#this is actually also my college essay

[mrtreesnek]

When people think about wasps, they tend to think violent and aggressive. That's not entirely their fault, the general media and their friend's accounts usually paint the same picture.

I've come to see them quite differently though.

Like with most insects, they're more scared of humans than we ever could be of them. Humans are such big creatures that could crush them and their hive in an instant. The worst a wasp could do to a human is sting them, or cause an allergic reaction if they're unlucky.

It's important to understand that the wasp is only defending, it can't understand the difference between getting close because of fascination, or because of hunger.

Wasps think differently than humans, they have a more prominent expression of fight or flight, life or death. Because they still have predators, they have to.

This is commonly misinterpreted. It's hard to not think of wasps as constantly hostile when across all planes of communication they're being demonized.

I believe a key to making sense of their actions is understanding their viewpoint.

In the wild, a solitary wasp sits on her carefully constructed nest. She doesn't understand why she's brightly colored, yellows allowing sharp contrast to black, she just knows it works.

The warning colors keep some predators away from her fragile hive where her young will soon grow.

When a perceived predator ignores the warning, when they get too close, she springs into action with her world renowned stinger. She can't afford to lose her hive. Of course she could always make a new one, but that would take precious time and resources, and her larvae need that time.

When she's successfully driven the attacker away, she returns to her hive. She has protected it.

She doesn't understand when the hive begins shaking, why it resents and shames her. They were trying to hurt the hive, why does it now defend their actions?

She won, why does it shake and sob?

Her hive expresses its sadness in how she defends, how it wishes they weren't alone anymore. How could she not have noticed? The defense of her hive was only hurting it more.

The isolation, she realized, forcing people away when they get too close; she was falsely identifying dangers.

Of course, she still needed help identifying who to attack and who not to, she learned to recognize threats from attempts at friendship..

As they focus less on defense, and more on the hives daily life, she realizes there's more than just life and death, predator and prey.

When she steps down and lets her hive express itself—himself—she learns more about him, about friendship and how proud she feels defending others from genuine threats. Together, they both grow and find happiness.

She understands how much easier it is for him to focus on his learning, how much he enjoys it now.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°

its too direct, and incorrect to say i am the wasp.

i am like her hive, the wasp is my subconscious,my illness ,my disorder, she wont be going away, so i have to work with her. She wont abandon her hive, but she can defend him properly.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°

I'm not diagnosed, and im not going to fight about having this disorder,

but I can say my favorite phrase. "If the coping mechanisms help, then it doesnt matter if you're diagnosed or not" i dont remember where it came from 😭.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°

i also have this metaphor i found from Nerium-Lemontree

the leashed dog, angry and misunderstanding.. i think they both make a lot of sense,

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°

sharing my midnight chant about this too.

through stigmatism and shame, hardship and relapse, i will persevere

i will succeed.

through breakups and fading friends, splitting and coping,

ill be okay, because of my will to stay alive, my will to keep going, to spite everyone around me, because i love to explore, because i love to understand.

(thats why i love star trek so much)

i can walk away, i can hide, but i wont back down,

it is hard to remember when im in the depths of it. but things that stick in my mind i will always remember

things my best friend says to me,

"i do care about you, I don’t hate you, I like talking it out and being able to understand you”

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^°

[simcardiac-arrested]

wait, that elias?

[nonbinary-sticks-the-badger]

i dont think he's shadow's best va but i think david humphrey definitely suits his character best (at least my version of how canon shadow should act). he has the ability to sound menacing but isn't overly aggressive; he can be gentle when needs be.

i particularly like his more monotone performance adds to it because it isnt so far as to sound unenthusiastic (as an actor) but it gives off the feeling that he's uninterested to those who don't know him, portraying the misunderstood side well. at the same time this adds to shadow being easy to view as autistic, which is obviously going to please me, an autistic person, and help me relate.

im glad he's not the exclusive VA for shadow, because i dont think he would have thrived in his more "edgy" mischaracterisations later (NOT counting shth because even if it is ridiculously edgy at times THE WHOLE! POINT! OF THAT GAME! IS THAT THE PLAYER! DECIDES! SHADOW'S! MOTIVES!). even when shadow is portrayed in a more nuanced light, eg 06, prime, it isn't quite the same way as he was in sa2 and heroes. neither have a major focus on maria or anything to do with the ark in shadow's story, and while heroes doesn't either, i think with the general tone of the game (and also with it being aimed at a younger demographic) shadow does get to express himself way differently through the level dialogue, a more informal way of communicating character, than in cutscene dialogue.

to be fair i have never played 06 so i dont know the level dialogue in that!!! but also out of the 3 iterations i just listed that one has the oldest target audience (heroes is PEGI 3, prime would probably be PEGI 7 and 06 is PEGI 12). and obviously theres no level dialogue in prime lol.

anyway hope you enjoyed my yapping about david humphrey shadow 👉👈

[lazy-toad]

I think my worst essay habit is that I absolutely write them like I'm writing an analysis post on Tumblr about some little detail or parallel that I really like in my latest podcast obsession

[hazellark]

Originality: Fanfiction, Genre, Trope

So I wasn't going to post this anywhere ever, but I saw a post that made me angry so now the internet, and my one follower, get my essay on Fanfiction. I wrote it for a class, in case the sectioning is a bit weird, but it is a piece of writing I'm proud of. I have an annotated bibliography I will post separately. A different title that didn't make it to the final report:

Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words or is the Cost the Thousandth Minute Spent Here

Image from: “Canon vs. ‘fanon’: Genre devices in contemporary fanfiction.” (McCain 8)

I started reading at around the age of 5, and I loved it. I was one of the kids that actively went to look at the books in the book cubbies of the classroom during free time, and once I was good enough at reading, I began tearing through the series I had available. Magic Treehouse, Boxcar Children, fairy tales, books on horses, cats, dogs. My parents wanted my siblings and I to always be able to have the books we liked available to us to encourage reading practice, so my dad made us all personal bookshelves and out of necessity, I ended up with the largest one. In elementary school, I chafed against the 3 books a week checkout policy. In middle school and early high school, with my limit removed, I would check out as many as 15 (my record) books at a time. My backpack rarely went a day without having at least one book inside. When I was still a preteen, my parents tried to encourage us to read critically one summer by offering to pay us for book reports, and I went ahead and read my assigned book and two more, hiding myself in my closet for a day to read all the way through Eragon. I would take free books home to the point that my personal bookshelf was often double stacked. All that is to say that I have always really loved reading. So when a friend showed me a site that allowed me to read hundreds or thousands of stories about characters I already liked, that I could access anywhere through my phone, I fell head first into the world of fanfiction readers.

Image from: A screen capture of my bookmarks page, on 4/17/23

When a reader begins, they're given books with simple words. The books tend to have consistent vowel sounds, and use basic words from everyday life. If they learn the written language early in life, odds are they never felt the need to seek out a greater variety of literature at that point in time. Books were basic fictional stories that taught how the lines on the page turned into communication. It's only once the basics are established that a learner can start to read for themselves. Fast forward a couple years and with a solid foundation of vocabulary, a reader can begin to have choice in what they read. One of the earliest classifications for literature that a reader gets is genre. Even books built for kids can range from the fantastical, like the Magic Treehouse series, to nonfictional books about animals, space, and history. As the years stack and a child reads more and more, they will begin to both notice and be taught about patterns. Even without knowing the labels, humans are used to pattern recognition, and as Thomas C. Foster put it, “Part of pattern recognition is talent, but a whole lot is practice: if you read enough and give what you read enough thought, you begin to see patterns, archetypes, recurrences”(Foster 29). The classroom and experience show similarities in story structure like the Hero’s Journey model, in characters like the tragic hero, and in story elements like a dragon fight to save a damsel.  At the point where a reader can recognize similarities, they can identify the types of stories they like, by genre, archetypes, tropes etc. Generally, people have a type of story that they like best, and shared qualities between two stories are attractive. A reader turned writer may like an idea, and want to put their own spin on it. The “what if” is the basis of all new stories. Foster, summarizing Northrop Frye, asserted that, “Literature…grows out of other literature; we should not be surprised to find, then, that it also looks like other literature”(Foster 29). In a world of literary repetition, what is originality? And in turn, what does that mean about fanfiction?

Image from: The back cover of Diana Winne Jones’ “Dark Lord of Derkholm” 

Following Frye’s line of reasoning, Foster concludes a very bold idea: “there’s no wholly original work of literature”(Foster 29). Yet contrarily, he goes on to explain that one of his favorite novels contains multiple recognizable archetypes and story elements, and called it “wildly original”(Foster 29), very intentionally using the word original once again. Those two statements seem to contradict themselves, but he draws the line at the combination of the familiar into something different from any piece on its own. My personal belief is that original literature, mixed from familiar traits like genre and trope, is spawned from the onset of the author asking the question “what if?”. We both agree that external inspiration does not deny creativity.

Image from: The fandoms tab of the AO3 main page

Genre

It’s not uncommon to ask someone their favorite genre. Most readers have a favorite genre, or at least a top two or three. It’s also not uncommon for genres to coexist in a piece: A high fantasy story can have a romantic subplot, a science fiction tale can have undertones of tragedy, and an autobiography can focus on the comedic parts of life. Introducing an element from another genre can be a strategy to keep an audience engaged, a way to fill time, or a side effect of a kind of world building. Fantasy, scifi, autobiography, romance, tragedy, comedy, mystery, westerns, horror, realistic fiction, and more are all considered genres of prose by at least some portion of the population. There are genres for nearly every kind of written work imaginable. There are letters for business, condolence, between friends, there are applications for jobs, schools, grants, and many variations of poetry. Beyond “types of things,” what is genre, and what does it have to do with originality?

Like how there is no singular list of major genres, there is not really a strong definition of genre that. In an article for “The Kenyon Review”, Northrop Frye grappled with two diametric definitions of genre, one being that it precurses and is “independent of creation” and the other being that genre is that it is born of and reliant upon the genesis and comparison of new works (Frye 8). His ultimate conclusions are that genres come from archetypes, and that “all literary genres are derived from the quest-myth” (Frye 15). Though he never says it explicitly, it can be derived from his statements that genre is related generally to content of works. The researcher David Chandler agreed with Frye on the difficulty in defining genre, stating that “Specific genres tend to be easy to recognize intuitively but difficult (if not impossible) to define”(Chandler 2). He goes on to say genres exist because classifications are necessary to make distinctions and descriptions, but that genre is not a static concept, something closer to a negotiation between the culture and the idea of it. He specifically notes that “Each new work within a genre has the potential to influence changes within the genre or perhaps the emergence of new sub-genres (which may later blossom into fully-fledged genres)”(Chandler 3). 

Suffice it to say, giving completely rigid definitions for genres does not work forever. Like with teaching metaphors, they work at a specific moment in time, but they might lack details, or be slightly incorrect, because the goal is to impart a main point rather than act as a perfect mapping of an idea. What can be said about genre is that it “provides an important frame of reference which helps readers to identify, select and interpret texts”(Chandler 7), and, in a later section about taxonomies of genre in film, indicates that similarities within a genre may be related to narrative, characterization, basic themes, setting, and iconography(Chandler 13). A loose definition can be drawn then, that literary genres are generally larger scale classifications of writing that involve the content of the text, useful for helping readers interact with the text for lower effort.

Due to genre being a wider classification of literature, it is not inherent that shared genre indicates a lack of original content. Conversely, because a genre tends to share enough content elements that by simply knowing the genre the reader understands parts of the book, genre forces some degree of shared features. Though not his intent, Chandler does address the mix of the two ideas, “while writing within a genre involves making use of certain 'given' conventions, every work within a genre also involves the

invention of some new elements"(Chandler 6). Though genre necessitates similarity, it does not inherently necessitate sameness. 

Image from: The YouTube channel ColeyDoesThings

(Note: Do NOT look up unknown fanfic tropes, you will SEE things)

Trope

Like every other literary happening, most people encounter tropes regularly, even if they are not always identified. They can span genres, or largely exist within one. Examples include found family, the wise mentor, friends to lovers, other worlds, the chosen one, and long journeys. They can act as a draw, a dissuasion or a cue to readers for what may lie in store. They exist normally, in altered form, in parodied form and more.

Trope mimics genre in the issue of varying definitions in different spaces, but because it is a “smaller” concept, it is a little easier. Speaking from the view of literary YouTube space, the content creator Merphy Napier identified trope as ”a literary pattern that gets used often enough that readers obviously, clearly, and quickly recognize it and generally know what they’re in for” (1:10 - 1:22). This is, again,  very similar in concept to genre, and for good reason: both need to be able to be used for clarification. Trope is, however, tied more closely to the story than genre is. Napier, later in the video, says that “All books either have tropes as the baseline of their story or as certain elements within the story. And what the author does to them to make them unique to that author, unique to that story, unique to those characters is what makes those books great” (7:42-7:55). Throughout the video essay, many examples pop up, namely characters, relationships, plot points, and setting, all of which fall under possible classifiers of genre. The general understanding that tropes are smaller scale classifications yet very similar to genre is well demonstrated by one of Napier’s examples: ”There are also certain genres that rely on tropes as their very definition. Time portal fantasy needs [time portals] to exist. If someone writes a time portal fantasy that doesn’t have the main element in it, the trope, this is bad” (4:05- 4:23). Overall, trope emerges as a smaller, similar structure to genre, though one a bit more story-centric.

Like with genre and exemplified in the second Napier quote, tropes are just a sum of a whole. They can be vital to a story, but there is always more. It should be said though, that most of the time, when people call a story unoriginal, it comes from the perception that too many genres and tropes are shared between two works- it is never just one or two. Because genre and trope necessitate similarity, the more shared genres and tropes, the more similarities are also shared. Thus, it is fair to say that two pieces of writing with enough shared tropes and genre seem unoriginal. Typically, when people do bring this up, it is due to a cause and effect- one story becomes popular and other writers jump on the bandwagon, writing similar stories in response to the popularized one. This explosion of subsequent stories is what generally leads a trope to be called overdone, and a story unoriginal. While there is merit in saying that in these cases the trope is no longer new, “overdone” is an opinion, based on the amount a reader is willing to read that trope (8:35 - 10:40). 

Image from: “The Works inspired by this one:” list of the fanfiction “Yesterday Upon the Stair”

Fanfiction

If someone spends a certain amount of time engaging with the internet, they likely hear about or see fanfiction in one of its variant forms. Though some sites are more popular than others, fanfiction, called fanfics or even just fics, exists in a variety of spaces in a variety of forms. “Household name” sites for the written format include Archive of Our Own(AO3), Wattpad, Tumblr, and Fanfiction.net (ff.net), but podfics (fics of the audio variety) can be found on Youtube, and threadfics- fics written with the thread function of social media posts to get past the character limits -get written every day on Twitter. The average reader finds their way into the fanfic space by first finding the community writing, drawing, and generally creating or engaging with the content of a published media, known as the fandom. 

Though fanfiction is sometimes called a genre, it varies in definition according to the context. The most basic definition is that fanfictions are “fictional works based on a work the author liked.” The meaning it carries in casual use is that fanfics are unmonetized, fan-made pieces of writing that are shared in an online space, generally designated for such writing. For example, fiction written by fans of Disney’s “Encanto” or the anime “My Hero Academia” would be called fanfiction, because of their format and the fact that they cannot be monetized without breaking copyright. However, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is not called fanfiction, because it is a published piece of work, based on a piece of literature whose copyright has already expired. Once again, there is more than one definition, and in this case, finding a middle ground cannot encapsulate everything. 

Fanfiction is a genre in that knowing a work is fanfiction can provide some expectations of what the story may contain, but fanfiction is a direct effect of other media, and while it is a type of fiction, it is larger than most genres are individually. The second definition may be correct by denotation, but it is not what people mean in conversation unless they want to imply even certain well known works like The Aeneid and fairytale retellings count as fanfiction. The third definition opposes the second, and even then it misses information. In her thesis, Katharine McCain, quoting Katherine Morrissey questions, ““How do we attempt to process a concept that is simultaneously claimed as an activity, an identity, and a connection to others?”(McCain 13). Fanfiction, as a concept, is too big. Fanfiction as a genre is inconsistent within itself, like every other genre. The definition of fanfiction, as it is used in conversation, misses the community that built and change the culture and practices. 

However, even if it cannot receive a codified definition, modern fanfiction can be described by some of its key characteristics. McCain identifies her subject as “a particular type of fanfiction—one that is becoming more and more prevalent among fans and acafans alike: a fanfiction defined primarily by its communal nature, its reliance on the Internet, and its desire to combine the creative with the critical”(McCain 13). Looking at this through the lens of AO3, the internet enables quick access and easy communication. An author may start a work and draw inspiration from the comments left on the works, as most writers of multichaptered works do not have everything written when they start to post. A common practice is writing fanfiction inspired by other fanfiction, as pictured above, which is born of the common attitude, “___ idea was good/bad, but what if.” Taking an aspect of a story, often a trope, and tearing it apart then putting it back together is the fandom way, and occurs both with canonical content(from the original source material, and also called canon) and fanonical content (based on a general consensus within a fandom- generally on what should have happened- and also called fanon).

With that in mind, McCain’s four main characteristics of fanfiction are the sharing and overlapping of content, common language and medium, “bad” writing, and the overlap of the creative and the critical. (McCain 15,16) The first and fourth aspect are both heavily tied to fanon and canon, the former referring mostly to the chain of inspiration from the source to a writer to other writers, and the latter referring to the practice of asking “what if” in creation. The second and third aspect both refer to the largely unmoderated nature of the fandom. Fanfiction spaces are always inventing, and are unrestricted by published work conventions. Regarding the second aspect, new terms are invented and propagated within fandoms to communicate the new ideas they generate. Fans describe genres and tropes alike as “alternate universes(AUs)” if they are not present in canon, for example fantasy AUs or Coffee Shop AUs. Formatting also varies greatly from fic to fic, as authors are free to format their story with any format they can create, and often will make specific choices to impart certain ideas or feelings on their readers. For example, keeping everything in lowercase can be used to make the reader feel like something is off, or slightly incomprehensible. The third aspect largely refers to Sturgeon's Law, a term derived from Sturgeon's Revelation, and imparts the idea that “90% of everything is crap.” Fanfiction can be written by anyone, and requires no editor to be published. Naturally, every level of content emerges for viewing- there are only filters when the author employs them themselves. 

Fanfiction is very blatantly unoriginal by most standards. It makes use of characters, settings, and tropes that can be directly traced to a source material. One writer, Patricia C. Wrede comments on her blog that “Fanfiction, as I have pointed out elsewhere, can be looked at as a sort of map of various alternate routes through the implied decision tree that the original writer used. The whole point is that it’s not purely original in itself; it has to have something to be an alternative to, or an expansion of”(Wrede, “Wrede on Writing”). An important note is on the wording “purely original.” Throughout the article, she agrees with the points of Frye and Foster, that near everything in existence draws from something else. Paired with my opinion that originality (not pure or true originality, just uniqueness) is spawned from the “what if,” this could mean that near everything has equal potential to be considered original or unoriginal. Genre and trope commonalities may have weigh-in as to the amount of uniquity in a work, but if hardly anything is “purely original,” there should not be a gold standard with which to punish other literature.

  As a final note on originality, it is important to note that even though originality is idealized, what matters most in a story is that it entertains its audience. It can contribute to that enjoyment, but as Wrede puts it, ”Originality is not the be-all and end-all of literary quality; it is simply one of the many and several ingredients that writers use to create stories.”(Wrede, “Wrede on Writing”).

Image from: The “History of Equestria and Other Headcanon Stories by Ink Rose” playlist on the YouTube channel of Ink Rose

Beginning to read fanfiction was a massive change to my life, but not in terms of type of content, or quantity. My main genre is still fantasy, and any drop in quality I attribute to Sturgeon's Law, as without the levels of review that published works receive, every level of writing makes it to visibility. Rather, it greatly increased the accessibility of reading. I no longer had to carry around books to everywhere I went, I could bring a phone or a tablet and with all my downloaded stories, I could have a much greater amount of readable content for much less to carry with me. For example, on family car trips I was capped at bringing more than 4 or 5 books to avoid taking up too much space. After I burned through them all, I would have to find books from whoever’s house we visited, hunt someone down to play cards, or set up a movie player. Fanfiction, existing in the online space or in the downloads of an electronic device, meant I could bypass the space limit, and, should the mood strike me, read near indefinitely. And I do read near constantly- waking up in the morning, between classes, while waiting, in my free time, in the bath, during breaks in schoolwork, when I really should be doing work, before bed, in bed, and possibly more. Some days I read a total word count greater than any individual Harry Potter book (the longest one is 257 thousand words). I did similar things before fanfiction, sometimes a book or two a day, but now I can read it anywhere, anytime.

Being a fanfiction reader means that for any popular media, I can typically find a story with my favorite character. It means that for any less popular media sources, I reread fics over and over, and lament the lack of a large pool of writers while bookmarking the works of my favorite authors and subscribing to their accounts, their series, and their works to catch everything they make. It means checking my email every day to see if any stories I read have a new chapter, and deciding between reading those chapters, if I remember the story, or ignoring them, waiting for the fic to be completed before reading it all at once. It means filtering out story elements, ships, or tags I don’t like, and reading the tags if I don’t, and even still stumbling upon something I didn’t want to read. It means reading vastly more than my mom, but still being told I need to read more “real” books and stories. It means walking around with downloads that make up days of reading available at any time, and that collection still not even coming close to my bookmarks count. It means having an account that some swear is the most personal thing they own, saying they’ll take their account information to the grave. It sometimes means loving and hating my fandom’s community in equal measure, and choosing to read on or leave based on prevailing feelings. It means loving characters or settings or worlds powerfully enough to read and read and read and read and only stop by the limits of the fandom size and my willingness to change my standards. 

The closest word to the love of reading is bibliophilia, or the love of reading/collecting books, but while I do love reading books still, I think I’m closer to a lover of stories. I could never read forever, as it is not where I find fulfillment, but it is where I find joy. I read everywhere all the time using my phone, from one of my dozens of open AO3 tabs or hundreds of downloaded fics. Nothing is entirely original, but it doesn’t need to be. I filter to my tastes and set myself loose, because I love reading fanfiction.

Image from: A screen capture of the main page of the fanfiction site “Archive of Our Own”

[izzy-b-hands]

I keep forgetting I can't seem to get the current version of xkit to work on my new laptop and going to do stuff that it let me do fjldksafjdlsaj

[warriorend-2]

ok ok since i can't be stupid and gay all the time (<- college student)

putting this shit under a cut bc while it's mostly just me rambling it's. spoiler heavy. & also wound up being 1600 words. sorry

1: possibly the most glaring thing, which makes me doubt the Phantom being a lot of otherwise-possible candidates, is that they would have to be very good at infiltration

-I presume Roxana didn't put the medal in her computer herself, which means whoever did put it there had to get in after she left, get into the computer without waking up Robutler, modify it to put it there, & put everything back (mostly) the way it was & leave a combination. granted maybe they just gave the medal to Roxana to put in there, but like. why

-getting it into that spot in the mines wouldn't have been too hard i don't think, just. knowing where the mine is and then sneaking in during off-duty hours (...assuming those happen)

-tbh the one in blind spot is probably the easiest to place given that it's just behind a license plate, & cars do have to stop sometimes even if it's not often

-i'm. not sure how they got the medal into hot water though. i'm guessing they snuck it in among the materials? (the other option here is that Zor had a hand in getting it there, which opens up a whole other can of worms so i'm not gonna. think about that one too hard)

-the one in cold shoulder is also not too hard to see it getting there. i would laugh if they had to make a mold of that little compartment & then make a block of ice for it though.

-the one in kboom is where i'm like. OK this facility is presumably not super new but it's also not super old given its current purpose. it may have been repurposed but still. how did they get the medal where it is and then also tag the bucket. the volcano doesn't look like it's horribly far away from shore (in the ending credits) but (also i'm aware the medal shouldn't even be able to be where it is but. yknow.)

and odds are that it doesn't matter that much, i'm just. they had a little safe set up in the control point already, they had access to the pneumatic tubes, etc. if the locations have any bearing and aren't just "here's somewhere to stick this puzzle that would be hard to figure out", then that implies some Shit about the phantom (& possibly also their allies. if they have any. if they do I highly doubt they're Agency-related.). given where the phantom gets to i am somewhat leaning towards the idea it may be V. Vitti (also the. insignia), given that we've seen the sort of places Agent Phoenix gets into (...seat of power) & so

2: Zor's goals feel a lot more on a personal bent this game, not just irt destroying the Agency but also. destroying the kinesium & anything that uses it. so whatever their reason, it seems to be a lot more personal (+ they actively Address the player more often, which could be Phoenix's infamy but also in the other games they were barely present, both in terms of voicelines & actual like. Story Push. they were a very passive supervillain in the other games, is what i'm saying)

which leads me up to like. we all know characters can lie, & in this series it's kinda expected, but. idk. i keep circling back to the shield generator. & the lava generators being accessible from Phoenix's cabin, but not the one Roxana was in. & Phoenix's cabin seemingly having all this shit that the others didn't have, & it could have been a tactical choice on Phoenix's part, but.

i mean. Zor does definitely say they want you dead, but they don't say it directly a whole lot (iirc they say "kill you and Prism" but otherwise they don't directly address the player in death threats, it's usually just. agents, plural. or "whatever end you meet" which is also a threat but is vague)

which just. why is Agent Phoenix still alive? Game design aside, of course. It wouldn't be much of a game if the villain kills you in the first level, after all.

But it feels, to me, like the weaknesses are far too glaring to be just missed over, especially in 3, because. if they want you dead that badly, why. why leave things so safe?

Hot Water is one i wind up on a lot, because you could chalk things up to being deathtraps, but Ollie knew about the gas and the grenade trap, & seemed completely unfazed by them (& kinda implied that's just How It Is for new folks), so they're not necessarily targeted, it's just standard practice. Putting aside the fact that even if they were intended to be deathtraps, they're so. Mild. to put it bluntly. Zor knows Phoenix by this point, knows the shit they've pulled & survived, a gas trap & a grenade in a vending machine feel very. yknow. that's like throwing a rock at the back of someone's head, comparatively

and then the KBOOM demo & the shield generator, both explicitly left for you to see. & it's a pretty 1-to-1 comparison for how the actual KBOOM mission goes, except for the telekinesis save at the end. the squid gets involved, but for the most part, considering it's a lab Zor loosely implies they were at, the security is very. lax. & everything is accessible to the "new hire", popsicle-ID necessity aside. (also apparently Ollie has been down there a while, given he doesn't seem to. know about the whole "world domination" thing. which is Eerie because if that's the case then how long exactly has the whole Kinesium thing been a plan?)

to me. & it has felt like this since the end of the second game. When Zor says they want you dead, there's a whole host of unstated conditions to that, which they would be good at given the whole CEO thing.

"I want you dead if you aren't good enough at your job to survive" sort of deal. which also lines in nicely with how they seem to be as an Actual Boss. of course, they never say the second part out loud, but. short of them just being Really Smart in a lot of cases (failsafe in Juniper's mask, leading Roxana along long enough to get her research & then trying to kill her, etc) but Really Dumb in others (leaving the shield generator, making the squid the only real danger to Phoenix down there, not having any failsafes to make sure the missiles launch at the end of 2 even if the briefcase is compromised (or just not using them), etc), it's like. the ways their plans get foiled at the end of 2 & 3 feels intentional.

plus you could make the argument that Roxana was also being used to lead Phoenix along until they were where Zor wanted them, at which point both of what they were using her for (Kinesium research, kite Phoenix around until they're in position, even if that second one wasn't in the deal) was done & they could get rid of her without feeling bad.

would stopping KBOOM have been possible without Roxana's help? Dunno. Not the way it's presented in-game, because in-game she was also instrumental to stopping it.

i'm also going to briefly play semantics for a second. i'm not sure i consider "even the great Agent Phoenix will eventually burn out" to be a threat because. that's what phoenixes do. They burn, and then they come back. Sometimes it takes a while, but. if i'm not just thinking about semantics Way Too Hard, the wording of "burn out" suggests something far different than "die". combining that with Zor talking about the Agency like That, & the Phantom (at least vaguely) implying prior experience with the Agency, & realizing that their involvement would cost them their life, makes me think. maybe "burn out" isn't a threat of death, but a threat of something about Phoenix changing soon. Maybe as a result of almost dying. "burn out" is also used for like. becoming exhausted, stopping trying, & maybe that too. who knows. i don't, i'm not on the dev team, i'm just some 21 year old chewing on semantics.

at the end of the day, my current standing on Theories is. hard to sum up but i will do my best. o7

-The phantom is probably one of a very small handful of candidates, & I'm leaning towards it being V. Vitti or maybe possibly Zor in a funny hat.

-Zor is trying to kill Phoenix, but not inescapably. maybe they're testing Phoenix, maybe they're just trying to almost-kill Phoenix enough times they get tired of the Agency and fuck off so Zor can do the whole "world domination" thing (which i am not. wholly convinced they actually are after.)

-summing those two up made me think of something else. perhaps the Phantom was also testing Phoenix in a roundabout way, by seeing if they could survive everything else, because they only show up in the third game. Their note opening with "it seems you're as good as they say" indicates they are at least familiar with Phoenix & their reputation, albeit maybe not directly (if it is Vitti, i doubt she would have access to Agency knowledge, but post-Rising Phoenix, once the rumors started getting out...)

-this is a silly theory i like to throw around in my head, but i'm very fond of it, so: the "death room" you go to after dying in a mission may not necessarily always indicate Actual Death. in some cases, yes, but in other cases. idk. i've always gotten more the vibe of having been captured as opposed to outright killed (although being able to respawn does throw a wrench in there, but oh well. game has to be a game & all)

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

i need to stop forgetting things exist the fucking second they leave my field of vision. why is is impossible for two things to occupy my mind at once especially when im tired. like. i feel like a sim. i feel like actions are being canceled and i just. move on. and completely forget what i was doing moments before. i fucking hate it

[indi-glo-archive]

one thing i've noticed lately that I don't think I can talk about on my actual fandom sideblog (yet) is the fact that i'm just having a fundamentally different fandom experience to what I think the majority of people in fandom are

A lot of people focus on shipping over everything else. Like, "I don't care about realism or good plot or character consistency or anything that really makes a show good, I just want my two faves to kiss" levels of focusing on shipping. It's like instead of caring about the actual show or even those actual characters, they choose to focus on their relationship instead.

A couple examples of this are the 9-1-1 drama that's going on rn. I don't watch that show but from what I've seen it's a great example of this. and, imo, people's opinions on Simon/Daphne from Bridgerton s1 are heavily influenced by wanting the ship over anything else. I think Simon's reasoning for not wanting children is perfectly ok reasoning to have. If he doesn't want to have kids or get married to spite his dad, if he chooses to ignore love to avoid those things, then that's his choice! It's not pathetic or goofy or negative at all for him to make a choice and stick to it, and it certainly isn't something he needs to get corrective SA'd about unless you just want to see him and Daphne fuck and you care more about that than them as characters.

idk. it makes fandom feel really shallow for me, someone who enjoys meta with depth and nuance more than mindless shipping at any cost. I already knew the overwhelming bigotry made it pretty shallow, but the shipping-only mindset adds another level to it. It's just not something I personally enjoy very much

[01tsubomi]

i'm taking the jlpt this sunday and had a stress dream last night abt it bc it sort of snuck up on me and now it's kind of a question of how much my actual japanese abilities will carry me (versus if i should've been cramming on flashcards this past month) but the listening portion is far simpler conversation than my coworkers and i have so. i think that maybe instead of "damn i should've been studying japanese" my perspective should just be "i speak japanese"

[dbphantom]

maybe i should have gone into practical effects instead of computer science...

[magentagalaxies]

i have so much work to do for finals season which is frustrating bc on the one hand i'm very glad all my classes have project-based finals where i get to be creative instead of just doing an exam or a paper. however. i have a bad habit with every project-based final ever of accidentally getting an idea that's way too ambitious and creating more work for myself than i need to do

however this semester even tho i fell into that exact same trap my two most elaborate final projects each involve 1. editing a video essay which contains an interview i did with paul bellini and at least 45 seconds of it are bellini talking about why he thinks i have great potential as a comedian, and 2. editing a ten minute reel of the documentary footage i got on tour with scott. which of course involves rewatching various videos of me and scott being extremely chaotic together. so i stay winning ig

[slowdesire]

actually even if yellowface showed the ugly side of publishing it kind of reminded me of one of my pipe dreams which is to work in publishing (idk how or in what way i never thought too deeply about this) now i'm like hm:... what if i actually DO want to do something in that realm as a long term goal

[welcometogrouchland]

Are we journaling for our mental health? To stretch our personal writing muscles? or for a secret third thing??? (brain exorcism)

[merevide]

being forced to think about my future WHEN I DON’T WANT TO

[britneyshakespeare]

might fuck around and buy my friend a copy of the riverside shakespeare (1973) for his birthday

side note it astonishes me that ppl are selling this book for between $50 to $100 secondhand in some places. you can get it for under 10 bucks at so many online retailers. it's a fifty-year-old tome that was commonly used as a college textbook, there are so many fuckin copies still floating around out there and most of them on the market are in the acceptable-to-good category of condition. how could one you have be worth much more than that? is yours in extra special superb condition? what?

do ppl just think everything vintage is valuable... bc oftentimes it just isn't