#under a readmore due to length and subject matter

[deadtower]

I know things are really rough right now, but I'm really proud of you for making it this far. Every day is farther than I thought I'd make it too. You will get through this night and the next and I hope many more to come, get some sleep, eat a good breakfast. Things are going to be better.

hey anon. thank you so much for this. i'm sorry it took me some time to get back to, i just wanted to answer it when i was feeling up to it and not when i was in the throes of depression. since i sent this i've come home (i was going through withdrawal at best friend's house), managed to actually sleep for a good 8 hours yesterday and today (beforehand, i had slept literally 3 hours total in 9 days — wish i was kidding), ate some food (had only had saltine crackers the past 9 days), and scheduled a bunch of interviews with some really good companies.

i say all this because i want you to know how terribly i was doing when i was making posts with suicidal tags in them and how much better i'm doing now. i went outside today and things were bright and people were going about their lives and the buildings reached into the sky just the way i love. life was going on outside of the very narrow tunnel i'd put myself into and it helped a lot to see that.

you're right, things are going to be better. i did make it through the night i made that post, and the next night, and while withdrawal forces you to think that you're definitely on death's door (mostly because of all the health problems you suffer during it, like not being able to eat, seizures, disorientation, brainfog worse than you've ever had before, absolute panic, sweats, shaking, etc., it's really really hard to convince yourself you're EVER going to be better) everything feels so much more open now that i'm past it. when i opened this message when you first sent it, i legitimately cried because it meant so much that someone saw i was hurting and wanted to send something encouraging. i'm used to being the one that does that for other people, and just assuming that i don't deserve it myself, so someone doing it for me really just sent me on an emotional journey. thank you so, so much, and i really hope the universe sees fit to reward you for being so kind. i know that's not why you did it — but i still hope it does, because people who take the time out of their day to help others do deserve to have good things happen to them, honestly.

thanks so much again, and sorry for the monster response, just wanted to properly thank you while letting you know what kind of state i was in when you sent this and why i didn't respond until now. <3

[biotek]

anonymous asked:    care to go into how mr. alenko felt about the whole cerberus thing at length?

of course and thanks for the question!  i think it’s absolutely an interesting topic,  considering how both virmire survivors essentially alienated themselves from a large portion of the fandom back when me2 dropped.  i’m not sure how many of y’all remember but people were out for blood.  me3 cooled some of those more incendiary opinions,  in kaidan’s case especially given how apologetic he was towards shepard,  but that dynamic makes for a really interesting meta!  even more so if you romance kaidan in me1.

there are two parts towards this question that i’d like to answer.  the first is kaidan’s feelings on cerberus,  which is a much shorter and more straightforward answer.  the second is how shepard fits into all of this.  i’ll place a readmore here just because i know how long-winded i can get.

1.  kaidan’s feelings on cerberus.

cerberus,  in short,  represents a culmination of all of the warnings kaidan gives shepard in their debriefings throughout me1.  kaidan is driven by rule of law.  he believes regulations exist for a reason.  this is due partially from his military upbringing,  of course,  his father serving and instilling that sense of justice ins his son.

however,  a great deal of his own caution comes from brain camp.  the entire establishment is sketchy at best,  kaidan questioning even how a second generation of biotics could have cropped up for experimentation.  with how they went about it,  training human biotics under the table with mercenaries in order to protect humanity’s ego,  it leaves a ton of room for error.  those errors compounded,  culminating in a crucible that literally broke children,  sending them home scarred for life,  if they made it out.  that includes kaidan who absolutely was not the same after what he went through there,  after killing vyrnnus.  

thinking about it in rather black-and-white terms,  children were sacrificed to create human biotics,  children were sacrificed to train human biotics,  children were sacrificed to protect humanity’s budding place in an unknown galaxy.

it’s just really sick.  kaidan undoubtedly believes that so much of this could have been avoided if humanity with through the correct channels.  i mean,  the asari have literally trained biotics for millennia.  if they went through the council,  while it’s too difficult to imagine what galactic relations would like if humanity focused less on individualism,  kaidan believes that lives could have been saved and that in general,  human biotics would live better lives if they humanity engaged with them in the right way.

moving on,  kaidan’s views on extremism are touched upon numerous times as well.  while he understands the trauma biotics,  especially l2s,  suffer from first-hand experience,  he admonishes the terrorists which kidnap and pillage in search of restitution.  again,  this goes back to the idea that the ends do not justify the means.  cerberus is just another back alley method for human dominance in the galaxy.  kaidan,  as a man of law and as a victim of humanity cutting corners,  doesn’t like the idea of it happening again.  the experimentations cerberus engages in throughout me1 could have been the biotics at jump zero,  in some alternate universe.

2.  kaidan’s feelings regarding shepard with cerberus.

to begin with,  let’s talk about kaidan’s relationship with shepard.  kaidan is someone who has given his entire life to the alliance.  he had nothing when he joined and dedicated everything he had,  mind and body,  towards his duty.  he’s been with the alliance for over a decade and has received numerous commendations for his service.

with that in mind,  it’s no small feat that he is willing to throw that away when the commander goes rogue chasing saren,  taking the mu relay to ilos.  he gives up his career,  his life,  possibly his relationship with his alliance marine father,  all on the hunch that shepard’s dreams are right.  of course,  kaidan’s had his own thoughts on the matter,  “the writing is on the wall but no one is reading it” sort of thing,  but it’s shepard who makes the call.  at this point,  he’s the only alliance member in shepard’s main crew of five.  meaning,  it’s he who will be tried to the highest extent alongside shepard.  and he goes anyway.

mind you,  he’s talked shepard’s ear off about cutting corners,  about doing things the right way,  consulting the council before making any galaxy-affecting decisions,  etc.  shepard’s never done anything to make him question following them.  might act rashly at times but it’s for the greater good,  all things considered.  this changes in mass effect 2 when rumors start flying all over space about a dead spectre working with terrorists.

on one hand,  i can understand how he’d see it as a betrayal.  after fighting against rogue council agents,  watching innocents be murdered by cerberus for no good reason,  shepard’s now gone rogue joining that murderous org.  speaking plainly,  shepard is cutting corners to stop the reapers,  as they’ve previously risked everything to stop them.  instead of consulting the alliance,  the council,  shepard is just following the intel from a terrorist org.  i think that’s part of it too,  that once they were free,  shepard made no attempt to rejoin the alliance.  they remained in the terminus systems,  making no effort to contact kaidan despite it,  and kaidan only found out on horizon.

horizon is a touchy subject too.  when you think about it,  shepard failed to an extent.  in kaidan’s mind,  shepard is working with these terrorists,  excusing all the harm they’ve done,  doing nothing to stop any further harm they’re causing,  all to lose just another colony.  once again,  the ends clearly do not justify the means,  but there was no ideal end even met regarding horizon.  

he has his own issues with cerberus as an organization but i mean,  regarding his personal ideals and duties,  we’ve seen him abandon those for shepard if he knows they’re doing it for the right reason.  i think if shepard reached out to kaidan immediately after,  if they went through the alliance somehow,  kaidan would have even joined up again.  it’s like...  he opened his heart to shepard,  the first commander to see him as a person,  and he talked about all of his past trauma.  it’s now all being spit on for some intergalactic space boogeymen.  of course he’ll take that personally.

so yeah by the time they are working together,  he just...  has to slowly allow himself to trust shepard again.  they weren’t just on opposite sides of some invisible ideal,  kaidan felt personally betrayed by shepard who,  knowing everything he’s been through at the hands of some shady org,  would join up with an even worse org to fight some menace.  that’s why i think kaidan is so willing to apologize,  because a lot of his anger was adrenaline and just?  an explosion of stress and betrayal in that moment.  so yeah,  sorry this is so long lol

[p4youraffection]

So first, I'd like to start off by saying that I LOVED the game. Like, really loved it. The writing is superb, the visuals are perfect... and that's why it disappointed me, as someone who takes issues like this very seriously, that you would call out Souji's abusive parents and then defend them at the same time. I just don't get how you can use a line like "it's not like they abused me" when they very clearly did? Idk. I'd like to hear your thoughts, if you have time to answer me.

Hi anon! First, thanks for taking the time to write in, and we’re glad to hear that you loved P4YA!

The rest of this reply (the part about Yu/Souji’s parents) is under a readmore, due to length. CW for (non-graphic) discussion of child abuse/neglect.

I think it should be noted that we, as writers, wrote a lot (and I mean a lot) of stuff into the game that we disagree with personally. From things as serious as Yosuke’s casual sexism to frivolous lines like Rise calling Kanji’s bunny dolls creepy (everything Kanji makes is totally adorable, okay), we firmly believe in letting the characters be themselves - whether or not that happens to align with our personal views. As writers, not only of P4YA but in general, we believe that sometimes it’s okay to write about things you don’t necessarily agree with: a character having a certain viewpoint is not the same as the narrative itself endorsing that same idea (and definitely not the same as the writer themselves espousing it).

And so when it comes to the matter of Yu/Souji’s parents, I think it’s also crucial to ask: would Yu himself consider his parents abusive? 

It’s something I gave a lot of thought to when writing that scene, and our particular characterization of Yu plays a big part in it. (As the one who wrote most of his lines, I could talk about Yu’s characterization for an embarrassingly long time, but I’ll try to keep it brief.) For all his protagonist-specialness and positive qualities, at his core, Yu’s just a kid who is only now figuring these things out for himself. He’s still learning and growing as a person, and (an important detail) he might still be a bit in denial (it is unfortunately very common for abuse victims to deny or downplay their abuse, even to themselves). And if I can bring personal headcanon into this a bit, I believe Yu probably didn’t even realize, at least not entirely, that something was wrong with his situation... until he saw the same patterns repeated elsewhere (aka with Nanako). So while I, the writer, myself disagree, I don’t believe that he would see it that way. 

I’d like to close this out by mentioning, while we’re on the subject, that writing that scene was something close to my heart, as I myself am a survivor of child abuse (albeit very different from Yu/Souji’s). And more than that, I was once a teenager in his shoes too - coming to terms with what had happened, and trying to explain it to people I cared about for the first time. It was very important to me to do that scene justice, and I can promise that I didn’t take it lightly. I hope this explanation helps.

[bookworm555]

Okay, so after reading some fairy tale retellings (like ‘Towering’ and ‘Cloaked’--still working on the latter, though), I decided to try writing my own. HOWEVER, I am so mad at myself because originally, this was more like a story-within-a-story -type thing (like, the plot was just a fairy tale Monty [from Class of 2068] was reading, and later she explains the story to Jin [and any other character within range to hear her fangirl over her favorite book]). The problem came when I gave the characters names. Because then I ended up giving them backstories, fleshed out their world, and gave the plot more depth. And then I got attached to them. So voila, I decided to actually write an entire, full-length story out about them. And I couldn’t decide which fairy tale to focus on, so it turned into a fun--and really gay omj--mashup of the Frog Prince, Rapunzel, and Beauty and the Beast (and a mixture of various versions of these tales, combined with my own spin).

...And okay, every time I look at this, all I see is Isabelle going “Antoine LeGuin! Get your nasty-ass yaoi hand off my shoulder before I kick you in the nads so hard you’ll become a soprano.”

SOOOO, I guess it’s time for character intros (all six of these losers are the ‘good guys’; I’ll draw a villain doodle at some point). Under a readmore because I got enthusiastic and wrote more about them than I should have.

Dude in red is Antoine LeGuin. I decided early on that his dad was French and his mom was English, hence the red coat (even though I didn’t really set a time period for this, though for some reason I’m gravitating to before the American War of Independence). But still. Red coat for aesthetics. He singlehandedly saved the village from bandits when he was only sixteen, so everyone practically hero-worships him, which gave him a huge ego.  Anywho, I call this guy ‘dudebro with a heart of gold’. Because at first he comes off as a jerk, but he’s not totally heartless (and later admits to himself and others that he was a total asscravat--speaking of which, I was almost tempted to give him a cravat). He’s also incredibly respectful to Perdante, even in his most assholish moments to everyone else. And even though the first part of the story has him pining after his schoolyard crush, Isabelle, turns out he’s not the epitome of straight masculinity that he thought. Spoiler: he ends up falling in love with Prince Marius. Also, he’s sort of a red herring (HA! get it? Since the color he’s associated with is red??) in terms of villains because, surprise, he’s one of the good guys. He was just a jerk, but not evil. The real bad guys are people in his friend group (actually, his whole friend group but Perdante, sucks to be Antoine, omj), though the main villains (besides the sorceress who fucked with the royal characters’ lives) are named Jacques and Claudette.  Fun fact: Antoine was named after Antoine D’Coolette from Sonic the Hedgehog.

Guy above him in green is Marius Côté. He’s the prince of one of the provinces in this fantasy world. When the story starts, he’s a greedy young man obsessed with money and taxing the crap out of his subjects. But when he cheats a poor woman out of her money, it turns out she’s a sorceress, and due to his greed and general assholery (think of his personality being like Kuzco’s), she turns him into a frog. However, she was lenient with him, because he can still talk to humans. To change back, he needs to learn to be less greedy...not to mention he has to kiss a royal. So of course, like everyone else, poor Marius thinks he needs to woo and kiss a princess. Which would work, but he’s not attracted to any of them. However, the first part of the kiss is broken when he accidentally kisses Antoine (after Antoine gets lost in an enchanted forest and literally stumbles upon Marius, the talking frog. It’s a long story XD). The reason he changed back? Antoine’s grandmother’s maiden name was ‘Roy’, meaning ‘king’. So technically, Marius kissed ‘a royal’. The two end up falling in love the more time they spend in the forest together, and Marius ends up helping Antoine kick the bad guys’ asses in the climax of the story.  Fun fact: Marius was named after Marius Pontmercy from Les Miserables.  

The girl in teal is Isabelle Marchand. She was good friends with Antoine when they were young, but as they got older, they grew apart due to their different interests (Isabelle preferred academic studies, while Antoine inherited his father’s gun repair shop). And while Isabelle’s feelings toward him stayed static, Antoine’s feelings became more romantic in nature. At first, he was persistent but polite, but when another potential suitor, his friend Jacques Gagnon, starts taking an interest in her, Antoine becomes more competitive in his efforts to woo Isabelle. This in turn pisses Isabelle off and she ends the friendship. She has no interest in Jacques, though, nor any other man in the town. She is more preoccupied with her mother’s death and taking care of her epileptic father. After said father, on one of his trips to a larger town to sell his pottery, picks a rose from what he thinks is an abandoned castle garden, he is captured by what he thinks is a monster. In a moment of cowardice, he states that he’ll bring his daughter to the monster if he’s freed. Anyone reading this probably knows how the story goes, so I’ll skip ahead and say that the monster turns out to be a prince who was cursed. Isabelle ends up falling in love with him, and blah blah blah, happily ever after. Fun fact: Isabelle was named after any incarnation of Beauty from multiple versions of Beauty and the Beast.

To the right of Isabelle is Abel Lebeau (wow, narcissistic surname, much?) Like Marius, at the beginning of the story, he’s an assholish prince with a shitty attitude towards others. But the same sorceress who turned Marius into a frog got a bit more creative this time and, after being denied shelter in Abel’s castle, transformed him into a conglomeration of various furry creatures, aka, a beast. True to any version of the story, he has to fall in love with someone within a set period of time or else he’d remain a beast forever. Also involved in this mess was anyone still in the castle at the time the curse was cast. So Abel’s servants, royal guests at the time, and even his dog, got stuck as walking, talking stone statues. But after a year of Isabelle living in the castle with him, the two fall in love, and the curse is broken. Fun fact: Abel was named as such because he had to change his personality to be ‘able’ to break the curse. Also, his surname, Lebeau, means ‘the handsome one’.

To the right of Abel is Bucky Barnes, er Perdante Fournier. She can be considered the main protagonist of all six of these characters, since the story focuses a lot on her perspective. As the story begins, she is escaping her cruel household, who intended to either marry her off to a man twice her age or force her into a convent (they gave her the option to pick between the two) by stealing her father’s horse and setting off to a village far away from hers, where she disguises herself as a man. (And when people asked about her light voice, she BS-es it by saying she has a condition that made it sound weird XD). At this village, she seeks out the strongest man, who she wants to befriend so she’d be seen as ‘manly’, too (not to mention she has no money and needs a place to stay). That’s where she meets town hero and heartthrob Antoine. After failing to out-drink him, she ends up telling him her intentions. He, reminded of himself and his own ambitions, agrees to help her out, and keep her gender under-wraps. On one condition: she cannot fall in love with him when they live together. Which is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy for Perdante here. Because she’s hella gay. BOOM. I just shattered the cliche love story between these two before it even started, XD. For awhile, she has a relationship with a barmaid named Claudette, but it’s short-lived (also, it’s revealed later on in the story that Claudette’s intentions were less than stellar, yikes. But poor Perdante doesn’t know this until the climax of the story). After escaping the same enchanted forest Antoine gets lost in, she comes across a tower in the middle of a clearing, and helps the young woman, Johanna, who was trapped in it, escape. Plot happens, and they fall in love. -heart eyes- Fun fact: Perdante means ‘loser’ (female version) in French (or at least, that’s what my dictionary says?). Ouch, not a flattering name at all. She was named as such because she was the firstborn, but she was female. Her father wanted sons, so even at birth, she lost his respect and interest. To make matters worse, the rest of his offspring (four more) were male. Also, when she disguises herself as male, she goes by the male version of ‘loser’, Perdant. 

Finally, above Perdante is Johanna von König. When her mother, the Queen of a German-speaking province, was pregnant with her, she had a craving for lettuce. So her husband, the King, decides to steal some from the local sorceress’s garden. Brilliant idea. Not. Because her lettuce was enchanted. In retaliation for the theft, the sorceress took the Queen’s baby, named Johanna, and locked her in a tower far away. Because the lettuce gave Johanna some...interesting...abilities. (Tears that can heal things and hair that grows WAAAAY faster than normal.) Many years pass, and the now-twenty year old Johanna is restless and wants to leave the tower. And of course, after the sorceress leaves to ‘check up on someone’ (which turns out to be Prince Abel), Perdante helps Johanna escape the tower, and decides to take her back to the village. As the story goes on, the two fall in love, and the story ends with an epic triple wedding (Johanna/Perdante, Abel/Isabelle, and Antoine/Marius). The King and Queen are so happy to have their daughter back that they don’t give a shit that she not only married another woman, but another woman whose name means ‘loser’ in French, XD. Fun fact: Johanna was named after Johanna Barker from Sweeney Todd.