding it all in!!)

Word Count: 2846

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

"I just don't know about this Abs." You say, huddling further into your coat as the wind blows by. 

Your friend nudges your shoulder. "What? Afraid of a little light show? Come on, it's the holidays! Or holiday time, anyway. What's the harm that can come from that?"

You shake your head, dodging past another bunch of people eagerly walking through the displays. "I'm just not a fan of so many capital people in town I guess..."

Your cozy little village was on the map for one reason and one reason only, the grand evergreen tree that sat in the middle of the square, assumed to be hundreds of years old, which was always decorated extravagantly for the holidays. Tonight was the lighting ceremony that would officially kick off the holiday season. 

You were, not exactly enthused about it, for the reasons you've already shared. People from everywhere came to gather in your village—which, mind you could hardly accommodate so many extra bodies—to watch the lighting ceremony and partake in the festivities. 

If you were younger and more carefree, you'd have enjoyed the commotion, you used to love people watching from the roof of your house, watching the fireworks display and cuddling up against the chill of the night air with—

You stop, the memory's gone, faded. Grown over with a bitterness and a grief you're more familiar with nowadays. Still, it does irk you that a memory from so long before the accident is so foggy. But, you let it pass you by like all the rest. It was better that way. 

The only reason you were out here now was for your siblings, and really just the older of the two. Gabe was just a baby, he wouldn't remember this. Lisa on the other hand would probably be upset if you didn't uphold the family tradition of watching the ceremony and visiting the night market and lights displays. 

"Oh, I think it's good for you to get out of that shop of yours every so often. Think the smoke fumes would get to your head otherwise." Abby slings her arm over your shoulder and flicks your forehead. 

You rub the spot, frowning. "Gee, thanks."

"I'm just saying, you gotta a live a little more." The slightly sad smile on her face doesn't miss your gaze. "If not for yourself then for them, yeah?"

You nod, sighing, and relent, offering a small smile in return. "Yeah, you're right."

"Speaking of, where's Lisa and Jack?"

You turn forward again. "They should be over by the—oh no."

Sure enough, neither your sister nor Abby's brother are where they should be. Immediately, you panic. You start looking around for the pair, calling their names as you weave through the crowd, which thickens as you move closer to the town square. When you arrive near the tree, still waiting on the lights to be finished prepping, and the king to show up, you and Abby decide to split to cover more ground. 

While she heads to the side of town towards the lake, you head in the direction of the remaining market you'd yet to explore. 

Meanwhile you try to keep calm. While Lisa had a penchant of running off—especially when around a certain friend of hers by the name of Gregory—you were particularly worried because of the amount of people. Not to mention, there was always the concern of something worse happening. 

Everybody was aware of the disappearances happening all across the capital. Whispers of children vanishing without a trace sent ripples throughout your quiet town, and with the king himself in your village, there were concerns that he'd bring with him whatever it was that was causing these missing cases, not unlike those that happened so many years before. 

But, thinking like that wouldn't find your sister, and so you have to bury those thoughts and focus. Think logically. If you were an eight year old girl with her friend who'd follow her anywhere, where would you go?

At that moment, you hear Gabe's stomach rumble and it clicks. Somewhere with food it is then. 

Along the way, you take note of the additional security that's present this year. Seems the threats that'd been directed towards the monarchy as of late weren't being taken lightly. It also didn't slip past your mind that the majority, if not all, this additional protection consisted of machines. 

Many looked exactly alike, large wide eyes and blank faces, though there was the occasional difference. For example, a bear and a rabbit animatronic stationed together, the bear standing tall and resolute, while the rabbit lounged casually beside him. If you remember correctly, you recall both a wolf and a gator roaming around the square with the tree, as well. 

You were half tempted to ask them if they'd seen your sister or Jack, but decided against it in the end. While you worked on animatronics and machines in general every day, you preferred not to talk with your clientele outside of work. It was better that way. Better to not mix business and pleasure. You'd learned that the hard way—

A rogue scream interrupts your train of thought. One that sounds far too familiar to not investigate. No one else seemed to hear above the chattering crowd, but when it happens again, coming from a nearby alleyway, you know it's Lisa. 

You force yourself through the crowd, stumbling into the alley, and head towards where you heard the sound. But by the time you get near the end, you see no sign of your sister. 

You sigh, defeated, and near the edge of tears. You run a hand through your hair, stressed. This is all your fault again, why can't you just do anything right—

There's a loud creak above you, followed by the sound of mechanical clicking. You look up in time for something to land on the ground in front of you, something else dropping down onto the railing of the fire escape just above that. 

The figure on the ground rises, slow, calculated, while the one on the railing stares down at you, red eyes narrowed and head tilted. 

They're wearing the same outfit as the other guards from before, red coats and blue pants, with gold and white detailing spread throughout. The one standing has shimmers of gold near the bottom edge of his coat, not unsimilar to the sky near dusk, from what you can see of the other's there's bits of purply-blue, reminiscent of twilight. 

You take brief note of the hats adorning them both, but it's their faces that catch you off guard. Not because they're animatronics like all the rest, either. 

Celestial bots, the two of them. The one perching has features of the moon, a bluish-white crescent for the right side of his face, and  deep blue for the other. His counterpart, the one standing in-front of you, has the features of the sun, with that same crescent combination, only yellow and a softer shade of blue, instead. 

None of you say anything for a moment. Simply watching, waiting. You glance briefly to the end of the alley, knowing you'd unlikely be able to make it should this turn sour. Though, you really hope not. 

"Can we help you, friend?" The sunny one asks, head clicking to the side, white eyes narrowing.

You're too surprised to speak for a moment. But you're not entirely sure as to why. Finally, you shake your head, coming out of your daze. "I, maybe. I'm, looking for someone. Well, someones. Two kids, boy and a girl. Have they come through here by any chance?"

"And we should tell you because...?" 

His tone catches you off guard, but you're hopeful. "I, the girl's my sister. She ran off with her friend, my friend's brother and we've been looking everywhere for them. Please, if you've seen them, I, I need to know."

You take note of the way the sun bot is examining his hands, paying special attention to the way he taps the gold, claw-tipped finger on his left hand. You swallow, you're not stupid, you know a threat when you see one. You want to instinctively reach back for Gabe, but resist.

After a moment, the yellow animatronic laughs. Looking back over to you. He takes a quick stride, looming over you suddenly. "Sounds like a bit too coincidental of a story, don't you think, friend?"

The one on the railing tsks. "Careful." 

The sun relents, stepping back with a grumble, smile faltering. 

Your shoulders relax for a moment, though only for a moment. 

The moon rests his chin in his hand. Red eyes narrowed cheekily. "But not too careful."

They turn to each other then, speaking in hushed tones. You strain to make out what they're saying. 

"—They do look similar, though only slightly. But what—"

"I think you're being paranoid. Not to mention a bit..."

"I believe cautious is the word you're searching for." A pause. "And I'm not..."

"It's not. But I certainly—what else could that twitch in your eye mean?"

Once the whispering becomes harsher and harder to discern is when you realize they're just bickering now. But before you can interrupt, a sneeze emits from the bundle strapped to your back, followed by the sound of giggling. 

Both bots cease their fighting and whip to face you. You see your opportunity. 

You turn around, pointing both thumbs down at your brother. "Look, she looks a lot more like him than me. If that's not enough I don't know what is."

Before you can face the two again, you find yourself being picked up by your shoulders and spun around. 

You understand what's happening when you hear the yellow bot speak, in a much lighter tone than before. "Well hello there little friend! Aren't you just the cutest little bundle of joy I've ever seen? Are you warm enough? Should I get you another hat, another scarf maybe?"

You continue to be spun around, Gabe giggling and squealing with delight. Finally you have to say something as your world grows dizzy. 

"Hey! I'm also here you know!"

As if on cue, you're set down again. Nearly stumbling before a hand rests on your shoulder. 

Glancing up, you see the sun animatronic cough into his gloved hand. "Well then, I suppose that will do." He turns and nods to his partner. "Go get them."

"A please would be nice."

He tilts his head, grin as wide as ever. "It would, wouldn't it?"

A moment's pause, the moon's eyes narrowing. Then, with a snicker, he rises, balancing on the railing before leaping up, disappearing over the edge of the roof. Leaving you alone. 

It takes you a moment to notice his counterpart is back to fawning over your brother. Cooing at him while Gabe delights in the attention. 

"And what's your name, little friend?" He asks.

You answer. "Gabriel. And yours?"

Quiet for a moment. A long moment. Then—

"Take a guess."

You tsk, but figured as much. "Not going to ask mine then?"

"No need. I've heard all about you already."

You twist slightly. "What's that supposed to—"

You're stopped by the sound of that same shriek from earlier, but now you realize that it wasn't one of fear, but of pure unhindered joy. 

The moon bot—or Moon, you suppose—lands on the ground not far from you. In his arms is your sister and Jack. 

"Lisa! Jack! Thank god." You rush over to them both, scooping them up in your own arms once they've been set down. "What in the world were you two thinking running off like that?"

You release them again, and they both mutter apologies. 

Your sister kicks her foot against the ground. "We just wanted to get a better look at the tree..."

"But then we got lost." Jack continues. 

You sigh, ruffling the hair on both their heads. "Next time, wait for me and Abby, yeah? If you wanted to get a closer look we could've walked faster."

"Sorry..." Lisa shakes her head, "But it's okay! Mr. Sun, and Mr. Moon took good care of us in the meantime!"

"Yeah! We got hot chocolate, and Mr. Moon took us for a ride!"

You smile. "Well if that's the case, what do we say then?"

Both kids turn to the bots. "Thank you!"

"Of course!"

"Our pleasure."

You stand up again, nodding once. "We better get going, or we're going to miss the ceremony." You glance between the two animatronics. "Thank you both again. I, don't know what I would've done if you hadn't found them." You lower your voice to speak more to yourself. "Probably sock someone... to be honest."

You start to usher the kids out of the alley, but don't miss the gaze exchanged between the guards. Just as you've turned around, you're startled to find Sun has slipped his arm to intertwine with yours. 

"We'll accompany you back to the square. It's the least we can do after such a scare!" He nods to the kids, already starting to get ahead again. "Moon will watch the children. Won't you?"

There's a sound, similar to grinding gears, behind you. Then a chuckle. "Of course."

He walks ahead, and plucks the two off the ground, raising them to ride on his shoulders. 

"Oh, I couldn't ask that of you—"

Sun's claw-tipped finger taps against your arm, head tilting as he looks down to you. "I insist." Then, cheery again. "We'd really be more than happy to!"

"I, okay."

The three of you make your way back to the square, Moon slightly ahead of you with the kids. 

"So, friend, are you excited?"

You chuckle. "For what part?"

"Any of it, I suppose. It's quite the spectacle!" Sun says, looking around. 

You can't deny it, it is lovely tonight. The chattering villagers and capital citizens, everyone in nothing but high spirits. The warm lights of the street lamps and string bulbs put up especially for the event. Children run and play amongst the crowed, going stall to stall. A small bit of snow falls from the sky, not quite coating or adding to the current piles that litter the streets. 

Your smile is small, soft. "Yeah. It is. Can I be honest with you though?"

Sun nods. 

"I just, I guess it just, hasn't done much for me in quite a few years." You shake your head. "Used to, don't get me wrong. Used to love all of it. But now it's just, well, I'm here for them more than me, you know?"

You notice that you've made it just in time for the tree lighting. The king's already begun his spiel. You wouldn't be paying attention anyway. Hell, you don't even think his kids are. 

Additionally, Abby must've spotted you, rushing over to where Moon stands with your siblings, looking relieved. 

"Is there any particular reason for that?" His face snaps down to yours. "Do you think?"

The tone shift catches you off guard. "I, um—" You pause, noticing something. Particularly, Sun's rays. They're patterned in a way you wouldn't expect for a guard animatronic. And the baubles at the points of each remind you of bells. Kind of like—"Were you always programmed to be guard bot?"

The tables turn. His eyes widen, wide grin faltering. Instinctively, your hand reaches up to inspect further. "These remind me of something."

"I—"

Suddenly, the crowd erupts into a cheer. Immediately the two of you break apart, and you turn just in time to watch the tree burst with lights. Starting from the bottom and rapidly climbing the tree in a spiral that ends with a flash of light from the star at the top. Seconds after, fireworks start to burst in the sky. 

Despite the lack of joy the festival has given you the past several years, in that moment you can't help the smile that slips across your face. 

A soft chuckle from beside you. "Pretty as ever, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It is."

A hand rests on your shoulder. Glancing up you see it's Moon. "Lovely meeting you, Star. But we should get back to our posts. Right, Sun?"

A pause. Then. "Of course! Our job here is done." Sun releases your arm, turning to face you. "Until next time, friend." 

Sun bows, and Moon does the same, but takes your hand, pressing the back of it to his face plate. It makes you laugh, the edges of your ears burning, and not just from the cold. 

Before you can say anything more, Sun takes Moon by his padded shoulders and marches him back in the direction they came. 

You don't get to think on the encounter further, as your preoccupied once more with wrangling your sister and—trying—to enjoy the evening with your friend. Though, given this was only the beginning of the month's celebrations, you expected you'd be seeing them again potentially. 

And if they had anything to say about it, you would.

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

Thank you @divinit3a for this request, I am gripping you by the shoulders and spinning you around like sun did to reader bc GRAHHHH THIS WAS GENIUS-i did a little bit of a spin from the original idea but I think it turned out alright >_<

Anywho, expect to see more of these three when i catch up on requests and spend some time on my Secret Santa :) Additionally, you can find the outfit designs for these guys over in Pom's post here. I suggest you check it out, had me SWOONING I'll probably make a post for this au in more detail sometime in the next few days but that's all for now, thanks for reading!

Masterpost link

Tag list (if you would like added, see this post for more info):

@scarletcowboy @beemyhuneybee @fishm0ther @deviouscrackers @elsajoyagent8

@luckyyyduckyyy @zenkaiankoku @jogimote @local-shrub @amarynthian-chronicles

@robinette-green @everlightreader @sinister-sincerely @starredeclipse @dangerva

@juukai @crystalmagpie447 @mothgutz236 @lizyxml

[twdgkidsdeservebetter]

Everything Wrong With Umbrella Academy Season 4 (Characters)

The way it felt like someone who had never seen the show wrote this season????

The characters were AWFUL and were almost entirely new characters with all their previous character development forgotten.

Allison - Honestly, I don't like Allison (after watching THAT scene w Luther), so I really didn't care what happened with her this season. I think it does suck that she wasn't able to be happy with Ray, they were nice together. Also, no rumours? Her power was one of the most interesting out of the family.

Luther - People were commenting about how childish and positive he was being this season and how it was out of character from him being so serious. Honestly? I love silly Luther, he's such a breath of fresh air. I also like to believe that because Luther was assigned the leader of the family (being number 1 and all), he's able to enjoy himself without that pressure. Also, I also love to believe that Luther is using being positive and silly as a coping mechanism as to not be overwhelmed by the sadness of losing Sloane and also his current living situation. Giving him his gorilla body back was so unnecessary and makes no sense cause it wasn't the marigold that gave him the body.

Ben - He sucked. I hate that Sparrow Ben was the one that was dragged with them because it meant that we had to deal with him sulking and being angsty the whole time. Also, the character development we witnessed 1-2 just disappeared instantly cause of Sparrow Ben. Also, his friendship with Klaus was the best thing in the show and I hate that we never get to see that in season 3.

Klaus - I was actually so happy for him being sober, even if he wasn't living the best life because of his paranoia with death and germs. So it really sucked when that immediately went down the drain the second his body got the marigold.

Diego - He deserved better. Yeah, his constant complaining about his "belly" (which wasn't even that big of a difference??) and wanting to go back to his old super spy life did affect his and Lila's marriage, but when he realised that he immediately accepted that he was at fault and was willing to improve their marriage to make Lila happy.

Lila - I liked Lila before season 4. I don't know what they were thinking honestly by changing her entire character. Yes, she and Five were stuck for 7 years together, but seriously? That plot added NOTHING to the story because in the end, Lila chose Diego and then they all DIED like 10 minutes later!!

Viktor - Honestly? Viktor didn't really stand out this season for me. Sure, he got kidnapped by Ian Hawk. I thought the idea of him trying to remove the marigold from Ben was a really cool idea but then it just didn't happen. I thought his interactions with Reginald were decent, since it's interesting to see how this Reginald thinks about Viktor compared to the original timeline Reginald.

Five - It's honestly kind of impressive how the writers were able to make the best character in the show the worst character by the end of it. They completely changed his whole character. First, his personality is duller than a door nail. He's so emotionless and so boring. Where's the excessive facial expressions and movements? Second, changing his motivations. For the past 3 seasons we have watched him with one goal in his mind; "Save the world and his siblings". So why would Five ever possibly consider both giving that up for Lila of all people. Third, giving Five a love interest was so useless and lazy. Why would he choose a girl over his siblings? Especially one literally MARRIED to his BROTHER. Fourth, him being all pouty and jealous over Lila choosing Diego (her husband and father of her kids - no shit she was gonna pick him over Five, literally have no idea why Five even thought he had a chance) to the point where he plans to just ditch his family in the middle of a big fight. Five, him fighting Diego in the middle of said big fight. THEN, Five just gives up??? Yeah, that's probably all he could do but seriously, this is Five we're talking about, the guy who survived in 45 years in the apocalypse to try and get back to his family and save the world. Do you really believe that he would just give up?

BONUS:

Jennifer - They could introduce a new character/love interest for Ben but they didn't do the same for Five so they just gave him the only other woman who wasn't his sister???? LAZY. Also, the amount of plot holes with Jennifer's character makes me queasy.

[starcrossedandstupid]

Not sure how to feel on the WEBTOON yet, but I’m optimistic

At first I wasn’t a huge fan of the Kristen design, BUT I think it’ll really pay off after she gets into her crisis of faith! Her looking all the more girly now means she has so much potential to really shift visually. I think it’s actually going to be an awesome switch up from the show if it’s pulled off well!!

I don’t feel the same way about Riz’s design. He’s cute, don’t get me wrong, but like a lot of people have said, he just don’t look like a goblin. Neither does Sklonda, but Riz is featured much more so yk not as big of a deal for her atm. Speaking of Riz’s page time, I don’t like that she’s clearly being portrayed as the main character. I understand where the choice comes from, with his motives being the most directly tied to the plot, but *everyone* is supposed to be the main character in dnd, every party member. I didn’t realize it at first, but someone also pointed out that the women got a noticeable less amount of page time in the first three chapters, and they are definitely right. Everyone’s morning introduction scenes were all so great, it feels so weird to me to have them be cut. They showed off everyone’s personalities super quickly, in a way I found made them all immediately likable and fun. For a WEBTOON trying to hook people in, I feel like it would’ve made sense to go through them all, so everyone would get attached to at least one person. Also it means we didn’t get to meet most of the parents!! Still, I think this can totally be remedied in a way that could be super fun! Obviously, when the party comes together in detention, that should serve as the place to stop Riz being the MC, as we meet everyone as a party, so things are split equally now. The morning scenes could be done in flashbacks after that, maybe with Fig’s being when she goes down against the corn cuties, as she doesn’t have an afterlife scene do to. But obviously it doesn’t have to be then, just an example. Flashbacks could be very cool if they do it.

Some straight up positives for me are Fabian and Ragh, I think they did a lovely job with them personality wise

But yeah, there are quite a few issues I have with it, especially the MC Riz and division of page time stuff, but I’m still looking forward to what is done with it! Every adaptation is going to change things, and while the big change in this is supposed to be it being drawn, other things were bound to change and that isn’t necessarily bad, it just needs to be pulled off well.

[flat-neines]

I wonder how Tanwyn feels now that Cassians mate and her friends are completely ruining AND disrespecting the Valkyrie name

Its specifically cassian (and the night court's inner circle as a whole as they're the primary pushers of the canon valks as they are) that tanwyn would be turning in her grave over, not the fact that there's new gen valkyries at all. (Though I do think she'd be a little skeptical, realistically speaking)

You see, my main problem with tanwyn being a footnote for readers to emphasize with cassian has to do with well, cassian himself and the narrative as a whole. There are many people who spoke far more eloquently about how sjm uses (and justifies) systemic oppression, feminism, slavery and politics as a whole for aesthetics rather than actually interacting with the appropriate gravity of these themes. Why do a second draft when you can write your self insert playing out your non/dubcon fantasies with your Gary stu instead? 🙄

This is why I feel like tanwyn sticks out so much in acosf to me.

If you take away the sorry excuse of a romance, acosf is about nesta trying, failing and dubiosly beginning to heal from her trauma through befriending gwyn and emerie, with the history of the valkyries empowering the trio into starting a new generation of the legendary warriors. We later find out that in the metaplot these warriors are narratively important to the series' past and future, especially with the dusk court plot threads. This by nature makes tanwyn one of the most narratively important characters in the series from the pre canon timeline. She, like Claire and Andras, should haunt the narrative.

Characters should be talking about her, what she and her sworn sisters had done for prythian and the fae world at large. There should be notes and journals left behind by her that contains crucial information about how the legion operated in her time. There should've been memorials that are all over prythian, that go unnamed and are a constant up until its revealed they celebrate the og valkyries sacrifice in the war (what war? Presumably the slave's war, on the side of humans/freedom) Tanwyn should've been long shadow that the neo valkyrie trio illuminates in honor of her, not another person in the fridge.

Tanwyn, like many of the cooler side characters that are massacred for the sake of sjm's protags (fly high nehemia,, you were such a baddie) is given none of that weight. She becomes a plot device to show how sad wittle cassian is and how he can never measure up to the ideals in his head because he is a "poor wittle bby" who gets bullied by the literal devil (nesta).

It's super egregious too because we find out tanwyn is a huge motivation in him pushing for the valkyrie army, because he misses fighting alongside her. He is encouraging and insisting illyrian women, who still don't have rights or safety nets, to join the neo valkyrie army; to fight and die for a court and ruler who hates them, for a nostalgic fantasy. He actively broke down a depressed woman (that is his mate) into becoming a warriors for his fantasy ideal that probably didn't even exist in the first place. If that's not butchering a legacy, I don't want to know what is.

So no, if tanwyn was suddenly resurrected and dropped into the plot, I don't think she'd snub her nose at nesta and her friends; they'd be welcomed with open arms. But she'd be flaying cassian and buddies alive for shitting on centuries of legacy because he misses the idea of her.

[mercurial-chuckles]

Thunderbolts*

I should be working on a paper, but focus is evading me, and it's been a week since Thunderbolts* released - and I've been itching to voice my thoughts.

⚠️ SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT ⚠️

Kindly note: this blurb is the opinion of a sleep-deprived, grad school-exhausted girl from some corner of the world. If you don't agree with me, feel free to scrunch up your nose, scoff, and move along. Let's agree to disagree respectfully, yeah? Sorry, my patience is thinning with anon-hate.

I wouldn't be yapping, but what can I say? I waited for this movie for so long - and desperately, mind you. I'll be honest, the desperation was mostly just to see Bucky. And dear God, he's Ho. Ho. Hot.

Objectively, it's a decent movie with a storyline. But I found it maddeningly mediocre. And no, it ain't because they used Sebastian Stan as bait in the trailer with only trifling screen time. As much as I love Bucky, and mourn the lack of screen time for my baby girl, I do love the MCU. I've been reverently following it since middle school. It's the story-telling in this that dragged it down.

Honestly, I've been super reluctant to watch anything MCU post-Endgame. But I still watched everything, hoping to see some spark. Nope. Just like all the other series, this one felt very anticlimactic on a fundamental level.

Of course, there's some good. The humor, dynamics, one solid fight scene, and the fact they touched on mental health, which, I loved how strikingly good they conveyed. I felt seen. Validated. Some of the scenes were definitely therapeutic.

But in the totality of the plot, they disneyed the shit out of the movie.

Just to be clear, I love Disney movies, the innocence, purity, and kindness leading to redemption and goodness? Yeah, that's a trope I cherish! However, milking just on a few emotional scenes with a team of anti-heroes and VICTIMS while the plot feels discordant didn't really land well.

The most insane thing is, there is SO MUCH good potential...great actors (have you seen Sebastian act? Sorry, I'll shut up), and a fine plot itself, TBH. It's more of a Yelena-centric movie, which isn't bad.

For starters, these would've made ALL the difference:

They could've weaved the scenes of Void from the start, and made it the prime aspect of the story because it would've made a tremendous, complex, on-the-edge experience, especially with the amount of trauma they all have. And Bob (absolute cutie) could've played a finer role.

Don't get me started on Bucky. In hindsight, Bucky's character (if the poor man had been given more value) could've been elemental because the growth… 🤌🏻 Sweet heavens! He had one badass scene (again, for bait) and then was shoved in the background? Excuse me, dearest Thunderbolts writers, let's talk!

Valentina as a power-hungry, manipulative villain person was meh. She's a politician. Period. Showing her past and not exploring the intensity of her motives or adding value to her character except for a flicker of vulnerability was disappointing.

Also, is it just me, or has anyone else noticed the chemistry between Bucky and Mel? Some characters just naturally fit together, right? Dear gods, they could've shown us more of them platonically. There could've been more dialogue, snaps, retorts…anything, really.

Anyhoo, missed potential, as I said. (Well, except for that Bucky scene in the end-credits. 🤭😏 That. Shooketh. Me)

Guess we gotta fend for ourselves by writing fanfiction to fulfil stories unlived, huh! Oh, and I'm writing a story, THUNDERBOLTZ, and it's in the works.

[crownowlistaken]

SPOILERS FOR YELLOWJACKETS FINALE

i have a lot of thoughts to ramble and no place to put them so here we go:

1. i still enjoy the show, it has issues but i appreciate the original idea and themes and i haven’t been put off into not watching it

2. the writers have a clear racial bias. to the point in which it feels intentional. tai’s family being an important (and arguably one of the more well thought out parts of the adult timeline) of the story to basically disappearing this season is an obvious starting point. unless akilah is alive (and i’m not a believer of the eight survivor theory so i think she could be), out of all the adult survivors we have left, only one of them is a woc, who like i said her whole family pushed aside to spend most of the adult timeline cleaning up shauna’s mess

3. following on from my last point, mari as pit girl being the perfect decoy was good storytelling and i love her making a sacrifice to save her friends. but stripping her, wearing her hair as a costume and basically degrading her existence feels like such a racially motivated attack on shauna’s part. especially as its the 90s its not out of the question that someone shauna’s age would be acting in a racist way when there’s no true consequence to her actions. also on a side note, i do not see why it would make sense for mari to take off her trousers during the hunt, her jacket was a good tactic, but the trousers seem weird as she didn’t even hang them up or anything

4. i know for plot reasons they couldn’t all just jump shauna, but during this hunt she and lottie seemed to be the only ones into it and lottie was not much a physical threat. i think i would have preferred the girls to go deeper into madness for this hunt so it would be believable why they didn’t just think to point the gun and crossbow at shauna while nat went for rescue (especially as shauna didn’t have the gun on her for most, if not all, of the episode)

5. back to the poc characters being underutilised, it feels like such a waste that travis was killed so early on, especially now that lottie is dead. i still want to know why she thought the symbol was so important to put under him as we’ve barely seen it this season (and even before then it felt like we were going to get a backstory as to why it was important and we just never did) and if he actually wanted to feel close to it, since everything now is pointing to the opposite

6. the time jumps in the teen timeline feel counterproductive to the storytelling. they were there for nineteen months but it feels like they’ve just rushed through those months to get to dramatic bits of plot. i would have liked to see more of their transition into the village they built, and also how they didn’t starve during that time between the cabin burning down and spring.

7. i feel like a lot of characters underwent major personality changes in too rapid a period. shauna partially, because while she’s always had a violent/vindictive side they’ve basically turned her into wilderness joker, whose consistently super fast (i know she’s fastest on the team but she gave birth with no medical care and has been starving, there should be more effects of that), knows how to use guns and seems almost impossible to take down even though most of the people there had the same level of athletic training she does (arguably nat should be stronger considering she was hiking almost every day with travis looking for food and scouting the area). also shauna used to be really caring in the first season, she slept in the attic with tai, looked after javi and even tried to comfort lottie and mari at various points. and it feels like in both timelines that part of her personality has been completely erased, to the point in which she feels like a different character. but also van, in both the teen and adult timeline van used to be one of the most devoted followers to lottie’s beliefs and the need for the hunts, yet this season she seemed to be leaning away from it almost entirely.

8. while i like that the adult timeline is starting to connect with the teen one, and the teen counterparts starting to act like their adult versions, it doesn’t feel well thought out. by this point it’s clear that the girls are going to get rescued soon thanks to nat, but then how do gen and melissa specifically get close enough to hanna for melissa to know about her daughter and the tape? also how and why does hanna die because all the girls seem so clearly against the murder thing now that it seems they would kill hanna in such a short space of time

9. this is just a random thing, i feel like i’ve seen a lot of people say that pit girl in the pilot was always meant to be unsolved to set up the show for having dark themes. i disagree strongly just because the rest of the show seemed to set the premise that questions would be answered as time goes on (eg jeff the blackmailer) so it would’ve been weird to just leave that seen like that (maybe if they hadn’t shown misty’s face it would have made sense but since they did it always felt like something to come back to

10. while i’m so glad callie and jeff left shauna i really hope we don’t see them for a few episodes, just because i feel like the two them, especially callie need a break from shauna. especially since it seems like this whole time the only thing she wanted was for shauna to love her. however, i am also upset that we barely got any explanation of lottie’s death. like yes callie accidentally killed her but i feel like none of lottie’s behaviour was explained. like why she was let out of the mental hospital, who she was talking to, why light all those candles etc… it just feels like another woc being used to further the storyline of a white woman in this show which feels like a huge waste of all the interesting characters available

i probably will have more thoughts as time goes on but those were the main ones sticking out after the finale

[phantom-thieves-official]

Hiii

What are your opinions about Ryuji's and Joker's duality?

People only talks about akechi & Joker's duality, but I feel like Ryuji and Joker also have some sort of similarities

(Also, srry if my english sounds a bit off)

Your english is fine anon, no worries!

I was thinking about this the other day, actually, because in the art book, the notes about Ryuji's design specifically mention how he was designed to counter Joker (not as a stark opposite so much as just... a balance) I have a lot of thoughts on this topic but it's always just been nebulous.... vibes. That I just get, without ever having to explain why. So it was a challenge to put it all into words. Hope it all makes sense ^-^

ANYWAY under the cut bc this is long as hell

Joker and Akechi have a very interesting duality, I will admit. I can see why it dominates conversations on the topic of 'characters Joker has duality with.' I promise I have a point in derailing this post about Ryuji into talking about Akechi; bear with me here. Their similarities serve to highlight their contrasting elements; it's like a bad-end look of what Joker could have been if he'd made different/more selfish choices. That's the whole point of a foil.

Okay now that we've established what a foil is, back to Ryuji.

I think Joker/Ryuji are the opposite of a foil, they're a mirror; where they highlight each other's good traits and their similarities. Not that they have no differences, just that those differences work to make their similarities more obvious.

I rewrote this a couple times and kept feeling it was hard to follow, so I guess I'll start to by outlining a couple key character traits for them each.

Joker is selfless, motivated by his sense of justice, willing to get himself hurt to do the right thing, tactful, on the quiet side, level-headed, intelligent and generally good with people. He's a planner, a 'think before you act' type.

Ryuji is selfless, kind, motivated by his sense of justice, willing to get himself hurt to do the right thing, loud, 'act first, think later,' brash, lacks people skills, often says things without thinking, not super smart. He's a guy led mostly by feelings, and is often the first to want to take action.

There are obvious similarities, and obvious differences. I think at a very basic level, Ryuji's traits help make Joker's more obvious - Ryuji's very emotion-based, more impulsive, 'act first, think later' attitude leaves room for Joker's more level-headed, tactful nature to show, especially early on. In this way they also balance each other out really well just in general - particularly early as that's when Ryuji gets the best characterization, Ryuji's the one spurring on the plot action. He's the one moving them along toward taking on Kamoshida. In contrast, Joker's the one reigning him in when he goes too far - he stops Ryuji from hitting Kamoshida, he makes him stop when they're just walking in circles looking for the castle on the second day, things like that. Ryuji's a character of action and Joker balances him out with more thought and logic. Ryuji's the heart of the team and Joker's the brain (not that I think Joker's cold or unfeeling; just he's much more careful and tactical whereas Ryuji is an emotions-based guy)

Their differences also serve to make their similarities stand out. If they were super samey, with tons of things in common, then no one in particular would be unique. But by having their demeanor, temperaments, and general personalities so contrasting, it means the stuff they DO share - the important stuff; the kindness, the selflessness; the want to help others - really stands out. But that's not the only way their differences serve to uplift their similarities. Back with the Kamoshida arc example, Ryuji's more action-oriented character means he's the one who spurs most of the action in the Kamoshida arc, so you see a lot about his character. But despite Joker not being such an active role, you still learn a lot about Joker's character. He's not as emotional or headstrong as Ryuji is, but he's still shown to care - Ryuji's more outspoken nature both contrasts and compliments Joker's more quiet determination. It provides a vehicle for Joker's characterization basically, by giving Joker a more outspoken companion who can drive the action and leave room for Joker to show his own morals by agreeing and going along with Ryuji. If both characters were more quiet, tactful characters like Joker or more rash, headstrong ones like Ryuji, it wouldn't work the same way (or at all.)

I think there's something to be said for their similarities, too, and how those play into their dynamic. Like I said, I think they're a mirror of one another, reflecting and highlighting the good traits in each other. Their kindness, their unwavering commitment to doing what they think is right, their willingness to put themselves in harm's way to help people they don't even know. It's really easy to see those traits in Joker because Ryuji mirrors him in that way. Every time Ryuji displays that selfless, good guy core, it's a reminder that this is the guy Joker hitched his wagon to. This is the guy Joker chose to help out, because he believes in the same things. Every time Joker makes a selfless decision to help someone, you know Ryuji agrees with him. You know they're on the same page, and so you can learn more about one by looking at the things the other one stands for; each time one of them displays those core traits, you know the other feels the same way. I think this is especially pertinent for Joker's characterization as the protagonist, since most things in a game revolve around the protag primarily and Joker, as a character, does not get a lot of speaking roles for himself - Ryuji's expression of these traits is often a reflection of Joker's feelings/thoughts when Joker himself is often not afforded such explicit characterization. (Not that Joker has no characterization, just that as the protag with limited dialogue that characterization is often less/less obvious than the other main characters)

Without Ryuji there would be no Phantom Thieves. He was the one who activated the nav the first time, he's the reason Joker awakened a Persona, he's the reason they went back into the metaverse a second time, he's the reason they started trying to do something about Kamoshida's abuse of the volleyball team, he's the main voice behind going after him in light of Shiho's suicide. I bring all this up as another element where they contrast each other in an interesting way. At the beginning of the game, from the second we meet him, Ryuji hates Kamoshida. He wants to help the volleyball team so much that he wants to go back into the palace where he almost died. From the jump, Ryuji is mad and he's bitter and he still wants to do the right thing. And at that point in the story, I do not think the same applies to Joker. When Joker awakens to Arsene, there's a moment of doubt - a moment where Arsene asks him, was saving that lady a mistake? Joker's at a point where he's been beaten down for following his sense of justice, and I think there's a degree to which he'd given up on it. That's why Ryuji's the main instigator behind the plot early on (besides Ryuji's more action-forward character.) Because Joker's still a little wary of it. I think this difference in their character is really interesting, because I think if not for Ryuji, Joker might not have ever been spurred into action; he might have ended up believing that pursuing his own sense of justice was a mistake after all. But Ryuji, someone similar in sharing his morals and similar in having been kicked to the ground and outcast for it, hasn't given up. I think seeing that reaffirms Joker's sense of justice; reaffirms that he didn't make a mistake after all. So they're similar in circumstance, but one has knuckled under and one has not. And seeing someone else like him who hasn't given in changes things for Joker.

On a less character analysis, more meta note, I think they have fun duality in both design and gameplay, as well.

The art book mentions explicitly that Joker was more 'classic, gentlemanly phantom thief' but that there needed to be "some offbeat fashion, a bad boy vibe, and a sense of playfulness" to sell the idea of students up to no good. So Ryuji was designed to be that - the book states he is 'completely rid of all the refined qualities the protagonist has.' It outright says 'structurally, he's the opposite of the protagonist' and that his slumped posture is a contrast to Joker's better posture. So from a basic, design standpoint they were absolutely considered opposites.

I think there's a lot to be said for their gameplay in a similar vein, where Joker is a jack-of-all-trades and as the protag with LOTS of persona/skill options, you're encouraged to be strategic and thoughtful with your personas/turns. But Ryuji is not that at all - his play style is super straight forward. He hits stuff. Not that there are no further intricacies to his gameplay but the basic is he has a really high strength stat, so get to whacking stuff. Even other characters with a pretty well-defined role don't get pigeonholed as much, as Ann (the Ryuji of the magic attackers) gets some stat and heal moves, and characters like Yusuke, Makoto, and Haru get more varied and complex movepools with some gimmicks available to them (Yusuke's baton pass related skills, Haru's walls) so from a gameplay standpoint you have the most complex (Joker) and the most simple character (Ryuji) for combat.

[akkpipitphattana]

Your post about Babe makes me think this is a safe space to vent briefly! I love this show dearly, it's hands down my fave show of last year, I foresee much rewatching in the future, and though it's clearly imperfect, up until now those imperfections haven't interfered with my enjoyment. But - and maybe it's because there's only one ep left so the prospect of certain things/conversations happening is looking increasingly unlikely, or maybe it's because for the first time I felt the screentime/writing apportioned to each couple this ep felt noticeably unbalanced - post ep-11, I'm feeling a little wistful/frustrated at opportunities missed. Babe is a super obvious one - it feels like Style's dad has had more screentime than him, and even though Style's dad is awesome, in terms of importance to plot/character motivation, Babe clearly comes out on top, and yet as you mentioned, the writing hasn't really reflected that. But I think Kant and Kant/Bison in general have sporadically been curiously underwritten - in their post-truth scenes, imo, they've never really been given the space to explore their feelings to the same depth that Fadel has. And I think I just sort of ignored it before cos all the other stuff (not just the kissing!) was so delicious, but then in this ep, the contrast tween the burger joint scene and the tattoo scene (which seemed almost truncated) just felt so stark that it thwacked me over the head. The obvious exception is the beach scene (and maybe the swing scene?), the meat of which we now know was improvised. Which makes me wonder if it's partly because they think they can get away with it or don't feel they need to write as much detail cos FK are there to do the heavy lifting for them? And yes, FK can speak volumes with eye contact alone cos they really are That Good, but some stuff DOES actually have to be verbalised!!! And I'm not necessarily saying their scenes needed a lot more dialogue, but maybe just to be given a little more time to breathe? I remember thinking that about the opening of ep 9 with the memory box - yes, the deflection and flirting is probably in-character to a degree and most definitely the latter is a lot of fun to watch, but even just giving them a moment longer to reflect on their pain/loss before they diverted to daddy kink would've made a big difference imo.

Again, I can't necessarily point at anything in particular and say that's what should've been cut out to make room for xyz, so maybe it really is just a matter of not quite having enough eps to fully cover all the material they were working with (think that's definitely the case with Keen and Lilly, but they are fundamentally side characters, and it's side characters who always get shafted! Whereas Kant/Bison...). And yes, again, that's what fic's for, I know that. But still...the what ifs are always the worst! What if we got actual onscreen acknowledgement from another character that Kant, too, has been a victim of grooming/coercion/exploitation/whatever you want to call it, and also deserves to engineer a reckoning for the person responsible (and I'm not counting the blackmail scene cos he's still not in a position of power there given the stakes)? What if we got Bison bringing up their first encounter (since there's absolutely no reason for him to think it wasn't part of the scam) and Kant getting the chance to reassure him that night was 100% real? What if we got recognition from Fadel that Kant is basically just another tired older brother doing what it takes to protect his nong? What if we got actual follow-through on the Captain's threats after Kant returned from their torture island getaway? Imagine the parallel we could have had tween him coming home in ep 7 to find Babe with Bison vs. him coming home in ep 10 to find Babe with the Captain! What if we got just one scene where Kant finally gets to be the one who breaks down and is comforted? What if we got anything explicitly BDSM-related (okay maybe still holding out hope for this one!)? Now I'm more than happy to eat my hat if any of that comes to pass in the finale, and don't get me wrong, I'm still very much enamoured with the show and with these characters and am delighted at the prospect of prison hijinks cos I thought we'd be getting a time skip! And tbh the main reason I want to vent is just to get it out of my system so I can return to my previous state of blissful indifference to the niggles and the quibbles! ...Which is really unfair on you, I am realising at this late stage in the game! So apologies for the (tempered, not full-blown!) negativity and if you'd rather steer clear feel free to delete and ignore! I do think part of it is just the risk you run watching a show week to week when there's SO MUCH TIME to speculate and analyse and headcanon - you're virtually always going to be disappointed in one aspect or another, whereas when you binge-watch there's just no time for expectations to even be formed let alone undershot! But then of course you lose out on the sheer bananas entertainment and mass hysteria that is the collective experience of watching something real-time, and, after all (at least for those of us on tumblr I suspect!) the obsessive speculation/analysis/headcanoning is a large part of the fun!

first of all, i'm glad you consider this a safe place to vent and i totally get having frustrations about certain choices and what not, i obviously have vented my own about the whole situation with babe and the way it could have been very easily handled differently. which, my main gripe with that is that it was a very easy change to make, and a lot of my other complaints about this show i feel in general just come from them not having enough time. the babe situation would have been very easily solvable had they thrown in even ONE line referencing that kant had called babe and he was fine. no need for a whole scene or anything that would take up too much time! just a brief mention, maybe in the scene when kant checks in on style in ep9, and style asks if he's gotten to call babe. that is literally all i would have needed to feel better about that situation.

however, truthfully i don't feel like there's actually that much of a disparity in terms of how kantbison are written versus how fadelstyle are, especially not in ep11, but i have seen this take a couple of times now! i can understand why it may come across that way because fadel and style were having a lot of vulnerable conversations, whereas kant and bison weren't as much, however, i also think it comes down to what each of the brothers needed on that last day. fadel does not trust as easily as bison does, he has a LOT of self doubt and fears that style will leave. what fadel needed on his last day was the reassurance that style was gonna be there and that he wasn't gonna leave while he was in prison.

whereas bison, i feel like he needed the hope of them having that future outside of that one night. it's why he and kant talked about getting married and traveling and talked about their dreams when they were younger. we also have to remember that bison and kant reconciled a whole episode before fadel and style did, so of course they had more time to have those conversations - which we do get to see between ep8, 9, and 10. they have plenty of conversations about their past, about their future, plenty of moments reassuring and affirming their relationship. fadel and style i think are kind of playing catch up before they have to be separated in that regard, which is why it seems more unbalanced. i'm sure if you asked someone that was more into fadelstyle, they'd probably say that ep8 and 9 felt unbalanced but for fadelstyle in that regard. we have to remember these couples and these characters are not only different from one another, but in different places.

and look, that's not me saying that there aren't things i DO wish we'd gotten to see kant and bison talk about more, and i do certainly have my complaints about the fact that firstkhao had to improvise most of the reconciliation scene. i just also think because kant and bison had a lot more lies and deception between them, it's going to feel more like we're missing things when they DON'T talk about things on screen, and i again think a lot of the things we haven't seen have been an unfortunate fact of them not having enough time for everything. cause like i would have loved to see everything you mentioned here, especially kant getting the chance to have a proper breakdown cause he deserves it. i do think it's possible we'll get some of those things next week, though, as i am for sure holding out for another proper bdsm scene until the final moments

i think in general final judgements do kind of need to wait until the show is over because if we don't have a full picture, how can we really judge? that being said, i do adore this show even with the complaints i have and what i would want to see, and while watching live can be stressful and lead to some disappointment and fandom wars, it is VERY fun to get to watch and analyze and theorize live so i really wouldn't change it for the world sjdskjf

[ineffably-smote]

Macbeth, David Tennant - A very subjective, spoiler and emotion filled review

Just walking out of seing Macbeth at the Donmar and I have Feelings. Unsurprisingly, I primarily went to see it because David Tennant was in it. I love the play, big fan of Shakespeare but the trip to London was most certainly motivated by a very specific actor. Hence the highly subjective review. Fortunately, I also happen to quite like Macbeth. We studied it at school, and it holds a special place in my heart (back then, Hamlet was my favourite Shakespeare play but honestly, after tonight, I’m not so sure anymore. Anyway, I digress). It was my first time actually seeing an actor I’m a fan of in real life, so obviously the entire time my brain was just going oh my god that’s David Tennant oh my god that’s David Tennant like I actually could not comprehend it. The man I’ve spent hours staring at on a little screen is suddenly real, and right there. So yeah, that took me a hot second.

(Excuse the piss poor image quality, I took this with shaky hands without looking or bothering to focus the cam)

The Staging

Still starstruck and a bit dazed, one thing really really stood out to me: the staging. It was so, so good. I knew it was going to be minimal from the pictures I had seen, and it was, but it was also so insanely real. There were barely any decorations, and half the cast and the musicians were hidden behind a glass screen doing background noises and gestures. From where I was sitting I could not see them much, but could definitely hear them which added to the overall atmosphere. The stage was also really tiny, and the play benefitted incredibly from it. All the action was happening in one tight space that had been put to use incredibly well, particularly the banquet scene but I’ll come back to that because it deserves its own paragraph.

The way they chose to do the soliloquies was so fitting - all the actors start to move in slow motion - everyone else slowing down and just the characters speaking moving was so good, it made sense.

The Headphones

I’m a bit mixed about the headphones. They were amazing for the vibes, we could hear whispers and they really heightened some of the emotional speeches in the play - because when someone is struggling with guilt and trauma it makes sense for them to be mumbling rather than yelling. So that was really great. However, especially in the scenes where the actors where yelling/ loud I preferred to take them off a bit cause it felt more real that way. I’m so used to hearing actors voice on recordings, it does hit different when you can hear them for real. But, as I said, personal preference and that’s what’s nice, you can take them on and off as much as you want.

Famous Speeches

There were three speeches I was quite interested to see how they were going to be adapted - scorpions and dagger for Macbeth, and out damned spot for Lady Macbeth. These are classic, everyone knows the words, the plot but they managed to make it feel real in a new and touching way. I think here the headphones were quite helpful because they allowed the actors to actually whisper parts of those lines. They were so subtle, so embedded in the text they felt so natural which imbued them with all their power. I saw in a review Cush Jumbo’s out damned spot speech be described as “haunting”, and I wholeheartedly agree.

The Macbeths

I didn’t like Macbeth, the character, very much when I first learnt about him. His actions didn’t make sense to me, I couldn’t quite comprehend in my 21st century little brain how he went from I’m super loyal to the King to I will freely murder children for shits and giggles. But now, now I understand. It makes sense, it’s believable. And that’s a mix of the acting choices and teh overall setting. Like the opening scene, instead of presenting Macbeth as a glorious hero, he is presented to us as a traumatised hero. He spends the first few minutes washing the blood of his clothes, haunted by noises from the battlefield. And that sets the themes quite nicely, not ambition, as Tennant specified in an interview, but guilt and trauma. There are so many ways to interpret Shakespeare, that’s the beauty of it, and I think this version of Macbeth just resonated more with me (maybe because ambition I don’t quite understand but guilt I am intimately familiar with? Or maybe because it was David Tennant? I don’t know, probably a bit of both). Tennant delivers a convincing Macbeth. Yes, you can see his ambitions play out, but also his fears, his guilt, and that makes him into a complex three dimensional character that you want to understand.

And I absolutely loved this version of Lady Macbeth. Not just a powerful woman who bullies her husband into become an evil murderer (because again, here we can see traces of that in Macbeth from the start), but an ambition woman in love, with her husband, with power, and not quite healed from the trauma of loosing her child. Again another review said she is more of an enabler than a manipulator and I quite liked that description.

My Favourite Scenes

God the banquet scene. The one with the ghost of Banquo. An absolute masterpiece. I did not expect that scene to hit that hard. It was raw, it was powerful and even if Tennant was facing away from where I was sitting, even without seeing his face I could feel the emotion, the whole audience could. In a video essay on Tennant, @davidtennantgenderenvy highlighted how in almost every role he played, there is it is the classic Tennant breakdown moment, and breakdown moment it was. Not with tears, not as expressive as he sometime is but just enough for a King trying to hold it together but fear and guilt breaking through. I was absolutely overwhelmed and it was beautiful. The set up for the scene was amazing too - there were ceilidh, celebrations, I adored the contrast between these fast pasted scenes and guilt ridden whispers of the couple. And the way everyone sat down around the stage and suddenly it looked like a banquet table ? Just perfect.

Another really cool moment, less on the emotional side but more on the visuals was when Macbeth goes to get the second prophecy from the witches. Almost the whole cast is there, running around, moving, almost dancing and it gives the whole thing a mystical atmosphere. There’s smoke, Macbeth falls, is carried up high Jesus style, cowers, rises, it’s so busy and insane all the while there are whispers and whispers in the headphones - it manages perfectly to feel like a mystical moment.

Descent Into Madness & other cool things

For Macbeth, having the kid running around scene after scene, haunting him, and then scene where he kills him - GOD it’s powerful. Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness was so well characterised, I also loved the glass on the background that locked away some of the cast. Just wild. The actor that played Malcom actor was also really cool, and Macduff and Ross, big fan of all of them.

Overall I am overwhelmed with emotions. Tennant is truly one of my favourite actors - from Good Omens to Staged, Jessica Jones, even Harry Potter but also Mad to be Normal, Nativty, There She Goes, Around the World in 80 days, Doctor Who (god I’ve started a list, never start lists cause you’ll forget people) and so, so many more, I was truly beside myself with excitement and expectations for tonight. And it did not disappoint. I do not want to leave the theatre and I pray they release a recording of this because I want it imprinted on my soul.

(Side note: I don’t know how to use tumblr very well, for some reason whenever I try to reply to ppl it posts from my other blog? Anyway @raquel-and-sergio is in fact me)

[skyfcx]

yo yo yo! howza'bout an update?

howdy, long time no see and all that. it's currently almost 3 am est at the time of starting this post, so if you're looking to read this, just expect a real stream of consciousness type post.

first, let's address tumblr stuff! i've been absent for a good bit, and... i think it's going to stay like that for quite some time. if i'm being honest, the desire to write on tumblr has been at an all-time low as of late. the only ping i've gotten has been for tails and rosalina, and that's really just because those two are forever characters and that desire will never properly vanish. but for rping in general? i think i'll be taking quite the hiatus.

now i'm not putting up the deuces and vanishing forever! i'm still having creative thoughts, just not in the rping direction. if i were to post anything, it would probably be some more fanfiction-type stories featuring my ocs and the adventures i've been plotting out for them. so. short stories, i suppose! i could see myself reviving my extremely short-lived personal blog and posting some things there if i ever got the motivation to sit down and actually write something more bookish.

though with all of that said, this is probably a mighty see you soon on the tumblr front. i still check my main blogs and i am available on discord even though i've been pretty shit at responding to messages, totally my fault to those i've kinda lowkey ghosted. but i'm gonna be real quiet going forward. hugs and kisses to the lot of you, though. i see everyone still having fun every single day. just imagine an image of me giving a thumbs up superimposed on the sky. that's the vibe.

now, personal life stuff! gender is still weird but i think i'm starting to get a handle on it. after properly being mistaken as a female in public for the first time, i think i'm comfortable enough to upgrade my he/him to a he/she/they! still have. no idea if boy or girl or both or neither, but in terms of pronouns? i dont mind being a him because that's what i've been all my life, she feels very good because that means im being viewed as feminine-presenting, and they is honestly just the most accurate nine times outta ten. tbh the only thing i know for sure is that i dont want to be masculine-presenting. i can be male, but i refuse to be masculine, lmao.

also, i got new glasses! they're more rounded and really help the feminine look, i think. i've been catching myself smiling more at my reflection whenever i see myself in the mirror with them on, so the change has been really positive already. i'm in a place where i wanna experiment with my clothes and see how me i can truly feel like.

oh! and im not sure if i've mentioned it, but i've moved to a far more comfortable place with my girlfriend!!! she's trans, her family was super accepting of her, and now they're super accepting of me wearing the sorts of clothes i like! so i've been far more willing to test out the sorts of clothes i wear now that i dont have to worry about being found out. so...

yknow. all in all? i'm doing real good over here, gang. despite the radio silence. perhaps sometime in the future i'll pop back in with some sorta blog to get goofy on the dash with yall again. or maybe i'll actually write short stories and post those to their own blog! whatever it is, i just wanted to pop in at. three at night. and share my thoughts in the form of a life update. life's been good on the macro. we will work on the micro, but the overview makes me quite happy when i step back and look at it.

[twosides--samecoin]

hey! i appreciate you offering me some advice!

i’m workin on my first ever fic (and creative writing for that matter lmao) and i keep running into the same issue

i’m really struggling to come up with plot/story. if i have like key moments or anything i have no issue writing it. i have a few pivotal moments that i want to happen but filling in the moments between them is super hard for me. is there any way to get over this?

Most people have a few key scenes they want to see when they think of writing a story, and it's normal not to know how to link them together. My longfic was my first try at creative fiction. Here's some of the thought process behind how I took my fic from an idea to a story arc!

Planning a story arc is about developing the journey. How did your main character get from Point A to B?

There's so much that goes into this answer, so here's a table of contents for this post:

Writer mental health: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Process

Planning Documents

Question Everything

Study [Part 1] Themes & Motivation

Study [Part 2] The Source Material & Your Inspirations

Study [Part 3] Storycraft

Sidequest: Questions, themes, motivation & storycraft for a story about nothing

🧠Writer mental health: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Process: I've written a post or two about perfectionism and writer mental health. Stories are sort of like plants; writers are like gardeners. No plant or story is fully formed from the jump. If your idea is a plant, then it grows from a seed. If a writer is a gardener, then they're tending a plant that grows over time. Allow yourself to make changes. Be willing to draft the story, edit, then sleep on it for a day or two and edit again before you post it online. You can always press the edit button after publication. I'm starting with this because the sooner you develop a growth mindset, the more likely you will avoid common writer mental health pratfalls. Treat writing like an oil painting in a museum: it began from a sketch and wasn't done all in one go. This point might not feel relevant until you have a bad day as a writer.

📝Planning documents: Take notes on anything and everything. Most writing software will have an outline/table of contents feature to help you organize. One document could be character notes, another might be a timeline of events. One could be scene ideas. Don't feel pressured to explain yourself too much. Treat these documents as scrap paper where you can write down quick ideas and move on; use a bullet point format. As my fic grew, my documents and the contents changed. Mine are now quite messy, and I don't feel the need to use them every chapter. I've outgrown them to a degree, but I still have them for my own reference.

I encourage you to avoid deleting large sections, even if you retcon an idea. Instead, move them to a cutting room floor document. You never know what you're going to need, and though it's in your head right now, you never know what you might forget.

❓Question Everything: While you know who your characters and what some big pivotal scenes are, you need to ask Who, What, When, Where, Why & How about these people and events. If you're from an analytical background such as law or journalism, you were trained to think this way when you learned issue spotting.

Asking these questions about the pivotal scenes and characters will spawn further questions you need to answer, which will then help you figure out what to write in-between the big scenes. If your pivotal scene is a fight between the Hero and a Big Bad, or the Love Interest proposing to the main character, you should ask questions about how the characters got there. What is the conflict between the Hero and the Big Bad? How did the MC and Love Interest meet? What challenges did they have along the way?

The genesis of my fic began with these questions. I thought:

"[What] would I do to fix the canon Fallout 4 [Who] RJ MacCready story?" I was then granted a vision of RJ hiking in the snowy mountains of [Where] Banff National Park. The [Why] was "Med-Tek didn't work out". That partly answered the [When] (North America in the post-apocalypse, over two hundred years since the bombs dropped; at the end of RJ's canon story). [How] did they figure out he needs to go to Banff?

After this idea took hold of my brain, I kept asking questions. As I answered them, I kept notes.

[What] happened at Med-Tek? [How] does RJ get from Boston to Banff? If this fic begins at the end of his canon story, [Who] is the Sole Survivor who helped him through it? [Where] are the key locations in Banff RJ should go and [Why]?

Some questions are more pertinent to explain than others. For example, travel was a big question I had to solve given my story is set in a post-apocalyptic version of our world. Distance travel- unless you're a caravan or the Brotherhood of Steel- is a luxury for your average Wastelander. So I looked up the closest real world equivalent to a vertibird (a tiltrotor aircraft such as the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey), spent time researching forums and roughly figured out how much fuel and how many stops a vertibird would need between Boston and Banff.

Another writer in the Fallout fandom might not find that pertinent or put in the same research. I value being able to point at something and say, "Oh, I figured that out" to help me better inform my writing.

📗Study [Part 1] Themes & Motivation: Ok, so you're thinking about how the Hero got involved with the Big Bad and the conflict between them; you started with the proposal and marriage between your MC and Love Interest and are now thinking of how they met and how their families react to their partnership.

What are your character's goals and objectives?

What is their background? What makes them think or feel a certain way? Keep in mind that people are complex. A traumatized person isn't always "acting" traumatized to the other characters or the audience.

What are some activities you've observed in real life relationships?

What do your characters like to do when they aren't working?

Who are your characters outside of the events of the story? Who are they before the story? Who are they after? If the story events didn't happen, who would they be instead?

What does one character observe in a room that another will not notice? If one character turns their nose up at a concept or idea, why or why not?

How does your character react under pressure?

What classic literary tropes apply to your character/story? Can you mix and match, or subvert a classic trope?

A love story is rarely ever just a love story. A superhero movie is rarely ever just about superpowers and fighting. What themes, concepts or ideas do you want to explore? Do you have any intellectual curiosities or side hobbies you want to bring to your writing? I really love studying philosophy and enjoy hiking. I am a big fan of works that examine the relationships humans have with nature and each other, as well as the nature of power. These are two things that make my fanfiction different: my characters react to their environments. They observe differences between Banff/Boston and remark upon what happened to Earth when the bombs fell. One of the best compliments I ever had on my fic was from a reader from Alaska who saw their childhood home reflected in Banff's boreal forest; who almost felt as though they could smell the environment by reading the story. My wife @edaworks is a multihyphenate and autodidact- statistician, sociologist, attorney, hobby archaeologist and cosplayer among many other things. In her fic, she brings completely different ideas to Fallout than I do.

📙Study [Part 2] The Source Material & Your Inspirations:

If you struggle to think of ideas relating to the central conflict, you can always return to the source material.

Are there details you notice that you have questions about?

Is there a character interaction that intrigues you?

Is there something you feel the original creator didn't explain? (For me, I wanted to figure out how resource-intensive travel like flight is possible in Fallout.)

Outside of the original text, think about works by other people that inspire you to make your own work. What intrigues you about what they do? How does your fave author or director handle the moments in between the pivotal scenes?

What literature outside of fanfiction do you enjoy? (Some of my fave books are House of Leaves, Infinite Jest, Walden, Le Petit Prince, The Catcher in the Rye, The Road, Ulysses, Blood Meridian and The Lord of the Rings.)

Do you enjoy comedy? Do you have a particular sense of humour because your parents raised you on Laugh-In and Richard Pryor? How can you infuse your story with jokes?

What movies or TV shows had an impact on you as a kid? Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill is a love letter to the stories he was inspired by. In turn, Kill Bill inspired my own story. I'm also influenced by stories about courageous kids navigating a corrupt adult world as well as industrialization vs nature, such as in Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Akira, Princess Mononoke. A lot of what I like is hyperdetailed in some way, be it via dense themes, immaculate cinematography or intricate set design.

What music do you listen do? Are there musicians who explore themes that resonate with the story you're writing?

📚 Study [Part 3] Storycraft: Learn about story structures and basic plot types to help you figure out how to build the overall story arc. Get to know your genre.

Note that you're not required to choose a story structure/plot type/genre. Approach to story delivery depends on cultural tradition, genre and the means with which the story is told. An awareness of them will help you understand how you can build your story.

A radio play, college graduation speech and a bedtime story are all part of the oral tradition. Despite being different stories intended for different audiences, all three could be told with a variety of story structures, or the same one. This chart from r/screenplay compares different approaches to story structure. There's even an entry for the Scientific Method.

If your story falls somewhere in the action/adventure genre, a story structure that might help is Joseph Campbell's monomyth; a three-act structure that watches a hero move from a known to unknown world and back again. Published in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces posited that many heroic works can be boiled down to a similar story structure. You might know it as The Hero's Journey. A good movie for examining The Hero's Journey is Hercules (1997).

(The above image is from Bookfox. <- The linked page has similar graphics & explanations for other structures.)

After acquainting ourselves with the Ordinary World of Ancient Greece and Hades' meddling, Weirdo Freak Whom Do Be Too Strong Hercules visits the Temple of Zeus, who tells Herc he can earn his godhood- the Call Of Adventure. Hercules now wants to go the distance and find where he belongs. Zeus sends him to Meet The Mentor, Phil. After a training montage, Hercules and Phil go to Thebes and cross The First Threshold into the Unknown World. Herc wants something, encounters trials & a massive ordeal, then returns to the Known World a changed man.

Let's say one of your pivotal scenes is a huge fight between the Hero and the Big Bad. You could place that almost anywhere on the right side of the wheel. The Call to Adventure could be the first fight. The fights and conflict could get worse until a major fight happens at The Ordeal. Whatever you do, the audience needs to see the pivotal scene contextualized in some way. Whether you begin the story with a fight or are leading up to one, we want to see why it happened. You want to lay the groundwork and context for the pivotal events.

The pivotal events don't mean anything without context to support them, and the audience will not root for your characters if we don't see them struggle and/or aren't given reasons to care or get to know them.

Keep in mind it's not all about drama. Ideally, The Hero's Journey helps an author deliver layers of information that ranges from telling us about the characters' journey/everyday lives to showing the audience details that leads toward the central conflict. Maybe your characters are having a casual lunch and they see people running and screaming down the street. It's out of context in the moment, but it tells the audience, "Something's going on in this story that isn't right". Setup, payoff: the audience learns the reason why things aren't right when you contextualize them through supporting evidence.

These videos [1] [2] by Extra Credits explain the monomyth through an analysis of the video game Journey.

"But Tumblr User twosides--samecoin," you ask, "I'm not writing a heroic journey. What if I want to write a story about people just hanging out?"

👕Sidequest: Questions, themes, motivation & storycraft for a story about nothing

While your Hero doesn't need to slay monsters, some degree of conflict is necessary in most stories. Even the slicest of stories in the slice of life genre like Lucky Star have at least an episode or arc that has some problem to solve.

Seinfeld is known as being "a show about nothing", except that's not quite true. It's a slice of life comedy series that explores the misadventures of a friend group. Many episodes are predicated on telling a certain joke, gag, or are about seeing how the characters act in absurd situations. It's never about nothing. When the show was pitched to NBC, Seinfeld said: "We want to show how a comedian gets his material". The show is about mundane/everyday situations and turning people's worst tendencies into comedy gold.

Example: Seinfeld, season 5 episode 2: The Puffy Shirt

Who: is Jerry Seinfeld? Jerry is the titular character and a comedian. Also-ran are Elaine and George, as well as Kraemer and his new girlfriend, Leslie.

What: the fuck is that garment? The puffy shirt in question is considered a MacGuffin.

When/Where: Early/mid 90's NYC. Jerry's apartment, a photo studio, a restaurant, The Today Show.

Why: It's funny to see a grown-ass man act a fool about a bad fashion choice because of a miscommunication. He has to go on The Today Show and the host mocks the shirt, leading Jerry to snap about it, which then offends Leslie.

How: Jerry mishears Leslie, who has a very quiet speaking voice. In an effort to be polite, he accidentally agrees to wear the puffy shirt on The Today Show while pretending to understand her.

Themes: Miscommunication, humiliation, consequences arising from false politeness, awkward situations

Motivation: Jerry was motivated to be nice in an effort to accommodate Leslie's low talking volume in order to move the conversation along. He didn't realize he was agreeing to something he didn't want to do. This episode is not just about the humiliation Jerry suffers in the A plot- there are also B and C plots containing their own jokes that add to the tension of the episode, which all fall apart when Jerry snaps. Several plots and character arcs create pacing that feels like a boiling pot by the end of the episode: It's layers of mini jokes that support the main joke, which doesn't get a full punchline until the end. It's still one of the funniest 30 minutes of television ever produced, over three decades later.

Hope something in this ramble helps! Thanks for the ask, @publikoccurrences :)

All of my consultation, beta editing and screenshot commissions are free, but if you find what I share helpful: Consider reblogging, buying me a Ko-Fi, or check out my writing on AO3! You can send me an ask about any writing topic and I'll be glad to answer.