#the writers really did this

[respectthepetty]

Home always talks to ghosts

It's the trust between Home and Peach that really solidifies that they are partners.

Because this is how it started:

And now they look at each other for permission to put themselves in danger, yet they trust each other enough to face it together.

Because trust is the foundation for any relationship.

But what makes them the best partners is they complement each other.

Peach sees the ghosts, but Home is the only one of the team who has consistently tried speaking to them.

Home tries really hard to communicate.

Because his family never did.

So the show giving him the gift to finally hear the ghosts he keeps trying to talk to is a beautiful moment.

Since he has never been heard.

He is the piece that he felt they were missing all along.

And now he gets to help the ghosts in the exact way he has been trying to help the living.

By having a conversation.

[i-will-write]

reading my own fics as a reference for a new wip and squinting at it like "how the hell did I do that"

[tumblydove]

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-25/hollywood-screenwriters-reach-tentative-deal-to-end-strike#xj4y7vzkg

WE DID IT JOE

[sotc]

as fun as it is to talk about the sillay crow family dynamics, i'm soo interested in what this means for the crow familia going forward in a darker lens.

im mostly speaking from the perspective of a rook de riva who romanced lucanis btw <3

illario brought the axe down on his own head after failing to take first talon. he's imprisoned except to play house whenever caterina wants to see him around for family dinners before tensions inevitably shove him back into the cage he's been left to like some house pet lmfao. it's actually kinda fucked up and as a certified sicko i love it. especially considering the casualness in which lucanis describes all of this. crows gotta be a little unhinged<3

But!!! while lucanis was right that illario's reputation is ruined forever as a traitor crow beaten to his knees before every house that doesn't exactly free house dellamorte either. Talon houses will want their pound of flesh of illario for nearly trying to put antiva under venatori control. and yet lucanis refused. house dellamorte showed mercy. they are breaking the rules, making exceptions. this is not how the crows operate and there should--WILL be retaliations for it. illario left this house bleeding in his attempt to claim first talon and their blood is in the water now with house dellamorte having a sole heir who blatantly exposed a weakness and seemingly has no lineage to take after him.

and nevermind that we know murmurs amongst the crows will linger about a first talon being an abomination. i know lucanis kind of handwaves it off as at the coffee date like 'there could be worst first talons' but baby boy, you have avoidance and denial issues this WILL become worse of a problem the longer it goes on. <3

more under the cut bc i didn't realize this was getting so long lol

but in comes fifth talon viago de riva. a bastard to the king of antiva who wants to strengthen the crown. a man who has been ruthlessly exacting and meticulous to get where he is now. and the scariest part is that he has ambition, always has, and knows he has more power than the king himself to make plays if he needs to. this makes for a dangerous (and sexy) combination. in comes his protege rook. casting silly family dynamics aside, viago knows this union between house dellamorte and de riva is extremely beneficial for both houses but also very dangerous. even he knows his ties to teia show a weakness in him that other crows may seek to exploit. and while i do think he may be sincere about wanting rook to find their happiness with lucanis as he has with teia - i truly think he will not shy from showing the importance of a 'political alliance/union' especially with first talon house dellamorte struggling from the blow after all is said and done.

and of course, by extension to de riva, house cantori and the beautiful lovely miss teia, will be extending her support to strengthen their houses but also herself from any opposition. as much as i love that she's kind of the heart that brings this fucked up lil familia together, i know she is just as cunning and clever to recognize what this alliance does for her too.

and caterina.. well, without going into a whole thought piece on her, she has built her (and her grandson's reputation) entirely to instill fear in others, even command enough respect to know she's the one running things while lucanis is just a stand-in as first talon. but what happens when caterina is gone? another dellamorte dead just like all the others. all lucanis has left is himself and his traitor brother. how does he handle illario? how does he fair being a leader to the crows when he didn't want any of this in the first place and no longer has caterina to guide him? how does he wish to pursue carrying the dellamorte legacy (if at all)? does he seek a protege of his own to take on after him? i can't remember who says it (viago or lucanis) but there's a line about how saving thedas will make their houses immortal (hot and very sexy) but also how far can that reputation protect house dellamorte, really?

i don't really have a point to all of this, this is all just stuff im simply chewing on and letting out into the ether because the ripple effect of repercussions with what illario did and what lucanis now has to deal with fascinates me SO MUCH.

[molinaesque]

Astarion: I think he likes us. Tav: I like him, too. But I'd never say it to his smarmy face. Raphael has a crush on Tav and tries real hard to act cool about it.

[nibbelraz]

A writer and His number one fan hater

[leona-florianova]

No, Jayce...What the fuck...He was dying of terminal illnes at like 30... Terminal illness caused by all the pollution in Zaun (Piltover mining operations, The Grey, the sewer system) .. What he really wanted was at least little bit more time to figure out and prevent the cause... To help the people of Zaun that work n live in the fissures...

But that part of Viktors character was lost at this point so whatever

Anyway... whats up.. S2 was very hollow.

[mollysunder]

Sky and Viktor's relationship is such a horror movie to me. You've got a man who was frustrated by the limitations placed on his life that were out of his control, like his class, mobility, and general health. Despite everything, he manages to rise beyond his station and avoid being an assistant for the rest of his life.

Then you've got a woman from the same background who admires him and all that he's accomplished in spite of the similar class based prejudices they faced all the while she's his assistant. She works up the courage to take leap of faith and reach out to him with her own research to show what's possible if they worked together as equals. And then he gets her killed!

Sky's death isn't the end of it because while it affects Viktor it is in no way meaningful to Sky's life or value as a person whatsoever. Even the pendant he wears in her memory is based on the design of her notebook, but that was just her notebook's cover, she probably bought it from a store and the design itself is probably mass produced. Why not use Sky's signature that was in her letter and in the notebook, the thing part if the notebook with real value?

Then Sky's brought back in s2 and she really only exists to be Viktor's assistant again, who he kills, again! But this time it's different because this time Viktor's making a conscious decision to look Sky in the eye and kill her... to prove he's changed.

In the middle of all this, in no way has Sky's death been mourned by her family or anyone else who could have known her. Jayce wasn't affected by the reveal, he didn't think it was important to tell Heimerdinger, or anyone who knew her. Nothing about her life, death, or disappearance has spurred any emotional reaction or even curiosity about what happened to her.

Sky's new life was also extremely isolated because she became further tied to him (in some ways you could say she was defined by him). Viktor never mentioned Sky to anyone in the material plane during his commune arc, so she only exists to him and she has no way to communicate with others, she's just there for Viktor's sake.

Then in the finale we learn this all a part of a big time loop where Viktor actively set the wheels in motion to have him and Jayce create hextech together, but if everything follows as is, that means Sky is violently killed in those timelines too. That means Viktor weighed the costs and decided over and over and over again that Sky was expendable enough to let her die for his plan to work eventually. How is that not murder at this point?

What's worse is that post-finale Sky's humanity is a point of dispute amongst the fandom, the VAs, and the writers themselves. Sky's the hexcore manipulating Viktor. No, Sky's a manifestion of Viktor's guilt. No, she's actually supposed to represent his humanity/conscious made physical. And in none of these arguments do they discuss Sky as a person, she's just an object meant to serve Viktor both in the narrative sense and literal sense as his assistant.

The most absolutely maddening part is that with Viktor's new bio on the League site, not only have most traces of Viktor had been scrubbed by Piltover's archive, but Sky's life has been completely wiped. Her death was implied to have been swept under the rug, and only described as the "loss of life" consequence from his Hexcore experiment.

Viktor was afraid of dying a senseless death (created by the conditions Piltover condemned his birth to) in obscurity and then he turned it into Sky's destiny.

[douche-canoe-regatta]

The Locked Tomb doesn't just feel as though it was written especially for me and my own personal enjoyment. It's also the series I always dreamed of writing when I was a kid... only to be told I was "way overthinking" my stories. I remember so clearly what they said.

"Don't obsess over the meanings of character names. don't make silly, 4th-wall-breaking references. what are these jokes doing here?don't make it so complicated. are you drawing your characters' clothing designs over and over again? shouldn't you be writing? why does it matter which numbers your weird character is assigned?" (6249D, btw.)

or: "This is too close to (movie, TV show, book). you're stealing. you're ripping it off. christ, knock it off with the thesaurus already. it's too weird. god, why are you so weird??"

eventually I stopped writing sci-fi/fantasy. it wasn't much fun as a 12-year-old being pushed to write like a 45 year old. I was constantly being praised for my writing ability, yet encouraged to remove anything that made it uniquely "me."

decades pass. I pick up GtN. love at first sentence. cleared my schedule. never looked back.

y'all, I can't explain how VALIDATING it is to read a writer who probably heard that shit over and over - likely her entire career! - and still said "Fuck you, I'm doing it however I goddamn please." Here we are, 3 bestselling, award-winning novels and 1 rabid fanbase later. fuck them indeed.

In the end, I never did become a writer. but reading TLT was something of a transcendental experience, feeling Seen in that way. like being told, for the first time,

"They were wrong. you can do anything you want. and it can be amazing."

so yeah. we do bones, motherfucker. choke on it.

[bixels]

The Ryoko Kui interview's reception is such a disaster over a pretty normal (yet still flawed) interview between a non-Japanese fan and Japanese artistic. This is discourse for discourse's sake, and it's no surprise that almost every Twitter user I've looked at who's using this interview to parade Kui around as a goated mangaka standing strong against Western ideology is anti-trans.

Like, I do think the interview was kinda wonky with its focus on fandom culture, which Kui clearly didn't have much interest in. But sometimes that happens. Sometimes interactions between two people, especially a fan and a creator, two people who view and interact with a piece of media in completely opposite perspectives, don't click. Does this really need to get blown up into a "West vs. East culture war" issue.

Anyways, Kui saying "I don't consider my audience's interpretations when writing. I leave it to their imaginations, but I have my own read on things too" is the healthiest, most normal thing an artist/writer who wants a non-parasocial audience could say. Artists and writers use this line all the time. If Kui didn't enjoy autistic Laius or Farcille headcanons, she would have probably voiced/signalled her discomfort, like she did on the topic of Senshi fanservice. Overall, Kui handled the interview really well. Props to her to sticking to her guns and keeping a healthy disconnect from the fandom. While I think the interviewer could've/should've been more tactful and restrained, the flaws in their questions is not a symptom of the woke mind virus trying to wriggle its way into the pure Japanese psyche. It's the sign of an over-eager fan who sees a piece of fiction differently than its creator.

[jasonsbruce]

[windwenn]

Stop that right now jimothy

[foxx-queen]

so about the choice in act 3. I feel like the writers wanted to do the suicide mission from me2 AND the companion choice from me1. which clashes at its core because the whole point of the me2 mission was that if you did all the companion quests and worked for it, you could keep everyone alive. and I get wanting the shock of having one of the companions die no matter what, but at this point in the game after the obvious set up, it just feels like one of those haHA surprise! moments

then there's the fact that it's between davrin and harding. the black man and the fan favourite from dai. like it feels so stacked against davrin at that point.

I picked davrin first, and then I went back and picked harding, thinking maybe that was the right choice to keep her alive. and here's where the whole choice gets even worse for me, because harding, instead of using her stone magic, the actual thing that would give her an advantage against ghilan'nain, she climbs up to the exact same spot as davrin, and uses her bow. she tries to use arrows against a giant multi-limbed blight enhanced being. it's stupid! of course she dies!

I had expected that if you picked harding, she would use her stone magic, which would distract ghilan'nain because of the history with the titans, giving lucanis enough time to act. it would have worked really well as a continuation of her character arc, and it would tie into her personal quest in a way that would make it clear that the effort we put into doing that was what makes the difference.

but by not doing that and having her die no matter what, it instead feels like it doesn't make sense. davrin, at least, is just a man with a sword. his death here makes sense because he's against impossible odds.

which brings it back to feeling really bad that the choice was between him and harding. because for this sacrifice / loss to make sense, it feels it should be davrin. for this narrative beat to make sense, it should be davrin dying.

it feels like the writers are saying: the correct choice here is davrin. he's the only companion who should die no matter what. to signpost this at the moment you make this choice, we will have the other choice be the fan favourite from dai. because no one will want to risk her potentially dying.

it feels bad. it feels racist. davrin deserved better.

[batcavescolony]

Ok let's go back to this line from Agatha All Along

"it's underwater! There's a boy. It's a prank. They tricked him. He's gonna drown. it's a bad place. And the people, the family, there's no one to love him! He's got no one!"

Guys we're getting some Tommy lore and it's heart breaking💔 (we knew it would be).

[radiantmists]

This scene has me laughing bc Charles doesn't have a single line, most likely there's no direction for him in the script, but because of the blocking he's on the screen for nearly the whole time, so you just get to watch him silently being utterly charmed by Niko, just like we are.

[baejax-the-great]

If I were a writer at a big game company working on a sequel to a beloved series and the higher ups kept telling me to make the game shittier and kept sending my work back to me to be dumbed down even further somehow, and then once most of the writing was done they laid me and my coworkers off illegally without severance, I'd probably gleefully watch as people trashed the shitty game that shipped.