#this meta ended up being only about 2/3 the length of my usual metas and somehow that feels appropriate because Terry's life ended too soon

[indigovigilance]

The Final Fifteen is about Terry Pratchett's Death

read on Ao3

The final fifteen is obviously a major plot point, and serves a role in a story that was written long before Terry Pratchett was ever diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. But the scene itself wasn’t written until just a few years ago, during the writing of Season 2. In fact, the scene came about during a park bench conversation between Neil Gaiman and John Finnemore.

Others have noted that the non-romantic kiss that signals the story moving into the third act is a Neil Gaiman staple. The function of such a kiss, from Gaiman’s perspective, is to communicate.

In 2023 we are seeing a lot of stories written by men, for men, about men who are best friends and discover that their friendship can go deeper than the norms of society would usually allow; that platonic and romantic love are not so far apart, and perhaps the better word for a relationship that can be described this way is intimacy.

Neil Gaiman has made it clear in interviews that his friendship with Terry Pratchett was deeply intimate. They began collaborating on what would become Good Omens in the 1980’s, endured a tumultuous experience together through the first publication, wherein Neil offered to martyr himself on behalf of Terry if the book failed, and then spent the better part of two decades touring the world, meeting the people who loved their work. Neil would even off-handedly remark that Terry’s fans were so cheerful, and Neil’s seemed like they were ready to kill themselves; wouldn’t it be nice if they got married? From the outside, it looks very much as if Terry was Aziraphale-coded, and Neil was Crowley-coded, working together in an unexpected partnership to make the world a little bit more tolerable for the humans inhabiting it. I am not conjecturing that Neil and Terry had romantic inclinations the way their fictional characters do, but I think it is fair to say that their opposites-attract intimacy became an important part of who each of them were.

In 2007 Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer’s. As the disease progressed, he began to lose himself, and knew that the person he used to be was slipping away. He wanted to end his life on his own terms, and die as himself, but England did not and still does not allow for voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. He advocated for the right to die but never achieved it, and ultimately succumbed to the disease in 2015. Neil Gaiman has spoken a lot on the topic of death, and one answer of his that resonated with me reads:

Mostly it feels terrible. It even feels terrible when it’s someone who has been in a lot of pain for a long time or has not really been there for a long time and you know that Death has in some ways been a blessing: suddenly you are mourning the whole person. 

It doesn’t get easier as you age. It gets stranger. The point where you realise how many people you used to know and like who aren’t there any longer, and you cannot talk to them or see them or laugh with them is painful in a way that I had never expected. The first time that someone you had a romantic relationship with dies and you realise that there had been moments both of you shared and now you are the sole custodian of those moments and one day you will be gone and they will be lost forever is peculiarly strange and hard. 

~~~

The entire show is seeded with references to Terry Pratchett, but the most important one is the one that’s missing. Neil Gaiman cameoed as a sleeping moviegoer in S1E4, but a long time ago, he and Terry had discussed cameoing as sushi restaurant-goers, because sushi was weirdly prominent in the book. That cameo would have been in S1E1. But when it came time to do it, Neil couldn’t. Not without Terry. 

Neil: I was gonna say our location is a Chinese restaurant we’d had turned into a sushi restaurant. So Terry and I, Terry Pratchett and I, had a standing… not even a standing joke, just a standing plan, that we were going to have sushi - there was going to be a scene in Good Omens where sushi was eaten and we were gonna be extras, we were gonna sit in the background, eating sushi while it was done. And I was so looking forward to this and, so I wrote this scene with it being sushi, even though Terry was gone, with that in mind and I thought: Oh, I’ll sit and I’ll eat lots of sushi as an extra, this will be my scene as an extra, I’ll just be in the background. And then, on the day, or a couple of days before, I realized that I couldn’t do it.

Douglas: You never told me this before either. I might have pushed you into doing it, had I known. I think you were right not to tell me.

Neil: I was keeping it to me self ‘cause I was always like: Oh, maybe I’ll be… this will be my cameo. And then I couldn’t. I was just so sad, ‘cause Terry wasn’t there. And it was probably the day that I missed Terry the most of all of the filming - it was just this one scene ‘cause it was written for Terry and all of the sushi meals we’d ever had and all of the strange way that sushi ran through Good Omens.

~~~

In the Final Fifteen, it is clear that Crowley and Aziraphale want to stay together. They love each other. They each know that the other loves them. There’s nothing that needs to be said, no convincing that their bond is true and real and precious.

But Aziraphale has to go to Heaven, and Crowley cannot follow him there.

I cannot speculate what it must have been like for Neil to endure losing a friend who, though I’m sure he desperately wanted to still be in his life, he also knew that life had become a burden to him, and grieved that Terry was not able to choose the time and manner of his departure from this Earth. This sort of complex grief, we fan-ficcers know, is the kind that is often best processed through story-telling. 

I think that what we see Crowley going through in the Final Fifteen, alongside its importance to the story arc of Good Omens overall, is Neil processing his grief at losing his friend Terry Pratchett, and even the kiss, that violent, terrible, awful kiss, was the symbolic representation of Neil saying goodbye.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

hello there! 💜💚 i hope you're well and have enough time for tea, baths and all the other lovely self-care stuff 💚💜

i would like to ask you a question... i feel a bit dumb asking this but... what are the different types of fanfics? like- i know what fluff, angst and smut is. and i know what's an AU, and more or less the concept of omegaverse (i think...)

but when is a ficlet a ficlet? or a oneshot a oneshot? what is a 221b? a drabble? idk if there are more but i guess i just don't really understand the differences between the lengths of them? does this make sense..?

i've been confused about this for a while and can't quite figure it out. if you'd help out i'd very much appreciate it!

ps: please don't be too judgy about me not knowing this *hides*

Hey Nonny!

AWW thanks!! I love tea, baths and lots of self-care, just very bad at giving any of it to myself, haha!

And NONNY, please know that there are NO judgements here at all! PLEASE don't feel bad!! Fandom isn't something you magically know overnight! <3 And it's always okay to ask! <3

Before I answer your question, I highly recommend you peruse the Fanlore Wiki; it's a good place for new people to learn about fandom terms and history, so check it out if you need further clarification, as my answers are based on my understanding of each of the things you're asking about from being in TOO many fandoms for TOO many years, LOL.

I'm not going to go into everything, since fandom is SO huge and there's so much about it that I can't cover it all, hence the link to Fanlore, so here are immediate answers to some of your questions:

Drabble: A fic that's exactly 100 words

A 221b Ficlet: A fanfiction exclusive to the multiple variants of Holmesian fandoms that's exactly 221 words long, and the VERY last word of the fic starts with "b".

Ficlet: A short story, usually under 1,000 words but can be a little more.

Oneshot / vignette: A short, single chapter "scene" fic, essentially a story covering a missing scene or an out-of-context situation. In a similar vein, there's Two-Shots, which is basically a oneshot but from two different perspectives (ie. First chapter is situation from character A's POV, and Chapter 2 is from Character B's situation).

Podfic: An audiobook of a fanfiction. If you prefer to listen to stories, rather than read them, there are a tonne of amazing podficcers recording stories in multiple fandoms.

Five and One (and variations of): A story that depicts "Five times that Character [verb] [insert situation here] and one time [insert contradicting situation here]". It's basically 6 one-shots in a single story that has the last "one time" situation be a feel-good FINALLY ending. Some authors split them up into single chapters per situation, and others write the whole story as a single chapter.

Meta / Metafic: An essay or story based on analysing a piece of media. The Fic version expands upon a theory within a given fandom so that the theory fits into the narrative of the show.

WIP: Acronym for "Work In Progress", which is an unfinished published story. Some authors "write as they post" while others finish multiple chapters prior to posting them, but only post chapters one at a time on a scheduled basis, which keeps people coming back to the story until the end. The latter USUALLY guarantees a full-story inevitably being posted, so it is the more preferred type of WIP.

Short Story: a story under about 10,000 words

Novella: a story between 20 and 50K words

Novel: Anything over 50K words. I think past a certain number (100K?) it becomes an Epic, but I'm not 100 on it. Google says it's a story that spans multiple "books" and time periods, so I'm not sure.

Hope that helps a little bit, Nonny, and PLEASE don't hesitate to ask if you come across some other terms you would like to know from a fandom-old's perspective! We love helping y'all out! <3 NEVER feel dumb, please. There's no shame in asking for help. And if someone made you feel dumb because of it, FUCK 'EM.

[hxhhasmysoul]

I remember you mentioned how most of your online friends in the jjk fandom are meta analysis people.

I’m assuming it due to you being excellent at media analysis, however… I was wondering if you have any online friends that you made who’s media literacy isn’t the highest out any sheer chances?

I’m asking this since I’ve personally have not, in fact I tend to go out of my way and not interact with anyone who’s not within the meta analysis group of the jjk fandom. Which would also include artists. I would still like their fanart and occasionally reblog it, but I’ll not personally interact with them beyond that. For fanfic writers, I personally don’t read any, so I also don’t interact with them either.

Lately though, my other friends notice how I’m been intentionally limiting my circle and being too judgmental, for they mention that while not everyone can create amazing meta posts, they are still expressing enjoyment about the same series.

I’m just personally curious to hear your thoughts and opinions on this, since you’ve also mentioned how you tend to block people you deemed unworthy of your time, so I feel like you might understand a bit where I’m coming from.

i'm not excellent at media analysis, @subdee or @cursedvibes are. and they tolerate me so.

i'm also judgemental and mean and i can rant to my friends and be very unpleasant, i do it less in public but i can also lash out in reblogs.

about the media literacy... with some people you can discuss stuff and kinda point out that they are ignoring some stuff or they could consider something. but online it's hard. and i usually just become snide about it and it never goes anywhere. it's like several stars have to align for it to happen: 1) the person needs to be open to have their opinion questioned, 2) you need to be open to question in a way that will not put them off before the message gets across, 3) you actually need a good argument, 4) you need not to be like me and get confrontational and angry 90% of the time, 5) the conv o needs to move into the dms - in public it's almost guaranteed to fail, 6) other - who knows what really.

most of the time however it ends up in a confrontation. and then blocking.

when i'm in a calmer mood i block preemptively not to rile myself up. but sometimes i'm in a bad mood and then i will start shit.

and there's also the question of flavour of the media illiteracy. like i will not discuss stuff with bigots, these are insta blocks. i will not discuss stuff with the fandom purity police, one because they are often bigots and two because they don't understand they use the language and concepts of the far right and it's like a very fundamental problem.

in the jjk fandom specifically i will not discuss stuff with people who espouse views that "gege hates ...", or call gege a misogynist or accuse them of an incest fancier, or use violent language towards gege, those people are too far gone, those are insta blocks.

i will also not try to talk to people whose main interest in hxh or jjk is completely different than mine. i don't give a single shit about stsg, at this point it actively irks me and i will ignore people who engage in it. ii will not engage with people who call yuuji boring or say he's not the main character, it'd be too much effort to talk to them and probably with no reward.

i have also a lot of smaller pet peevs that i will either block people over or not engage at all. so i do understand you anon and i think life's too short to waste on people you'd have nothing to talk to.

though my situation is quite different, i read a lot of fanfic and write it too so i interact with a lot of writers. not everyone i interact with is into meta.

it honestly depends on what you like and how you want to interact and what you want to talk about. if you only care about meta then interact with people who like these kinds of discussions, it's ok not interact with people if you don't vibe on the same wave length. i've said it before, i'm very much into organically finding people you vibe with. sometimes i interact with people and it feels we have stuff in common but the convo just doesn't really work, it's kinda awkward or whatever. and well it's not meant to be, there will be others.

[a-wild-rosette]

Hey saw your 'Ranboo Negative' post about how you don't think he's a good character? (i'm sure that's what you said) and i was wondering if you wanted to expand on that?

(no pressure i'm just not the biggest fan of him either and like hearing people who agree with me lmao)

Hi anon my beloved.

I don't usually write crit but I'm mad enough today so :D here we go :D

So I'll admit that his entire like, enderwalk mystery and such doesn't engage me as much because mystery isn't my most favorite genre and I just feel like there are too many questions and mysteries keep piling up on top of each other. But like, that's probably just a personal preference thing.

But like on a character development, especially emotional and the way the character interact with the world? Yeah not into that. Here's why.

1. People excuse his actions too much and there is literally no consequence on Ranboo for his actions whatsoever.

c!Ranboo is the type of person who is nice, but not kind. The kind of person that stands for nothing and therefore falls for nothing. Instead, other people suffer the consequence of his actions.

Like Ranboo gave Techno back his weapons and stood by and watched at people were tortured by Techno and Tommy. Twice, may I add, with Fundy - one of Ranboo's supposedly closest friends, and Connor - an innocent bystander. No one ever calls him out on it, and he can go on and deny what he did (or didn't do, more like) was not bad. Or like the whole ordeal with Doomsday. He basically talks a big game of being loyal and choosing people, but in Doomsday the only person he chose was himself and his own safety.

He betrayed L'Manberg. He left Tubbo and Tommy to fight for their death even though he said he was going to fight with them. He abandoned every other person who cared about him, only to go and team up with the people who destroyed the country of the FOUR PEOPLE who had always wanted to protect him (Tubbo, Tommy, Niki, Fundy). He refused to pick a side, and by that, he picked the side of the tyrant. In the face of injustice, inaction is an action in itself. But yeah, while everyone else lost everything, Ranboo has everything to gain. He has powerful allies, a home that he can fill to the brim with richness, and in the end, everyone who he has hurt? Tubbo goes out of his way to protect him against Quackity's (reasonable, albeit quite harsh) criticism. He's still friends with Tommy, you know, despite being friends with one of the dudes who blew up Tommy's country. Even Fundy and Niki still care about him in the aftermath. He didn't lose anything - everyone else in L'Manberg did.

Somehow, he never had to stop and reconsider his stance on everything and who he supports, he never had to stop and considered "hey, maybe i'm not as good of a person as I want to be". AND HE COULD DO IT because no one calls him out on his action (or inaction, more like). It's always "oh no he's a victim because he has memory issues". Cool motive, still murder :) He's still a person with autonomy, and "peer pressure" is still not a good enough excuse to hurting people. And you know for sure that, even if Ranboo hurt someone *again*, it's gonna still be "justified" by whoever he didn't hurt :) (Not naming names here but it starts with Ranboo and ends with apologists). Actually, just look at the outpost situation with Las Nevadas right now :D

You see, Ranboo can do things that are really just... frustrating at best and downright annoying at best, and the amount of people going hearteyes at him still is enough to overwhelm any meaningful criticism in character :)

2. In fact, the consequence of Ranboo's actions fall onto other people. Or like, people justify Ranboo’s actions by demonising other characters. C!Ranboo does this too. 

Not just other people blaming Ranboo's actions on him being "peer pressured", Not just like, people getting hurt because Ranboo didn’t support them. But Ranboo himself pushing the blame on other people to maintain the view that he was blameless. 

c!Ranboo wants to be a “good” person so bad that he went to a lot of length to justify himself, blaming any wrongdoings on other characters, putting himself in the victim role to explain away his actions. He wants to be a good person, a “reasonable person” who would bring “peace” to the server and resolve conflict, but he refuses to actually do the hard things, because being “good” means taking a stance, being “good” is hard and needs effort, efforts that Ranboo does not have the drive to put in. So instead, he chose the easier thing: explain his actions away. He wasn’t bad, he couldn’t control other people’s actions. He was just a victim. Oh no! 

Like when he called Fundy a coward for wanting to team up, for “choosing people, not sides” - the exact things Ranboo preached. Like when he yelled at Tommy for when his plan to kill Dream failed, even though he and Tubbo helped Tommy without ever trying to stop him or make him more well prepared. He denied any of his involvement in any plan that went wrong and pushed the blame onto the people around him. And even in the Las Nevadas dispute just now? He also subtly hinted that Tubbo was the one who made the decision, not him. He’s the reasonable one here. As if he didn’t help Tubbo. As if he didn’t antagonise Las Nevadas right along his partner. 

And I would be more lenient with this trait if it weren’t also supported by literally everyone around Ranboo. Like, take the time when Phil told Fundy he had “a lot of redeeming to do” and expressed that Tubbo also had things to make up for, and then compared Ranboo with them as the poor, manipulated victim. Deliberation or no, that comparison push a narrative between Ranboo and Tubbo and Fundy, between the “good” victim and the “evil” perpetrator. Or, like, take the times where everyone blames c!Dream for manipulating c!Ranboo, even though there is no hint about that actually happening. Ranboo’s “victim” narrative keeps being reinforced, which, again, gives him no space and no dissonance to actually reconsider his stance. 

3. There's no stake for c!Ranboo's character.

When L'Manberg was still around, Ranboo clearly showed his loyalty didn't lie with the country. He had no emotional connect to the place, and he failed to see how the country meant so much to the people who built it and fought for it and saw it rise and fall. Even his emotional connection to Tubbo and Tommy was chalked up, by himself, as "they were nice to me, so i'm nice back". Relationships, in season 2 at least, were just a tradeoff of favors and niceties to Ranboo, and whether it was the case or not, Ranboo convinced himself that was the case. This gave him a detachment from *everyone*, because at the end of the day, the emotional stake wasn't there, loyalty was not in ss2!Ranboo's vocabulary.

And right now? Ranboo is in full life, he has a whole chest of totems. The closest thing he has to a stake is Tubbo and Michael, but like, meta-wise? I don't think Tubbo is dying anytime soon, and Michael is also probably safe because no one would be cruel enough to use Michael as a plot, when cc!Ranboo and cc!Tubbo are clearly really attached. Ranboo is rich, powerful, with a powerful husband, and a whole fucking lot of plot armor. And while, yes, his attachment to Tubbo and Michael is a positive development (and the *only* positive development actually), it's also paled a bit when Ranboo is still allied with the people who destroyed Tubbo's home, not to mention he was there against Tubbo when the Syndicate threatened him. The emotional connection between him and Tubbo was still not strong enough for Ranboo to reconsider the people he supports.

I’m gonna be patient for now, but honestly the way the character is being excused over and over both in canon and by the fandom is really frustrating to watch. 

[tundrainafrica]

I've been following your blog for a while now and I love your writing and your meta! I was wondering, do you consider Levi and Hanji's relationship to be romantic in canon? Do you consider it canon that Levi had romantic feelings for Erwin?

Thank you for the ask anon, also, thank you for ruffling my feathers a bit too :D. I’m glad you like my writings and meta and I hope that my works continue to bring you joy. 

The types of questions you asked up there could only lead to the types of answers that can spark ship wars. I mean the dialogue in 136 and the change in kanji for chapter 132 hinting their own ships canon were enough to have Eruri and Levihan shippers bashing each other on twitter tbh. 

Personally, I see the romantic potential for both Levihan and Eruri in the show. That’s why I found myself reading a good number of Levihan and Eruri fics. (But lots more Levihan if it isn’t obvious from AO3 bookmarks and my tumblr title). I mean lots more romantic potential than let’s say.... ereri

Do you consider it canon that Levi had romantic feelings for Erwin? 

I’ll answer this one first. No. I don’t think Levi had romantic feelings for Erwin anywhere on the show. Was there potential for something to bloom? Possibly, that’s why I still read eruri fanfiction. I like exploring the possibility if Erwin wasn’t a little too obsessed with his dream, maybe their relationship could have turned out differently.

In canon, by the time they introduced Erwin, Erwin had already forsaken all romance and I think whatever feelings Erwin had towards romance rubbed off on Levi and their relationship ended up being more professional than anything. Due to Erwin’s one track mind and the position he had taken upon himself. any romantic possibilities between them in canon was just harder to make happen. 

Levi though still had strong feelings towards Erwin. It’s undeniable. Erwin had given Levi purpose to live and direction on where to go next, what to do next so that’s why regardless of whether canon had made it possible or not, this relationship is still very interesting to explore. 

Erwin was more professional and cold than Levi imo and honestly, despite the cold demeanor of his best friend Erwin, Levi was an incredible softie at heart and we’ve seen that side of him multiple times, when he gave Petra’s badge to that one soldier, when he stared at that one mother and child when they were on the wall ready to leave to retake Shiganshina.

We all know Levi begrudgingly wanted that soft side of him indulged and between Erwin and Hange the one more likely to indulge that softie side of Levi was Hange. 

Which brings me to the next question.

Do you consider Levi and Hanji's relationship to be romantic in canon? 

I wouldn’t be obsessively writing Levihan fics if I didn’t see it as romantic in canon. But at the same time, I don’t believe Hange and Levi have been in a relationship since Season 1. My headcanon here is Hange and Levi built that relationship over time and this relationship just rapidly progressed after season 3

It’s incredibly subtle which is one of the reasons people like to pretend it doesn’t exist. Probably because they’re trying to promote another ship or they don’t wanna see romance in AOT

But I don’t think a relationship developing subtly is at all a sign that it can be more platonic than anything else. 

In fact, most healthy relationships and most relationships from a bystanders point of view, develop subtly. Like we were the bystanders in many other developing relationships in real life, I think we, the audience of AOT, were also bystanders watching the subtle development of Hange and Levi’s relationship. 

Let’s think about how we’ve watched relationships develop in real life.  

If we’re not invested, they happen incredibly subtly. These people are just constantly together, then eventually we realize we can’t invite the other without the other, then we realize we can barely get them alone, then we realize the person changed and eventually they drop this bomb saying “by the way, I’m dating this person now.”

This pattern happens way too many damn times among my friends though and people I just randomly watch everyday that it just became so expected for it to develop into romance so eventually, when I’ve seen the formula play through, I tend to lean on the side of ‘yeah, they’re probably togteher or getting there.’

Yeah, I get it, there’s a danger in assuming that people are together. I’ve seen enough romantic relationships develop though to realize that leaning on the side of ‘romantic’ given specific signs is usually the correct assumption. In fact, I have earned a good amount of money irl winning bets with my friends that two people are actually together but are hiding a relationship (or possibly are in denial).

What are some of these signs? 

The way they treat this one person is so glaringly different from how they treat other people 

Through the years, I have lost a lot of my best friends to their boyfriends/girlfriends and as the youngest child, I have watched all seven of my siblings get into a relationship and believe me, a lot of them have a certain line they would draw on what they are willing to do for their close friend or sibling and what they are willing to do for a lover. 

I have seen people in love so willingly have their hand crushed while the person they love has their fingers set back. “Hold my hand as hard as you need to.” I’ve seen my friends take a detour 1 hour away from the destination just to pick up the person they love. And here’s the thing, they wouldn’t have done it for anyone else usually, they would have only done that thing for that one person. 

Yes, okay doormats exist. But even people with doormat syndrome, the threshold of what someone is willing to do for a close friend and for a person they love still differ regardless. In a life or death situation, I think both Levi and Hange would have fought to conserve lives but if we consider small things, like routines, groceries, small favors, I feel like Levi has an incredibly low threshold of what he’d be willing to do for a random person. But Levi still carried her groceries for her so he could meet her with Moblit in the smartpass. Levi still picked her up and waited for her in Season 2 when she was researching the rock. And for Hange, chapter 115 is all the hint you need. I honestly don’t know if Hange would have gone through those lengths for anyone else but selfishly abandoning commander duties for one guy? She practically said screw you to everyone else. 

The way they talk to each other is different.

This is something I notice in real life too. Most people won’t notice when they themselves do it but it’s incredibly obvious for listeners if the listeners look out for it. The tones of people’s voices change when they’re talking to someone they love. For a lot of people, sometimes their voices get a little high pitched. For others, sometimes their voices get a little softer. Just watch when you’re talking to a friend and suddenly their SO calls. (It might not apply to everyone but I find this incredibly common.) Not just tones, speech patterns change or tendencies too. In front of that one person, sometimes people are a little more selfish. Like maybe, they don’t usually say what they want to eat but when the one person asks, they would answer because suddenly they know what they want. 

With Hange and Levi we have the ‘let’s live together’ and the ‘dedicate your heart’ respectively. 

These are two expressions/phrases they would have not used with anyone else. There was probably more in canon, but these are just the most glaringly obvious ones with two pivotal scenes that blatantly show that Hange and Levi do have signs of the above.  

Hange and Levi who are generally very selfless all business people, are suddenly only selfish with the person they love. Hange with “let’s live together?” An injured Levi deciding to rest and sleep despite the fact that they were in a war because Hange was nearby to take care of him?

Those two were suddenly selfish when they were alone with one another?

They are constantly together.

Okay, irl, you can see this when you have all your friends ride in a car together and somehow, it’s always them taking those two seats next to each other. They leave the classroom together. They leave every single dam room together. And it could be subtle or not but they always wait for one another. Yet if one person is not there, they’re the type to just go ahead and leave without giving the room behind them a second look. When someone wants to buy something, the other always has an excuse to come. And oh my god, when you call your friend in the middle of the night to hang, that person is always in their dam house or in their dam room, no breaks. 

And Hange and Levi have their equivalent of this. 

Levi literally picked Hange from her lab in Season 2 while she was injured and he had no need to. 

I think I have made a post where Levi and Hange are shown constantly together but lemme make some points. Even early in canon, why were Hange and Levi introduced riding next to each other, they’re not even in the same squad. Why were they riding out the gate together? Shouldn’t Levi have been with his squad and shouldn’t Hange have been with her squad? 

Yeah sure, maybe they just decided to ride together. But why were they next to each other in the Ilse’s notebook too when they went out the gate? And even when they were going to take back Wall Maria, Levi and Hange were next to each other in the lift, they were back to back on Wall Maria. 

Like the only expedition where they weren’t riding together was when Levi had to protect Eren yo.

“They’re both leaders of course they were together” Mind you, Levi’s position in the military is a special one. He’s the captain of a special operations squad and not at all a squad leader so he shouldn’t be riding next to Hange if it were by “leaders” and in the retake Wall Maria, if they were divided by “leaders” why didn’t Hange take the lift with the other squad leaders? Why wasn’t she back to back with the other squad leaders on top of Wall Maria? 

Why did she pick to hang out with Special Ops squad Captain Levi of all people, in every. Single. Damn. expedition. Scene. 

And don’t even get me started on post Season 3 man. They’ve been inseparable since Erwin died.  

They literally come in a set. 

And you kinda realized your friends are in love when you wanna invite one of them out and you realized you kinda have to invite their special little friend by default. 

And Hange and Levi are just like that too, 

Hange and Levi have always come in a set. In fan art, in those advertisements, Hange and Levi are always next to each other. In those fan audiobooks, smart passes, there are always Levihan crumbs. Attack on Titan Chuugakkou was literally a testament to the canonicity of Levihan since in that show, they didn’t even hide anything, Levi and Hange were always next to each other. (I think Hange actually ended up living with him towards the end?) Post Season 3, I don’t even think there were many seasons where Levi and Hange were apart and when they were apart it was more of for duty than anything else. 

Hange was always with him when she could, despite her duty as commander. Given their circumstances, they wouldn’t even be together a lot if they didn’t make the effort too. 

Especially towards the end, 126 - 132, the few times Hange did leave Levi behind were for commander duties but Hange never left Levi for the lulz. And also, in 132, Levi was magically able to walk when Hange finally left him behind, and Levi could barely walk in 132, yet he still pushed himself to stand up, walk toward her and attempt to stop her. 

In fact, Hange’s first scenes were next to Levi and Hange’s last scenes were also next to Levi “See you later Hange.”

And I think the huge efforts they put to being together despite their circumstances says a lot already. Hange and Levi’s treatment of each other and their being together constantly in general is a huge testament to the canonicity of their romance. 

Sure, there were no ‘I love yous’. But really, before our irl friends who were in love actually came out to us, maybe months or even years after we’ve watched them be joined at the hip, were there really ‘I love you’s  between them or did we all just place bets on it because they were just being too glaringly obvious about it in how they treated each other? 

[nikkiwriteswords]

Hi! I would love to hear your thoughts/predictions/hopes for s3, now that we got the episode titles :D

Hey Nora!! Let me go grab my tua theory hat real quick. Spoiler alert, it looks exactly like the umbrella hat on the 3 right here:

Full disclosure, I've only got like a pinky toe in the tua fandom right now, but I'm still going to see what BS I can spin from these titles.

1. MEET THE FAMILY. The description on imdb is "The siblings get to know some more of the 43 children in an alternate timeline." So, I think this is pretty self-explanatory. Netflix likes to start things off with a bang, so s3 of TUA will probably be no different: we'll probably get a vague flashforward/flash-sideways to a "what if" scenario that will make sense by the last few episodes, and the rest of the episode will be sowing seeds for the s3 plot. The big question is, what family are we meeting? I think this episode will revolve around themes of family (no-brainer) and redefining the relationships between our Umbrella siblings in light of the season 2 finale, as well as their new Sparrow 'replacements'. To that end, initial Sparrow sibling parallels will be presented and subsequently complicated in this first episode. I also predict we'll see varying reactions to this alternate Reginald, as the Umbrella siblings are thrust into an outsider perspective that follows on from season 2.

2. WORLD'S BIGGEST BALL OF TWINE. This is going to be a multi-layered metaphor. I can feel it. It will no doubt refer to the plot that's about to unfold (is it an outside threat to both parties - the Umbrellas and Sparrows - from, say, the Commission, or is it more to do with the two rival Academies?), but I wonder if it also refers to the Wizard of Oz type scenario the Umbrella siblings find themselves in: they aren’t in Kansas anymore. (But you know what is in Kansas? The world's current biggest ball of twine.) Also kind of want to see Klaus knitting again in this ep - perhaps as a way to subtly re-address his ongoing addiction issues, especially now Ben is gone.

3. POCKET FULL OF LIGHTNING. This probably has to do with powers. Sparrow powers, Umbrella powers. There'll be a lot of new flexes in this season, so who this refers to is anyone's guess.

4. KUGELBLITZ. Here's where it starts to get interesting, because this title carries forward the subject of lightning from the last one. According to a very quick internet search, kugelblitz literally means "ball lightning" in German, and refers to both a) a glorified WW2 tank designed to take out aircraft (a certified Big Boi), and b) a theoretical black hole made from light/radiation rather than matter. So this is absolutely going to be a new, unseen power - probably from the Sparrows. Hopefully from Christopher because a cube executing a move named after a sphere just makes me chuckle. Ah, fun with shapes... But in addition, this power is probably going to pack a huge, debilitating punch to whatever narrative is underway at this point in the plot. I'll bet money that whoever wields this power is the tank character in their party or they are after this at least.

5. KINDEST CUT. This throws me back to the barber shop meta, I'm not gunna lie. Someone's going to get hurt, either physically or emotionally, and it's going to be the lesser of two evils. If it's a follow through on the barber metaphor, then Reggie will be the one to orchestrate it. Or, in a surprise twist, will he be the one gTetting hurt or being silenced? (Remember that cutthroat allegory that chases the siblings through the first season, particularly Allison and Klaus. It was about becoming voiceless.) 6.MARIGOLD. Big shout out to this post for spreading the word on the marigold symbolism. I'm pretty sure this will be Reginald backstory, which ties in with the creation of the Umbrella Academy. Also, because I'm a sucker for flower symbolism and reading into things, consider that marigolds:

a) fall into two families, the calendula which means "little clock" and the tagetes, which is named after the Etruscan prophet Tages. The Etruscans believed heavily in predestination - some events are set in stone, and cannot be changed. (Consider the way the apocalypse seems to always come for one set of siblings...) b) are named as such colloquially because they were offered in place of money to the Virgin Mary. (More divine imagery, and reference to a pure mother figure...) They are Mary’s gold. So maybe it’s a reference to Reginald’s wife, which would fit with the flashback scene we see in 1x10.  c) are a flower of duality. They have strong connections with the sun and resurrection, yet the marigold is thought to be a flower of grief because it blooms in autumn. Again, think about that flashback in the first season. At the end of the world and a wife dying, there was the promise of rebirth. d) It's also a very common flower. Remember, there's actually 43 siblings out there. We've only met 14.

Also Netflix loves to do this thing around the halfway point (usually episode 5/6) in a season they're producing. They'll switch up the narrative with a twist or turn that provides a new perspective. 7.AUF WEIDERSEHEN. Once again, a German connection. And, obviously, a goodbye. Considering the last season focused on Kennedy, are we going to get some earlier Cold War time-travel shenanigans? Or maybe WW2? I think Blackman has said something about the Berlin Wall, which is interesting. A country divided... Umbrellas and Sparrows allegory? But as an aside, I'm also kinda lowkey hoping it's a nod to Auf Weidersehen, Pet. If you don't know the show, here's the wiki summary for the first season:

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet is a British comedy-drama television programme about seven British construction workers who leave the United Kingdom to search for employment overseas. They find work on a German building site in Düsseldorf but despite promises of hostel accommodation, are forced to live in a small hut that reminds them of a World War II POW camp. The rest of the series is driven by the interactions and growing friendships between the various characters.

In episode seven, three of the “Magnificent Seven” visit an intercontinental hotel. Just saying. If s3 was to go this route, my money would be on Luther, Diego and Five getting up to shenanigans in this one. I miss 125 shenanigans.😢

8.WEDDING AT THE END OF THE WORLD. Honestly, I’m holding out hope that one of our fave siblings gets married. I feel like that’s a trap though... Actually I feel like it might actually be a trap. As in, this is when the rising action really kicks it up a notch. But also remember the title of 1x01: We Only See Each Other At Weddings and Funerals. Maybe the siblings get split up, possibly in episode 3/4, and they’re trying to reunite through episodes 5-7. Also thinking about hotels and apocalypses...  There’s something very fatalistic about these titles so far. I have a feeling that the B-plot or the subtext is going to reveal a lot more about Reginald’s history and the destruction of his world.

9. SIX BELLS. This makes me think of church bells, which is some nice continuity with the wedding of the last title. But church bells are rung for all sorts of reasons - as a call to worship, or in celebration or mourning, or to tell the time. (Thinking back to those marigolds suddenly.) But why six? Now I’m thinking of bell ringing (change ringing), and the way different bells have different cord lengths to control the time of their chimes. It’s a highly mathematical process. Will this episode be Five’s time to shine? Will he coordinate his siblings through a large attack? 10. OBLIVION. Does anything even need to be said about this one? Hotel Oblivion baby ✌✌ Any further theorising would require more knowledge of the coming plot tbh.

Edit: I wrote most of this at 2am, so I’ve just tidied it up a little. Thank you for the ask, Nora! This was fun to think about. 

[todomitoukei]

thank you @haleigh-sloth for the tag and the shoutout ♥♥!!!

1. How do you begin writing your analysis: do you start writing about the first thing that strikes you; or do you step back and look at the narrative structure first; or something else?

Hmm depends. I mean a lot of my metas are answers to asks about specific topics/scenes that I receive, so I already have the topic for the meta and then usually just start writing my response however it comes to my mind, only stopping if I have to look stuff up if I don't fully remember scenes/lines that I'm talking about. Once that's done I go over it a couple of times to edit/rearrange/format, etc. When I do my translation comparison posts I just write down the translation first and then do the analysis (I kinda go back and forth all the time when doing this because sometimes I don't feel like doing the translation part anymore and sometimes I don't know how to phrase my thoughts for the analysis part so it's just kinda chaotic and unstructured, but slowly turning into a continuous text)

2. What do you like to keep in mind while writing your analysis/meta?

I like to include sources so that people don't just read my takes and run with them, but are able to check out the references for themselves, too, and draw their own conclusions from them while also getting more details from the sources. That includes referencing the manga by either quoting it or including panels when it comes to what characters have said/done within the story, as well as including sources to back up the conclusions I draw/takes I share (i.e. when talking about anything mental health-related)

3. Do you try to keep your value judgments separate from your analysis?

Kind of? I mean, my main focus is usually the original Japanese text, which is just pretty factual, however, if there is an opportunity to shit on Endvr, well...... :-*

4. Do you prefer analyzing characters, or arcs, or both?

Characters! I always prefer to focus on the psychology/philosophy of things and prefer to treat the story as being part of the characters to further understand who they are as people, rather than the other way around. That being said, society shapes people so I find focusing on the setting of the story very enlightening, too, so if a story has an arc that focuses a bit more on the society/world in the story, then I guess that is also worth analyzing.

5. Do you think receiving feedbacks/responses on your analysis/meta help improve your critical skills?

Nah, most of the criticism/"feedback" on here is from people who lack any kind of reading comprehension so I'm good lol. Writing meta helps me sort my own thoughts so I don't care too much tbh, I kinda prefer reading people's own separate metas in that case because I feel like I usually try to say everything I've wanted to say before pressing post. I do like to see people adding actual valuable insights/correct me when I was genuinely wrong or providing more resources, though, so don't be afraid to add anything to my posts (unless you're just gonna be rude and misinterpret everything I said)

6. Do you consciously decide which media you want to write analysis on or does it naturally come to you?

I mean... this is my bnha side blog so I'm just writing about that, and only because Dabi/the lov/the Todofam live in my head rent-free anyway :) and I honestly wouldn't even know what else to write about? The only other thing that I am absolutely obsessed with is Life is Strange, but it's just my comfort game/series so I don't really care about writing or reading about it.

7. Do you prefer writing long or short metas? Which ones do you prefer to read?

Long metas, both for reading and writing. But good formatting and panels also help to make it easy to read and not get lost in the text, so if the format is shit then short ones. Overall, though, long ones usually mean there are more points brought up and more references made, which means more details to better support the point that is being made. Also, I am unable to keep myself short so I think my posts usually end up being kinda lengthy even when I try to make them short? I definitely always end up debating with myself whether or not I should add a read more somewhere or if it's short enough that it won't piss people off when it appears on their dash, so if I've ever pissed you off... sorry lol.

8. Which are your favourite analysis/criticism/meta blogs?

@transhawks @redphlox @haleigh-sloth @hamliet @thyandrawrites are all incredible blogs that really make being in the fandom fun and I love their insights!

9. Which shows/movies/media do you think deserve to have more analysis done on them?

Hmmm, to be honest, I don't really interact with other fandoms, I usually just consume media and form my own opinions without looking into the fandom's overall take, so I don't know which fandoms don't have a lot of metas. As for which ones I overall think deserve to be analyzed a lot, I think Psycho-Pass, similar to bnha, has a lot of potential for talking at length about the ethics behind their society and how governments often mask their crimes as being for the greater good etc etc. Also, stories like Tokyo Ghoul, Violet Evergarden, and Angels of Death might be really good for metas, too....

10. According to you, what are some prerequisites for good quality analysis?

Providing resources - no one wants to have to fact-check everything on their own, so provide at least some sources for what you talk about. Good formatting is also important. No one wants to read a 10k single paragraph or have to reread a sentence several times because it stretches across a whole paragraph (this is @ Kant and @ me). Additionally, it's really helpful to bold/italicize words/phrases to make reading easier and more accessible.

Tagging: @transhawks @redphlox (I know haleigh tagged you too, but I'm a rebel >:])

[alexseanchai]

Fanfic 2020 in Review

I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!

1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*

1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai

nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*

unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:

“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily

“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)

“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives

“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition

“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family

“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting

“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home

“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war

“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single

“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another

“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette

“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father

“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s  “Your Presents Required”

“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams

2) Number of words written:

ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.

AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder​; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.

3) Your most popular fic:

“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.

4) Your personal fav:

“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)

5) Your fav scene:

aaaaaaaaa

—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)

but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:

Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.

This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.

She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.

There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.

The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.

Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.

Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.

(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)

She walks on.

6) A fic or scene that challenged you:

where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.

there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...

7) A line of writing you’re proud of:

from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:

Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.

okay let me break this down for you!

* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories

* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature

* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers

* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”

* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie

* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure

* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all

* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks

* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?

* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)

8) A comment that touched you:

there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.

9) Something that inspired your writing:

by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami​

10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?

I broke that fucking record!

and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭

11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!

(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)

[welcometomy20s]

January 10th, 2021

Action Button Review

Review

Tim Rogers reminds me of Hank Green. They are about the same age, they look about the same age which is a combination of young and old that feel eternal. They also have the same length of experience in writing in online spaces, interest in Japanese media, and apparently have Crohn’s disease? In summary, he might be the closest equivalent to Dave Green that exists in the real world. Well, I guess Dave Green is not apt, as Dave Green is not special in a way, while Tim Rogers is special, but his speciality comes from his failures rather than his counterparts' success.

Tim Rogers is a hypothetical Green brother who did not decide to publish that book. He’s a hypothetical Green brother who went to Japan instead of Alabama or Florida. Whose project crashed and burned rather than a surprise success. He’s forged in fire while the Green brothers are eroded by water. Both are wonderful people, but with a different ground of intensity and differing wealth of wisdom.

I encountered this series because I found a twitter post about a six hour review of Tokimeki Memorial, and a white middle-aged man talking about a dating sim for six hours with laudatory blurbs would always pique my interest, but since I didn’t know the guy, I went ahead and looked if he made other videos, and found he has four other review that were all about three hours or more. Now I knew that I had to watch all the reviews to prepare myself for this six hour review of Tokimeki Memorial.

Now, I wasn’t a stranger to three hour reviews of video games. I watched Joseph Anderson, Raycevick, Whitelight, matthewmatosis, and Noah Gervais-Caldwell. In fact, in the comments below Action Button Reviews, many people talked about a comparison to Noah Gervais-Caldwell (and Brian David Gilbert) and that was quite funny since I actually watched a recent Noah Gervais-Caldwell video.

His first two reviews were perfunctory, him opening himself up and trying out new things and polishing his review style, as he went through the Final Fantasy VII remake and The Last of Us. While I watched The Last of Us, I distinctly remembered and contrasted Noah’s The Last of Us Part 2 review with Tim Roger’s The Last of Us review. I liked Tim Roger’s defense of interactive movies (although he denies it!) contrasted with more cynical but ultimately positive connotation in Noah’s review. And Noah’s thesis pairs nicely with Tim’s observation that Ellie was the main protagonist all along. That fact makes Part 2 much more understandable, even the bad parts.

When I finished watch his first two reviews, I went ahead and also watched several of Tim’s videos on Kotaku, which were slightly shorter, the longest being just over an hour, which is a review of the best games in 1994, and does contain a short segment about Tokimeki Memorial, which his six hour review was my destination. To put in context, Tokimeki Memorial was #3. #1 was Earthbound, #2 was Final Fantasy VI, and #4 was Super Metroid. And I just watched a playthrough of Super Metroid basically on a whim, because it’s a monumental and a great game to play and watch.

And while the segment of the games that I knew to be great and monumental in my absorption of knowing video games was deeply personal and rightly claimed its stake that it deserved its spot, his segment of Tokimeki Memorial never got there. It was almost as if he was deliberately hiding behind something. In the end of 1994 review, Tim pitched an idea about a three hour Earthbound review, which probably was Tim’s idea of floating a departure from Kotaku, which would happen two months later, and I wonder if he was trying to deliberately throw a curveball by making a video of Tokimeki Memorial instead of the promised Earthbound review. This may be a far leap, I admit.

I went back and watched the video about Doom. It was much better in quality and in darkness. I was reminded of Film Crit Hulk’s writing of The World’s End and James Bond, another very long essay that was deeply personal and chapter for easier consumption. Few commenters noticed that Tim Rogers was just doing a dramatic reading of his written reviews on Kotaku and Action Button dot net, and how they liked that approach, and I found myself liking that approach as well. You might believe a video review needs more than just reading an essay out loud, but just the act of reading an essay out loud in the correct intonation and inflection adds ton to experience. And Tim Rogers sounds like he has decades worth of experience to present a dramatic reading of his essay very effectively, much like Hank Green.

I continued scaling the mountain to my goal. I went through his review of Pac-Man and was delighted by his reading of Namco games, and was impressed by the opening sequence, and just generally enjoyed it. I was getting excited to set a day aside and let the six hour review of Tokimeki Memorial watch over me and reduce me to dust.

And it sure did. That six hours was a harrowing experience. What Tim Rogers is best at is telling a story, and so to go through a let’s play was a wish I never made, fulfilled. In the end, I was left with nothing and everything. It was like finishing a really good book.

I wanted to watch it again, then again I never wanted to watch it again. It was almost a traumatic experience. Tim talked about there being endless variation of love, and the love Tim Rogers went through was not the fluffy yet melancholic one that I craved, but one akin to a devotion of an eldritch god. Love made in justification for one’s efforts in attending and maintaining a relationship. A love stronger than most kinds of love, but most draining and taxing as well. Tim Roger’s synopsis of Tennis Monster reminded me of Asking for It by Louise O’Neill, which is also about empathizing a quite hateable character because we kind of have to. Apparently one person knows the full plot because Tim Rogers rambled on about it as he was couch surfing in his house, and unbelieve as it usually is, I fully trust that the commenter is telling the truth.

I was like a heroin addict, who really wanted a different hit, like talking to friends or hiking, my mother wanted me to go hiking with her, and I didn’t because, after the pandemic started, all I wanted to be was inside. Outside felt diseased. The air outside felt contaminated to me, hard to breathe. I was stuck in this place.

Tim Rogers is an exceptional figure. He seems to be a movie protagonist, he reminds me of The Librarian, played by Noah Wyle. Tim has eidetic memory, as he has access every single autobiographical memory formed, but not other types of memory. We know that those types of memory are different because of people like Tim and people who are opposite of Tim, someone who has no memories of autobiographical memory but otherwise fine. These people tend to have very few emotions and have a hard time deciding things. Lack of emotions is correlated with difficulty in decision making.

So Tim is the opposite of that, Tim is full of emotions, complex emotions and he can make decisions and carry it out in a snap. He would be good at school, and he was, but he would be too focused on his grandeur to be under some authority, which is how he became who he was. His anti-authoritarian nature rings throughout his reviews, highlight the general Generation X vibe that Tim exudes but also the modern socialistic movement of Generation Z, which adds to this odd mix of old and new.

Not only does Tim have eidetic memory and intense work ethic that he never seems to move away from, therefore making a three hour video masterpiece at a clip that seems unbelievable for a seasoned viewer, he also has exceptional skills in fast math and language, he seems to be at least familiar with dozens of languages, and of course Tim’s experience is bounded by his decade of living in Japan.

I think this is why Tim naturally gravitates towards video games. When Tim says ‘welcome to video games’ there’s a natural supposition that Tim Rogers is the protagonist of video games, and I think he is. Tim wants to be in video games, because he needs to be in video games, instead of some almighty god cruelly deciding to plop him into a real life. He should be an video game adaptation of The Librarian and go on world-spanning adventure and romance impossibly beautiful girls instead of toiling the grime of what real life portends to. His life is dramatic, but impossibly mundane as well. It’s a simulacrum of a movie or a video game, which is pretty cool on its own.

But of course Tim Rogers isn’t the only part of Action Button Reviews. In the ensuing five videos, Tim Rogers tries to do something. Video games are a wide net. There is so much to video games, something like Gone Home and Geometry Dash are included alongside Wolfenstein The New Colossus and Farmville. What makes a video game? Actually, the more interesting question is, why do we have the term ‘video games’? Why do we put all of this mess into a single category, as if there is some throughline.

Tim Rogers starts to do that. Tim Rogers boldly states that things like Doom and Tokimeki Memorial are intimately connected to each other. And that all video games are in conversation with each other, through deep and complex meta-narratives. Tim Rogers is a cartographer, trying to map out how video games are made whole.

I’ve always strived to be that kind of a cartographer, to showcase the weave of reality, of connecting two seemingly unconnected parts, and showing to a profound implication both existing, instead of one or the other. If you don’t know, I have been trying to write something out of my current obsession with Virtual YouTubers, and mostly Hololive, and while I think I stumbled upon the six hour video review of Tokimeki Memorial outside of my interest in virtual YouTubers, this video, as I expected in the back of my head, gave me plenty of thoughts about Hololive. Its rumination of cyberpunk and idol culture is so directly connected with the peculiarities of Hololive that I was quite astounded.

From the very beginning, I wonder how Tim Rogers thinks about Hololive, especially after he has done that six hour review. I’m sure he will have a lot of interesting thoughts about the prospect. I want to get in contact with him, maybe work under him. But then I don’t want to hang out with him. I want to be near him as he talks to a crowd at a party, but I don’t feel safe to be near him when there’s less than ten people nearby. I think below ten, I would be swept in some danger that I won’t be prepared for.

Tim Rogers and Action Button Review is a fascinating review series and if you have the time, I suggest you should take the journey. It’s well worth it, just to get a different perspective on video games and the world around it.

[recentanimenews]

OPINION: How Umineko Changed My Entire Approach to Fictional Media

All screenshots captured on Playstation 3 by author

  The following article contains a discussion of thematic elements and motives that appear during the second half of Umineko When They Cry. While no actual plot details will be revealed, some might still consider it spoilery. So if you want to experience one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever completely untainted, you should check it out on Steam right now.

  The internet is pretty rad, isn't it? You can follow your favorite creators, watch tons of awesome shows, and talk about your favorite things with other people. How about we do that right now? Well, too bad, because YOUR FAVORITE THING IS BAD, ACTUALLY! You made the mistake of posting about it online, so prepare to be sent lots of negative comments linking to 5-hour video essays pointing out every single flaw about your favorite story and why you are wrong for enjoying it!

    It's a situation I'm sure many of us have experienced at least a couple of times online. While the internet can be fantastic for finding like-minded people to chat with about things you deeply love, it can also be a gamble and sometimes you end up in a discussion where your conversational partner seems more interested in showing off their intellectual superiority over a work instead of openly discussing its merits or flaws. I certainly know — I used to be one of them.

  "As I've eaten my way through countless tales to escape boredom, I haven't really been eating them. I've just been killing them." - Hachijo Tohya

  The rise of social media has opened the gates for some incredible in-depth discussion and has changed the way I experience things over the years. But there is also a dark side to the discussions on the internet and that is the trap of wanting to feel intelligent in how you approach stories, which is often accompanied by not really being emotionally earnest. I myself tried to come off as perceptive by pointing out so many mistakes and bad things about media which led to exactly one thing: me becoming absolutely miserable. All I cared about was consuming as many things as possible (FOMO's also one of the many downsides of social media) and appearing as "smart" about them as I could. Until one fateful 10-month stretch in which I played a certain visual novel known as Umineko When They Cry.

    Umineko really is tailor-made for catching people with that mindset: It depicts a mystery story about how mystery stories are told and consumed — and what genre would be more fitting to challenge someone concerned with intellectual superiority than one that is all about the clash of Author vs Reader? 

  "Books aren't a competition. It's not about who's read the most. But boasting that you've read all your ever need to read is just as wrong-headed" - Battler Ushiromiya

  Umineko starts off with a well-known mystery trope: A family meets up in a mansion on a distant island, gets cut off by a storm, and then slowly gets murdered one after the other until everyone is dead. And just as in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (which served as one of Umineko's main inspirations), a bottle detailing the events of the incident to the public eventually washes ashore. But this only serves as Umineko's prologue, as its main character Battler quickly finds himself facing off against a self-proclaimed Golden Witch known as Beatrice on a meta-narrative level where he must prove these gruesome killings could have been committed by a human culprit, or be forced to acknowledge her existence and allow her to fully revive.

    Thus begins a game of chess filled with exceedingly preposterous murders in which our protagonist's family gets killed by demons, giant goat butlers, and sharpshooting bunny girls — all supplemented by the so-called Red Truth, a truth-revealing tell not unlike Martha's vomiting in Knives Out. Battler must use these authorial proclamations and find a loophole that enables him to explain the murders in a way that does not frame any of his beloved family members as the killer and still allows him to deny the existence of the gruesome and torturous witch.

    Umineko's all about how stories are perceived and told by both their creator and their audience. It explores how remarks by the author in every situation — no matter how off-hand they might be — can be used, applied, and twisted to shed a completely different light on a story regardless of its original intent. It shows how adding meaning to a narrative that wasn't meant to be there can both add to or subtract from its most important element: The heart its creator wanted to convey.

  "If I had found meaning in only exposing the truth, I would have sunk to the level of a truth-revealing witch and fallen into ruin, spreading only hatred, [...], crushing and refusing to acknowledge anything but the particular truth I seek, unable to escape the cycle of misery." - Ange Ushiromiya

  Umineko goes through many different angles of how we create, share, and discuss the tales that fuel our discourse. It ponders the importance of rules when creating storylines and tackles how easy it is to overlook major themes and motives by just focussing on minute details that are open to misinterpretation and irrelevant to a story's soul. It even includes the typical misanthropic yet oh so intelligent detective that usually gets idolized in most media (think BBC's Sherlock or House, M.D.) and puts them at odds with every other character because who would really want to cooperate with someone that completely disregards you as an equal human being and merely perceives you as an amalgation of hints, motives and alibis?

  "Sheesh! Just one more step and I'd have been able to take a heart as innocent as the smooth sand just after a wave had pulled back and tear it to bits. What a shame. This isn't fun anymore." - Erika Furudo

  And just when you start to really get into Umineko, it moves away from its main conflict, providing you important hints for its solution which most readers ignore as they aren't presented with facts and logic but on an emotional level distanced from the characters we long to get back to. But most importantly, it conveys how one single element is so indispensable to enjoying the narrative odysseys we embark on in our lives, to cherishing the characters that are presented to us in these tales, and to truly understand a story's message behind things like story developments, plot twists, and narrative tricks. I, of course, am talking about love.

  Be it the love you feel for characters, for certain staging elements, phrasings of prose, orchestrations of music, design of sound effects, implementations of themes and motives, or cinematographic puzzle pieces — the one thing that is indispensable to truly enjoy all kinds of media, is love. Or, to quote Umineko directly, "Without love, it cannot be seen."

    By the time, I was nearing the end of Umineko's eight main chapters, it had transformed from an intellectual battle between author and reader to an all-out war of a story against its community of readers who simply wanted to tear it down to cold, hard "facts." I had spent ten months and over 100 hours. The first half took eight of those months to get through (owing to a few lengths in Episodes 2 and 4), I finished the second half in less than two despite my busy schedule. I even dedicated a whole 15-hour marathon to the final episode as I was too glued to the grand finale to move away from it.

    A new me came out the end. I no longer had an interest in tearing apart media for minor missteps. I enjoyed them much more deeply and honestly and began taking my time with the things I consumed. Instead of filling my plate at the buffet of stories as much as I could, I gave each dish its own course on the menu so I could appreciate its flavor in a different way — one bite at a time and not stuffed up simply to give the outward appearance of a seasoned gourmet. And for that, I will never be able to thank Ryukishi07 and his co-creators at 07thExpansion enough.

  "The point of theory-making is not to create a culprit or to trample the truths that lie in the hearts of those who have not sinned. If you want to play detective, don't neglect the heart. Otherwise, we're just intellectual rapists. Don't forget it!!" - Willard H. Wright

  If you are interested in reading Umineko When They Cry, you can find both its Question Arcs and its Answer Arcs on Steam, GOG, and MangaGamer. You can also read the manga adaptation digitally on Bookwalker (though I personally recommend the visual novel for its award-worthy soundtrack alone).

  What work of fiction has touched your life in a profound way? Tell us in the comments!

      René Kayser works for Crunchyroll as a PR and Social Media Manager in Germany. You can find him on Twitter @kayserlein where he tries to get people into Umineko every single day.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[esperantoauthor]

24, 25

Thanks for the ask, Pam! In another ask you requested 8, 19, & 20. I linked to those I already answered and I’m including 20 below. Enjoy!

(20) Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?) 

Oh gosh, I think I love talking about this stuff way too much to have any “hidden” references. If I reference something in a chapter I always cite it in my endnotes and I’ll usually let people know about clues or callbacks in the notes or in the comments. This is hard to answer without spoiling the reveals in my stories but I’ll try.

In Express Yourself, Blaine mentions in passing that he doesn’t like talking on the phone in Chapter 2. This was 100% an intentional clue that would become *very* important later in the story during a pivotal dramatic scene. I think because of how it was introduced, most readers didn’t realize the significance until after the scene was resolved. I’m pleased with how I introduced that because it was in the story before you know much about Blaine’s situation. Introducing a critical clue early on, before other important context is filled in, I think can make it all the more satisfying when that piece of information becomes important later.

I think a less successful reveal was the “white car” in the sequel. I think about half the references to it ended up on the cutting room floor when I reordered some of the events in the plot. Because of that, I don’t think I had created as much of a sense of mystery as I’d originally hoped. Oh, well!

(24) Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Definitely! I published fanfiction as a teenager so it makes for an easy comparison.

1) Vocabulary: I’ve always had a large vocabulary and reveled in choosing just the right word for the moment. I still include interesting words in my writing but I’ve toned it down since I was a teenager. I think, like many teenagers, I was trying a little too hard. Reading it back, I think it was definitely in danger of sounding pretentious. I also usually try to either make it clear from context what the word means or use it in such a way that the reader really doesn’t need to know it.

2) Length: My stamina for writing lengthy pieces has grown a lot. My stories are  much longer than they used to be.

3) Life experience: I write a lot from my own experiences and things I’ve learned along the way so obviously I have a lot more to draw on now than I did as a teenager. 

4) Genre: When I wrote fanfiction as a teenager, I only wrote prequels. Now my big works are both canon-divergent AUs.

(25) What part of writing is the most fun?

It’s hard to choose! I love being in a “flow” state when I’m writing, I love stepping into a world entirely contained within my imagination (how wild is it that we can create stories in our own minds that entertain us?!!), and of course...

[mehenxe]

◈ ◈ ◈ ◈ & ღ & ♫ bc ur a slut for music ; & ✮ (i want explanaTIONS ...gET META W THIS SHIT )

◈ — share some head-canons you have for a muse of your choosing, but x4.

[ elijah kane ] ◈ — all efforts to get him into studying how to make robotics like hyacinth have resulted in a lot of miniature woodland creatures able to sprint across desks. it’s not exactly what anybody had in mind, but hey, you never know if ilya might not want to send in an actual animal for something he has going on. they can call up sugar kane industries ( big face-palm here ) to take care of the job. ( wyatt voice: seriously, you couldn’t think of anything better than sugar kane. ) / hyacinth kane has a nice ring to it. elijah has tested out several different nicknames: sugar kane also for them, mistah k, ( missus k? ), cinthy ... cindy ... ( sean: yeah! cindy k! like cindy crawford! / who the fuck is cindy crawford? / wyatt — / how old are you. ) / he’s had a life-long dream to be able to go scuba-diving off the coast of — some exotic island he can’t remember the name of. beforehand, it was one of those things that he was too afraid to do, but full-out war changes your perspective. in truth, he’s always been a water baby, growing up going swimming in the local rivers and running pellmell down the dirt lanes. he grew out of it, and then grew back into it. whether or not he’s going to be able to do that without monroe tagging along ( and then by default, ilya, and then probably hojin will want to come, and then ravi will have to, and then oliver will want to watch over them and then jinho will buy a whole yacht with his dumb vampire money — ) — ah, well, there’s worse people to spend an extended holiday with. his father will come along too: sit on the deck in a lawn chair and drink a virgin margarita as he deserves after putting up with this whole extended family. and with his son being a you-know-what.

[ alice bedi ] ◈ — there was a time where she was interested in wigs. she had percival sit down on her shack’s bed and watch as she perused through at least fifteen different styles of wigs. each one got a firm head-shake: too rough on your complexion; lilac looks good as a colour, but the style is horrid; why did they think it was a good idea to make a bob that length? a tough customer. she returned back to wearing veils, her preferred style being that of mantilla, or the veil that’s worn to chapel over a jade comb. due to the volume and length of her natural curls, she rarely wears the combs at all, but will if it’s a particularly formal occasion, like that time she accompanied percival to a ‘high-society event.’ ( translation: they crashed a party because he was bored, and she had a bad feeling about him going alone. ) / as the local librarian’s assistant, she’s the first to get in the way when someone is overtly curious: why are you asking so many questions? hmm? the irony is that she herself asks just as many questions — she insists that the difference is: she reads the room and knows when it’s inappropriate to ask them. ( and if she knows it’s inappropriate to ask them, and instead chooses to risk asking them regardless, it’s because she knows it’ll smooth out in the end. / despite what she wears daily, one of her most favourite colours is moss green. there are a multitude of reasons. moss is her favourite foliage. it’s similar to algae, another favourite foliage. and it reminds her of someone who she says is her sister; however, anybody who knows her, knows that she has no blood-siblings. one or the other might be a lie, or both might be the truth. when she’s in a mood, she’ll smear the moss at the base of her neck like a perfume, a splotch of green beneath white.

[ huang shen ] ◈ — he designed an irrigation system to work, specific to his farm, to be able to make rice paddies despite the surrounding environment. it’s a southern crop in the united states, but there was no way he was going to move to the south just to expand the business. his entire family was so relieved about it that they danced through the sprinklers and set off fireworks — and none of them are really into that kind of thing. it’s particularly incredible due to the area they’re in, being very prone to sometimes too much drought and too much rain, and both are responsible for driving out selling numbers of crops. his plan is to switch into an agricultural degree, and perhaps even expand it into engineering, so that he can continue helping this way. / one of his surprises for algernon was learning sign language. for the longest time, months even, shen made it out like he had no idea what was being said, and let damien, as surly as ever, be the translator when algernon was unwilling or unable to speak. in the background, however, he was working with a tutor and seeking to understand better what it meant to be both HoH and mute. then, when algernon’s birthday came around, everyone went silent ( holy god he was so nervous ) and he gave an entire romantic, long speech entirely in sign language. he’s sure that some of it got lost in translation due to how hard his hands were shaking, but the way that algernon kissed him afterwards, it didn’t seem to affect much. now, they communicate constantly on this even ground. / he’s started up horseback riding again — and has roped tobias into doing it alongside him. tobias might have grace on the stage floor, but certainly not on the back of a horse; he somehow ended up upside-down beneath the horse’s belly, and then fell down in a tangle of limbs. shen has taken to the western side of things, re-learning how to barrel race and rope cattle; but he and tobias have had to separate their lessons due to these antics. lucas isn’t allowed to come to any of them; his stupid remarks send them into fits of laughing. ( bold of us to assume he doesn’t just sit in the truck and shout anyways. )

[ deok bae ] ◈ — due to the empire no longer supporting his upgrades, nor looking in his general direction, he has had to find other ways to obtain new modifications. this is including, but not limited to, going and pulling them out of other people’s bodies as catharsis — but usually, he defects to yuri and silas to fix him up. to his chagrin, the LED-light in his forehead has absolutely no use whatsoever, only displaying his brain’s processing as a symptom of installation. he pulled it out himself via the tip of a knife’s blade. the next time that he’s seen by those who haven’t seen him in quite some time, he might be unrecognisable. i am not deok bae — perhaps deok bae is no longer himself either. if there was no connection to eli in his head, he would forget that; perhaps he would merely succumb to the machinery, perhaps he would succumb to the wolf-dom. there are several pairs of teeth in his mouth awaiting for their moment to bite. / when he was a teen, his version of ‘sneaking out’ would be to wheel his chair to the gardens at the back of the temple, where he would sit and think for hours and hours. his father would come and find him there; sometimes, master jhcor would instead. his father would return him back to where he needed to be, but master jhcor would sit beside him and gaze serenely until bae felt the need to speak what was on his mind: his angers, his fevers, his rages. one time, he was surprised to see that it was not master jhcor, nor master deok, but zan coming to sit with him. his heart had sat in his throat the whole time, half-expecting zan to laugh at him or say something particularly piteous. instead, the conversation was — well, looking back, absurdly normal, all things considering. when bae blinked tiredly, zan rose and took the handles of his chair and took him back. he hadn’t intended to ask him to do so, but it was done anyway. / bae drinks a lot of soda. it’s somewhat fitting, if you believe all that talk about how coca-cola can double as a cleaner due to the high carbonation and way it’s made. he does seem to get shiny after several cans — it’s also convenient that he can’t experience sugar-highs nor malfunctions of the liver or stomach due to too much consumption. he considers himself to be a soda connoisseur as a result. he offers a lot of hmm, that’ll taste disgusting comments that annoy the shit out of the others — but then kisung takes a drink and bae ends up being right, so there’s no regrets.

ღ ━ favourite canon ships for your muse(s). are there any you dislike?

there’s ... none that i dislike. there’s moments of come on, but that’s bound to happen. i think the favourite ships are the ... guardian / princess vibes ( whether it’s literal or not: akane / the samurai, quinn / sehrin, jian / elaine ). i also love the growing from previous immaturities towards each other ( grey / tobias, jihoon / wyatt, playboy / jordan ) — and himbos of course ( hojin / ravi!! ) there’s also the whole ... tsh, vampiric aesthetic that we get ( minzhe / yongha ) ... the ones like jisoo / mingfei, cyrian / ulysses, cadoc / pestilence ( exploring violence against but without the stickiness ). of course, if i keep going, i’ll end up listing all of them and then where would we be.

♫ ━ a small playlist for a muse of your choice

for nam jungsoo, because i actually once did make a playlist for him:

1. brand new — sic transit gloria ... glory fades 2. within temptation — what have you done 3. iamx feat. imogen heap — my secret friend 4. florence + the machine — shipwreck (the odyssey) 5. crown the empire — hologram

i mean, the songs are still kinda relevant considering his current character ...

✮ ━ top three favourite muses that you’ve played

but is it possible to pick three favourites ... that’s the real question. maybe. jianguo, because of catharsis, because of cultural exploration and similarities. grendel, because of the depth, the personal torment, the surrounding family. jinho & julius, because of exploring that darkness. and famine — man, now that’s something. there’s a lot more than three though. like blood and jisoo and tobias and arthur. but. the questions INSIST THAT I CHOOSE.

[howtodisassembleyourdeviant]

Rules

1.) No god-modding, meta-gaming, or any of the usual roleplay malarkey. Respect amongst the players. If you choose to use a specific plot or AU I outlined outside of our roleplay, please ask first. 

2.) I am an adult. I will not be roleplaying with anyone under the age of 18, and I will not write any NSFW threads with anyone under 21. NSFW is not necessary for any threads. I know I write it a lot, and some of it is pretty out there, but I 100% do not require it. 

3.) All sexually explicit posts go under ‘ sexual deviant ’ If I miss one or something is a little more sexual than I realize, feel free to let me know either by DMing me or sending me an anon. I will fix it immediately. 

4.) Triggers: My main writing triggers are dub-con and non-con. I also cannot write threads with themes that include infidelity. I prefer when I write angst that there is a happy ending, but I can understand there are times when that is not possible, or it becomes too predictable. That being said, if you want to discuss plots, hit me up in the DMs or my Discord: DisassembledDeviant#7234

If you have any triggers, please tell me. I may not realize what I'm writing might bother others and it’s difficult to remember what might be triggering, even though I read your rules. If you are getting upset with something I wrote, or feel that the plot is getting off course, let me know. I cannot read minds and will perceive anything written is how you want your muse and the storyline to go. I write how my muse feels in the situation and I can inform you why or make changes if necessary, but I need to know. Don’t expect me to know what you’re thinking or how you feel. Mun does not equal muse. 

5.) I do not purposely drop threads without informing the other partner. If you noticed I haven’t replied to one in a while, chances are, I’ve lost it. Please feel free to inform me. I know most do, but I do not mind being poked, just be mindful.

6.) I reply to damn near everything and sometimes my replies are long. Please don’t be intimidated by that. I do not care what length you reply with, as long as you give me something to work with. If I start to overwhelm you with threads, or if the length is just too long, please let me know and I’ll re-do my reply. 

7.) I do not ship hankcon/hannor. I know a lot of people do, and I have no problem with them, but I will not do it. They are friends/family only for me. I don't hate the ship, I just have a deep connection with Connor's character and 'daddy issues', to put it simply. Everyone else I'm pretty open-minded about shipping with.

If you do ship hankcon/hannor, I ask that you tag it please. (RP threads don't necessarily need to be tagged as I will just avoid reading threads between Hank rpers and other Connor rpers, but I wouldn't mind if you did.) I do consider it a trigger as I do have an emotional reason for it and not because of the dynamic. It makes things easier for me and I greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

8.) I over-think/over-complicate things. If I ask you something and the answer is obvious, please don't be rude. 

9.) I am a human. I have people I don’t associate with and my reasons for it are my own (and vice versa). What they choose to do is their own business, but no matter the situation, I will not mention names or talk about them behind their back. Any opinion you have, I hope is based on your own interactions with me and not based on whatever is said by others. People say a lot of things when upset or angry, can paint people to be villains, and not enough bother to hear both sides. Please, keep the discourse and drama away, I’m here to have fun with my friends and hopefully make new ones along the way. 

About the Mun:

My name is Arsenic, but I go by Seni (pronounced like penny only with an s instead of a p) I don't really care what you call me though. 

Demiromantic/Asexual

I'm 29

Diagnosed with ADHD when I was 22 and I have a lot of hang-ups about that. It does affect my writing, often leaving me to obsess with certain threads more than others. I don’t mean to, but it happens. It does not mean I like other threads less.  

Time zone is CST

Originally from South Carolina, but I've been around.

I am outdated (I often don’t understand memes or new slang and my pop culture is limited) and often don't pick up on sarcasm (which kinda works when writing an android).

Thank you for reading and understanding. I hope you enjoy my Muse and we can have some fun! 💙

[lcnguor]

THE MEGA RP PLOTTING SHEET / MEME.

First and foremost, recall that no one is perfect, we all have witnessed some plotting once which did not went too well, be it because of us or our partner. So here have this, which may help for future plotting. It’s a lot! Yes, but perhaps give your partners some insight? Anyway BOLD what fully applies, italicize if only somewhat.

Mun Name: Mik      Age: 26       Contact: IM, discord, smoke signal, whatever.

Character(s) I rp: Nora, Spike. Which muse(s) inspires you the most atm?(for MM): Nora, most likely Current Fandom(s): Fandomless Fandom(s) you have an AU for:  pretty much everything I find around and hop on. My language(s): spanish, english.  Themes I’m interested in for rp:   Fantasy / Science fiction / Horror / Western / Romance / Thriller / Mystery / Dystopia / Adventure / Modern / Erotic / Crime / Mythology / Classic / History / Renaissance / Medieval / Ancient / War / Family / Politics / Religion / School / Adulthood / Childhood / Apocalyptic / Gods / Sport / Music / Science / Fights / Angst / Smut / Drama / etc. Themes/Genres you have an AU for: modern without supernatural, I do have some fantasy set up but eh. 

Preferred Thread length: one-liner / 1 para / 2 para / 3+ / novella. Asks can be send by: Mutuals / Non-Mutuals / Personals / Anons. Can Asks be continued?:   YES / NO   only by Mutuals?:  YES / NO. Preferred thread type: crack / casual nothing too deep / serious / deep as heck. Is realism / research important for you in certain themes?:   YES / NO. Are you atm open for new plots?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Do you handle your draft / ask - count well?:  YES / NO / SOMEWHAT. How long do you usually take to reply?:  24h / 1 week / 2 weeks / 3+ / months / years. I’m okay with interacting: original characters / a relative of my character (an oc) / duplicates / my fandom / crossovers / multi-muses / self-inserts / people with no AU verse for my fandom / canon-divergent portrayals / au-versions (as main or only verse). Do you post more ic or occ?:  IC / OOC. Are you selective with following others?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS.  

Best ways to approach you for rp/plotting:  ask, IM, discord, singing telegram, smoke signals, messeger pidgeos -- whatever dude. I will most likely talk and ramble a lot, I do like plotting and I squeeze my brains out to think in ways to rp with ppl. and I really suck at approaching others. really...

What expectations do you hold towards your plotting partner:  Ideas and somewhat more enthusiasm than me. I tend to shy away or feel very much awkward right off the bat if the person approaches me with not much to say or give. And honestly, some people really intimidate me because I am too hard on myself, so giving a bit of a pat on the back makes me relax more. I deal with a lot of anxiety and I know people run away the second I show it. 

When you notice the plotting is rather one-sided, what do you do?:  Mostly when I am doing the talk or coming with ideas or looking generally more interested. It takes effort for me to get on things and actually do stuff but if it’s not the other way around I end up thinking they got bored of me. I am one hell of insecure person. As for what I do, if after many tries of trying to reach another person and end up feeling rejected or ignored, then ... I stop. What’s the point of insisting if the other person would just be awkward or not spare you a word?

How do you usually plot with others, do you give input or leave most work towards your partner?:  well, I usually ask first what the other thinks or have in mind, if nothing, I either suggest or start brainstorming with the other person. I know some who have dealt with me at first I seem like a dettached person but not having ideas really makes me feel like I have not much right to talk. I want to give yet without impossing or letting it twist my arm. I know for a fact nora’s lore really doesn’t help shit for most things. 

When a partner drops the thread, do you wish to know?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS. - And why?: if the thread was meaningful and we were really into it , then I would ask but as for the most, I don’t really bother with it. Sometimes people just lose muse, and even if I was enjoying it, I don’t have the right  to force someone or ask why they stopped. thread dropping is normal, i guess.  - What should your partner do when dropping a thread?:  whatever they want. telling me or not is up to them, I don’t really mind. RP is not something SUPER serious like it should be just perfect. I try to convice myself of this a lot.

What could possibly lead you to drop a thread?:  either because it was old as fuck, I couldn’t find muse or because it was lost in the void of tumblr’s amazing tracking system. - Will you tell your partner?:   YES / NO / DEPENDS.

Is communication in the rpc important to you?   YES / NO. - And why?:  if I do not have some idea of who am i rping with and what they have in mind, then it’s nearly impossible. being purely IC is really uncomfortable and could lead to a lot of misundertandings. - Are you okay with absolute honesty, even if it may means hearing something negative about you and/or portrayal?:  yeah. mostly yeah -- I mean, I will feel bad, I do have feelings, but I will take it with water. - Do you think you can handle such situation in a mature way?  YES ( but I will feel bad anyways ) / NO.

Why do you rp again, is there a goal?:  connect with others, ramble a lot about characters, have fun. I’ve been rping since i was 12 ( back then it was not big deal your age apparently ) and having to connect with other people by making these plots and stories and just having a fun time is something that brings me joy. There’s so much that can be done. And exploring my muses with other muses influences is really helpful to fill the holes left due indecisiveness.

Wishlist, be it plots or scenarios:  I wish people joined my lore more. Having muses that could be in the same story department as Nora in particular, would be hella and inspire me more. There is so much I have. Explore nora’s power is also something I want but it’s hard -- it’s very invasive and not many would really like it, feeling it’s meta. For now, I don’t really have other muses and Spike has her little crew outside tumblr.

Themes I won’t ever rp / explore:  umm, it’s hard to think in something in particular. But mostly stuff that collides with nora’s story/character. but there is a lot I am willing to explore.

What Type of Starters do you prefer / dislike, can’t work with?: casual starters are my fab. It’s easier to figure out how  to go or stop and think. plotted ones also work. as for what I dislike or cannot work with, things that force my muse to not act how they would? not giving me something solid is hard to handle. 

What type of characters catch your interest the most?:  I really like out of the norm muses, something that you see and say /oh , look at that/. Aesthetically, story wise or personality wise, something that goes out the usual troup most would use. I do have a guilty pleasure for opposite to my muse characters --- something that would really show the contrast with one another.

What type of characters catch your interest the least?:  Very basic ones? or those who try TOO hard to be special. A character that doesn’t fit in the context they are in, esp. in fandoms. HEAVILY divergent characters that just basically turn them into OCs. I know I sound like a bitch but I am the type who respect canon and the actual author behind the character too much. Also those that I don’t know much about? as in, the fandom never managed to catch my interest or smth in that line.

What are your strong aspects as rp partner?:  I know where is the line between fiction and reality. And that what your character does it does not reflect as the person you actually are. I am pretty laid back and I understand people’s views and reasoning. idk. I draw a lot if I am super invested ?

What are your weak aspects as rp partner?: I am super sporadic and can go from being super active to flat out dead for weeks. my mood swings a lot with the amount of attention I get, as horrible as it sounds. I am very anxious as a person for reasons ( not IRL mostly, just bad experience from previous partners ). I promise a lot but do little? honestly I will just bad mouth myself if I keep writing this.

Do you rp smut?:  YES ( tho mostly on discord ) / NO. Do you prefer to go into detail?:  YES / NO / DEPENDS. Are you okay with black curtain?:  YES / NO. - When do you rp smut? More out of fun or character development?:  both? - Anything you would not want to rp there?:  ehhhh, idk -- i don’t do as much to know what I don’t like here.

Are ships important to you?:   YES / NO / RELATIVE. Would you say your blog is ship-focused?:   YES / NO. Do you use read more?:  YES / NO / SOMETIMES. Are you: Multi-Ship / Single-Ship / Dual-Ship  —  Multiverse / Singleverse. - What do you love to explore the most in your ships?:  the very nature of human relations. I am talking about Nora big time here -- there is a lot to explore in her relations and how she reacts and acts towards someone is very very contextual. How much she fakes, how much she is sincere, how much she struggles or how relaxed can be. force her to show her real self, which is very hazy even for her as a task. Be very poetic deep and also very shallow. I particulary see her as a character that REALLY depends on her relation with the other muse -- but generally speaking for any of my muses: I love to explore them as a pair and as individuals. - What is your smut tag?: the unfamily friendly. ( new tag (?))

Are you okay with pre-established relationships?: YES / NO. - And what kind of ones?: Anything? I am open to anything honestly. As long as it makes sense.

► SECTION ABOUT YOUR MUSE.

- What could possibly make your Muse interesting towards others, why should they rp with this particular character of yours now, what possible plots do they offer?:  Anyone who is denying their feelings, are peculiar as an individual or anyone who needs an insight of themselves and the world around them. Nora is a mentor type of character, she is here to be a support and help others explore themselves and learn. Also if you are a minor, she will most likely try to get close to help -- one must protect the good sad kids.

- With what type of Muses do you usually struggle to rp with?:  Stubborn, very fixated with things. Who would not open themselves to other perspective without thinking someone is trying to change them. Also she would struggle a heck lot with psychopaths and sociopaths, or anyone that “doesn’t have a face” for her. - With what type of Muses do they usually work well with?:  Curious people, struggling ones, kids in general -- people that are willing to listen to her opinions and try to improve in a positive way. Also those who are quirky in a way. 

- What interests your Muse(s) in general:  rabbits, literature, interesting people, the unknown, learning, relationships of all natures.  - What do they desire, is their goal?:  Live long without letting her particularity ruin her -- for her kind nobody makes it past the 50s and she wants that , to conquer her ability and prove that even with something like she is ( they are ), it’s posible to live and be happy. have a family of her own, yeah she is that cheesy. - What catches their interest first when meeting someone new?:  Their actions and the emotions that they are carrying on their back.  - What do they value in a person?:    sincerity, willingness, enthusiasm. - What themes do they like talking about?:  a lot of phylosophic stuff, deep topics -- as well to casual things of life. about people and society. - Which themes bore them?:  excuses and avoidance -- people who are willing to drop everything and give up.

- Did they ever went through something traumatic?:  the attempt of suicide of her mother. and the successfull suicide of many of her peers. - What could possibly trigger them?:  any sort of threat or violence towards someone who does not asked for it. esp. her peers and family. - What could set them off, enrage them?:  Immoral ones. Those who are willing to stomp on others just to success in their goal. - What could lead to an instant kill?:  is not killing, but touch a hair of her family and you are done. same for her friends and protegees.

- Is there someone /-thing they hate?:  gorgers, suicide, her tired face. - Is there someone /-thing they love?:   her family and dear ones --- to a fault. rabbits or anything related to it.

Is your Muse easy to approach?: YES / NO. - Best ways to approach them?:  any way is okay as long as is not threatening. - Where are they usually to find?:  during the night, in the streets -- during the day is either her workplace or her house. maybe a park near her apartment/location if she is feeling stuffy.

Something you may still want to point out about your muse?:  she is not a good person , she is willing to manipulate people and is constantly trying to impose her morals. but she is also very sensitive even if she doesn’t show it --- Nora does look tired for a reason , and one of them is because she cries a lot . 

CONGRATS!!! You managed it, now tag your mutuals! ♥

Tagged by:  @skyvar​ Tagging:  @batoushoujo​ , @obtainedloss​ , @lorddiiavolo​ , @evanesense​ , @sunpierce​ , @necrotrigae​ , @maljefe​ , @ethaeria​ , @calpio​ , @veiliisms​

[speechless-illusions]

What if we got the story of the rooftop trio animated in season 5 of BNHA?

*Disclaimer before starting: This thread comes from my intense desire of seeing the Vigilantes Spin-off made an anime, and my desire to see the story of Shirakumo animated because I like to suffer. It's written in a "theory" way but I don't want to imply it's true or it's going to happen, because even though I'd love something like this, I feel it is too far-fetched and surely not going to happen. But what if...? So please keep in mind that I'm just joking, and not being really serious about this (..or am I?)

First of all, I'm going to explain how a strange thought like the possibility of seeing the story of the rooftop trio animated in season 5 came to my mind.

I'm obsessed with both bnha and vigilantes. I started reading vigilantes because I wanted to know more about aizawa and I heard that his past was explained there, but I ended up falling in love with vigilantes and I consider it something you must read if you really want to understand the bnha world more. To me, it is not only a spin-off, it's a very important part of the bnha story specially because I can't see someone feeling the same impact while reading bnha story (specially after the Kurogiri reveal) if they haven't read vigilantes too.

My best friend also loves bnha, but she hasn't seen the 4th anime season yet, and hasn't started reading the manga. She is going to start reading the manga soon and I told her "Keep me updated about what chapters you're reading because I want you to stop reading bnha when you reach a certain chapter, switch to vigilantes, read the whole vigilantes (or at least until Aizawa's past arc) and then come back to read bnha"

I want her to do this because I feel the Shirakumo/Kurogiri reveal doesn't hit you that hard if you haven't read the rooftop trio chapters of vigilantes. I mean, I read them before and the reveal got me the most shocked I've ever been. I can't explain how I felt but I couldn't close my mouth and I kept saying "No way... No way... Oh god..."

When do I think she has to switch from bnha to vigilantes? In other way, when do I feel like it's the perfect time to read vigilantes while reading bnha?

Well, this is a personal preference but I think it should be after the joint training arc. Why? Because of this scene:

It's (if I'm not mistaken) the first time Shirakumo is mentioned in the bnha manga. It's chapter 217, the last chapter of the joint training arc, before the meta liberation army arc starts. (Keep this in mind because it's important later in my analysis)

I think this dialogue is perfect, because it makes you wonder who that Shirakumo is? And it's when I think my friend should switch to read vigilantes. She will eventually read the Aizawa's past arc, meet Shirakumo, cry about him like I did, and then come back to read bnha, starting the meta liberation army arc. She will read that arc, which is very long and focused on the villains, so she will probably forget a bit about Shirakumo. This means when the reveal of Kurogiri happens at the start of the Paranormal liberation arc, she will be shocked.

I didn't like the idea of telling her to read Vigilantes right before the reveal because then, the moment she saw aizawa and mic going to Tartarus, she would be suspicious about that what is going to happen could be related to that. But making her read vigilantes after chapter 217, gives her like an amount of 40 chapters of the manga to read before the reveal. In those 40 chapters Shirakumo is not mentioned, so she will focus on other things, not Shirakumo, and when the reveal comes it will blow her mind.

You're probably wondering why I'm telling all of this when the title of the post is about season 5 of the anime. Well, here it comes:

Yesterday I was curious about what parts of the manga we will probably see animated in season 5, so I went to the My hero academia wiki and started wondering about it. Here's what I thought:

First, I thought about how the pro hero arc wasn't finished in season 4. In the anime, they cut the season when Endeavor wins against the nomu. But in the manga, Dabi appears right after that and then we see the first glimpse of double agent Hawks when both of them talk in private. This means the season is going to start with a few chapters left of the Pro hero arc. Watching the equivalent of manga and anime chapters in each arc, I came to the conclusion that usually in the anime, each arc is more or less half the chapters of that arc in the manga. The Pro hero arc has 10 manga chapters, and so far, we've had 2 anime episodes. So this means we could still get at least 2 or even 3 anime episodes about that arc...

Then, it comes the Joint training arc, which has 24 manga episodes. If we follow the previous estimations, it could be like 12 anime episodes (maybe less, since that arc has a lot of fights and fights are longer in manga than anime)

And then it's the Meta liberation army arc, or my villain academia, which is 23 manga chapters long. So maybe 11-12 chapters, but as I said before, battles tend to be longer in manga so maybe less anime chapters.

This seems correct. Adding those numbers we could get a 25 chapters season. But now let's imagine that my estimations are not really correct, and also the battles turn out to be much quick in the anime, so they end up with less chapters than the ones I've estimated.

Let's imagine they get only 23 chapters, for example. But they need 25...

Even if they could start the next arc and cut again the arc at the end of the season like they did in season 4, it would be weird. I mean, the Meta liberation arc is only about villains, and I imagine they're going to make that second half of season 5 only about villains. Opening and ending villain themed included. So it would be weird if the last one or two chapters of the season were from the following arc, because they would come back to the heroes for like two chapters after being only focused in the villains for 10 chapters... It would feel weird. It would be better if they end season 5 at the end of the meta liberation arc, when the LOV wins the fight.

But... What if they need more chapters to reach 25? What if the first half of the season needs those 2 chapters? (I see it more likely that this would happen to the first half and not the second, because the meta liberation arc would perfectly fit half a season in my opinion)

And this is where my brain said "What about... Animating the rooftop trio story?"

Okey, okey, I know. It sounds really far-fetched. I told you at the begining. But let me explain.

Remember what I said about my recommendation to my friend: that the perfect moment to switch to read vigilantes (and so the rooftop trio arc) would be at the end of the Joint training arc (which as I have analysed, would be in the 1st half of season 5) and before reading the meta liberation army arc (which will probably be the 2nd half of the season 5). That is the spot where I personally think it's the best moment to learn the story about Shirakumo to make the Kurogiri reveal most shocking (as I said, you would have at least like 20 anime chapters to "forget" about Shirakumo and then the reveal would be like "WHAT?! THAT SHIRAKUMO?! THE ONE FROM LIKE LAST SEASON?!")

Now, let's talk about length: if we cut out all the parts related to the vigilantes main story (because it wouldn't make sense to animate for example aizawa talking to Koichi), the arc about Aizawa's past (or Rooftop trio arc) is more or less, 6 manga chapters long. It has a battle, and some extra scenes that could be also cut, so let's say you could fit that story in maybe... 2 anime chapters. Only 2 anime chapters. Wow, that would come handy if you need to fill a 2 chapters gap in an anime season, don't you think?

Animating that arc right after Aizawa mentions Shirakumo at the end of the joint training arc would not only be the perfect spot in the bnha story to do it, but would also have the perfect chapter length to fit in the 25 chapters limit of season 5. It would give us the necessary info about Shirakumo to feel really really shocked about the Kurogiri reveal. I mean, it will surely hit harder if you know the whole story and how his relationship with aizawa was, than if you only know the few glimpses the bnha manga gives us about it.

Do you need another reason to get crazy about this? Well, remember this:

They literally put Shirakumo in the last ending of season 4. They put there a character that we were not supposed to know nothing about until season 6. Why hint him so soon? Well, maybe to hint something that could happen in season 5...? Something like... An arc about who's him and his story with aizawa and mic?

I'll let this right here. I'm not saying they are going to do it. I'm saying I would love to see this happening and that in my head IT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE

[skaylanphear]

Y’all need to calm down about the Season 3 teaser

Honestly, I wasn’t gonna get into this drama because I think it’s kinda silly anyway, but the more I see about it, the more ridiculous it gets.

Y’all are getting WAY too defensive of Marinette in the new teaser. Like, a lot of her character arc has led to this moment. We KNEW Lila was going to come back and that it was likely going to have to do with Adrien. Marinette has displayed jealousy issues on multiple occasions, as well as an avid hatred for liars. This show is also centered around the will they/won’t they aspect of Adrien and Marinette’s relationship, so relationship drama is expected. This episode is likely the catalyst for a lot of those things. 

Really, it was handled rather cleverly in that it backed Marinette into a corner she couldn’t wiggle her way out of, as she typically is able to do. As I have said in previous metas about Marinette’s character, her strength lies in manipulation (“resourcefulness” for those of you who are made uncomfortable by my word choice). Be it as Ladybug or her civilian self, her first step in solving any problem is to manipulate the situation around her until she gets the outcome she desires. As Ladybug, this is her literal super power. As a civilian, it sometimes works in her favor, it sometimes doesn’t. In Reflekta, her first attempts to manipulate the situation failed, so she instead manipulated the photographer with her charms. In Anansi, she played a trick that allowed her to cheat so Nino could win, in Reverser she created a situation so that she could attempt to control the outcome, etc, etc... And while I salute the writers for using this quality as both a good and bad thing--and for displaying so acutely what it’s like to be a woman in a world where you are often disregarded--it also means that putting Marinette in a situation where she can’t manipulate what’s going on is going to frustrate her. Add in the lying and you’ve got a recipe for Marinette being backed into a corner (something that is, arguably, very, very difficult to do). 

If we look at the premise, it actually relies a lot on what has happened already in the series. Only Marinette and Adrien are going to be aware that Lila has a tendency to lie. It was also established that Lila has regular contact with the class via the Season 2 finale, which means that the students have probably talked to her regularly. They do know her a bit and as far as they know, she’s a kind, generous person who leads an exceptional life. So when she finally comes back with some silly story about saving Jagged Stone’s cat and thus has hearing damage, it’s really not that far of a stretch that the other students would believe her given the things they’ve believed in the past. 

So if we look at it subjectively, what we have is a nice girl coming back to school who suffered an injury and has asked nicely that the class accommodate that, only for Marinette--who the class knows will go too far to get close to Adrien, who will lie even if she apologizes later, and who will go to extreme lengths to achieve what she wants--to question this, thus upsetting Lila and making her--Marinette--look like a huge jerk in the process. 

You might say, “well the class should know better.” What should they know, exactly? That even though Marinette is strong and willing to go the extra mile for others, that she can’t also make mistakes and be mean? Max knows she can be, even if she apologizes later. The teachers know she tends to make up excuses to get what she wants. Sabrina probably doesn’t have the best opinion of her. Alix clearly thinks her obsession with Adrien is weird. Nate likely feels embarrassed over what her plan made him think. Like, she tries, she really does, but not everything turns out the way she wants, nor does it always come across as though she’s a saint. Adrien said she was like their everyday Ladybug, not the rest of the class. On top of that, his statement is compounded by the fact that he actually KNOWS Ladybug and has called her out on her faults multiple times before (his own issues aside). So yeah, Marinette is generally a good person and she puts up with a lot and she goes the extra mile, but she has her own selfish desires and her own skewed idea of what is acceptable. 

Let’s be frank, Marinette crosses a lot of lines. And even if that attitude leads to her doing good things, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s comfortably prepared to do whatever she wants even if someone else tells her “no.” And she learns, of course, and does better, and usually turns things around, but that part of her personality is still there. And being Ladybug, more than likely, has only encouraged this part of her.

So now we have the situation in season 3. Lila is basically, at this point, another up and coming Chloe as far as her levels of nastiness, except that Marinette is the only one who knows that (and Adrien, but he likes to see the best in everyone and so likely believed what Lila said in good faith). The issue that Marinette is the only one that knows is only compounded by the fact that she can’t defend her attitude toward Lila because that would mean she’d either, one, have to admit she’s Ladybug, or, two, formulate some sort of lie that would be the equivalent of what Lila did, which isn’t exactly a good idea given what Marinette is angry about in the first place (also, that’s a shitty thing to do anyway). The rest of the class have nothing but good opinions of Lila. Even Alya has had nothing but good things to say about her. Add in the fact that a good majority of the class KNOWS Marinette has a past of acting ridiculous when it comes to Adrien and it’s not a far stretch that they’d be irritated with her behavior. To them, it looks like Marinette is, once again, trying to manipulate the situation to her advantage so that she can serve her own desire to be near Adrien. As the audience--who arguably knows a lot more about Marinette as a person than the class--it’s easy to say “well, she’d never do that,” but the class has a different understanding of her personality. She’s a well-intentioned young woman who fights for what she believes in and who sometimes goes overboard in order to get what she wants, especially where Adrien in involved. It’s not that far of a stretch for them that she’d behave this way if Adrien was introduced into the equation. 

If anything, the fact that the class knows Marinette better only adds to the reasons they’d react the way they did. I work in customer service with my sister and if a customer came up with a disability and she had the audacity to question that IN FRONT OF 15 OTHER CUSTOMERS, I’d probably give her a nasty look too. Marinette--whether she was justified or not--came off as a brat and was attempting (again) to humiliate Lila in front of everyone (be it that she deserves that or not). After all, everyone else in the class clearly has no problem with Lila, so why would Marinette? They probably know Marinette doesn’t know her, because Marinette likely hasn’t said anything contrary in an effort to keep her identity safe. After all, when Lila was first introduced, she was antagonistic toward Lila before she’d even known her--Alya was present for that. 

Marinette’s entire attitude comes across as an exaggeration of her own previously poor behavior, whether that’s justified or not. Which likely only makes her all the angrier, as SHE knows this, but there’s nothing she can say to clarify that to anyone else. 

And quite frankly, I’m not even that mad at Alya for volunteering Marinette’s seat for Nino. No, it wasn’t the most polite way to go about it (she could have asked first), but Alya has gone above and beyond for Marinette and her love life, setting up all sorts of situations and encouraging Marinette whenever she can. I don’t think it’s that selfish of her to say “I’d like to sit beside my boyfriend” given all that she’s done for Marinette. Yeah, it’s kind of shitty that Marinette now sits in the back, alone, but if it wasn’t her, then someone else would have had to do it. And sometimes in classrooms, you just sit where you’re told to. I’d also like to add that, upon learning Alya was then sitting beside Nino, Marinette was not upset. Rather, she was simply upset she had to sit in the back.  

Honestly, even if it hadn’t been labeled a mistake, I wouldn’t even be that mad at Adrien for glaring at her. Adrien takes a lot of what people say at face-value and is often more forgiving than he should be. It’s not completely out of the question that he might believe Lila, given what other things he’s willingly believed. Adrien WANTS to believe in people. Not only that, but he has firsthand experience being on the sour end of Marinette assuming the worst because of circumstances. No, I don’t think he holds it against her, but she was pretty brutal toward him despite the fact that he tried to explain and that she didn’t even know him in the first place (origins). 

Marinette is a strong and wonderful character, but she has faults and while I likely would have handled a lot of things in the story differently, this episode premise isn’t as bad as people on this hellsite think it is. Yeah, some of the opinions that come from the Defend Marinette Squad are justified, but this episode isn’t even out yet and everyone is up in arms. That aside, I don’t really see how anyone is that out of character, except for maybe Alya. 

I think that a lot of people who view Marinette as this perfect, blameless flower are angry that her faults are being exploited so as to put her in a difficult position. A position that also reflects badly on her, despite the fact that we, the audience, know she’s not at fault. Honestly, that’s probably the whole point--that we as audience members feel the same frustration that she does. She’s our hero, so we hate it just as much as she does when someone is telling lies and it reflects badly on her. It has been well-established that Marinette is emotionally sensitive to two things--lying and Adrien. OF COURSE the writers are going to use Lila to exploit that. And they’ve set it up that Marinette has been just as faulted in the eyes of the other students as she has been virtuous. I doubt any of them now hate her, but I also doubt that any of them are surprised at the concept of Marinette becoming so emboldened as to act against another student so as to get a chance with Adrien (there’s a reason she gets compared to Chloe all the time, guys--there are parallels there whether we like it or not). 

Like, that’s literally the plot of Gamer, despite the fact that Max was a whiney little bitch about losing. 

Marinette can be a good person and still make big mistakes.