#you really think half of this stuff makes sense as a linear story?

[jorrated]

idk why sonic fans care so much about canon timelines. classic sonic is past sonic or an alternate version sonic? who gives a shit sonic canon is the definition of fuck it we ball have fun with your blue rat

[eccentric-nucleus]

so, i finally finished (posting) my huge, novel-length teenage mutant ninja turtles fanfic. i just posted the final epilogue over on ao3!

here is my director's commentary on it, if you want to read even more about it. this contains spoilers for the whole thing. maybe read the epilogue first and sit with that for a minute. also this will probably be pretty incoherent if you haven't read the whole thing. it's just a disconnected series of thoughts i have about the story, really

man, this story. this is maybe the longest thing i've ever written? like 'the new hive' and 'hell game' had more words (i think) but they were mostly a disconnected series of sex scenes with thin connective tissue between them. this is ~200k words of a single, linear, mostly-plot narrative. i'm writing scenes that aren't just about getting the two leads to fuck!! that's weird. it's definitely the most ambitious thing i've written. kind of weird that it's tmnt fanfic. that's just how it worked out, i guess.

so back in 2022 i watched the rise of the tmnt movie because people kept talking about the animation quality of the fights and that got me into a spiral of actually paying attention to the ninja turtles. i had never been into them & genuinely i think a huge part of getting into tmnt stuff was that rise actually varied the design of the turtles so that they weren't all basically identical save for color-coding. turns out visual design was the missing mystery ingredient.

also in 2022 i was burning out on writing 'goblin cave', when what i had intended to be a fun little writing exercise ended up getting algorithmically surfaced and getting me hundreds of comments on each chapter. that got a little stressful and i wasn't really enjoying that, so i stopped. but i was like, hmm you know i mostly just write weird porn but maybe i should write something a little more ambitious. with a plot, and everything. 'goblin cave' was (in my mind) all about a character who was created for violence deciding art was a much more worthwhile pursuit. but the main character of that doesn't know what art is. because it's a magical dungeon core. and i was still thinking a lot about dead zones of the imagination, by david graeber. so i was like, okay, let's do this again but in a slightly more self-authentic way and make it weird gay porn with weird animal dicks. let's give michelangelo ninjaturtle a monologue about how the powerful are utterly insulated from any consequence.

(also early on, after watching most of rottmnt, i stumbled across this blog post about the tmnt comics and the end of the world. that ended up being deeply influential on the fic too. i've been kinda in a state for the past few years and this fic is absolutely a part of me working through a lot of complicated feelings about the world and the future. lol people talk so much about people writing dark fic 'to cope' but this was pretty much the first time i've outsourced my emotional processing by having bad things happen to fictional characters.)

so uhhh where to start here. the setting of the fic is this complicated messy mashup of a half-dozen tmnt continuities. it's very rise-heavy, since... that was the only series i had watched(/read) when i had determined the major plot points, but there's a lot of bits and pieces from all over.

to roughly outline the characters here, a huge influence on mikey's personality in this is... mikey's 'dr delicate touch' persona in rottmnt. in the sense that... okay yes yes that is a kid's show and all of his dr delicate touch lines are, you know, setups and punchlines. you think he's going to be nice but actually he's mean! etc. but in-universe it's like, wait hold on a second. mikey is like the most emotionally-intelligent of the four. he absolutely knows when people are on the edge of flipping out and need a calming out to a stressful situation. and instead he freaks them out more! mikey's hobby is: being mean to his friends & family, for fun! what a fun character trait.

i was thinking about this tweet a lot, too. i read some writing advice once that people tend to make characters who are supposed to be likable too squeaky-clean. nothing but positive character traits for them! but actually every 'positive' character trait is exactly the same as a 'negative' one; it's just a matter of focus and degree. a character is light-hearted and comedic? they can never take things seriously, even when they really should. a character is willing to do anything to protect the people they love? so they're violent and threatening and scary if they happen to decide you're something that they need to protect against. etc. i was really dedicated in this to bringing out the worst characteristics of everybody's personalities.

mikey was also very deeply inspired by: all the garbage progression fantasy stuff i've been reading. i've complained about this several times on this very blog, but a constant theme in most progression fantasy is 1. the main character will constantly get more and more powerful and 2. the main character will never really have their relationship with the rest of the world changed via that power. it's just stat-ups. they just have higher stats so they're more powerful. mikey is the most powerful person on the planet and it's fucking ruining his life. he knows that there's nobody capable of actually checking his behavior, & he's in this constant state of thinking he's maybe a few bad days away from murdering half the planet and incredibly aware there's not really anything he can do about that aside from constantly worry. he's kind of an anxious mess.

mikey absolutely thinks it's more ethical to murder somebody out of the sheer glee of seeing people crushed before you than murdering somebody for something as tedious as mob orders. you're satisfying a deep, raw desire felt from the heart! that's good!

what he'd like to do, in some sense, is just hang out in his studio and chill with other artists, but he knows the world is not gonna let him do that. things will come up. a lot of his being a creepy bystander thing while people get murdered is b/c he's very much formulated his morality to be like... it is not his responsibility to fix other people's problems. other people will do what they want and that has no bearing on him. is that a pretty cowardly and self-serving morality? sure! but he was kinda designed to rule the world & his flinch away from that pretty much defines him as a character in this. that's kinda the morality he needed to end up on to convince himself not to be a genocide machine.

he's incredibly aware he could basically be a superhero, & all it would take is... giving up on all his hopes and dreams and constantly engage with his abilities. and being a superhero isn't that many steps removed from living up to his full design spec and just taking over the world and ruling as god-emperror. idk how well i hit all those notes in the actual fic, but, that's what i was going for. mikey as the narrator clearly doesn't want to talk or think about it so it's never really directly confronted.

raph is... okay so i guess a fairly common piece of fanon, for rise especially, is to characterise raph as having multiple personalities? whether that's him just having alters or him having full-blown MPD depends on the fic. my fun little nod to that is that he's kind of a disassociative mess. he has kind of failed to reconcile the disparate aspects of his personality and he switches between one of several different facades depending on the situation. also, you know. the trauma.

(i didn't really mean for it to be as such, but there is this theme in the story about names? despite everything else mikey has a crystal-clear self-conception of himself and has one name, which he gave himself. raph, who has kinda failed to build his own personality, has a collection of name other people have given him, none of which he feels actually fits him. donnie has a more fluid self-identity and also has roughly a million aliases and false identities & constantly slips in and out of character when it's convenient. leatherhead still going by the name mikey gave him goes hand-in-hand with that bit where mikey meanly thinks about how maybe leatherhead's entire self-conception is hung up on something mikey said to him once, etc. this is one of those things that i'd go back and make more present if i did go back and clean up the rough draft, b/c as it is it's there, but it doesn't really do a whole lot.)

--

this fic was inspired by... i had read a few big aus that were just like, taking the characters and loose bits of setting and going off in completely different directions. some of NeiNing's aus were a definite influence, plus like, this one au where raph is an ex-con mechanic, etc, etc. just like "i am going to play out a completely unrelated drama using turtles as the dolls". maybe most directly influential was Of Knights and Thieves, where donnie & mikey are corporate espionage hacker/thief types and raph & leo are do-gooder vigilantes. the original concept for this was much more heavily focused on the art forgery. in a very early draft the idea was leo would get involved much more actively in trying to track down the creator of the false takenobus. then i was like, "i am going to crash a completely separate story concept about the dark armor into the side of this art-forgery story". the filename for the story is still 'lol grindr hookup art thief'. that is not really where the story went.

oh man, the art stuff. i made some posts about this at the time! that are now several years old. here's one! i did end up getting a traditional woodcut printing of Tokaido 53 stations, no. 11, Hokone. in a lot of ways doing all the art research was more satisfying and fun than writing the extensive downward spiral that was the latter half of the fic. but, hey, that's life too i guess.

also raph in this is... okay, so, i don't mean this in a mean way. i really liked the fics! but cndrow has written several raph/donnie fics where raph is just like... like a repeated theme in them is raph confessing eternal love & talking about how he's like, mentally planning on them being together forever. on the first date. and sure sure everybody has different tastes; i'm absolutely sure that my interest in guys who are mean leads to some stories that are extremely offputting to some people, etc. but it's like, oh man, raph, please slow your roll a little. if somebody said they were planning our future wedding all of ten minutes into talking to me i would flee the room. & the raph in blinded by the summer sun is very much inspired by that. sadly, i never fully committed to that. originally i even had a line in chapter 9 where slash was like 'please tell me you didn't drop the 'i love you forever' on this guy already' to imply that that was, you know, a theme for raph, but i chickened out and cut it. raph as a kind of rolling series of bad relationships characterized by him falling forever in love w/ his latest crush until the relationship detonates and leaves him not really understanding how things went wrong. but i don't think that's expressed well like, at all. but that ideally should characterize a large part of why he keeps chasing after mikey even well after the point where it would be reasonable to disengage. also to convey some of the downsides of a character believing in true love. it's rough out there in the world.

also thank you tumblr user averyterrible for writing this goncharov post. that was the point in the story where i was like, actually i have been writing raph as way too much of a sad boy. if i want to play in the space of crime drama, there needs to be some crime! he's a yakuza assassin. he needs to chop off somebody's fingers with bolt cutters.

--

to me, the central question in the fic isn't really 'will the mikey/raph relationship work out' or 'will mikey succeed in his plans', it's 'why is mikey doing these things'. & i think the leatherhead chunks in chapter 23 finally give enough context to what's going on with mikey to let people answer that? like oh, mikey is a mess.

(lol the initial setup for the early chapters are supposed to give an audience response of like, "oh no, raph has some dangerous secrets" "oh no, raph is a violent yakuza murderer! i hope mikey is going to be okay interacting with raph" "...oh no, i hope raph is going to be okay interacting with mikey")

a lot of the story really is about how... mikey & raph's relationship is in a lot of ways very adolescent? they have not had a lot of prior experience with healthy relationships, and they're trying, but, uhhhhhhh. mikey likes to act like he's so cool and above-it-all and unaffected by things happening, but that's actually just b/c he doesn't really care about most things. when something happens that he genuinely doesn't like he immediately snaps and has a giant meltdown. (we see this once with raph, when mikey has a panic attack and throws up when raph blows him off wrt warning him of bishop, and once with donny about the armor, where mike immediately starts tantruming and threatening to kill himself. mikey is very bad at resolving conflict. he's kind of a brat, actually.)

like every character in this is in some way their worst self. they're all pretty awful people. but they're all also trying to... grapple with their place in the world and try to be better people. to even figure out what 'better' means. this is a story about how 'being a good person' is a constant struggle, not to 'do the right thing', but to even figure out what's 'right'. it's about picking yourself up again after a bad period and going, well, let's keep going. like mikey has a lot of traits but one that i, the author, actually think is fairly admirable is his ability to get back up and keep going after a really bad period. which is funny b/c characterwise that goes hand-in-hand with his callousness. just shrug off all the misery you caused other people, i guess! see above about positive/negative character traits.

(also uh there's another tmnt fic author whose work has a lot of... a Bad Guy is constructed/identified. then helpless children (or teens!) are rescued from him. then the bad guy is ruthlessly & violently murdered. sometimes onscreen, sometimes offscreen. and then it's nothing but chapter after chapter of people being happy and cutesy to each other. and like, i get it. but the, like, recurring theme there of the Bad Guy having done something fundamentally unforgivable that separates from all understanding & mercy, to which the only justice is a violent death, just strikes me as... simplistic. sometimes people do really awful things and part of grappling with that as an adult with an adult moral conceptualization is realizing that you gotta look past your initial reflex to punishment.

or like, mikey's whole childhood in this really fucked him up but a huge part of his identity is him having to form an identity from that. having to make the determination of which parts of him are 'him' and which parts were done to him. lol @ him aggressively and extensively rejecting everything about what draxum made him to do & then blithely being like 'we were engineered to eat humans anyway' as a defense for all the corpse-eating. mikey you just like eating people & have decided that part does align with your self-identity. mikey would really not appreciate anybody being like 'i'm sorry nobody saved you from that' b/c that (to him) would basically be the same as them saying they thought he was fundamentally, irreparably damaged & was going to be forever incapable of being anything other than what draxum made him to be. he wouldn't take it well.)

uhhh what else. i mean there's a lot. fun fact pretty much every time mikey gets mad at somebody else he's hugely projecting. even his pacifism is like... hmm maybe he should have killed draxum. a lot of his talk @ raph about splinter is secretly mikey relitigating his feelings about draxum. oh what's that mikey you think that splinter is only playing happy family b/c he's immortal and he has infinite time to spend humoring somebody's illusions but that when push comes to shove he'll drop all that? gee i wonder if that might apply to any dynamics in mikey's own life. lol at mikey being like "wow red your life is kind of a fucked-up nightmare of weird psychopaths playing like they're happy family" and then two chapters is like "hey come meet my family. we live in my genocidal dad's bombed-out lab and we're treating him like a weird racist grandpa". i kinda wanted something that would complicate mikey just being like "i am a pacifist now and i don't kill anybody"; mikey that's all well and good but like half his inner tension comes from not being sure if he should've left draxum alive. that's kinda the mirror to him debating whether or not actually killing leatherhead would've been better. (in a few years shelldon is gonna go through a period of not wanting to talk to any of them. mikey & donnie are better parents than draxum but that's such a low bar.)

(likewise at the end when mikey is like "this is raph's healthiest relationship so far!" to leo, like, this is more mikey projecting. really the raph/casey relationship was probably better for raph & casey, idk, who can say. but is mikey's relationship with raph the healthiest romantic interaction he's ever had? yes, absolutely. we don't get to see the mikey/leatherhead relationship really up-close and personal but it should be pretty clear that it was pretty awful for everybody involved. compared to that, the mikey/raph is absolutely mikey's healthiest relationship so far. just. low bars.)

lol i am a little concerned that mikey's tendency to monologue, & especially his whole political monologue near the end, will get people to think he's just acting as an author's soapbox. i mean, okay, the little author's note where i'm like "as always, mikey is a perfect role model and everybody should do what he does" was a fun little joke. but, oof, the number of fics i've read where the authors feel the need to loudly and repeatedly disclaim that This Story Contains Things The Author Does Not Condone In Real Life is pretty disheartening. way to have absolutely no faith in your audience. but likie, the part where mikey is pretty much flat-out like, "actually i think my moral framework is whatever is necessary to justify my actions" is meant to be pretty damning. maybe not of mikey specifically as a character, just of, you know. the whole world where that's a pretty common outlook among people with power.

--

lets talk about the rape. part of it is that it felt like it would be inauthentic to go through the entire story without mikey seriously violating one of raph's boundaries. part of it is that mikey here kinda has the trifecta of ASPD, ADHD, & bipolar, and the thing with that is it's very easy to just say that but a little more difficult to convey the personality traits involved. this isn't really something ever stated as such in the fic, aside from various people calling mikey crazy + raph calls him a sociopath once. it's kind of too didactic to just flatly state "and this is what's wrong with mikey!" imo. but. this is a story about violent people. imo you can't just gesture to a character with the background level of callousness for the genre and go "okay this is a clinical sign"; you kinda gotta do something more direct. 'wow mikey sure is CRAZY and WEIRD good thing it only shows itself as him being slightly mean to people'. no. mikey has done some pretty horrible things in the past and clearly isn't fully done with that.

(i did pretty much go straight down the list of symptoms there. impulsive, suicidal, aggressive, violent, risky sex, arrogant, limited empathy, no regard for other people or social norms, difficulty with relationships, arson, etc, etc, etc. but it's not like he's a 'realistic' portrayal here, since... i mean, he is a super-powered ninja. there's a level of 'superficial charm' here but we do get enough of mikey's interiority to be able to tell he's a total mess in a way that's not particularly constructed.)

also it's like. raph graphically tortures several people to death & i didn't really feel the need to disclaim that here. murder is usually seen as a lesser crime in fiction than rape. people love their violent blorbos but the second there's the implication of sexual violence people freak out. the usual line people say is that the threat of murder is a little more removed for most people than the threat of rape, which idk if i fully agree with. but part of it is also to draw a line between raph's violence and mikey's boundary violation. like mikey says, well, raph tried to non-consensually murder him a few times too.

anyway i don't think i really stuck the landing with that either, in part b/c raph's response to it. he's a little too pathetically accepting of things at the end instead of being angry + violent. that could use a rewrite or two.

--

honestly i'm kinda sick of this story now? which sucks a little, since i kept realizing things about the story all the way up to the very last moment of editing. if i had waited to post any of this until i was done with the first draft... well, it'd be a very different story if i went back and turned this rough draft into something more complete. i never really did manage to hit the character beats with raph i was hoping to. oh well. like, i still like it. but i can definitely see all of its weak points. i guess that's just part of the process of writing. it'd be worse if you wrote a giant novel and came out on the other side not more aware of your failings as an author.

i feel like raph isn't super well-realized in terms of character motivations. or... his relationships aren't shaded in as well as they could be. if i were redoing this whole thing i'd definitely include some chunks of raph pov just to lay out more concretely what he's doing & what his life is like when he's not in the same scene as mikey. i kinda included that raph+donny conversation at the very end just for jokes, but actually ending every chapter with a little section of non-mikey pov would've helped ground a lot of the characters. raph isn't super well-developed and leo is pretty much incoherent absent external familiarity with his character's deal. they're not conveyed super well, in part because, well, any time mikey is onscreen everybody is having to deal with mikey. it's a problem.

but something that absolutely could have worked as a secondary narrative to the story is the whole thing with raph working w/ the oroku. that was a bit of a late addition to the story. it's meant as a reference to, you know, all the times raphael ends up being compared to/assuming the mantle of the shredder in the comics. but as it is since we don't get any real looks into exactly what's going on in yakuza town when mikey's not around none of that got developed very well, imo.

--

it was very important to me that mikey not learn any lesson here. where things are at in the end are pretty much the exact same as where they were in the beginning. the bit in the pizza scene where he's like 'you guys get to live and i get a boyfriend' is very accurate. literally the only change in mikey's life through this entire thing is that at the end he is in a relationship w/ a guy who he can tell some of what his life is like to. not that it's a super healthy relationship, but it is there.

well, that, and also now he's maybe out of time. (uh, so the laughter at the very end of the epilogue is mikey realizing he's out of time. the whole epilogue really is about how he's got all these conflicting tensions of who-knows-what in his life, & then right in the middle of the tension it's like, whoops, the utrom aren't coming in 10 years or 20 years, they're coming now. and in a week you're gonna be getting some really pointed questions about how you know the utrom envoy. and in a few years, well, there's gonna be some planetary evacuation) like the whole story is about... anxiety. mikey feeling the weight of the future on him in every moment. actually seeing things collapse would be a relief; you'd get the release of all the potentiality collapsing into an actual problem. the moral of the story is you get what you get and in the end all mikey's actions, good or bad or otherwise, have bought him is nine more months of ignoring his problems.

anyway sorry to all the tmnt fans who were expecting a happy cheerful mikey/raph story. this is actually about the fundamental injustice of existence. whoops!

[themultiuniversal]

Probably a controversial opinion but I think the genshin 5.1 archon quest could've been a lot better.

Like it's decent but fuck man there's so much they could've done to help with the pacing, making things more exciting, and just make it better.

I acknowledge that a lot of it was good - I really like Citlali as a character and how she was portrayed in the quest. All the lore drops was huge especially since genshin tends to try not address these hidden away lore nuggets. Showing explicit death in an archon quest when they've been very reluctant to do so before was also I think a good decision. And of course the whole Natlan War combining gameplay elements into the story was a pretty cool way of doing it.

But the bad stuff does a lot to undercut all the good stuff.

For one, the Chasca and Chuychu pseudo-stealth segment was just ??? Like if you're not gonna let me actually engage in gameplay and do a stealth section then why not just give me exposition via text? Just have Chasca tell us that they found that Fatui found the secret source? There was zero point to sitting through the like 5-10 mins of zero input Chasca and Chuychu going through the camp.

My main gripe however, is mostly with the Natlan War. It's supposed to be like the climax, I feel (I know there's more to come but it does feel like a climactic story beat) yet

1. Like half of Natlan isn't even out yet. It feels a little jarring that for this "war all across natlan" we only see half the nation and only interact with that half. It would've been so much cooler if they delay the archon quest for like an update or two until they release at the very least 2 more tribes and then suddenly we have this much larger battle map to play with.

2. I respect the split story choice stuff but at the end of the day it still feels pretty linear when there's only a few decisions and they're all between only 2 spots. And also we can't really see how stuff elsewhere are going or the stuff along the way outside of fluff text on the map.

3. We literally never team up with the other cool characters except for kinich and xilonen. Like you have this all star cast all working to fight for Natlan and you're telling me that I never went to the same location as Capitano and team up with him or with Mavuika? I understand story-wise it wouldn't make sense since you'd want to split up to cover areas but like godddd please let me interact with those characters during this big giant set piece battle!

4. The enemies are too easy/too few. We've been told over and over that it's waves and waves of abyss monsters but when we get there it's like 3 waves at best and they're ez to fight like cmonnnn at least make the battles harder or longer or something make me more immersedddd

5. There's no that feeling of hopelessness or like not being able to help that comes with war. Like yes there's the whole "the deathcount keeps going up" and "you get to this location and sees everyone is dead" and "you can't go everywhere all at once" but those are all kind of distant. I understand that while the deathcount is like... each number is a Natlanese dead, it's still pretty arbitrary especially when it's a video game and I'm already part way unimmersed. They could've made it a lot more personal if the traveler personally fails to save people. If the traveler goes to a location to rescue someone and they were alive at the start and despite everything the monsters got to them too fast for the traveler to stop even though he's there. They could've done a part where there's so many monsters it overwhelms the party and you have to struggle not just to defeat the monsters but to actually survive and get out. They could've done traveler fighting together with other warriors and have the warriors die and the traveler physically react to someone fighting with them dying. Like GOD they could've done so much to make it feel more personal and i would've been so much more immersed than "ok you defeated this group of monsters and saved this people now head here next and oh look the number of dead people went up and also abyss corrosion went up".

6. Chuychu. Chuychu, chuychu, chuychu. She died onscreen but for what it's worse she might as well have died offscreen. The moment she and Chasca appeared it was pretty obvious she was gonna die and Chasca was gonna become a hero and then the whole plan goes ahead and etc etc. We barely knew Chuychu and she could've used a lot more time and interaction to get us invested in her character. Her dying message was kind of cliche and Chasca gaining power after that was also cliche. They could've made us try to defend Chuychu and fail because theres too many monsters but instead she was already fatally wounded before we got there. God, they could've done it better.

Like the quest was decent but goddd it makes me so much angrier that it could've been a lot better.

[two-braincells-in-total]

Rank the books you've read this year(not necessarily all just the ones you really liked can do too)

I've read too many books this year to be able to rank them, so I'll just list them and rate them in a random order

IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm a mood reader, I don't rate the pacing and writing and stuff, I rate how much fun I had while reading it

Shatter me by Tehereh Mafi (book) - I'm giving this a 4/5 stars, because the pacing was pretty slow in my opinion and, even tho I still love it, it's not as strong as the rest of the series

Destroy me by Tehereh Mafi (novella) - 5/5 stars. Aaron Warner. That's all I have to say about it

Unravel me by Tehereh Mafi (book) - 4/5 stars. The first half was kind of slow, but I loved the second half

Fracture me by Tehereh Mafi (novella) - unpopular opinion but 5/5 stars. It's very good to be read before Ignite me, because this way the things that happen in Ignite me make a lot more sense, the character development in Ignite me would feel forced without reading Fracture me and honestly, Adam's POV didn't bother me as much as other people. Yes, I was mad at times, but the things that happen are pretty important for understanding the plot and characters of Ignite me

Ignite me by Tehereh Mafi (book) - 5/5 stars, there isn't much to say, Juliette's development ate

Restore me by Tehereh Mafi (book) - 5/5 stars. It did not restore me. I think it was a good way to continue Juliette's character development, because healing isn't linear. And that ending omg

Shadow me by Tehereh Mafi (novella) - 5/5 stars, Kenji is my baby

Defy me by Tehereh Mafi (book) - 5/5 stars, best book in the series FIGHT ME. Again, I loved the direction of Juliette's character development and Emmaline almost made me cry (I don't cry on books)

Reveal me by Tehereh Mafi (novella) - 5/5 stars, once again, Kenji is my baby

Imagine me by Tehereh Mafi (book) - 5/5 stars, I don't really remember what happened in this book, but I remember that I liked it

Believe me by Tehereh Mafi (novella) - unpopular opinion, but 4/5 stars. I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped I would

The Do-over by Lynn Painter (book) - 3/5 stars, I was confused about how tf that happened and I'm not the biggest fan of the plot tbh

Betting on you by Lynn Painter (book) - 5/5 stars, I don't really remember what happened, but I had fun while reading

Better than the movies by Lynn Painter (book) - 5/5 stars, it was a fun read. It was actually the first book I read this year

Better than before by Lynn Painter (novella) - 5/5 stars, again, I don't remember it, but it was fun

A little note here, when I list a book, I include all of the bonus content for it

The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barns (book) - 5/5 stars, underrated series in general, it deserves more love. I read it for a school assignment and I was very disappointed to find out the assignment was cancelled after I had already done a full analysis on it. It became one of my favourites tho. The 'you' was creeping me out SO BAD

Killer Instinct by Jennifer Lynn Barns (book) - 5/5 stars, I loved this book. The plot twist was unexpected, but I must admit kind of annoying (SPOILER!!!!!!!!!! What do you mean the killer is someone who had 2 lines up until it was revealed? They didn't even figure it out, it was by accident and I know that cases like this aren't uncommon, but come on!)

All in by Jennifer Lynn Barns (book) - 5/5 stars, this is the book where we start getting bigger hints about the biggest comflict of the series

Bad Blood by Jennifer Lynn Barns (book) - 5/5 stars, this book changed me forever, the story was so creepy and sad and so well thought out, if you haven't read this series, you should. This book is a literal masterpiece in my opinion

Twelve by Jennifer Lynn Barns (novella) - 4/5 stars, nice ending to the series, even tho it still gives the possibility for continuation of the saga (jlb, this me begging for another book), not the best in the series, but it's a novella, so that's what we get

The Grandest Game by Jennifer Lynn Barns (book) - 4/5 stars, I have several rants about it on my blog, so I'll leave it at that

The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson (book) - 4/5 stars, the plot twists were good and so was the storyline and the characters

I hope this doesn't find you by Ann Liang (book) - 5/5 stars, got me out of a reading slump, it was very cute, perfect if you want a lighthearted read, finished in a day

If you could see the Sun by Ann Liang (book) - 5/5 stars, again, very cute, it had a little bit less romance than ihtdfy, finished in a day

This time it's real by Ann Liang (book) - 4/5 stars, cute, but I don't remember much from it, finished in a day

Five feet apart by Rachael Lippincott - 4/5 stars, enjoyable read, nice message, left me staring at the wall

One of us is lying by Karen McManus - 4/5 stars, I liked it, but they were only solving the case in the last 50 pages, the rest was just teenage drama, which is still fun, but not what the book was supposed to be about

One of us in next by Karen McManus - 3/5 stars, I don't remember much, but I remember it was mid

One of us is back by Karen McManus - 3/5 stars, same explaination as oouin

Two can keep a secret by Karen McManus - 4/5 stars, enjoyable read, but same explaination as oouil

Nothing more to tell by Karen McManus - 4/5 stars, I remember it was a fun read, but nothign revolutionary

You'll be the death of me by Karen McManus - 3/5 stars, it was kind of annoying, poor Mateo was the only character I liked. Literally all of McManus' books have the same characters and plot when you break it down, which is why oouil is my favourite, it was just the first and honestly the best written

The Cousins by Karen McManus - DNF. The plot seemed nice and different from the rest of the books, but I couldn't get past the romance. I know that (SPOILER!!!!) apparently they aren't actually related, but they still think they're cousins for quite a while and I still see it as incest

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne - DNF. The fmc was annoying and I had already read The Spanish Love Desception, which is apperantly a ripp off of The Hating Game, but I still think it was better, the fmc was less annoying

Save me by Mona Kasten - 4/5 stars, cute read byt the ending was wild. I still have to read the next book. I already knew what was happening, because I had watched the TV show, but it was nice still

I read a bunch of other books for school but they are classical Bulgarian Literature and there is no point in including them

I also read (and still reading) a buch of wattpad originals and I would've included them, but they are all still in the beginning and I don't know how they'll progress

On the note of Wattpad, I do believe that See me by jackssfox counts as a book, but, as much as I like it now and I know that I'll continue loving it, it isn't finished, so I didn't include it (tho it would be 5 stars)

The books that were listed are 35 (if I'm counting correctly)

[waywardsalt]

Hey, thanks for the response on the post where I asked about what people dislike ab totk! I genuinely appreciate it a lot, and you summarized most of my thoughts about this beautifully!

Here's something you might find interesting: something about this game's pacing REALLY bothered me from the start, and I think I know what it is. Totk, despite being an open world game that you can pour a ton of time into, feels short. It's a really weird feeling, and I think it can be explained in that Nintendo is trying to use the linear storytelling format for a nonlinear game, which is also why the ability to see the tears in a random order was disorienting, and why the stories from the ancient sages felt so repetitive.

The gameplay is long, but the story isn't! If you compare it to Skyward Sword, for example! In sksw, you go through each of the areas once, and then again with some changes, and then again with more. There's several clear acts, and even if the game is super super linear and recieves criticism for that, it works really well in that context. Additionally, the characters more than make up for the linearity of the story. Totk tries to take that same format, but doesn't seem to understand that this format is for a linear story. It only has a very brief story, and the story to gameplay ratio is so dragged out that unless you get invested in the world, it all starts to feel really stupid and pointless. Unfortunately, totk fails at getting us invested, too.

I really hope this made ANY sense at all, ty again for the input!! I love the responses I'm getting on that post djbdjsndns :D

Hi, you're welcome for my uh... totk rant, I guess? I covered a lot of stuff in it but I wouldn't say I covered everything bc there is... a lot abt that game that rubs me the wrong way in one way or another.

totk is definitely an odd case, it being an open world game that does try to adhere to linear game rules, you’re right- and i’d say the story is severely kneecapped by that attempt on the game’s part to have its cake and eat it too. it tries to mix what botw brought to the table with what was done in the past, but because botw is vastly different in what it does than past zelda games, the result is a messily paced, poorly-told, gameplay-focused with piss-easy mandatory puzzle segments result, failing to capture the advantages of linear games and instead making those specific parts considerably weaker.

people give linear games shit for… honestly, im not totally sure, as someone who really enjoys linear games. they allow for a good focus on story and character, mostly because you can have a set pace and passing of time and order of events. totk tries to implement linear style elements into a game where you can do anything out of order, so in the end the story is surprisingly brief but slow paced because you have to travel so far for everything and they have to account for you doing everything in any order, hence... repeating the same fucking information as a reward for four of the dungeons (which, i don't care how you feel about this game, is an awful fucking choice i mean holy SHIT), and is probably why the interactions with the new sages include very brief character arcs or something, they wanted to include some kind of linear character stories but it all just got stuffed in between a bunch of mini-main quests.

the fact that effectively half of the main story happens ages in the past and is communicated through brief cutscenes that can easily be encountered out of order, too, is kind of a pitiful way to tell the story. they're all basically glorified exposition dumps since nothing about them will change, they're all events that have already happened and have nothing to do with the player except hyping them up i guess.

the dungeons themselves are awkwardly transposed from a more linear game style with them relying on a specific skill to some degree, but they just fall so flat compared to past linear zelda dungeons. in botw the divine beasts honestly worked because the mechanic of manipulating the beasts themselves and the activating of switches fit perfectly with the setup of the dungeons being huge machines, while there isn't as good of a story example as to why totk's dungeons have the same switch mechanic. botw's divine beasts work pretty well in an open world setting. totk's just fall to pieces in an open with setting, even discounting how ascend could just snap them in half entirely. you just... can't have the same kind of dungeons as past zelda games in an open world format. once you take out the array of specific-use progressively-earned items, you're just left with this tiny little gmod ass toolbox to do what felt like baby's first loz-style dungeon. go to the clearly marked waypoint, do one (1) simple puzzle, get reward.

i miss mini bosses, rooms with puzzles that had to be solved to unlock a door or a doorkey, and even the experience of wandering around just trying to figure out what to do next. honestly, the first half of the lightning temple was the best part of all of the dungeons put together, and then we're back to 'go to four different rooms to do four different easy puzzles'. linear games have genuine advantages over open world games, and open world games have their own advantages. in the story segments, totk just ignores the advantages inherent to it's game's basic style in favor of trying and failing to emulate the advantages of a very different game style.

totk is so paradoxically unable to tear itself away from the series' past while at the same time disregarding series staples and even big parts of its own goddamn prequel.

in my experience with the game, as far as i can remember, i believe i went around and opened all of the towers, did some shrines and the depths, got the master sword, did the main quests with some side quests, then sped through getting all of the memories in order, then did the final boss. in between all of that, i managed to get all of the armor, do every single shrine, and open the entirety of the depths. i did not give a single damn about the story by the end. for me, with my playstyle, everything was just... spread out over such a long period of time so there was barely any urgency at all, i experienced the memories all in quick succession while already knowing the big twist (which. btw. i didnt care about. i wasnt really endeared to zelda and link's lack of visual interest during cutscenes just brought up the question of if he doesnt care why should i), and since this game's story is more linear, it just felt so disjointed and strange and... not important.

with botw it makes pretty good sense why link may take ages, why you could get the memories however you want, all of that. zelda is keeping things with ganon on pause for you. all of the big stuff happened in the past. you are here in the present, in the ruins of the past, a blank slate come to eventually complete the mission that you had failed, at the same time discovering this new world and becoming re-acquainted to it with this strange second chance you've been given. totk doesn't have this excuse. at least in past zelda games, you did things in a specific order, so when you wanted to fuck around, it was usually something related to or based on your progress. if you want to fuck around in oot what you can do is based on where you are in the game and even then it all ends up wrapping back around to bolstering link for the end. getting hearts, better items... like every side quest in every other loz game did. in totk you can do a sidequest for like. one flower. and what does that even do for you. it doesn't have the excuse of the honestly pretty well crafted setup and world state of botw.

i really don't know what happened during the development of totk, and i can't imagine it was the smoothest thing in the world, esp considering the pandemic hitting in the middle of it. but just... it just feels like it failed in so many regards and was just... so disappointing, and yet people are heralding it as the best zelda game and- this is not what i want a zelda game to be! i want a zelda game to have those wonderful puzzle-filled dungeons with well-written main characters and music that fits the setting and feels supported by the game's events and a unique setting with unique little nooks and crannies and good pacing and act structure and like. some kind of heart to it. not just another big open-world game created to be the big open world game where you can do this one amazing specific cool thing that TOTALLY is worth the $70 or whatever else it may be priced around the world.

idk. to me what makes zelda games zelda games is the linear storytelling and those complex dungeons and specific method of progression, and botw's new open-world emulation of the sense that loz 1 gave does not and probably will not ever be able to mix with that linear style unless you have massive in game game style shifts to allow for it. either return to the old format or just commit to the series becoming Triple A Open World Game Series Number 34

[trensu]

So curious about Hawkins Home Steve - does he have a tragic backstory? Steve + head trauma = him not really thinking twice about headaches or foggy memories, but also siren song tends to do that anyway! I love how the kids are already essentially in love w Steve and are trying to get him back. Dying to read Eddie's reaction to him being wrong about Steve! Need to know what's going on in that angsty head of his... love the bits of backstory about his apprehension towards humans, the heartbreak of letting something slip through to hurt the kids... him really trying to not let Steve in (physically and emotionally) There's also something particularly tasty in fics when Steve's finally acknowledged as a Good Guy (also give the man a hug... both of them honestly.) Chomping at the bit to know more about Billy and if he comes back... i love how Billy v Steve showdowns + steve protecting the kids manifest in AUs and i'm so so intrigued at how much you've set up, especially from an outsider POV. Also wondering if Steve would be upset about the memory wipes, though i expect he would immediately understanding given the safety of the kids, but I also feel like this is a lot of fodder for angst between those two .... 👀 (also I peep eddie's power over steve waning - and if there's a limit on how often you can use it before stuff starts to slip through...) Sorry for the long ask - and feel free to ignore since I know there are more parts in the works. In love with the concept of this AU!

Anon, i'm LOVING your ask! It makes me so happy to see people, like, ENGAGING with stories in general, but seeing it happen with my silly writings specifically? i'm ECSTATIC!!

i'm not gonna say much because 1) they're mostly just little scenes percolating in my brain that may never actually get put to (virtual) paper and 2) if they miraculously DO get written, i don't want to spoil anything. that being said i'll give you that a) there is LORE i've made up regarding Eddy's siren genetics and b) ooooh, boy do I have a billy appearance/scene/possible oneshot for this 'verse already half written that i think you'll enjoy

one concrete thing i'll give you, because i don't think i'll write it, like, directly into the fic, is that the reason steve is able keep fragments of things so far is twofold.

firstly, the human brain doesn't like gaps in perception and will straight up make up stuff in order to make things make sense so steve's mind is keeping bits to keep his memories somewhat linear even though they've been scrubbed of any intricate detail. secondly, steve just really really wants to be a dad. i've always liked the concept of a goal or ideal being so important to someone, emotionally and mentally, that it can overcome seemingly impossible odds. so steve wants to be a family man so much that even magic can't take it away from him because his very heart is clinging to any scrap of hope for that dream to come true.

[rabbiteclair]

lobotomy corp update:

oh sure in addition to time loop fuckery and sad robots, this game also has soldiers in rabbit gas masks who make rabbit puns as they murder people. and nobody even told me, I had to stumble onto it myself. demerits for everyone

I've only had Evangeline for twelve days, but if anything happened to them I'd kill everyone in this facility and then myself.

speaking of murdering everyone though, I have in fact hit the point of 'ah, the start of the day. [readies pistol] let's kill all the clerks while they're still bunched up.' listen, I've got Mountain, CENSORED, Blue Star, two abnormalities I can't necessarily prevent from breaching, and a few more that are gonna kill a dozen clerks when they breach. I leave exactly enough clerks alive that if CENSORED or Nothing There breach, they'll linger for a while killing clerks and give me time to gather my forces. at that point, even if Mountain does breach, it doesn't have enough victims/bodies around to become a problem.

core suppression complete up through Tiphereth, at which point I rewound because I'd hit day 46. I really did not expect Tiphereth(s) of all people to have just a downright painful conclusion to their main arc, but here we are. every minute that A spends doing literally anything except groveling on his knees sobbing 'OH MY GOD I AM SO SO SORRY' is a moment wasted. I do however find it really funny that the Tiphereth meltdown was a one-girl show. Tiphereth, it's time for your character growth. Not you, boy half, you're already perfect and I love you. Go watch cartoons for a while.

I just finished Gebura's missions, and goddamn. if the game asks me to do another fucking Midnight I am going to blow up the entire goddamn planet. if I have to put up with that I'm taking you fuckers with me. I know this is kinda Arbitrary Deaths: The Game, but every Midnight I've done so far has been some real bullshit in that department. at best they are tedious right up until I make a mistake for two seconds and somebody gets vivisected. the 'suppress 3 unique Alephs in one day' one was a pain in the ass too, but Mountain and Nothing There are fairly easy to pummel as long as I prepare beforehand, so the only real challenge was CENSORED. and getting them to breach without killing someone in the first place.

every sentence out of Binah's mouth is more concerning than the previous one, which is pretty impressive considering that she starts out fairly concerning to begin with. Hokma would probably be just as concerning if I didn't spend every conversation with him going 'wait what. what the hell is he implying??' Instead he's just concerning because he likes A. nobody who likes A can be trusted. Except post-suppression Tiphereth, but she's a kid.

the time fuckery though. THE TIME FUCKERY. practically every line of Angela's takes on about three different meanings as you progress through the game. there's stuff early on that seems perfectly innocuous until you loop back around. the straight linear path through the story is incomplete because there are parts that only really make sense when you're reading them a second time. it's the kind of narrative trick I don't think you could pull off in any medium but a video game. hell yeah. this is the content I'm here for.

although, gameplay-wise... I respect the conviction to go 'this is a game where all the characters are trapped in tedious and painful cycles, so let's get the player in on that,' but actually i would like to be done with the tedious and painful cycles now thanks. I have 119 hours logged in this game and, judging by a friend's comments, I probably have another full loop through the main plot ahead of me, since apparently it's very hard to do both Binah and Hokma's suppressions in a single iteration. At least days 1-30 are downright trivial at this point, and I'm far enough into the game that I can afford to go 'eh, that dead agent was only a level 4 wearing Waw gear, I can let it ride.'

plot-wise, we have reached the point where I've started taking notes, because thanks to all the looping, things not necessarily being told in order to begin with (especially with the weird route I took through the first half of the game), and occasionally clicking through cutscenes at top speed when I should've been in bed 5 minutes ago but the day just kept going and I didn't want to lose the progress, there are a lot of parts I've had to go back and reference anyway. I still feel like I've got a fairly decent overview of what's going on here, although there are some clear intentional holes in the information they've given so far. I think I'm also a single critter short of 100% codex completion, and I've been assured that will help a lot with making sense of things.

[verdantglow]

so is it safe to assume that you're going to be going through each of the seasons chronologically then? and exploring how each of their relationships form and change over time? or are you going to pick a set point that is the "current" times and make references back to older series and stunts?

also out of curiousity, whos pov(s) do you watch? im always interested in learning this stuff

also also i think seer of void is perfect for Sc(h)ott and i think heir of rage works really well for Joel. im trying so hard to think of any other classes that would work for him and im just... coming up short. maybe page? because i can see him inciting rage in others and growing stronger as time passes with it. but i dunno. youve thrown me back into my homestuck phase that i thought i had gotten out of years ago and thus have forgotten too much :')

So that’s a bit of tricky question. The campaigns happen in the chronological order of the seasons, but I honestly haven’t settled on what is ‘now.’ Tbh, I’m kinda treating this AU as a playground for all my crossover relevant headcanons & plot bunnies. I’m not planning on making one cohesive fic for this AU. My hope is to do an assortment of art, comics, & fics (& maybe animations?; gods I’d love to do mini animations/“flashes” for this & would like to try to, if I can get my brain to sit still long enough). Each piece will be a different chunk of the story, a significant event or plot line that I feel like examining, rather than there being a linear story. Kinda like a selection of vignettes rather than a novel.

Granted, I’m not married to this idea yet. It’d be a nice way to do things in that it’d allow me to follow my inspirations rather than be stuck in a timeline. But at the same time, I’m not sure how that’ll read/look. I might just start at Secret Life or after Secret Life & do everything else as flashbacks. But it’ll definitely be around the Secret Life time if I do decide to do some linearity because Gem is bae & I desperately need her at least somewhat prominent. (& she joins up with the others between sometime before Limited Life & before Secret Life. Haven’t nailed that quite down either, but she wasn’t part of the group from the get go, like the others. (Everyone was somehow linked to each other from before/around the 3rd Life campaign, even if they didn’t join the VLARP until Last Life.))

Tbh, I haven’t comprehensively watched most of the Traffic seasons. I started watching mcyt when Limited Life was happening, but couldn’t maintain focus at the time. (Probably because I was watching Grian’s viewpoint of EVERY SINGLE SEASON AT THE SAME TIME, dear god what is wrong with me lol.) So until recently, I’d only seen the first half of all of Grian’s seasons. I finally finished his 3rd Life the other day (in one sitting mind you; wild experience) as well as Martyn’s 3rd Life.

When Secret Life rolled around, I was more invested & wound up watching Grian, Mumbo, Gem, Joel, Scar, Lizzie, Martyn, Jimmy, & some of Etho & Cleo.

Right now I’ve got Jimmy & Tango’s 3rd Life, Joel’s Last Life, & Etho’s Double Life going on a rotation. I think that’s all I’m currently watching? I’m kinda crawling through those as I’ve got an absolutely massive list of Hermits I’m watching at the moment. Other POVs I’ve got earmarked for watching at some point: Impulse 3L, Lizzie, Martyn, & Pearl LL, Joel, BigB, & Pearl DL, & I haven’t even started figuring out who I’m gonna watch for LimL.

I’m so flattered this AU is getting you back to Homestuck! You know, I hadn’t seriously thought about it in… six? seven? years, until I had the thought that Scar & Grian made sense as fucked up moirails & I suddenly had an AU to be fascinated by lol. Like. I haven’t even been observing the high holidays for a few years, & now I’m doing in depth research on Lore so I can work on this AU. Funny how life works that way, a new special interest resurrecting an old one.

[burning-sol]

Briefly mentioned in the tags of my exandroth dress drawing, this is my oc Elizabeth Lydon. I've decided I'll put more stuff under the cut if you wanna read a bit more abt her. But I think what's most important to note is that she is a doctor, and generally a very good hearted, compassionate and determined person.

She's caring, but not typically in a spoken way or by using physical affection. Sometimes she seems dismissive because of that, but actually it's just because she's caring in a practical way - if that's how you'd best describe it. When someone vents to her, she might not immediately go to comfort them because she gets caught up in thinking about what to do about that problem. Elizabeth files it away in the back of her mind and puzzles over it, organises everything she needs and then gets back to you with solutions. When it comes to neighbours, she has more than once rocked up to houses with a bunch of tools and supplies to fix that ONE step that you said was annoying you a fortnight ago. And she'll quietly work away at it until she's done before heading home. It may seem a bit strange at first, but it's just her way of doing things.

Anyways. She was conceived all the way back in 2017 (god it's been half a decade) and she's remained essentially the same in concept the entire time. I've made minor adjustments to her story and personality, but that's about it aside from jumping universes! To try and keep the 'jumping universes' bit brief: I had all my OCs together in one universe; they were all wacky and had unique things happening because I was a little lad having fun with characters; the primary group of OCs developed overtime to become more 'realistic' (for lack of a better term) with a more 'realistic' universe; this year I've decided to take certain characters and concepts that were more magical and shove them into a new universe with a fantasy setting where they wouldn't conflict with the 'realistic' setting of the previous universe. Hopefully that makes sense.

Her character concept in question was that she was a doctor! But not just that, she's a time travelling doctor. Originally her time in the past was going to be more involved, but I've changed that now because I don't want to think about time travel too much. As it is, she goes back in time and studies older forms of medicine and disease to create remedies for her clinic in current time. Nobody quite understands HOW she got so prolific in medicine, but she is incredibly well known in the world for both the effectiveness of her medicine and its incredibly humble pricing.

The pocket watch is the secret to her time travelling capabilities. It's a magical mechanism that's been passed down through her family for generations now. In exchange for the family's good deeds, the entity that bestowed the watch permits they continue to use it. The only item that matches it is a bell that is kept in the cottage her family uses for business. When the bells is rung it will ring through the watch and basically serve as a beckoning home. This is VERY useful for obvious reasons. If Elizabeth is asked for in person, the bell can be rung and she'll be sure to come back home.

Maybe that doesn't quite make sense. I guess the way I imagine it is that the bell and the watch are both running in the same linear time. The bell is like an anchor. You can go to any point in the past- But when you have to come home you're brought back to the same point in time as the bell. So if the bell is rung on a Thursday and the watch is back in time on a Monday, you can't just wait a day and then go back to Thursday. When the watch is experiencing Tuesday, for the bell it's now Friday. Sorry if my explanation is messy. I hope that makes sense.

"But Sol, couldn't this easily fall into the wrong hands and be used for nefarious purposes?" Well yeah! Probably! If someone was REALLY desperate to have it they could find a way! But it would be difficult to acquire. And overall this fantasy world is a pretty optimistic, fun one? Like sure. I could make a plot around this. But that's for a DnD campaign or something. When it comes to me writing for myself? Naw. I like things being nice and warm and friendly! People are good, they act in good faith! ^ ^

And that's all I have to say on that.

[longroadstonowhere]

taking another little pause for wind and truth thoughts - around page 400

gods this book is terrifyingly long, ahahahaha - the pages are sooooooo thin, and the different separation of parts is really messing with my concept of how much of the book i've gotten through (the length makes sense, it's a huge finale, but still)

finally getting a look at shinovar and shinovar culture is.... well, all cultures are a little fucked up but yeah i'm not surprised szeth has the particular blend of neuroses he's ended up with, and i'm really hoping his story ends up being about how, like, just because the spren can bond with you doesn't mean it's a healthy thing to do, you know? like the highspren are playing directly into his most unhealthy habits, it's pretty bad

seeing nightblood ask the same sorts of questions that kaladin is trying to lead szeth into asking is fascinating, though, even if it dipped back into 'me destroy evil real good' as soon as fighting was mentioned (progress is not linear etc etc)

and adolin, my boy adolin, up to some truly bizarre shit and i love him so much for it, like he's got some kinda pseudo-bond going on with maya AND his armor now, and he's trying so damn hard to live life separately from his father without realizing yet that letting his feelings about dalinar shape his every move means he's STILL letting his dad define his life, and just.... hooooo boy kid, did not think i'd love reading your sections so much as we got further into this series but here we are

the renarin and rlain scenes were so sweet, especially with drehy coming over like 'okay baby gay, i am here as a resource and a fount of wisdom because us guys who like guys gotta stick together', i'm so glad sanderson has worked on writing queer characters and is continuing to do the work (like, man! jasnah's whole being pissed at wit thing because she recognizes they're just looking for different things in their relationship and she's really really uninterested in the physical stuff! god i love her, cannot wait for the second half of the series to find out what her deal is)

i get the feeling that ba-ado-mishram is going to be our antagonist for the second half of the series, because this whole contest with odium really does feel like it's gonna put a button on that interaction, and mishram is just now being pulled to the forefront, so it'd feel weird to wrap up her whole deal in this book, but, well, who knows? i could've never predicted that a bunch of folks getting pulled into the spiritual realm was on the table for where the plot was going, so guess i just have to see what comes ahahaha

[dravikso]

HEY HEY. I discovered your art some weeks ago, I think it was weeks. Anyway, I really love it! The designs you've sent are so cool and interesting and it makes you think 'oh man, I wonder what goes under all that. Whats the story?' Also, the shading, the use of colors, the sketches? I really, really like them. I read that you've got ideas in your head but it can be hard to like, put in order, but could feel free to draw as it comes too. Art, or the progression of it, isn't linear. We MAKE it linear once all the stuff is out, and then we try making sense of it. Yeah, I just wanted to tell you that your art rocks so hard and the times I've seen in in my dash has made me go half mad. >:))))

Thank you! I'm glad you like my art haha

Yes i do have ideas. I actually have several pinned notes in my notes app full of character analysis bullet points and dialogue and story details but I have this dumb perfectionism problem which means that I feel like i can't just throw ideas out there without them being elegantly executed ie via drawings or writing. I've tried drawing them a few times and every time i'm like ohhhhh nooo this looks so bad. I can't release these ideas in this state! I must wait until i've improved to *insert arbitrary skill level*! and then every time i meet that i raise the bar higher and never get anything done.

I know it's stupid and people care more about the content of the story than the quality of the artwork when it comes to these things... but man, it's mental hurdle, and historically i handle all varieties of hurdles quite poorly

[moonsinkfoxgirl]

all the 30s! <3

30. favourite tv show(s)

Utena, Aria, Madoka, Symphogear, Flip Flappers, probably some more I'm not thinking of right now

31. 3 random facts

and yet more of these...hnnnmmm

In either his book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art or its sequel (I don't remember which >.> it was probably the second one?) Scott McCloud actually predicts the fact that with the advent of computers comics would return to the form where instead of discrete pages you just kind of scroll through a continuous canvas

but this was before smartphones so he thought they would scroll sideways on a computer screen, as opposed to the scroll downwards standard of webtoons that has now become a significant chunk of the world's webcomic market

he figured this would happen in part because there are historical examples of such comics: the Bayeux tapestry for example tells the story of the Norman Conquest, and while there are no panels there's deliberate scenes in it in chronological order from left to right; the restriction of the page was born with the book, and with new technologies it makes sense that we would move away from that

not a fact but my personal opinion on this is that it is kind of a sad thing in practice, not because of anything inherent to the scrolling but simply because smartphone screens have a really awkward format (small and thin) that is significantly more limiting than pages of physical books ever were, so webtoons end up extremely linear and with less opportunity for interesting panel layouts, making the format sort of lesser...

32. are your friends mainly girls or guys?

girls^^

33. something you want to learn

would love to able to draw simple pixel art and stuff so I can make a video game

34. most embarrassing moment

hmmm idk maybe that one time in high school when i destroyed my spine by jumping from a significant height with my eyes closed, thus taking the entire impact force with my back instead of by having my legs give in

35. favourite subject

I liked almost all subjects in school, German maybe, I liked interpreting short stories and stuff

36. 3 dreams you want to fulfill?

hmmmmm

make a video game and/or visual novel

get a job that doesn't consume half my life

get my website to a state I can actually be proud of instead of the entirely unfinished mess it currently is

37. favourite actor/actress

I don't know any of those

38. favourite comedian(s)

those guys who do Die Anstalt are pretty okay but i wouldn't describe them as favorites just the only ones who come to mind because I don't watch comedians usually

39. favourite sport(s)

chess maybe if that counts, but even then I'm not particularly interested in the contemporary sport

[eoangstlover56]

After sleeping on it, I didn’t hate last night’s SVU but I think the main issue I did have with it and that I’ve had with some others in the past is that they sometimes spoonfeed their audience as if we aren’t capable of thinking for ourselves. When they do parallels to things like Lewis they go too hard at it. They make it too obvious and give us so many parallels to the point where it’s like they’re just copying almost like they are more focused on sparking outrage rather than getting a point across that adds to character development. because i think they were attempting to correct past wrongs in a way? and show healing but that point was missed because they picked such outrageous parallels that people couldnt overlook those things to see the rest. I don’t think they should never do a Lewis parallel…unfortunately as awful as it was it was something that happened to Olivia and healing isn’t linear so it’s gonna come up from time to time. I just think they should be more SUBTLE about it rather than making it so obvious that it’s a parallel to the point that it’s triggering for people because it feels like it’s just shock value(they’re picking the most obvious parallels they can find). They could’ve accomplished what I think they might’ve been trying to without doing that.

Like…don’t pick the crazy juror. Everyone remembers that. Don’t pick him representing himself. Everyone remembers that. Pick some random small detail that no one is gonna remember unless they rewatched that arc within the last week and a half. Something none of us really pick up on until the end when there’s a resolution and then we’re like “oh wait! That’s what they were doing. I didn’t realize but I see now. I’m glad they fixed that. I’m glad Olivia got to have that moment of closure.” Make me THINK in other words. Make me have to be a bit confused at first and critically analyze what’s in front of me. +and make predictions. Not be exactly sure that’s where you’re going with it. OC doesn’t spoonfeed us which is why sometimes their plots are confusing. You don’t have to go so hard with the parallels. Pick some random thing and then at the very end Olivia mentions it in therapy or to Fin and we’re all like “oh wait I didn’t even think about that and now all this stuff that happened makes sense that was good writing”. And don’t make it have no point. I did really like the ending though I just wish the ending wasn’t overshadowed by such blatant parallels. Even if we didn’t get a Lewis convo with Elliot I would’ve either liked to think we were leading up to one or see Olivia working through something/talking through something to encourage Maddie that she’d get through this because she dealt with those feelings (because maybe Maddie says something to her and it’s small enough that we didn’t even remember Olivia having those same thoughts until the end etc). She recognized as something as part of her own journey and she’s finally addressing it at the end because of that random thing that happened in the episode and then it wouldn’t be so blatant and shocking and obvious and we’d be like finally we are getting some healing and something is being addressed that hasn’t been before yay continuity! Rather than just blatantly tell me this is a parallel. Make me guess. You don’t have to spoonfeed me I’m an adult I can think for myself. Make me go ohhhh I see what you did there I wasn’t expecting it and it took me a minute to get it but now I do and it’s not one of the most obvious offensive ones like making a female juror a nutjob who wants to sleep with the suspect. We all remember bronwyn freed. It makes it more compelling when we have to think. When we go I didn’t remember that shit at all until your context clues led me to realize it and then it made it a more compelling story than if you’re just picking an obvious one. Be more subtle so I could pick up on the good parts.

[zaptap]

btw i still think theyre going to do unova remakes this year. for a second there i wavered a bit since i realized they could do something with johto first (hgss is older than gen v after all) but i think after indigo disk bringing unova back into the spotlight, it makes more sense to keep that going right into the next game (and there's no pattern yet for second-round remakes, since we've only gotten lgpe. could be total coincidence they did kanto again before sinnoh)

as for whether the remake will even be any good? idk lol. maybe they'll get ilca to do the bare minimum again. or maybe they'll decide not to after how much of a mess bdsp was (i feel like theyd rather not have to come up with special rules for pokemon home transfers again)

and to me legends arceus was one half of the sinnoh remake (the part where they add a lot of new stuff and bring newer pokemon to the region, which bdsp lacked) so they could do another legends game. they could continue the trend of focusing on a mythical and maybe do genesect or victini, or maybe base it on that merged dragon legendary we never really saw? idk

really hope though that they just... do a normal remake again. recreate the world and story of the original game, yes, but add to it. let us have pokemon that didn't exist when the originals came out, add new pokemon forms, etc. i really miss the old remakes being in the same style as the brand new games of the generation and able to communicate with each other, instead of this thing theyve been doing since lgpe where everything is in a weird bubble by itself

at the same time though i liked legends arceus and it'd be nice to see something like that again. my theory has been that it came about because game freak maybe got a little too ambitious working on a more traditional sinnoh remake (trying to work something like the wild area into sinnoh, maybe settling on making five of the areas more open, and ultimately deciding it was too different--or had some ideas to make it even more different--and spinning it off into something new while hiring ilca to cover the expectation for a "normal" remake since they'd be abandoning that)

and now, after having already done the split-model remake with bdsp and legends arceus, would they do the same thing again? i think with scarlet and violet's open world, having it be similarish to those games probably won't happen (also they absolutely wouldn't have terastalization and tera raids--if blueberry academy is in unova and has a special tera orb to enable all of that, that means it isn't in the rest of the region). but they could still have it be more linear while being stylistically similar to sv, as opposed to what bdsp did

ANYWAY how about this actually: have the type of remake we got with frlg/hgss/oras (where there's plenty of new stuff and you can get pokemon that didn't exist in the originals) and then throw in some kind of Dream World inspired side story area with legends arceus mechanics. that would be really cool

.......also there's the whole question of like. what the fuck are they gonna do about bw2. those games went above and beyond the usual third version deal. different story, different starting area and map progression, different protagonists. they can't simply tack on some alternate clothing options and throw in the kyurem/kami/etc forms and call it good. that would be unacceptable

would they put both games in one? would they sell the second as dlc? would the paired games, instead of black remake and white remake, be bw remake and bw2 remake? (would that even work?) or would they really just ignore bw2 as much as possible? honestly with the way game freak's been these days i feel like that might be most likely unfortunately

for the past few years ive been wanting to replay gen v, but with these remakes coming... well, in the past i've replayed rs before oras and played yellow before lgpe, and that was fine, but when i replayed platinum before bdsp came out it just felt like i was playing the same game again except worse. like i think i'd rather have played bdsp and then platinum. so i'll wait until after the remakes before doing that i think (or at least until we have an idea of what we're getting) (not that i think i'll have time to get around to playing those before then anyway)

[swimmingleo]

HS1 // THE WALL : A MESS

I love love LOVE HS1. When it came out, I had absolutely no idea what it was about as a whole and that’s the best thing ever because then you basically spend a lifetime (nah) trying to make sense of it and it’s SO MUCH FUN. Here it is, a monster post text about how Harry is the biggest Pink Floyd fanboy ever and we kind of share that really.

Before I start here are some Pink Floyd parallels posts I really love, courtesy of @bluewinnerangel: here and here. The second one is mostly clownery on my part I apologize but it’s a warning of what’s to come in this long ass post.

... this won't make the cut to my professional portfolio.

THE WALL: WHAT IT’S ABOUT

DISCLAIMER just so we're clear, I don’t think this wall has anything to do with someone else’s walls. I think the inspiration and creative process behind both their albums are really different so what I'm saying about HS1 doesn't necessarily apply to Walls. But hey, as someone once said, a wall is a wall.

The Wall is a concept album by Pink Floyd with a narration: it tells us the story of Pink, a rockstar on the verge of a breakdown. He ends up building a metaphorical wall around him. Each brick represents a trauma (the passing of his father during the war, his upbringing, his school education, the Blitz, his love life). Pink isolates himself in a hotel room and the wall is absolute. From there it's a free fall into depression and madness before he makes his wall fall eventually.

Now let’s talk about HS1. We know the sound of some of it kind of reminds us of Pink Floyd, as pop tabloids said (they do love forcing down parallels as much as I do). We also know that with this album, Harry wanted to say things he couldn’t before, and it's all about him, his struggles. Sad stuff.

“I don’t want to hear my favorite artists talk about all the amazing shit they get to do. I want to hear, ‘How did you feel when you were alone in that hotel room, because you chose to be alone?'”

Harry really really likes the idea of being alone in a hotel room for this album.

What we also know is that the album was supposed to be named "Pink". Let’s take a look at the album cover real quick:

Harry is not facing us, he's naked and curled up on himself, surrounded by pink water.

My interpretation regarding this whole analysis: he doesn’t let us in by turning his back on us. Yet he’s still vulnerable and exposed because he’s naked. Pink water is not pure, it's a result of toxic waste. Therefore it could be the form his wall takes: Pink's wall is made of bricks/traumas, Harry's is made of toxic substances/traumas. Here an interesting interpretation by billboard that helped me.

Harry trapped underneath blood water on the SOTT cover:

Harry above water in SOTT's mv standing taller than it

SO this once named “Pink,, album cover could be his own take on Pink’s character. From the get go, he compares himself to the protagonist of The Wall.

HS1 begins and ends within 4 walls: Harry is waiting for someone to come out of their room in MMITH and ends up alone in a hotel room in FTDT. Another bedroom in Only Angel. A room (kitchen) in Two Ghosts. Walls are also mentioned in ESNY (Understand I’m talking to the walls). Regardless of the whole album progression, the setup barely changes, which makes me think that while Fine Line tells us a linear narrative, HS1 is more of a reflection on past traumas with no resolution in the end. Swimming in a fish bowl, a glass half empty. Contrary to Pink who gets to make his wall fall at the end of the album, Harry’s walls are still up. His first album is just the beginning of his solo career, of his story.

For this post I'll focus on some parallels that strike me as LOUD, whether it’s a specific theme, lyric or imagery.

MOTHERHOOD AND WAR

It’s SOTT appreciation time. What did Harry say about it ? It’s inspired by a mother dying after giving birth and basically warning her child about life in the span of 5 minutes. It’s also about various political and social issues, as he said once, vaguely answering a very pointed question in the midst of post 2016 political climate.

There is also a nice death imagery going on with the angelic choirs, the idea of seeing things from above, the bullets, the escapism. I don’t think it’s literally about a mother dying after childbirth. But I don’t think the mother explanation should be dismissed as just 'Harry talking out of his ass to get himself out of a delicate situation'.

I find a lot of interesting parallels with Pink Floyd’s song Mother. It’s about Pink remembering his overprotective mother, who projected on him her own fears and traumas and contributed to the building of his wall.

Just stop your crying it’s a sign of the time, SOTT

Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry, Mother

… to point out the obvious. But it doesn’t stop here, there is also a lot of war talk going on:

Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets ?

Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb ? / Mother, will they put me in the firing line ?

Of course the nature of the war differs from one song to another. Mother’s about WW2 and SOTT, well, oppression of some sort? me thinks closeting. Still in both cases the speaker feels trapped and is asking why. They’re seeking answers because the cruelty they suffer from is undeserved. Pink was a child caught in the war and Harry was a child caught in the money machine. Both are at the beginning of a long, tiring, dehumanizing journey. And a protective mother figure warns them about it.

Basically in both songs we have a voice who asks a dreadful question and a voice immediately attempting to soothe them somehow.

Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets ? > Just stop your crying.

Mother, will they put me in the firing line ? > Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry.

Once again, I don’t think Harry is having a conversation with his mother the way Pink does. But I do suspect the use of motherhood as opposed to the violence and uncertainty regarding the future. He’s using a motherly tone as a way to cope, a made up inner voice to reassure himself. While Pink associates motherhood to trauma, Harry associates it to comfort. It tells him to Go forth and conquer.

Quick additions to the SOTT parallels with The Thin Ice, another song about Pink in relation to his mother:

We never learn, we’ve been here before, SOTT

Dragging behind you the silent reproach of a million tear-stained eyes, The Thin Ice

This voice of the reason reminds them they're carrying history somehow, a legacy. The weight of it adds on the pressure. This war isn’t only about them, it’s about a lot of people and it’s been going on for a long time.

And another addition regarding the war imagery in SOTT with Goodbye Blue Sky (Pink remembering growing up during the Blitz).

Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets ? / Breaking through the atmosphere and things are pretty good from here, SOTT

Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky ?, Goodbye Blue Sky

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST a parallel between SOTT and Stop (where Pink the rockstar is exhausted and begs for his misery to end).

Welcome to the final show, hope you’re wearing your best clothes, SOTT

I want to go home, take off this uniform and leave the show, Stop

ISOLATION

As mentionned before, HS1 starts with MMITH: Harry waiting outside someone’s bedroom and almost begging for that someone to come out. More precisely, H just left the bedroom: he used to share that space with that person, but now there’s a wall between them.

In The Wall’s storyline, Pink completely cuts his ties with the outside world and locks himself in a hotel room: his wall is complete. From there, he wonders if he actually made the right choice isolating himself in Hey you.

Yeah, tons of MMITH and Hey you parallels ahead:

Meet me in the hallway, I just left your bedroom, give me some morphine

Hey you, out there beyond the wall, breaking bottles in the hall, can you help me ?

Is there any more to do ? Just let me know I’ll be at the door/on the floor

Would you touch me ? / Would you help me to carry the stone ? / Can you help me ?

I walked the streets all day

Hey you, out there on the road

Hoping you’ll come around

Don’t tell me there’s no hope at all

Maybe we’ll work it out

Together we stand, divided we fall

Is this not... A dialogue ? MMITH’s speaker is outside the room, staying around just in case the person inside needs them. They’re desperate to prove their unconditional support. Hey you’s speaker is inside the room, trapped behind the wall, and questions whether or not the person waiting for them outside would actually be ready to assume the responsabilities that come with helping them with the load.

Which leads us to the end of HS1, FTDT. Now, Harry’s alone, inside his hotel room as well. After a succession of songs expressing frustration, anger, despair, jealousy, which are as many bricks, he built up his own wall, just like Pink. He distances himself from the "you" in MMITH even more. Now they’re in the same situation:

Played with myself where were you ? / Even my phone misses your call, by the way

Hey you, out there on your own, sitting naked by the phone, would you touch me ?

Still going strong with the hopeless dialogue.

Right after Hey you comes the song Nobody Home, where Pink, fully isolated, gets more and more depressed and can only list the material possessions he bought with that rockstar money. More parallels can be made with FTDT:

Maybe one you’ll call me and tell me that you’re sorry too, FTDT

Ooh, babe when I pick up the phone there’s still nobody home, Nobody Home

AND REAL QUICK I’M SO ANNOYING SORRY THIS IS NOT EVEN HS1 BUT we can all agree that FTDT and Falling have a similar start right ? Alone in his bed, drunk and very sad. Allegedly Harry is at his lowest. Ok. This from Nobody Home…

All down the front of my favourite satin shirt / I’ve got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains

… looks a bit like this ? Though it’s not satin hm.

… And of course he’s in a richly decorated room where he drowns in his sorrow again and again. This room is like a trap he can't escape.

ANYWAY what's interesting is: if Harry identifies to Pink so much throughout this album, to the point where he theoretically almost named the album after him, why is Harry the one beyond the wall in MMITH? Is there someone else who shares similar life experience, traumas, emotional bagage and who could also relate to Pink to some extent ? Someone so similar they could be the ''you'' in the ''we'' of SOTT ? The one Harry wants to get away from here with? Them against the rest of the world ? SOMEONE WHO’S QUITE FAMILIAR WITH A WALL METAPHOR ?

WAR AND KIDS

Another big part of The Wall is the famoso Another Brick In The Wall part 2. The song protests against the abusive school system that works like an industry : it formates people and rips one's individuality off... turning them into a copy of a copy of a copy...

“Hey, teachers! Leave them kids alone!”

“If you don't eat your meat you can't have any pudding...”

“All in all you're just another brick in the wall”

mh why is that blackboard there, what's on it?

…Maybe ?? I can't see very well so it's convenient but.. maybe?

AND I KNOW this is not about Louis but those melted smooth faced masks which all look the same also remind me a lil bit of the concept of the masks in Walls' mv..? a tiny tiny lil bit? coacoac anyone?

… and this is just a white brick wall and I suppose white brick walls are very common but it’s still there so I’ll take it.

In Another Brick In the Wall part 2, the kids are kept under control by the teachers with pudding as a carrot and stick approach (If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding). In the film adaptation of The Wall, Pink dreams of the kids rioting and burning down the school. In Kiwi’s MV, there are no teachers or any adult (except H, who also self inserts as a kid). All the children are gathered in a school gymnasium around a gigantic pile of cakes.

So Kiwi the MV could be Harry’s sequel of ABITW p2: the kids successfully got rid of figures of authority and seized the cakes/pudding which were once used as a weapon against them. The MV feels like a dream sequence because it’s so random, therefore it could be Harry’s fantasy just like the kids rioting were Pink’s fantasy.

What's also interesting is that the persons who make their bread on the speaker's behalf (the woman in Kiwi and the teachers in The Wall) both have a sad love life at home:

When she's alone she goes home to a cactus, Kiwi

When they got home at night, their [...] wives would thrash them, The Happiest Days of our Lives

... Whereas ''home'' is basically Harry's only safe place, his constant, where he always go back to when he feels lost. This love Harry has no matter what makes him superior to them in that regard. "Them" is that external factor that is trying to take his love, his strenght away: the ones that are going to find him soon in Stockholm Syndrome, that made his lover walk away in Happily, that try to force him into submitting by telling him that nothing's ever easy, that the end is near. It's a powerplay between them and Harry, a war.

TO MAKE IT SHORT-ISH, what strikes me is that between the HCU (Harry Cinematic Universe lol) and The Wall, there is this common idea of a war that starts very early in life and results in absolute self-isolation. War corrupts kids, war makes money, war makes the world go round. Pink/Harry were exposed to it very young, had trouble understanding it and accepting it, and had to protect themselves with this metaphorical wall which eventually alienated them from everything.

It would also not be the first time Harry associates with the concept of being involved in a war of some sort: see the tattoo "won’t stop ‘till we surrender’’…

… or even a war involving kids: see the tattoo "I can’t change" inspired by Make It Stop of Rise Against. Bang, bang from the closet walls…

I don't really know how to conclude this properly so tchuss

[milkywaydrinker]

Day 22. Time travel

I hate time travel as a plot device. It makes no sense half of the time. The other half of the time it just makes everything needlessly convoluted. I haven't seen a time travel plot done well outside of very niche, high-concept sci-fi. Anyways, have two people who are the same person but are almost nothing alike anymore yell at each other.

The graves were symbolic. Of course, she knew where all of their bodies were; she had that chronicled. When you're the one to outlive them all you get a choice: forget or carry a piece of each and every one of them with you at all times.

“Another year, you aren’t missing much Barney, nothing ever changes.” "Oh man, so that's how it goes huh? Immortality really is a bummer." A familiar voice came out of nowhere, startling her. Her magic ignited in one palm while the other reached for the grip of her rapier. "How did I get jumpier with age? Are you somehow more stressed now than in high school?" The person behind her was herself. The other Norma looked at her with a critical eye. "So it's true you don't grow much after puberty." She sounded disappointed. "Hey." Looking at herself, or rather, at a version of herself she'd considered dead and gone, was a bit shocking. "What the fuck?" "Long story, I think we're currently destroying multiple timelines actually." She seemed pretty cool with that. Okay, so that wasn't exactly "her". It should've been obvious from the start. They wouldn't have been able to interact in this way unless… "You're doing something very stupid and very dangerous." "I know." "Do you now? You can't jump forward without derailing your original timeline, you can't just hop over to the next fork and pretend it's fine!" Even in her own reckless youth, she'd never reached this level of unhinged. Starting a multiplanar war was nothing in comparison to whatever this brat was doing. "I never said it was fine." The kid huffed. "We're combing through the splits to find the one where the world doesn't end. We want to see how the other versions of us prevented it and copy their solution." "That's the most creative way of admitting you ran out of ideas I've ever heard." She was beginning to lose patience. "Sometimes everything goes to shit and there's no way of fixing it. Burying hundreds of other timelines under your misery is beyond selfish." "You don't get to talk to me about selfishness." She almost spat that sentence out. "You're a vampire, there's no way you haven't done stuff you regret." What a cheap gotcha, they really were from completely different worlds. "Go back home, Norma. Exactly a second after you left. Every moment you aren't in the stream of your timeline you create a split. Go back and figure your problems out." She turned away to face the graves again.

Time is unforgiving, and while its nature isn't exactly linear, the cause-and-effect chains bind everyone and everything in the moment. Pulling one element out inevitably unravels the whole structure, breaks it down, and creates paradoxes. Nothing good ever came from time travel. "This timeline isn't a total mess." "I told you to go home." "No. I need to ask you something first." The gravel crunched under her combat boots as she approached. "How did you do it?" "I'm not letting you copy my homework." This was what having a younger sibling must have been like. Poor Ana. "Just tell me how to save the world and you'll never see me again." "No, but if I tell you how I've done it, you'll be seeing me sooner than you'd like."