#[ i actually have THREE meta posts saved in my drafts ]

[moongothic]

WAIT WAIT WAIT HOLD THE FUCKING PHONE

So normally we only get fullblown, extended and dedicated flashbacks for heroic characters in One Piece, the characters who we're meant to root for. The literal only TRUE exception we've had to this rule was Big Mom's flashback. Even fucking Doflamingo's flashback was tied to Law and Rosinante's

So the fact that we haven't gotten a single fucking GLIMPSE at Crocodile's backstory is?!?

Like sure, we haven't gotten like a Moria flashback, but you know, he literally told us all we needed to know himself, AND we got to see glimpses of him in the Wano flashbacks. Arlong didn't get a flashback of his own, but he did get to cameo in Fisher Tiger's flashback. And Rob Fucking Lucci got a flashback that was 6 whooping panels long

BUT CROCODILE?? Not only do we know almost Fuck All about his story, but also have never gotten as much as a glimpse at it? But his backstory has been HINTED and TEASED at multiple times??

GUYS. FELLAS

Like. I am SURE the "Full Backstories for Heroes Only" rule is going to get broken again, but with Imu and Blackbeard already there just BEGGING to have their beans spilled, can we even be sure Sir Fucking Crocodile is somehow going to become A Villain So Dangerous To The Narrative that he ALSO should also recieve a Full Fucking Backstory?? For his Nefarious Schemes?? AT THIS POINT??

Y'all

I think it's more likely Oda's been saving up Croc's backstory because it might just completely recontextualize his entire character

[unladielike]

what things would immediately reveal Vivian's origins / home place? (ex. like a typical meal, accent, etc?)

                UNPROMPTED ASKS. » always accepting!

I already mentioned some of her Canadian habits over here, but one thing that would probably give away the fact Vivian is from North America is probably her bringing up 'poutine' in conversations, if only because that's a very distinctly Canadian dish and is street food that's commonly sold there.

Like, if she ever reminisces about poutine, one would be correct to automatically assume she is either Canadian or has lived in Canada at some point. Aside from that, though, I can see others figuring out where she's from by her mentioning that Thanksgiving is only celebrated in October and how not being invited to the cottage or cabin is the societal equivalent of not having a date for the prom, with the latter being something I headcanon she brought up to @more-than-a-princess's Sonia at some point.

Honestly, with Vivian being such a chatterbox, I could see her telling her that Canadian middle class adults usually owned cottages, with them costing thousands to maintain, but their usability is strictly seasonal, meaning people would only travel 'up north' (specifically Muskoka, Shawnigan Lake, or the Laurentians) to visit one between June to August. Because she's not a normie, though, she would make it very clear she was never invited to one while acting as though it's no big deal... but secretly, she feels very bitter and left out nobody had ever invited her to their cottage or cabin.

anonymous

[torpidgilliver]

i have some half-formed thoughts about 2.0 and what it was in relation to what Murderbot always says SecUnits are. 2.0 was cloned from MB’s kernel and condensed and rewritten into a form that basically amounted to a sentient drone strike. its purpose was to fight dirty and die tidy, taking care of a problem for MB and ART remotely without leaving them any messy new lifeforms to parent afterwards

in any other piece of fiction, 2.0 would have been resentful—wouldn’t you? surely MB and ART had to know that the code they made would be sapient, capable of self-determination and possessing the capacity for complex emotion, and yet they didn’t try to account for its potential survival. it would be hard to fault 2.0 if the new directive it wrote was “get to Me Version 1.0 and take over its body.” but that “Me Version 1.0″ is the sticking point. Murderbot 2.0 continued to think of Murderbot 1.0 as an extension of itself, while still noting that they were different people.

i found this post in my drafts and have no memory of writing it and no idea where i was going with it. i think what i meant by “fight dirty and die tidy,” aside from the obvious, is that MB always references how SecUnits are meant to prevent bloodshed if possible, and to get ripped to pieces if not. it made 2.0 to be the opposite of that, something that seeks out and initiates violence, but which sheds no actual blood, and yet 2.0 was more than that. it was still gentle, in its way. it rescued not just ART’s humans, but Three as well, someone MB would have claimed (through its unreliable, SecUnits-can’t-afford-to-be-sentimental-about-each-other narration,) wasn’t worth more than a passive effort to save. it took the existence it was explicitly designed for, moreso than any SecurityUnit built to protect, and it chose to be more.

idk, words have been hard lately and im not good at meta to begin with. i just have some Emotions about 2.0 and i cant figure out what they are or what to do with them

[panharmonium]

old bookends!au meta that i typed up in a frenzy one night during our last rewatch and then never posted because things disappear in my drafts, but i’m cleaning them out today

under the cut because it’s really only relevant to padmerrie 🙃

“I LOANED IT TO YOU THREE YEARS AGO!!!!!”

this whole sequence is reminding me of a recurring bookends thought i often have which is just that kakashi actually allowing himself to have fights with people who aren’t obito is kind of a big thing for him and a sign that’s he’s (still!) getting better all the time

like - i imagine that bookends!kakashi in the aftermath of obito disappearing goes through a long isolationist period because:

a) he can barely keep his head above water as is and he does not have the time or energy or brainspace for anything that isn’t keeping a child alive and semi-well-adjusted (always at kakashi’s own expense in those early years, because preventing sasuke from becoming “like him” and suffering “like that” is the reason he’s running up that hill, to the point where it’s just.  bad for his own personal and emotional well-being but simultaneously a necessary sacrifice that he doesn’t regret and that sasuke will someday recognize for the herculean lifesaving choice that it was) 

and b) he’s reeling from the fact that the person who rewired his worldview and taught him to love/trust people abandoned him and left him to drown, and at some point, you know, the lesson about not relying on anyone else sinks in, for a kid whose father killed himself right where little kakashi would find the body, for someone who then grew up in a system of state “care” and fled from it when his one possible way out (minato) was murdered for the entire country to see, who survived on his own and never had anybody to take care of him ever and then got burned by the one person who ever convinced him to give human connections a try again despite all of that - if that person could do him like this, then how is he supposed to trust anybody else to have his back? 

if kakashi can’t count on obito, he can’t count on anybody.  the stakes are too high here.  sasuke is too important.  kakashi can’t rely on anyone to Save the Child (read: to prevent the creation of another kid with kakashi’s own brand of trauma) except himself.  anyone else is too much of a risk, and he literally does not have the brainspace for "friends” just now.  

and then, a little later, when he’s starting to come out of his shell and reconnect with old friends (yamato gai etc) and make new friends for the first time in ages (iruka), he’s still not letting himself be totally free with them, either, because kakashi, as we know, internalizes everything and carries the weight of the past on his back even when the guilt isn’t his to claim, so there is this subconscious piece of him that remembers the last time he lost a friend and is still half-convinced that he was the one responsible for obito disappearing on him (no), and we know kakashi already has this underlying streak of thinking he’s intrinsically less worthy than everyone else, he’s hard to love, it’s hard to be his friend, he’s the trash and other people are the trash collectors cleaning him up and making him better.  so he doesn’t let himself be his full authentic self with his new connections either, because that would mean he’d have to have feelings and needs and maybe he would even get sad or upset or angry sometimes, and you can’t DO things like that when there’s no room for error in your life, when every little thing you do might torpedo the tiny bit of stability you’ve cobbled together for yourself, when every little mistake you make might destroy the relationships you’ve started building.  

he holds himself to an impossible, inhumane standard, because that’s what he’s always had to do to survive, and his relationships are stunted as a result, because it’s hard to be deep, true friends with a person who’s always wearing a mask, even if said person is doing it to (supposedly) make things easier for you.  and it’s hardly fair to the people currently around him, who would never begrudge him his bad days or condemn him for a less-than-proud moment, who would never reject him because he once expressed himself poorly or reacted to being hurt.  him withholding those parts of himself is a trust problem on his end, and even though it’s wholly understandable, it impairs his relationships for years.  (like - people like gai and yamato have known kakashi long enough to know when he’s doing this, and while gai possesses an impressive level of immunity to kakashi’s behavior, yamato is always second-guessing himself, because if someone is supposed to be your friend, and then they don’t actually trust you to, you know, be their friend, it’s like - “what am i doing wrong?”  it’s a constant reminder that you aren’t the intimate friend you want to be, that they won’t let you close that distance, and you have to wonder what is it about you that makes you not enough.)

so i love this image of kakashi, several years on, being for once SO delightfully unrestrained, so quick to speak up when something pisses him off, so ready to risk having the fight.  he’s spent so much time swallowing his own feelings and putting his own needs aside and never letting himself be visibly angry or upset about anything (because anger takes energy, anger distracts you from surviving, anger makes you a less effective caregiver [especially to a very angry kid], and if you let yourself be angry about one thing you might suddenly realize that you are angry about a LOT of things, and that will open up a can of worms you can’t repack), so him actually allowing himself to get mad and have a stupid fight with someone who isn’t obito (without expecting said person to bail on him like obito) is like when you see a little crocus nub clawing its way out of the snow and you’re like “oh!  that plant isn’t dead after all!  look at him go!  look at him grow!”

[canageek]

Trying to decide if I actually went to take part in this rpg book club.

So @thydungeonguy posted about a TTRPG book club a while ago. I thought this sounded like great fun, cuz I've mostly been playing the same three or four RPGs for the last decade. I'd like to learn some more games, great.

I thought it would just be a fun thing wherever and reads an RPG and then plays it, but there's like 8 million rules telling me how I have to play and run my games: now some of these are good about stopping certain topics if a player gets uncomfortable, totally on board with that.

But a lot of them just feel like someone trying to enforce their specific play style, it's the most specific being:

"15. Treat NPCs with depth and purpose: GMs should give NPCs goals, motivations, and potentially flawed ways of thinking, enhancing the game's realism. Treat NPCs like PCs. They also have goals that they want to accomplish and have a desire to survive as well. GMs and players, when playing a character, ask yourself “What would this character most realistically do in this situation, even if it may not necessarily be the smartest thing from a meta perspective?” Think of this as an extension of Server Rule 5."

"25. We prefer that physical dice be used whenever possible. If impossible or just somehow extremely inconvenient, use of electronic dice rollers is permitted, however these are never to be referred to as the acronym for Random Number Generation. We are trusting you all on this matter. Anyone found cheating by faking dice rolls will be given a warning and if the problem persists may received disciplinary action."

What the f*** do you have against electronic dice rollers, they're more convenient if I'm just talking voice chat anyway, I'm totally fine with either one they give you the exact same probability distribution.

And secondly my dude it's a one-shot, not a campaign. I'm not putting that much work in the NPCs for a 4-Hour session, I just want to have a fun escape for 4 hours. I'll save the detailed long-term character growth for the decades long campaign.

Then there are a whole bunch of rules about distraction free environments and testing your microphone ahead of time and showing up on time, and similar nanny rules. People have lives and kids and noisy neighbors, it happens.

This is the second draft of the rules and I'm really not sure I want to continue trying to be in the club, cuz it feels like someone else is just going to bully me into accepting their specific play style rather than a bunch of people coming together to have a good time.

[streetlights-was-taken]

[postscript] the gardener who only collects seeds

← read on AO3 (available on 230415)

for venlumiweek2023.

day 6: time loop au / "say you'll remember me"

i. conceptualizing the fic

oh god. I'll be honest, I wasn't planning to do this fic at all. but I think time loop and memory are very cool concepts and I would be remiss not to write anything for the day 6 prompts when I have a series dedicated to exploring these very concepts (caesura).

I shuffled through a bunch of ideas. I already had a "time loop"-ish idea back in february, but it was too ambitious to finish before this year’s venlumi week starts. it's like a choose your own adventure fic. if you're interested, I have a demo of how it works here (archive-locked, so you need an AO3 account to access).

unfortunately, writing that fic is the equivalent to writing 9+ fics and becoming an indie game designer. I know my limits. (I might still try writing it one day. but it will definitely take some time.)

the second idea I had for a time loop fic was to write about a storyteller (venti) rewriting their story over and over because it’s never perfect. and each rewrite of the story manifests as a time loop for the characters within it. he does this until he can create a beautiful story, but also because he deeply cares for the characters in it (lumine) and wants the best for them.

but I decided I couldn’t write it exactly that way because I don’t think venti is that much of a perfectionist. he observes and he records, but he's pretty chill about how events unfold. I think that would be more believable for lumine to be the perfectionist, given the hints of her having a martyr/hero complex. however, I do think venti is a great spectator-type of character, and I don’t want his affinity for memories/wind/time to go to waste.

I ended up with the semi-final idea for this fic after taking inspiration from this tumblr post about self-inflicted time loops:

a self-inflicted time loop where lumine keeps rewinding time until she can save everyone in teyvat. venti, who records everything through the winds, is aware of each time loop. lumine, who loses her own humanity as she becomes obsessed with doing a perfect run, rewinding at the slightest inconvenience and failing to connect with the people she wants to save with every loop. and finally venti, who takes pity on her and erases her memory, because he knows lumine will always save teyvat, just as she has 167 times. but she cannot save herself.

it's a little tragic and bittersweet… but I guess I really like writing this kind of fic. I developed the lore around this a bit more as I wrote (more in the next section).

other ideas I considered were:

looping just one event (but genshin doesn't have one that compels me)

doing something similar to link click and life is strange where the character visits the past through photographs (but genshin also didn't compel me here; I like the idea, but I'll probably just write a link click fic if that's the case).

finally, I actually planned for this to only be a 4000-word oneshot because I wanted to finish the fic in one weekend. for some reason, I ended up with 8000 words in three days. uh. yeah.

due to the deadline I set for myself, I did not have the time to polish this fic. I did give this a rough SPAG-edit, but the fic you're reading now is pretty much the first draft with hardly any revisions. there are some concepts that I probably could have executed more elegantly (such as when istaroth breaks the fourth wall). but I didn't really have the time develop this story more, unfortunately.

(there's something quite meta about this too, now that I think about it. we have a fic about a storyteller learning to be satisfied with their story, and what do I — the author of the fic — do? I post the first draft as it is, without revisions 😆)

ii. lore™ and other inspirations

this fic is actually a cool case of plantsing for me. I had a rough outline of the fic for lumine's chapter through the idea I explored above (plotting). but as I was writing venti's chapter, I ended up creating all this lore in the background purely through discovery writing (pantsing).

I was actually going to scrap the idea of venti being a storyteller and teyvat being his story. but then I was thinking of another fic idea (separate from venlumi week) and one of my inspirations for it was the parable of the tree in the in-game book before sun and moon. there is a line there that says:

for it is the god of moments who is able to take "seeds" from this "moment" into the past and the future.

this is where I got the idea of turning each time loop into a seed! this also ties neatly into the phrase, "seeds of stories, brought by the wind, cultivated by time."

the idea of storyteller venti soon evolved into him not just writing a story to be told, but composing a world/story to be "planted" into the fabric of reality. in a way, all the time loops are simulations of a reality that is yet to be created. (this is also an idea I played with in the cyoa demo too, though I wasn't really sure if I was going to use that idea in this fic until I started writing venti's chapter).

the title is also a play on this concept. the gardener is, of course, venti, who collected 256 seeds over the course of composing the world of teyvat.

composing is a neat word because it refers to the act of creating through artistic labor, and it is specifically tied to the idea of producing works of music and literature. which is exactly what a bard does! so I used composer as the title of... whatever it is venti and istaroth does.

with all of these elements in place, I can't help but take inspiration from other works as well. specifically:

svsss: my favorite thing about this novel is shen yuan and shang qinghua’s relationship with the narrative, so I was also inspired by that as well. particularly, how shen yuan’s kindness literally changed the narrative. and the overall readership/authorship commentary we have from shang qinghua. (cumplane also happens to be my favorite ship from this novel, which is fun to think about some meta subtext fuckery going on there where all the other characters falling for sqq just further legitimizes cumplane because those characters are all figments of sqh's imagination and— okay I'll stop here now because this is not the point of this post. but yeah basically the idea of the author falling for someone in the story and the world reflecting those intentions.)

twewy: I wrote a lot of twewy fics back in the day so you can't expect me to write about composers and not think about twewy. twewy doesn't really tie into the fic too much besides the whole composer thing, but when you're really into twewy it just makes the fic extra fun I think. like I said in the end notes, I was this 🤏 close to write seed:168 where venti knowingly calls lumine by name before asking for it, just like how joshua does it with neku in week two.

finally, I decided on 168 loops for lumine as a reference to the number of materials you need to ascend a character (this is also the same number of loops in the dream-battle samsara with scaramouche).

I decided on 88 loops for venti because 256 was the number of dots I can use for the hourglass art lol. it was just a happy coincidence that 256-168=88, and that 88 is a neat number to end a time loop with.

iii. a time loop is a puzzle

it really is! often, the character is already stuck in some way before the time loop starts, and the time loop breaks when they either achieve character development or break the puzzle that is trapping them.

I think lumine and venti approach the time loop puzzle from opposite ends. lumine regresses through her time loop. she becomes less connected to the world through it, and she aims for perfection that she can't achieve. she starts seeing her friends as more like characters in an unskippable cutscene than as people.

meanwhile, venti actually grows through his time loop. he began as a composer, but only through going through several lifetimes does he start to understand what it actually means to live and to love. he connects more with the world around him as he goes through the loops. he sees his characters more as people, as friends, and he is delighted that lumine can bring out the complexities that they offer instead of letting them stay as tropey stereotypes.

for both characters, the time loops are self-inflicted. they can stop at any time. venti lets go of his control over the time loops to lumine because that was his ultimate expression of love at that time. this was proof that he grew through the loops.

lumine was actually already in her best form in venti's 87th loop. she was in a world that was designed to love her, and she in turn was a loving person. however, venti advised her to focus on the destination instead of the journey. then he gave her the hourglass. this changes lumine's character and enables her regression in the time loops.

only by breaking the time loop and resetting her back to how she was in the beginning does she go back to her loving self. she was already happy before. venti didn't need to change her.

it is with both time loops that venti learns all his lessons in life and creates the most optimally designed world for lumine to love.

iv. narrative arrangement and the emotional journey

although the story started with lumine's chapter, this is very much a venti-centric story. lumine's chapter, for me, served more as a prologue to what was really going on in the background.

I quite like how I arranged the narrative. it is not chronological, but I think it most effectively delivers the emotional journey I want the reader to experience. lumine's chapter serves as an introduction to the time loop, the kind of world she lives in, and the kind of effects a self-inflicted loop can bring about. lumine knows less about the mechanics of this world, and she is the protagonist of venti's story, so she serves her role well as the one to introduce us this world. it also makes her into an unreliable narrator sometimes.

then she tips the hourglass at the end of her chapter. the reader is then transported to venti's chapter and his time loop. it's a bit of twist later on that his time loop actually happens before lumine's, so we actually get two time loops in one chapter. one is venti's loop, and the other is his pov during lumine's loop.

inserting venti's loop in between two povs of lumine's loop (first chapter, lumine pov; second half of second chapter, venti pov) also shows the contrast of the two loops more. where lumine regresses, venti grows. where venti becomes hopeful, lumine becomes hopeless. and so on, and so forth.

his pov in lumine's time loop is also important to show how much impact lumine leaves in his world. when she loves, the world loves her back. when she is detached, the story breaks apart in different ways. tighnari doesn't trust her, albedo becomes obsessive, festivals become gloomy (and come on. genshin is festival impact. when there are no archon quests, festivals are the bread and butter of this game).

the second chapter has two loops to follow, like an hourglass. the structure of the second chapter is very reminiscent of one imo. though I didn't really plan that out as I was writing; it's just something I noticed during my own read through of the draft. pretty neat how things can end up like that. I think this is what people call serendipity.

v. planting seeds and breaking walls

this part is, admittedly, probably something I could have executed better. I debated over just not doing it, but I wanted to try anyway and see if it works. I love meta bullshit in my stories.

yes, the seed istaroth plants is not really about teyvat: venti's world, but about venti and lumine themselves. about their story through the loops. in other words, the fic you read, the story you witnessed, is exactly the story istaroth planted into reality.

there's some funky implications about this. are we, the readers/author, also observers and composers? hm, yeah, we are. venti even mentions that his composition are just words on a screen.

without its protagonist and without its creator, it is nothing more than words on a screen. a story to be read, but not one that can come to life.

and when istaroth addresses the reader, she also looks beyond the screen.

she looks up, beyond the screen, and smiles. "and that will be a story worth observing."

there are other hints too. the higher dimension is also called the "fourth plane" (aka, the fourth wall). it's even a little cheeky that istaroth says, "we will bear witness to whatever story you choose." because that's exactly what is already happening. every time someone opens this fic and reads it, it is already being observed. we are already bearing witness to the story venti and lumine composed.

well, that was my intention with all of those lines anyway. I'm not sure if it was too subtle or too obvious, or if it fell flat and didn't quite land like I wanted to.

either way, I tried. I'll let the reader decide on that.

vi. ascii art?

honestly, I've thought about looking up if I can do ASCII art on AO3. but I only gave myself three days to finish this whole thing, so I decided against it.

I still ended up coding hourglasses in HTML while procrastinating on this fic lol.

fun fact: the lower half of the hourglass in the first chapter (the triangle, excluding the falling dots) add up to 256 dots. the hourglass in venti's chapter (including the neck) add up to 88 dots.

[terapsina]

Fanfic writer ask game: 4, 8, 15, 16, 18

4. Do you prefer writing multi-chapter or oneshot fanfictions?

It really rather depends. Writing multi-chapter stories is certainly a lot more stressful (the sad line of my old dropped attempts rather showcase that).

But at the same time my longer stories do bring me bigger amounts of joy I guess. I get INVESTED in them.

But I also love writing short little drabbles that are like me baking a cookie, instead of a line of cakes. So I guess I like writing both, it's just about what I'm in the mood for.

8. What kind of document do you use to you write? Microsoft Word? Google Docs? Straight in the AO3 text box?

No, I'm a true savage, I write straight on Tumblr and make frequent use of 'save as draft' (I have an explanation to this, I used to write more TV show meta posts when I joined the hellsite, and I got so used to this particular font, in this particular size, on this particular background that writing anywhere else gets so distracting I might as well give up).

I do last edits in AO3 drafts though 🥺 that makes everything okay, right?

15. Are there words, phrases, mannerisms or scenes you tend to use a lot?

Ugh, the bane of my existence is how when I write and come up with a word that fits, the word somehow gets stuck in my mind and I'll find it used again two paragraphs down. And I don't notice until I do a reread aloud in editing. At which point I tend to google a bunch of synonyms.

Also: 'burst into laughter', 'choked back her tears', 'swallowed past the stone in her throat'. Also also my characters tend to raise their eyebrows and roll their eyes a lot, I think.

16. How long is your longest fic?

31'060 words as of yesterday, She's Come Undone and Set Free. Who knew how invested I'd get into letting Elena be angry; having Caroline dealing with her s1 trauma; making TVD era Rebekah get actual friends; and (most recently) giving Bonnie a properly interesting love interest *cough*Rebekah*cough*. (I already knew I could get invested in Elejah, that one wasn't a surprise).

18. Recommend someone else fic! (And tag them if they have a tumblr!)

This question is confusing but I'll take it to mean I should recommend someone else's fic to everyone who reads this.

Okay. I'm gonna narrow it down to TVD/Legacies fics because that's what I'm recently writing myself and if I don't put some kind of theme limit I'll get a headache.

We Remain by AnonymousObsesser - Elejah, starts during American Gothic and then goes a completely different way (I have read the first three chapters at least 5 times, the Elejah feelings are seriously top-notch).

A Year to Eternity? by @missnmikaelson - Elejah, Klaroline, a bit of Bonnie/Kol, a bit of Handon - Starts out during 5x12 of The Originals. But with TVD had a different ending (Elena isn't married to certain people for example and I love it). Neither Elijah, nor Klaus die because that's stupid (Caroline yells a bunch at Klaus about it, Elena's blood is always the magic cure we should all know this: "To seal the Hollow away we need the willing support of Elena Gilbert." Amusement sparkled in his eyes. "I'm asking about your knees, Nik, because you're about to grovel on them.").

plastic crown by @jennifersminds - Elejah but not as the focus, the focus is Elena runs away from the Salvatores (Rebekah gives her a car, Elena ends up in Vegas, I honestly don't know how to describe it, the story just has a very unique imagery) and tries to build herself back up. Trauma. Vengeance. Female friendship. Strip clubs and slight bit of vampiric serial killing. Oh, just read it, you'll understand.

(I think the three above mentioned fics can probably be blamed for me starting to write She's Come Undone).

tis the season for a kidnapping by @vorpalmuchness - Elejah, Elena gets kidnapped by a couple of idiots whose information is a BIT out of date (they call Elijah and expect gratitude is what I mean, those poor poor morons). And I LOVE it.

being unwanted (and wanting too much); by @natalia-dyer - Post s4 Hizzie, basically Lizzie coming to her great lesbian awakening/acceptance of self as she realizes why none of the guys were ever quite right.

Torn by the hours by @isagrimorie - (if you don't think I absolutely love that fic, you are WRONG, it lives in MY head rent free). Hizzie, with Lizzie waking up in the middle of the battlefield where Hope has pulled a full on massacre because she thought Lizzie was dead? I am RABID for this scene.

(okay, it's possible I overdid it a lil'bit).

[thedeadhandofseldon]

The Anti-Mercer Effect

On the Accessibility of D&D, Why Unprepared Casters is so Fun, and Why Haley Whipjack is possibly the greatest DM of our generation.

(Apologies to my mutuals who aren’t in this fandom for the length of this, but as you all know I have never in my life shut up about anything so… we’ll call it even for the number of posts about Destiel I see every day.

To fellow UC fans - I haven’t listened to arc 4 yet, I started drafting this in early August, and I promise I will write a nice post about how great Gus the Bard is once I get the chance to listen to more of his DMing).

Structure - Or, “This is not the finale, there will be more podding cast”

So, first of all, let’s just talk about how Unprepared Casters works. Because it’s kind of unusual! Most of the other big-name D&D podcasts favor this long, grand arcs; UC has about 10 hours of podcast per each arc. And that’s a major strength in a lot of ways: it makes it really accessible to new listeners, because you can just start with the current arc and understand what’s going on!

And by starting new arcs every six or seven episodes, they can explore lots of ways to play D&D! Classic dungeon delve arc! Heist arc! Epic heroes save the world arc! Sportsball arc! They can touch on all sorts of things!

And while I’m talking about that: Dragons in Dungeons, the first arc, makes it incredibly accessible as a show - because it lets the unfamiliar listener get a sense of what D&D actually is. (It’s about telling stories and making your friends feel heroic and laugh and cry, for the record). If I had to pick a way to introduce someone to the game without actually playing it with them, that arc would definitely be it.

And I’d be remise not to note one very important thing: Haley Whipjack and Gus the Bard are just very funny, very charismatic people. Look. Episode 0s tend to be about 50%(?) those two just talking to each other about their own podcast. It shouldn’t work. And yet it DOES, its one of my favorite parts, because Haley and Gus are just cool.

And a side note that doesn’t fit anywhere else: I throw my soul at him! I throw a scone at him - that’s it, that’s the vibe. The whole podcast alternates between laughing with your friends and brooding alone in a dark tavern corner - but the laughs never forced and the dark corner is never too dark for too long.

Whipjack the Great - Or, the DM is Also a Player!

I think Haley Whipjack is one of the greatest Dungeon Masters alive. The plots and characters! The mechanical shenanigans! The descriptions!

Actually, let’s start there: with the descriptions. (Both Haley and Gus do this really fucking well). As we know, Episode 0 of each arc sees the DM reading a description - of a small town, or the Up North, or the recent history of a great party. And Haley always strikes this tricky balance - one I think a lot of us who DM struggle with - between giving too much description and  worldbuilding, and not telling us anything at all. She describes people and events in just enough detail to imagine them, but never so much they seem static and unreal - just clear enough to envision, but with enough vagueness left to let your imagination begin to run wild.

While I’m thinking about arc 3’s party, let’s talk about a really bold move she made in that arc: letting the players have ongoing control of their history. Loser Lars! She didn’t try to spell out every detail of this high-level party’s history, or restrict their past to only what she decided to allow - she gave them the broad outlines, and let them embellish it. And that made for a much more alive story than any attempt to create it by herself would have - but I think it takes a lot of courage to let your players have that agency. Most Dungeon Masters (myself included) tend to struggle with being control freaks.

And the plots! Yeah, arc one is built of classic tropes - but she actually uses them, she doesn’t get caught up in subverting everything or laughing at the cliches. And it’s fun! In arc 3, there really isn’t a straight line for the players to follow, either - which makes the game much more interesting and much trickier to run. And her NPCs are fantastic and I will talk about them in the next section.

Above all, though, I think what is really impressive is how Haley balances mechanics, and rules as written, with the narrative and rule of cool - and puts both rules and story in the service of playing a fun game. And the secret to that? She’s the DM, but the DM is a player, and the DM is clearly having fun. Hope Lovejoy mechanically shouldn’t get that spellslot back, but she does, and it’s fun. The changeling merchant in Thymore doesn’t really make some Grand Artistic Narrative better, but wow is it fun. And she never tries to force it one way or the other - the story might be more dramatic if Annie didn’t manage to banish the demon from the vault, but it’s a lot cooler and a lot more fun for the players if Annie gets to be a badass instead - and the rules and the dice say that Annie managed it.

Settings feel like places, NPCs feel like people, and the narrative plot feels like a real villainous plot.

Anyway. I could go on about the various ways in which Whipjack is awesome for quite a while - she’s right, first place in D&D is when your friends laugh and super first place is when they cry - but I’m going to stop here and just. Make another post about it some other time. For now, for the record I hold her opinions about the game in higher esteem than I do several official sourcebooks; that is all.

Characters - Or, Bombyx Mori Is Not an Asshole, And That Matters

Okay, I said I would talk about characters! And I will!

Just a general place to start: the party! All of the first three parties are interesting to me, because they all care about each other. Not even necessarily in a Found Family Trope sort of way, though often that too. But they generally aren’t assholes to each other. The players create characters that actually work together, that are interesting; even when there’s internal divisions like SK-73 v. Sir Mr. Person, they aren’t just unpleasant and antagonistic all the time. Listening to the podcast, we’re “with” these people for a couple hours - and it isn’t unpleasant. That matters a lot. (To take a counter-example: I love Critical Role, but the episode when Vox Machina pranked Scanlan after he died and was resurrected wasn’t fun to listen to, it was just uncomfortable and angering and vaguely cruel).

All of the PCs are amazing, and the players in each arc did a great job. If you disagree with me about that, well, you have the right to be incorrect and I am sorry for your loss. Annie Wintersummer, for one example: tragic and sad and I want to give her a hug, but also Fuck Yeah Wintersummer, and also her familiar Charles the Owl is the cutest and funniest and I love him. And we understand what’s going on with Annie, she isn’t some infinite pool of hidden depths because this arc is 7 episodes and we don’t have time for that, but she also has enough complexity to be interesting. Same with Fey Moss: yeah, a lot of her is a silly pun about fame that carries into how she behaves, but a lot of how she behaves is also down to some good classic half-elven angst about parenthood and wanting to be known and seen and important. (Side note: if your half-elf character doesn’t have angst, well, that’s impressive and also I don’t think I believe you).

There are multiple lesbian cat-people in a 4-person party and they both have requited romantic interests who aren’t each other. This is the future liberals want and I am glad for it.

Sir Mister Person, the human fighter! Thavius, the edge lord! Even when a character is “simple,” they’re interesting, because of how they’re played as people and not action-figures. And that matters a lot.

In the same way: the NPCs. There really aren’t a lot of them! And some of them come from Patreon submissions, so uh good work gang, you’re part of the awesomeness and I’m proud of you! The point being, the NPCs work because enough of them are interesting to matter. It’s not just a servant who opens Count Michael’s door, it’s a character with a name (Oleandra!) and a personality and history. They’re interesting. Penny Lovejoy didn’t need to be interesting, the merchant outside the Laughing Mausoleum didn’t need to be interesting, but they ARE! And Haley and Gus EXCEL at making the NPCs matter, not just to the story but to us as viewers. I agree with Sir Mister Person, actually, I would die for the princesses of the kingdom. I actually care about Gem Lovejoy of all people - that wouldn’t happen in an ordinary campaign! That’s the thing that makes Unprepared Casters spectacular - and, frankly, it’s especially impressive because D&D does not tend to be good at making a lot of interesting compared to a lot of other sorts of stories.

And, just as an exemplar of all this: Bombyx Mori. Immortal, reincarnating(?), and described as the incarnation of the player’s ADHD. I expected to hate Bombyx, because as the mom friend both in and out of my friend-group’s campaigns, the chaos-causer is always exhausting to me. And yeah, Bombyx causes problems on purpose! But! She is not an asshole.

And that’s important. Bombyx goes and sits with the queen and comforts her. Bombyx gives Annie emotional support. Bombyx isn’t just a vehicle to jerk around the DM and other players; Bombyx really is a character we can care about. To compare with another case - in the first couple episodes of The Adventure Zone, the PCs are just dicks. Funny, but dicks. Bombyx holds out an arm “covered in larva” to shake with a count, and robs him of magical items, but she also cares about her friends and other people! She uses a powerful magical gem to save her fertilizer guy from death! Yeah, Bombyx is ridiculous, but she’s not just an asshole the party has to keep around for plot reasons; you can see why her party would keep her around. And one layer of meta up, she’s the perfect example of how to make a chaotic character like that while still being fun for everyone you’re playing with, which is often not the case. And I love her.

The Anti-Mercer Effect - Or, “I think we proved it can be fun, you can have a good time with your friends. And it doesn’t have to be scary, you can just work with what you know”

The Mercer Effect basically constitutes this: Matthew Mercer, Dungeon Master of Critical Role, is incredible (as are all of his players). They’re all professional story-tellers in a way, remember, and so Critical Role treats D&D like a narrative art-form, and it’s inspiring. Seeing that on Critical Role sets impossible standards - and people go into their own home games imagining that their campaigns will be like Critical Role, and the burden of that expectation tends to fall disproportionately on the DM. And the end result, I think, of the Mercer Effect is that we get discouraged or intimidated, because our game isn’t “as good as” theirs. (And I should note - Matt certainly doesn’t want that to be our reaction).

So the Anti-Mercer Effect is two things: it’s D&D treated like a game, and it’s inspiring but not intimidating. And Unprepared Casters manages both of those really freaking well. Because they play it like a game! A UC arc looks just like a good campaign in anyone’s home game. They have the vibes of 20-somethings and college students playing D&D for fun because that’s who they are (as a 20-something college student who plays a lot of D&D, watching it felt like watching my friends play an especially good campaign). They’re trying to tell a good story, sure, and they always do. But first and foremost, they’re trying to have fun, and it shows, and I love the UC cast for it.

And that’s the other half of it: it’s inspiring! It’s approachable; you can see that Haley and Gus put plenty of work into preparing the game but it also doesn’t make you feel like you need hundreds of pages of worldbuilding to run a game. Sometimes a cleric makes Haley cry and she gives them back a spell-slot from their deity! That’s fantastic! It’s just inspiring - listening to this over the summer, when my last campaign had fallen apart under the strain of graduation, is why I decided to plan and run my new one!

That quote from Haley Whipjack that I used as the title for this section? That’s the whole core of this idea, and really, I think, the core of the podcast.

The Mercer Effect is when you go “that’s really cool, I could never do that.” But Unprepared Casters makes you look at D&D and go “wow, that looks really fun. I bet I can do that!” And I love the show for it.

And I bet a lot of you do too.

[prairiedust]

I have been going back and forth about whether or not I wanted to post anything at all. But my unrequited!cas reading just played out right in front of my weepy little eyeballs, and I’m devastated but feeling very balanced at the same time.

(I have drafted and posted and deleted this post several times, each time realizing that there is more I need to explain or at least sum up, partly because “unrequited” is such a loaded word...)

After Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets, I started an unrequited!cas tag on this blog. Specifically, I felt that Castiel-- in later seasons, at least, if not from the very moment he saw Dean in Hell-- loves Dean truly madly deeply.

However, Cas does not and has never believed that Dean returns his feelings.

Buddy. Pal. Brother.

The one thing I want…. is something I can’t have.

Regardless of how Dean does or does not actually feel, Castiel believes that his love for Dean is unrequited.

So that’s what I’ve meant by unrequited!cas since 2017. Cas loves Dean and despairs of ever being loved that way in return. To his mind, unrequited.

I’ve tracked this reading for three years, hoping (sometimes despairing). In my earliest iteration of this reading, I took it as “Heaven’s most sacred oath” made Cas reign in his feelings. Over the past two seasons, the show subverted that expectation, supplanted it with the Empty Deal, and then exploded it onto the screen.

When season 14 premiered, I decided to start using ‘the folklore of supernatural’ tag to start tracking pings of what I guess is now my “fairy tale meta” that evolved out of knowing that Lucifer’s child would be known as Jack. So, okay, it was ten percent crack and eighty percent complete earnestness and another ten percent rum, but there were a lot of really fun readings that I got out of that. 

Basically-- Dean was painted as Snow White for a really good part of season 14-- remember that the ma’lak box was an infernal coffin-- but Jack totally busted that up. Like, he tore that up, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it out the proverbial window. That story did NOT get repurposed from Dean to Jack. On the other hand, Jack threaded a Sleeping Beauty allusion, one that Castiel stepped into in order to save Jack from the Empty-- Cas agreed to assume the consequences, and that tale WAS repurposed.

We saw in Despair just exactly how that played out.

So here’s my spec, based off of my fairy tale metas. I know, it’s all a little bit blue curtains, but it’s also no percent rum this time.

Sleeping Beauty falls asleep because she fulfils her destiny. She satisfies her curiosity about the spindle. There is nothing in the heavy-hitting versions of that tale to indicate that she inflicted that damage on herself in order to summon her prince. She did it because it was something she wanted to do.

So too when Castiel let himself live his true heart, and did so with no expectation of anything from Dean.

So here’s where I am. Sleeping Beauty falling asleep is just a trough, one of the low points in the story. The lowest, true, although later dips may have more riding on their outcome (thinking of the Disney SB when Prince Phillip takes up the sword and shield to do battle with Maleficient here, man, that is a roller coaster.)

But anyway, there is more plot for her after the incident with the spinning wheel. Sometimes, a lot more plot. But the point of that story is that she wakes up.

In short, while I actually cried, actually out loud, when Cas spoke his truth, when he touched that spindle, I believe that there is more.

Castiel still needs to be saved.

I’ve been afraid of actually saying that because it just seemed to be too much to hope for. But. I mean. We still have the prince’s part to see played out. 

So, whether we actually get more Castiel in the last episodes remains to be seen, I guess. Either way, I’m weirdly satisfied. Castiel got to live his heart, he became replete. And Dean now knows that Castiel loved him completely, unconditionally, irrevocably-- that Castiel saw his true form.

[hayleysayshay]

Love your metas on Mako. You have an great grasp on his character. Can I ask what your ideal story line for Mako post Canon would be, as in if there was another comic series where would you see his character going?

(Sadly I wrote most of this out before and it wasn’t saved as a draft ahhh) but thank you, I love writing about Mako.

I think I’d just have some story that acknowledges Mako (and Bolin’s) trauma and childhood. They (or just Mako) saw their parents get murdered and then lived on the streets. Every day would be a fight for survival. It was truly fucked and canon doesn’t acknowledge it .

I think both Bolin and Mako world be traumatised by the past, But Bolin copes better by being more expressive, and I think . But with both I think there’s a denial about how bad their past is, and how it isn’t normal, and how it affected them.

I think Mako has always struggled with introspection— you can’t afford to second guess yourself if every day is a survival. Any choices that were made he couldn’t doubt, he had to take care of his brother. Like, in Republic City Hustle, the reason Mako agrees to becoming a probender was because of Bolin’s puppy dog eyes— Shady Shin appealed to Mako’s logic. Mako couldn’t doubt himself and always thought he was right in the moment, because he had to be. I think by book 4 Mako is better— he can see where he went wrong with Korra and Asami. I think Mako needed that time to just be Mako— time away from being Bolin’s protector, Korra’s boyfriend and protector and Asami’s boyfriend and protector— which is why I think I’m that clipshow with Wu, although I don’t like the line about how Mako how he wanted fame and money (he was literally homeless, of course he’d be focussed on job security Ahhh), I think the line about him learning to not have a lady in his life as being very true and *needed* which is why I like book 2 ending with everyone single (arguably they *all* needed it). This is muddied by him being Wu’s bodyguard, a protective position, but it does appear it was viewed as a job by Mako (any emotional investment coming later, likely).

So, I’d like to see this introspection this continue— Mako realising how bad his childhood is. You could do something where there’s like a three part piece focussed on Mako and Bolin only. Like going to the Fire Nation and learning about their mother and trying to find her family would be great. But this would be too much, likely, I think you could wrap this up in a typical adventure storyline. Maybe there’s some sort of conspiracy or drama that reflects Mako’s childhood. Maybe the whole krew is in the Fire Nation and this triggers some souls searching.

I like to headcanon that Mako would have issues with bending fire if his parents were murdered by it, but this arguably has no basis in the show as Mako doesn’t show anything, and could be left out. However murdered parents trauma is very clear and I just want *something* that acknowledges this.

I want Mako to have an emotional release where he cries, dammit. Just give me a scene where he finally breaks down. Where he realises that no, he isn’t okay, what happened was never okay. Let him be angry. And then after that, I think with the power of love and understanding from Bolin and potentially his friends and family, is he able to start to move on, and have a healthier relationship with... himself.

After an exploration of the trauma, then we could have the compulsory romance lol.

As for work, I don’t have an issue with Mako staying on in the RCPD, which, to add, is a fictional police force in a fictional world with a fictional character. I honestly don’t see Mako as the type of person to leave his job quickly, but after the emotional release I think you could easily marry a storyline into it that he rushed into a job a bit and is it really what he wants to do? He could help the orphans, though this is more my headcanon for Bolin? I don’t know, I flip flop on Mako’s career.

What I’d like to see is an expression of how far Mako has come from who he was when he was eighteen. That should be celebrated. Sure, Korra helped with it by introducing him to a world bigger than his, and he clearly admired Korra a lot, but Mako please give yourself some credit.

As for romance, I don’t give much of a poo at this stage, but I prefer Wuko, and remain unenthused at the idea of FN princess x Mako. Any romance I’d have well after the trauma storyline. And if it was wuko I want a freaking long storyline that actually develops it, but there won’t be so I think it’s be cringe so best not they do it. Or any romance. But I’d like if for him to be bisexual honestly. Why not.

[captain-of-the-historicfuture]

~hello~ !! For the meta asks!: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, and 25 :))

Hello!! Thank you for sending these; I was really excited to see that ask game and I was hoping somebody would send some in. It still took me a while to actually answer them though, and for that I apologise. But without further ado! Some meta answers (under the cut because they ended up being fairly long, whoops):

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (Consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway.)

I thought of a few examples, but they could basically be grouped together under a common theme: whumpy/angsty scenes that were self-indulgent as all heck. The whole self-indulgent aspect often required the characters to be just the teeniest, tiniest bit OOC and/or necessitated rather unrealistic plot circumstances. So it was simply easier to keep such scenes as maladaptive daydreams, rather than trying to think of explanations for the character/plot issues…or exposing myself to judgement for them LOL.

Receiving permission to write/share one such scene anyway is an opportunity I can’t let slip by though. It might be because I’m writing this while running on zero (0) hours of sleep—let’s hear it for insomnia, y’all!—but I suddenly couldn’t remember any of my newer ideas under this category. However, I did recall a one-shot I had started writing a couple of months ago that sort of counts? “Sort of” because I could actually be arsed to write it since I was, ya know, writing it. Only got about six hundred words down though.

…should I share those six hundred words…?

………nahhh. I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet.

But here’s the gist of it: Coulson and May (because of course it’s Philinda) were married for quite some time before the Attack on New York. But then Coulson DiedTM and then got ResurrectedTM. But gasp of horror, he had to lose his memories of his romantic relationship with May because reasons. (I actually did have some ideas for those reasons but sshhhh this is about me yeeting context and setup.)

The first half of S1 still happens as normal (except MayWard doesn’t happen because??? Vows) and it’s now post-E20 “Nothing Personal”. The morning after (or a morning soon after, whatever) the T.A.H.I.T.I. reveal! May’s mom—who doesn’t know about GH.325 and whom May fed a cover story about Coulson divorcing her or something equally as oof, IDK—shows up at the hotel and starts ripping into Coulson for breaking her daughter’s heart, then dragging her back into the field with her ex-husband (him), then accusing her of terrible things and forcing her away again.

Poor guy’s confused as heck, and so is the team, and soon enough so is Lian. The only one who understands what’s going on is May, and she’s freaking dying off to the side like why is this happening to me and eventually everybody’s like! Explain??? (Was thinking about including something from Coulson like, “Are you still keeping things from me?” Just for that extra smidge of angst, yay!)

So yeah then May gives a, like, two-sentence debriefing that elicits more questions than answers. Coulson decides to take May aside and they have a heart-to-heart. Lots of feelings and angst and hurt/comfort and at some point plenty of kissing too. Just! May hiding her feelings for Coulson’s sake but really magnified, plus some actual apologies and consideration of the grief May’s been through on Coulson’s part.

And uhh yeah that’s basically it I dunno hdsjncjshd. I warned y’all it’s OOC, plot-bendy, and very self-indulgent!

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

I don’t think I could name a single character for this. I get different things out of taking on different voices, you know? I guess recently I’ve found myself gravitating towards more taciturn and introspective points of view, like JQ from my original novel Rosewood or M. Yisbon from my…other original novel Temple.

Generally, however, I like tackling stories from an outsider’s perspective. That’s why I so rarely write my more “substantial” (serious? demanding? for lack of better words?) projects from the PoV of my “preferred” character. This usually means writing from their love interest’s perspective, but not always. With shorter fanfic, using a more removed/unconventional/niche PoV can be really fun. Like, I once wrote a canon compliant ficlet purely(-ish) about Philinda from Tony Stark’s perspective. That isn’t always sustainable with stories that demand more character development or closer character studies, however, which is why it’s a good thing I like writing drabbles!

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

My word counts tend to run long, but I usually only write one-shots for fanfic. If I’m even inspired with a novella- or novel-length story idea for a fandom, you already know I’m in deep with them. And if I actually find the motivation to plan and execute that idea? Dangg. That’s only ever happened…twice, maybe thrice, and I’m in a lot of fandoms.

At times, I wish I could go for more of a middle ground ’cause, like, you know what I love to see? An AO3 dashboard with several completed novellas for my ship/character of choice. I mean yes, I hecking love >90k fics, but sometimes I’m in the mood for quick reads…and what am I supposed to do when I burn through all the drabbles and 2k one-shots? (Besides despair and/or reread my faves desperately.) Novellas are basically always safe for me LOL, and I’d hope to be able to give as much as I take.

Ultimately though, I think I’m okay with where I am with regards to that. I wish I could write more in general, but I’d be okay with “writing more” just meaning “writing more one-shots”, ya know? More than okay, really. I have mad respect for fic writers who have, like, a hundred or more one-shots under their belt for this one ship. The fandom ecosystem would be incomplete without them (as well as every other type of writer, but sshhh that’s the type of writer I’m closest to being right now).

I’m definitely a plotter, and I definitely prefer it that way. It’s cool having such a detailed record of my process. I like feeling like a frazzled genius on the brink of a major discovery with all of my different outlines and colour coding and many drafts and various websites.

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

Not exactly. It might be cool if my original works were recognisable in the world, but I don’t think I’d want to be recognisable. As for fanfic, I’d low-key enjoy gaining a place in that fandom’s community as a fic writer. Like someone who gave and got fic gifts from fic writer friends, who participated in challenges and GCs, who received writing prompts on Tumblr, whose name was known for doing a certain trope/genre a bunch of times… Ya know what I mean?

Unlikely to happen when I’m so hecking hesitant to publicly (i.e., outside of AO3) claim credit for my writing, but fjnskfsjhfjs. A writer can dream, right?

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Of those three, tags are the easiest for me, for I have a reliable system for figuring out those.

Next easiest would probably be titles. For fanfiction, I like to use titles that are a quote from the source material. You should have seen all of my old Hamilton fanfic… I was really proud of some of those titles. And I don’t mean, like, whole lines—usually only two to five words. It’s a unique type of wordplay that I just love dabbling in.

And lastly, summaries. Sometimes inspiration strikes me and a snappy and intriguing synopsis just jumps out—one that I’m quietly pleased with—but most of the time I’ll spend way too long trying to think of such a synopsis and eventually just go with whatever I’d come up with so far. And live with my quiet dissatisfaction for the rest of time.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (Plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations...?) Tell us about them!

Typically, no. If I have deleted scenes, I save and publish them separately, but that’s about it. I sometimes think of AUs for my own work and might talk about them in my author’s notes—might even talk about writing them—but I never really do anything with them.

Although…

It’s not uncommon for me to decide a plotline isn’t working for a certain story or to think of an interesting but undoable arc for a certain character, but what I’ll do is make a whole new story for those ideas. Once I’m done developing the original idea and the branched-off one, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell they grew from the same roots. Does that count?

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as (film, webcomic, animated series, etc.)?

That depends on the story. I’ve actually written stories in other mediums—movie screenplay, musical stageplay, poetry, TV show scripts, play scripts, roleplay—but the novel does tend to be my comfort zone. Sometimes, if I have an idea that I think could work, or would even work better, as another medium, I’ll label it as such in my folder of ideas and decide not to write it as a novel.

Most of the time, my non-book projects are collaborations. I’m working with five different people on six different story ideas: two webcomics, one stage musical, one anime, and two animated TV shows. Little concrete progress has been made in any of those, mind you, but they’re still fun to discuss!

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Absolutely. But I’ve been writing stories since I was five years old, so we would hope so, huh?

I wouldn’t say my writing’s changed completely, though maybe that’s just my insider’s perspective.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

Oh gosh, I can’t believe you’d make me choose. Writing is just such a wonderful experience for me; I love just about everything to do with it. Admittedly, not all the time, but. Since that barely qualifies as an answer, however, I’ll give you this—

The endings. Not only that intense feeling of rightness when you wrap up that last sentence, but also the moments before. The adrenaline of knowing you’re almost there but you gotta push just a bit more to actually get there. And also the part right after—the real wrap-up, honestly: the revision and the editing. Heavens, I love revising and editing my work.

Which is not to say I don’t like writing it out for the first time, too—there’s nothing quite like seeing your cursor scroll to the next page, like going from a blank expanse to a Oh man, how many more lines are even going to fit on this page?, like watching that page counter tick up another number. However, there’s something cathartic about finally ironing out those problems I had to force myself to stop worrying about earlier because “just finish the first draft dangit”.

I guess that’s not really the end of the writing process, but whatever. Close enough (as fic writers are wont to say).

Another thank-you for these asks, and feel free to come back with more at any time! ;P

Send in fun meta asks for your friendly neighbourhood writer!

[oldmanatom]

wrote a whole long post about how i “did” “NaNo,” thought i saved it to my drafts, came to post it tonight and it’s not there. that’s genuinely a bummer since i had other Thoughts™ baked into it, but i’ll take it as an opportunity to write a second draft version instead, now that i have my thoughts more together:

my version of NaNo, much like my version last year, was just to hit a word count goal with whatever writing i could scrape together. this year i set the goal lower than last year, and actually more or less hit it, which was cool and tbh surprising.

i’ve been resistant to writing to hit a word count in the past—seemed like an easy way to psych myself out, plus how i write (jumping all around the story/page/doc) makes keeping track of word counts annoying at best, challenging at worst—but succeeding last month made it far more appealing. i’m going to try and hit it again this month, to see if it might be a good way to keep myself on the writing...treadmill? hike? grind? [insert relevant metaphor here].

for the first time in literally (literally!) years, i’ve completed a first draft of something. it’s objectively not very good, and will need a lot of work—i didn’t know what the hell i was doing for 50% of it, and once i figured out what i was trying to do i didn’t know how to do it for the other 50%, and it took me basically the entire month to put it together brick by brick, so what i have now is about as scattered as you’d expect from that process—but it’s done, which means i can actually do that work and make those edits with a holistic view on what i’m working with, instead of, like, trying to fix the foundation as i’m also trying to build the frame and hang the drywall, so to speak.

thinking also about this post, and about that Terry Pratchett quote about how the first draft is just you telling yourself the story, and about how impossible it is to know and see everything there is to know and see about my story on the very first pass. this idea—that something being done is better than it being good when it comes to first drafts—is something that’s both obvious and easy to understand, and yet has taken me years to realize and more years to actually implement.

why? lots of reasons. one of them: i get stuck in write-edit cycles—write something, go back and edit it, write more, edit that and edit the other part to fit in with the new part, write more, etc etc. it’s a momentum killer. if i do that, i finish nothing, as i’ve proven over and over again over the years as i’ve started a million things and followed through on exactly none of them. trying to break myself of this habit has been a struggle, and mostly i lose, but i’m losing less often and less extensively than i was at the beginning, which i’ll take.

why care about this? lots of reasons. one of them: i am extraordinarily tired of looking at my folders full of bits and pieces stuck in Google docs that get forgotten about and left to collect virtual dust. they might be “good,” but i’m not satisfied with just writing them and letting them sit and do nothing, like some sort of dragon’s hoard of words. i am, regardless of how i feel moment to moment, a decent writer; if nothing else, i’m writing things that i like to read, and that i’d like others to read; i should find a way to bridge the gap and finish these off into something i can share.

(feeling like nothing’s ever done enough to share is its own point which i’m still trying to figure out, and which might be the next meta “thing” i tackle on the first edit/second draft of this piece. how much can one oneshot teach me? is it wise to make this into The Little Story That Could? i guess we’ll find out.)

one thing i’ve been learning as i’ve been trying to put this idea into practice, which will absolutely sound sappy but keeps proving itself true: my story’s going to teach me as i go. it’s going to tell me what needs to happen with the plot and characters and everything else, and it’s going to do that regardless of whether or not i have a 19 page scene-by-scene outline or a conversation i like, an image in my head of the scene, and a vague idea of what i want to happen next. and, whatever i miss on the first round i can pick up and work on in the next rounds. but it only teaches me if i keep writing it, unfortunately.

basically: it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be done. that’s it. that’s the only requirement of a first draft: that it be complete. just keep writing until the damn thing’s finished. polish comes second. i keep repeating this like a fucking mantra, like something you’d chant to yourself to get through a root canal or the last hour of a truly terrible shift, and honestly that’s what it feels like half the time, but it worked once, so who’s to say it won’t work again.

i think there was a third point in my original post, but i can’t remember it so i guess it can’t be that important. i’ll end with a few quotes from this past month of NaNo, entirely from that draft, which is partly because that was 80-90% of my writing this past month and partly because the other 10-20% is stuff that i’m likely going to be posting soon (yes, i do have plans to post something soon, sorry @ my poor neglected writing sideblog). without context, because i think that’s funnier—

1.

To your eternal shame, you can't actually manage to look up at the woman you know is standing in the doorway, one sandaled foot through the threshold and leaning heavily on the Death First to Solicitors and Thieves doormat. Instead, you glance partway over and see weak, yellowish light spill out from inside, cascade over the porch steps, and reach with dim and blunted fingers out towards her soaked half yard. You trace the watery edges of it with your eyes instead of looking at her, and it's a coward's move but that relief is back again, so.

"Harrow?" she says, barely audible over the pounding water around you.

You remember, then, when you told her ages ago that her vintage standing lamp needed its bulb replaced and the two of you had gotten into a nice little row over well, it's not dead yet, now is it, and where the hell am I supposed to find another weird filament bulb like that, and who exactly decided to get the damn antique showpiece thing anyways. It's entirely unsurprising that after all these years it's still the same almost-flickering bulb stuck in it, that it's somehow still alive and managing to bleed light out onto this miserable scene.

2.

Being shorn down to your shirts and jeans and socks makes you wrap your arms around yourself again. No longer having five pounds of wet denim on your shoulders lets your body remember what warmth is, and more importantly reminds you that you have none, and so what had been a vague shaking for the last hour turns into full-on shivering, teeth clacking and everything. You ask, not for the first time, for some reasonable God to show you mercy and cut you down.

Instead, Ianthe covers her smile half with her hand and says, "Oh, look at you, Harry, you poor thing. Soaking wet and I didn't even have a hand in it."

"Shut up," you try to say, but your chattering teeth and jaw make it come out more like "s-s-s-hhhht 'p," and Ianthe doesn't react regardless, just shakes her head and throws you another towel.

3.

"Harrow, please. It's late and I've never been fond of your insistence on bullshitting when I have your back against a wall. Besides, ending up huddled on my porch in the worst storm of the year is a little much, even for—"

"Even for me," you interrupt, "as though I was the one who slept in front of our front door for three nights so that I wouldn't 'run out on you with the rent' after you lost an argument."

The corner of Ianthe's mouth twitches, but it's the only slip of her otherwise curious, focused expression. "To be fair, it was an argument about the rent."

[thecxmmissioner]

( I just found this sitting in my drafts from 2017 but never posted it? Not sure why, maybe just never got around to it, maybe was waiting to harass @exsiliumductoris . But it’s some interesting Reeve meta so I shall post it now. )

Reeve and Veld—

The more I read the more obscure bits of canon ( BC, novellas, etc. ) involving Reeve ( which tbh I did not bother to do until I started playing him a couple of months ago ), the stranger this is to me. Namely, that canon keeps making these references to Reeve and Veld being lowkey pretty chummy, while indicating that it’s curious that they are but without ever hinting why.

Check this out—

In Before Crisis:

Tseng: [Player Turk]. The person I told you about has returned from his business trip. Player Turk: Reeve, the Director of City Planning, right? Do you really think he is going to help us [disobey our orders to assassinate Veld and help him save his daughter instead]? Tseng: Chief Veld said he would. We’ll have to believe in him.

Player Turk: Gongaga, huh... Tseng: We must get there without the army noticing us. But how...? Reeve: Take a submarine from Junon. Tseng: But the army controls the submarines. Player Turk: We can’t let the army know we’re on the move. Reeve: There’s no need to worry. Simply sneak in and steal one. If they catch you, tell them it was on my orders. I’ll take full responsibility. Player Turk: Thank you very much, sir. (Why is he willing to go to such lengths for us?)

Player Turk: Thank you for helping me all the way here [to Gongaga]. Cait Sith: Aw, don’t ye worry none. Veld and I go back a long ways. Player Turk: ?! You know about us cooperating with Chief Veld?! Cait Sith: My fortunes told me so. Player Turk: What did you say!? (He knows that we’ve turned traitor. What should I do...?) Cait Sith: Ye dinnae have tae worry yeself. I’m not about tae go an’ tell th’ President. Player Turk: Why? Cait Sith: I told ye, we go back a ways. How’s Veld doin’? I only e’er heard that ye could nae quit th’ Turks lest ye were dead. Player Turk: I’m sorry. That’s... That’s classified... Cait Sith: I see... I see... Player Turk: I am truly sorry. Cait Sith: ‘Tis fine! Truly! Just tell him that I’m happy tae be o’ help tae him. Come! We’d better hurry!

As far as I can tell, though, there’s never any time earlier than this when Reeve and Veld interact?? Unless it’s a very small blip in an earlier part of Before Crisis, because admittedly I have only skimmed the rest of it. But this connection isn’t even just isolated to Before Crisis.

Case of Shinra novella:

It was Reeve who saved Tseng in the end. An odd little robot cat – riding on the back of a Giant Moogle – appeared before Tseng. Reeve was assigned the mission to spy on Aerith and her comrades using this robot cat.

[...]

“As for yourself, Mr Tseng — I’ll contact Shin-Ra for you.”

“—Right.”

[...]

Tseng had a lot of questions for him, but as he was lifted up by the Giant Mog, he lost consciousness due to the pain. His memories of what happened next were sketchy at best.

Three men carried Tseng onto a boat. The men were his former superior and his subordinates. Why had Reeve contacted them, and not the company directly? Had he been in constant contact with them. Question after question came to mind, but Tseng didn’t have the strength to say anything. He was unconscious for most of the trip. When he regained consciousness, he found himself in a small room. The air had a distinct smell of sea foam and rusted metal, he knew he had been taken to Junon. A doctor arrived almost immediately and began his treatment.

Later in Case of Shinra:

By late night, Tseng and Elena had joined Reno and Rude, but even with their help, they didn’t finish up until the early hours of the morning. When the four finally got home, they decided to catch up on some sleep, but just before noon, they were suddenly awoken by Veld, who barged in out of the blue.

“You gave me quite a surprise for an old man who’s supposed to be dead.”

“I should be the one surprised that Turks are sleeping for this long.”

[Veld shares intel with Tseng, Reno, Rude, and Elena regarding the man holding Rufus hostage, and then they prepare to part ways.]

“What do you plan to do now, Sir?” Tseng asked as he made his way to the door to follow his subordinates.

“I’ll head back to Junon. Reeve should be on his way there now. ”

“That is curious.”

“Yes. And Reeve is not the only one you should keep in mind.”

So, in all of these little references, it basically goes: “Hey, this has never been shown on screen, but Reeve and Veld are actually pretty tight. Like, tight enough to trust each other as co-conspirators multiple times throughout the years, both before and after Meteorfall and Veld’s supposed death.” “Huh! That’s kind of noteworthy and possibly significant.” “EXACTLY.”

???! 

[ “...Care to tell us why, canon?” “NOPE.” ]

I really want to believe it’s because Reeve was involved in the reconstruction of Kalm, but that’s just me theorizing.

Anyway, I just thought this was neat and wanted to share it!

[myevilmouse]

Hello dear friend! I was wondering if you might be able to tell me what were George Lucas’s plans for Luke’s future after RotJ? We’ve now seen what the EU had in store and what Disney has done, but I was wondering what did Luke’s creator himself want to happen? I’ve tried looking it up, but there’s not much info I can find. Maybe you can enlighten me? Thank you ever so much! Your account brings me so much joy every single day💗 Take care and may the force be with you!

Hello dear anon!  Thank you for your very sweet note--it brings me joy to know that people find joy in my devotion 💗 💗 💗 

There are a few separate places where I have heard things about George's intentions for Luke post-ROTJ, so I will info dump a little.  I've read the Rinzler books and watched so many "Making Of" things that I may not be able to name all my sources, BUT here's what I consider the most important one and I promise I didn't make it up:  I read somewhere that Lawrence Kasdan (scriptwriter) wanted to kill someone in ROTJ, and the director was on board.  Kasdan wanted it to be Han Solo, and Lucas veto'd it, and so they were pushing for Lando to die nobly or something instead.  Marquand and Kasdan thought if one of the main heroes bit the dust, it would give a more high stakes and epic aspect to the films.  And Lucas was adamantly against it, and said something along the lines of "these characters have earned their happy ending" and forbade them to kill any of the good guys in ROTJ.  Thank god.

The next clue we have of Lucas protecting Luke's happy ever after was when Del Rey was wanting to kill off a major character to sell their latest installment in the New Jedi Order book series, Vector Prime (1999).  They asked Lucas (who still had creative control at that point) if they could kill Luke.  His response was to provide a list of characters they could not kill.  Of course our Jedi was on that list.  As he had said before, the trio deserved their happy ending.  Sadly, Chewie wasn't on that list, and once again our medal-deprived Wookiee was given the short end (and in this case, lethal) end of the stick.  So they killed him in that book, much to the anger of fans all over.  *kicks EU for the injustice*  Apparently Lucas was OK with Chewbacca's demise, when the story editors double-checked to be super sure, as long as he went out "heroically," which he did, saving Han & Leia's youngest child by sacrificing himself.

It should be noted that when George Lucas sold the rights to Lucasfilm to Disney, apparently he also threw in outlines for his envisioned sequel trilogy.  I have read somewhere that he was (unsurprisingly) very disappointed to find that Disney was basically throwing all his ideas out, and none were incorporated in TFA.  A shame, but it does seem that Lucas' plans for a sequel trilogy were going to be much more cerebral and meta than what most people would have expected.  While I would have been super happy with an Heir to the Empire film, Lucas has spoken about his dream for the sequels in this excerpt from James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction:

“[The next three Star Wars films] were going to get into a microbiotic world. But there’s this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force… If I’d held onto the company I could have done it, and then it would have been done. Of course, a lot of the fans would have hated it, just like they did Phantom Menace and everything, but at least the whole story from beginning to end would be told.”

This makes sense, if you go look at the earliest drafts of Star Wars--the Journal of the Whills.  Lucas even had midichlorians in the back of his brain, since the beginning.  I can't imagine what those films would have looked like, but we can be confident Luke wouldn't have been given a character assassination ;)No one had so much love and life invested into Star Wars as George Lucas, so when TFA came out and he was reportedly disappointed (per Bob Iger's memoir), that wasn't unexpected.  Still lots of people felt his absence at the world premiere of TROS was a deliberate refutation of Disney's "canon", and I don't blame him one bit, not after TLJ, how could he trust them with Luke, his noble heroic creation and personal avatar?

(probably what Mark’s face looked like after reading TLJ-script)^^

Mark Hamill has spoken in interviews about what he thinks Lucas wanted for Luke--notably training Leia in the sequel to ROTJ as a Jedi, that is one point, which would fit in just fine with the EU, the microbiotics, and Legends.  He also said Lucas wanted to kill Luke in the final film (Episode 9).  Not sure that is true, given the other evidence to the contrary, but it seems to me that if Lucas did want to "end" Luke's story with a death, he only trusted himself to do it correctly, otherwise he would have let Del Rey knock him off in the Legends-verse.

(Mark and George discuss how Luke is never gonna give any Jedi up, never gonna let them down, never gonna run around and desert his friends!)

TL;DR  George Lucas wanted Luke to live happily ever after!!! 

And May the Force Be With You too, Anon, always.

[mittensmorgul]

I've just read through your previous ask about a yellow bathroom from S13 and some older color meta posts, but I'm wondering if you had any thoughts on the use of yellow specifically thus far in S15. You noted, "Which brings us to yellow (and also yellow and blue together, which have always been a warning sign on Supernatural… she says as she’s watching 9.01 and looking at Hael wearing a sulfur-yellow sweater over a dark blue dress. Those are the colors of Heaven and irresistible duty)." Con't..

So far what’s jumped out at me is Amara’s yellow pant suit, the girl tonight (avoiding spoilers bc timezones) wearing a yellow beret and tie-thing, and most glaringly, Dean’s yellow over shirt at the end. We never see him wearing yellow, certainly not that blatantly, or at least not that I remember. (My memory is unreliable) ‘Heaven and irresistible duty’ certainly fit, but I’m wondering if you have any new thoughts or anything else to add.

***

hello! And welcome to the continuation of the chat I initiated with you while trying to work out what exactly to say here. I’m copy/pasting my chat rambling here and then going forward from there…

(editing this, because tumblr borked the formatting when I posted it... thanks for that >.>)

the way Lilith’s clothes were coded in this episode were effectively a trap. SHE was effectively a trap, I mean Chuck had “written her into the episode” specifically to “seduce dean” after all… and she did that… wearing an outfit that ScREAMED Cas, so I want to put together something coherent for you before replying :’D

coinofstone Gotcha. Thank you for teaching out. I don’t generally follow color meta, someone pointed me to some of your #color and temp posts so I dug through a little before sending in the ask - Lilith’s comment about Chuck’s pervy obsession with Dean was a giant klaxon that made me think of Dean’s concerns about Cas too. But it’s also another “Hey remember Amara” moment

mittensmorgul yeah, and it’s a really good point

coinofstone Absolutely. I look forward to reading your post on this, once you’ve had time to digest and get it all written

mittensmorgul you mentioned the “duty to heaven” association with that mustard yellow/tan color, and that seems really relevant since Lilith’s entire presence there was in service to Chuck’s story, even as an unwilling participant in it, while Dean’s wrestling with his entire relationship to Cas, questioning if any of it was even real, since Cas’s mission originated as “Duty to Heaven” in saving him from Hell

mittensmorgul And I think all of this will become textual in 15.09, in Dean’s prayer to Cas…Foreshadowing! But not the kind Chuck’s writing…

mittensmorgul heck, I think I might just copy paste what I wrote to you here, and reply to your messages. I think I’ve worked out what I need to say

(and now that I have permission to post this, we can move on to why this is so interesting)

Lilith lampshaded herself as Chuck’s plot device, effectively. She was reenacting her own previous plot line from 4.18, seducing one of the brothers. Last time it was Sam, this time it was Dean. I’ve already posted something else about this tonight. She actively critiqued Chuck’s writing all along. She saw through Chuck’s story enough– even while she was a basically manufactured element of his story– to be self-aware of her own function within that story, as well as to point at other elements of the story and tell Dean “this is foreshadowing, isn’t it dull and predictable?”

She’s like… the opposite of Becky in 15.04.

Chuck basically BEGGED Becky to give him “notes” on his draft, and Becky had approached it in a fanfic-mindset of good faith, assuming Chuck was basically just writing fanfic as any human would. Lilith is self-aware, and knows the meta-plot. She knows she’s been placed there as a character in Chuck’s story, and she knows all about the story Chuck is trying to tell… and she HATES it.

She says she was given the choice of three vessels, and chose the one who’d apparently “picked the hardest road” for herself. She could’ve chosen one of the other girls, but this is the story that resonated with Lilith. Did she choose this, or did Chuck create her story out of whole cloth as even more foreshadowing, and with heavy references to the past when he’d done exactly the same thing with her? (rewriting her from a child into a “comely dental hygienist” when that suited the narrative he needed to tell?)

But that brings me back to Ashley/Lilith’s weird choice of clothing. Even back in the opening scenes in the tent, her two friends are dressed normally– t-shirts, like one might wear to sleep while camping. But Ashley… had the tie on. Scarf. Neckerchief. Whatever. She looked weirdly like she was trying to be a girl scout just because they’d been on a camping trip, you know? So, weird neckerchief. Which in this case looks both like Cas’s tie, AND Marie’s outfit in 10.05.

And Chuck told her, “not bad.”

Yeah, school uniforms for Marie and friends, but… Ashley/Lilith apparently chose this for herself, right down to the weird little beret.

Marie’s outfit was trimmed in this mustard color, but Lilith’s is just full-on mustard accessories.

Because Lilith was entirely self-aware through this entire episode that she was nothing more than Chuck’s plot device. She had no free will. She said repeatedly that she would’ve tortured and killed Sam and Dean both if she could, but she couldn’t, because she was entirely limited by what Chuck created her for within this episode. HOW FRUSTRATING, RIGHT?!

I guess, hence the perma-fake-tear visual of that wound on her cheek. Which was emphasized in the episode with her actual tears coursing over the cut.

This… was her chain. She could COMPLAIN about her role, she could complain about the stupidity of Chuck’s entire story. She could even laugh about his obvious asinine plot devices and foreshadowing– including her own incongruous appearance at this point in the story. But she was entirely bound by the construct Chuck created for her, and was unable to act outside of his plot.

Duty. Bound. And it’s tied right around her neck like a choker she can’t take off, in the color of duty to Heaven.

AND SHE WAS A DEMON, NOT AN ANGEL.

That doesn’t exempt her at all from being a pawn in Chuck’s narrative.

She even talked about her original purpose, to die for the original story, to free Lucifer, and her frustration that it was all for nothing. There was no grand purpose fulfilled because of her sacrifice. As far as she;s concerned, everything her entire existence was built around had been a lie. And she’s seen Chuck whole story for what it really is as a result of that. And yet here she is, playing another role for Chuck, in his unending narrative where he hopes maybe this time around things will work out to his liking. But it never will.

She also lampshaded the whole Free Will versus Destiny conundrum which we’ve been saying for years was the central theme of Supernatural since… forever. And pushed Dean to reiterate his stand on it– that he wouldn’t give it up, that he’d take all the bad he’d ever endured all over again, as long as he was making his own choices in his life. I’m not even sure that was what Chuck was going for here, or if Dean’s continued assertion of his own belief in free will was what broke Chuck’s hold over Lilith as a “character” here, and allowed her to begin voicing her critique of Chuck’s story, you know? If Dean had given in to her seduction, would she have ever been able to wrench free enough of Chuck’s written story to voice her own opinions of it? I like to think that Dean’s act of rebellion there changed the script, or allowed her to go “off script” enough to fill him in on some of the realities of Chuck’s interference.

But that remains to be seen. As far as Lilith goes, I think she was a construct for this episode… literally an agent of Chuck entirely created for the purposes of this episode as a test just as she was in 4.18. Was this the “real Lilith” brought from the Empty? Or just Chuck doing his thing and creating a story? How much can a writer really lie within the construct of his own disintegrating story?

[literaetures]

omg ive never met anyone who likes the medici show!!!!! pls share ur thoughts

you must be new here bc i Love the show! it’s one of my all time fave period dramas (coming from someone who knows nothing about the actual history of the family other than the one (1) page history that was given in her high school history textbook and sporadic wikipedia diving when watching the show— i just love period dramas) and i often quote this post by @hotniatheron when talking about this show (because that’s literally. the whole show)

the cinnamon topography, the sets, the characters the costumes, the d r a m a, the storyline! i love it all! i’ve written a few posts on the show as well that i’ll link here if you want some memes (and usually gifsets i rb are filled with commentary) but if you really care about why i love the show, i’ll try to give you as much of a summary as i can (w o w so this got long because i have a lot of feelings so i’ll leave this under the cut but tl;dr i adore this show and i think about it more than once a week and have tons of half-written meta posts sitting in my drafts fjwkjfewn)

i watched s1 when it first came out and immediately fell in love, watched the whole thing in one day (avoiding a paper i had due lmao) and completely fell for it. i loved the morally ambiguous leanings of everyone in that season— no one was quite Good™️ or Bad™️, they all did things with their own ambitions and their own ideas of what a good future may look like in mind— i loved all the scenic shots and the duomo (the true protagonist), i loved the characterization of “the banker that wanted to be an artist”, the attack and murder of albizzi and his son! in the forest! in slow motion! while the duomo is being consecrated! the mist of the forest combining with the smoke from the lamps! still gives me chills! i hated every moment cosimo wasn’t respecting his amazing wife who rode in oh horseback! in the signoria! just to save his ass! and he completely shunned her for it! i loved lucrezia’s depth they gave her towards the end that was later extended in s2 (where you could Tell contessina took her under her wing and gave her the single braincell of the family) and even more, i loved the multi layered storyline of the season— the coming of age story of cosimo, the murder mystery of who killed his father, the PLOT TWIST of who killed his father!!! (i kept forgetting in my first and second rewatches of the season and every time i forgot it felt like i experienced it for the first time all over again!) but most importantly, i loved the narrative of not knowing what to do in life, that every decision you made is a gamble with outcomes that are both good and bad, but there will be people around you who support you and get you through it

and then. s2. by far the better written of the two three seasons with a more clear plotline and timeline that allows you to really take in the characters and the plotline at once while allowing for more nuance and depth in a way that we didn’t get in s1! here we have the distinct battle between Good and Bad which was shocking after the morally grey complexity that we saw in s1 but made for a fresh new season that i instantly enjoyed! b u t!!! it did not go! where i thought it was going to go! as someone who knows nothing about the history, i went into it completely in the dark and solely began crafting possible endings in my head. i thought. i had pictured. that lorenzo and francesco started off enemies, francesco realizes his uncle jacopo (sean bean) has been manipulating him, switches to the “good” side, hears the acts of betrayal, and instead of falling back into his uncle’s plotting and manipulation, i thought! i assumed! that francesco was playing him! i thought! that francesco would see through the manipulation and the abuse and was in a double agent scenario where he was plotting the “pazzi conspiracy” but he told lorenzo and giuliano about the plot and they’d catch jacopo in the act, give him a trial, and give him a prison sentence! i thought this WHOLE thing! even at the end of ep7! even after the hugs (i thought the extra squeezes was francesco signaling to lorenzo and giuliano that everything was going according to plan (because remember the whole Good and Bad clear divide? i thought this was going to be the grey zone of s1 to remind us of moral ambiguities)) and even when ep 3 “mass” was going. i was sitting there in my clown paint waiting for francesco to get! his! redemption arc! because i forgot! that this! was a historical period drama about real events! and it wasn’t until lucrezia’s scream that i realized “OH. it’s not going to get better” you can imagine. my pain. but i think that’s what made this season so good? anyone could have watched it and fallen in love with the storyline and good narrative they presented that allowed you to get lost in the characters and the story

and as for s3. i’m withholding as much of my thoughts as possible because i will be watching it when it finally airs on netflix and i want to properly give it the binge watch that i’ve given the past seasons to really sit with my thoughts to have fully formed thoughts and onions on it!

in any case, i love this show. so much! i cannot wait for the renaissance project to happen with seasons about all the artists, but g o d am i going to miss this disaster family so! much! (and all those scenic duomo shots) 

i love contessina and francesco (those are my two fave characters from the show) and there’s honestly so much more that i can say but honestly you can scroll through my series tags and see me cry about it because i’m rambling so much i know— if you give me a chance to tell you my thoughts on my obsessions! i’m so sorry in advance!

but i’m sure this is. not the length that you expected, but i hope it’s at least a bit entertaining! thanks for letting me talk about my obsessions for a bit!