#theres a bit of plot– character arcs and general world plot

[luniise-kel]

thinking about how cool and awesome moon stone cassandra couldve been if she wasnt given the world’s worst villain motivation

dropping my whole au / rewrote of season 3 below

uh preface is im sleepy and its almost midnight, so like sorry if some parts dont make sense or whatever

uhh basically, instead of cass trying to like reach her destiny or whatever as like her Main motivation and the only reason to why she Evil and Malicious ive changed it so its more mixed in with her desire to protect rapunzel. i think moonstone cass is cool and i like the idea of her but i really just think her execution was poor mostly because it wasn’t built up as much as it shouldve been.

rewrote cass’s character slightly just so there more empathize on her idolization of her mother, and so when she learns the truth of why mother gothel left her, the knee jerk reaction to blame raps makes a little more sense.

Anyways, Season 3 cass deals with a lot of her issues, i think on the journey to get the moonstone something something happens and cassandra is told that if rapunzel comes in contact with the moonstone she will Implode. Like die. Return to being the sundrop. and cass is like oh fuck, shit, balls, I need to Protect her from Dying. So out of her intense Need to protect Rapunzel she yoinks the moonstone, and (still slightly pissed at raps for stealing her mom but not really she’s just trying to figure out her emotions + rapunzel needs to get away away from this rock) she goes into Evil mode.

Her villain arc is partly fueled by her anger at her own situation, always in second place. her desire to feel love and cherished and important rather than being the 2nd option. However, it is also fueled by her need to provide safety to her friends ,, even if it’s not the smartest choice. Moonstone Cass devotes her entire identify to being the cliche villain, so no one feels bad if like the solution to destroying the moonstone is killing her. she knows that logically the Zhan Tiri is manipulating her but 1. she idgaf and 2. she needs to learn how to control the moonstone’s power so she doesnt hurt her friends.

Tbh boiled now, it’s just cass isnt obsessive with mother gothel and mother gothel leaving her to kidnap a baby because it made like no sense for her character. like instead, moonstone cass grabbles with her identify and place in the world, who she is outside of rapunzel. Also she wants to learn more about her past, yknow, who mother gothel was and is she Worth getting upset over. spoiler she figures out that no, her bio mom sucks booty

Anyways, throughout my version of season 3, cass is trying to figure out a way to destroy the moonstone. She visits Rapunzel often too and pretends to be evil just so she can check in. She angry at her mom but not so much on rapunzel, maybe a little bit but probably more to with simply trying to crave out her identify outside of rapunzel. Same general plot beats happen in s3, but shes more grief driven than anger driven i suppose.

Theres probably a lot i forgot to like, reformulate in this especially w s3 bc i havent had the time to rewatch it and collect my thoughts that well. But, uh, hope u enjoyed. might yap more about my personal gripes with the show and how i think it shouldve been written.

also to add on i suppose, at the end of the series she gets exiled from corona officially, but lowkey comes back to hang out and after like a year every1 is like yeah okay i guess.

[nariyahcore]

Sonic and Nine make a toxic duo/“sibling” relationship

And why Silver could easily fit into that dynamic instead

I have mentioned this before not too long ago, but never got the chance to elaborate on why I personally do not like Sonic and Nine as “brothers”. So!!! I’ll take advantage and explain why Silver and Nine are a much better duo :]]

BUT FIRST!!! I want to credit my pookie @abs9lution who came up with this duo in the first place! i have their thread that elaborates further on silver and nine’s dynamic at the end of this post if you’d like to check it out! it also includes a thread on what’ll happen to silver and blaze’s dynamic, and why Blaze’s character was downgraded throughout the years

the end of this post also includes a tldr for those who don’t have the patience to read all this yapping (it’s okay me too 😭)

Table of Contents:

i. sonic and nine’s toxic relationship

ii. explaining how silver’s addition would’ve mattered in sonic prime

iii. why silver and nine would make a better duo as brothers

I. Sonic and Nine, and why their dynamic does not work out.

I feel like I could go on for AGES as to why i genuinely dislike Sonic and Nine as a duo, because there’s just so many things wrong with these two 😭

If you’ve watched Sonic Prime then you’d know Sonic’s goal was to simply bring back Green Hills, with the help of the friends he made along the way.

This also includes Nine (momentarily) before his (EXTREMELY VALID AND JUSTIFIED) villain arc.

Throughout the show it is extremely obvious Sonic only saw Nine as Tails “but angsty”. He didn’t take time to realize that Nine was NOT Tails and never will be. Whilst his main concern was to bring back his friends, I feel like no one talks about how demeaning this was 😭

The poor kid has absolutely no idea what a friendship is like, so having Sonic rely on him for even a little bit was bound to become a heavily over attached and almost obsessive-one sided dynamic.

So no, it’s not meant to be “toxic brothers!!!” core, it is sooo downgrading to not only Nine’s trauma imho, but also the whole plot of S3 in Sonic Prime. They CANNOT be brothers 😭

This is often dismissed just for the fact of “lol sonic and tails brother ship in all universes”

Do not get my wrong, I adore the Unbreakable Bond stuff, I think they’re the brothers ever!! HOWEVER, this should not apply with Sonic and Nine for obvious reasons.

I can yap more about this but the main purpose of this post is about Silver and Nine, so I’ll keep this section short!!

II. Silver should’ve been in Sonic Prime and I will die on this hill 

LIKE??? ITS LITERALLY ABOUT THE MULTIVERSE WHY WOULDN’T HE (and Blaze) BE IN THIS SHOW???

Silver in general needs to be in more official media but that’s a rant for another post 😭

His addition to this show would’ve been sooo important, it actually would’ve changed a lot of the plot and even the ending of S3 (which was absolute shit imo 😭)

I don’t have a lot to say about this part of the post, apart from the fact his inclusion would have made the show more interesting, and his background is very similar to Nine!! (Which I’ll explain in the next section)

III. Why Silver and Nine would make a better bond than with Sonic.

they have similar backgrounds and interests! both come from a dystopian city with the want for change; one wants to leave and make a new world, while the other wants to help fix his.

They both balance each other nicely! And YES I KNOW THE SAME IS FOR SONIC. THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT THERES NO TRAUMA INVOLVED BETWEEN THE TWO 😭 and it’s not a complete copy of sonic and tails but with an angsty version of the fox

silver wouldn’t see nine as “tails but angsty” or just another version of tails, I think he’d see nine as his own person!! they could keep each other company and be the sillies ever

Something I like about this is the fact it’s not EXACTLY like sonic and tails, and they can still have that brother bond!! They have tons of potential, which is why I ignore canon and follow my delusions in fanon 😁

TLDR: sonic and nine booooo silver and nine yippee!!! /hj

okay in a serious note, sonic and nine just wouldn’t have a healthy friendship that wouldn’t have one-sided obsession and lots of toxicity, while silver, a character that albeit random, still has enough similarities to fit into that role!!

Please read the thread behind the mastermind of this headcanon!! They explain the details I’ve put in this post, but I’d like for you guys to read it too. It includes a separate thread by another person based on Blaze and Silver’s odd dynamic and why it’s often brushed off!!

sorry for any spelling errors I did NOT proofread this

art by BREADBURNE86414 on twt!!

[alicentsgf]

why are people so pressed about how Alicent ends up this season??? Like hotd hasn’t been good since s1 people also criticized everything back then but tbh Alicent from s1 was always headed to where she ends up?? I thought it was common knowledge that her last choice would always going to be duty vs love and s1 stated very well that Rhaenyra is that freedom for Alicent???? I absolutely hated the things they put Alicent through (alicole sex and for what? All of her sons being a dick to her??) her arc this season was badly executed but to blame and think that the writers are catering to rhaenicents? seems a bit stretch when the ship is hated by the majority of the show. We can argue in the journey of how Alicent get to the point she is now but it was clear for the beginning that the head of TG?? She would never be, sometimes I think that thanks to most of the general viewers didn’t understand Alicent as a character the writers thought if we put her in these humiliating scenes the viewers would understand that she is a victim of the patriarchy and the men who surround her, but I guess not even with that the GA and fandom as whole could ever understand her character and honestly im good with it, she’s a walking contradiction and i have read her character like that since the beginning, good riddance tho to the obnoxious people that kept bad talking Olivia for only doing her job (this is not a dig to you but the extended fandom that are attacking Olivia again for her character)

Why are we upset now? Because we dared to hope lmao. And now we're realising theres absolutely no coming back from this (it was already mostly ruined i know).

I think the issue is the choice between duty and love should have been made when she chose her children and grandchildren over viserys wish for rhaenyra to rule. Choosing love didnt have to and shouldnt have meant choosing rhaenyra. Like finally FINALLY she lets herself cast duty aside, because "what is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms", "you never love anything in the world the way you love your first child", "you imbecile (affectionate)", etc etc. That is what works in line with the original story AND the sympathetic sides of alicent we saw with in season 1. Sure motherhood shouldn't define women but this is a story abt a fucking lineage !! What do people expect. Of course its going to be about parents and children.

F&B might have been bare bones, but it at least had a strong political backbone to it thats been completely removed this season. That direction would have offered more oppertunities for alicent to be explored as a multifacted character. The problem is that because they angled this as a story primarily about misogyny rather than a story about the inevitability of the targaryen line imploding, they maybe thought they couldnt do that without making alicent look like an unsympathetic agent of patriarchy. (Most of the audience read her that way anyway so they did a pretty crappy job avoiding it). Rhaenyra represented a certain freedom for alicent in the story, sure, im not against that at all, but for the writers to suggest literally being with Rhaenyra is what alicent needs to do to achieve freedom from duty? To free herself from the shackles or patriarchy?? (🙄) Its so laughable. Alicents little grandson had to have his head sown back on for his funeral and Rhaenyras faction sent the assassin. Her daughter was traumatised. You dont just fucking come back from that. Really we should have known when viserys died how this was gonna go and I think in some ways we did because a big number of us were upset with the misunderstanding then, we just didnt want to believe what this signaled about where they were taking alicent. People are upset now because alicents character has become totally unrectifiable. We just never believed they'd diverge so much from the known plot points of fire and blood.

As for this bit you said:

" I think that thanks to most of the general viewers didn’t understand Alicent as a character the writers thought if we put her in these humiliating scenes the viewers would understand that she is a victim of the patriarchy and the men who surround her, but I guess not even with that the GA and fandom as whole could ever understand her character and honestly im good with it, she’s a walking contradiction and i have read her character like that since the beginning."

I have thought this myself and unfortunately I think you're right. In an effort to make alicent sympathetic they have created the most convoluted character i've ever laid my eyes on. Towards the end of season 1 we were already saying her being so forgiving after driftmark made no sense, but i was compelled enough by her because of olivias performance of that scene with the knife to be willing to wait to see where they took her this season. And its been an exercise in more of the same stupid shit. The issues in season 1 have just been amplified by the realisation that season 2 is just the same thing again and again and again for alicent. Shes just a punching bag and im sure thats in an attempt to get the audience to feel bad for her, because i cant see any other reason for it, but its just so badly written that shes no longer compelling or interesting really at all. Theres nothing to root for when you dont know who someone is. I have so little to say about her this season and that hurts honestly. Olivias performances deserved much better writing.

[tvok]

hey im interested in getting into ygo do u have any recs or recommended orders of reading/watching theres a lot from the looks of it on anilist so i was wondering about your preferences o:

ANON I ABSOLUTELY DOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I'm only about halfway through the sequels (i just started arc-v) so I'm not like the most knowledgable person in the world but I can give you my personal recs. COME CLOSER!!!!!

First of all, every yugioh series is totally independent from each other (sort of - gx is set directly after dm and leans on its worldbuilding quite a bit, and 5ds takes place in the same universe as well though a bit further in the future, but you can watch them on their own with no problem) so if there's one in particular that grabs you there's nothing stopping you from jumping straight to it - that being said I've been watching all of the anime in release order (ygo dm -> gx -> 5ds -> zexal -> arc-v (i am here) -> vrains -> sevens -> go rush) and I've been enjoying it a lot. I also wouldn't recommend watching arc-v in particular without having watched the ones before it as it probably won't really have any impact for you. Now for specific recommendations (in order) !!!! SORRY THIS GOT REALLY LONG.

yugioh manga - START HERE !!!!! the original story by kazuki takahashi. high school boy inherits an ancient magical artifact containing a spirit that's really, really good at playing games (and inflicting psychological torment on bullies). I have to give it a warning for some shonen-typical creepiness towards female characters in the early chapters, but it's REALLY worth reading and it's a story that's so near and dear to my heart. this is the fastest and easiest way to start loving yugioh. Its worth noting that the original ygo manga is the ONLY manga (afaik) that tells the same story as its anime + i haven't read any of the others aside from a little bit of the gx manga, so the rest of my recs are anime-only

(optional) yugioh season 0 / 1998 / toei - a one-season anime based on the early manga chapters. if you like the horror vibes of the manga you'll enjoy this a lot. really fun 90s animation with a killer soundtrack, but generally not considered """canon"""

yugioh duel monsters - this is the one most people watched as a kid. it's an adaptation of the manga, but with most of the early chapters cut out so as to get straight to the card games + some extra arcs added in. this is most people's favorites and the most popular! you can also watch this in lieu of the manga, but you will be missing a LOT of the early story or experiencing it in condensed form (and the plot of ygo dm is already patchy At Best).

yugioh gx - direct anime sequel to ygo dm. boy goes to gamer school to become the next king of games + high school shenanigans ensue. gx is a really charming, goofy romp with a super lighthearted s1, an interesting s2 and a shockingly engrossing s3. s4 (the last 25 episodes or so) never got dubbed in english so if you're a dub enjoyer like me you'll have to switch to subs to get the full story

yugioh 5ds - direct sequel to gx, though further in the future than gx was to dm. card games on motorcycles are real and so is class warfare and the surveillance state. iirc this is the only yugioh anime that was rated 4+ - it has a slightly more mature tone but there's still plenty of lighthearted fun to be had. Really strong s1 with a second season that falls off a little bit, at least to me, but is still absolutely worth watching. s2 is missing a number of episodes in the english dub, so again if you're a dub enjoyer you will find yourself quite confused by the end. its probably worth watching s2 entirely sub-only (something i still need to do)

yugioh zexal - the first of the sequels that is possibly set in a different universe entirely (or just the really distant future). middle school boy gets a magic necklace from his dad that has an alien inside. zexal is a lot of peoples favorites and now that I've watched it I GET IT. Really strong story + pacing from beginning to end and a really endearing cast of characters. It's silly and goofy and fun but DAMN DOES IT COHERE.

yugioh arc-v - the first of the sequels that is DEFINITELY set in a different universe entirely. this is the one I'm watching currently so i don't have much to say about it yet GET BACK TO ME ON THIS ONE. this one boy's dream is to become the greatest clown who ever lived (tragic) (inspiring)

INHALES LOUDLY. that was probably more info than you wanted BUT I HOPE THAT HELPED AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT? again I recommend reading the original ygo manga first and i think that will give you a good idea of whether you are down with the yugioh silliness or not. It's important to remember that this is a very silly anime series about card games but like. As long as you can buy into the worldbuilding and accept that this is just How Things Are in the world of ygo, it's suuuuuuuch a fun world to sink your teeth into.

[asteralis-01]

Hello hi I’m still losing it over this song and how well it fits with my oc so I’m gonna infodump even though none of you understand what I’m talking about. Also I am scared of ppl figuring out who I am so Im using other names for them lest someone recognize them.

“Heatseeker, I’m just looking for the truth,

Heatseeker and I’m shooting for the moon

Heatseeker, yeah, be I’m looking for a way

I’d rather be lost than to stay the same”

BC HYUNG IS LITERALLY A HEAT SEEKER! SHE IS HOT (like actively on fire hot I mean) AND SHE SEEKS!! Hyungs most important character arc is that she is looking for her best friend, S, that disappeared- that everyone assumed her to be dead but no one even looked for her. She also knew that the news was lying, because they claimed she died in a way she most definitely would have. Hyung knew that they were working on a portal, Hyung KNEW S was going to go in there at some point or another. BULLSHIT she died while playing with some electrical stuff in a forest that’s a lie! Hyung knew she wasn’t that stupid, Hyung knew everyone was lying to her and she was the only one who even knew there was a truth to uncover.

S is based on the sun, and theres another character who is meant to be her parallel and is based off the moon, so that’s a bit of a stretch but Hyung always associated S with the finer details of the world, the curiosity and fondness it takes for someone to research something like the moon, so it’s not to far to say that she would compare S to the moon and the sun.

The looking for a way goes back to two things- that the only way to reach S was through the portal- one that was locked away in a highly secure facility and still doesn’t work because it was never fully researched. She doesn’t understand it- all she knows is what S told her about the portal, but even still she wasn’t the smart one, she didn’t understand all these big science words and concepts- they were both children after all. It could also be used to refer to her other problem- living in a hetero/cisnormative, predominantly white racist town as a daughter of an immigrant. She delt with constant bullying and othering- if not over her origins than over her liking of women, and if not over either of those than for her general ‘weirdness.’ She was always a bit isolated and in her own head, she thought about outcome more than consequence and it led her to doing a lot of sometimes dumb shit which would land her even more backlash. Shes looking for a way to find S, she’s the only one who knows she’s not dead, but she’s also looking for a way to escape the pain she is in. She also has some family issues sprinkled in (immigrant parents, a not-dx father with depression and not-dx mother with adhd will do some stuff to you but I’m not sure what exactly it did to her yet. All I know is they tried to be supportive of Hyung but didn’t understand and fell into the toxic way they were taught to raise kids) so she is hoping to escape that as well- that comes back and doesn’t just bite her in the ass, it chomps her whole ass off.

AH and this is like that gives me the most feels because she WOULD rather be lost than for things to stay the same- no one is going to change, no one is going to try and learn the truth. No one is going to do anything, and she got to a point where she couldn’t handle that anymore. Anything would have been better than continuing on, that was her true belief. If it took her ending up on the news like S and being presumed dead- so be it. She would come back soon and prove to everyone that they should have looked for S. It shouldn’t take more than a week.. right? She’ll come back and have only worried her parents a little- she won’t be gone for months upon months getting the same abuse that S was going through right? She would return with her family intact… Right?

Anyways I am very autistic about Hyung recently, so far their ‘story’ has been centered around S and what she went through, and Hyung was more so just a plot device for S growth- but Hyung is such a good and complex character and I love them both.

[literalite]

hi joseph! what are your thoughts on penacony arc? started it just yesterday and i'm not vibing with it 😭 afaik this is a pretty common feeling towards the beginning and especially 2.2 chapter but i've also seen people defending them. it's always intersting to see your opinion about any media in general, you have some insights i never really thought about. good luck on whoever you choose to pull!

omg hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii im so glad u appreciate my takes about these sillyyy gacha games rubs hands together lets get into it.. ive finished the whole story at this point but so sorry if i end up spoiling ill try break it up patch by patch

tldr; i think penacony is def a plot that gets more refined the further u go on, which i think makes sense because of how large and expansive the cast is to begin with they also throw like a fuckton of different plot points at u so theres a few different veins of thought u can chase in various directions. theyre going for more of a mystery and more morally ambiguous cast than the other planets/locations we've been to so far so i think its more a side effect of the genre so to speak. there's more room for error here and i admit i got tripped up at times esp in the beginning. i actually really liked 2.2 but it might be because my personal favourite penacony character got a lotttt of screentime, my fav patches have been 2.1 and 2.2 because at least in my opinion thats when the plot sort of tightened and wrapped up so it was less just stuff all over the place left to mislead us. this latest patch's story (2.3) is probably my least favourite but im still like sorting out why exactly. overall i think penacony might have had the best plot so far

2.0 - if one dreams at midnight aka black swan, sparkle and misha, and the introduction of penacony in general

the opening of this event/world was REALLY good i loved having acheron walk us through the hotel. probably one of the more engaging new gameplay tutorial processes i've been through and it raised so many questions (who is she/who is she to us/whats with the red text/WHAT IS GOING ON) that from someone who was admittedly not entirely sold on the whole dream hotel concept i was pretty easily hooked. admittedly i think the sort of concepts they were laying out for us in this new world are a lot more abstract than what we've previously encountered so i know a few of my friends ending up getting kind of tired of all the philosophical exposition and started just fast tracking their way thru the dialogue... which is a shame! yes theres a LOT of it and not all of it feels relevant in the moment but as someone who sat thru and read it all i think it was pretty solid. maybe they just need to get a bit better at being succinct

DGFghj the cutscenes and the characterisation in this patch were really beautiful moving stuff because i swear to u going in i didnt give a fuck about like. most of the cast like my only thought going in was oh i want sundays gender. but what i REALLY enjoy about penacony is that it felt like all the characters served a purpose in the story and there wasnt any characters just shoehorned in for the sake of more units to sell. does that make sense? for example in the xianzhou luofu i love that cast i swear but if you really look at them you could probably axe at least five of them from the roster and the main story would have remained exactly the same. like they appeared in the plot but they felt palpably unnecessary. whereas at least right now with all the playable characters that first appeared in penacony all played vital roles in progressing the story. i think for the amount of characters and how interesting they all are thats pretty solid storytelling, even if it amounts to just a lot of exposition at times. i liked the various clashing ideologies and paths it made for way more substantial narrative than any of the other locations so far

2.1 - into the yawning chasm aka the aventurine story ft. acheron

i think this patch had the strongest emotional story running through it, but i could be biased because i LOVE aventurine. to be clear i really didnt care about aventurine prior to playing through this story quest

im serious btw like i actually could not care less about him. it was solely the story quest that made me do one of my biggest 180s on him so far, and i know i'm not alone in this sentiment. i was actually really surprised they were spending sooo much time in his pov and mindset i think it was a decently bold move considering that we literally fight him by the patch's end- imagine if we'd spent half of belobog in cocolia's shoes for example. IT PAID OFF- i genuinely think the slightly less enthusiastic response to 2.2 is in part due to how fucking surprisingly amazing 2.1 was. i think acheron's presence in this one for me could have done with more but she has a stronger overall place in the narrative over the course of all of the penacony story quests that it somewhat balances out. the trailblazing crew took one hell of a step back for this patch but everyone was fine with that and i hope it encourages the writers and the devs to be okay with our like "main protagonists" being less of the pov characters. its interesting when you get to see other's lives, if anything for a gacha game it should honestly be encouraged? but anyways yeah this one was my fave patch on just the story alone

2.2 - then wake to weep aka robin and boothill's patch, as well as wrapping up the main plot of penacony AKA the sunday patch. to me.

i do think this one's story is a little weaker than the first two and especially in comparison to 2.1... but nevertheless i really loved it still mostly because i'd been waiting for sunday to unveil his true colours this entire time. the english va for sunday? fucking incredible it was the amount of just barely leased emotion holding on by the barest thread of control you could detect in pretty much every line he said that really hooked me onto the character. i think this update's plot is a little messy in terms of like pacing- at some points it dragged on and on others it felt way too fast but i adored the false ending and the whole twist of it all. some aspects of the story were admittedly really repetitive for some reason? a lot of the dialogue felt a little too overexposited- as much as i love the express crew when they're altogether they really just like yapping on about the same thing on repeat... i don't think the whole talent show thing was necessary LMFAO going into sunday's history lesson/mind palace construct would've been more than enough.

alllllso i get why boothill was here for this but at the same time of all the characters he feels the most... redundant? this sentiment is mostly influenced by the next patch because i really thought we were going to like actually go somewhere with his set up with aventurine but that kind of just.. didn't happen. like hes more necessary to this story than say, qingque or i guess bailu were for the xianzhou luofu but regardless his presence in this while amusing kind of lacked the oomph that all the other characters have had

this patch's cutscenes were definitely the best of all the ones we've seen so far, in my opinion, basically only rivaled by the aventurine vs acheron fight. all of sunday's scenes were chef kiss to the highest degree the way the line "through harmony, we obtain order" lives in my mind literally rent free. honestly i just like watching this whole thing

its fantastic. SUNDAY is our best villain so far hands fucking down i really liked the whole social contract aspect of his methodology. as much as people mischaracterise him sighhhh just the betrayal of his own sister in a bid to fulfill her dream, albeit misguidedly, is just so lovely and tragic i just. HRGHHH fucking phenomenal work. i know people got taken aback because sunday spent 2.1 being so focused on robin's murder, and i agree his turn straight back to his originally laid plans was more abrupt that i would have personally liked, but i still really enjoyed the whole thing fghjk. i am so biased because ive loved sunday from literally the moment his little chibi invited us to penacony at the end of the 1.6 stream (??) so every aspect of it was amazing to meeee. this patch had a slower build up to its climax than the others but its still my second favourite wuagh

2.3 - farewell, penacony aka firefly and jade's patch

im sorry this one is probably my least favourite ;-; they gave us really high expectations (the whole aventurine vs/with boothill ending, jade's introduction to penacony, etc etc) and i knowww this was always meant to be the last chapter of the penacony story so i shouldn't have expected them to unfold whole other untouched plot points at this stage but.... after all the high stakes of the rest of the story this ending while in some aspects kind of satisfying, fell short. for now! i expect them to bring the whole ipc scheming plotting thing back, they seem like a faction that will encounter a reckoning closer to the endgame of the story as opposed to being wrapped up right now. on an emotional level and specifically for the trailblazer and firefly's relationship, this was a fine patch! it was really cute... i just think that with how much emphasis we got on the pov of the other characters i really wish we'd spent time more with the rest of them. i guess i expected the ipc to bare their fangs a bit more here, but it still felt like it wrapped itself up cleaner than i would've preferred. sfdgfghjhkjk sue me i like chaos i want action i want them to fiiight... i guess it'll just be a matter of time though. not on this world, but maybe someplace elsewhere. we can only hope! in this regard i actually preferred the xianzhou ending, with tingyuns funerary service... it had more of a true weight to it than the goodbye the astral express gave the dead trailblazers and gallagher. they shouldve gotten a cutscene idkkkk

my brain is steaming so im gonna curb it here but basically in order of my fave to least fave the penacony patches go as follows:

2.1 -> 2.2 -> 2.0 -> 2.3

as someone who's only played genshin and hsr from hoyoverse i think this is a really good sign as to increasing complexity and depth to their characters and plotlines. the penacony narrative works because as self contained as it is it also presents us with a lot of questions and differing viewpoints that i daresay most of the other worlds both from genshin and hsr have so far been pretty much completely lacking. this really felt like a big beautiful puzzle getting assembled before our eyes and while the pieces didnt all seamlessly fit its just so much better than i am used to from this company im excited for the next worlds to come :D

[suffarustuffaru]

So, have you read Re:Zero Mimagau IF/Genderbent If? What do you think of this if route? A lot of people have complained that it's boring because it's basically just changing the names and keeping the general plot the same, but I personally kinda like it a lot?I didn't expect Tappei this troll to come up with something like that,but maybe he just ran out of ideas and improvised...

Some of the little details that were changed because of the gender reversed were interesting, like ram jokes on subaru are more refined and less aggressive in general ;male rem behaviour after (s)he was saved changes from female rem into a positive, smiling and relaxed version of him, but they way he bonds with subaru is different from rem, to avoid problems(sexual offenders), imagine it kind of like reinhardt is with felt etc.

But I'm a bit disappointed with the male Emilia's personality, I personally thought that since he's a male elf he'd be a bit more cold and reticent than was in the main canon, and then the male version of satella's name is actually "Luna"! I don't know if Tappei is hinting at something or he's just trying to troll with us lol

Although I enjoyed Mimagau IF, but some of the later plots and scenes can be very weird and even creepy because of the whole gender reversed.

my apologies it took a long while for me to answer to this ask T^T i put it in my drafts bc i wanted to think about the topic in depth bc this is Super interesting..... and then i forgot about it on and off oops HAH. but no i havent read the genderbend if!! i WOULD but there is only so many rezero side stories i can get to and so mimiagau is only at the bottom of the list bc like you said the plot is similar to canon anyway and i got other side stories i need to finish!! but im Definitely intrigued by mimiagau thats for sure <3

HAH yeah maybe tappei ran out of ideas and decided to make a genderbend au for funsies but he Has shown an interest in playing with gender a bit via the natsumi arc..... and yeah keeping mimiagaus plot similar to canon is, you know, a good way to save time and effort on it but i 1. really adore all the names that tappei chose for everyone, given the vast majority of characters are gonna have their names changed bc biological sex changed, and 2. i also appreciate the minor changes tappei makes bc it Makes Sense thatd it change bc its a genderbend au. some things will just Inevitably change bc of that fact, yeah. bc of societal gender norms and other things like that. plus the fantasy worlds opinions on gender are interesting bc its Definitely a mixed bag....... like how rezero in general is a mixed bag in terms of how misogynistic or not it wants to be. like rezero will read like r/menwritingwomen bc of all the times tappei INSISTS on mentioning boobs, or female characters sometimes having questionable designs, but then rezero turns around and creates truly iconic characters like echidna or anastasia or *insert many other great female characters here* aljsdlf or the beautiful character arcs that beatrice and emilia have in arc 4 for example HAH.... a mixed bag for sure!! and the fantasy world has all sorts of stuff... like you know theres all the world ending powers and powerful positions various people can have regardless of gender, the royal candidates in canon being all women but theyre referred to as "kings" either way, but then theres stuff like crusch wearing masculine clothing being a Big Deal + general emphasis on ladylike behavior, etc etc... also homophobia and other such things like that exists HAH. so its interesting to me.

again i havent read genderbend if but the changes you did mention are interesting yes!! and it makes sense... male ram making more aggressive jokes with female subaru Would be more frowned upon and you know the way male ram and rem present themselves would be more frowned upon if they acted exactly the same as they do in canon. like you said, theres just different expectations there bc their genders are flipped o.O societal expectations both from us the viewer, the world of rezero, and tappei which is very much what the point of a genderbend au is - i mean the moment you make a genderbend au it shows your opinion on gender whether you like it or not i think :o youd definitely have to think on how thatd change the plot in minor or major ways!! and its like every person is gonna have a different take on rezero genderbend au fr T^T which i also find super interesting.

yeah so as for male emilia / emilio - the idea of him being more cold compared to canon is fascinating.... i have slightly mixed feelings on it though bc im like "WAIT BUT WHICH DETAILS WOULD CHANGE AND WHICH DETAILS WOULD NOT CHANGE BC OF THE GENDERBENDING" as i said earlier. like you could go in so many directions with this. is (female) puck gonna be more lenient with emilio???? is female puck gonna be just as controlling as male puck in the same exact way, or is it different since emilios a boy with slightly different societal expectations????? would luna and emilio by proxy be feared Even More bc theyre guys now?? (probably not bc rezero fantasy world just recognizes Power above all else right bc theres equality there. but still important to ponder about ig.)

but yeah anyway SO MANY QUESTIONS are swirling around in my brain about this bc genderbend au = you can do SO MUCH with this. so much. but yeah as for emilio, my personal thoughts on it is that emilia and reinhard in canon mirror each other A LOT. they have softer personalities partly bc of their trauma helping to shape them, partly bc thats just who they are, partly bc theyre kind of admired (reinhard) and feared (reinhard and emilia) by the whole world so of course theyre gonna be softer to combat that bc Anything they do can be taken the wrong way. so like while i think adelheid might be a little softer than reinhard and emilio might be like a little more uptight and formal than emilia bc Societal Things i Personally think emilio and adelheid would likely still act pretty similar to their canon selves. bc emilia does have moments where she acts cold or a bit uptight so maybe emilio would have more of those moments bc that (being Softer and vulnerable) would Probably be a bit more frowned upon as a boy yeah!!! while adelheid i can see having to balance like. noblewoman expectations vs sword saint expectations too bc the energy i get from canon is that attitudes towards sword saints are mainly the same (intimidation,, fear,,, admiration,,, theyre tools for the government,, etc,,,) but the vibes to me is like. female sword saints vs male sword saints are seen a Little differently. just a little bit. if that makes sense. more societal norms at play here HAH. then again there Are female knights theyre just not on screen that much unless youre a sword saint.

and luna!! :D great name imo i love that name choice. i think its probably bc emisuba / emilias moon motif in canon + tappei had to find an astrology name aljsdlfj i wonder if he has more reasons to choose luna though? or maybe the dude was just like "hmmm i cant keep satella ig...." though tbh i kind of thought hed just keep satella pfft cool that he chose luna. bc again - emisuba moon motif!! :o bc the phrase "the moon is beautiful isnt it" = "i love you" also................. and yeah tappeis a troll too theres that HAH

as for the later plot beats being weird and creepy bc of gender reversal - they were already like. weird in canon though tbh with everyones canon genders aljdsfljsdlfj i think its just more apparent with gender reversal partly bc societal things and partly bc maybeee male characters torturing female characters happens often enough throughout fiction anyway?? not that the other way around doesnt happen but like. i dont know how to explains this HAH but yeah gender reversal makes things feel a little wack but it was ALREADY wack in canon tbh. i think as long as its treated with nuance its fine though hah and also as long as. subaru doesnt get magically tortured More bc shes a girl now. if that makes sense. no misogyny or misandry please!! though. im gonna be real i think tappei would be more fair with the now male cast in genderbend if. just bc rezero and its tendency to either hate or love women either on purpose or on accident HAH.

OK ALSO AS FOR SUBARU people always have different takes on genderbend subaru (my take is that subarus ALWAYS genderqueer either way okay...) and i think its interesting how people interpret subarus like. interest in isekai too + subarus personality in general......... like what changes bc of the gender change??? is subaru still interested in the same KIND of isekai stories?? does subaru gravitate towards shoujo now or is subaru still like into more shounen esque things bc either one can happen!!!!!!! is subarus personality more disapproved of now that shes a girl or is it less disapproved of - in the sense that people might interpret a girl doing it vs a guy doing it differently. and then theres audience opinions too bc like if subaru WAS a girl from the beginning people might have different opinions on her but also some people think subarus annoying either way (which fills me with sadness...). but also fem subaru had HER OWN NATSUMI ARCS OKAY... THIS IS REAL TO ME. TAPPEI BETTER HAVE INCLUDED IT. BUT ANYWAY yeah. interesting ways to take genderbend aus theres a gazillion different directions you can go in. this was not very coherent i think but genderbend aus are very interesting to me!!! though of course my own opinions and experiences regarding gender and gender roles are showing aljsdflj bc that IS the nature of genderbend aus.

ALSO toxic masculinity in rezero is like. a Very Important thing with characters like subaru and julius so its like. youre gonna have to find a way to explore that in Different ways with genderbend au bc those kinds of issues arent gonna go away. theyre gonna manifest a bit differently, probably. and its probably gonna affect the Now Male cast too.

[chatonyant]

One day I'll find a good way to map out my stories to better plan them out, both in world-building ways and plot ways

Problem is is that when I physically begin to write them down I end up losing a lot of motivation behind it and sometimes just straight up forget I have it

Plus writing in notes is somehow different from slamming into a chat and monologuing about some ideas, which somehow gets the ideas flowing better?

But if I only brainstorm in my head, things get floaty since it's hard to keep track of everything at once without it in front of me and yet making it so that it's in front of me is so very hard lmao

Also just getting started on brainstorm is like a Russian roulette– will I have an idea that will snowball or will I go "im going to think about the importance of face paint today" and then immediately get distracted

[collisiondiscourse]

on the wonder duo (part 1)

(BNHA Analysis Post Ahead! This isn’t explicitly romantic, but it is an analysis of the relationship between the two most popular characters in BNHA--Katsuki Bakugou and Izuku Midoriya. Split into two posts because I realized that this was gonna be long as HELL)

yall ever think about the fact that the wonder duo is perfectly set up in so that bakugou and deku together are the better version of all might?

bc like. ive been thinking.

everyone knows the win to save and save to win parallel. How they are supposedly two halves of a whole perfect hero (which, previously, was defined as all might)

but ever since bakugou and deku started working as one—growing together to win AND save and continuously reminding each other that they shouldnt try to do things alone, ive realized that its BECAUSE theres two of them that they surpass all might. its not a case of deku and bakugou both being 50% of an ideal hero, but rather i think that they are 100% of what all might SHOULD HAVE BEEN from the very beginning.

as early as the AM v AFO battle in kamino, we see the effects of all mights flawed existence. the fact that he, the greatest and supposedly infallible symbol of peace, was destroyed—society had begun to collapse. there was suddenly no pillar to hold people together and the impacts were so severe that even in the latest chapters of mha it keeps on getting worse. the truth is, all mights biggest mistake was the burden he placed on his own shoulders

with bakugou and deku... its different.

its different for them because down to their attributions, they seem like two halves of a whole person.

i think that the wonder duo are going to surpass all might because of the fact that they work together.

@bakugoukatsuki-rising @svpercraigus @tybee​ @isaustraliaathing​

(batshit crazy and conspiratorial essay under the cut !)

1. Complementary Colors

I’d like to first preface literally everything I say by the fact that I am not an expert analyzer or literary major in any way. I am literally just some random fan on the internet who has wayyy too much time and looks wayyy too deep into things, but here we go!

A common thing we see when we talk about bakugou and deku is the way they are... sort of an inverse of one another.

Down to the design of their features and the way they move, Deku is the obviously softer of the two. There’s an intentional contrast between the two of them, in the way that Deku’s drawn with round shapes and curvy hair and the way Bakugou is literally all spikes and half-mast eyes and rough muscles. Bakugou’s movements too are languid and showy, with the way he leans when he walks and splays his legs and kicks open doors. Katsuki, in a casual sense, is loud and dramatic. 

Deku on the other hand s finicky. He jitters when he walks and he’s often fidgeting and mumbling. Comparatively, the aura he radiates is energetic and frenzied, even self-conscious to a point unlike Bakugou’s calm and confident movements.

the point is, there’s a clear difference in how either of them are designed and what exactly they are supposed to represent. They utterly complement each other down to the way they behave and even their main colors (red-orange and blue-green) being literal complementary colors.

Now, moving to my more ungrounded points, this is quite a bit of a stretch so I’ll try as much as possible to make sense of these with hyperlinked sources because. yeah.

Down to their names, I think Deku and Bakugou both symbolize something deeper. I think that the way Hori expresses characters and what they’re meant to do is something that we have to pay close attention to when we talk about the Wonder Duo’s rise to success.

Izuku Midoriya (緑谷 出久), as some of us may know, does have an interesting meaning when broken up. According to a lovely fan translation of his name, ‘Izuku’--while not an actual name used commonly in real life--means to ‘Come out’ or ‘Long time’. ‘Midoriya’ on the other hand means (Midori) ‘Green’ and (ya) ‘valley’. The translator further pointed out that his first name ‘Izuku’ could be a reference to him being the first legendary hero to come out of the long-running All Might Era. (or, if you’ve been reading @/bakugoukatsuki-rising’s posts, the first significant anime protag in a long while to come out as queer, ppfft)

but that isn’t my focus right now.

We know that Hori LOVES telling stories with names, and more often than not in the BNHA universe, names alone tell us a lot of things about the characters. When referring to Izuku’s last name, Midoriya, it’s important I think to step back and realize that hey, maybe there’s something more to Green Valley than just the fact that his motif is all green.

After searching for a lil on the specifics of green valley, I’ve found out that across many cultures, the colour green and valleys in general tend to represent life. From dream analysts, to Christianity, and even old Taoist teachings, valleys are seen as areas of fertility and escape. They are seen as safe havens and often escapes for people to come to after running away from bad circumstances.

(Sound familiar?)

Deku, in essence represents life and peace. He represents being the “salvation” that the world in BNHA needed. To me, it sounds like Horikoshi is trying to say that he is the long-awaited hero in the sense. The one that people can feel will create a society that feels safe for everyone after years of All Might just saving people from themselves as a band-aid solution.

On the other hand, we have Katsuki Bakugou (爆豪 勝己), who’s name we commonly know means (Katsuki) Winner and (Bakugou) Explosion Master. He is essentially, the champion. The power. His name means success and power and all the things that make up winning.

When putting them side by side, it then becomes increasingly... interesting to me how their names almost perfectly slot into All Might’s save to win and win to save mantra, and how they are both quintessential parts to what made All Might as a hero.

2. Hero Too!

Now, I’m not even gonna really TOUCH much of what happens in canon. If you want me to do a step by step breakdown of their arcs in regards to the plot of manga and anime, feel free to send me a gratuitous ko-fi tip so I can pay for the headache I get after trying to organize my thoughts into word vomit.

What I WILL talk about on the other hand, is the subtle shift both of them slowly have in regards to how they look. Bakugou and Deku, while growing up, seem to have MANY many parallels--but before I elaborate on all of that, I wanna talk about something else.

Detour: Deku’s Red Shoes 

We all know the iconic symbol being Deku’s red shoes. For all his life, save for some outfits like his hero one, we see Deku more often than not wearing his signature red sneakers which have become a running joke in fandom.

But the funny thing is, in Japan, red shoes seem to have an interesting connotation.

In 1922, a popular Japanese nursery rhyme was written, called “Red Shoes”. The interesting part to me about this song was the symbolism that, in my tiny pea-sized brain, I could connect to the story of BNHA.

The story goes that there was a little girl with red shoes named ‘Kimi’. She was from Shizuoka prefecture (which, if you didn’t know, is most likely where Musutafu supposedly is) and was raised by a single mother. When she was young, her mother had to entrust her with a foreigner under the impression that they would give her a better life in America. The stranger is a man named Charles Hewitt (who was described to have blue eyes) and supposedly took her away. 

The singer of the song (supposedly the mother, but some argue it was written from the perspective of a childhood friend) believes that Kimi is happy and living a better life away from them, when the reality of the situation was much worse. The young girl with red shoes in actuality had Tuberculosis, and thus the foreigner whom she was entrusted to had left her to fend for herself and eventually left her to go to America while she died alone and orphaned.

“When I see red shoes, I think of her.”

A very interesting story with very interesting implications indeed.

-

Anyway, moving on to the more... “nuanced” and connected parts of this section, I have every reason to believe that Bakugou and Deku were simply MEANT to be working together down to how they dress. Now, I’d like to discuss their hero costumes.

At the start of their series, using these godawful pics for reference, it’s clear to see that neither of them seem alike in any way--reflecting the dissonance in their relationship at that point in canon.

ough. deku why. (yes we know why its because you love your mom you stupid little bunny <3)

Anyway, we see an immediate gap in how the two of them are. Deku’s first costume is one that reflects how he treated his dream of being a hero. He was still in that childlike idolization phase, the one where his dreams and aspirations were hinged on pure feelings and inspiration from All Might. Katsuki on the other hand was a lot more tactical--professional to an extent. The gap between their respective development with their quirks is something that is clearly felt in every fashion decision they’d made.

(Notice how Deku’s green is a lot brighter and less like the green accents Katsuki has all over his costume.)

As time progressed however... their costumes changed. The colors, the silhouettes, the practical functions, most things.

(Deku’s Gamma Costume and Bakugou’s Winter Costume used respectively)

we begin to notice a few similarities.

As the show goes on and we see more evolutions of their costumes, it almost seems like they begin to look like a matching pair. Deku’s green grows darker and almost teal in nature, while Bakugou’s orange is veering towards red territory. This is important to note because red-orange and blue-green as I said earlier were complementary colors as compared to simply orange and green. The minute shift is something I really wasn’t quite sure was intentional, but something I find interesting to pick up nonetheless as the colors they used to accent their costumes begin to match up.

Secondly, I think and important thing to note is silhouettes. The way that both Bakugou and Deku’s costumes are designed follow a lot of parallels that typically we don’t see with the rest of 1-A. For one, they both have a combination of tight long-sleeved tops with a bulkier set of bottoms. They also share the use of utility belts and metal pieces typically worn around their necks. Deku has his bunny-eared hood that mimics All Might’s hair, while Bakugou has his orange and black explosion ear-pieces that mimic his own quirk.

i don’t think any other people in class 1-A match each other as subtly yet strongly as these two. Uraraka and Deku and Bakugou and Kirishima do come close however.

“But Codi, you fucking knob!” I hear you plea. “This is such a reach and tells us practically NOTHING!” And yes, I’m inclined to agree with you! You’d be sort of right in the idea that this is a reach. Maybe I am looking too much into this, and maybe it really isn’t that deep--but I do think that them subconsciously matching outfits means something quite brilliant.

In the way that their costumes are designed, each aspect of either outfits have a very logical explanation. The changes were strategic and made with their fighting styles vividly in mind, so what that tells me is that BECAUSE these costumes are so complementary or similar in nature (Bakugou’s reinforcing his arms while Deku reinforces his legs), these two are implicitly showing the audience that their combat styles are complementary as well. 

The evolution of their design choices and similarities tell us that even unknowingly, their minds line up in strategy on the battlefield--a clear exhibit for why they would be INCREDIBLY POWERFUL as a Hero Duo to begin with.

When I look at their hero costumes side by side, I see a mirror. I see the way that these two are reflections of each other and are strong where the other isn’t. The point I see in BNHA repeatedly is that EVERYONE HAS A WEAKNESS. Nothing is infallible, regardless of how hard you train or how powerful your quirk is. Everyone will always have a weakness, but the significant difference I see when fandom discusses the future of Pro-Hero Society is that the new generation is finally raising itself to be RELIANT on each other. 

Observing their fighting styles and the simple use of their quirks, its obvious that they are indeed two parts of a whole hero. Bakugou, who’s quirk emphasized his arms and hands and the power that comes from it, while Deku who’s quirk now emphasizes his legs and lower body and the way he’s always running to save people.

IN CONCLUSION:

As they become heroes, it is easy to assume that if nothing else, Bakugou and Deku will cover each other’s weak spots (especially when you consider the way Deku probably won’t be able to keep using his arms with the way both the anime and manga are going...) (also chapter 285, anyone?)

-

Part Two: Interactions, OfA

kofi || commission details

[antiloreolympus]

5 Anti LO Asks

1. i dont even think lo persephone is particularly a bad character, i think the issue is rachel has no idea what to do with her. she wants her to be native and innocent but also deadly and confident, but that'd require persephone to have some flaws/complexities, so she just makes up vague "feelings" and the underworld making her smell bad. rachel herself cant commit to actually letting persephone be a real character with weaknesses and flaws.  which just ends up making persephone boring and flat. 

(same anon abt persephone's lack of flaws) the issue too is that because rachel made persephone the most powerful goddess and has hades as the most powerful king with all the resources, all sense of stakes and tension is just not there. they dont even have actual antagonists because apollo, demeter, and leto are jokes, minthe had no power, and everyone falls over backwards to defend hxp, and we already know the ending. the plot and conflict are as shallow as the characters themselves.

2. its honestly kinda ??? that there is art of lo demeter and persephone and how loving of a relationship they are (were?) and yet thats not in the actual comic? like demeter's love for persephone is framed as abusive and cruel and the actual reason for persephone's problems yet everything demeter said would happen did?? and those werent her fault? like its one thing if demeter had all these fears but were proven wrong, but she's time and time again proven right? and is still framed badly for it???

3. i think part of the reason the art of lo doesnt hold up is bc the world is very flat. like the characters are already boring enough in their colors being the only actual character design, but the world around them is very lacking. theres no distinct buildings, no distinct flowers or trees, and the backgrounds all just flat voids of a single color with some sketchup lines slapped on top. now, other webtoons do this too, but its so the panel doesnt become overwhelmed, LO does it to be lazy.

4. the webtoons app updated to where now the main page banners change every time you open the app to let more series get ad space so OF COURS LO has a banner on it and?? its confusing?? like it has persephone being ~sexy in a bathtub~ and the tagline is "no service in the underworld" and its like what does that even mean?? also the ads love to pretend shes this confident, sexual woman when shes literally everything but in the actual comic. its kinda shocking how often the LO ads just lie like that.

5. Comparing LO to some other WEBTOON I would say that LO is too ambitious for its writer. For “Forever After” you normally just have the current issue and the overall issue with the story, so just because we go through characters in that story their characters complete their arcs. True Beauty is drawn out BUT arcs are still tied up abs even tho it’s not as interesting as it was it still holds my attention positively. “The first night with the duke” kinda got past the point I care about but still again has me drawn in. Suitor of Armor’s story is expanding greatly but I feel the writer already has plans for that

BUT LO is another story. The cast seems bloated for the plots going on and I’m losing track. Like Eros got to explain his little story, and then we forgot about it for a bit with Hades and Aphrodite talking about it for a split second and then way later Eros says “I’m gonna find Pyche” but is he looking? No he just asks his mom for more hints we don’t see him try to do anything clever. He doesn’t even find her on his own merit. And after two years we don’t even get a full conclusion how that went. They shot arrows at Apollo and then what? They were high up in the air, was Eros able to break their fall (probably) What about the whole falling for Ampleutus stuff? We probably won’t see anything for another couple months regrading those two.

ARTEMIS! She’s Persphone’s roommate, we know she’s lying about never having a crush but who is it? RS stated Artemis is gay. Does it matter? Does it influence the plot at all? Is it gonna be a big reveal that Zeus is her father? Why does she hate the three kings so much? Does Zeus know he’s her father? Or was Apollo abs Artemis “created” like Persphone and Hera? (Probably not but still)

HESTIA and ATHENA! When did they start TGOEM? Why did they? Hestia isn’t Athena’s aunt right? Was Athena “created” by Zeus? How does Hera feel about that? What was Hestia like before the war and now? Is Hestia close with the other six traitors?

Hera and her kids! We know Hera has more than Hephaestus Ares and Hebe but like what’s the story man? Hera is closer to all three of these children (Zeus seems to discourage Hephaestus presence, Ares defends his mom, and Hebes mad at Zeus for banishing Ares from the house) but these weren’t snap things that happened, it seems like the kids bond to their mother way more than their father just in general before the story, but why? I feel like Hera’s stuff is used as filler but I’m still more interested rather than HXP all the time. Whose the sister? Why is Hera closer to P rather than her own kids it seems. And echo!? Why did Zeus hire her and what’s the agreement?

That ghost that keeps showing up?

Whatever the Kronos revival plot is?

What happened to rhea?

So the Trojan war already happened?

What’s the deal with Demigods?

Nymphs can have parents but sometimes don’t? (Daphne was crested by Demeter, but Thetis has a mom?)

Is Megara and P now just friends? Or did we miss her character where she either gets over hades or plots revenge?

I just feel like with everything LO isn’t planned this far out and it’s just worrying for what she’s in the mood for not tying plots together and getting much figured out. Like the plot just Keep not moving forward because there’s just too much to cover. 

[haljordangreenjedi]

okay so somebody asked me to rank the green lanterns a couple days ago and i just did it based on the general Vibes i got off each one because i don't know enough about the lanterns and now i want to hear from an expert SO: RANK EACH OF THE GREEN LANTERNS (the human ones but if you want to include others go crazy) FROM NOT-SO-BEST TO BEST AND EXPLAIN WHY

OKAY SO, first off, i love you. you should know that. second off, there’s good and bad sides to all four human green lanterns and really this is just personal preference, and 3/4 of these are subject to change at some point, but this is where we stand as of right now:

4. Guy Gardner

first off, he was Hal’s case worker in Emerald Dawn II (1991), because Hal got in trouble for drunk driving and got sentenced to a maximum security prison for 90 days to be used as an example. And I just, I don’t like this plot in Hal’s life, it doesn’t make a ton of sense with his character or his profession (it would literally end a pilot’s career.) anyway, enough about Hal Jordan because I’m supposed to be talking about Guy here. Guy’s trying to help Hal out which, gets him points in my book, but he also ends up like hating Hal at the end of this arc and it’s just like, I’m sorry, that’s unoriginal, pls try harder. 

I also don’t understand this whole Vuldarian DNA plot that’s a thing with him, but his time owning a bar is cool. I just, I haven’t read a ton of his comics and i haven’t gotten attached to him yet, so that’s that. He’s in 4th, sorry Guy. Better luck next time. 

3. Kyle Rayner

Kyle gets third place for two reasons: he has some pretty great interactions with Hal, with some key points of believing in Hal when he needs it the most (and that panel with the stacked rings and Hal taking Kyle flying. That panel gives me life for reasons I can’t fully put into words.), and his girlfriend was literally murdered and stuffed into a fridge. I have to respect the trauma. 

Reasons I don’t like Kyle: you know how in middle school there was always that kid who would show off in gym class? or like your favorite teacher would pick some new kid to champion and you just kinda... hated them on instinct? Kyle’s an artist, but he has that vibe. He’s the kid in school that suddenly everyone has decided is the Best and it’s annoying. I get it, he’s meant to be like the “best green lantern,” the one to restore the corps when Hal and Parallax tore through it and then he’s a white lantern. I just... idk, he’s nice, he’s cute. I want to read more about when he was teamed up with Jason and some people have made it so that Hal has become his bother father figure which is also adorable, it’s just instinct to not make him my favorite. I’ve already done the whole phase of liking the ‘Chosen One,’ I don’t need to go back to my Harry Potter phase. idk, please universe don’t hate me for this.

2. John Stewart

okay, I have mad respect for John Stewart. It’s also instinctual. He’s the brains of the human Green Lantern operation. No, like, literally. If the four of them have one collective brain cell, John has it at least 89% of the time. He’s an architect and a former Marine, he punched Hal in the face in a bar before they were both Green Lanterns, which is hilarious because as far as I’m aware, it’s never touched on as being something either of them remembers. Kudos for not holding onto that rage, John. Hal has something to learn from you. 

There’s also an interesting change in his way of thinking from when he was a Marine to his duty as a Green Lantern, and I like that growth even if it’s not always acknowledged. There is a bit during the Color Spectrum War arc where they go over his guilt at the destruction of a world, and it felt remarkably deep for a DC comic, even if it was technically part of a Hal series. He’s just one of those guys that you can’t help but respect because he seems to have all of his shit in one basket, and it’s a good counterbalance.

1. Hal Jordan

you knew this was coming. if you didn’t, then you need to go look back at what my username is and think for a while. I love Hal Jordan almost more than life itself and it might be because of how well i can relate to this man. he is the most cocky, depressed, stubborn piece of shit in the galaxy, and I LOVE HIM. okay, like, there are so many different arcs about Hal and I know people have a tendency to not like him because like he’s the modern OG and he can be a piece of shit, and like, he was the bad guy but he came back from it and I just want to say: my dudes, that’s the POINT.

Hal has flat out stated that HE doesn’t even like himself, and you think that you as a reader are supposed to like him all the time? The man's life is rife with trauma, okay. Not everything he does is going to make perfect sense if you’re not paying attention and it’s just like. Honestly I can’t explain it all. Hal runs on spite and coffee and the list of people he lives FOR is very short, but the list of people he lives IN SPITE OF is very long. 

The dude runs with his gut constantly because that’s what keeps him alive. Even Sinestro has pointed out that HAL DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. He acts on instinct, he doesn’t plan out a shitload of battle strategies, and that’s how Hal manages to keep besting these people over and over. 

Also just, he’s sad boy. He wants to protect people, even if it means staying away from them. He’s willing to take the blame and appear to go rogue MULTIPLE TIMES for things he believes in and to find the root of the problem and it’s just like... you really think a guy that was happy-go-lucky and didn’t sit awake at night because of how prominent his failings are in his mind would be willing to do that? you’re wrong. sorry. you don’t designate yourself as public enemy number one AFTER ALREADY FIGHTING TO COME BACK FROM THAT ONCE if you don’t have a part of your brain saying you deserve it.

ALSO HIS GRIEF FOR COAST CITY WAS JUSTIFIED AND THERES A LONG LIST OF PEOPLE THAT COULD HAVE HELPED PREVENT HAL FROM BECOMING/SUCCUMBING TO PARALLAX AND A LOT OF THEM ARE ON THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OR TINY ANCIENT BLUE SMURFS. 

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK, GOODNIGHT.

(also i’m not sure if my answers were coherent towards the end but yeah!! send me asks about green lanterns because I have a lot of feelings. Anyway; Hal Jordan.)

[hamliet]

when does a relationship become queerbaiting? theres a book that i really like and the 2 male leads characters have a lot of storylines and arcs where they get closer and i think some of the tropes used can be similar to the typical romantic tropes, neither of them end up with anyone at the end of the story since its more about found family and the long journey the whole cast goes through. they even get shipped by another character as a running gag. personally i always saw it as being open to interpretation but recently the revised edition of the original novel came out and there were several lines those 2 characters had about each other that were kinda toned down, i didnt think much of it but i saw a post about how it was clearly baiting and the author was being homophobic for toning it down. i didnt think it counted as baiting since as far as i know, the novel was never advertised as anything with romance and the author never pretended they were gonna end up together. i am definitely a little weirded out by the decision to change those specific lines but a lot of the story stayed the same, including a lot about their relationship so idk what to think.

i guess im more confused on if it counts as baiting, or even substext??

Sooooo I am not the best person to ask about this, because I’m a cis woman who has thus far in life only been attracted in a romantic sense to cis men. I can talk a bit about baiting as a general concept in fiction, but you should definitely take it with some grains of salt. 

Baiting, for me, is like deliberately playing up an aspect writers have no intention on delivering on. Usually this is done for ratings, to tease fans, fanservice, etc, but without payoff, it is just bad writing. Red herrings are good in writing, but only can be successfully used if the actual result is more satisfying than the herring. This applies to writing in general, not just to romantic ships. However, when the baiting involves historically underrepresented groups for no reason other than to get fans to spend money consuming the story, I think we can all agree that becomes something more grotesque than just bad writing: it’s insensitive, socially irresponsible, frankly hurtful. 

Some common examples are Bridgerton which has a gay character, who is extremely minor, yet they played up this character in advertising. Also, Rizzoli and Isles I think actually had its producers mention deliberately playing up the lesbian subtext to hook the audience without ever intending on following through. 

That said, context also matters. Like, there are aspects of the culture of the work’s author, the target audience, and such that come into play here also (so like, romantic tropes differ by culture. For example, enemies to lovers is common in Asian stories but less in the west, and the “girl who pursues a guy” is extremely common in Japanese shonen in particular, while it is very much a cringe trope that almost never results in romance in American fiction. So if a writer reads, say, tropes that are common in America into a Japanese work and says it’s baiting, that’s quite possibly not the intent even if it may have been the experience of the reader. So even if there was no intent, there can still be hurt, and that hurt can be real, if that makes sense. 

The definition of what constitutes ‘baiting’ varies. I do think that, in true Tumblr fashion, the term gets thrown around a lot and loses its intended meaning, or is so rigidly defined that creators can meet the letter of the “not a bait” requirement while ignoring the spirit of it.

To start with the latter: regarding something hitting the letter of what most wouldn’t consider baiting yet not really the spirit, let’s look at The Rise of Skywalker. This movie had a genuine lesbian kiss in it... between two characters we’d never seen more than a glimpse of while others are celebrating around them. Since it has a kiss, it’s not baiting, right? Well... the director deliberately said in the lead-up to the film that he included it because he “wanted LGBT people to see themselves in the film.” If “see yourselves in the film” is like a nanosecond of background, then, like... idk. Baiting or not, it feels icky, and I know some people consider it baiting and some don’t even if they don’t like, love that representation. But I think this is more queerbaiting than like, Nobara and Maki, who don’t have explicit romantic coding. 

Going back to the former, in terms of ‘queerbaiting’ losing its intended meaning... I think there are a lot of really poorly written romantic ships out there, often het, while a lot of same-gender relationships are really well written regardless of whether there’s romantic coding within the text. The main emotional energy in stories with 90% male characters (as frankly many if not most stories are, great job world) is probably between two men. There’s just so much more potential with well-written characters who share a lot of screen time, so of course people are going to ship them. In my opinion, this does not inherently make it baiting, but it certainly creates an environment that lends itself to baiting even if the writers aren’t intending to do this. 

Like, you could say the main emotional energy in BNHA is Bakugou and Deku. However, Bakudeku is 100% not queerbaiting. It’ll never be canon romantically (I don’t even ship it lol). There has been nothing to imply romance between them even if the main emotional message can be seen in their development. Deku/Ochaco is likely to be canon, but there is a significant lack of genuine emotional energy between them (the story’s plots and themes don’t coalesce around their relationship), so it’s probably going to feel forced. In contrast, Naruto/Sasuke had an actual kiss in canon, which while played for laughs is a lot more direct romantic coding than anything between Bakugou/Deku. I actually don’t think the majority of Narusasu is baiting, but I definitely think that one moment in chapter like 3 was really poor fanservice for yaoi fans, and has not aged well at all. 

It is also the case that fans can confuse headcanons with what is actually in the text, and that just never ends well. For example, Clover and Qrow’s ship in RWBY: a lot of people read Clover as gay, which led to “bury your gays” outrage when he died. A member of the crew stated explicitly they had never intended for Clover to be a love interest for Qrow, and truthfully here was nothing strictly romantic in their relationship--nothing like a kiss or a declaration of love or a parallel to another romantic couple. Hence, I don’t personally consider it queerbaiting or bury your gays, but a lot of fans felt that it was and their pain is legitimate even if I think textually the argument isn’t there. The one thing I do think is true about this in particular is that there was also no strict platonic coding, which encourages headcanons. Clear writing, yo. It can help. 

Note the word “can” not “will,” because strict platonic coding doesn’t always fix things, either. In what was probably a reaction to the outrage over Clover’s death, you had extremely blatant platonic coding of Ruby and Penny’s relationship this season leading up to Penny’s death. Ruby refers to Penny as “our friend” three different times, wherein “friend” sends a platonic message and “our” sends an even stronger message that it’s not about the two of them despite the fact that their friendship is one of the sweetest and most interesting in the show. A lingering Ruby-Penny hug then is followed by a lingering Penny-Weiss hug, then Yang, then Blake, etc. The writers went out of their way to hit people over the head with “platonic” and yet they have still gotten accusations of bury your gays and queerbaiting because people will see what they want to see in a story. 

Seeing what you want to see in a story also isn’t inherently bad. People who are underrepresented are going to have to read themselves into stories because Lord knows writers ain’t incorporating them well enough if at all. It’s why “Mary Sues” are common in fanfiction, which is primarily written by people who are not straight white men: because where the hell else are we to see ourselves in fiction? So essentially the macrocosm of culture creates this problem, both in terms of baiting and the misuse of the term, and the only fix is a shit ton more good representation.

[goosedawn]

i've never listened to Friends At The Table (though it's on my list now, dnd campaigns podcast wooo!) what would the storyline of the crossover entail? with the HermitCraft characters i'm guessing it's chaotic and interesting 😊

:0!!!! :DDD!!!!!!! if u end up giving it a shot i hope u enjoy it! they dont actually play dnd, they play a bunch of other tabletop games which are all really neat also! (also if u need a suggestion for where to start if/when u get to it, feel free to drop me an ask)

the story follows the typical structure of "group is sent off to do tasks for money, and eventually realise something bigger is going on" so i am largely following the plot in that way, where groups of adventurers are sent out to investigate a series of towers that appear to have some connection to the gods of the world. ajhsjjejhfhjef most of my thoughts about the au are more character based,, so instead of a proper plot summary i can give details and thoughts on where some of the hermits fit into everything so far (while. trying to avoid the big twists revealed in the podcast ig,,?) i also ended up including some sleepybees (sbi + beeduo) in the au but im still not 100% sure on where they fit in (as in i have too many ideas djhdkndnj)

ANYWAY uhhhh some spoilers for the universe im basing this off of, under the cut cos it got long :'D

context/setting:

the specific arc/universe that this au is set in is the one from Seasons in Hieron (SiH) which is their fantasy season! (its. its long,, this arc spans i think. 3 seasons? plus a short interlude season)

the setting was previously a traditional fantasy world that had some sort of great catastrophe (the Erasure) happen, and the current world is after people have rebuilt a new society! its described as "post-fantasy, post-post-apocalyptic" its very fun and subversive and afhdjfbj the worldbuilding is just. real good :>

-----

characters:

im still figuring out where different hermits fit into the au but i am basically taking aspects of various characters from the podcast and splitting roles and traits to hermits, so its all mixed up! also,, there are just. so many hermits,, i have not found places for all of them (not even most of them i dont think) but here is what i have so far:

impulse and zedaph work in the New Archives (a series of huge warehouse-like archives run by the orcs of this world!) impulse is an orc, zed is not! impulse works to retrieve artifacts for the archive, and zed,, hes just kinda there. learning and experimenting with pattern magic (a type of magic done by arranging and rearranging things in specific configurations, often they are obscure and weird things like "27 brown birds in a tree, 5 table legs, 500 buttons, 16 steps to the east" etc.) when the story finds them they are studying a fallen tower in the center of the Mark of the Erasure (a location still showing the effect of the great cataclysm that befell the world)

tango vaguely takes the role of Ephraim, prince of something or rather,,, idk man hes cool and has fire powers, very anime. his powers were a gift from the gods, and he goes on to hv close relations w them! he meets up with impulse and zed later on and become fast friends obviously

joe is an expert in pattern magic, and is on the run from the archives after having stolen a pretty nondescript notebook. its a nice notebook! hes just a human guy. he writes and recites poetry in order to do pattern magic using the notebook!

cleo hails from the city of *Nacre*, where people get multiple chances at life. people from there can get killed but will exist on as zombies, then if they are killed again, they exist as ghosts, and then they pass away fully. she is an undead pirate captain that joe somehow manages to sway over to their side ahjbhfbjf,, she is hunting down the lost prince/king of Nacre.

wels is a pala-din (pal-ah-deen, rather than paladin), a sort of living marble statue that serves one of the gods in the pantheon.

scar is ofc, a wizard! it. it should be noted that wizards dont really exist in this world, people who perform and study magic are mages, not wizards,, "wizard" is kind of a weird term to use sjbdbjhfjjhb scar takes place of The Great Fantasmo in the podcast, and similarly has an invisible assistant! he doesnt seem to remember much of his past...

cubfan works in Velas, a fishing town where the story "begins" he does not enjoy talking to scar, and seems to be sad whenever hes around. perhaps scar reminds him of someone, or perhaps of better times...

tfc hes a priest aagsuijdjhkdgjdkihwhjvd i swear theres a reason for this later,, the role of the npc alyosha is somewhat split between tfc and cub!

-----

others i have thoughts on but im not settled on yet:

im debating having xisuma as part of the pantheon, but if not, he would be a druid so he can shapeshift into animals sjbakjnsnfjb he would take the general role of Fero in the story, but would also be kind of split with evil x, who captures... a certain stubbornness and deepset frustration Fero has in later times.

etho could take the place of Samol, the first god to exist. he is the embodiment of this world, and is kind of isolated and strange wbhshjhbdbhjdjbdkjn,, strange /pos. hes also. kind of dissapearing though... i wonder why :)

while theoratically i could have xisuma as samol cos. yknow. admin. i think the vibes and role just fit etho better

and... if i had etho as samol i think it could be fun to have doc and bdubs as other members of the pantheon, if u go with their dynamic from the start of s7 they even fit the divorced couple vibe two of the gods have /lh /hj (nho pantheon pog..? maybe. theres a total of 5 deities in the pantheon tho...)

im leaning toward either false + stress or maybe gem + pearl pairs for two of the goddesses in the pantheon, but thatd probably depend on if i can find a better place for them ;P

techno and phil take the role of red jack, and techno is a Huge Oni Dude >:] in canon red jack has a cool horse!!! it fits!! hes also. heavily implied to be kinda immortal?? anyway. im torn on this because techno and phil ALSO fit the roles of some of the player characters, with relation to the missing prince/king of Nacre but im still working things out,,

no matter whats up with them, ranboo takes the role of bluejay, redjacks son, meeting up with tubbo and tommy who take the place of benjamin, the son of one of the player characters. tubbo and tommy kind of. get sent to another dimension to keep them safe,,? and live in a lie for many years before they are brought back.

when i first thought about this au, i also thought about the whole. sending child off into fake dimension to live life, and of course. i thought about. grumbot ofc and originally planned to have mumbo or grian take the place of that player character abhdfvnbrvbn but it also implies one or both of them would be paladins (not pala-din! just the normal religious knight) AND have connections to tubbo and tommy which is. funny but ehhhh idk.

-----

and that. maybe probably somewhat incoherent train of thought is what i have for the au so far! its. still very much a work in progress so thank you if you stuck through all that!! ive still got a lot to think abt in the au,,,, lots to figure out ;P hopefully i can iron it out a bit more in the future, but its fun to think about for the time being

[michaelarowrites]

Hi hi!! Just finished reading Honor the Words yesterday - SOOOO GOOD! So much LORE! The plot is THICKENING!!! Im EXCITE!! :DDD thank you so much for this story and these characters theyre always so wonderful (genderqueer yumeko & asuka hello!! New godly powers whaaaaat?!! Literally everything with/about youji & that stuff with the characters taking on more power with their godly aspects?!!?!?!)

Im already looking forward to the next one XD how many books are you expecting there to be in the series? 6 for each divinity? (Also are you expecting to get the next book out next year?) Also also, do you have an approximate for how many words these books are? If not no worries ^_^ im just curious

Im rereading both of them now and oh my GOD i cant believe you mentioned the blood ash cult in book one! I COMPLETELY missed that! XD On that note, im looking forward to seeing Akane again! Maybe she'll become an ally oooo... And learning more about Shiori's childhood with the blue dragons.

YOU PLANT SO MANY SEEDS AND I LOVE THEM ALL! THE GARDEN THIS ALL TURNS OUT TO BE WILL BE AMAZING!!

(Akdgskf side note: i cant believe it took me this long to realize the sun moon and star nations are comparable to japan korea and china *facepalm* lol)

I have sooooooooo many thoughts about this world thats mostly just excited questioning about lore and future events XD but theres too many to say or even remember at one time so i hope i can convey it all when i say im LOVING! EVERYTHING youre doing here and i cant wait to watch the rest of it unfold <3333 thank you sooo much!!

Thank you so much, friend!! I'm so glad you enjoyed the book, and I'm very glad you asked all of these questions =D To be honest, one of the most difficult parts of the self-publishing process is that I don't get comments like I would when posting a story chapter by chapter online, so it sorta leaves me at a loss wondering if anyone is reading/enjoying the story. So thank you very much!

And I am always very happy to answer questions about these books! So here I go, in probably more detail than you ever wanted to have =D =D

- The original plan was to have at least 8 books, one for each divinity and then two that were going to be... something else. But I've been working on the third one and realized that it would just be easier if I don't try to confine the entire arc to one book, so now the series is just going to be however long it needs to be =D Although, knowing me, it's really going to depend on how much I enjoy writing these stories and how much people enjoy reading them =) I always write more when I know people want to read more.

- I am in the final stretch of finishing the first draft of the third novel! (it took me a loooong time to figure out how I wanted to end it, so writing this one took longer than it should have). After that it's the editing/beta reading process. My hope is that it would be out early next year, but definitely no later than the summer of 2022, since summers seem to be when I publish them =P

- And yes! I actually have a very deliberate word count that I shoot for-- I aim for each book to be about 60K words long, although I think Shine the Brightest was a little less than that and Honor the Words was a little longer. But my goal was to have these books be as cheap as possible, and the shorter the novels are, the cheaper they are to buy. (The longer the books are, the more the print costs are, so the higher the flat rate for minimum cost). But also, I figured I could finish writing them faster if they were only 60K words long.

- Hahaha, the Blood Ash cult was planted early in the first book because I knew they would be significant later, but it's definitely something you would miss except on a re-read. So thank you!

- Akane returns in the third book! And you find out a little bit more about Shiori's childhood =)

- And hahaha no a map/general layout doesn't exist yet, but I definitely need to make one, because I keep writing in terrain details and eventually I'm going to have to figure out where all the territories are in relation to one another. (In the third book, I mention that the Blue realms are near the ocean, and I had this mental note of "dang you better remember that and come up with a map later" but then I didn't.)

- Hahaha, no, Masaomi's safe sex practices only prevented the other grand dragons from privately assassinating him and making his kid the new Red Dragon. They probably would have killed him regardless. So there you have it, safe sex protects you from assassinations XD

Thank you so much for all your questions and for your enthusiasm, friend =D I'm very happy to answer more!! Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoy how it all turns out!

[pochapal]

I hate doctor 11 but ive never been able to explain why in like words lmao. He feels like such a mary sue character imo and like theres something about his characterisation that was always just really ineffective (like the stuff about fishfingers and custard or whatever it was). Imo i'd love to hear you give top 5 worst things about the 11 era because i rlly just love when it gets torn apart

i hold nothing but a seething contempt and loathing for that man. every time he appeared on screen i felt ready to snap like a riled up chimpanzee in my enclosure. i am frothing at the mouth and overcome with a desire to start flinging heavy objects. this might be incoherent and inconsistent but i started this rewatch in feb 2020 and only finished this week so i got through 11′s episodes last august/september time and i refuse to revisit it to jog my memory or fact check anything i’m saying here because this man does not deserve the space in my mind for that.

the first thing is i can’t fucking STAND the quirky whimsy timey wimey bit he has going on all of the time. i can’t even say this is because this is a kids show and i was a teen and then adult when i first properly watched him but actually!! when i was eleven years old i’d sleep over at a friend’s house most weekends and it always coincided with the airing of a new season 5 episode and i remember we watched the finale with the dumb time hopping to get out of the box prison that was never explained and didn’t make sense and i thought at the time “this is really stupid”. and before that my only other doctor who exposure was watching the david tennant christmas specials with another friend and throughout childhood my only opinion on doctor who was “this is a tv show that is not for me but is one that all the boys i am friends with like so i will put up with it to maintain our friendships” but at least those episodes were both suspenseful and engaging enough to keep me watching all the way through. like who the fuck does an end of the world sci fi plot and approaches it with an “oopsy woopsy i am a funny little alien man who is going to stop you all by making you do a hecking silly” like it’s unneeded and self-parodies an already cheesy show to the point where it becomes unwatchable and makes it impossible to ever take this man seriously.

next thing that downright sucks ass so badly is the stupid fucking overwritten constantly escalating plotlines. like everything from season 5 up until his regeneration at the end of season 7 is meant to be this grand interconnected cosmic plot about how...the doctor trying to bring back his planet will end the universe or something so all the top powers across all of reality tried again and again to stop him from doing that except he doesn’t know what’s going on so he keeps thwarting these people who supposedly mean good?? i mean i sure don’t fucking know what they were trying to say!! like for some reason we never get the doctor suddenly becomes this superdemon that threatens everything so these people (whoever they are) decide to, in sequence: suck him through a time rift to erase him from existence, trap him in a prison and remake a universe without him, take his companion’s baby and turn her into a perfectly trained doctor killer, form two(!!) secret societies to hunt him throughout history that are only stopped by his companion splintering herself across his personal timeline to protect him, and repeatedly cause reality collapsing events because it’s a kinder outcome for the universe than what he will do. this grand and terrible event turns out to be...he spends a few hundred years chilling by a rift that leads to his home planet and protects a few generations of children from monsters which convinces them to give him infinite regeneration power then fuck off back to their pocket universe. and it’s like!! what is the point of anything that happens in this man’s era when everything is always “the darkest moment” or whatever the fuck!! i don’t care!! we never get a compelling reason to believe this bumbling clown of a man could ever be a universal threat!! the whole thing is so dumb i hate it!!!

thing number three i hate is how the eleventh doctor is ALSO characterised as this abrasive egotistic male supergenius to the point where he becomes genuinely indistinguishable from bbc sherlock. genuinely who enjoyed seeing this guy constantly tell people their tiny human minds can’t comprehend what he’s doing and then basically just wave his magic wand to solve whatever problem each episode is facing. 2012 is the year of human sin because this fucking shitsmear character archetype somehow became both a redditor role model AND a tumblr sexyman and it’s like!! nobody is enjoying this stop making this seem cool! him saying timey wimey thing any time he does anything is frustrating and dumb and locks the viewer out of giving a fuck about anything that is happening! smartest man in the room syndrome is a disease and the eleventh doctor is terminal with it. like remember how they established river as an accomplished scientist (when she wasn’t being a child soldier or a time paradox or whatever the fuck) and every time that came up mr doctor eleven man was like “oh this thing is obvious because i’m a genius and you didn’t realise because your brain is tiny so get out of the way and let the grownups think” or that time it turned out amy had been replaced with a slime clone for half the season and the doctor chewed rory (audience surrogate) out for somehow not realising this fact we didn’t know right from the start and like. this served no purpose other than to draw into severe question why the doctor is also this super beloved magical figure implicitly trusted by all children everywhere like. mr steven moffat is totally allergic to writing and solving mysteries in his tv show and fuck you for wanting to figure things out as you go along based on the new evidence you uncover at strategic plot intervals just let this asshole man use magical thinking to reveal he knew the answer all along and you’re a fucking idiot for not also realising this thing which had no basis or precedent anywhere else in the show.

speaking of dumb things let us not forget the absolute shitshow that was minority representation in this era. i’m not even talking about the low hanging fruit of how genuinely unironically sexist amy and clara were written where each episode moffat either seemed to loathe them or was incredibly horny over them and they had no character growth or arc or fucking anything. i’m talking about how fucking shit terrible the incidental representation was. god remember how every single fucking gay person who appeared in this era was written as one incredibly fucking stupid joke and how the women were all either sexy dominatrix, feeble girl in love, or Mother (or all three in some really terrible cases) and i’m not qualified to talk about this but also how incredibly white this era was and how on two separate occasions we had monarchs reimagined as sexy girlbosses with a gun played by black women who the doctor leched over. nothing about any of this was good ESPECIALLY coming off the back of rtd who was surprisingly forward thinking for 2005 and did a really good job of positing travel with the doctor as queer allegory. in comparison moffat gave us THE MOST heterosexual shlock i’ve ever had to endure. amy and rory could have been interesting characters were they not hemmed into this domestic bickering young straight married couple bullshit that was in no way changed or altered by traveling with the doctor except for the quasi incestuous river song reveal that was dumb and bad and stupid.

the last major mega gripe i have with the series is moffat’s fucking jingoistic boner for british military aesthetics. this carried over throughout his entire tenure as showrunner but was super terrible vomit inducing in eleven’s era. the unironic admiration for ww2 britain and winston churchill is downright wretched. are you incapable of telling a second world war story outside of churchill’s london and plucky blitz fighters. shit gives me hives so badly. and then!!! that weird church owned army that features in the future that end up being bad not for the concept of what basically amounts to an imperialistic intergalactic rendition of the fucking crusades but because they’re part of the nonsense go nowhere puzzlebox narrative that says the doctor is a not good man who will do bad things to the universe :(. remember how rtd’s doctor was a freshly traumatised man hot off the war criminal press who time and time again vehemently refuses to engage in military violence, but who tragically inadvertently turns every one of his companions into soldiers in his own personal army, and he has this moment of complete horror at the realisation and it is this which causes the downward spiral that ends in 10′s regeneration. and then how there’s this cringe line about how there’s a force of people who are “the doctor’s army, always ready to fight his battles when he’s not around” or some shit and then it turns out this is actually massive literal military operation and we’re meant to celebrate this. fuck off.

bonus round because this needs to be said but i have never hated anything like i hated that fucking human tardis episode. everything about it induced violent anger in me from the sickening overindulgence of that softgoth dark whimsy helena bonham carter tim burton aesthetic to the bafflingly terrible evil carny stereotype of those junk scavengers to the overblown sudden tragic shipbait romance of human tardis and the doctor. every word out of her mouth was trite shit and the fact that the death of her body was presented as this super emotional dramatic scene despite there being no buy in or incentive to care and the fact that every single person on tumblr in 2012 ate that shit up like it was fucking gourmet. i loathe every single thing about that episode so much.

[bengustown]

OJGQ? 👀👀 anything and everything please

WHOO BABY!

theres not a whole lot planned out world-building wise ill be honest, i was working more on characters, but here's what i got:

- salem grows stronger a generation earlier and builds up power > the fall of beacon happens way earlier!

- team ojqg essentially replaces team rwby in a narrative sense. theres also team skrw (summer, kali, raven, willow) who are the "replacements" for team jnpr. ill probably make a seperate post about them

about the characters:

- Ozpin is the son of a middle class family from Vale and attends Beacon in hopes of reaching higher education and making money as a freelance huntsman. He's a bit of an oddball among the students, always up to some mischief or reciting entire paragraphs of weapon manuals to his peers. He acts like an old man already. Wonder why that is!

- Ozma's spirit was reincarnated into him just a few months before the plot starts. He's currently struggling with adjusting to it, because he really doesn't just want to be assimilated for Ozma's cause - but what can you do?

- This sets up his arc: Coming to terms with not being able to be his own person ever again. This, however, includes that he needs to focus on people on the outside, as well. Basically, an arc about becoming more selfless as a person and a team leader.

- Glynda is from Vale as well and wants to become a huntsman to save citizens who can't save themselves. Her semblance manifested very early on, and due to its extreme power, Glynda was basically destined to become a huntress.

- Glynda is the stable, stern one of the team. She takes school very seriously - but doesn't mind some jokes. Sure, she'll roll her eyes at Qrow occasionally, but she does secretly think its kind of funny.

- Her arc is about learning that she can't always be the one who takes responsibility. It peaks during one of Qrow and Ironwoods fights where they seriously endanger themselves and people around them. She has a breakdown, tells them to get their shit together, then storms off.

- Ironwood is the son of a big politician in Atlas. He was sent to Beacon in order to improve his father's reputation in Remnant, to assert authority and prove how much of a 'good person' he is, wanting to send his son to this 'wonderful school' instead of Atlas. And while he isn't Jacques Schnee in terms of being awful, his father isn't.. the best person.

- James is just as serious as Glynda is when it comes to studying subjects, just more.. extreme. He can't stand Qrow's stupid pranks and would rather call him out in front of the entire class than sit around and watch. He's not selfish, more just strict and has a rather narrow view of the world. Thanks Dad

- His arc mostly revolves around his frequent verbal and physical fights (yes, they fight with their weapons. great idea guys) with Qrow and coming to terms with his previous prejudice against Faunus and lower class citizens.

- Qrow's backstory is the same! Same old Branwen tribe shtick. Raven's still his sister.

- Qrow is a playful student who doesn't like paying attention or really wants to be at Beacon (But he still has to. Thanks Branwen tribe!). He loves messing around with people, calling them names... you name it(haha). Thus, he frequently fights with Ironwood.

- His arc is about him getting over his prejudice against the upper class through his fights with good ol' Ironwood! It's not exactly as apparent as Ironwood's arc, because Qrow's kind of in the right.

and that's all i've got so far!! im glad ur enjoying this au aaa