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spaceorphan18 · 1 month ago

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Some (abridged) thoughts on The Shape of Things

The thing about this play is that - I watched it twelve hours ago, and I'm still thinking about it. I don't necessarily know if you want me to bore you with my complex thoughts about the play itself.

There's a lot going on -- about what art really is, about whether or not people can change, about how relationships change you -- and the play doesn't necessarily provide answers to these questions - kind of lets it hang. Structurally (where's @snarkyhag to laugh at me about this thought) it's very cleverly written and put together, and I got to the big twist a bit before it happened but wow, okay, that's just a lot to digest. But thematically, it's left ambiguous, and I wish there are things that... may have been explored more? May have been expanded on? May have been more than just surface level?

I guess I just think there's a superficiality to it. Which, is partly the point. but I guess, it's clever in how it gets to where it wants to go. But what it's actually saying, feels muddled. I also feel like, and this is so just my take, it's definitely a play written by a man -- and a man who is mad at women but I'm not sure if I can coherently describe why I feel that way.

(There's one small scene where the two women talk and I joked to myself that -- oh, gotta pass that Bechdel test. it did, slightly. But despite the fact that this was written by an apparently famous modern playwright, I wasn't that impressed with how the women were written as people.)

Idk - I'm still thinking it through, and I may need to watch it again, in full, to really get a grasp on how I feel about it as a play.

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Anyway, getting into the Luke Newton of it all... first of all, though, I think all four of the actors did a pretty good job. I think the two secondary leads had not a whole lot to work with and made good with what they had. The main actress was great! It's a very, very, very complicated role, and I think she did well with it. I'd be super curious to hear what her actual take on the character is, though, because -- the character is basically a blank slate. (Or a psychopath. You decide.)

For Luke, I think the word I'm going to go with is captivating. I had seen some clips of this floating around, and I was intrigued and genuinely impressed because even from those clips - it wasn't Colin, and it wasn't himself (or the person he presents in interviews).

The character of Adam is -- an interesting one. He's a character who goes through a transformation, and a character whom I don't necessarily like - but maybe not for reasons that people may think. (I honestly don't mind the cheating part - as it made him very human. But the level of manipulation he willingly endured drove me crazy.)

But what impresses me is that Luke did such a great job breathing life into him - making him feel real (and different from, well, Colin is the only thing I have to compare it to) and making those changes feel real (even when I have some complicated thoughts about how I don't believe you can fundamentally change someone through superficial changes...)

There is also such a physicality to the role (being on stage is such a different animal) and I loved that. I think it's was such a fascinating thing to just -- watch him inhabit the character, and do different things, and not feel like I'm even watching Luke Newton at all - but a different person entirely. Which is why I use the word captivating because I think there were times when I was more interested in watching the acting and the performance more than the writing or story itself.

(does that make sense to anyone else but me - maybe not, but there we are.)

If I'm going nitpick one thing, it's going to be about the accent (and this is across the board - not just Luke). I don't necessarily understand what they were going for - New York? Boston? It... wasn't American Midwestern, says me who has lived here all her life. And some British got through. But -- I will say, the accent was dead perfect during scenes and moments that were probably rehearsed the most, and those were the more emotional and pivotal scenes, so no notes there.

But yeah, overall, he did a great job. I think this role was a range that he handled really well, and I hope when coming across new projects he continues to seek things out that continue to let him go in different directions. I think he really has potential, and I really hope the future projects he chooses continue to foster that.

And, like, I know a lot of people want him to blow up or become bigger, and sure that's fine -- but honestly, I hope he continues to do theater, too, because he's really great at handling the stage. (I'd love to go see a live performance of his someday)

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A couple of smaller Bridgerton-ish related things

There's a part where Evelyn goes through Adam's journal and I'm like -- why is not not madder about that?? That's an invasion of privacy! And, I mean, yeah it did remind me a little of Pen reading Colin's journal

(Also - because it's bonkers where my mind goes sometimes, I almost feel like this play and its messaging is the antithesis to Bridgerton Season 3. And someone's going to try to make me explain that, and I'm not sure if I can other than it makes sense to me. maybe when I'm not so tired...)

Someone called Adam 'distinguished'. Ngl, I snorted.

And that's what I've got! I know this is an old(er) play, and I'm sure fandom already discussed it to death way back when, but if any of ya want to chat about it, please do!!!

#luke newton #the shape of things #how have i been thinking about this all day now?#really miss theater in general - i should see more plays #i used to all the time

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tirralirralirra · 9 months ago

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something I love about having read/watched frieren and dungeon meshi concurrently is getting to see that, despite their similar broad genres (fantasy, DND-esque settings, failure op elf girls /lh), they are two very distinct stories that ultimately achieve the same* thematic goal through different narrative means.

like you have frieren's contemplative, almost slice-of-life style storytelling that focuses on how the connections between people make an impact, and how it's beautiful to cherish the memories of those we love, even the small ones (especially the small ones), and that being alive is so, so beautiful because of those things. Then juxtaposing this with the overall narrative of a literal journey to a land beyond in order to meet with the dead, while not losing focus on those that are alive. Frieren as a story takes time to explore the small things that make life beautiful (fields of flowers, the beauty and not the power of magic, stargazing and sunsets with your friends).

and then you have dunmeshi's tight narrative arcs that are built around urgency (saving falin, first from digestion, then from...chimera-ization), but also continually return to the same concept as a core tenet to both the literal narrative structure around meals and the overall story: to eat is a privilege of the living. That there is joy to be found in eating because it means you are alive, that you survived. That taking time to take care of yourself is honoring your life. That death is a part of life through the acts of killing monsters to eat, and that the dungeon's condition where a soul remains tethered to the body is unnatural.

For that last bit, I love how we're just introduced to the concept in the beginning as a bit of world building, something you might just take at face value of, "oh, I guess this is how this works in this story", and over the course of the story the characters start to interrogate that reality, culminating in Marcille's realization at the end that they took death for granted because of the dungeon's condition:

[ID: Manga panel of Marcille looking down in thought and saying "Look, this might sound a little weird, but...I think the entire point of this journey we went on....was learning how to accept death.]

(Panel is from the ehscans version, will update with official eng when the final volume releases)

I also love that the story takes the time to say, look, you can be in a hurry, but you still need to take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, What will you achieve in the service of yourself or others if you don't take care of the most basic qualities to survive first? The most recent episode is a good example of that with the focus on shuro vs. laios, and then there's this reinforcement of the idea by the end:

[ID: Dungeon meshi manga page showing Laios, Chilchuck, and Senshi shouting "A balanced diet!!" "R-regulating our daily rhythms!!" "And moderate exercise!!" respectively, followed by the three in various poses in front of the word "VICTORY" and Laios saying "If we watch these three points...we'll naturally work our way to strong bodies!!"]

Anyways this is all very disorganized and I have other things I need to do and I could write a more cohesive, actually organized thought piece on all of this with like, coherent points, but I don't really like to delve into literary analysis on my fandom account. it just lives in my head, rent free. thank you for coming to my ted talk tumblr. don't expect to see more of this, lol.

*I say same goal, which is not to say the only goal. stories can have more than one theme, it's ok if you disagree with me on this, but please bear in mind that I'm speaking very, very broadly.

#dunmeshi #dunmeshi spoilers #frieren #frieren spoilers #esque thoughts #dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #meta esque

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lotus-tower · 10 months ago

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Why do we talk like that about Gintama?

So this is something I've already talked about a lot here and there, but I thought I would condense my thoughts on the topic in its own post.

We've joked a lot about math zeitgeist, but why in the world are we furiously mathposting about Gintama? Why did I write 28 pages of actual essay for it? Where does kraniumet get all those images from? (I've always wondered this.) Essentially, what's driving us to analyze these themes and motifs over and over again... and why can they be analyzed over and over again?

When I first wrote My Orochi Stood Up, I made it clear that this was an original framework made for the same purpose as all analytical frameworks and models: to enable me to gain certain key insights about the series, to account for all of its innumerable bits and pieces, and to arrange their relationships to one another in a cohesive, legible way. In short, as I wrote in my essay, it provides me with symbolic technology.

In the same vein, when I wrote my spontaneous math post, I said that so much of math is about things that don’t exist and yet become real, not just because they help you articulate something but because they help you arrive at a solution. This is the purpose of things like imaginary numbers--or negative numbers for that matter.

I know that we should never live life in accordance with the fake hater in our heads that we imagine saying stupid things to us so that we can respond to them in smart, cool ways. I'm sure Zura lives like that though, and we all think he's charming, so maybe we should reconsider this idea. What I mean to get at is that I've never once tried to claim that Sorachi literally intended any of what I describe in my ouroboros framework. I don't think he sat down one day and planned to make his motifs compatible with western alchemy, I don't think he had the creation myth of the island of Japan in mind, and I don't actually think he read Barthes.

But what's undeniable is that there is something so bizarrely consistent, coherent, and plentiful about Gintama's thematic flourishes--even though in many, many ways, Gintama is filled with bad, and worse, mediocre, writing. What sets Gintama apart from other series isn't the inherent quality of its writing (which has stark ups and downs). If you'll forgive the confusing and somewhat contradictory wording, what makes Gintama distinct isn't a quantitative difference (as in, more goodness), but a qualitative difference. What does this qualitative difference boil down to?

First is structure. This part we've gone over a lot, so I'll try to keep it brief (or novel?). Gintama is a series with basically just one favoured literary technique, and it uses it again. and again. and again. and again. and again. Parallels upon parallels upon parallels--and there are only a few key thematic ideas that Sorachi is interested in exploring. You can describe it as consistency, or, if you want to be uncharitable, repetitiveness. But it is, frankly, absurd the amount of parallels--or rather, the degree of parallelism--this series contains. What's interesting about it is its effects on how we engage with the story.

By making it obvious that this is a conscious and explicit writing decision (through various means, mainly dialogue), any characters with suitable parallelism to a prototypical character A are all connected to one other--let's call these the A-sided characters. This holds even if they're all a bit different from each other. Imagine all these A-sided characters spread out in line, like hostages tied to each track of a train track or the rungs on a ladder. They lose similarity with each rung, like loss of clarity in a game of telephone--let's call this "reflection lossiness." Even though characters in the top rung and the bottom rung may not have much in common, they may both be within "lossiness range" (<- I just made this up) of a character in a middle rung, and therefore able to communicate indirectly with one another.

Moreover, because the prototypical character A has a foil in prototypical character B, all A-sided characters are also connected not only to any individual foils they may have, but potentially to all other B-sided characters. Since it's easier to identify characters' thematic affiliations through their interactions and dynamics with other characters, the consistency of the A-B foil formula, when combined with the fact that animanga foils are generally made very obvious, helps us perceive these diagonal relationships. Thus, the reader can squint at the interactions of almost the entirety of Gintama's enormous cast with valid suspicion, with less difficulty than in other works with more complex structures. The series' sheer length also ensures that there is an abundance of material to comb through, so much so in fact that this careful inspection, through rereading again and again, becomes necessary.

For instance, the interactions between any given pair of characters may not seem directly relevant to our protagonist at first glance, but once you know the magic A | B schema, you may notice that that pair's interactions resonate with that of a different pair, one involving an A-sided character with less reflection lossiness from the top and who therefore reflects much more of what happens to them onto Gintoki. In this way, the original pair, who are probably just a couple of minor side characters who appear once in a weird arc and then never show up again, can make you go, "hey wait a minute. what if?"

What if?

Let's look at a concrete example. Housen and Utsuro don't seem to have much to do with each other at first glance. However, because we know that he parallels Kamui, and that Kamui | Kagura parallel Takasugi | Gintoki, who in turn can be mapped onto Utsuro | Shouyou, we can arrive at a Housen-Utsuro connection that wasn't previously obvious. What is the utility of this connection? For one, it sharpens our ability to articulate how the hole-sided flee from the things they fear and yearn for by adding Housen's infamous avoidance of the sun into the analysis. It also provides new ground for exploring potential ideas comparing, say, Kamui choosing to leave with the Harusame and walk in Housen's footsteps, with Oboro's resigned embrace of the Naraku and Utsuro. Additionally, since Housen was defeated in Hinowa's lap, this also helps us draw a Hinowa -> Kagura connection, which helps us arrive at a Hinowa-Shouyou connection, which helps to reify that Shouyou is a milf.

By inserting one or two blatant instances of foreshadowing and parallelism early on in the series, instances that are impossible to pass off as coincidence, Gintama primes the reader to suspect that similar nuggets might be hiding anywhere, to check every garbage can we encounter from there on out like in the Pokemon games.

Whoops. In attempting to explain the math zeitgeist I succumbed to using math in my explanation. It's irresistible.

But that's structure. Let's move on now to something arguably even more important: motifs.

It's undeniable that for a shounen series that's half gag-manga, Gintama has a strange amount of analyzable motifs, and a clear loyalty to them. Regardless of how extravagantly people on tumblr dot com may want to overanalyze their favourite Shounen Jump series, their efforts are usually restrained to theme and characterization. Their ravings do not usually resemble the ravings of the Gintama Salon. If you've read this far, I don't think I need to explain this to you, or what Gintama's most prominent motifs are. But why is Gintama so motif-ful? The sword's importance is obvious, expected even, but what differentiates Gintama from, say, Bleach, where the characters' swords also literally represent their souls in a way?

In the end the answer is what I already discussed in My Orochi Stood Up, the foundation of my entire framework, in fact its very title: the dick joke.

Sorachi's immature sense of humour is the glue holding the entire thematic and narrative structure of Gintama together. Why do we search obsessively for meaning in the flotsam of Gintama's less narratively charged moments? Because, quite frankly, many things are phallic. The sword is no longer simply a sword--by being imbued with the spirit of the dick joke, it becomes not only valid but textual to associate it with the head of the nation (shadow juice squirt), the motif of the dragon (thank you Elizabeth), and castration. What I mean is not whether the sword can be read as a dick--obviously, phallic logic has been prominent through all of human history--but the way in which Gintama's sexual humour gives us--and itself--an impetus to equate motifs in the first place.

Comparing very serious things to dicks is funny--the more abrupt, the more shocking, the more mood whiplash, the funnier is. Therefore, for Gintama's toilet humour to be as effective as possible, tone dissonance is ideal, pushing it towards the intermingling of comedy and tragedy that we know it so well for today. This in turn validates and reinforces the meaning-making role that these phallic jokes play in the story as a hole. It is not only that we cannot separate the dick jokes from the serious delivery of the plot, but that in many arcs important information is given to us through ridiculous gag devices (ball gags?).

The logic of basic sex jokes is extremely simple, intuitive, and easy to understand. The prominence of the pole necessarily implies the presence of the hole. I've talked about that enough in my essays, so I won't go into detail here, but the reason that I wrote my essays in the first place is because of how easy it is to map a procreative framework onto a series filled from beginning to end with phallic gags. As much as I may joke about it, the underlying logic of "the pole and the hole" is powerful and compelling, providing connective tissue to seemingly disparate motifs with ease. When combined with the "sorting" power of the A | B structure, the ability to associate any particular character with any particular motif easily gives us the ability to analyze how a given set of characters interacts with a motif; equally, where the motif sits in Gintama's playing ground of phallicism can inform a given character's dynamic with others.

I've already written at length about the role that wordplay plays in this as well. To save on time, I'll just quote from My Orochi Stood Up:

Gintama’s insistence on wordplay enables interesting meaning to be derived from these dirty jokes and their interaction with other motifs in the story. After all, the name of the series itself elevates the spirit of the balls joke, even if unintentionally, to the same level as the other metaphor in the title: “silver."

But perhaps the singularly most important example is the -tama in Gintama, with its plethora of potential meanings, each of them just silly and dirty enough that you have to take it seriously. Beyond the obvious joke on kintama (balls) and the “silver soul” meaning, we’ve seen that tama is also easily conflated with atama (head), and even with tamago (egg). This is clearly demonstrated with the series’ fixation on beheading leading to the salvation of the soul, and the bodyswap arc hinging on the pun between soul and egg.

In short, it is the comedic aspect of Gintama that fuels the series' own willingness to conflate and play with its motifs, and that validates--provokes--our mad efforts as readers to draw unlikely connections and dig through dirt. Though it may seem more ridiculous on the surface to be taking such a magnifying glass to such a profoundly silly series, it is in fact more justified for Gintama than it would likely be for a more serious series, one where the paths between motifs are not pre-paved, let alone lubricated with shadow squirt juice.

I was recently introduced to a theory of comedy where comedy was posited as an interplay between excess and lack. How this maps on to Gintama is obvious; but one thing that comes to mind now is how easy it would be to characterize our scholarly efforts in examining Gintama, a series one could humorously characterize as "lacking", as a kind of excess. Which is to say, I think Gintama has pulled its penultimate trick on us (because it's still coming out with more stuff for the anniversary. I believe it.) by making us part of its comedy.

#gintama

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yinyuedijun · 4 months ago

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big jjk spoilers

it's almost 4:30 and I'm finally done reading the gojo vs sukuna fight. I actually do think this addresses a lot of the reasons I was never really taken by gojo's character and also why I always felt lukewarm about the thematic progression of the series. despite the fandom's somewhat negative opinion of gege's writing, I actually do think when you look past the clumsiness and obvious burnout, it is heading toward a coherent thematic arc and gojo was a part of that. I like that he died and I think he died well. I think his and sukuna's deaths were also always a given tbh lol and I'm interested in seeing how sukuna's will play out. this may be a controversial opinion but I think gege does know how to write a good death (though he's written a lot of not good ones lol). I have a lot of thoughts but I gotta pass out now lol. please do not hate me for my thots btw remember I am a nobody in jjk fandom 👍

#yueshuo.jjk #jjk manga spoilers #good god i hope u have that tag blocked

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monsterblogging · 7 months ago

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List of Official/Official-Adjacent Pacific Rim Media

Here's a list of Pacific Rim media for y'all Pacific Rim fans who want to check out as much of it as possible!

PACIFIC RIM (2013 FILM) Usually considered the primary text of this franchise. Pacific Rim fans mostly agree it's good.

PACIFIC RIM NOVELIZATION BY ALEX IRVINE The novelization of the 2013 film. The book's writer, Alex Irvine, had texts from Legendary Pictures work with, but some of the information was outdated. Furthermore, the book has a cynical, smug tone and comes off like it's written for the type of audience who thinks CinemaSins is actual media criticism. The only thing it's really good for is for scraping out lore, but it's full of contradictions and occasionally uses outdated lore, so you have to compare/contrast it with other materials.

TALES FROM YEAR ZERO Authored by Travis Beacham, this comic explores the origins of the PPDC and the Jaeger program. It's interesting for lore, but story-wise, it might not be engaging if you aren't into Travis Beacham's particular romantic storytelling tastes. Also, if you're a puritan who gets offended when main characters are kinda fucked up people, this isn't for you.

TALES FROM THE DRIFT Authored by Travis Beacham, this comic tells the haters-to-lovers story of Duc and Kaori Jessop, pilots of Tacit Ronin. Mildly interesting for lore, and another romance-oriented story. (Beacham loves those.)

PACIFIC RIM: MAN, MACHINES, & MONSTERS The official artbook. Has some interesting information and lore, though it also contains a few typos and references outdated worldbuilding.

TRAVIS BEACHAM'S TUMBLR After Pacific Rim's release, Travis Beacham answered many fans' questions. While he was often cryptic and straight-up refused to answer certain questions for fear that he'd spoil a future story, he still provided quite a bit of insight. You can visit his old blog at travisbeacham.tumblr.com

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING Largely panned by fans of the original film. Partway through production, the sequel to Pacific Rim was handed off to another director, and many plot elements were hastily changed with little to no regard for the rich worldbuilding developed by Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro, or even story coherency. The film never gives really your brain space to breathe, so it's very difficult to follow the story. Moreover, it misses the thematic and allegorical tones of the first movie, and lacks its occult influences. Overall, it's a hollow followup to Pacific Rim.

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING NOVELIZATION BY ALEX IRVINE Fundamentally, it's the same story as Pacific Rim: Uprising. The upside is that Alex Irvine's writing is significantly improved, and the story is much easier to follow in novel format. The downside is that you don't have John Boyega's acting talent.

PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING JUNIOR NOVELIZATION BY BECKY MATHESON It's more or less the same as above, but edited down for a younger audience.

THE ART AND MAKING OF PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING The PRU artbook. I've never read this one, so I couldn't tell you what's in it aside from the very obvious.

PACIFIC RIM: AFTERMATH A prequel comic to Pacific Rim: Uprising written by Cavan Scott, Aftermath tells two stories: one focuses on Jake Pentecost and his relationship with his father; the other on what happened to Hannibal Chau and Joshua Griffin (one of Vulcan Specter's pilots) after the kaiju war. The comic makes excellent use of the lore, and the stories are great.

PACIFIC RIM: AMARA A prequel comic that focuses specifically on Amara Namari. I have mixed feelings about it; the mini-Jaeger designs were great but I felt that the actual storyline was a little melodramatic. I dunno, read it for yourself and see what you think.

PACIFIC RIM: ASCENSION A prequel novel to Uprising by Greg Keyes, this story gives life and focus to many characters who didn't get a lot of attention, including the Kaidonovskys and the cadets. Mako Mori is given the narrative respect she deserves, and Hermann Gottlieb's characterization is top-notch. The author makes use of the lore provided by Legendary Pictures to weave a rich and fascinating narrative that puts the actual Uprising film to shame.

MAKING OF/BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE There's a number of videos out there on YouTube, which you can find by searching up.

PACIFIC RIM CONCEPT ART There's quite a lot of concept art out there. You can start here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or search Pinterest or whatever search engine for Pacific Rim concept art.

PACIFIC RIM: THE BLACK A cash grab produced by Netflix, The Black disregards Pacific Rim's rich worldbuilding and follows bland, generic cartoon protagonists through a bland, generic cartoon plot loosely - loosely, mind you - based on the films. It tries to be dark, but it has all the skill of a sixteen year old edgelord about it. Also, the production values are nonexistent. You will miss absolutely nothing worthwhile by skipping over it. If for some reason you really want a Pacific Rim story where child soldiers are framed as a good thing, just read Pacific Rim: Ascension. If you want dark, watch Pulp Fiction or From Dusk 'Til Dawn. If you want a story where somebody makes a religion out of turning people into monsters, watch Midnight Mass or play/watch a no-commentary playthrough of Resident Evil 4 or 8. If you want an AI that looks after two stranded children, watch 3Below. Seriously, there is nothing The Black does that something else doesn't do infinitely better. "But most of these aren't Pacific Rim stories-" Wrong. Any story can be a Pacific Rim story if you're not a coward. And just about anything is a better Pacific Rim story than The Black.

PACIFIC RIM: BLACKOUT Prequel comic to Pacific Rim: The Black. Haven't read it, but it's written by the same guy who wrote Aftermath so it's probably a sight better than The Black.

#pacific rim #pacific rim 2013 #pacific rim uprising #pacific rim the black

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fansplaining · 2 years ago

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Do you have any advice, guides, or opinions on how write a good rec list?

WELL! This is Elizabeth, and as the longtime co-curator of "The Rec Center" newsletter (with @hellotailor) I do have *a lot* of thoughts about rec lists. 😊 I'm delighted you asked, because as I'm sure both Flourish & I have mentioned on the podcast, rec-list-making is way less prominent now than it has been in previous fandom eras, and I think that's a shame. Reccing can be a great critical tool, and rec lists make a fanwork space richer—not least because they can move readers beyond the mostly quantitative metrics of the AO3.

I'll put the rest of this under the cut:

So obviously there are different kinds of rec lists, including by category/trope, favorites about a character or a ship or fandom, etc. To me, a true ~authored~ rec list is one in which the writer(s) deliberately put together a batch of fics to make some kind of argument about the works/the ship/the fandom/the source material.

Most of the lists we run in the newsletter are not like this, because we're pulling 5-7 works from our guest submissions bank—and since we don't (realistically, can't!) read the stories that are sent in, I have no idea if those 5-7 compliment each other in any real way. (When I put together one of these lists, I aim for balance: not all M/M, not all white characters, not all Western source material, etc.) (Yes, unsurprisingly, those are overrepresented in our submissions bank.)

But an authored rec list treats the rec list itself like a fanwork: you can tap into connective tissue that runs throughout the fics you choose, and you can put stories side-by-side that illuminate something when read together. You can approach this from two different directions: working from a broader pool of fics you like and pulling out a coherent batch, or starting with a theme, an argument, that connective tissue, and seeing what fits.

When I first got into my current fandom, I kept a google doc with fic titles, links, brief descriptors, and general thematic vibes etc., for future reccing use. (Obviously you can do this with AO3 bookmarks, but I use those differently, so this was a separate endeavor.) These were set up to transfer to "The Rec Center" easily, e.g.:

“Celestial Navigation” by kaydeefalls. 9K words, rated Teen. Canon-era: C & E go to NYC to try to recruit several mutants. Delicate balance sort of story with a soft revelation. No tropes.

When I actually go to rec something, I reread it—mostly because I want to get the content warnings right, but also because reading it to rec is more like reading for work: you wind up looking at the text with a different eye, always lowkey thinking about how you'll make your argument about it in writing. I haven't actually recced the fic above in the newsletter, but here's another X-Men fic I did rec at one point:

“Come Together” verse by blarfkey. 60K words across 4 stories, rated Teen. Backstory: When Peter gets arrested for breaking Erik out of the Pentagon, Erik returns the favor and breaks Peter out in turn—and takes him to live with Charles. Beautifully awkward father-son bonding coupled with bitter, stubborn exes pining: *chef’s kiss*. The verse spans five years, with really believable character growth, which is really saying something, based on the emotionally-stunted starting point for all parties involved. Rec: Peter is the POV character here, so a+++, and the close third-person narration plays with the spaces between what he feels and what he says while capturing his voice beautifully. This means 50% dragging people and 50% feeling like an idiot, which is a total joy. A lot of X-Men stuff, canonically or...fanonically...sorry...is about found family, and I mean, this one is about finding your literal blood relations, but it’s also about building a true family, and I think the author gives that enough space to really sell it. Content warnings: Canon-typical violence, torture, ableism, the unenlightened thoughts about women’s bodies that preoccupy heterosexual teenage boys

That rec is from a whole list I did with @morgan-leigh a few (five???wtf lol) years ago, which I think is a good example of an authored rec list: Morgan and I had overlapping tastes and similar interpretations of the characters, so all the fics here feel like they're talking to each other in some way, and making an argument about who these characters are (in Morgan's beautiful words, many of these stories "capture the exquisite and venal dickishness of both our heroes" lol).

Obviously rec lists don't have to be super formal—we created this reccing format a long time ago to keep things standardized—and I certainly don't think recs need to sound like literary criticism (not that the examples above sound like literary criticism lol...you know what I mean). Some of my favorite rec lists are pure vibes and (performatively? in a good way) emotional, and that's great. If you're a fic author, you know what a delight those comments are to receive. And like someone's AO3 bookmarks, the all-vibes rec list is an opportunity to see if you, too, feel like the selected fics smack you in the face or whatever violent expression of appreciation people are using. They often don't give you a ton of information, but if you and the reccer have similar taste, you know you can trust their picks.

But! I would make the case for reccing as a chance to talk about fic in a way that you really wouldn't in a comment to the author or in a performatively emotional tag: critically, not in the "this is bad" definition of "criticism," but, like, in the lit-crit way. Why does this work—and how does it work? As with all literary criticism, "work" is totally contextual; a good rec list sets up that context, and gives you just enough information to want to click through and see for yourself.

All that being said, you don't need to overthink it—and I say this partly because I'd really love to see more rec lists floating around! The AO3 often primes people to sort in a top-down way, and though there are tons of great fics with lots of kudos, as the meme goes,

Rec lists let you include things that aren't super popular, that hit niche characterization or plot notes, that really worked for you specifically for whatever reason. They're pure human curation—not just recs, but an arrangement of those recs that creates a whole new work in the process. And that's something I really love about fandom! We don't want algorithmic 'if this, then that' for-you pages; we're interested in doing the actual work of reading, thinking about, and sharing what we like with others, and that's wonderful.

#asks #fanfiction #reccing #rec lists #the rec center

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paperstarwriters · 1 year ago

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ive come kneeling at your doorstep to beg for that essay on murio and luciels parallels you mentioned 👀💦👉👈

i love loathing lucio so much so it would deal my lil hater ass so much psychic damage and i cannot wait to get rekt

(onlyifyouwanttothoofcoursetakeyourtime)(just making sure youre aware id print that shit n frame it above my bed were it to come to existence)

Hello @tetsuooooooooooo! I know you said I can take my time, ok I'm still really really sorry this took awhile, I've been kinda burnt out from classes lately, and writing a bunch of essays for that lol, but I've managed to make a somewhat coherent argument for my case here lol.

Now, to preface this:

I only really like Lucio as a character to thematically dissect and kick around occasionally for giggles. I am a far, far cry from a Lucio stan, I just find him interesting—like a bug. Honestly I don't think I'm gonna convince you he's in any way a good guy I just might make you loathe him more 😅

I haven't played Lucio's route. I'm too busy and I get too annoyed with some of his antics + the options of reactions that MC is allowed to make. I've only played the side stories and a lot of my understanding of his character is built from Muriel's route (and I know he's much more different in his own route than he is in the others') as well as hearsay from other people talking about Lucio

I know I said that I'd include Aurora's songs in my original statement but that got wayyyyyyy too messy so I'm just opting to exclude them lol. (not to mention youtube is doing a very irritatingly strange thing of deleting and then reuploading Aurora's songs??? so I don't wanna deal with the messy files :/)

With that out of the way here is my essay :)

Wordcount: 2,908

──────── ✎ ────────

Muriel and Lucio are both very, very caught up in how they are seen by others. While it's clearer when it comes to Lucio, it is also made clear in Muriel by the fact that Social anxiety is often caused by stress over how a person is perceived and their mental belief that they are helpless to change that perception. This causes of their self perception are also quite similar, due to their similar histories, but in the same way that there are some notable opposites between them with their struggle for their identity there is also some notable differences in their histories that arguably causes the slight difference in their struggle for their self image.

To begin with their history, Muriel and Lucio are noted to both come from the South. They come from two opposing tribes, and are both eventually chased out of their home and community by 1) a cruel person who arguably causes their struggle of identity and 2) the plague. Of course, the major difference here is that Lucio actively made decisions that would lead to him being chased out of his tribe, he was arguably aware that if it failed he'd have to leave, he just hadn't considered that it would actually fail.

Muriel on the other hand is chased out of his home at a much younger age, and he has no choice in his eviction from his home or his family. There is no action that Muriel could have done that would have allowed him to stay where he was, unlike Lucio who had a clear option that would have allowed him to stay.

Or at least would have allowed him to stay until he grew tired of his mother's attitude towards him.

I don't believe that Morga's cruel and dismissive attitude towards Lucio started when he tried to kill her, rather, I believe that she has been doing that for a long, long time. She often states that she had been "too soft" on Lucio, but I think her "softness" is the same kind we see in Muriel's route. She berates him, she threatens him, she tells him how awful and unskilled he is to everyone else and makes a show of his failures, but when she is completely and fully enraged and is about to hit Lucio, she hesitates.

Is that softness? To her perhaps. To the tribe, perhaps. But not to me, and not to Lucio.

So, despite all of the harsh words thrown his way, he decides to take action to prove her wrong. I'm willing to bet that a lot of Morga's criticisms were about how strong he was and how he was in fact not actually as strong as he could have been, not as strong as he should have been. That's why when he takes action to prove Morga wrong, he immediately snaps to killing her. There is, after all, no better way than showing your power than killing your opponent (we see this belief in Morga when she spars against Muriel and he beats her.) Of course, in hand-to-hand combat, and on fair terms, Lucio can't actually defeat his mother, so he takes to more under-handed methods in order to beat her.

When this fails, it is the first major wound on his self-image. He cannot defeat his mother. He is not strong enough to defeat his mother despite cheating.

So, he runs away.

Besides marking a wound on his self-image, this also marks Lucio's connection to others. Having been exiled from his tribe, he is disconnected from the friends who may have actually supported him somewhat, he is robbed of his connections and separated from anyone who may have actually loved and cared for him (platonically and/or romantically)

Similarly, Muriel's separation from his own family, and his eventual abandonment into the streets of Vesuvia separates him from any stable sense of love and affection as well. Because he was separated from loving parents as a child and was likely surrounded by a number of children who were abandoned because they were unwanted, or because their parents were unable to care for them, Muriel has no other answer than what the other kids give him it is the only answer he has. Further more I believe that Muriel was probably abandoned by that merchant because they were unable to keep feeding him, which he also attaches onto his real parents as to why he was abandoned in the first place.

And so Muriel believes himself to be unloved and unlovable after being separated from family, or any semblance of a family.

Returning to Lucio, he moves on from his tribe and eventually joins a military group(? I think? Idk. I'm sure there was a specific name for it but I can't remember sorry) Once again, this is an act of trying to prove to his mother and to his community that they were wrong, and when compared to the ordinary person outside of their tribe, he's actually a really good and capable fighter. Of course, however, this is inevitably cut short as he looses his arm, and is once again confronted with the fact that he is unskilled as a warrior and so he retreats from his perceived deficiency and takes a different route to getting the love and admiration he wants—politics.

Of course, as we see in Muriel and Asra's childhood tale, this inevitably puts him into direct conflict as, in order to climb the social ladder he offers to "clean up" the streets. While it's largely left up to interpretation as to whether or not the Threat of Asra's safety came first or Muriel's position as a gladiator came first, I can't help but believe that Muriel's position as a gladiator came first, as otherwise, he might've gone out and tried to check on Asra's safety. (though this is mostly a headcannon) I believe that Lucio offered Muriel a chance to have some say in who gets "cleaned up" from the streets, and for Muriel to be able to get rid of the "actually bad criminals". Regardless of whether or not this is true, the arena gives Muriel his first taste of admiration, as people cheer for and adore him, but it also tears that sense of admiration away as he eventually has to come to terms with what he is doing. Whether that sense of dread and awareness was always there or it occurred somewhere in the middle is also unknown but the outcome is the same regardless. Being known and being admired becomes tied to hurting and harming people—because it is the only trait he sees that other people admire, he sees it as his only lovable trait.

And so Lucio and Muriel begin to reflect each other—and I don't mean reflect as in they show the same image, I mean reflect as in we see a similar image, but the image is reversed (*wink wink nudge nudge*). Here Muriel sees himself as only capable of being loved for his ability to commit violence, and Lucio sees himself as being incapable of being loved because he cannot complete the amount of violence he needs to commit.

Now, I feel the need to emphasize here, despite having many people around him who Lucio may truly believe love and admire him, the people around him very likely don't actually care for him very much because they either do not know him well, or they see him as little more than a pawn in a plan, or at least someone who gives them benefits. And even if there are a number of people with genuine admiration for Lucio, it still wouldn't be enough. Admiration is never enough when you lack genuine emotional connections with others, and Lucio, clearly does.

Again, this parallels Muriel who also struggles with a lack of genuine emotional connections to others. Although he has Asra with him, it's clear that, Asra's tendency to be fickle with connections has extended to him as well, especially when Asra spends more time with MC than him, leaving Muriel feeling abandoned and alone. Considering that Asra is the only person we ever really see Muriel connect or talk to, it's no stretch to say that Asra is one of Muriel's only friends, if not their only friend period, and so with Asra disappearing on him as often as they do, Muriel is left feeling that he actually has no connections at all.

Of course once again reflecting each other, where Muriel clearly sees he lacks connections and pretends he does not, Lucio, makes unsteady transactional rather than emotional relationships and pretends that that is enough.

It is of course, not enough, because if it were, he wouldn't have treated Muriel like that, he likely wouldn't have plucked Muriel out at all. Although this is largely speculation, I believe that Lucio treated Muriel the way he did because he feels as if Muriel is the very child Morga would have wanted. He is big and strong, and although not technically skilled if Muriel were raised by Morga like Lucio was, he might've been. This is why his first reaction to seeing Muriel and Morga working together is that Muriel is Morga's replacement son. It's because that's how Lucio had been treating him. Muriel is Lucio's little avatar to live out the glory of being a fantastically skilled fighter who can beat up all of his opponents. This is also, why I believe that Lucio purposefully trained Muriel to be less skilled in fighting than he was. In Muriel's route, Lucio comments that he's always been able to beat Muriel, and while I do in fact believe that Lucio is actually a skilled fighter, despite how he is often presented and despite my arguments above—he's most often a skilled fighter in the technical sense. He knows all the movements, he knows all the strategies, he knows all the underhanded tricks. By not fighting Muriel too often, and refusing to teach him these tricks however much it may be able to help Muriel out in the arena, it allows Lucio to be able to defeat him whenever he wants to. It allows Lucio to make it seem to himself that he is better than the person his mother would have wanted as a son, which I believe to be both horrible but also sad, for both Lucio and Muriel.

With Lucio, it shows how desperate and inferior he feels with his fighting skills, constantly trying to compensate for it something we can also see that in the portrait of himself he has in his room.

For Muriel, it keeps him scared, and keeps him pinned in place despite having realized the consequences of his fighting. Something which only furthers his self-hatred when he realizes he actually could have easily left.

So yes, Muriel and Lucio are both very self conscious people, and while for Muriel his self consciousness stems from people seeing him as a monster, and him believing that he is one although he does not want to be one, Lucio is self-conscious in the fact that he is not seen as the brutal fighting warrior he was supposed to be.

These reflected aspects of each other, alongside of their self consciousness is the very thing they struggle through in their routes, the very thing that MC helps them to get through.

Lucio believes that through various paintings of himself that rearranges his past (paintings of himself as a triumphant fighter, while his mother is demure and elegant), various unfair/practically staged fights, and celebrations of himself on top of it all, he would be able to convince people that he is awesome and amazing and that he deserves to be loved. In doing all of this however, Lucio runs away from confronting the beliefs at his core and wondering if perhaps, what he understood as traits that make a person great may be incorrect—that his mother had not just been incorrect on the fact that he was a failure, but on the fact of what makes a person successful or powerful. By constantly covering up what he sees as deficits, Lucio skims over his own internal struggles entirely which makes him look foolish and annoying as he ignores what's so clearly there for others.

Meanwhile, for Muriel, he is aware of his deficits, and is unable to properly hide them without disappearing completely himself, he tries to figure out and fix all of his problems through introspection and isolation, but it is not something he can do on his own. Muriel of course, can't accept the fact that he may need help. He can't accept the fact that despite what he believes of himself, other people may actually care for him the same way he cares for them, and will actually offer help. And so, as he runs away from people and community, from friends, and possible friends alike, Muriel runs away from his own problems as well, even if he tortures himself with confronting them (I can't remember if he actually does this or if this is a fanfic trope 😅) Essentially, by constantly trying to deal with his struggles on his own, he neglects his connections to others who may help him, or at least offer support.

And then MC comes along, and because they both desperately needed that deep connection to someone else, regardless of whether it is something platonic or romantic. MC is able to leverage their relationship in order to further propel Muriel and Lucio's development into acknowledging the thing they refuse to acknowledge, and finally balance out their coping mechanisms, which, on their own isn't actually unhealthy (Lucio's really good at connecting with others; Muriel knows how to confront his inner turmoil) using that single method as their crutch for their traumas only ever hurts them more.

As Muriel progresses through his route, he grows more connected with his community and people. One meaningful moment that I don't think they give enough screen time in the game is the moment that Muriel is forced to confront people recognizing and seeing him again. He's forced to confront everyone's perception of him, their memory of him and he retreats into the mirror maze where he stares at all these reflections of himself, all reversed images of himself, but he believes them all to accurately represent himself—as if his superficial physical image is what represents himself mentally and emotionally. And then MC (and Morga 🙄) come through to him and pull him out of that panic attack (or interrupt and yank him away from properly addressing the problem in Morga's case 😤) And that's the first step to being loved. As they say, in order to let yourself be loved you have to let yourself be known, and in that first step, choosing to step forward and prioritize the lives of others over his own self image, Muriel begins to be admired by others. Genuinely admired, for traits that he likes in himself rather than traits that he hates.

Similarly for Lucio, (although I haven't played his route so this is largely based on hearsay) he's faced with problems that he Has to face on his own (or at least somewhat on his own) the main one being that he has to confront the consequences of his own actions, he has to acknowledge to himself that he isn't perfect and that he can't be perfect. It's why at the end of his route on the upright ending, he leaves Vesuvia, to take on a life of (semi)solitude to further take some time to improve his ability at introspection, while in the Reversed ending he's still talking with people, still trying to manipulate their perceptions of him (and the MC), and still trying to be a "good boy" (ie. perfect) for the MC.

Now, it may be argued that Julian can/should be included in this struggle of how others perceive him but I raise you this; that guy is the most dramatic ass dude in town and his biggest dramatic act was telling everyone about how horrible he is. He clearly has no issues with how other people see him, but he has problems with how he sees himself, which again, reflects Muriel a bit, but I'm sure most people are familiar with their (more blatant) similarities by now lol

So yea.

Muriel and Lucio are reflections of each other. At their core, they both struggle with the same problem of caring way too much about how they're seen by others, but they cope with (and thus worsen) the problem in opposite ways, so when they take steps to heal themself, they also go in opposite directions, with Lucio needing to take some time to himself to get into his own head, while Muriel needs some time away from himself to get out of his own head.

Essentially they're heading in opposite directions to reach the same conclusion: other people's opinions don't matter as much as your own opinion of yourself and the opinions of the people close to you.

Interesting parallels, no?

Of course, I believe this could've been better illustrated if Nyx Hydra didn't rush the last three routes, but alas, this is what fan fiction and fan-analysis is for lol

Anyways I don't tend to poke around the Lucio side of the fandom too much to begin with so if this has all been said and argued before forgive me for the repetition, and If I've gotten some points wrong, please feel free to correct me! I've mentioned before I haven't really played through Lucio's route so some things may be wrong.

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beaft · 1 year ago

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Hi and sorry in advance for using this as an excuse to rant a bit about Good omens 2! I feel the same, I binged it with my girlfriend and at the end we just sat in silence for a minute and then went "...what the fuck was that." It was so incredibly poorly written and plotted in many aspects, though I understand that if one doesn't love dissecting stories piece by piece to analyse it from all possible angles it could be hard to understand why some people are saying it's bad. I feel like it's comparable to a house that looks pretty but is build on really shitty foundations and has a lot of structural issues. Most people can't see anything wrong with it and find it good, but the people who know how those things are built can immediately see all the glaring issues under the surface.

In short, in my opinion a lot of this season's short comings hinge on it's complete lack of thematic coherence and structure, completely ignoring or even discarding what was at the heart of the original story. This season was a disjointed jumble of scenes and concepts that only superficially lead to other scenes that within the bigger picture had no weight at all, plot or thematic-wise. Once you start thinking back to some of the plot threads the show established to move the story forward it's almost ridiculous how little they actually meant for the conclusion. And I don't mean stuff that 'might be resolved in the third season'! Creating a miracle to keep Gabriel hidden from everyone? He could've hid in a closet and it would've had the same effect for the plot. Muriel being set to keep an eye on Aziraphale and Crowley? Nothing, no consequences, in fact Aziraphale fucks off on his investigation right after, which, by the way, served no purpose than to give us some exposition that in the end got re-iterated to us during Gabriel's flashbacks. He doesn't actually figure anything out in a way that impacts the story lol. Even the whole "we have to make these two women fall in love so that Heaven believes us!" is kind of just forgotten by the end of the story, and nobody holds them accountable to their claim. The character of Jim is completely non-existent for half of the season and has no emotional arc or impact as a character on Aziraphale and Crowley - he could've been a magical cardboard cutout that spouts funny lines every now and then. There were so many set-ups within this season itself that had completely lackluster or non-existing pay-offs it's actually kind of ridiculous.

So many of the things people list or write about when talking about this season are there in concept, but they're not acted upon in the writing. A prime example of this is the Aziraphale/Crowley and Nina/Maggie parallels that people are pointing out - but within the season's current day scenes there isn't any romantic or emotional development between Aziraphale and Crowley, and the story doesn't center itself around that parallel or development. The only scene I could think of that even remotely does something with that is the Jane Austen dancing scene - except where Nina and Maggie have a conversation about what is going on right in that moment and how they're feeling, Aziraphale and Crowley are as good as emotionally dead and then the scene already ends.

If you start breaking down the plot elements it could've been made so, so SO much more tight-knit and coherent by focusing on what was important - ergo the character's relationships now and the bigger plot beats. As much as I loved the flashbacks in season 1, in this season they merely serve to tell us what we already know about Aziraphale's and Crowley's relationship and to add some superficial and pointless context to the different locations Aziraphale visits. Another thing I think is a big difference between this season and the original story is that every character, every concept had a Point to it, usually a joke or some sort of funny commentary (whether it was good/actually funny is another thing entirely). That's what made it feel interesting and sharp, whereas the new characters in this season just kind of... are. If you break down the concepts to their bare essence, coffeeshop owner in a toxic relationship and record shop owner who has anxiety are pretty bland as character concepts go. Shax as a character is also just so... pointless lmfao. It's almost badly caricaturing the concept of Gomens demons, which are already caricatures, so the effect is somewhat reminicent of beating a dead horse long after it has died. Anyway, so sorry to clutter your inbox like this but I just needed to get this off my chest. It's so weird seeing the dissonance between what is textually there in the show and how people are reacting to it!

hi! i hope you don't mind but i'm posting this publicly because tbh you really hit the nail on the head with every single one of these points. the whole season felt like this:

over and over again a potentially interesting plotline would get introduced, and then the writers would kind of just. forget why it was there? best example is, as you say, the nina/maggie thing - originally it began as a cover story to explain away the Forbidden Miracle, but that quickly ceased to be relevant, and the "we need to make them fall in love to get heaven off our backs" became a half-hearted running gag that was returned to every now and again with increasing half-heartedness. no sense of forward planning, no callbacks or consequences, just the constant sense of frantic improvisation without an end in sight.

#good omens #good omens spoilers #long post

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transmutationisms · 2 years ago

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do you have any thoughts on people saying the writing isn't subtle enough / feels off for succession this season?

oh man... there are a lot of different critiques being rolled in together here so forgive me being a little broad. also, i'm focussing on what i'm hearing from, like, podcasters and episode recaps and reviews, because those things are coming from people who are actually trying to be public figures and i'm not interested in bitching about random tumblr users who are just on their personal blogs lol.

anyway, so, in terms of things that i've seen being criticised repeatedly. one is the dialogue; people feel it's too blunt or direct and sometimes hacky. i have some sympathy here; i didn't love, for example, the tomshiv dialogue in episodes 1 and 4. however, succession has always had some percentage of dialogue that's direct like this, or frankly just lacklustre. if every line was a snappy one-liner that would suck, actually. also, i don't think it's true that this style of more blunt dialogue is universally bad; episode 3 had a high percentage of it, because of the subject matter, and it received basically universal critical acclaim. i feel like i need to get to the end of the season before i can see how it all fits together.

another thing that i think people are right to perceive as a change is that logan's death, plus shiv and roman getting more development and screentime, means it feels more like an ensemble show now. i don't inherently dislike this, though i do think it has contributed to some pacing wobbles (like i thought the first halves of episodes 1 and 2 were weak points thus far). it's not an entirely new trend, though, and on balance i think it works okay because this season really demands that sort of equal focus on all three sibs after logan's death. (rip connor)

then there's the fact that like .... frankly .... most, uh, mainstream anglo journalists are some flavour of corny liberal and i just don't think they understand what's being done politically in this season or how it's continuous with prior seasons lol. like, in many ways the cruises storyline (which i love, dgmw) was easier for them to parse because they could just read it as "the corporate world does misogyny and that's bad." which is like, true, but it doesn't really engage with the commentary on masculinity on any deeper level, or fascist homoerotics, or how media conglomerates create and profit from the spectacularisation of politics and everyday life and why that's fascistic. like if i were to put this bluntly, it surprised me how many people were surprised by 3x06 and i think journalists who didn't see that coming or thought it was thematically discordant are just not people who have anything interesting to say about this show lol. so like, yeah of course they're not tracking the body politics and arguments about degeneracy theory and capitalist eugenics that animate the entire show and especially season 4.

i certainly don't think the show is beyond reproach, and i have some nitpicks and complaints and criticisms, including of this season. i also can't yet pass judgment on the ending obviously, and reserve the right to hate it if necessary. but in general i like season 4, i think it's good television, and i don't think it's discontinuous with what this show has always been. and honestly, in a year, when the dust has settled and people are able to consider the entire season as one coherent piece, i would not be surprised if the critical response is markedly different and probably marked by a certain degree of nostalgia that we're simply not seeing right now because these episodes are hours old.

#s4 critiques

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animazi · 28 days ago

Text

AO3 Wrapped: Writer's Edition

tagged by @cheesenames

Words written this year: 43,215 (genuinely how. for context the last things I wrote before this year were all sub 1k pretty much)

Works written this year: 5, all star wars, 3 of those being peedy...

Work Most Proud of: girl and ghost. for something written for a headcanon I don't personally like that much I think it ended up being the neatest and best constructed of everything? providence, in summer has, imo, several massive pacing, thematic and structural issues that annoy me deeply

Work with Most Hits: providence, in summer which is the inevitable answer given its a) not a crackfic, and b) is about an actual main star war character

Fav title: providence, in summer. it's based on the 'providence in the fall of a sparrow' line from hamlet, which is imo quite fitting for padme as I read her (a character who has devoted her entire life to grander works than her, save this little corner of peace she has attempted to whittle out - which even then is caught up in prophecy lol - and I like and certainly used the force sensitivity via the twins idea - suddenly getting these strange awarenesses of the world you can't control and feel alien yet total in their correctness. horrible!) but I thought the unaltered quote was both too long and also didn't properly represent the themes of the fic, see my earlier note about how I'm not satisfied with providence overall lol, so I added the 'in summer' part which does get across another slightly flopped theme of that aka the temporary nature of it all. something both longed for and hated (I despise the heat in summer)

Pairing You Wrote the Most For: sigh. with pain in my voice I must accept my crown. peedy. I was also the World's Most Prolific Peedy Writer (I know I know, please hold the applause)

What Work was the Quickest To Write: um. my dad...the emperor! which I wrote on one (1) train journey. admittedly a full day of train journey, but still.

What Work Took You Longest To Write: providence, in summer...and I'm probably going to redo it at some point lol

How Many WIPS do you have for next year: idk man ideas just spawn in my brain from time to time and sometimes they get accepted, and sometimes they go live in the googledocs prison. I do want to write the vader and the obi-wan ones I've had in docs hell for a while though...

Longest Work of the Year: providence, in summer, although coruscant dreams; or eedy in love is a relatively close second. what can I say I'm a versatile person

Shortest Work of the Year: one love story. I haven't finished it though. I want to do a coffeeshop (cafshop?) au and some other deeply cheesy 2010s fanfic au concept in it still

Fav character to Write: embarrassing (true) answer. eedy. because all im doing is writing crack so I really don't have to care that much about ensuring she has a coherent characterisation going on lol. the serious (false) answer would be padme though, I just really love her so even though I agonise about how to write her, I still have fun

Which work of yours have you re-read the most: girl and ghost because it is actually good.

Total Kudos this Year: boring

Total Hits This Year: also boring

Total Bookmarks This Year: see above

Total Subscriptions This Year: ditto

What Do You Listen To While Writing: either silence or like exclusively sofia isella songs? I don't even like them that much I cannot explain it, 'everybody supports women', 'I looked the future in the eyes, it's mine', and 'all of human knowledge made us dumb' all just. have writing vibes I really cannot explain it

Fav line or passage: oh god. evil question. uhhh can I choose two? nobody is stopping me

from girl and ghost: "She had realised that they were doomed one unremarkable afternoon in the gallery when Vel tipped back her head and laughed, golden girl awash in sparkling glass crystals. In the bright white light the tips of her eyelashes had shone like burnished copper bringing out the blue of her eyes, like some delicate artefact Kleya would handle white-gloved, carefully removed from touching it - for its own sake." (this was one of the first things I wrote for this. I really like it, even though the great gatsby influence is obvious...) from providence, in summer: "In her mind, she dismounted from the guarlara and walked out alone into the grass, blades brushing her shoulders, tangling in her hair until they pulled it out of the tight nautilus shells and carried her feathered headdress down to the ground. They pulled out the ribbons in her hair, brushed away her makeup, tore down the regalia of the queen and left the girl behind to walk on forwards deeper into the grass sea and its whispered susurrus-song; a land baptism between the sky and the sea in the art of emptiness, of hollowing out the self and allowing Naboo to reform her. The pale moons, veiled by day, bore witness as she walked alone and unafraid through the ocean, her path her own. Above her, the hawk followed, thermal currents carrying it smoothly along with her. Morning dew that had not yet evaporated beaded on her bare feet and the air was alive with the ancient song of the wind and the high chirp of crickets and calls of birds. The hawk cried, and Padmé woke from her dream." (I will stand by this: a good amount of providence is genuinely my best writing. it's the sort of somewhat self-indulgent prose I really love, and think fits a padme pov story.)

I. I have not read very much fic this year I have to be honest. I don't read for fun at all during term time, and I've been writing more this year, so I don't know whose done what or tumblr usernames, so I fear I must be boring and double tag @wlwanakin and @midnight-melancholiaaa

#original ani thought #genuinely please talk to me about padme. I may not be happy with providence #but my god I can yap endlessly about the core ideas and themes of that fic #I have two (three if you include vampadme although I wouldn't post her on ao3 too) more fics due at Christmas for midnight <3 #one is mon x eedy. and the other one is a leida mourning mon au thing. wildly different tones lol

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cigarettesandinevitablebetrayal · 1 month ago

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woe, ask meme emojis be upon ye 🧮💕😠🎀🌅 🔚🤔📚🦉😊😭

🧮 - What are you working on? describe it in 20 words or less

Super secret gift exchange one shot.

But, also, Inquisition rewrite with new lore and specific focus on Dalish culture.

💕 - What's your favorite part of your writing process?

Honestly? It's that moment when I take a step back after final edits and realize that it's not perfect, but it's at a stage where I really like. Being able to see what I've created after and keep returning to it just to admire.

😠 - What's your least favorite part of your writing process?

The plot outlining, my beloathed. I hate writing down notes and organizing them into the reasonable order that they should occur to follow the thematic arc I want to achieve. Homophobia. I should just be able to write and remember all the details in my head.

🎀 - How do you decide when something is done?

Okay, so my writing process (as far as fanfiction goes) is: character creation, frustration at a canon writing issue, brainstorming, free writing, planning/plotting, more freewriting, and then actual drafting followed by 2-3 rounds of editing with time in between to take a step back and return with fresh eyes. That being said, by the time I'm actually drafting the piece, I already have a pretty good idea of where I want it to end.

So long story short, I know when something is done because I go into a piece with the question "what do I want to say/do here?" and end it when I'm satisfied with having reached that goal.

🌅 - Do you typically known the ending to something before you start writing it?

Oh, whoops. Well, to dovetail with the previous answer: usually yes. Occasionally, on longer projects, my goals shift and I subsequently shift the ending to reflect the new thing I want to say.

🔚 - Have you ever completely changed the direction a piece was going?

Yes, I have. Rashad's story is easily the biggest example of this. I did a lot of tweaking of their character, which wound up changing their relationships, their living situation, and some of the ways they approach things. This wound up changing the entire storyline of The End to All These Violent Means, which I'm still trying to fix.

🤔 - Why do you write fic?

Because I have a problem with canon that is pretty easily solved. Because I love writing. I love making things and speaking to people in more coherent ways than having conversation. Because not making anything is unbearable.

📚 - Do you ever read similar works while writing, or do you intentionally not read them?

Yes and no. I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, much with its own heavy world-building. I try to reflect that in my own writing. I usually read a lot of fanfic similar to what I end up writing before I start writing for a fandom, but after that, I try to stop reading most fic in that fandom. Partially because I swap time to read with time to write.

🦉 - Give yourself a piece of writing advice.

Stop researching for that shit you know you're never going to need for the chapter. You don't need it. Finish the piece and you can go down the research rabbit hole later.

😊 - Say something nice about your writing.

I'm really proud of how I write characters and I think that my dialogue has gotten much better over the years. Not sure if the former informed the latter, but they certainly work well together.

😭 - What’s something you’re currently struggling with?

Staying motivated and not panic spiraling when writing other people's OCs. I get way out of my head trying to figure out if I'm writing them accurately. It's a disaster.

#thanks for the questions!#asks answered

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mdhwrites · 2 years ago

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How sick are you of the "TOH season 3 was bad because of Disney" argument?

I feel bad that I've been talking about the shortening as much as I have lately and this ask feels like a part of that. XD It's probably the one thing that the troll from a bit ago really got under my skin with and what seemed to piss them off the hardest. The idea that I was 'blatantly ignoring the circumstances' that led to the problems in the show.

But frankly, I just don't hear the argument being used much anymore. That might just partially be because at this point, I feel like I see more Amphibia art than I see Owl House art on my timeline because... Who is really defending this show at this point? It seems like even die hards are glancing back and fidgeting about it, like that person who I reblogged about the glyphs. That was a decently popular post for something that should have been controversial considering how theoretically important the glyphs are to at least the branding of the show.

S3 in general seems to have left a really bad taste in people's mouths and it's not hard to see why. When you had two and a half hours of content to give your story a proper bang of a finish, even if you can't make it all cohere thematically or the like, you should be able to do SOMETHING. That's WAY longer than most movies and TOH didn't have to do the first two act of establishment that most movies need to do. They had their players, they had their villains, they had their stakes and they never have to find an answer on their own to the Collector or Belos so they effectively already had their solution. They were setup to have payoff after payoff after payoff.

But I made an entire blog about how S3 could never have been great... Because what was there to payoff? Beating Belos is about the ONLY thing S2 left for the cast to do, especially once the second special came around and the interesting elements of the Collector were killed. He's just a sad but playful boy, just like Hunter was sad but mad and Amity was sad but smart. We had no other villains that we as an audience were connected to, all the character arcs were done, to the point where they have to make shit up for Willow so they can do SOMETHING with her and even that feels like shipping fodder, and the thematics were left so far down the road that... What can you say about the ending positively besides "I'm happy everyone is alive and seems happy where they are"?

None of these issues only arose in S3 of TOH though and I think that's the real problem for the fandom right now. Literally the longer the show has gone on, the more its inherent flaws in its writing become obvious as well as the fact that these writers simply aren't good enough to improvise off of the flaws in their own writing to make it better. We have no one who is Toriyama during the Cell Arc here where they can change on the fly and actually build off of what has to now be discarded. Or, hell, me, because I don't plan my stories from go but I take GREAT pride in being able to build on surprises I leave for myself on accident. Remember: The Power of Love did not start even with that title or Boscha planned to ever make more than joke appearances. Now it has a lot of people's favorite versions of both Boscha and Amity.

And that story is over a hundred chapters long. I had at least another hundred chapters of plans in mind. But when my brain stopped working for it and I decided I needed to write an ending so readers could be satisfied, I managed to do one in six parts that word count wise was probably at most 15k words. Not that long frankly but I was able to highlight the mended relationship between Amity and Boscha, how far Boscha had come socially as to be able to ignore those who might have gotten under her skin before, her better relationship with Luz, tie up the biggest loose ends and get them all together.

Was it entirely coherent? No. Was it as impactful as it could have been had I done all my plans? Of course not. But it was satisfying and true to the story and none of it wasted my audiences' time while still giving them an ending that was not only poignant to what had come because of how far Boscha had come but also just give the audience what they wanted. I knew what to cut and I knew what was important.

The Owl House never knew what was important to it though. Never met an idea it didn't like. So... How do you end a story that has never had a focus, clear thematics, plot, world or even characters? That throws everything into the kitchen sink and just waves away the elements in the sink that will stop them from adding new elements that will never get past the surface?

In a lot of spectacle that shows you were always a lot more shallow than you claimed and that's gonna leave a lot of people cold. I know it did for me, even well before the finale.

=========

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

#toh critical #the owl house criticism

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fictionadventurer · 1 year ago

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I have been following your reading of Ruth with interest; when I read it myself the main impression was that of relentless misery. Certainly, characters were kind and nature was beautiful, but Ruth's life overall was too sad for me, even if it shone forth with her sweetness, innocence, generosity, and mercifulness.

With time I have come to a more... analytical approach if you will. I feel like The Problem With RuthTM is that Gaskell is serving on her plate more than she can chew. A good part of the story feels like an homage to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, with the pointing out of double standards, the protection of children, forgiveness of those who made your life miserable, etc; but it is also trying to include commentary on single motherhood, religious hypocrisy, social cruelty... and that kind of corners her into writing Ruth, the fallen woman, as too angelic, too perfect, too innocent, all the time, and that gets a bit grating after a while. Even Fanny Price has her moments of jealousy or anger in her inner thoughts! It also corners her into... having to kill her off in the end? Even if it isn't a horrible death in disgrace, and she is an exalted character at the end of the story for her virtues, it still sort of carries the idea that she cannot "come back" from the mistake of her youth.

Ruth does become too good, and I wished that Gaskell had been able to show her as a more complicated character--would she have been worthy of redemption if she hadn't been perfectly good after she repented of her major sin?--but I was able to forgive it somewhat because Ruth is set up as innocent and trusting from the beginning, and Gaskell points out that her present-focused personality is both the source of her sin (not thinking about the consequences) and her later saintliness (letting go of the past and not thinking of herself). I didn't think it made her an annoying character, because that portion of the story was less about her and more about how other people react to her--here's a community that loves her because she seems perfect, so how does that change when they find out her deep, dark secret?

I don't think Gaskell was trying to do too much. I think the story's incredibly focused because everything centers around one theme: sin. How do we fall into it? How do we rationalize it? How do we hide it? How do we redeem ourselves from it? How do we judge others for it? Almost every character has to grapple directly with some major sin they commit and the fallout from it.

It's why I don't agree that this is at all a Tenant redux. Bronte was writing directly about gender and marriage and critiquing the societal structures surrounding both. Gaskell centers the story on Ruth's fall not to comment on gender or sex, but to explore sin, and this happens to be one of the most severely-judged sins in her society. Even if the surface situation seems similar--a woman pretending to be a widow to hide a shameful past--their realities and personalities are exact opposites, and the stories are exploring very different things.

As for the ending, I also heartily wish that Gaskell had come up with a happier ending for Ruth. I was so disappointed when I realized Gaskell was going with the expected cliche. However, I don't think Gaskell was trying to say there was no redemption for Ruth. She had been thoroughly redeemed in the eyes of the town. The death read to me as, "Well, the story has to end somewhere, and this provides the easiest ending point."

Actually, aside from my disappointment at the chosen path, I think this is one of Gaskell's best endings, because it's thematically and structurally coherent. Ruth going to care for Mr. Bellingham at the risk of her own life is a mirror to Mr. Bellingham abandoning her after his first illness. The first time, she was shut out from caring for him; the second time, she comes when no one else will dare. After his first illness, he proves that he doesn't love her by abandoning her for his own convenience; during the second, she proves what love truly is by coming at risk to her own life. (Also, the fact that the one servant who stayed with him was the boy he'd rescued from the river at their second meeting--my heart!). Ruth has retained her innocence and grown into someone courageous, while Bellingham with his worldly prosperity has magnified his faults and fallen deeper into sin. Ruth has become someone so selfless that she gives her own life, while Bellingham is so selfish that he expects to be commended for merely giving money to a child he's abandoned for twelve years. (Gentle Mr. Benson throwing him out of the house was almost enough to make me forgive the rest of the ending).

The callbacks and mirrors made for a much tighter ending than Gaskell usually manages--even if I was disappointed in the choice, it didn't come out of nowhere, the way, for instance, that some parts of Mary Barton do. It made it satisfying to me as an overall story, so I can forgive a lot of smaller flaws along the way.

#answered asks #elizabeth gaskell #ruth 1853 #thatscarletflycatcher

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cvrc11 · 1 year ago

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AN INCOHERENT RAMBLING ANALYSIS OF A VERY SMALL PORTION OF NIER AUTOMATA (2017)'S THEMES

Okay so it has been 6 years of me basically thinking about Nier Automata at least once a day and planning to eventually write something coherent about it, and I still plan to do that because lord knows this will NOT be coherent, but @flemmboyant accidentally prompted me a few days ago to spew a bunch of analysis of this game she has never played at her and she told me it would be a good tumblr post so. This is my extremely rambling and incoherent response (slightly edited for clarity where her responses to my messages were relevant for context) to the prompt "Tell me about Nier Automata's themes", because I just needed to get this OUT OF MY SYSTEM apparently jesus christ it's been SIX YEARS it feels so much longer how did i ever live before Nier Automata. anyway.

This contains full spoilers for the game's themes and narrative, and also a single pretty major spoiler for the original Nier, and probably will only make sense if you're familiar with the game, so, readmore time!

[okay so this all began with me saying that 2B's highly sexualized design, and to a lesser extent 9S's kinda creepy schoolboy design, actually serve important thematic functions despite Yoko Taro's insistence that he just "likes pretty girls". So that is the theme I am explaining here at the start] Basically I think what Automata is going for with the fact that all the normal, "civilian" androids who are fighting in the war as a ragtag resistance are wearing sensible clothes and look like adult humans with fairly photorealistic deisgns, but the military androids who are created by and fight for YoRHA are either anime waifus in sexy maid costumes or pedobait pubescent boys in schoolboy outfits (a thing which is definitely more widely sexualized in Japan than in the west) is that the military propaganda machine of YoRHA is invested in the spectacle over the reality of war and purposefully attempts to distance their aesthetics from the harsh realities of war and make them all sexy and shiny and cute. And ALSO the game has this thing about how the androids have maybe been programmed to experience the equivalent of human sexual pleasure when engaging in violence and murder so anything that aesthetically brings sex and violence close together is in service of that, such as the fact that 2B's and 9S's clothes get blown off when they use their BUILT IN SELF-DESTRUCT OPTION because they're SENTIENT BOMBS BUILT FOR A FOREVER WAR WITH NO PURPOSE BUT THE PERPETUATION OF A CYCLE OF DEATH AND VIOLENCE but they've been made SEXY and CUTE to MAKE EVERYONE, INCLUDING THEMSELVES, FORGET ABOUT THAT FACT AND -------------------------

also the YoRHA androids are all made to be sexy and aesthetically perfect but they are not expected to experience love or desire or appreciate beauty, aesthetic or otherwise, while the normal androids who look like normal people DO experience all these things and act on them and fall in love and fuck and love flowers and landscapes but the YoRHA androids don't even KNOW that they ARE sexy and aesthetically perfect because it means nothing to them, it's just what they look like, and being half naked is meaningless to them but they always have BLINDFOLDS on because yoko taro is SUBTLE AS A BRICK and the scenes of the greatest intimacy and sensuality and love are those in which they TAKE OFF THEIR BLINDFOLDS and see each other's EYES

and even the machine lifeforms, who look alien and have nothing of the human form about them, understand desire and love and beauty more than these perfect beautiful sexy porcelain dolls who mimic the most exaggerated fantasies of their ancient human creators who are no longer even alive to appreciate them

anyway now you have the requisite knowledge to understand why i am insane about the one moment in nier automata that i am the most insane about, which is when, in a conversation that isn't voiced and plays out in text on a screen between 9S and one of the game's antagonists, the antagonist in question suddenly, in an attempt to throw 9S off, asks "You want to **** 2B, don't you?" and it's this big shock moment because OBVIOUSLY you ASSUME that says FUCK and this comes out of NOWHERE and it DOES throw 9S off HARD and then later in the game 9S's mental state deteriorates very significantly and he fights a bunch of 2B clones and during the fight he starts to be creepier and more manic and obsessive in the violence he inflicts on her and in the end he chokes the last one of them to death while laughing maniacally and also crying and you think the plot twist is that the censored word was maybe KILL and he's secretly been trying to kill her all along but then you remember that their sex and violence responses have been programmed to be the same and you realize the word isn't censored for THE PLAYER because PEOPLE SWEAR IN THIS GAME ALL THE TIME, the word is censored FOR 9S because HE DOESN'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO, THEY ARE THE SAME TO HIM and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

he's a GUN in LOVE who thinks the only feeling is BULLET

anyway this is only one layer of the like 5000 thematic angles this game is juggling. the first boss you fight is named Marx and Engels. Fucking. YOKO TARO, MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

there's a part where a bunch of children commit suicide and depending on how you interpret certain stuff the game MIGHT be saying to you, in that very moment, that they were never real people and didn't actually feel anything and were just machines doing a fake-out chinese room thing to mimic genuine human interiority, and grabbing you by the throat and going "so you SHOULDN'T CARE, RIGHT??? so WHY DO YOU STILL CARE, BITCH" and this moment rewrote my personal understanding of what it means to have empathy and what the moral value of empathy is, but it could ALSO NOT BE SAYING THAT AT ALL and their feelings COULD have been real in which case it is instead asking you if you feel good about yourself because you WANTED their feelings to be real, you TAUGHT THEM to feel like real humans, you ENCOURAGED them to embrace their humanity and be humans and not machines and now they're DEAD BECAUSE OF IT so WAS IT ACTUALLY BETTER FOR THEM TO FEEL THINGS, YOU MONSTER

none of this is even TOUCHING on all the INSANE shit this game does with GENDER there is SO MUCH GENDER EVERYWHERE the gender is LEAKING THROUGH THE SEAMS the YoRHA soldiers have comical over the top sexual dimorphism and absolutely NO interest in gender or traditional gender roles while the robots that have no sex of any kind or any reason to even associate with any gender whatsoever are OBSESSED with human gender and WANT TO HAVE IT SO BAD and they DON'T UNDERSTAND IT but they WANT IT SO MUCH and they KEEP TRYING TO INVENT GENDER but they DON'T KNOW WHAT ITS FOR they just THINK IT MUST BE IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT WAS IMPORTANT FOR HUMANS and in their attempts to enshrine it REVEAL ITS ABSURDITY AND POINTLESSNESS

this is the Little Sister machine. By putting that pink bow on her head of her own volition because of her naive and foolish but authentic desire to be a woman she is more of a woman than 2B, who was designed by generations of scientists to be the Most Woman Ever but who has never had a single thought in her life about the concept of gender or womanhood, could ever be. This is the game's implicit message all the time and it rules

i didn't even get into the themes about the unnecessary overvaluing of "authenticity" or "natural" things that are manifested by the fact that not only are there no humans in the game, humans died out a long time ago and the "regular people" you interact with are all other androids like yourself who either were never programmed to be insane killing machines like you or simply broke their programming at some point so now you ostensibly fight your forever war to "protect humanity" but are in fact protecting your fellow androids but ALSO THOSE "HUMANS" WHO MADE YOU AND THEN DIED OUT CENTURIES AGO WERE THEMSELVES NOT ACTUALLY HUMANS BECAUSE IN THE ORIGINAL NIER IT'S REVEALED HUMANS DIED OUT THOUSANDS OF YEARS BEFORE /THAT/ GAME AND THE "HUMANS" WHO MADE THE ANDROIDS IN NIER AUTOMATA WERE THEMSELVES ARTIFICIAL CREATIONS DESIGNED TO PREVENT HUMANITY'S EXTINCTION THAT FAILED AND INSTEAD JUST BECAME THE NEW HUMANS SO YOU ARE LIKE. SO MANY LAYERS DEEP INTO NOT BEING "NATURAL" OR "AUTHENTIC" HUMANITY BECAUSE IN FACT THE LAST BIOLOGICAL HUMAN DIED OVER ELEVEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO

So ALL that stuff I talked about the authenticity of "real" gender AND the authenticity of the "humanity" of the robot children has to be taken in the additional context of MULTIPLE MATRYOSHKA DOLL LAYERS OF FAKE HUMANS

[at this point she asked me WHO ARE YOU FIGHTING IN THE GAME because as you can see I kept referring to a war without explaining bc i was too busy being insane about THE THEMES]

YOU, or "androids", are fighting "machine lifeforms", which, you see, are TOTALLY DIFFERENT, and unlike YOU, an android who definitely has normal human emotions, are OBVIOUSLY just mindless drones with NO semblance of humanity to them, because THEY were designed by an ALIEN RACE to INVADE EARTH and then it's revealed the aliens actually died out on their own like IMMEDIATELY after invading and the machines have just been self-replicating all along lmao

honestly the FUNNIEST part of Nier Automata is that THE ALIENS ARE REAL and are UTTERLY IRRELEVANT

like. it seems so OBVIOUS from the START that the big reveal is gonna be "oh the machines are ALSO man made this is some wild misunderstanding and the war is pointless" and then you FIND THE ALIENS and they're DEAD IN A SPACESHIP and the FACT THAT THERE'S ALIENS THAT INVADED EARTH IS NEVER EXPANDED UPON they are never given A NAME OR ANY DEPTH OR ANYTHING IT'S JUST AN ACCEPTED FACT OF THIS SETTING THAT "THE ALIENS" INVADED AT SOME POINT AND NOW THEY'RE DEAD, LET'S MOVE ON

and they are NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN because that's the POINT, the point is that both the humans and the aliens are an EXCUSE, even if the androids didn't KNOW both species were extinct (which, the android LEADERS did know about the humans at least), it wouldn't MATTER if they DID know because the war is no longer ABOUT humans OR aliens even though that's what ALL the propaganda is about and the motto of YoRHA is PROTECT MANKIND and you hear that phrase EVERY FIVE SECONDS and then it's revealed they're dead and NOTHING CHANGES and the androids STILL shout PROTECT MANKIND as they go to kill and die in an endless war over nothing with a group that by and large isn't even hostile, they're just sitting around trying to figure out if putting on a pink bow bestows GENDER for fuck's sake they have no interest in conquering the earth for aliens that THEY don't even KNOW about because they don't even HAVE the mythologized notion of their own creators that the androids have, the machines that ARE fighting are only fighting because THEY'VE ALWAYS BEEN FIGHTING and that's just WHAT LIFE IS and AAAAAAAAAAAAA

you built a world wide death machine army and told them they were fighting for peace but they can never make peace because they're a DEATH MACHINE and all they know is DEATH and THEY'RE GUNS IN LOVE WHO THINK THE ONLY FEELING IS BULLET and that REMAINS TRUE ON THE LEVEL OF THE PERSONAL DRAMA BETWEEN 9S AND 2B JUST AS MUCH AS ON THE GRAND SCALE OF THE GLOBAL EXTINCTION GENOCIDE WAR BECAUSE THEY'RE THE SAME THING DRIVEN BY THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM AND THAT PROBLEM IS THE FASCIST DRIVE TO BUILD A GUN TO SOLVE EVERY PROBLEM

as you can see even when i start by saying "the FUNNIEST thing about the game" it ends up being NOT FUNNY AT ALL because it's ALL ABOUT THE THEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES [tears off my own head and kicks it out the window, still screaming about themes]

#my thoughts #nier automata #nier automata spoilers #suicide mention #THE THEEEEEEMEEEEEEEES

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