#though tbf he's also been through The Horrors

[nogoodsheepstealing-greatgrandma]

HOTD with book ages vs show casting

It's interesting to think about how fans perceptions of characters would be radically different if we had book accurate casting.

Emily Carey (aged 18-19 here) is perfectly age-accurate to play an 18-year-old Alicent.

Meanwhile Paddy Considine, at 48, was pushing it a fair bit to play a 29-year-old Viserys.

For reference, Tom Glynn-Carney was 28 while filming Season 2.

So not that he's my fancast for young Paddy or anything, but let's be real. You would all be writing self-insertxVizzy fics. Alicent would have no more agency in the marriage if Viserys was his book age than his show age, but fan perceptions of Viserys would definitely be different if he was played by a young and attractive actor (no offense of course to Paddy, he is serving Targaryen realness etc.)

Or look at Fabian Frankel. He would have been around 27/28 while filming season 1. You were shipping Alicole back when Emily Carey was still in the role, after all.

And then there's Rhaenyra, who was 8 during the events of the first episode, and 9 when Viserys married Alicent.

Milly Alcock, roughly 21 here, is just a tad older than 8-year-old Rhaenyra.

Amelie Child-Villiers would have been 12-13 while filming Rings of Power, so older than Rhaenyra at the very beginning but can pass for younger.

To anyone who thinks a child Rhaenyra wouldn't have been interesting to follow, er... have you read ASOIAF? There are quite a few prominent child POV characters, you may have noticed. And Alicent doesn't automatically become uninteresting if she's 18 rather than 15... or 40.

I mean I get it, Rhaenycent shippers, you prefer the sapphic dynamic in HOTD... and it is absolutely fine to prefer something! But it isn't inherently deeper or more interesting. It isn't objectively better. BFFesbians can be just as one-note as you claim step-mother/daughter relationships are with the wrong writing, and step-mother/daughter relationships can be richly complicated.

Now, I've already gone through the absolute horror that is book Rhaenyra and book Criston

Criston Cole was 22 when he met a 7-year-old Rhaenyra, 23 during the events of the first episode. So Fabian at 27 (pictured here) is a a few years older, but his age gap with Amelie is the same as Criston and Rhaenyra. And yikes. This is why 'Criston the Dad who Stepped Up' posts make me throw up in my mouth. (Also it is so weird that Criston is never recast after the time jump even though the actor is younger than Emma D'Arcy - Criston is 47 during the Dance).

And yes, Daemon has a similar age gap with Rhaenyra

Daemon was 24 during the events of the first episode. Though I would add that Daemon wasn't, contrary to popular opinion by greens, grooming Rhaenyra when she was a young child. There isn't really any indication that he paid particular attention to his 8-year-old niece - he was mostly sulking on Dragonstone in a relationship with an adult Mysaria for starters, and then he was off in the Stepstones till Viserys and Alicent's 5th wedding anniversary tourney.

From then, no I'm not in favour of a 30-year-old Daemon and a 15-year-old Rhaenyra... I am not in favour of childbrideros. But considering he'd been absent from her life between the ages of 8-15, and there is no indication he ever paid any attention to her before then... it is less creepy than Criston Cole being Rhaenyra's shadow from the age of 7, with rumours of a sexual relationship beginning at a point when she would have been 12-14.

By Westeros standards Daemon unfortunately falls into the 'culturally normalised and could have a whole lot worse' category (and tbf, considering the popularity of ships like SanSan...). This isn't a pro-daemyra or anti-daemyra post, I'm not really going to go into their relationship or whether or not it's healthy here, just clarifying that Daemon isn't the Humbert Humbert of this story - that would be Criston (not being Humbert Humbert of course is a very low bar).

And when it comes to the casting and how that impacts audience perceptions... Matt Smith at 39 was too old for both 24 and 30 year-old Daemon (though exquisite in the role of course).

Considering how his haters condemn Daemon for his actions in episode 1 while excusing Aegon for rape and Aemond for murdering Luke (and burning alive many many other children)... Let's have a look at an age-appropriate actor for 24-year-old Daemon and see if that changes anything.

Ooh would you look at that, Ewan Mitchell at 24 while filming S1.

Or Tom at 28 during S2, just two years younger than 30-year-old Daemon. With a face that wins hearts over rape. You telling me if Daemon was his book age you wouldn't be excusing his actions? You wouldn't be taking all the rape apology arguments Aegon stans use and applying them to Daemon's seduction of a 15-year-old Rhaenyra?

Especially if you still had him acting alongside 21-year-old Milly, who was supposed to pass for a 14 to 18-year-old Rhaenyra.

Hopefully though no one would be excusing a younger Daemon played by Tom Glynn-Carney if he had been put against an actual 14/15 year-old like Evie Allen. Who would have been a more age-accurate (and disturbing) casting for Rhaenyra...

Oh wait, how old was Maddie Evans (Dyana) while filming S1 again? 15? Never mind.

Casting teenagers in such scenarios is of course a difficult business - above all the first priority is to protect underage actors. Milly was well-suited to convincingly play Rhaenyra from early teens to late teens, and it's impossible to constantly re-cast for absolute age-accuracy across the time jumps. But it does impact perception - while the first priority is to protect underage actors, the casting of older actors to play teenagers does contribute to society's perceptions of teenage girls in particular as mature adults, rather than children.

Meanwhile the attractiveness of adult male actors - and the younger they are - does indeed shape what some audiences are willing to forgive or excuse. Reactions to Daemon and Viserys by fans (especially green fans) would be radically different if they were cast with their book ages - sorry to say it greens, but your objections to their characters is in large part due to the fact that you are not attracted to DILFS (or leprosy!). And even if we still aged up Rhaenyra like the show does when she first met Criston Cole, reactions to him during the Dance would be vastly different if he was played by a book-accurate 47-year-old. Again, Fabian Frankel is younger than Emma D'arcy.

Of course, the bar for age accurate casting is clear in the way we were supposed to accept Olivia Cooke playing Tom Glynn Carney's mother (they are two years apart).

Because again if Alicent had been 18 at the start of the show and 41 at the start of the dance she would have ceased to be an interesting character or something I guess. Because no one wants an older woman (ew gross!) as the series co-lead alongside a non-binary lead. And because mother/stepdaughter relationships are inherently one-note while BFFesbians are inherently rich, deep and complex... apparently. It has nothing to do with, you know, the writing quality.

Final Round!!! Aegon and Aemond picking fights with kids

Harvey Sadler here is 8/9 years old when he played young Lucerys. Which makes this baby face 2-3 years older than... a six-year-old Book Jacaerys when 10-year-old Aemond was 'pummelling him savagely'.

So yeah, "3 against 1" - the oldest of those 3 being younger than Harvey Sadler. And honestly, 6-year-old Jace has my undying respect for the sheer balls on him to go up against a bigger kid twice his age and size. Does he care that Aemond has just claimed the largest dragon in the world? No, he pushed over his baby brother!

"But it's more interesting if Aemond and Jace are peers" Maybe. If HOTD gave Jace equal screentime and character development perhaps. But they didn't. Any value added by making the antagonist interesting and sympathetic is cancelled out if the cost is ignoring the protagonist or making the protagonist boring (especially in a family civil war drama!).

"But sympathetic Aemond is much more interesting" I am not arguing against making him sympathetic. He is still a kid here, and he still has Aegon to bully him and earn him pity points and trigger a cycle of bullying as he takes out his grievances on others who don't deserve it etc. You don't need to age up his victims or remove sympathy or screentime from them. Sympathy doesn't have to be zero-sum.

Leo Hart was 13 at the time of filming, so the perfect age to play a 12-year-old Jace during the dinner scene where a grown-ass Aegon picks a fight with him over asking Helaena for a dance. Also an accurate age to play a 13-year-old Luke when Aemond murders him.

Elliot Grihault who played teenaged Luke was meanwhile actually closer in age to Book Jace during the dance than Harry Collett (no offence Harry, you still made a more believable teenager than 24-year-old Jon Snow did).

And lest we forget Aegon's true nemesis... 13 year old girls on tiny dragons 'no bigger than a horse'. No offence to a 24-year-old Bethany Antonia, but Shani Smethurst at 12 was perfectly cast to play Baela during the Dance and absolutely would have been the next Arya if this show didn't hate black girls.

But hey, at least we got adult Baela saying "I am blood and fire" while the script struggles (*cough doesn't bother) to find her anything to really do. That sure is an improvement over book Baela acting out, causing chaos, kissing kitchen boys and crying to save them from punishment, grieving alone on dragonstone after the gullet, trying desperately to get the adults around her to believe her suspicions about Grey Ghost, wrecking Aegon on her tiny dragon, being forced to grow up quickly under captivity and fiercely defending her rescuers from execution.

[callsignfangs]

141 boys as gamers. Yep.

Price:

• Totally the rager.

• Insists the games are stupid and he couldn’t care less about them, he had important work, afterall

• Has to get a new controller/keyboard every few weeks and has multiple controller-sized holes in his walls. Probably even broken a couple mics unintentionally.

• Still plays almost exclusively competitive multiplayer games, tho. Might occasionally dip his toes into horror, challenge, and even collection-based games.

• Unleashes every foul word in his nasty vocab on anyone he dislikes in a game (probably had his mic taken away /j)

Ghost:

• Patience of a saint.

• Tells everyone he doesn’t care about gaming, and tbf he probably cares the least out of the four

• Probably played getting over it with a straight face for funsies

• Also needs to get new equipment often, but just because this dude manhandles it to hell.

• Picks games at random. Probably by the steam homepage. Maybe by requests/recommendations. Does tend to prefer open-world and sci-fi games, though. Also has a very intricate minecraft world he’s spent hundreds of hours on.

Gaz:

• Chaotic as shit

• Always looking for secrets and manages to practically destroy half his game files. He goes looking for an extra coin he missed in a hard to reach cubby two stages back and ends up glitching through the floor twice, skipping three bosses and deletes the save file all in the span of maybe five minutes

• Mans will absolutely feast on any game with decent lore, but actually prefers cosier games like unpacking, minecraft, stardew valley (heavy on stardew). Will happily explore adventure/exploration type games, as well.

• Sits in the weirdest positions when gaming. Mate has both legs straddling the monitor and has folded himself in half like a fleshy garden chair, managing to somehow play the game upside down with maybe a sliver of screen /j

Soap:

• Can’t take shite seriously. Imagine like. A stream with markiplier, wade and ethan as one person. (Gaz is his bob /j)

• Mostly horror games, probably.

• Has gotten banned from multiple platforms bc of this mans OUTRAGEOUS swearing. He pulls out multiple languages, from Scottish to, like, Arabic (ty Farah 😇)

• Speaking of, I think he’s learning a couple of languages. This was bc he accidentally came across a game he really wanted to play that hadn’t been translated to English, so he started learning bits to play it, then he realised he actually really enjoyed learning languages and opening up new opportunities to interact with both games and fans :]

• Most in tune (besides maybe Gaz) with the slang and references his fans make. I like to imagine him saying ‘the girls are fighting’ whenever there’s any fights in a game giggle.

• Has fallen asleep on stream multiple times. Like, he decides to do a gaming marathon and straight up falls asleep in the middle of it. Also if this man doesn’t go to bed at, like, exactly 8pm he will fall asleep right then and there. He’s an old man at heart.

• Makes the stupidest faces. A plot twist had his jaw absolutely snapping to the floor, eyebrows peeking over the clouds and hands on his head. I bet he’s done it so much his jaw clicks.

—

Sosoooo, hey. Im alive 😇😇 Sorry for randomly vanishing, ive had a bunch of personal stuff to deal with and honestly my motivation died a little. I pinky promise im working on asks n stuff 😚 I might stick to more hc-y posts for a bit just to like. get accustomed to everything again. So yaya 😚

[zqmbiescorpse]

GLADIATOR, PART 1

johanna mason x female reader

a/n: i'm listing tags below because they give a good description, include important information and this was originally intended for ao3. for the first part and for some of the second, johanna isn't there because i wanted to do some world building and you, the reader, has somewhat of a backstory and a last name but this is not at all a self insert i promise.

summary: after winning the 72nd hunger games, quite a name had been made for you in the capitol - quickly becoming a favourite across panem. because of this, naturally, you find yourself thrown back into the horror of the games due to the 3rd quarter quell, representing district 5 one last time. though, not all is lost, fellow tribute and close friend, johanna mason of district 7, finds herself in the same position.

tags: graphic depictions of violence (sometimes), johanna mason, katniss everdeen, peeta mellark, finnick odair, johanna mason x female reader, catching fire, mockingjay part 1, mockingjay part 2, 72nd hunger games, 75th hunger games, gore, eye gore, detailed descriptions of eyeball squishing, disabled reader, female reader, reader is missing an eye, reader is missing limbs, missing fingers, traumatic events, blood, choking, johanna mason needs a hug, rebellion, slow burn, mutual pining, scared of feelings, fluff, angst, making out, kissing, confessions, peeta has his prosthetic leg, maybe smut idk, tension, awkwardness, wlw, i love johanna so much

warnings for this part: gore, detailed descriptions of eyeball squishing (i'm sorry), murder, traumatic events, choking, suffocation, stabbing, blood (tbf it is the hunger games)

wordcount: 1.01k

(part 2) (masterlist)

Weapons long disregarded, tossed away into the sand, leaving you both unarmed - only your fists, or what you had left of them, could be used to beat the other to death. He was bulky, and taller than you. Still, you managed to have him pinned to the floor once more, with your hands wrapped tightly around his neck, slowly crushing his windpipe. You hated every second of it, the fear in his wide eyes looking up at yours, a disturbed red creeping into the whites.

Your grip wasn't as tight as it could've been, with only eight fingers, the middle and index missing on your right hand, your dominant hand. Hell, the pinky on your left was hanging on by what must have been a thread, only a red string of skin. You decided it was seven fingers remaining, desperately thinking of anything else aside from the spluttering boy beneath you. He was so close to death, you knew it and so did he. 

With nothing else to save himself, the male district one tribute reached for your head, both his dirty, grazed hands placed on either side. They were large, nearly covering your entire face, and undoubtedly strong. You became more panicked, unsure of what he was going to do next, however, as you attempted to apply even more pressure to his neck, he also began to squeeze.

An eruption of agony shot through the right side of your skull, his thumbs burying deeper and deeper into your eye. For a brief moment, your grip weakened due to the unbearable burning sensation coming from the socket, which had been invaded by the boy's chipped fingernails, stabbing and squishing at your eye. This gave him enough of an opportunity to sit upright, gaining back control of the brawl, continuing to push even harder; really just digging his thumbs in as hard as he possibly could.

You were screaming now, the sounds causing your throat to feel sore and rough, though, how could it compare to the searing pain you felt elsewhere? Your eye was well out of place, edging forever inward, your vision on the right side now completely black, blinded. He started to scream too, echoing those of a primal being on a path to victory after suffering through a tormenting battle. The force was so intense you began to feel an uncomfortable sensation build up rapidly besides the excruciating pain; your eyeball was going to pop. Burning hot blood was gushing down the side of your face, running down all over your fellow tribute and falling down into his mouth, coating his teeth and his tongue with a thick red ooze. 

You couldn't take it anymore, removing your hands from him in a desperate attempt to save whatever mush would be left in your socket in hopes of a salvage. Unfortunately for you, reaching up to claw at your own eye left you perfectly vulnerable and open. With one last push, he stuck his fingers as far as he could, such an immense amount of force you could've sworn the boy was moments away from crushing your skull - poking and prodding at the sensitive nerves within your damaged socket.

Another strangled screech violently came from within you as you felt a squelching burst trigger pure anguish, wet tears and warm blood trickling together down your face - mixing together to cause a disgusting mess. Too absorbed in the torturous suffering, you failed to remember the other blood thirsty tribute still present, who was now preparing to finally take your life.

You stumbled back, a new sense of disorientation upon you as you tried to put distance between yourself and the approaching Grim Reaper, the boy taking his time getting closer, a weird expression contorting into his features; the realisation that he was enjoying this made you crumble. Shuffling backwards frantically, one hand digging through the sand, the other glued to where your eye should be whilst the crimson substances flowed between your three fingers at an unstoppable pace.

So much pain. So much exhaustion.

The whole fight had been intense and raw, seemingly going on for hours. Scrapes and gashes littered your frail, disfigured body and your bones ached beyond belief. If that smug fuck hadn't made his way towards you any quicker, your chances of bleeding to death were a lot higher than dying by his hands. It deeply disturbed you how that same boy was powerless beneath you just minutes ago, terrified and so desperately wanting for his life. Then, there he was, smiling like a lunatic, caught up in the victory that hadn't yet arrived - seeming overjoyed to witness your suffering.

An early celebration, indeed. Part of you, at that moment, thanked any higher power you could think of, eternally grateful that the Careers couldn't help but be arrogant assholes who view themselves as undefeatable kings and queens. In the time wasted by the boy from district one strolling his way over to you, you had managed to come across your weapon, a long sort of sickle, sticking out of the sand not too far behind you.

You waited, fingers twitching at your side. You didn't want to reveal the weapon concealed by your back at the moment, but rather, let the foolish boy get closer. He should've ended you when he had the chance.

Mustering all the strength you had left, you ignored the throbbing that was pounding against your skull and swiftly grabbed the curved sword, hand tight around the handle as you lunged forward, knocking the tribute back down into the sand - beneath you for the final time.

Not an ounce of hesitation prevented you from what would soon haunt your every thought. At that time, you had no needs other than the one to end this, every sensation in your body numb, apart from a blazing desire in the pit of your stomach. The sharp blade plunged deep into his chest over and over and over again until the cannon boomed in the far distance, signalling his death. You had won. 

[buildarocketboys]

Crimson Peak notes @tumbleclub

So I took notes throughout my rewatch so under the cut is basically a live blog of my thoughts and feelings - spoilers for Crimson Peak throughout since I refer to what happens later in the movie from the start.

The main things I want to say about this movie though are 1. It's such a masterpiece of gothic horror. The aesthetic, the story, the characters, the relationships, the SYMBOLISM...all so on point that it almost feels TOO on the nose at times (except it doesn't because I love it. It's perfect, mwah). And 2. I love all the characters. They're all so compelling, they're all, in some ways, sympathetic (yes even Lucille...god forbid women do anything etc etc). I just love watching these fucked up (and less fucked up, shout-out to Alan, you the real MVP) relationships play out, it's so *chef kiss*

Anyway, here's my play by play thoughts. Warnings for incest, murder, horror and gore (although I don't actually talk about the gore much, it's a fairly gory movie when it comes to the murder/attempted murder and such though)

- 'a parasite with a title' go off Edith

- also she'd prefer to be Mary Shelley because she died a widow. She's so metal

- her relationship with her dad is so cute. Shame he dies

- Thomas coming in dressed in black from head to toe...

- also immediately clocking Edith and flirting with her...he knows what he's doing

- the red clay is fucking genius

- London... Edinburgh... Milan 👀

- her dad sees right through him from the start...we have to stan

- For being who are only trying to help Edith, they sure are scary

- LUCILLE!

- THE NOT QUITE LIP KISS

- He really is pushing all Edith's boundaries (and society's boundaries) from the very beginning huh

- "I don't want to close my eyes. I want to keep them open." is an interesting character quote for Edith

- Love Alan indulging her ghost obsession.. besties. But also him mentioning ghosts being minerals in the earth... very interesting..

- from my fiancée @judasisgayriot - "love that this is supposed to be a sunny day but the colour palette is so washed out and dull"

- Lucille ultimate goth queen. Feeding the butterfly to the ants... (Also just noticed that on the DVD cover a butterfly is sitting on Edith's hand...we love symbolism)

- "it's mine I want it back" about the ring. Because she took it from their mother when she killed her but also because SHE'S Thomas's wife

- Dad sees RIGHT through him

- "thoroughly break her heart" and then he comes for her writing. God. Yeah. Fuck him. But he clearly means it "perfection has no place in love" which makes it hurt all the more

- Love that the obvious way to kill him is to either use the razor or drown him in the sink, but no, Lucille fucking bashes his head in on the sink. Kind of badass ngl

- The thing about Edith is she really WANTS to be a protagonist in a ghost story, which is probably why she ignores alllll those red flags

- That said, I DO think she should have picked up on some of them, Jesus girl

- "you've been married a while" + one of the previous wife's dog as soon as they arrive...

- This house is a fucking wreck Thomas!! This would not pass health and safety regulations!! Girl run!

- He really has to stop himself from kissing Lucille. Then definitely smells her

- The bloody pipes... honestly you could be forgiven for thinking it's too on point. Not me though, I love it. The more obvious symbolism the better

- I love the fact that Thomas chose her BECAUSE he actually fell in love with her. Which Lucille CAN'T know (and TBF idk if Thomas even knows himself completely yet. He's playing a role but also he's not)

- GREEN GDT BATHROOM!! One of the jankiest ones, but it's still (crimson) peak!

- I love the bloody mist effect on the ghosts, like they're still bleeding but they're in gaseous form now so so is their blood

- Lucille creeping through the keyhole...

- Edith's fantasy of their childhood vs their Flowers in the Attic reality

- "I don't want her to miss a single thing we do" STAN LUCILLE

- Love her trying to get the lowdown on whether Edith and Thomas have fucked yet

- The huge moths thriving as opposed to the butterflies being eaten...

- Thomas like "You're not like other girls"

- Thomas's workshop and inventions are nice and make him more sympathetic. Definition of poor little miaow miaow. Terrible but also sad and pathetic

- Also these ghosts are fucked up, they definitely didn't just die of being poisoned or whatever.

- Surprised her father's ghost doesn't make an appearance...all the ghosts are women (except for Thomas right at the end)

- Edith: "Has anyone died in this house." Thomas: "Duh, it's a really old house. Americans 🙄"

- Oop...crimson peak mention...too late for poor Edith

- Ohhh shit she's coughing up blood (gdi Lucille giving her poisoned tea)

- I love that she tries to commune with the honestly pretty fucking scary ghosts. She's such a horror girlie

- Oh this one took a cleaver or something to the head

- I'd just stay in the post office and refuse to leave tbh. It looks cosy

- Love that Edith is a writer girlie too

- She's SOOOOOO fucking mad that she slept with him, she almost brains Edith with a fucking saucepan

- Ooooooh the bloody footprints from the clay

- Also Edith doing her little detective bit, stealing the keys

- The basement with the clay vats is so creepy. I mean so is the entire house but yeah. God. Perfect place to hide a body

- She's so mad that he wants Edith to see it

- Lucille DOES love to trauma dump on Edith lol

- Love that this is the first time Thomas explicitly acknowledged the poison tea and tells her not to drink it

- "We stay together. Never apart." "Never apart."

- "You couldn't leave me. You wouldn't." "I can't."

- ALANNN

- Also love that they're talking about the murders, sure, but also the incest. This is a conversation they've had multiple times. And in this one thing, Lucille sees it clearly. Thomas doesn't, or doesn't want to, wants to believe that he can make this work with all three of them, somehow (boy you're dreaming)

- Oop here we go with the sibling fucking!!

- Lucille is so possessive and victorious lmao

- Love that Edith immediately jumps to "you're not his sister" because incest does not compute

- Alan knows her so well so he knows what she means by her mother and crimson peak

- Yassss Thomas stab him non-fatally! King shit (lmao)

- Wow burning the book...cold

- "None of them ever fucked Thomas"

- Poor incest baby 👶

- THE HORROR WAS FOR LOVE

- This speech is everything to me.

- IT IS A MONSTROUS LOVE AND IT MAKES MONSTERS OF US

- "You should have seen him as a child. He was perfect." (Vs perfection has no place in love 👀👀)

- They're so sad honestly. I can't help but feel sorry for them. Even Lucille

- "you lied to me" "I did" "you poisoned me" "I did" "you told me you loved me" "I do" AGGHHHH SO GOOD

- The fact that he thinks they can all start a new life together. Oh honey.

- Interesting that ghost Thomas is white to match the snow instead of red or black like the other ghosts

- She literally heard you the first time Lucille! God! (Badass of her actually)

- Edith's speech with Lucille's ghost playing piano at the end...so good

[syrupsyche]

Chapter 2 of "Even If There Are Monsters" Director's Commentary

I wrote a Les Mis × Dracula AU! You can find the commentary for Chapter 1 here.

Now onto Chapter 2!

Combeferre as the Dr. Seward-figure is kinda funny to me 😭 because I feel like they'd have HATED each other. And is a big reason why I didn't have a Renfield character either; not only would the Renfield side plot taken way too much time, but I also wholeheartedly believe that Combeferre would not have been an asylum director 😔. So a regular doctor he is!

Speaking of Combeferre, that implied One-sided Combeferre/Enjolras tag is a callback to Lucy's rejection of Dr. Seward. Didn't include the scene bc its fanfiction; readers would already be familiar with Combeferre’s personality! No need for any humiliation /lh. But for those curious in the lore of this AU, Combeferre had indeed confessed to Enjolras years ago, only to be kindly rejected. Clearly their friendship has not suffered, but Combeferre will always be a little fond of him. As we can see in the later chapters.

There's a lot of build-up around Enjolras's illness and his relationship with Grantaire, firstly bc yay exR ❤️ and secondly, I've always loved the parallel between Arthur/Lucy and Jonathan/Mina, and though both couples deserve happy endings, A/L was simply just the right person, not enough time trope 😔 and so I wanted to gun for this parallel even further by having exR and marisette go on the same "journey": one side of the couple suffering/missing, while the other is frantic with worry.

Anyone familiar with Dracula would also know I've completely mucked up the vampire lore/logic/timeline of the OG novel too. Well, with Renfield gone and me not wanting to basically regurgitate plot, I figured I'd just create my own vampire lore 😭 They can come in uninvited now apparently! Yay!

Prouvaire as the Van Helsing-figure also means that he is now their equal instead of a High Ranking Professor with Multiple PhDs Etc. Thus, he has a personal stake in the matter from the very beginning, making him hesitate when investigating bc surely his friend couldn't be going through what he thinks he's going through...right? And also makes for a great friendship with Cosette! I love writing the both of them together; they would have had tons of lovely conversations in canon 🫶 too bad they're left to face the Horrors here.

This was a shorter commentary than yesterday's but tbf, this chapter is quite short in generally. Was unsure where to cut it but decided to do so just before the next rising action (sleepwalking outdoors!) Hope you guys enjoyed nevertheless :D

Come and find the next chapter's commentary tmr!!

[a-student-out-of-time]

...That sounds a lot like Danganronpa 3 tbf, that just had shock value after shock value.

//Well, DR3 was bad for a number of reasons, but the biggest was definitely the fact that they spent so little time, if any, getting you invested in the characters that the only way to illicit any kind of emotional response was to make their deaths as disturbing and gory as possible.

//It’s the equivalent of playing a sad violin to make a scene feel sad. Bad writing that needs some sort of a crutch to hold it up, rather than allowing the emotions of the scene to carry through. DR3 had its focus in the wrong areas and didn’t deliver on its promises, and that’s why it needed to go the extra mile.

//And I still barely remember Ryota is supposed to exist, even though he got so much focus. Probably because I don’t care all that much about him or his frankly pointless inclusion in the story. They try so hard to make you care about him and feel bad for him, but I don’t care because I don’t like the idea that it was all because of his stupid brainwashing anime. It’s a lazy cop-out.

//To put it another way, if you didn’t know anything about DR while watching DR3, the only emotions you would’ve felt would’ve been disgust and horror as a result of basic human decency. As a fan, you can add annoyance to most of the deaths too.

//LINUJ didn’t have that problem. He had the cast, he had the skills to make us invested and he could’ve told a competent story. He even had an engaging hook with the idea of the Voids, 5 masterminds in the cast who were working behind the scenes.

//But his focus also fell in the wrong places, and rather than carrying on with that momentum, he instead got lost in this scene of needless conflict and tension, violence and cruelty that made the second half of the game genuinely hard to sit through most of the time. When they’re not gross and shock-baity, they’re just aggrivating.

//LINUJ and DR3 both have those flashes of brilliance that the rest of their stories needed, but sadly never got.

[grannycharles]

Hi, so ive seen you post about this minceraft roleplay thingy (?) (I actually have no idea if it is soley that there was some talk about acting being good in the last video and it confused me even more) and was wondering what the hell is the plot? Like what is it about? Ive skimmed some posts and they are always very wild and now the curiosity got the better of me. Also I think it ended? At least some posts sounded like it did ^^;

So take this as your free pass to rant about it and tell someone who has no idea what the whole thing is about :3

I hope you are having a wonderful day!

oooooooooh hehehehehehe you are enabling the demons >:)

i assume you mean generation loss, because that's basically been all i've been reblogging the last few days.

it is not minecraft roleplay (but i can see where the confusion is coming from bc the creator, ranboo was first known for his mcrp on the dream smp)

generation loss is a livestreamed horror series created by twitch streamer ranboo "ranboolive" the beloved. they're really cool, funny as fuck and stream a lot of different indie horror and story games! (and minecraft, when it's time for him to lose another mincraft championship lmao. L)

anyway, the first part of genloss aired in three shows last week: on wednesday, friday and sunday. really messed up my sleep schedule due to time zones, but oh god it was worth it. of course the vods would've waited for me, but there was ✨audience participation✨ during the streams and i was not going to miss that. and also ranboo had been talking about this project and hyping it up for almost 2 years. so yeah.

and holy shit they delivered. tbf i was really perplexed when it started out all sillygoofy, but the slow descent into horror, the realization of what was truly going on, hit like a ton of bricks. that tone shift was pulled off So well omg.

the plot / premise / whatever is as follows: (fictional) media corporation showfall media is premiering a new type of liveshow with audience participation! there is a Hero, who the audience has to guide through different rooms and puzzles that pay hommage to old point-and-click escape room games and the saw movies among other things. and it is hilarious! however, something seems to be wrong with the transmission, it glitches out at times and the characters act strange. the fourth wall seems more fragile with each passing minute of the show.

ranboo and their crew made a really cool meta commentary on what it is like to be a "content creator" (god i hate that word sm). if you share your life online, where exatly is the line between "show" and "reality"? are your decisions really your own? what happens to you when the show ends?

he got quite a few of his fellow streamers and friends to star on the show, and even though i'm only tangentially familiar w most of them, the points genloss was making came across. everything that "ruined the immersion" was very much intentional. like, ranboo was 16/17ish when they started on yt and twitch, and they're 19 now. that is BONKERS to me. i'm so fucking proud of this guy, he made a really cool, impactful thing and i hope there'll be more of this series.

okay i rambled a Lot. hopefully that clears up some stuff! if you want to watch the show, the vods of all three shows are available on twitch.tv/ranboolive and also on yt on the ranboovods channel. it's about 6 hours total :D triggerwarnings include gore, unreality, probably some more i cant remember right now, just a lot of psychological horror fuckery.

and if you want me to ramble more, feel free to poke me again! because god do i have Thoughts tm about genloss. and yeah the entirety of episode 3 left me shook and rewatching the beginning with the knowledge you gain makes it so much worse :) in conclusion i am Very Normal about this thanks for enabling me

[aninsecurewriter]

Scream VI - My thoughts - SPOILERS!!!

I loved this movie. Tbf, could be because I'm just a simple horror movie fan who adores the structure of the Scream movies. However this was just so fun and I had such a blast watching it, just a great movie!

And the fact that it's out of Woodsboro and in New York was amazing! The people did such a good job with the use of this new setting, with the alleys and especially the subway. It was so good!

With so many theories that this killer would be Stu, and then Mindy even mentioning it in the movie. My gosh... They better not do it. Matthew Lillard's performance in the original was amazing and if they bring him back I think it might be ruined and my heart will never forgive them for that. Let him die, with his amazing performance as Stu living on.

This killer was so incredibly brutal! It was both amazing, terrifying, and so out of character. So like... Good and bad for me. It made the killer far more menacing and scary, especially with the mask, but it also kinda takes away some of the comedic effect that makes me love the first scream and the clumsy killings of Billy and Stu.

I sorta have mixed feelings on the reveal of the killers. The family, and how it revolves around Richie, such a whiny little jerk. So kinda annoyed that he became the catalyst cause he was such a null killer in the last movie.

HOWEVER my jaw was on the floor at the sight of two ghost faces on screen, and how happy that made me! Idk if it has happened in 2, 3 or 4 but this was the only time I noted that both, in costume, were there and it had my jaw on the floor.

They really shouldn't have pulled so many punches on killing off the main characters. The "core four" were still alive by the end, how silly is that! And even Gale is alive after teasing her death. I kinda get it after killing Dewey last movie, but still don't tease it and then not follow through. Tbh though, actually just annoyed that the same four managed to survive. And it's the second time that Chad has "died" but then "oh he's still alive" and that's just a bit silly and annoying to me. Wish they would've killed more of them, would've been interesting.

Ngl, after this movie I absolutely want Sam and Tara to be the killers in the next movie. Idk how they'll believably do it, but my gosh I want it. I want Sam to be the bad guy one day, with her fathers mask as well. Purely because they're trying hard not to do it but it's like Chekhov's gun. It's there, on the table. Stop toying with it and shoot it! Please!

(the killer waiting for the subway)

[theophagie]

Like. Goddd. I don't even know where I'm going to go with this just. Uaaaaaggggghhhhh

Over the years I've always seen people say that "Araki stated that if Dio had known about Giorno, he would have raised him himself", and I've never cared to look into this to see if this is true or not (I don't really care to) (Definitely not tbh lmao), but in my heart......... yeaah.................. but not in the fanon cutesy "mudad" way. All the power to y'all but I'm not about that life we play by incestuous horror rules here

Thinking... thinking about pt1 Dio vehemently hating his father for his abusive behavior, for having been the cause of his mother's death, for his alcoholism, to the point of poisoning him...... thinking about pt1 Dio forsaking his initial plan to overtake the Joestars because he could not bring himself to swear innocence "on his father's honor"...... thinking about pt1 Dio berating himself for drinking because it made him just like his father...... This was my premise to say that in his mind Dio has a very clear image of what a father shouldn't be, which doesn't mean that he wouldn't be horrible as well (he would. 100%), but at least I do think that he wouldn't/wouldn't have put Giorno through Dario's brand of abuse...

... He would have his own brand of abuse anyway!!! lol. Egotistical, self-centered, manipulative man who considers everyone else except two (2) people to be inherently inferior beings ends up with a kid that's crazy powerful and looks rather similar to him, whatever shall he do. Thinking about him raising Giorno to be his ultimate tool vs Giorno (*is himself*) trying to cunningly keep up with him and get around his orders and desires... I think that they would be in an eternal state of tension, neither of them capable of lowering their guard or turning their back to the other but also unwilling of completely letting go first. And let us not forget about Dio having access to Giorno's blood......

And won't someone think about the Jonathan factor!!! Jonathan!!!! The Jojo to begin all Jojos!!!!! The only man Dio truly and fully respected and saw as an equal, as someone worthy of becoming one with him, of sharing his destiny... the someone whose body he stole. And had sex with. And had a son with (multiple sons tbf, but I don't care about the other ones. Rip). That son being Giorno, who inherited his looks and ruthlessness and Jonathan's birthmark and spirit...... Giorno being born from sick, necrophilic, twisted love and then made to be the receiver of that love by virtue of being a possession of Dio (in his eyes), so similar to him, and of being the living proof of his union with Jonathan......... I'm sick. Sick to my stomach. And until now I've been speaking while keeping the "Dio raises Giorno" scenario in mind because the power imbalance and Giorno's struggle to not let his core be shaped by Dio would be craaazy in that case, but their canon non-acquaintance has me on my knees too...

I've mainly been talking about Dio's pov because 1) I like him more than Giorno 2) more material to work with since he's so present but. Thinking hard about Giorno growing up with a neglectful mother and a physically abusive stepfather... thinking hard about Giorno keeping a photo of Dio in his wallet even though they've never met and he knows nothing about him... In his wallet!!! His Idea of Dio is always close to him!!!! Araki why would you not go anywhere with this besides telling us that it's a thing!!!!!!!!!! It makes me crazy, because it immediately speaks of his longing to know him............ to the point of crossing some lines should he have the chance to meet him, in my mind? To the point of crossing some lines should he have the chance to meet him!!!!! But also, Giorno is really similar to Dio in some aspects, so I feel that the scenario where they meet later in life is the one in which they'd be able to "appreciate" each other the most. A more balanced distribution of power with mutual respect and manipulation attempts and toxicity......

Why must I be haunted by thoughts of two characters that don't have one (1) canon interaction to their names... one of them is a fave and that's cool but I've never even really cared that much about the other one outside of his being #un fratello......... *Stanis voice* it's because of the potential horrors, Cristina

[iloveyoutotype-moonandback]

CW: gore, abuse and rape mentions.

So I recently played the original Tsukihime visual novel (it’s being remade so I might as well check out the original right?) and I wanted to talk about some of my general impressions and thoughts on it. 

TL;DR for people who don’t wanna read any spoilers (or if you just don’t wanna read through my long-ass post): I thought it was good and there were lot of aspects and themes that I found interesting. I did have problems with certain aspects of it however, and I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone since it’s really violent and...well just see the CW for yourself. But if none of that deters you, then I think it’s worth checking out!

So, like I said above the cut, I enjoyed it overall. The story was interesting, with the focus being on vampires and some more information on the church for example (fate tends to focus more on the grail war, so other aspects of the Nasuverse are inevitably glossed over or not mentioned at all). This also had a psychological horror aspect, with Shiki having dreams where he kills people just to give one example. But then there are certain indications that what he’s seeing is real, leading him to believe that he could be unconsciously killing people. And he doesn’t WANT to see these dreams, he actually hates them to the point that there are a few scenes where he straight up avoids going to sleep altogether. The problem is that he has no idea how to stop seeing them, or even what’s happening to him. Also other characters often hide stuff from him or lie for his “protection”, so that really only adds to the uncertainty (this dude kinda gets gaslit a lot, come to think of it). 

I remember seeing some people say that the artwork for this vn isn’t as good as what you get in fsn, which makes sense given that it’s older and thus earlier in Takeuchi’s art career. And I can see what they mean, but there’s legit some good CG’s in this one. Also it does this interesting thing where instead of drawn backgrounds, it has real life pictures that have been edited/stylized. I can’t quite articulate it, but it gives the vn a different vibe that really works for it imo. I like it.

In terms of characters, I gotta say that Hisui was one of my favorites. I guess I just kinda relate to her in a weird way. She’s quiet, isn’t super expressive (or at least it seems that way initially), and doesn’t like being touched. I used to be like that (I’m still like that sometimes but I’ve gotten a lot better), though obviously she has....very different reasons for being that way. But at that point my brain had already gone “that one” with her.

Speaking of Hisui, I really like Kohaku too. If we’re comparing Nasu’s works here, I feel like she’s kind of comparable to Sakura. Mostly in a thematic sense, seeing as how she’s someone who appears normal enough but there’s a lot brewing beneath the surface that we don’t fully see until her route (and by that I mean she suffered sexual abuse from Shiki and Akiha’s father when she was a child). I don’t want to compare them too much tho, since they are different characters at the end of the day. It’s just something of a common thread I noticed. Though with Kohaku, you do actually get a glimpse into what her deal is in Hisui’s route (mainly in the epilogue), which then leads right into Kohaku’s route. 

Outside of the two maids, Arcueid was another favorite of mine (if Hisui is my favorite, I’d say Arc is a close second) because she looks elegant at first but then you realize she’s a fuckin dork the moment she opens her mouth (and I love her for it). Ciel was cool too, and it was interesting to have a member of the church who’s more sympathetic than Kirei Ketamine over there (though as her route reveals, the church is still kinda fucked). I liked Akiha as well. It was really interesting seeing her develop across the 3 “far side of the moon” routes. At first you think she’s normal then op, turns out she’s part vampire and is actually pretty fucking powerful! That said, I did have a few problems with her route...

...which leads me into one of my criticisms of this vn. Akiha’s route was my least favorite out of the 5. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, it is not because of Akiha herself. Akiha good and cool. The issue here is Akiha and Shiki...basically fall in love and also fuck at one point. Did I mention that Akiha is Shiki’s little sister? Because she is. “Well Shiki was adopted so it’s not technically incest” don’t make me tap the sign:

Like yeah, I know “romance happens between Shiki and the main heroin of the route” is a common thread here but I’d like it if they made just one exception. Sibling relationships are good too, you don’t need to resort to romance. 

And, well, now that it’s been brought up already: this vn has sex scenes! And they were just as bad as I expected! I did read through one or two, but after that I just started either skimming through them or skipping entirely. A lot of them don’t really effect the story much (except for like, one which is actually kinda important) so most of them aren’t really worth it unless you just want to laugh at the weird lines. Not a big deal but I felt like it was worth mentioning at least.

Moving on, Tsukihime did have some problematic elements outside of the whole incest thing. Fate/Stay Night had its own issues and obviously Tsukihime will have them too. Tbf to Nasu, he did say he later regretted some of the stuff he wrote in this early period. It’s good that he’s grown as a person and a writer, because looking back there are definitely a few lines here that are really fucking bad. One that stuck out to me was this line from Arcueid’s route where Shiki is arguing with Ciel and then he just suddenly says something along the lines of, “if you try to stop me from going, I’ll rape you right here”. It’s right the fuck out of nowhere too. And like, the reasoning was that he could barely walk at that point so he just came up with some super threatening thing to say, but it was just really unnecessary. 

Actually, I think the same could be said about some of the sexual violence depicted. Like, there’s a whole recurring thing where Shiki will just suddenly get possessed to murder someone (because his vampire step-brother basically lives in his mind rent-free) and he mentions the arousal he gets from doing so. At several points he even acts on these impulses, and winds up getting hard and cumming as he cuts someone up into pieces. It’s...really fucking weird and I’m not sure what it adds by being there. It adds a creep factor for sure, but ig it’s a question of how necessary it actually is. Some of it is integral to the story, as is the case with...certain aspects of the Arcueid and Kohaku routes for example. So don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying remove it entirely, I’m just questioning some of the extra stuff that doesn’t seem totally necessary to me.

So all in all, while I did have some problems with it, Tsukihime isn’t bad by any means. Like I said before, I think it was good overall and I enjoyed it.  You can acknowledge the problematic elements of something, but still otherwise like it. But yeah, certainly not for everyone, but still worth playing in 2021 I think.

[trashcatsnark]

1, 14, 19, and 30 for the ask game. I'm curious, especially about the last one

Ahhhhhh thank you so much for the ask, I really appreciate it, it was so nice to wake up to, thank you! 1. what radio station(s) do you listen to?

Personally, I switch around the radio stations a lot, i think the Vexelstorm(?) and Dirge are the two I flicker between the most. I like the rock music and having a chance of hearing Samurai tunes. One time black dog started to play while I was cruising the highway and it just had such a cool vibe; if only I hadn’t immediately crashed into a wall. 

My V though, doesn’t actually fuck around with the radio much especially if someone else is in the car. She’s deaf, has been since around the age of 9, and while she uses hearing aids and can hear, even “listens” to music in her apartment (though she takes her hearing aids out and feels the music rather). But when she has hearing aids she sometimes feels overwhelmed by being able to hear, so she’ll keep music off to quiet, and when someone is in the car she prefers the radio off so if they talk its not two loud sounds at once. Ironically, given this, when she takes her hearing aids out to “listen” to music, she prefers the loudest rock music because it provides the most bass and vibrations to feel it. 

14. what quest/sidejob/gig made you happiest? (again, multiples allowed)

God, I have so many I can think of; I like the rescue gigs a lot, like saving Bugbear, Wakako’s favorite netrunner, Hwangbo, the one where you save the doctor (there are actually technically two doctors you save in two different quests i realized). Those make me really happy, because they’re kind of a reminder that the work V does is not all thievery, revenge, and dealing with dark shit. I love the monk mission, um seeing that poor monk with the forced implants made my heart shatter, so being able to help him and his brother made me really happy.  The Ballad of Buck Ravers made me grin because its one of the ones thats just pure fun and seeing how Johnny interacts with V. I love the boxing missions, especially with Cesar the Valentino and that I can choose to help him out because lbr he needs the cash and car more than V does. Delamain and his quests makes me happy. The only other one I’ll say (tho I do like a lot of gigs and side missions) is probably a specific Cyberpsycho one, where the game just takes a sudden hard dive into horror which I love. Cause its like a maelstrom cult and you’re investigating corpses in a bloody pentagram, as you start hallucinating the cyberpsycho, who then comes out of a ice filled tub in the center. Like it has an energy to it that I just fuck with. 

I’ll project and say my V is in a similar boat of liking the rescue missions, she likes feeling like she can do some good in the world despite being a merc. She also likes the ones that are avenging people or helping folks; killing corpos who fucked people over, tracking down the raw bd of a boy who was murdered to help solve the case, and things of that nature where it feels like she might actually be doing something good.  19. how do you feel about revenge? is it a worthy fighting to achieve or something that sucks you in too deep?

This is all on my V, cause I feel weird talking about my personal feelings of revenge. Given her job, V has seen a lot of kinds of revenge and is often asked to be the one to deliver it. And there’s revenge she gets and revenge she doesn’t get. She’s actually far more selective with what work she’ll do and isn’t afraid to blatantly go against what she’s suppose to do in order to do what feels right. Which sometimes pisses off her fixers, but they begin to understand that they just shouldn’t send her certain jobs. But she’s all for revenge against people who genuinely did wrong; because her logic is if she lets the corpo agent who killed an entire nomad family for scientific trials just go, the corpo will do it again. She sees it as taking them out before they can hurt others, like cutting out a cancer in society. But when it comes to shit like, go kill a guy for loving a girl in a rival gang???? No fucking way, she’s not killing someone for falling in love, eat a dick, she’s telling the kid to run. In terms of her personal life and revenge, she struggles a bit more, because when you add in your own feelings it feels a hell of a lot less black and white. And she sometimes struggles with the fact that her feelings don’t always make sense, she’s definitely not morally opposed to revenge and despite usually being more calm, there is always kinda this underlying layer of anger in her that when something makes that come to the surface she loses herself in it. She could have killed Dex, would have if she had gotten the chance, because he brought her into this mess, she vouched for him to Evelyn, trusted him as much as he supposedly trusted her; then everything went to shit and he threw her under the bus. She’d kill for that, for that hurt, that loss, that pain; it’d be revenge she’d get happily. Her nomad family for example though is more complicated...cause despite everything...she loves them, but they’re actively trying to kill her, that hurts but she can’t bring herself to be angry... or vengeful...just hurt. 

30. does Rogue Amendiares scare the shit out of you or are you weird

Controversial take, I guess I’m fucking weird. I’m not scared of Rogue, yet, I feel I should preface. And I do project this on V, so take it as the answer for both of us. I feel like the two biggest things that contribute to Rogue’s ability to scare/intimidate is her social standing in the fixer community (which comes with power of course) and something Johnny says when you go to talk to her, that she can see right through you, don’t waste time lying. And the first aspect of that, doesn’t mean shit to me. Like, while I know Rogue was badass in the past and eventually is actively doing shit later on in game, the fact of the matter is fixers aren’t shit. Don’t get me wrong, most of them are cool people, and its nice to be hooked up with clients. But they’re getting a large chunk of cash for being a middle man who’s too big of a baby to go get their hands dirty. Like, fixers aren’t scary to me even if they’re powerful ones, like what, you gonna send someone else to axe me while you sit around??? terrifying, kill me yourself, coward. 

As far as the other aspect of why Rogue is propped up to be intimidating, the idea she has built in bullshit detectors. I/my V don’t bullshit a whole hell of a lot at least not in the current context of how I’ve interacted with her (haven’t done tapeworm missions and her stuff with Johnny yet tho tbf). Like, i don’t have a reason to lie about needing Hellman, so why the fuck would I? However, if this bullshit detector also helps her pick up on emotional shit, like if my V tries to hide her feelings about stuff...thats gonna suck and be scary if Rogue like picks up on what V is really feeling. Because emotional vulnerability is a thousand times more terrifying than a fixer who could make V disappear with a snap. 

*Small fun fact when I first did the Panam mission, Johnny told me I had balls to go ahead and do the mission without telling Rogue first which I didn’t even know I was suppose to do but also why the fuck should I, she sent me to do the damn thing, I gotta call her everytime I sneeze too????? How is that ballsy????

SORRY ONCE AGAIN FOR SUCH A LONG RESPONSE, BUT THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK, I APPRECIATE IT SO MUCH!!!!!

[zenosanalytic]

4/20/19 HSE 8

Ok back at it

MEAT 15

Cool Fight; Not terribly surprising.

MEAT 16

Dirk’s as much Rose’s father as Rose is his Mother. I guess maybe it’s more convenient, psychologically, to choose a causative direction and stick with it, rather than accept the Mobial nature of their genesis, but for some reason it bugs me this keeps getting overlooked.

Dirk’s over here talking about how right he is all the time and I dont think he was ever right about anything even once in canon(aside from certain aspects of his talk with Dave, and choosing not to kill Hal) XD The only “plan” of his to work was the one re: entering the Session, and 1)he outsourced it to Hal and 2)it only worked because he managed to improvise his way through every aspect of it failing to go the way he thought it would, and even that probably had more to do with their entry being part of HiC’s plan to use them, so she wasn’t trying to wipe them.

Another Thing: I dont think the Ascent Differential is Aspect so much as Personality.

Another Another Thing: That Rose, when discussing her life-long fear of knowledge as a corrupting and ruining outside force(this being a person who always felt her mother wasn’t her mother, in some sense, and responded to that fear by rejecting emotional intimacy with said mother), doesnt see the connection between that life-long fear and her fear that Ascending will be bad, damaging, and corrupting, is Notable. Perspective continues to be important, and lack of self-awareness continues to hamstring ppl in this narrative.

MEAT 17

I feel like this new narrative belligerence on Dirk’s part isn’t going to work out too well for him with a person as aware and recalcitrant to narrative meddling as John. It’s going to be John and WV all over again. This is also a wonderful example of how personal flaw and specificity isn’t solved by Godhood in HS, and can really trip you up; basically all of this, including the “impotence” applies to Dirk, too, when others disagree with the direction he’s trying to push them in, and this whole rant may be meant, ironically, as an example of dramatic irony: basically, that Dirk’s rant about total control and knowledge reveals the limits of his knowledge and will be followed by examples of how limited his control is, which he can’t be aware of, but which the “impotent” audience will.

MEAT 18

...And, almost immediately, John’s objecting to the narration and doing things before Dirk “writes” him doing them(the sigh).

MEAT 19

“So yeah, I’m gonna allow it” Notice how he asserts power over situations he does not, in fact, have power over.

Which is kind of an interesting dynamic to bring up in the context of authorship? I mean: in the realm of nonfictional works an author can’t “make” things happen, only alter for their audience what DID happen. In some respect this is being written as equivalent to that dynamic; the simple admission in M17 that Dirk is misrepresenting events also admits those events happened another way than he’d prefer, meaning it’s also an admission of his lack of power over actual events. And, of course, all the other things I’ve been talking about, and the fact that everyone’s “character” is rooted in natures established in the original work. But in a fictional work an author’s creative power is absolute, and this is a fictional work; though I suppose a derivative or transformational one, which accounts for the shortfall. Another interesting aspect of this is that the “Author” is presented as a Narrator; Narrators merely describe what happened, they don’t create it. I was going somewhere more concrete with this but it popped out of my head >:T >:T

Ok so other aspects of this: I agree that Jane’s been established as a pretty ambitious person, but she was also always a pretty moral person and the way she’s going about this so far doesn’t seem to be in keeping with that part of herself. And also: she literally wants to create shortages, and thus the suffering shortages will cause, for... what? Nostalgia? Because she think she can run Capitalism better than the adults from before all this?? Because Hierarchy is Neat??? Seems like a whole handful of really petty, selfish, and juvenile reasons to me. Also one guaranteed to cause social conflict; I doubt a civ that’s never known material want is going to react too well to sudden starvation and financially-manufactured forced-labor(which, lbr, is what most work in our world is).

Obvsl, as a snake and member of the storied gens Atheris, I agree with Roxy&Calli that patriarchal human concepts of gender are not the end-all-be-all of identity, but what really jumps out to me here is Roxy’s description of the nature of their love for, and previous sexual interest in, Dirk which I find really True. Like: the sentiment of wanting to see children of a person because you really like that person and think they should continue, or of thinking having the kids you might have with another person would be pretty interesting. Also that loneliness is a hell of a drug 8T

I’m trying to figure out why this conversation would be circumstantially simultaneous with The Furthest Ring being “destroyed”, but I got Nothing :T :T :T

MEAT 20

So yeah, Jade’s merging with her Alt!Selves, not too surprising since it was heavily foreshadowed in Endgame.

Given that Sessions are located IN the Furthest Ring, and Sessions MAKE new multiverses, I find it being made out of “negative potential. The absence of a future” pretty ironic :p I wonder if the tentacle hair bit is a nod towards the Horror-Terrors, and theories about them being Players? Rose and Dirk’s view of Ascension would seem to suggest HTs might be SUCCESSFUL players who eventually abandoned their universes out of fear of the damage they’d do misusing their godhood(as it doesnt solve your personal problems), rather than the old HC of them being failed Players.

MEAT 21

My theory about “The Economy” being code for sex doesn’t stop feeling ever more confirmed by this narrative :|

Dirk’s anger at the idea of anyone not thinking he’s right about everything is Palpable on this page. Also I’d just like to note that This:

Is being said by a person currently in the middle of metaphysically manipulating a friends towards her worst impulses(and also potentially some amounts of self-hatred, give her thoughts re: femininity) for the sake of establishing a dictatorship through which she, as his agency-dimmed puppet, will enforce his personal politico-philosophical preferences regardless of what anyone else thinks and he’s saying it about people who just said This:

which is to say: a bunch of political pluralists who are NOT seeking to impose their morality on anyone but rather to establish a system where EVERYONE can SHARE their moral understanding of policy issues and come to a consensus decision on them, within the context of a political society DEFINED by the equality of all as political actors. There’s just so much that’s wrong, weak, and easily dismissable about Dirk’s argument here. Not to mention his obvs, undisguised, physical disgust for trolls >:T

And he’s doing all this Purely because, given his fixation on “Winning”, he wants to Win. Like: he’s not actually even pursuing what he considered good policy; he is, literally, doing this all for Pure Ego, which he has the gall(and lack of self-awareness) to accuse others of acting from. And this self-deluding buffoon is a person who believes himself “Ascended” and therefore possessed of a “higher” and “clearer” perspective on matters above their “petty” concerns about, oh non-humans being allowed to live as they like, or practice any political agency at all, and all ppls being spared unnecessary and pointless suffering due to entirely manufactured shortages. So much (real, actual)Irony, of so many types, in all of this, all at once.

An aside: I am really liking the political-mindedness of these Epilogues so far; really playing to my Interests uwu

The bit about Hybrid babs and shipnames is funny, and it doesn’t read like a shot at the fandom to me at all; it’s more a joke at Dave’s expense given the obvs distress Kanaya’s in and his inability to stop making the situation more awkward(itself prob the result of Bro’s neglect/abuse)

Oh hey look: it’s Dirk the “Omniscient” being distracted, caught unawares and off-guard by the actions of others, unable to handle the role&work he’s chosen for himself(ie “out of his depth”), unable to split his attention between even just two conscious ppl at once, and not knowing what others are thinking. Given this and his handling of Jade’s thoughts in the last section, I kinda feel like it’s less he can actually sense the thoughts of others, and more that he gets some kind of inkling or hunch, or maybe that’s it’s purely just him guessing(that’d fit real well with his comments on Roxy being “inscrutable” to him), or even just having an awareness of the plot he is narrating(and thinks he’s writing). Of course it could also be some kind of Heart thing; not really even access to their thoughts at all, but a sort of awareness of their Agency? Like: Heart is The Self and The Self is expressed through Agency, so he has, in some way, developed an awareness of “Self-Action”, which is to say, Agency? Kinda like how Dave “feels” Time and Jade “feels” Space and Rose “feels” Relevance. Which, just as an asnide, would be something super-basic powers-dev wise, since Dave started having a sense of Time way back in the early Acts, long before godhood. Though I can see how Dirk developing an awareness of OTHERS intentions(and feelings, potentially, given Heart’s other associations) would seem like a big step for him, given how self-absorbed he is.

Ok that’s it for this one I think. I know I’m not being terribly kind to Dirk in all this but, tbf, he’s being kind of a huge snide Dick in basically every respect, and I also don’t have a lot of Chill in me when it comes to 1)arrogant people or 2)manipulators (:T

[callie-the-snarky-geek-blog]

RvB16 Episode 2 Review: Incendiary Incidents

(Old Blog Repost)

Last time, not a lot happened other than going out for food, Donut unlocking his true potential as a contortionist, and alien Norse Gods are a thing that exist. Nothing that unusual for this show. We got the setup, so what’ll they do with it now as the pizza quest continues? Lets find out!

Overview

To the shock of no one, Grif crashed the ship. He rushes everyone through the insults and sidenote to Kai’s… so does she actually have regular contact with their mom? Makes me really wonder about where Grif stands with his family. Anyways, good news is the pizza place isn’t far off! They just have to go through some ominous woods! Grif however opts to go through the less than ominous woods which would take longer, but isn’t… well, ominous. This gets Simmons attention. Enough that, as they make their way through, he pulls Grif aside to find out what his deal is. My shipping heart is happy to see Simmons noticing that something’s not right with his not-boyfriend and getting to the bottom of it… please tell me I didn’t accidentally write an innuendo,

So you knwo that ‘new science’ Grif mentioned last episode? Well here’s that new science: laziness… sort of! So when stuck on the moon (I THINK he called it Iris? So… after Michael and Lindsay’s daughter/Geoff’s goddaughter? AWW!), Grif found a book that Jax left behind about story structure. He found out about ‘incendiary incidents’, which are incidents that jumpstart a plot essentially I tried to look it up to see if that’s an actual term… and all I got was a bunch of fire safety websites. But I’ll take Joe’s word for it and say it’s an actual term. So Grif cutting off Jensen before, crashing the ship deliberately as it turns out due to a message from Locus, and avoiding the ominous woods is to avoid getting into an incident that would jumpstart a plot, and therefore lead them into another adventure. IDK if this is clever fourth wall breaking but… wow. WOW. Even Simmons gets chocked up about how much effort Grif put into doing nothing. It’s counterproductive when you think about it, but still!

Unfortunately for Grif, he IS in a webshow with plot structure and the powers to be aren’t going to let them get out of it that easy. Caboose discovered a glowing lake. And a figure emerges form it. Now the episode summary describes a thought to be deceased team member returning. Oh my Gd, that… that’s crazy! It could anyone! But why?! Tex? Flowers? Shelia? Church? Alpha Church? Yellow Church?! The guy who got killed during one of those 360 videos?! The possibilities are endless! It could be anyone! Who knows what kind of shocking twist it cou.. it’s Donut. Who we all knew was alive. Yeah… well I’ll give them this, it had me hyped for the episode.

So Donut… Jesus Christ. No, seriously, Donut is now Jesus. He walked ont he water for crying out loud! Donut says that he had been taken through time and that they have to go into the past to stop a great danger… and absolutely no one buys it. Now to be fair, Simmons makes a good point later. They already went through a time travel story and it turns out it was just a simulation. So them being skeptical about this happening again, especially since only Caboose saw the body horror last episode and I imagine that he forgot by now, is pretty understandable. But yeah no one buys it and Grif feels relieved about avoiding the story bomb… until Simmons points out that refusing the call is an actual story trope. See Grif? There’s no escaping!

So the Reds and Blues make it to ton and… yeah, it’s been totaled. After talking to Jeremy Dooley… I-I mean a cop… no, I’m 90% sure that was Jeremy. Anyways! After that, Donut tries to convince them of time travel again, and this time has actual proof. He has this new gun which he uses to open a portal to a few days earlier. How did he get this? Well to put it simply, after he got hit by Loco’s machine he got sent back in time and his body got wrecked, but God found him and fixed him. IDK if he means the Christian God or one of these alien Gods, but they’ve picked the Reds and Blues to be his time traveling warriors and has sent back four more guns for them to use to go back in time with. The portals can also only fit two grown humans at once.

Unfortunately, things go downhill quickly. So you guys remember the four armed guy from the trailer? Well the sky goes dark and he appears… oh sorry, typed that wrong. I mean that SHE appears. Yes everyone, we have a legit female villain at last!! I couldn’t get her name, but part of it sounded like Callie… which is my name… UGH… anyways! Yeah, she starts causing chaos and destruction. Donut uses a bubble shield, telling the others to use the portal guns and get away. They comply with everyone pairing off: Cabbose and Lopez, Tucker and Sister, Grif and Doc, and Sarge and Simmons. Donut remains behind, though I assume that he’ll follow them later. Huggins, who has been following the group, chases after Grif and Doc by going through their portal. We follow Sarge and Simmons as they land in… what looks like ancient Egypt. Could be wrong, but we’ll have to wait and find out cause that’s the end of the episode!

Review

Well all of that escalated quickly!

So… gonna talk about Grif first! Cause yes, he’s getting a character arc! I mean I guess it could have ended here since his plan failed, but since Huggins went after him and Doc we could get something on that front. Anyways, so I was right and Grif is actively trying to keep them out of getting into adventures. To the point that he’s putting effort into maintaining laziness… that’s the kind of logic I expect form this show. It wasn’t how I expected it, but I expected it. It’s also good to see that he does still have some hangups from the moon. He seems a lot more… what’s the word? High-strung than normal? He’s also still talking in pretty large bursts compared to normal. I don’t know if that’s just me reading into it too much, but it seems like Joe is trying to show that Grif still has hangups from his self-exile. Which hey, if it means more Grif focus, I am not complaining!

The episode is more about plot than the last one. Last week was the setup, and now the payoff is here. So first, Donut. He was written SO WELL. One of the issues last season was that Donut was pretty much a background prop and they even forgot to put him in scenes. Joe must have realized that this was a problem cause he’s already fixing it BIG TIME. Donut’s had shit happen man! He comes off as slightly mroe serious and competent in a sense that he actually knows the gravity of the situation. But he still feels and acts like Donut, which is good! It shows that he CAN be useful and competent, but without sacrificing his personality. Heck he only spouted out one innuendo and it was just to prove that it was really him. I am digging this new direction!

So turns out that the four armed guy si a terrifying alien goddess of death… I dig it! So someone pointed out that this character is similar to Hela from Thor: Ragnarok. SO it REALLY seems like Joe is basing the villain off Norse mythology… or just the Marvel Cinematic Universe verisons of them. Either way is fine. So I’m not sure if… Kali-Ra I think is her name? Anyways it doesn’t seem like she’s with the same group as Huggins cause I imagine that she would have reacted. I also don’t think that this chick is the main villain since DOnut referred to a ‘devil man’, but still she is terrifying and badass and I LOVE it. We finally got a female main villain guys! Joe is the hero we’ve waited for! Yay! Also Sarge asking he rot marry him, Of course he’d want to marry a violent death goddess… I’ll totes ship this!

Alright, time travel! SO ever since Joe mentioned it in that post a while ago, I’ve… been skeptical. Time travel in pretty much every show tends to be confusing and create tons of plot holes. It even happened in RvB before with Season 3 before Burnie retconned it as a simulation. Didn’t save my head from imploding, but still that’s a fair excuse. Hopefully Joe has a VERY good idea on what he’s doing with this, but I’ve been warming up to the idea since then. It’ll be fun to see the guys in different time periods at least! Form how it looks, Sarge and Simmons may go tomb raiding it it really is Ancient Egypt. I mean Sarge vs mummies, there is no way that cannot be epic!

So the gang is being split up, and the pairs are interesting! Sarge and Simmons sin’t that much of a surprise and tbf it’s been a long time since they had some one-on-one time. Simmons has also grown out of being a kissass quite a bit, so it’ll be interesting to see how that goes. Caboose and Lopez are together… so I’ just going to assume that in every animated RT production, Burnie is just meant to be stuck with/get annoyed with Joel in one way or another. Cause that is the impression I’m getting. Tucker and Sister are together, so I imagine flirting… okay I’m good with that! Hopefully Sister gets some focus to herself that isn’t just Tucker trying to hit on her, but still I’m good with this!

And finally Grif and Doc… that one is gonna be interesting. Grif in particular seems very grudgey against Doc for the betrayal and we just saw Doc save Grif form getting crushed by tackling him into the portal. Which props to Doc for that BTW. Still with that and since they’re 100 on an adventure now, Grif’s not gonna be a happy camper. Also if O’Malley gets active and starts going into Grif’s past issues like in S13, I… imagine that’ll be rough for our favorite orange boy. Also Huggins chased after them, so I assume that they’ll be discovering her soon. Which if she pals up with them…t hat could be really cute tbh! I am all for Grif and Doc shenanigans with a a ball of light! But yeah, this could lead to a LOT of things and I’m very interested in seeing how this plays out.

Final Thoughts

It was great! Admittedly this is a lot mroe bizarre than RvB has been in a while but it’s also RvB where Grif still being alive after getting hit by a tank and having Simmons organs thrown into him improperly isn’t ever questioned. Alien Norse Gods? Ia m all for it! Donut being Jesus? Awesome! More setup for Grf having a character arc? HELL YEAH MAN. It was a well done episode, progressing the plot without wasting any time, gives us a glimpse at how dangerous our villains our, gives us a badass female villain, and sets up everything for the episodes ot come. There’s definitely a feeling of epicness compared to last time, so it looks lie Joe is taking the armature gloves off and giving us one Hell of a story. I am very excited to see where it leads!

[bidickgrayson]

i’ve finally almost gotten to the place in persona 3 where i stopped playing a couple years ago. just got to october, and i stopped some time in november in my first playthrough

it’s interesting to revisit shinjiro’s death a couple years later, because that death was one of the few things i remembered with any kind of detail. i remember being very angry at the storyline that had a ten-year-old kid plot revenge for the death of his mother. couldn’t really understand that urge/the fact that that kind of storyline was coming from a TEN YEAR OLD

and i’m still not a fan, but i am a little less directly angry with ken. the first time, i wasn’t expecting it, and so i was just angry that ken got shinjiro into a situation where he was killed lol. i had a lot more sympathy for ken this time around, when i knew what was coming the whole time, and could remind myself more rationally that ken didn’t actually kill shinjiro

really where i disagree with the writing around shinjiro’s death the most is around the aftermath, primarily around akihiko’s reaction. first of all, BULLSHIT on the fact that akihiko was like “we need to stop treating ken like a kid” because HE IS A KID!!!! what are you talking about!!!! “he needs to make his own decisions” like OKAY i get that you want to respect his autonomy but....he was just a kid who plotted a revenge-murder of a high schooler who killed his mom in front of him, only to watch in horror as that high schooler THROWS HIMSELF IN FRONT OF A GUNSHOT TO SAVE THE KID’S LIFE and then died in front of the kid. there’s no acknowledgement of the trauma, because they’re trying to treat this precocious ten-year-old like he’s an adult, when frankly, no adult would go through that without some trauma!! it’s just dumb. and i can forgive the sees members for some of it, because this is a bunch of high schoolers dealing with some heavy shit with no good adult supervision (lol @ ikutsuki), and they’re all just kids themselves, so i can’t really blame them for not knowing the best way to handle it and stumbling through on their own

also, what makes it worse is that it was literally just revealed that ken was suicidal/wanted to die like, just a while before, and tbf none of the other sees members knew, but i knew as the audience, and so to have akihiko go like “well, he’s gonna do what he’s gonna do” was so jarring and distressing. GET THIS KID SOME HELP! but. whatever. and then ken of course decides to come back and has a new resolve, and it’s treated as though that’s the really strong thing to do and not a definitely unhealthy lack of concern for mental well-being. “i’m strong so i’m not going to let the multiple traumatic events/my suicidal ideations (as a ten-year-old!) distract me from our mission”

also, back to direct reactions to shinjiro’s death, and maybe this is more personal preference, but i really Cannot Relate at all to akihiko’s resolution in the face of it. i remember that disconnect was jarring to me when i first played it years ago too. because he’s sad, and then very quickly he’s not sad because “it’s what shinjiro would have wanted”. and i just can’t relate to how quick he came to terms with the death, because this was literally akihiko’s oldest friend. and when the other’s express sadness, he’s like, don’t be sad, it’s what shinjiro wanted. LIKE WTF it is still sad??? i just think a better balance between acceptance and grief could have been found, because i really feel like they jumped over the majority of the grief that i would expect from shinjiro’s oldest friend, which is very jarring. but. i mean, who knows, maybe that would be realistic to some. it feels like a shortcut to me tho. i like akihiko, but this particular instance really disconnected me from his character

i’ve heard that with the female protagonist in p3p, you can do a social link so shinjiro doesn’t end up dead. and i’m really curious how that plays out (/why the social link changes it). i just wanna be able to say “YOU’RE A HIGH SCHOOLER, YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE YOUR DEATH IS THE BEST WAY THINGS CAN PLAY OUT ( :( )”

anyway, some other thoughts while i’m here:

my vague recollection of p3 having some social links with ppl who weren’t really good people was correct. or maybe i should say, weren’t people i really found sympathetic. like, the devil link with the shady businessman (which i still haven’t completed), or the magician link with the classmate kenji (he has called me SO MANY TIMES, and i have turned him down every time, because if there’s going to links i don’t complete, i am fine with one of them being his. i just.....am not interested in his quest to fuck his teacher, i don’t enjoy it. i know i completed his in my last playthrough, but i can’t remember how it resolves but....god i could not care less about kenji). then there’s the hermit link with the teacher online (she’s so annoying lol, and i hate that she tells protag that she has a crush on the irl him, like, fuck off. also, she’s such a bad/unsympathetic teacher, it made me really miss kawakami, who had flaws but was ultimately a good teacher imo). oh, then there’s the emperor link with hidetoshi on the student council who....lol, that’s another link i completed last time but have barely touched this time, because i really dislike him. i kinda remember him softening towards the end of the link, but so much of the first part is just about enabling him being a tyrannical class council member which is not fun. and i ultimately like the tower/monk link, but he’s another character who....doesn’t really seem like that nice of a person. but i do like him because he likes the protag

the other links for the most part are good. it’s interesting the differences between p5 and p3 social links, because p5 had a definite theme to all of the links (/the whole game lol) where they were all ultimately good people who were misunderstood/unfairly judged/treated somehow (altho i haven’t done the iwai link all the way through, i imagine it ends up similarly because he’s a somewhat decent person “doing evil to combat evil” iirc). but there’s no real theme for the p3 links as far as i can tell. which makes sense, because in p5 there is a specific reason to have links with them all because they end up helping you, and they all end up as accomplices to all of the crimes the thieves commit lol

i really dislike that you have to romance all of your female classmates in order to complete their social links. what is friendship lol. really really really makes it feel a whole lot cheaper, and really makes it hard for me to care. very glad they stopped making that a requirement in p3p and beyond

what also make it hard for me to care?? the blank and unemotional p3 protagonist lol. i really have a hard time connecting to him, because he doesn’t really do much?? he’s just a blank wall for all of the social links, and it really disconnects me from the emotions of it. some girl will be confessing her feelings to him, and i’m just like, hm, fascinating, who cares, he’s gonna go on a date with another girl tomorrow. it doesn’t feel real to me at all. maybe i’m just totally unfairly biased toward p5 (and i don’t want to compare endlessly, bc p5 is newer and clearly they’ve made many improvements over the years, but it’s the easiest comparison at hand), but when someone talked to joker about how much he meant to them, i bought into it a lot more than i do with mr. low energy, the p3 protag. joker felt like an actual character to me, that i could care about, who i could understand/imagine his feelings and reactions to things. but for the p3 protag, it’s a lot of, well, i GUESS he COULD care about shinjiro dying, but you sure as heck have to read a whole lot into it to get to that conclusion, because the strongest reaction you can make him have to it is to have him tell the callous students at the assembly to “shut up.” which is nice, but hardly anything at all lol. i just find him difficult to project my emotions onto him in the game, unlike joker, who i didn’t have as much trouble believing in his genuine feeling for the people he talked to. i think also, people reacted to joker in a much more specific way that made him more real than the p3 protag, who kind of feels like a ghost most times, except for his social links where he shows up just to say exactly what the other person wants to hear lol. idk, i’m looking forward to replaying p5 and paying more attention to joker this time

(my feelings on the p3 protag are gonna be interesting come end-game, because if i understand correctly from the vague spoilers i’ve gotten about p3, the protag is gonna sacrifice himself to save the world. i keep trying to remind myself/play with that in mind, because i don’t think someone would sacrifice himself if he was actually as unemotional and detached as he sometimes comes across as)

80% of my rage at this game comes from being unable to control my specific party members in battle and so they do things that i don’t want them to, 10% comes from enemy advantage attacks (especially when i swing at them, but they hit me first), 9% comes from this game challenging me/punishing me for being underleveled when i’m playing on easy and don’t want any challenge at all because i want to get past the silly fighting business and back to social links/story, and a special 1% goes to the sleeping table boss in tartarus, which definitely was a primary punisher for me being underleveled and caused me to yell angrily at my screen yesterday

oh, ikutsuki. it’s funny, because p3 was the first persona game i played, and very early on, i was like, i don’t trust ikutsuki at all, so when the reveal came that you should not, in fact, trust ikutsuki, i wasn’t at all surprised. but it’s funny to replay it, knowing that persona likes the “this guy is not what he seems” trope, and realize that...there wasn’t really a specific giveaway instance where ikutsuki said something that was off (a la pancakes, or adachi showing up to a private conversation with interesting timing), it was just a sort of feeling i got about this weird adult who was having these high schoolers be responsible for saving the world, apparently. he really is a terrible terrible advisor though, lol, even knowing he’s evil. it’s sad to realize that the only adult help these kids have got is someone who is absolutely not on their side, and they’re truly on their own