#this is long be warned

[noramachwitz]

In the new IS interview with Thomas Atkinson there are quite a few interesting bits but what caught my attention more than anything was the fact that he said they were originally supposed to film the Whites car crash back in August 2017 which would have put the Whites exit in October 2017.

The Whites exit had implications for a few other characters (mainly on robron but on Joe/Graham/Debbie/Dingles in a secondary sense as well) and when you think about it then A Lot of things about how this story was told start to make sense. Obviously this is based on 50% speculation and 50% on quotes from actors and IM so it might not be completely right but it made a lot of sense to me so I thought I’d share it.

There’s a lot to this so this is under a read more if you wanna:

First off, here are some things that we basically know for sure (I’m establishing facts because for some reason this turned into an honest to god essay wtf). I’m going to try and do this chronologically but don’t hold me to it:

According to the IS interview, Thomas knew back in 2016 that he would exit as a killer which means that must have been one of the first things IM decided to do when he came in which also means he came in and knew he’d ax the Whites. All this has been a long time coming.

The show generally storylines about 5 months ahead which is why in April 2017 John Bowe went on his famous tirade on twitter and basically announced he’d been fired. Five months of storylining would have once again put the Whites exit in September/October which fits.

What also says this was the original plan is the simple fact that literally every one of the actors’ contracts would have been up in October since that’s when they all came to the show (the OG Whites in October 2014 and EH in October 2016). And btw that would explain why they treated Rebecca’s character the way they did because she was never supposed to stay around longer than a year originally.

Now what was affected by them pushing the exits back?? A List:

Joe & Graham: Obviously the Whites leaving later meant that Joe and Graham had to move into Home Farm later. That would explain that kinda strange way they were introduced. Joe and Graham had a handful of appearances in September, were introduced and relationships with Debbie/Charity introduced for the most part and then suddenly went off screen for more than 5 weeks. That definitely not the most ideal way to introduce your new characters to a soap format is it? Pretty sure they had to stall and put that sl on hold because of the Whites exit.

Lachlan: Obviously the Whites leaving earlier would have meant that that Lachlan’s descent into Our Favourite Serial Killer would have started earlier and ended earlier. I’d say Gerry dying would have probably happened in January since that would have been a year after his first appearance (since we know IM loved his anniversaries) and the conclusion that is happening now would maybe have happened back in May/June.

Robert & Aaron: Now ... I would almost bet actual money (only like 5 quid tho I’m not mad) that the original timeline for Robron was to break up in July just like they did, then the crash in October and the robron reunion on Christmas (Since Christmas plans must have already been in motion when they decided to change stuff). Remember how IM kept saying we were going to get a summer robron wedding?? I’m willing to bet that originally, their anniversary in February would have sparked the second engagement which would have naturally lead to a summer wedding. (I mean IM is still terrible at timing/pacing but you know this would explain why to a degree).

Steven Flynn (who played Alex #rip) actually said in his last interview that he was originally only planned for 10 episodes on September but his stint got extended to 29 which would fit with them pushing the reunion further back then first intended, so that’s further proof.

Now the most interesting question is of course WHY their exit got pushed back this far. I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure but I think there are some obvious candidates:

Short answer: Mike Parr (and also some Lucy Pargeter)

I think Lucy going on maternity leave was the first thing that threw the timing and the scheduling of the robron sl and in consequence the Whites SL and exit off (it actually must have influenced Debbie/Sarah even more but that’s a whole other post).

Mike Parr said at the BSAs that he always wanted to do 4 years and his contract would have run out in April 2017 (since his first appearance was in July) but they convinced him to stay one more year by giving him the accid attack sl. April 2017 aka the same month where they originally must have told JB and co that they were fired. And then the BSAs 2017 happened where everything hinted that something massive must have been shifting because 1) John Bowe said that the production team keeps changing their minds about the Whites exit 2) Danny said that infamous line that he doesn’t think they know what they’re doing. Now if they had long term plans for Ross that included him playing a role in both the Whites exit and the robron sl then wouldn’t that have been the time where they had to scramble everything around? Makes u think. If suddenly they found out Mike was leaving in a year and a bit and they had to setup and come up with a whole “brand new” exit sl for him it would explain a lot (since they love involving Ross in everything)

Lucy’s maternity leave in early 2017 must have thrown the schedule off a lot since at this point it seems kinda obvious that Sarah is going to get Grace’s heart. Remember how Chas slept with Paddy right before the robron wedding and IM said that Debbie has a 18 month long SL coming up when she came back?? Now those stories are running parallel to each other and I think they were always meant to. That’s why when Lucy came back they immediately sarted with Chas/Paddy. I’d also say the Joe/Debbie stuff was supposed to happen once Sarah was better again and had had the heart transplant but you know Ned and Andrew were already casted and they couldn’t wait a year for them to arrive. That’s why they had to drop villain Joe as quickly as they did and how Joe/Debbie getting back together was rushed because they couldn’t have Debbie involved in both Joe drama and Sarah drama. I’m lowkey hoping that they’re going to continue with their original plans for how they wanted Joe/Debbie to go after Sarah is okay again ngl I miss villain!Joe.

Now if you combine both of those aspects then is it any wonder that 2017 Emmerdale was as messy pacing wise as it was? So many Big Stories were affected by this that must have had a ripple effect on the whole show, right? That’s the feeling I have anyway.

Now even more speculation that’s honestly just Speculation™ because we’ll never know but speculation is fun so here we go:

The crash being in October means it would have happened about a month before Rebecca was due to give birth so that leads me to believe that either Seb wasn’t supposed to be born originally OR it finally explains why they casted a premature baby without it ever being mentioned in on screen. The crash being later meant that Rebecca could carry the kid to term after all but they’d possibly already casted a premie so that never went anywhere.

I have some more speculation tbh but since we have no idea how either Ross or Rebecca or Lachlan are going to exit that’s kinda futile so I’m going to leave it at this since this post is already long enough lmao. If u made it this far than honestly kudos, I had a lot of fun typing it.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk while I remembered how to write essays (it’s been a while lmao).

[bluebudgie]

RAMBLING about ffxiv in comparison to gw2 under the cut. ive been thinking about this a lot in the past years already, comparing the two and their features. spoiler tl;dr: in my personal opinion gw2′s positive points heavily outweigh what ffxiv has to offer, but there’s a handful of things i wish that gw2 did similar to ffxiv.

this excludes both expansions for gw2 and ffxiv, since ive never played heavensward and stormblood and it would be unfair to compare gw2 with all its expansions to just the core game of ffxiv.

warning, there are highly subjective onions in this. oh boi here we go

Let’s start with the things that i like about FFXIV that I wish gw2 implemented in a similar way:

First of all, different transmuted gearsets that you can save and then switch to on demand. It’s just nice having different gear sets (not even necessarily with different stats imo, thats what legendary armour is for) and switch around. Probably interesting for roleplayers.

Beast Tribe crafting quests. This is probably the feature i’d want the most in gw2. It would have two big advantages: 1) Get to know other tribes better and in more detail. We could have Tengu, Skritt, Kodan, Quaggan, Hylek, Grawl, Jotun.. probably more. And an even more important side effect this would have in my opinion: It would make people actually use crafting professions. The crafting professions are highly underused (mainly because they’re honestly useless for 95% of content) and having daily tribe quests attached to them would at least make them less obsolete? The crafted items could be soul- or accountbound so that there wouldn’t be any way to just simply buy them off the trading post either. Then again, FFXIV overall has the more interesting approach to crafting and gathering so I’m not sure this would really work out in the same way. Nontheless, for sake of different tribe lore..pls anet, make it happen.

The second most important thing i want implemented in GW2: FISHING!!!!!

I also like the Hunting Log. GW2 sorta has a similar system in the achievements tab but I think FFXIV presents it in a nicer way.

All those emotes. FFXIV has so many and you can even use some while sitting or being on a mount etc.

...dodo. FFXIV just overall has the cuter minis, and there’s.. the dodo. Dodo is better than any other mini ever in any game.

The problem is.. that’s already kinda about it. And with exception of the whole tribe crafting thing and dodo it’s also like.. really minor stuff that doesn’t really affect gameplay.

Now things that I personally (!!!) prefer about GW2 that overall just make it the better game for me to play:

And that is... the core gameplay.

I know. It’s an MMO. MMOs are supposed to be played with other people. But I hate, absolutely despise, instanced group content. I come from a singelplayer RPG background (that sounds overly dramatic) and let’s be honest..... all content in GW2′s pve (excluding raids) can be solo’d. Story? Soloable. Dungeons? Soloable mostly. Fractals? At least low level fractals are soloable. Open world content? Soloable, apart from a few events like bigger world bosses. GW2 can be entirely played as a singleplayer game (which, again, I know is not necessarily the purpose of an MMO) and... i love that.........

Other things I prefer about GW2 in contrast to FFXIV:

More customization options during character creation.

Very subjective opinion but i find the player races a lot more visually appealing and diverse.

The wardrobe and dye system is INFINITELY superior, like i cant even imagine how anyone could justify anything else. But then again I guess that’s fashion wars 2′s speciality.

very personal taste but i also like the look of most armours and weapons better

No ‘end game’, everything feels equally accessible, and the level limit is set at 80 without having to upgrade to better armour constantly (in the same time i can also imagine that precisely this would be a negative point to many people and they like the constant upgrading)

A lot, lot, lot less grinding

Explorable underwater areas and underwater combat

Now MMOs arent really known for delivering the storytelling depth of a delicately crafted singleplayer RPG but overall GW2 has interesting lore and also some nice characters.. and i just cant get into neither ffxivs story nor lore at all. not blaming that on the game and i dont think any of the two games has “better” or “worse” storytelling  but it’s just an experience ive made. i realized while playing that i absorb every single text box and piece of lore in gw2 like a sponge, and in ffxiv i just want to hit the skip button as fast as possible during every dialogue. Can’t really explain why either.

Being able to trade across several characters on your account.. i know ffxiv isnt really made to have several alts since you can play every class on a single character but i still find it annoying that i cannot trade any items at all to other characters on my own account

Much bigger maps with the whole vista and poi system that rewards you just for exploring maps, which is.. well thanks to having more open world content in constrast to instanced content

More customization and gear options while playing classes. I know blabla there’s always an optimal combination of gear and traits and skills that will be meta but... it’s just not necessary as long as you stay out of lvl 100 fractals and raids. Play a tank thief? Go ahead. Make a heal engineer? Noone stops you. It just doesn’t matter and you can find your own personal playstyle with a lot more different traits and skills. And no we didn’t fail chak gerent event because 1 person was in knight’s gear which made the boss scale too much. Yes i read that on the forum.

And also, while i don’t want to take this as an actual argument, but.. u have to consider that you buy GW2 once and then play forever, and every single “cash shop” (aka gemstore) item can be purchased with the ingame currency if you have enough time and patience for farming gold. There is no need to ever spend a single penny on anything. FFXIV.... has a monthly fee AND cash shop items that as far as i know can only be purchased with real money and.. while i know that this is the norm in other MMOs (I believe WoW has a similar system?) I just find that very questionable. I know it’s all optional so it doesn’t influence anything, but still I believe this is a point worth mentioning.

Now I’m not saying all of this to make FFXIV sound bad. As mentioned there are a bunch of things I like better in it, and after all I liked the game enough to actively play it for a year. FFXIV and GW2 are both good games, but thinking about it i just realize a lot of times why exactly i feel so much more at home in gw2 than i do in ffxiv.

[asrielsarchive]

send help i'm so into this twilight au i didn't even realise i liked twilight again??? it's still so shit but i'm so engaged with garrett and bella as siblings

so garrett was changed during the revolution i think??? and he was always super duper close with his baby sister bella and so he goes home once he thinks he can control his thirst only to find her alone with their parents killed by the english so he stays there to care for her until she's eighteen which is how he meets carlisle, who's settled down in the same town still alone and carlisle is fascinated by garrett living with bella whilst still eating people and garrett's like well she's my sister i couldn't just bite her at random obviously come on carlisle

and then he changes her a few days after her birthday (since she's been pestering him to since he came back a vampire and he's never had much willpower when it comes to her). the first thing he does is get her monumentally smashed and they eat a local english family and then have to leave the area and he starts to teach her everything he hadn't already about being a vampire and what he knows of it and they just wander all over the country learning as much as they can about vampirism -- garrett's so friendly and cheerful and open he makes friends everywhere and bella's much shyer but once she gets to know people her willing heart and ferocious loyalty win her some friends (not as many as her brother but enough)

and they pop in on carlisle from time to time over the late 1800s/earliest part of the 1900s then they go south for a while and by the time they get back carlisle has added edward and rosalie and emmett and esme to his family and garrett makes friends with them all instantly but bella accidentally eats some local girl edward's been stalking because she has some weird gift that interests him and garrett has to get carlisle to get edward to promise not to rip bella apart and they don't see the cullens for a while after that

they're both so curious and fascinated by the world around them and what their abilities give them so they just keep learning and meeting other nomads and some settled families and make a point of eating as many english people as they can just because

and quite by chance one day in new york they run into edward and bella's like sHIT and hides behind garrett but it soon transpires that edward's in his red-eye phase so they join him for a while and have a great time all together and edward and bella totally have this will-they-won't-they awkward 100 year old virgins flirty thing going on and garrett spends most of his time with his head in his hands cringing

and eventually they persuade edward to go home to carlisle and part ways and bella mopes for a bit but garrett soon figures out a way to cheer her up

and after a few more decades they're in alaska and they get told by carlisle to look in on his friends the denalis and now it's bella's turn to be constantly making retching noises as garrett and kate flirt like hell and eventually she's like that's it i'm leaving and staying with someone else if i have to listen to my brother having sex all night one more time

and garrett just laughs and rings ahead to warn carlisle she's coming and the cullens sort of adopt her temporarily until garrett comes back for her because they're not really good at being separated and her thing with edward gets more and more intense and garrett finally turns up like i hear rumours of dangerous codependency and whisks her off for a romp around argentina

and when they finally get back this time they decide maaaaaybeeee they're nearly ready to settle down somewhere (but the road is always calling their names and they're never really happy apart from when they're alone together under a vast starry sky with blood on their faces and the whole open world before them) (no amount of home comforts or settled friendship offered by the cullens and denalis can change that)

[simplygrim-blog]

Just explaining some Notp things.

I get a lotta asks about this, so I figured I'd type this out.

I didn't have much of an opinion on Eruri at first. I didn't ship it, but I didn't hate it. Then as I got more invested in the AoT fandom, started scouting out fanart and fanfiction, I sort of noticed a trend of Levi becoming this submissive little uke for Erwin. And that bothered me. A lot. And it bothers me when Eren is depicted as a submissive little uke for Levi too, but because their power dynamic isn't one that triggers me, it doesn't bother me quite as much. 

And then I started reading 1994. It's fantastically written and I enjoy the easy-going plot. It's not too terribly angsty but enough to keep me interested. Levi's a bit too out of character for me (though as he goes through character development he's getting much better) but eh, there's been worse.The Eruri in 1994 pretty much embodies everything that's ever triggered me about the ship though. Blonde haired, blue eyed knight in shining armor drags Levi up from the underground, only to use him. Like all the fanart of Levi bending over for Erwin and becoming his puppy, 1994 puts a story to it. In my head, all I ever see between them is Erwin being his white knight, and Levi pays him back the only way he can. Levi having a bad case of hero worship just seems so un-Levi to me anyways.

Of course my perception of the ship is not everyone's and the Eruri fandom probably sees it a lot differently, or maybe they like the idea of Erwin saving Levi only to use him for himself. I'm in no position to judge kinks. But based on past experience and the fact that I only see their dynamic in 1994 whenever I look at them, I've had the misfortune of hating it with a passion. It's not even just 1994 though, there are lots of Ereri fics where Levi has an unhealthy relationship with Erwin after Erwin saves his life or something, and that's how/why he and Eren end of together. I've just kept up with 1994 because I got really attached to how Eren is characterized, the Jearmin is precious, and because it's one of the few coming-of-age fics where the main character doesn't go through 10+ chapters of playing the no-homo game.

During a stream with some friends, one of them brought up that Erwin is always dominating Levi (which I had obviously picked up on as it's one of the reasons that ship is a big fuck no for me), but with Ereri, Eren and Levi are pretty equally the uke or seme (God I hate the uke/seme thing but I'll use it because they're terms people in shipping know). Their power dynamic doesn't bother me because they're on pretty equal footing as Humanity's Last Hope and Humanity's Strongest Soldier. They don't really have the commander/subordinate feel (to me) that Erwin and Levi have and Levi didn't save Eren from the life of a thug (which, we're made to believe from the rumors about Levi, that it wasn't pleasant). Levi doesn't treat Eren like a child and the power in the relationship isn't skewed to one side. Plus, with Eruri, I just don't see how their canon personalities can be maintained? Like Levi loses a lot of his personality when he's paired with Erwin because he becomes this weepy little thing and Erwin becomes this massive overbearing dom with little compassion???

I guess what I'm saying is that to me, Eruri just feels like Erwin saved Levi and now he expects something from him. Which isn't true. It's just my perception of them and it triggers me really really bad. I hope I answered some questions and made even a tiny bit of sense.

Oh and the LeviPetra thing just bothers me because they made Petra shipping fodder in her death after building her up to be this great combatant female character to fuel Levi's hatred for the Titans while simultaneously saying "you're important, but not THAT important" to the rest of the dead squad. It's just typical sexist bullshit the way her character was handled and that's not cute to me. 

And see I'm not tagging this because that's a shit thing to do and I wish more people afforded Ereri shippers the same treatment lately.