#ALSO HOW DO SO MANY PEOPLE STRUGGLE WITH THAT ENEMY IT'S PRETTY STRAIGHTFORWARD??

[alllgator-blood]

narinder wondering if he should revive the lamb after they died to the same anchordeep sniper enemy 500 times in a row (they didn't know you're supposed to hit the projectiles back at it):

working on something incredibly stupid in capcut, I'm NOT an animator by ANY means but that nermal trash can video going around a while back still makes me laugh every single time and I wanted to try something new. I only have experience with literal windows movie maker and a 2013 cracked copy of sony vegas so while I'm hoping to get this done today, tomorrow is more likely

[zeta-in-de-walls]

Tommy’s character and the theme of failure

One thing I’ve always rather appreciated about Tommy’s story in the Dream SMP is how it explores the idea of failure. It can be a challenging one to do right as it means exploring a character’s weakness a lot and can start to feel unsatisfying if the character never succeeds but I feel like Tommy’s story avoids this issue as his arc is ultimately an encouraging one. His character never stops trying or gives up in spite of his losses, showing the perseverance to keep going until eventually he starts to find happiness, no matter how elusive it seems. 

Tommy’s character is no stranger to failure of course but I’d say this theme starts to become prominent with November the 16th. Tommy had two goals: to save L’Manberg and to save Wilbur. He was pretty optimistic about both. And he failed. The day ended in disaster with Wilbur dead, Technoblade, his idol, mocking his heroism and telling him to die, and his home in ruins. It takes him a long time to come to terms with who Wilbur was, separating Wilbur into two in his mind: President Wilbur and the ‘crazy’ Wilbur who blew up L’Manburg. 

But Tommy continues on, quietly moving on as L’Manburg gets rebuilt. No matter what, he still believes in L’Manburg; it’s still alive. Also, he wants to finally get his remaining disc back from Dream, feeling the need to do this after putting it aside for so long.

But of course, things don’t go well. That which he had taken for granted, his bond with Tubbo, was under fire. His personal wish to get his discs back was causing division. A simple prank gone wrong was tearing everything apart as Dream threatened L’Manburg once again. None of these things were purely Tommy’s actions, and yet his actions played a part all the same as Dream essentially took advantage of all of Tommy’s weaknesses. Tommy was being viewed as a liability, a troublemaker, as self-centred, as a problem. 

Tommy’s character likely blamed himself somewhat for his failure with Wilbur and L’Manburg the first time but it had been out of his hands and his reactions were more shock than being truly broken by the events and he kept up his optimism. Yet this time, the problems were not things far beyond his control. It seemed it was his own mistakes spelling his doom and it impacted him quite severely. As much as he recognised Dream as an antagonist here, his friends distrust of him was his failure. Despite his best efforts, he could not convince Tubbo not to exile him. 

Rather than seeing the fairly resilient, optimistic Tommy like the first time he was banished, this time Tommy’s defeated. We see the full effects it takes on his mental state and the narrative does not pull its punches. Tommy’s already depressed and we start to see evidence of suicidal thoughts very quickly. This is all made far, far worse by Dream who encourages his dark thoughts and feelings of worthlessness, telling him everyone’s better off without him while breaking his spirit and making him miserable by repeatedly blowing up his items. 

Dream was of course Tommy’s enemy, he’d recognised before that what Dream had been doing to L’Manburg, with the obsidian walls and insisting on banishing Tommy, had been unfair even if Tommy had been helpless to stop him. Yet over exile we see him really start to internalise Dream’s words, starting to really believe that narrative that he is unloved and a liability, despite his best efforts. As his mental state worsens we see him starting to believe Dream’s lies so much that he begins to believe that Dream is really his friend who cares about him. Meanwhile, he’s angrier and lashing out at the people he cares about, we seem him kill Jack, break the bridges he built and generally lashing out at the people he misses the most. 

So through exile, we see Tommy at his weakest and most vulnerable. We also see some of his flaws with his uglier side, his uncontrolled emotions, his dependency on others, his deep self-worth issues and how he can be so successfully lied to. This deep exploration of Tommy’s character allows us to really see how the repeated failures and setbacks and losses affected his character mentally and depict it as yet another obstacle he needs to overcome. 

And ultimately he does, ultimately deciding to fight back and run away from exile on his own. Tommy’s arc goes to very depressing places but manages to remain an inspiring story by showing you at his weakest and yet also show him never truly giving up but pressing on, in search of that happy ending. Running away from exile has him also realising that Dream is his enemy, not his friend and he commits to fighting back against him. 

But of course the narrative doesn’t entirely move on. Tommy’s struggles and failures continue to plague him as the mental issues he has with self-worth and his confused feelings towards Dream do not go away. He managed to continue but that wasn’t the perfect victory as most of his problems are still there and he’s still the same person. at Techno’s house, we see him and his confusion. He’s lighthearted and joking about but he’s still deeply troubled without a clear stance on Dream or L’Manburg or Tubbo and he clings to the idea of the disc as a simple goal. It seems as if he’s doomed to become the person he hated or make the same mistakes again. He once failed to save Wilbur and it seems as if his greatest failure would be to go down Wilbur’s path too, blowing up the country he once loved. 

And Tommy nearly goes too far. He finally meets Tubbo again and his anger, his issues all come back as does some self-centred behaviour as he declares that ‘the discs are worth more than you ever were’.

And he immediately regrets it. He apologises, he turns around and gives them up to Dream. He won’t let himself turn into Wilbur. 

And yet, every little victory he fights so hard for is met with an even greater failure. He switches sides on Technoblade while giving Dream exactly what he wanted. His story isn’t a happy one in spite of him trying his very best and making the decisions that are right for him. And we can only wonder how inevitable it was or if he could’ve done better for he hurts Techno deeply. Is he doing better or does his very nature doom him to make the same mistakes again and again?

Once ore, we see L’Manburg blown up and this time Tommy declares it a lost cause. Despite his best efforts, it’s over and we can only stare at the ruins of the nation he’d once helped build with Wilbur. Additionally, Tommy is dead to Techno now, that relationship seemingly broken forever. 

But it’s not the end. Tommy is defeated once more, with each failure hitting harder than the last but he doesn’t give up. He keeps on fighting. For all he’s lost, he’s won Tubbo back, and the experiences may have been terrible but he has learned something through all of it. Even if all that is, is understanding suffering a bit better and getting back the courage to apologise and reconcile.

He and Tubbo go after Dream and it’s almost, almost too late. He’s nearly locked in prison forever and Tubbo almost killed. 

But it’s not end. Just this once, it’s not a failure. They bet it all and finally had that victory. The rest of the server comes to save them and Dream gets locked in his prison while Tommy and Tubbo are finally free. 

Course, Tommy’s story isn’t over there. And the thing with this theme of failure is that it keeps on cropping up. They may have finally gotten a victory but Tommy’s issues aren’t over. he tries to start again, building his hotel but the trauma from exile has made an impact on him. It’s something that can’t be solved in a day, but only over a long time. And despite everything, the issues keep coming back. Tommy feels like things are unresolved with Dream and visits him again. 

And he gets locked in prison and dies and then gets resurrected. And its all absolutely devastating and it seems as if Tommy will never get better, that he’ll never truly have his happy ending. His hotel gets stolen from him and its as if everything he tries to do ends in failure.

He tries to sort things out, tries solving things with killing Dream and it just gets Ghostbur killed and the guilt can only eat at him. Wilbur is back at Tommy’s afraid but time has passed and he’s starting to see Wilbur more for who he is. After all he’s been through, he understands him way better than he did before. He once more commits to helping him but Tommy isn’t the naive kid he once was. 

Tommy still lives in the very same spot he always did. He still wants the same things he always did: a home, security, peace, friends, and he’s been experiencing many losses. And yet, his story is not a hopeless one. Because in spite of all that’s happened, he’s still trying again. And he’s learned and can avoid making those mistakes again. Right now, he’s doing better, he’s committing to living peacefully in a way he hasn’t in a long time. He’s been attempting to build bridges and though all his failures haunt him, he is gradually healing day by day, still trying to find that happy ending.

I think Tommy’s story is very cool for the way it really explores these themes of failure. It does not pull its punches, its dark, never easy or straightforward but that’s also what makes it so powerful. Those bright spots, feel so good, they feel so rewarding because they were so hard-fought. We root for Tommy’s character because we’ve seen his journey and really feel he deserves his happy end even though its never going to be perfect and indeed every failure is a mixture of forces outside of his control and his character which he has been trying to improve, learning to be nicer, more forgiving and more aware of his own emotions. He can’t fix Dream nor does he know how best to help Wilbur but he can help himself and that’s what he’s always trying to do. He holds himself to account and always tries his best.

[herinsectreflection]

I Don't Sleep on Bed of Bones: The Slayer as a Killer Across the Seasons

A pretty constant question throughout Buffy's arc - arguably the central question of the entire show, that Buffy must answer, is "what is a slayer? What does being The Vampire Slayer mean?". And a major part of that is the question of whether a slayer is just a killer. It's a question central to S5, but ripples throughout the rest of the show too, with some of the most iconic scenes in the show in converstion with each other around it. Inspired by an ask I received about this from @potterkid, I took a look at how this idea develops and resolves itself over the course of the show.

In S1, being the Slayer means accepting responsibility. It's metaphor for growing up - a metaphor that recurs throughout the show along with other ideas, but is strongest in S1. Buffy is torn between her teenage/human wants and her adult/supernatural responsibilities. She accepts her mortality and her duty (fighting the Master), and wins when she manages to integrate that with her personal desires (fighting the Master in a kickass prom dress with her friends and boyfriend). There's some stuff around the classic superhero idea that being around the hero is dangerous -e.g. in Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, but not much on the idea of a Slayer being a killer exactly.

In S2, being the Slayer means making hard choices. It means accepting that sometimes all your options are bad ones, but choosing one anyway, even at personal cost. This is introduced through Ford's story in Lie to Me, with Buffy's words to him forming one of the core thesis statements of the show ("You have a choice. You don't have a good choice, but you have a choice."), and it's climaxed beautifully in the tragic ending of Becoming. There's not much direct allusion to the idea of Buffy being a killer here, but this is a vital moment in that discussion. Ultimately, Buffy does make the decision here to kill Angel - not to slay Angelus, but to kill him. To take the life of her ensouled lover in order to save others. It's kind of the opposite of the decision that Ford makes - the best of two bad choices. It's the classic trolley problem, and Buffy's hand is on the lever by design - she has to make that choice because she's the Slayer. We will see this moment returned to again and again as this Slayer-vs-Killer theme develops.

Also, Ted is a very important episode for later. Buffy herself feels guilty specifically because she used her slayer powers on what she thinks is a regular human, and therefore killed him. Specifically, being the Slayer made her a Killer. It's also notable that this is where the idea of Buffy having a free reign to kill is first introduced - by Buffy's original shadow self in Cordelia no less.

Cordelia: I don't get it. Buffy's the Slayer. Shouldn't she have... Xander: What, a license to kill? Cordelia: Well, not for fun. But she's like this superman. Shouldn't there be different rules for her? - 2x12 Ted This isn't explored massively here but will be revisited again and again going forward.

S3 is where this theme really comes into focus. Faith enters as Buffy's shadow self and a representation of hedonism. How that manifests is as a Slayer who gives herself a license to Kill. She posits the idea that as slayers, they can and should decide who lives and dies.

Faith: Something made us different. We're warriors. We're built to kill. Buffy: To kill demons! But it does not mean that we get to pass judgment on people like we're better than everybody else! Faith: We are better! - 3x15 Consequences

Obviously, this is something that Buffy has to reckon with and fight against. But there is a glimmer of truth here, because at the end of S2, she does take the power of life and death into her own hands. She is faced with the choice between Angel and the world and decides that Angel should die. She had to, that's the position she has to be in because she is the Slayer. She has to be a Killer because she is a Slayer. So the two are intertwined.

More than this, Faith is someone who at least appears to revel in the kill. Up until now, we hadn't really seen Buffy enjoy being a slayer, but Faith does. Buffy is genuinely drawn to that, to slaying for pleasure. The equation of slaying/killing and sex for Buffy is first explicitly drawn by Faith in this season. ("Isn't it crazy how slaying always makes you hungry and horny?"). Slayers are very much like vampires in that respect, blurring the line between sex and death. In general, Faith introduces the idea that Buffy is drawn to killing - not just to protect people (the ideal of a Slayer), but for its own benefit. That's something that Buffy continues to struggle with going forward.

I have said before that Faith in S3 is an echo of Angel in S2, both in Buffy's relationship to them both and how that shifts mid-season, and in how it ends. In Graduation Day, Buffy again is given the power of life and death. This time, it's more personal - she can stop Angel dying by killing Faith. It's not such a straightforward (for want of a better word) decision as Angel .vs. the literal entire world, it's just the value of one life against the other. Another trolley problem, and it's not an easy choice, but it's still a choice. Just as she chose the lesser evil in killing Angel in S2, she kills the person filling the Angel role in S3. And this time, the choice is explicitly tied to the idea of being a Killer. Faith is set up as the person that Buffy could be in a slightly different world, and that person is a Killer, as Faith herself claims.

"What are you gonna do, B? Kill me? You become me. You're not ready for that, yet." - Faith Lehane, 3x17 Enemies

"You did it, B. You killed me." - Faith Lehane, 3x22 Graduation Day

In the act of choosing to pull the lever, Buffy has to kill. In the act of killing, she has become her dark mirror. In the act of defeating/becoming Faith, she becomes again the sole Slayer. Being a killer and a Slayer again intertwined. It's interesting here that she then makes the decision to feed herself to Angel. She unravels the trolley problem by throwing herself on the tracks. It's fascinating that between the dual trolley-problem finales of Becoming and The Gift, where in the first Buffy chooses to pull the lever, and in the latter she refuses and chooses a third option, Graduation Day exists in the middle as a stepping stone where she kind of does both.

The bulk of S4 is a little lighter on this theme, instead examining The Slayer as a role that must be juggled amongst a series of competing roles as Buffy's life as an adult becomes more fractured. There are flavours of it in Fear Itself, where Buffy fears that her friends will leave and her destiny lies with death and the dead, but otherwise not too much jumps out at me. Except, of course, for Restless, which is so heavy with this theme. It's one of the many reasons why I kind of consider Restless an honourary part of S5, as it's setting up the themes and arcs of S5 as much as it's wrapping up the like from S4.

RILEY: Hey there, killer.

BUFFY: We're not demons. ADAM: Is that a fact?

RILEY: Thought you were looking for your friends. Okay, killer...

TARA: I live in the action of death, the blood cry, the penetrating wound. I am destruction. Absolute ... alone. BUFFY: The Slayer. FIRST SLAYER: No friends! Just the kill.

OK, so SO much to unpack here. This is all within the under-10-minute sequence of Buffy's dream, and in that sequence she constantly shows a fear that she is in fact a "killer". It's clearly strong in her mind. Riley calls her "killer" multiple times, and Adam equates her with him, and with demonhood. I also find it very interesting how she responds to Tara's words, which are very literally describing the act of kiling ("the action of death...the blood cry...the penetrating wound"). She hears that and immediately identifies her as the Slayer, so slayerhood and killing are clearly bound up together in her mind.

Central to her concerns is the dichotomy between friendship and death. This was built up in Fear Itself, and it's central here. Riley and Sineya both frame it as a choice, between friendship and "the kill". This is a fear that Buffy has already, since S1, that her Slayer life will stop her ability to have a "normal" life of friends and family, but it also sets up her arc in S5 nicely. She chooses her friends over becoming a pure instrument of death in Restless, but that does not resolve her ongoing fears. They existed before and continue to dwell even more strongly in her mind, with words that both Sineya and Dracula repeat.

"You think you know ... what's to come ... what you are. You haven't even begun."

This sets the stage for S5, and her arc of choosing between family and being the Slayer. Friendship and family are presented as more of less one and the same a few episodes later in Family, and the choice Buffy is faced with in S5 is another trolley problem - the life of Dawn against the world. This time, it's more specifically tied to the Slayer/Killer dichotomy through the prophecy that Buffy is faced with ("Death is your gift"). This frames the similar choices she faced in Becoming and Graduation Day in the same light, with Buffy even specifically comparing this to the former.

BUFFY: I sacrificed Angel to save the world. I loved him so much. But I knew ... what was right. I don't have that any more. I don't understand. I don't know how to live in this world if these are the choices. If everything just gets stripped away. I don't see the point. I just wish that... I just wish my mom was here. The spirit guide told me that death is my gift. Guess that means a Slayer really is just a killer after all. - 5x22 The Gift

S5 is soaked in this Killer-vs-Slayer idea, and that's part of why I love it so much. It opens with Buffy having gained an appreciation of killing. She goes out not to patrol, but to hunt. To revel in the enjoyment of the kill, just as Faith did. There's also a constant theme of people identifying Buffy as a Killer. Importantly, it's a theme of her believing them. She knows that there is a kernel of truth there, and it develops from a subconcious worry in Restless to a more concrete fear in Intervention, where Buffy explicitly says that she is afraid that being the Slayer means losing her humanity and ability to love, and become nothing more than a "killer". Eventually, Buffy is so ground down by it that when The Gift rolls around, she simply accepts that the Slayer is "just a killer" as an inevitability.

BUFFY: Yeah, I prefer the term slayer. You know, killer just sounds so... DRACULA: Naked? - 5x01 Buffy vs Dracula

SPIKE: Death is your art. You make it with your hands, day after day. That final gasp. That look of peace. - 5x07 Fool for Love

FIRST SLAYER: Death is your gift. - 5x18 Intervention

I also like the way that Joyce is repeatedly linked to this idea. Buffy's response to Sineya points to Joyce's death as a rebuttal to the idea of death being a gift ("Death is not a gift. My mother just died. I know this."). Buffy talks about Joyce just before accepting that "a slayer is a killer" in The Gift. Spike's speech about Slayer's having a death wish comes immediately before Buffy finds out that Joyce is going into hospital. The idea of the Slayer as an instrument of death, killing every day, is juxtaposed against the mundane horror of what death is really like, as demonstrated in The Body. As the Slayer, Buffy must cause death, but this is what death looks like. It's hard and painful and mortal and stupid. Eventually Buffy reaches a point where she just can't do this anymore. She can't live in a world where she must choose to be a killer, because she understands death more now than ever.

It's here that the show explicitly connects the ideas of utilitarianism and being a killer. Buffy says that killing Dawn to save the world (and by association killing Angel to save the world, or killing Faith to save Angel), would make the Slayer "just a killer". This goes back to S3, and Faith arguing that the death of one innocent was washed out by the many people that they save, and that being Slayers gives them the right to make that calculation. Tara points to Giles in this episode, the voice of utilitarianism, and identifies him as a killer. Giles himself identifies himself as one when he kills Ben, and here draws a line between being a utilitarian/killer, and being a hero.

BEN: Need a ... a minute. She could've killed me. GILES: No she couldn't. Never. ... She's a hero, you see. She's not like us.

Some people criticise the moral absolutism of this, and could very justifiably argue that killing Ben, or even killing Dawn, would be the most moral thing in this situation. Who are we to say that Dawn's life is more valuable than the lives of a thousand other 14 year old girls, with families of their own that love them just as much as Buffy loves Dawn? But within the context of the show, I think it makes sense for them to reject utilitarianism. Buffy is a Sisyphean story. There will always be another apocalypse after this one is stopped. There will always be another impossible choice with innocent lives in the balance. Through that lens, the idea of "killing one to save a thousand" becomes meaningless, because there's a thousand apocalypses, and if you kill one to stop them all, then you've killed a thousand. That's how Buffy feels - she killed Angel, she killed Faith, now she has to kill Dawn? Where does it end? Eventually it all just gets stripped away, so what's the point? There's no winning move here. The only way to break the cycle is to change the game.

We should also keep in mind Buffy's words at the start of the episode. She fears that the Slayer is "just a killer", but she is also identified by the guy she saves in the alley in the opening scene as "just a girl". And Buffy agrees ("That's what I keep saying."). Buffy is The Vampire Slayer, which dictates that she must make these impossible choices, but she's also Buffy, which means she is a human being with the power of free will. She gets a choice - not a good choice, but a choice. As a human being, she can reject the options in front of her and find a third way. She can transform the whole game, and turn "Death is your gift" into an empowering statement. This was heavily foreshadowed of course - the Guide in Intervention outright stated that Buffy was full of love, and that "love will bring [her] to [her] gift". But it takes Buffy working through these fears and emotions and realising that she simply can't take Dawn's life. She chooses a new way. She avoids being a killer by rejecting utilitarian ethics. To paraphrase The Last Jedi, she wins by saving what she loves. Ultimately, she's not a killer, but a girl, a friend, a sister, a Slayer - a hero.

So season five is very much the climax and resolution of this theme. Very few themes ever disappear entirely from this show though, and this one continues to echo throughout the show. In S6, Buffy again fears she is slipping into darkness. That there is some kind of darkness that is innate within her. But where in S5 this was a fear that she recoiled from but at times seemed inevitable, in S6 it is something that she is drawn towards, that disgusts her but that she takes a kind of comfort in, because it's easier than facing the mundane reality of her depression.

This yearning for her own darkness takes the physical form of Spike, who she uses for what is basically sexual self-harm. Spike steps into Faith's role as Buffy's shadow self for much of the later seasons, and , and like Faith he represents killing as hedonism, and as sex. There's no vampire who so aggressively blurs the lines of sex and death/violence as Spike. Her fear that killing is part of her nature, and her fear of her own sexual desire, are very much one and the same. When she breaks down in Dead Things, she talks about the darkness within her, and of her shame over her own sexuality.

Spike also repeats Faith's utilitarian justifications from Consequences in the episode which forms the climax of Buffy's self-destruction, Dead Things. When Buffy attempts to metaphorically commit suicide by turning herself into the police, she does it while constantly identifying herself as a killed. She repeats some variation on "I killed her" four times in just two scenes. She wants to be punished for being a killer, and not protected for being the slayer. She has grappled with this several times, and is still resolute that being the slayer does not give her a license to kill, but this time she is desperate to be seen as a killer, to give justification for her own self-hatred.

The final way S6 explores this idea is with Willow. When she is after Warren, Buffy tries to stop her, not for Warren's sake but for Willow's. She knows that taking a life changes a person, and implicitly draws on the first time she chose to take a human's life, the moment she "became a killer" on that rooftop with Faith.

Buffy (re: going to kill Faith): I can't play kid games anymore. This is how she wants it. Xander: I just don't want to lose you. Buffy: I won't get hurt. Xander: That's not what I mean. - 3x21 Graduation Day

XANDER: She should be coming down at some point, shouldn't she? I mean, back there she was out of her head ... running on grief and magicks. BUFFY: Doesn't matter . Willow just killed someone. Killing people changes you. Believe me, I know. - 6x21 Two to Go Killing Warren might have been justified given what a complete piece of shit he was - just as killing Angel was justified, just as killing Faith was, just as killing Ben was. That doesn't matter, because Buffy still recognises that the act of killing leaves permanent psychological scars, which she is still bearing.

In S7, we get the final major exploration of the "does the Slayer have a right to kill" idea in Selfless. Here, Buffy seems to have reached the conclusion that Cordelia, Faith and Spike (all her shadow selves) were right, and she does, in fact, have the right to pass judgment because she's the Slayer, when she decides she has to kill Anya.

"It is always different! It's always complicated. And at some point, someone has to draw the line, and that is always going to be me. You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the slayer is always cut off. There's no mystical guidebook. No all-knowing council. Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law." - 7x05 Selfless

However, I don't think the show wants us to take this as gospel. Buffy is conclusively proved wrong in this episode, since killing Anya doesn't work, and it's Willow who finds a third option that saves the day. In S7, the idea of the Slayer-as-Killer is more an incidental theme, while the central exploration is the idea of "one girl in all the world". It explores the nature of that tragedy, that Buffy is by definition alone. Because of this, she necessarily must be a killer. She does have to pass judgement, because there is nobody else capable of it. She has to be the one to hunt and kill vampires. She has to face the choice to kill Angel, to kill Faith, to kill Dawn, to kill Anya.

This is where the theme ends up - as a tragic inevitability. Buffy must always make that choice. Making the selfless choice to kill her boyfriend doesn't stop it. Avoiding the choice and dying herself doesn't even stop it. That boulder just rolls down the hill again and again, and Buffy is the only one who can push it back up. The Slayer is a killer because the Slayer is alone. So the only way to break that cycle is for the Slayer to no longer be alone. There are still elements of The Slayer, and of Buffy as a person, that are linked to death and killing, but she has mostly made peace with those parts, and now can be free of having to be "the law" too.

[yumgrapejuice]

An analysis on Ranboo’s lore playlist

okay y’all first of all, ranboo has a killer taste, i love him, and second, i couldn’t resist. i’m an analyst by nature. am i looking too deep into some things? did ranboo maybe choose some songs purely for the vibe? perhaps. do i care? no. let me have my fun.

I’m gonna drop my own analysis/interpretation based on these songs but feel free do use this yourself if you want!! And also feel free to disagree/correct me on anything!! I’m not a professional musical analyst lol and I did take some inspiration from already existing interpretations for the more lyrical songs.

here’s the playlist btw

“Introduction to the Snow”—introduction to the album. Fitting for the playlist’s beginning, seeing the tone. It’s mostly referencing (self-imposed) isolation.

“Dream Sweet in Sea Major”—this Miracle Music’s whole album is about dreams and reality, how they clash, loneliness and the wish to be close to someone, yet still remaining isolated. Very whimsical, metaphorical, melodic, and it has this vibe as if on the edge of consciousness. I’d say it fits quite well with c!Ranboo’s general vibe. This song in particular deals with sleepwalking(ha)/being in a dreamlike state, the line between what’s real and what’s not blurred.

“The Mind Electric”—oh this one fits Ranboo extremely well. First part is in reverse, the second in normal (mirroring), and it can get quite unsettling. Like you’re not sure what’s happening with the instrumentals, many different voices. Again, very metaphorical, but to put it shortly, the protagonist is being judged for a crime they’ve committed and, in their defence, they say: “Father, your honor, may I explain, my brain has claimed its glory over me; I’ve a good heart albeit insane”. They get “condemned to the infirmary” for that, where electric shock is used on them as a form of “therapy”. As a result, the protagonist loses grip on reality and themselves and truly does go insane. They beg for mercy and sympathy, but there’s no one to help them. “Someone help me; Understand what's going on inside my mind; Doctor I can't tell if I'm not me”—need I say more, really?

“Live and Let Die”—the phrase “live and let die” means to live your life how you wish and let others live how they wish without interfering. At first, you live by the phrase “live and let live”, meaning you have your ideals and you try to change the lives of others according to them, but as life progresses, you stop caring as much/try to distance yourself from others’ business.

“Turn the Lights Off”—dreams and nightmares. Mildly foreboding yet energetic. The actual meaning is about growing up (transition from childhood to adulthood), but we can take some other interpretations that’d fit with Ranboo’s character better. This Tally Hall’s album deals with differences, black and white, and how there shouldn’t be a divide between them. In this song, there are some noteworthy lines that I’d like to mention:

- “Bend the nightmare, you control it; Artful dodger, easy does it”—lucid dreaming, you have to be careful with it so as to not lose control.

- “Shut the closet, get under the covers”—you’re afraid of something and instead of facing it and seeing whether there even is something to be afraid of, you hide.

- “Turn the lights off”—confront your fears. It can also mean that in the dark, there’s no differences between people, going back to the album’s meaning.

- “And everybody wants to get evil tonight; But all good devils masquerade under the light”—this could mean that everyone has a darker part of themselves but those who actually indulge in their dark tendencies do so in plain sight by pretending to be someone else.

“Ruler of Everything”—the main theme here is time and how it’s the “ruler of everything”; time doesn’t matter about where it goes, and it will never stop. The second verse is most interesting to me—there are two singers, man and time, but for the sake of interpretation let’s just see it as two voices. One is obsessed about being liked, fitting in, constantly asking for reaffirmation (“Do you like how I walk? Do you like how I talk?”), while the second criticizes the first (“You practice your mannerisms into the wall”). They argue—”I’ve been you, I know you, your facade is scam; You know you’re making me cry, this is the way that I am”. The second is calling out the first for not being honest to himself. Tone is lighthearted but with an edge of unease.

“Merry-Go-Round of Life”—from Howl’s Moving Castle soundtrack. The title’s self-explanatory, I’d say.

“Killer Queen”—this one’s a harder one to interpret in regards to Ranboo lol. The song is about, based on an interview with Mercury, a high class woman that likes to indulge in her various desires (mostly sexual). I would doubt that’s what Ranboo was going for, so! Perhaps about a person that has no regards for their reputation and instead does whatever they feel like it? They have a certain image but still act however they like. Yeah, not too sure about this one :’) But that’s what I’ll go with for my later analysis.

“Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked”—quite straightforward. A person that performs bad deeds has reasons for them. Not excuses, but explanations, and you can sympathize with it. We all do “bad” things for one reason or the other, and, in the end, we’re all just trying to get by. Once again, plays into the theme of there not being a clear distinction between good and bad.

“The Bidding”—another harder one to interpret. On the surface, it’s about an auction where men are trying to sell themselves to women. They all present themselves in different images, and it’s remarked that the women care less about the date and more about the prospect of it, the pretty words. The date, actually, ends up being disappointing. Could be about expectations. Some men outright admit they’re assholes so whoever chooses them should know that. People can tell you what their intentions are from the start so if you end up hurt, you have no one else to blame but yourself.

“A Mask of My Own Face”—another interesting one! Unusual instruments, strong beat. They’re singing about how they have a desire to pretend to be someone else while secretly still being themselves. “I’d rob my own apartment and I wouldn’t give a damn; I’d blame it on the person that nobody knows I am”—implying they have no regard for their own livelihood and are just out to have some fun. Plus, that no one would be aware it’s all an act. “I'd wear it on Thanksgiving and I'd laugh in the parade; At all the people hissing, knowing I'm the one they hate”—they take delight in the idea of upsetting others and them not knowing it’s actually the singer that they should be hissing. “And at the big finale I would tear my face away; And smile as they grip their own and try to do the same”—everyone wears masks, and this person implies that their mask and their true self is not different from each other while others’ are.

“Stardust Crusaders”—soundtrack from Jojo. Action-packed? idk never seen it sorry lol

“I Can’t Decide”—oh, this one’s a doozy! One of the ones that do not fit c!Ranboo at all, but that’s what makes it interesting. A classic, the singer is out to have fun, very lighthearted and yet they’re singing about murder. The protagonist here is clearly mentally unwell and they’re indecisive whether they should let their enemy/toy/(up to interpretation) live or not. Some curious lines:

- “It’s not easy having yourself a good time”—in the context of the song, that “good time” implies something wicked.

- “I’m not a gangster tonight, don’t wanna be the bad guy, I’m just a loner, baby, and now you’ve got in my way”—they don’t view themselves as “bad”, however, the next two lines are paradoxal—the singer says they’re alone and yet decide to “mess around” with whoever comes up in their life.

- “No wonder why my heart feels dead inside, it’s hard and cold and petrified”—signifying lack of empathy.

- “It’s a bitch convincing people to like you”—they don’t actually want to do that and see it as a bother.

“Stranded Lullaby”—back to Miracle Musical, back to the theme of isolation. Super lyrical, super musical. They talk about how their memories float around aimlessly in their head, a sea, and may sometimes get lost. The protagonist, a sailor, is losing touch with reality and can’t tell apart what’s a dream anymore and what’s not. They question what they’re going through and why.

“Hidden In The Sand”—a song about longing, in my eyes. The protagonist sings about how “you” love things and how he wishes to love the same things, in the end admitting that “all I’ve wanted was you”. They don’t wish to be separated, they wish to have someone in their life that they could love.

“Now I’m Here”—euphoric. They sing about how they’re alive again, thanks to one specific person. I’m not gonna go too much into this one (partly because it’s a more difficult one for me again, partly because it’s Queen and I don’t wanna uhh talk nonsense on accident lol), but what I got from it is that when one one else saw them, someone did, and they made them “live again”, and now as a result the protagonist is devoted to them.

“&”—really highlights Tally Hall’s album’s theme of black and white and that there shouldn’t be a divide. The repetition of comparing opposites is present throughout the entire song (Weak & Strong & Wet & Dry…) and it’s heavily implied we should “say goodnight” to this mindset. But people love to choose sides, put things into good or bad categories. By the line “They took a lesson from their fathers” it’s implied that people don’t develop this mindset by themselves and are rather influenced by others around them. The whole album is titled “Good & Evil” and Tally Hall examines and criticizes this idea. If we keep dividing people into good and bad, eventually, we’ll all destroy ourselves.

“I’m Gonna Win”—a song about someone who’s struggling to get by. “Sometimes it can seem like a merciless dream”—life can get really hard and the protagonist wonders “what’s really worthwhile”. In the chorus, whoever, they declare that they’re “gonna win” no matter what. They might get “bloody and bruised” but they won’t give up until they “won’t be abused” and until they’re “laughing alone”. No matter how hard life/others kick them down, they’ll keep going. By the lines “It’s hard to be charming and smart and disarming; It’s hard to pretend you’re the best; It’s hard to fulfill everyone’s expectations; It’s hard to keep up with the rest” it’s implied that they find it tiresome to keep up appearances and be liked. It’s challenging to always fit everyone’s expectations, but they’ll continue doing whatever they have to to “win”.

if ranboo ever adds more songs to his playlist, i may add them here too :) 

[tamhrayis]

I remember someone asking me if I know @kasumi_kasa on Twitter (my answer is yes) and I saw the latest tweets about Omukuji. From Kasumi’s explanation they are fortune telling cards, so I would like to give my interpretations on EMA’s cards as they have “Excellent luck” (Daikichi).

Eren

From Kasumi’s translation, the advice (?) for Eren was “If you keep your heart honest and strong and believe in everything, the future will eventually open up for you”.

I think this advice is very relevant to Eren’s current state as he is in the debate between his selfishness (do whatever it takes to achieve his personal “freedom” and simply move forward) and selflessness (fight for the freedom of his people and friends). Eren needs to understand what exactly his heart wants and be honest with himself (did he do everything for himself or his people, or it’s both?).

I am not quite sure what “everything” means, because...well...it’s everything, but it might be believing in goodness and badness of both sides (World and Paradis/Eldians).

Wish: When the time comes, it will come true.

The sentence itself is quite ambiguous, because it can be interpreted differently, but I think it might mean two things:

1. Eren’s wish to exterminate all the titans will come true (especially if Ymir helps him).

2. Eren’s goal to become the “villian” to eventually end the cycle of hatred and all the past mistakes (again, breaking the curse and exterminating the curse will contribute into it).

3. His actual intention might be revealed (POV and the reason like in ch.131).

Expected visitor: It’s coming.

Expected visitor is present in all EMA’s predictions (?). So both 3 will see someone or something (depending on what “it” means). It might be Mikasa, but we still yet need to know how exactly she should come as these predictions were made after ch.138.

Missing thing: It’s near you.

This one is very interesting. What is the thing that Eren thinks he misses (in terms of what he doesn’t have)? Freedom. Eren has been chasing freedom since he was a child, but did he find it? No and I don’t think he will find the “freedom” he is searching for, because Eren himself doesn’t know what exactly his “freedom” is.

As a child, his “freedom” was seeing the outside world from Armin’s books. As a teenager, his objective slightly changed to getting revenge on titans and then, eventually, seeing the ocean and world.

But was he when they finally reached the ocean? No. Eren was upset, because the presence of an even bigger enemy meant that his freedom is nowhere near unless he destroys others. But does destroying the world mean that Eren will finally be free? No. Why? Because Eren himself doesn’t know what he is chasing. Freedom for him is something that he has never experienced and blindly has searched for until he became a slave to his idea of “freedom”.

Eren thinks that freedom will give him happiness and he will be happy only when he achieves it. But the problem is that the more he “obeys” his idea, the more unhappy he becomes. Now, he almost lost everyone who sincerely believed and fought for him.

This sentence says that Eren’s happiness (a.k.a his “freedom”) was always near him. And that’s his friends and Mikasa. Eren needs to free himself from his own “master”, which Eren created and that’s his superficial idea of freedom.

This idea is worthless, because it doesn’t bring anyone actual freedom and happiness. It broke Mikasa’s heart, hurt Armin and killed so many innocent people. It totally doesn’t worth it.

But another missing thing could be Mikasa and as it’s coming, it could also imply that Mikasa will come to him again (like...she kinda did in ch.138...?)

Game and match: Restrain your ego.

Eren’s ego is what used to cause him to fight with bullies, fueled his desire to get stronger and be free from Mikasa’s protection, and now pushes him to move forward, because Eren doesn’t want to lose (bringing iconic “If you win, you live. If you lose, you die. If you don’t fight, you can’t win”). Yes, he does want to be stopped (and was by someone), but even like that, he still continued to fight (he even turned into a colossal to fight Armin).

But since, in Armin and Mikasa’s cards, it’s written “win”, Eren has nothing to do, but to respectfully give us and tame his ego.

Study: Study with peace of mind.

This one is a bit unclear to me (and when I translated it, it showed “learning” as another possible translation), but if it’s related to learning something, maybe Eren will need to learn to give more importance on the present and learn to live in the moment rather than living in his thoughts, past, future, guilt.

If we look at ch.90 and ch.123, when his friends were having good time at the beach and Marley, Eren was wandering in his thoughts thinking about how cruel and uneven the world is, and how he wants to get revenge on it.

Even in ch.138, when he and Mikasa were living alone, far away from everyone, Eren was still consumed in guilt and responsibilities.

If Eren doesn’t restrain his ego and free himself from his “master”, he will never learn how to live a peaceful and happy life he secretly desires about.

Mikasa

So moving to Mikasa. The advice for her was “Do what is right and help those who are lost and you will be better”.

This one is pretty straightforward. Mikasa opposed the person she loves and chose to fight Eren to save humanity from destruction. In general, Mikasa’s character is about saving people and she values human life the most as she almost lost hers back in time. Even though, Isayama said that staying with Eren for Mikasa is a good thing and if she didn’t have strong morals (she would follow Eren), she can’t give up on saving other people’s lives.

Wish: You will get what you want. Don’t let your guard down.

The first part is clear as Mikasa will reunite with Eren and hopefully have a life with him, but the second part is quite interesting. So I think it might suggest that even though Mikasa loves Eren and wants to be by his side, she shouldn’t let her desires overpower her morals. Again, coming back to ch.138, Mikasa chose to run away with Eren and let her selfish wish to be with him take over her. She chose to stay away from fighting and let others’ lives to be in danger.

Mikasa needs to continue sticking to what she believes in and do the right thing to get what she wants.

Expected visitor: It’s coming.

Same as I said in Eren’s part.

Missing thing: It’ll be late, but it will come.

This sounds intriguing, because what exactly can come late? I think it might be related to her wish and desire to live a peaceful life as it might come slowly...? (If we take into the account that Paradis will probably still have some issues to deal with and peace won’t come instantly).

On another note, Eren’s arrival can be late too (in some ways..?), so it’s also plausible to say that the missing thing for them is each other.

Game and match: Win.

So since Mikasa is a part of alliance, they will “win” (even now they kinda did by stopping colossals) and Eldians (probably) will be viewed as saviors (though on island they are traitors as the majority of population was pro-rumbling).

Love: There’s happiness in this person.

Mikasa represents love, freedom and pride and as the statement suggests, there’s happiness in her. What Eren actually needs is happiness, so EM things again.

But even like this, I won’t say that Eren will instantly will become lucky and forget about his trauma. It will be a long learning process (as his card said), but Mikasa will greatly and positively influence his adjustment to a normal and peaceful life (especially since they will very likely live in mountains and as Grisha said in “Lost Girls” he thought that fresh air will positively help Eren’s anger issues).

So the presence of Mikasa, fresh air and calm atmosphere will help Eren learn to live in the moment and cherish what he has without going for something that doesn’t properly exist.

Armin

The advice for Armin is “Make a decision before and you will move forward, work diligently and you will be happy”.

It’s heavily related to Armin’s new role in life, 15th commander of Survey Corps and the position suggests, Armin from now is responsible for the lives and decisions of his subordinates. Of course, for now because of his inner struggles and doubt, Armin isn’t happy about his career advancement, but if he surrounds himself with good and diligent people, and gain some confidence, he will overcome his current problems.

Wish: Two wishes won’t come at once.

What are Armin’s wishes? His first wish was to travel the outside world and explore the unknown with Eren, but as he himself said in ch.131, that wasn’t quite what they dreamed about.

However, Armin still wants to believe that there’s still a world that they don’t know about past the walls (might be a reference to the miracle that Uri was talking about).

So going back to peaceful times and exploring the world definitely won’t come at once (he still has duties and issues to deal with), but slowly and surely will.

Expected visitor: It’s coming

Same as Mikasa and Eren.

Missing thing: It’s in a high place.

This one has 2 potential meanings:

1. Armin misses Erwin and Hange as they were his previous commanders and he would want some guidance from them. Even now, Armin (as a newly assigned commander), he thinks how these two would handle this situation (especially Erwin).

2. The other thing that Armin (possibly) misses are the good old days that both three of them wanted to go back. After all, every character somehow wants to have a peaceful life with no war and hate. So saying that this thing is in a high place might mean that it won’t be easy to achieve and they will still need to deal with negotiations etc. But it will come eventually.

Game and match: Win

Same as Mikasa.

Study: you will overcome difficulties

I am really glad about this one, because it means that Armin will overcome his insecurities and doubts, and will gain his confidence! Again, I am heavily manifesting a talk between him and Levi, so seeing him overcoming his flaws and becoming a great commander is more than anything I could ask for Armin *cries*.

The links to the translations:

Eren, Mikasa, Armin.

[magicofthepen]

Having put some amount of thought into similar concepts, I would very much love to hear about “Gallifrey BUT FANTASY”

Send me a WIP doc title (list here) and I’ll talk about it!

Thank you for asking about this one! It’s an idea that’s been slowly coalescing for at least a year and a half now – it’s never quite made it onto the active projects list because it’s a big one, and I keep having other big projects that I want to tackle first. But I love gradually coming back to and building this au, and hopefully I’ll write it eventually?

The general world premise is pretty straightforward: magic replaces both time travel and regeneration, so it’s a magic-based world instead of a tech-based one, and also the ability to do magic is only given to certain Gallifreyans (a Time Lords = mages sort of thing). Also in this world the different temporal powers/planets are different countries/kingdoms/empires. 

The story itself would be a series of three longfics that starts with a very narrow cast and gradually broadens to a more sprawling epic fantasy vibe as the series continues. A quick overview:

Fic 1 is a Romana/Leela Rapunzel AU (inspired by Tangled specifically tbh), ft. Pandora as the Mother Gothel figure. 

Fic 2 is the immediate aftermath of Romana’s return to Gallifrey and the "power struggle over the throne” conflict that emerges between her and Darkel. (Narvin and Brax show up in this one.)

Fic 3 is set some number of years after Fic 2. It’s a “Pandora returns” fic, but narratively it’s more inspired by the Time War. Devastating magical conflict, large cast of characters, but does have a hopeful/happy-ish ending. (Also: Romana/Leela/Narvin endgame.) 

Lots more rambling under the cut: 

Fic 1: Rapunzel AU

This fic is technically Tangled-inspired, but I should disclaim that I haven’t actually seen Tangled in many years, so my memories of it are somewhat vague? But there’s one scene from Tangled that inspired a scene in this fic, plus a certain similar enemies-to-friends-to-lovers vibe going on, and some inspiration for Leela’s backstory (if I’m remembering that movie correctly)? 

Romana is the Rapunzel figure, of course. The heiress stolen away from the kingdom as a very young child, so she doesn’t remember anything before being raised by Pandora. In this story, Pandora’s endgame isn’t to keep her trapped away forever – she’s grooming Romana to be able to possess her when the time is right and take the throne for herself. (Still need to work out a lot of plot details, including how much contact Romana has with the outside world, how Pandora is able to manifest without a body?? (because she’s definitely still a dark spirit of some kind in this world....), the exact nature of magic and magical rituals and how exactly Pandora stealing Romana and raising her benefits her endgame.)

(Also there’s an Etra Prime reference here, with Romana being trapped away from the world for twenty years. In this au, Pandora is also the stand-in for the Daleks – aka who/what Romana is most afraid of and traumatized by.)

Leela’s backstory is a work in progress, so I don’t want to say too much in case I change it, but at the point her life and Romana’s collide, she’s lived in Gallifrey before and it was not a good time. (On a side note: I feel like this fic may be a thinly veiled excuse to give Leela a sword.) 

This fic majorly focuses on Romana and Leela’s relationship arc, aka “extremely sheltered book smart mage who's been cut off from love and connection her whole life” meets “warrior who’s traveled a lot but has never really found a home anywhere and is (probably?) on the run from the Gallifreyan authorities for Reasons.” Short version: their lives collide, Romana gets tangled up in Leela’s plot drama (which is also mostly tbd) and ends up sneaking away from Pandora, they fall in love, just as Romana starts to see how much she’s been used and manipulated her whole life, Pandora tries to tear them apart and use both of them as pawns in her plan. Of course, they defeat her and all ends well (for now).

Fic 2: Struggle for the Throne

For Reasons (that will be uncovered later), the throne of Gallifrey has quite recently become vacant – just in time for Romana and Leela to show up in the capital city (they don’t ever go there in Fic 1). Romana just wanted to see where she was from after finally escaping Pandora, but in this world, Gallifrey has some sort of monarchy/inheritance of power thing going on, and Romana is actually the closest heir to the throne. The next closest is Darkel, who assumed she would take the throne, before Romana suddenly returns from the dead.   

Except Romana didn’t come back to take the throne. That was Pandora’s plan, Romana doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life and had no idea that she was walking into a power vacuum situation. But she ends up seeing how very terrible Darkel is, and how very terrible Gallifrey is, and starts genuinely wanting to be in charge so she can Change Things. She sees how terrible Gallifrey is to Leela (and other outsiders and non-mages) and wants to make this place better for her.....but over time gets swept up in the power struggles and the need to court favor with the other royals, which strains her relationship with Leela. 

Meanwhile, Leela’s dealing with returning to Gallifrey, a place where she already feels unwelcome (and probably is in some trouble with the law and needs to clear her name? again, lots of backstory details are tbd). And so she ends up struggling to decide if she really wants to be with Romana, if Romana’s going to end up in charge of this kingdom.....but she also hates Darkel and wants to help defeat her claim to the throne? I think there’s also going to be a plot thread in Fic 1 involving the village Leela was born in, and if so, this fic will also be dealing with the fallout of those events from Fic 1. (Keeping things vague because it’s all pretty up in the air right now.) 

And we finally meet spymaster Narvin, who is a main character from here through the rest of the series! I’m not going to get into his backstory in this au right now (because some things are still tbd, some things I don’t want to spoil), but he is not pleased about this young upstart heiress showing up out of nowhere and getting power handed to her without ever actually living in this kingdom. He doesn’t trust that she’s actually loyal to Gallifrey, especially since rumor has it she was raised and given/taught magic by some dark spirit – which goes against the long-standing Gallifreyan traditions of how magic is granted and taught and raises some major questions about how safe the kingdom would be in her hands. (These are also the prevailing arguments in general for tossing Romana’s claim to the throne.) 

Narvin and Leela also have.....a history. Not a particularly positive one. 

So this fic is also slowburn enemies-to-friends with Narvin + Romana and Narvin + Leela, as they gradually grow to understand and trust each other, and ultimately all work together against Darkel.

Brax is also in this fic? I am quite nervous about Brax being in this fic (I don’t feel qualified to write Brax! I usually avoid writing Brax for that reason!) But he’s the main “well-respected mage from an old family” who actually vouches for Romana and tries to help soothe the fears of the more conservative royals about supporting her claim to the throne. I’d also like to do a version of the “Brax as Romana’s tutor” thing, where he ends up working with her on developing her magic, since she didn’t go through the Academy system and is worried that her magic is tainted by Pandora. There may also end up being an almost-arranged marriage plotline with Romana and Brax, where certain people would be more willing to support Romana’s claim if she married someone respectable (and this is another thing that drives a wedge in Romana and Leela’s relationship). (She ends up turning him down, ultimately.) 

So it’s a fic about characters figuring out what they want in life and figuring out how to communicate better with each other and be better at relationships and friendships, all the while trying to stop Darkel from seizing the throne. 

Fic 3: Magical War

So there’s a significant time skip between Fic 2 and Fic 3 where the characters are going about their lives post-Darkel’s defeat and trying to make Gallifrey a somewhat less terrible place. 

But, however Romana and Leela defeat Pandora in Fic 1, it isn’t permanent. And when Pandora returns, it’s with an army of magical spirits (or something along those lines) that are slowly encroaching on the kingdom and poisoning magic itself (aka the Dogma virus But Fantasy). 

I don’t want to spoil too many of the plot details here, but this fic is a lot of “fantasy twist on specific events in the Gallifrey audios” – it draws some elements from the civil war, some from the Time War (especially because of that whole “Pandora is also Metaphorically the Daleks” thing), plus some other Specific Things from other audios. (Basically, I tossed the Gallifrey audios in a soup and stirred and made it fantasy?) 

Slow skirmishes and terrible attacks on the outskirts of the kingdom keep happening, Pandora’s forces draw closer and closer until they reach the capitol itself – and things go very wrong, and our main characters end up needing to wrest control back from Pandora (which may involve upending the entire system of magic in Gallifrey in the process? again, still figuring out how this fic is going to end – all I know is that unlike the actual audios, it will be a hopeful/happy ending). Lots of personal sacrifices are made, lots of old traumas need to be grappled with. Also re: Narvin/Leela and Narvin/Romana, this is the “friends to lovers” part of the “enemies to friends to lovers” slowburn arc. 

(Probably my biggest writing struggle for this fic is that I don’t really know what Brax’s arc is going to be. I’m not that familiar with Brax (I only know him from the Gallifrey audios), and I’m not strongly invested in his character, so I don’t feel like I’d do a good job writing him? But this is an ensemble fic and I can’t just ignore his character, so. it’s a challenge I don’t yet know how to deal with?)

But overall, one of the reasons I’m quite interested in this fic series is because it gives me the chance to write a version of these characters’ stories where things do get rough, but they do get a happy ending of sorts. (And more specifically, I get to write a version of Romana’s story where her self-sacrificing/suicidal tendencies actually get addressed, and she slowly starts to heal.) 

So that was a lot of rambling and vagueness, but thanks for giving me the excuse to talk about this au! It’s quite a daunting project (I have little experience with longfic and with plotty fic), but I’d really love to tackle it someday! (And I would love to hear about any fantasy aus you’ve developed!!)

[scarletarosa]

Ares

Greek god of war, battle-lust, violence, courage, and rage

Ares (Roman: Mars) is the son of Zeus and Hera, the King and Queen of Olympus. As the god of war, Ares represents its chaos and bloodshed, whereas Athena represents strategy and necessary wars only. Ares loves war for its own sake, and delights in the din and roar of battles, in the slaughter of men, and the destruction of towns. The destructive hand of this god was even believed to be active in the ravages made by plagues and epidemics. Due to his wrath, Ares was said to be hated by many of the other deities and was not much worshipped in Greece. Yet his Roman counterpart, Mars, was perhaps the Romans’ most beloved deity due to their focus on strength and conquest.

In ancient Greek art, he was depicted as either a mature, bearded warrior armed for battle, or as a nude, beardless youth with a helm and spear.

Myths: One myth describes Hallirhothios, an Athenian youth who rapes the daughter of Ares, Alkippe. Enraged, Ares goes after Hallirhothios and slaughters him. After this act, Ares is summoned to the court of the gods in Athens by Poseidon, but is acquitted since his action was just. Ever since, this place was named Areiopagos (Hill of Ares) in his honour. Another myth tells of the Amazon women, who Ares had fathered. He trained them in the arts of war and brought them up to be fearless warriors who lived in the outer-limits of the world. These fierce women were all led by queen Hippolyte, another Amazon, and they only allowed women to be among them, with all male infants being put to death.

In what is perhaps the most famous myth of Ares is the story of him and Aphrodite. The goddess of love and beauty had been reluctantly arranged to marry Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, since Zeus did not want anyone arguing over her. Yet not only was Aphrodite not attracted to Hephaestus, but she desired lovers rather than marriage. She was soon seduced by Ares and as they were love-making, the Sun god Helios saw them and left to go tell Hephaistos. Angry and bitter, Hephaistos crafted a chained net and captured the two lovers up inside it and all the Olympian gods came to see, some laughing at the sight. When Hephaistos was content with this revenge and decided he no longer wished to keep Aphrodite as his wife, he released them and they both quickly departed. The two deities are known to have had several children together, including Eros (infatuation/romance), Anteros, Phobos (terror), Deimos (fear), and Harmonia (harmony).

An additional myth which is based off of the Phoenician story of Ashtart (Astarte) and Adon, is Aphrodite and Adonis. This myth tells of how Aphrodite fell in love with the handsome youth named Adonis, whom she had helped raise as an infant. She bore him a daughter and was full of joy, but was keeping wary since she knew Ares would become furiously jealous. Ares one day took the form of a wild boar and gorged Adonis while he was hunting, causing him to die in Aphrodite’s arms as she wept. His blood mingled with her tears and became the anemone flower.

Appearance: A tall, muscular Greek warrior with tanned skin, dark brown eyes, and has short curled black hair. His demeaner is usually stern and he speaks in a deep voice.

Personality: Ares is pretty much always serious, and when calm, he basically feels like a dormant volcano. He is easily angered and does not hesitate to take vengeance when wronged. He is a god who primarily lives for the rush of battle and revels in powerful shows of strength. Although Ares can also help in teaching people how to develop personal strength, how to overcome oppressors and abusers, and how to overcome inner-struggles. Ares also is quite straightforward and blunt, whether it be to his enemies or when advising others. He teaches that in this world, you either have to learn how to be a warrior or you will be crushed by difficult situations or by those who oppose you. Confidence, resilience, courage, and assertiveness are all things he strongly values and teaches to those who seek strength. As for those who do harm to us, he says that we must stop being so forgiving as this is usually a dangerous and foolish mistake that will lead to even greater problems. Instead, our enemies must be defeated and put in their place, as this is the only way we can achieve any change towards the better. 

| Symbolism of Ares |

Weapons 

Armour

Shields

Chariots

Flaming torches

Rams

Venomous snakes

Large dogs

Vultures

Barn owls 

Eagle Owls

Woodpeckers

Boars

| Some of his epithets |

Adámastos (Indestructible) 

Álkimos (Valiant)

Ánax (Lord; King)

Oplophóros (He who bears arms)

Phriktós (The Horrifying)

Polæmóklonos (He who raises the clamour of combat)

Teikhæsiplítis (He who storms the cities)

Vrotoktónos (The Slayer of Men)

Offerings: red wine, red meat, poultry, hare, venison, wolf hearts, chili peppers, lemons, green bananas, unripe peaches, any weapons, clubs, batons, bullets, kendo swords, shields, military helmets, bullet-proof vests, military boots, military belts, dynamite sticks, grenades, lion pelts, shark teeth, ram skulls, obsidian, red scoria, rubies, smoky quartz, red jasper, carnelian, iron, steel, burning wood (especially if Himalayan salt in thrown in since it reminds him of blood), and red sandalwood incense

*please only offer explosives if you know how to handle them

[incarnateirony]

Time for a rant

And some hard fucking truths about this fandom. And shipping culture. And related LGBT issues.

Edit for reblog: Since everybody’s trying to be highkey mad about everything right now, if the cut didn’t warn you, or the title, that this is going to be an unpopular AF opinion you should read all of before jumping to any conclusions, let this edit notice be that. But this post includes a bunch of shit. History I more recently and more fully talked about. The LGBT men I know that won’t touch this fandom with a ten foot pole because of shipping dialogue. And the accidental two season canon Destiel RP troll that we finally snapped and voiced beyond the meta wall from PURE EXHAUSTION.

(related posts in reference: (x) (x) (x) )

we know season great we know season 9 and its potential we know season 10 -- and most of us know its cut scenes humanity, being human, colette, the altar of winchester, the secret admirer, the boyfriends that strapped into the abaddon/colette parallels, all of it we know carver himself wrote the s10 finale and got it to film and then it got cut we know s9 he gave misha a note to play as jilted lovers from the showrunner but then we ask why did this never make it well nobody in fandom was paying attention nobody paid attention to SPN struggling the first seasons nobody paid attention to gamble's era almost getting nuked they all swore up and down this outdated americana show was about to have a queer pairing go canon because, yes, at that point *reads crumbled note* wallpaper

In fact that last one, to this date, no much how much legitimate structural meta or even deadass text current meta fandom breaks down, whether they just study the microcosm of Destiel or the macrocosm of the text with Destiel as a piece of it, can not escape the claims of *reads note again* wallpaper and T-shirts.

one year into Carver who was pulling the show out of the cancellation trashcan and vying for it to continue now that it was on netflix a DUMBASS EXEC wandered into twitter and opted to talk to fans

the goddamn network CEOship had just rotated even

”Well I blame” [disembodied force outside of our own]

no honestly I blame (parts of) pre S9 meta fandom, and I say that as a meta author they had been convincing people of intent for years When these showrunners and even rotating network execs were thrashing for life Like literally even the heads of the CW were changing not even just SPN but some fucking how the “sages” of that era didn’t have any gat damn insight onto how that might influence future engagements So out of the blue a newish network crew gets BLINDSIDED by accusations of queerbait and giant danger articles that are huge PR bombs and it turns into protect the product mode which turned into the new S10 press releases with the spontaneous sexuality field on the characters and half the filmed content ending up on the floor the short end of it is fandom fucked up hard Carver was fighting for them But in result he got a corporate shut down on a product he had ironically exploded globally too well that was earning too much profit too quickly to catch that kind of bad PR Chad Kennedy was a fateful fucking day Ever since then showrunners have had to pitch the idea at corporate when it was a nonissue before And prove why it's a valid move with test groups and marketing You can say "prove it" I really don't have to in this rant, I really do not give a SHIT if you believe me, I don’t CARE if you want to reject what is otherwise logic because I’m not about to throw anybody under a bus I really like not getting people in trouble, but this alone is a glint in the fucking RADAR of how I'm going off.

hell ask yourself why we went from Robbie calling Destiel canon to being eviscerated by queerbait claims because it didn’t fulfill what a specific audience wanted or expected, to deleting his post, to only annual actors free of their contracts daring to talk about Destiel, to corporate shutdowns where it’s crickets until Emily’s return where she’s started YOLO posting about it -- but why, why, why did we go from actual support and discussion to silence that you still rage about

Without the season nine kennedy explosion I'm pretty sure we would have had inarguable destiel canon in season 10 like late s10 Carver passed his torch to Dabb mid S11 where they kept stringing it out and ramping it up within restrictions which is why Dabb runs a very weird fucking line Dabb knows he has no promise of getting it as far as his forebearer wanted or even had written AND FILMED but he will hedge out as many lines, esp with the hand of Berens that Carver originally passed the directorial note with, as he can Wayward was a huge factor in that and tbh my hope died when Wayward died that was a HUGE weight in the network Berens was pulling

I'm at a point where i've conceded to our jane austen novel but want to see how far they take that to completion, though in reality that completion was 13.5/6 that's when I went from like, I passively enjoy and accept this content to screaming into the dumpster it's not the landmark people wanted but story structure wise within how SPN handles it's the sufficient one Recalling Dean's implicative hookups since like season six I mentioned on one hand The fact that they went full circle and bookended it in direct script mirror to Lisa after the S13 lead in would be amply sufficient to het drama and I refuse to enable hets running around the goalpost on queer people I would love better open blunt representation but I also recognize the genre of the show It's something Dean and I struggle with our server actually DeanCas have been canon for a season and a half here but maintaining that without taking a distracting romantic genre tilt or whatever is its own form of challenge We write established relationship openly, without bars, to the point we DMed each other for months like WHEN WILL THEY CATCH ON WTF but the problem, ironically, is that it's so parallel to the show nobody caught on

which really, though it didn't start as a conscious experiment, and was natural tells me everything I need to know even wiping what I knew on production and itk ends even if I just had that it says e v e r y t h i n g I have literally watched people laugh track completely serious content, because it's gay ergo it's funny LGBT people. Shippers.

I wrote subtle lines. They got ignored. I wrote blunt lines. They flew past heads. I wrote lines designed to be overt to the point of painful. They got laughed off. Het culture is a hell of a drug. Both in this RP and in how we interpret romances like DeanCas, even LGBT people and shippers, because people are expecting performative results and statements where either for the former they don't fit the show or genre or for the latter, there's some sort of restriction or imposition but there's authors writing their gay little hearts out and tearing their hair out after.

I've been the author tearing my hair out until I wrote a Cas, explicitly, in a moment, to be as blunt and straightforward and unmistakable as I could, to the point I felt I was bending the character to even make it happen, and debated my options for like ten minutes before doing it, just to free myself of this purgatory. And STILL got a wash of questions wanting me to *confirm* the content they just saw instead of going, gee, that’s PROBABLY WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.

Dabb is fighting the good gay fight and being woefully under respected for it, with Berens as his copilot, carrying a torch given to him by Carver, but people are too wrapped up in a mix of prior bitterness, performative culture, personal demands and shipping culture to see the forest for the trees, because he's deadass just writing an established fucking relationship but people would rather yell either queerbait or destroying the relationship. PR deadass pitched Absence like a het breakup drama and nobody blinked, just yelled how mean it was

Am I hinging my hopes on hammer-on-head-overt-canon-kissing-scene-DeanCas for the final season, no. Would I be surprised if it happened, knowing the execs? No, beyond breaking past corporate walls fandom dropped like a curtain in S9

But considering how "fuck performative culture" Berens is, as a gay man, fangirls absolutely should not fucking expect that either in even the most wild "the chains are broken, burn it all" method

Every queer man I know ships Destiel. Simultaneously, every queer man I know fucking loathes the sum of shipping culture with a vengeance.

Because it's grossly out of touch with MLM and is mostly WLW people trying to speak for what they think MLM should be when we already pretty much have the MLM right there.

YOU WANNA KNOW HOW THE ACTUAL QUEER MEN I KNOW SEE HOW THIS FANDOM HANDLES DESTIEL DESPITE BEING AVID SHIPPERS WHO SEE IT AS CANON ALREADY AND GET SCREAMED DOWN?

And since everyone likes to imagine the straight male audience as some borg, have a straight male friend exploding when someone called a fandom speakpiece a trainwreck. Bless his heart for not getting what queer or bi really mean situationally but his heart’s in the right place

I’m tired. Tired of trying to illustrate this to an audience I realized I have never once in my life been straight-coded enough to incorporate myself to much less understand the lensing of. Tired of watching queer men that I know who love this shit hide away in the recesses of DMs to hide from conversations lest they be accused of being homophobes or whatever by people refusing to read context, and/or just be smacked down by actual homophobes or just deadass rival shippers that refuse to see anybody be happy with something they don’t like in something that was never realistically a rivalry to begin with, because rivalry implies relative equality-ish and while all ships are equal in fanon, they aren’t necessarily in canon, and despite the thrashing and baying of antis this isn’t and will never just be a “fanon ship.”

Unpopular opinion but the biggest enemy to LGBT people isn't hets, it's the LGBT community, because we're too busy invalidating own own content and creators to make a truly unified front against het culture (or in this case, the network), and waving a flag with a lot of letters doesn't do anything to fix that. Yelling online into tumblr doesn’t fix that. @’ing creatives who have no power in this beyond the option to drop any attempt at queer resonant content cold turkey for you all to yell at them about THAT too doesn’t fix it.

No, yes, DeanCas are perfectly valid as Thebian warriors where one is clearly ace spectrum and the other is bisexualish if repressed as long as they are clearly enamored with and engaged with each other; no, nobody needs to fulfill anybody's migrating quota list when every romantic checkbox has been hit already that would be respected if they're het; would coming out statements in this sort of complicated relationship be great, sure, but they aren't in the kind of show that even addresses that and there's no way to make them even perform as the isolationists that they are without breaking or damaging the characters, not in the public eye, not in a show that hasn't shown a single sexual dean encounter for six-plus seasons for any other reason than to highlight a major traumatic problem in his life. 

No, I wasn’t “hiding my gays.” My gays just didn’t have their bedroom times put on blast while they even openly made comments about the nature of their relationship everybody flagged down because they weren’t making out in front of everyone, even if that hand *did* drag a shoulder too long, even if Dean *Did* inexplicably drag a naked flatlining human Cas into the FUCKING med bay out of the Dean Cave at like 6 AM in the morning. Yes, your dedication to talking down content is that fucking loud even if you don’t realize it.

SPN is never going to be a show where the characters distinctly identify "I'm a nonbinary demiman ace-spectrum demisexual" and "i'm an aromantic bisexual with a female inclination", it's just not, stop trying to make it happen, it isn't gonna happen, realistically they are not the kind of people to engage gender politics, they're just going to be themselves. And it's queer, and it's beautiful. Fandom needs to stop moving goalposts because it's becoming more and more transparent. They just need to __. Go to dinner, check, have lingering touches walking past each other, check, admit love for one or the other, check, watches the goalpost run off into the horizon Kiss, you mean kiss, you want them to kiss, but Dean hasn't had that in how many years and what was the framing of the last moment of that. 

SPN isn't about romance. Antis are right in that. But romance exists in SPN and one needs to mind the framework of it to not tilt the entire central focus of a genre show. One can have romance without being about romance, but people need to be conscious of what that means before they advocate about it. When Ruby or Anna were around they were dangerously close to becoming "about romance" which is why there was such a goddamn fit because these women were clearly tailor crafted to be plugged into a light/dark parallel in the back of the Impala

They haven't had a kissing-based romance in SPN for eight years. Ten if you cut past Lisa as a literal prop.

And if we wanna demand creator confirmation before we consider ace-y romances valid we'll talk about the biromantic commentary of S8 or the jilted lovers of S9 or the confirmed parallels of S10 or any of the overt shit after that, which got hit by marketing walls. We had that. They got yelled at for queerbait. Because it didn't hit people's quota. So we yet again hit a wall. Shipping fandom exhausts me. And I say that as a DeanCas shipper

I am literally watching people run their own goalposts around all the goddamn time Cas is so much more than becoming background commentary in the back of the impala like ruby and anna were geared to be He's his own goddamn individual, currently all but free of the wants and lusts of man from food to sleep to drink to urination to sex to PBJ, but deeply enamored -- per actual citation on the S8 DVD -- with humanity by proxy of a man he's given everything for Dean is a complicated individual who is growingly aware of his tug and pull with Cas on all emotional spectrums but has never once cheapened him to just being a sexual tool, reasons of which we can headcanon away, but he's never turned Cas into one of his bad coping mechanisms like Porn Star or Amazon or Deanmon's Fling And those, plus one waitress and a vague strip club incident in grief he came home from, sum up his post-lisa excursions, from a man who used to lay a different woman every episode in early seasons WelCoME to mlm cuLTURE In the actual L for love, not lust because kinda like jensen's headcanon of prostitute Dean there's even a chapter of feeling tossed away that's not what it's a b o u t and never was so performative DeanCas enrages me genuinely And if people have a genuine kink okay I guess but like, admit that's what it is. Otherwise assess the actual state and stasis of the characters in play and the cultural/gender issues involved, because it's soooo often either WLW or straight girls looking at MLM and deciding what they think it should be and it m i s s e s t h e m a r k b y a a m i l e and then the gay dudes hide in nooks or get besgieged by fangirls or are a Ben and avoid fandom entirely best Deans I've ever written with were with gay dudes tbh Kemi got the art of it enough to pre-write some scenes before they ever aired but there's elements that just vanish into the aether with either queer women or straight dudes. Different parts disappear Never had a straight girl write a Dean, don't intend to ever try wE nEed RepResEntAtiOn [sweeps hand at the show] if people stop running their goalposts around to the calls of straight girls, homophobes, and shipping culture it's right there. Is it monumental and groundbreaking, no, but SPN started as an outdated callback piece to begin with and has vaulted into the almost-current, so let's check ourselves in what we expect out of it. It's not gonna be a banner. But it's content actual queer men AVIDLY invest themselves in only to be told it's not enough/whatever in a world where there is dangerously low bi male representation, most is gay male, and most of that is hugely problematic stereotype easily replaced by a rainbow lamp wearing a boa and a sticky note pointing people towards plot. And in generous cases, are like Malec, which are a mix of creepy and stereotype. Yes let's nevermind the ancient warlock drawing the 18 year old dude into the allure of his thick eyeliner and glimmer and spandex pants, nothing to see here folks. but somehow we've reached a point as a culture that the above is considered better than "ageless deity becomes enamored with humanity through bond with one man, falling into him regardless of gender, surrendering all it knows to become like that man and protect that man, and becoming like unto a man, and learning the ways of man, through all classic romantic tropes known to man, and even classic endings and bookends of all romances given to man, only to settle in to a stable relationship baseline with a man, after sharing courtship gifts with a man" just because somebody, some fucking where, in a mix of bitterness, homophobia, and goalpost moving decided "public kiss or it doesn't count" even if we're left to wonder how that timeless thing knew what was under his pillow he kept safe that he came into his room and played him to get after a classic romantic gift.

Stop. It.

Yall may be wanting to victim pose because somebody else convinced you that you were a victim here but I’m a middle aged person willing to view history and accept basic FUCKING responsibility.

Because there’s a distinct fucking difference between “victim blaming” and “have some perspective and some basic adult responsibility in the unfolding of history as it happened rather than reframing it post-event because somebody else convinced you that’s what happened”.

The only people anyone is victims of in this fandom is people they took the word of as gospel without them having any sort of actual developmental insight at the time.

You wanna play victim?

Take it up with them.

As a modern meta author that primarily deals with actual legend and theology mytharc with a side of DeanCas structure I STILL run in to walls from antis erected by the people before me that did, indeed, use the methods they whip up as excuses, so if you’re gonna victim pose, I’m just as much of a victim of those people as you are, difference is I wasn’t enough of a follower to believe them when they preached “performative queer canon gospel to meet fangirl hetnorm performative demands of MLM we mainstreamed into our basic expectations because somebody told us to” at the time or now or ever. 

In fact, here’s the conversation that LED INTO THIS RANT.

CastielToday at 12:27 AM Old SPN has its values in a form of nostalgia or genre-searching it had a sort of drifter grifter americana vibe the later seasons lost

GarthToday at 12:27 AM Ah, early 2000's

CastielToday at 12:28 AM Well it's more than just year it was definitely a genre piece back then

GarthToday at 12:28 AM No, I know, but shows that span a long time you can track in it where you can tell writers styles started clashing in a way

CastielToday at 12:28 AM and that genre was pretty much dead at that point so even when it was new, it induced nostalgia "This is familiar I miss this where did this go" but in being so oldschool as it aged forward it aged worse and worse against the modern and Misha was the first bolt that really sparked a dynamic shift it was a breath of fresh air that carried it through kripke's plan and almost doubled its respective viewership in scale but still kept the old spirit Gamble desperately tried to capture that spirit but did not understand the actual essence of that spirit and budget restrictions didn't help due to twitter buzz she thought that spirit was "just duh brudders" which is dangerously reductionist

GarthToday at 12:30 AM Hey, Misha saved it in more then one way.

CastielToday at 12:30 AM the brothers were ironic vehicles for that spirit that gave it faces but it was a weird form of american dream that america hadn't realized its dream had warped into 50 years ago the american dream was a 3/2 bed bath and business degree

StarfiraToday at 12:31 AM I don't get how Gamble thought Misha's Cas was expendable. She just couldn't get her mindset out of s1-3 mentality I guess.

CastielToday at 12:31 AM but as that became labored with culture and debt the american dream drifted into freedom, exploration and the road with some sense of familiarity in classics, be it cars or music

GarthToday at 12:31 AM Funny, I can watch some episodes and go "huh... well... it gets better" and that says a lot that I view Se1-3 like that

CastielToday at 12:32 AM Once security was no longer a security, and people became anchored by their illusions of security into desperate survival to maintain that illusion of security, the idea of roadster americana was the new american dream

GarthToday at 12:32 AM Hmmm good point

Aryn Prime #TokenStraight😘Today at 12:32 AM I just looked at spn Facebook comments and geeeezzz

GarthToday at 12:33 AM I keep having to remind myself about a few details outside of SPN because being able to just wait for Netflix to get a new season then rewatch it all from the beginning has made me have a different view then others.

CastielToday at 12:33 AM So especially to the older generation older SPN has a strong nostalgic value you were lik six when it aired so that era is gone to you

GarthToday at 12:34 AM Yeah, 1996 Nov is me

Aryn Prime #TokenStraight😘Today at 12:34 AM One dude on Facebook said he resents that the actors have kids since he heard that part of the reason that it's ending is because J2M want more time with their families Wtf

CastielToday at 12:34 AM Whereas when it first aired

GarthToday at 12:34 AM I first watched when I was 14

CastielToday at 12:34 AM it was reflecting an age lost

GarthToday at 12:34 AM Aryn, wtf?

CastielToday at 12:34 AM to people desperately trying to find it but in reflecting old times it aged very poorly Gamble still didn't understand what made the appeal so regressed it to brothers without that true americana vibe while culling Cas which was a disaster

GarthToday at 12:35 AM See, it's like the same thing on how I can enjoy some older shows while understanding that it no longer works anymore. Older shows don't age well normally. And yeah, Se7 hahahahahahahhahahahahaha man once I stepped back and looked at the details of season 7 during the third rewatch I was like "hmm..... yeah. this sucks."

StarfiraToday at 12:36 AM I graduated high school in 2000 so those of you were kids when you watched SPN make me feel old. LOL

GarthToday at 12:36 AM lmao

CastielToday at 12:37 AM MOOD STAR MOOD

StarfiraToday at 12:37 AM AT LEAST I'M NOT ALONE WITH THESE YOUNG WHIPPER SNAPPERS

CastielToday at 12:37 AM You were probably in the generation that if you had tuned in when it was fresh you would have been like OH I REMEMBER THIS

GarthToday at 12:37 AM LMAO

CastielToday at 12:37 AM I MISS THIS it's not by fluke that Dean's theme song is literally titled Americana

GarthToday at 12:38 AM Ah yes.... the theme song....

CastielToday at 12:38 AM It was a whole beautiful craft

StarfiraToday at 12:38 AM I'm actually in between Dean and Sam's ages

CastielToday at 12:38 AM But it had to get with the times and Gamble took it in the worst direction possible

StarfiraToday at 12:39 AM I was born in 82

CastielToday at 12:39 AM Carver... people have their issues with carver but IMO he recovered the show as well as he could with the plate he was handed in the times he was There were still problems sure

GarthToday at 12:39 AM It's gone through some ups and downs, yep.

CastielToday at 12:39 AM but to boot out of Gamble era into the modern world was no small task The WAY HE HANDLED THE PR he basically was like THAT SHIT WAS A HOT MESS AND I FLUSHED IT but eloquent it was some shit like REWATCHING THE LAST FEW YEARS I REALIZED THAT OUR LORE HAS BECOME A BIT DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW SO I DECIDED TO REVISIT MORE FAMILIAR ELEMENTS

GarthToday at 12:40 AM When the people working on the show go "shit, I forgot to make notes"

CastielToday at 12:40 AM It's not that Carver didn't make notes

StarfiraToday at 12:40 AM Oh man were so ecstatic when Carver was announced as a showrunner. Ultimately, he let me down in s9 and s10 but s8? Season 8 will always have a special place in my heart.

CastielToday at 12:41 AM it's that there was no kind way to voice that Gamble was a disaster He had a three year plan and for reasons™ got even derailed in that plan and half of it ended up in the cut footage Destiel fandom do not like hearing my take about it I'm a shipper but I recognize

StarfiraToday at 12:41 AM Is season 8 perfect? Nope, but I don't think it's easy to describe what breath of fresh air it was after the shit show of season 7 to those who weren't there when it was airing live and binged through it

CastielToday at 12:41 AM yall fucked up b a d nobody will ever own responsibility for it but carver's intent is clear as day on the creatives wall and season 9/10 became a fustercluck as a result I want everybody in this room to think about this from a creatives angle, first carver then corporate Carver said when he joined he had a three year plan with final notes on his desk from the second he walked in the door again he entered in season eight We know what happened seasons eight, nine, ten on screen

GarthToday at 12:43 AM Yeah, Star, I don't have as many problems with the seasons as others do because hello Netflix, but I can see where the issues are after some explaining and some insight into the PR stuff that happened with the fandom points at Min and others like her

CastielToday at 12:43 AM we know season great we know season 9 and its potential we know season 10 -- and most of us know its cut scenes humanity, being human, colette, the altar of winchester, the secret admirer, the boyfriends that strapped into the abaddon/colette parallels, all of it we know carver himself wrote the s10 finale and got it to film and then it got cut we know s9 he gave misha a note to play as jilted lovers from the showrunner but then we ask why did this never make it well nobody in fandom was paying attention nobody paid attention to SPN struggling the first seasons nobody paid attention to gamble's era almost getting nuked they all swore up and down this outdated americana show was about to have a queer pairing go canon because, yes, at that point reads crumbled note wallpaper

GarthToday at 12:46 AM Urgh, gotta go help with dinner prep. Mom doesn't like me being on Discord lately so I'm going to have to cut out now guys. Min, I'll catch up to your info drop afterwards lmao

since that still surprising some people too.

[tren-fraszka]

Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020 Letter

Dear creator,

Thank you for taking your time to check my requests. I know my requests can sound a bit tricky, but please don’t be discouraged. I wish you will have good time writing first and foremost!

My AO3 is Tren, if you wish to check it out.

Likes: comedy, casefics, canon compliants, AUs, time loops, bodyswaps, roleswaps, “being hoisted by your own petard” plotlines, snark, pettiness, rivals, enemies to friends to lovers, violence, friendships, and character bonding,

DNW: explicit sex (makeouts and fade to black is okay), A/B/O, mpreg, rape depicted as positive (so no “it’s okay, because the other person enjoyed it/it was what they truly wanted”), trans headcanons, soulmate AUs, stories ending with surrender to fate/destiny, fourth wall breaking in canons where that doesn’t occur, character has cancer or other real-life terminal disease AU, word “queerplatonic”.

Also, I included what ships I’m okay with in each fandom. Please do not include any ships that aren’t canon and I have not allowed in those sections (if you feel really strongly about a ship I haven’t mentioned, you can always ask through mods just in case).

Additionally, while I almost never request fanart as possible medium, because I prefer my main gift to be fic, I would be very okay with receiving fanart treats. On another note, feel free to use my old letters if you get your hands on them. I never stop being interested in fandoms, and if I requested something once I will still want it in the future.

                                             REQUESTS

MARIMASHITA! IRUMA-KUN

I read new manga chapters as they get translated so feel free to incorporate anything from the manga that’s available in english. I’m not spoiled for anything beyond that, so please no spoilers for future developments.

Kiriwo Amy/Suzuki Iruma

There are many good ships with Iruma, but this one just has a lot things I like.  I love enemy ships with both sides being way too emotionally invested into each other so this was inevitable. I love how this relationship starts as this really wholesome friendship and school festival preparation, except Kiriwo turns out to be a bit messed up and wants to blow up everyone. But then they both accept the outcome and go on with their lives still thinking about each other. Iruma goes through a lot of trouble to keep the club operating even though Kiriwo has been pretty much expelled. And then Kiriwo is now obsessed with Iruma as his anthitesis and perfect enemy.

I’m okay with the potential story happening at any point in the canon. I would love both a story set before the festival while Kiriwo is still hiding his true colors or a story set after festival. Maybe Iruma runs into Kiriwo somewhere after he escapes prison and instead of calling an adult, he tries to stop Kiriwo from causing trouble on his own. As for pre-festival story. Maybe some upperclassmen steal important parts from the club and Iruma and Kiriwo set out to get them back.

Naberius Kalego & Suzuki Iruma

I love Kalego for being a much better take on Snape than original Snape ever was. The second the series made Kalego Iruma’s familiar I knew this was about to get good. And it was. I love how Kalego slowly warms up to Iruma, even if he is still allergic to his and Sullivan’s antics. I love that Kalego is actually a competent teacher who cares about his students, even if he would rather eat a whole lemon than admit it out loud.

For prompts, maybe Sullivan ends up having an important business and Opera isn’t available so he dumps looking after Iruma on Kalego for a few days. Or Iruma is struggling with studying since so much is new for him so Kalego ends up forced to help him catch up with the material (if you are following manga inclusion of Balam is always welcome). Or maybe Iruma gets into usual trouble ends up stranded somewhere and the only one he can call for help is his familiar.

AUs and ships

I love the worldbuilding around the demon world, so I would ask that if you decided to write an AU that it still incorporates demons. I would definitely love an AU where rather than getting summoned to demon world, Iruma accidentally summons either Kiriwo or Kalego into the human world. Maybe Iruma’s parents try to use him as an offering, but instead he ends up bound to a demon. I would love to see Kiriwo excited to unleash suffering (even if his weak powers severely limit him in that regard) onto human world just to discover that he made contract with the biggest pacifist possible. Or Kalego being torn between wanting to return home as soon as possible (he has classes to teach!) and wanting to somehow help the weird human child that just keeps getting into trouble. Any other demon-focused AU is also welcome. I’m also fine with any sort of AU divergences scenario. Maybe Iruma keeps accidentally sabbotaging Kiriwo’s terrorist plans without realizing it. Or Iruma ends up summoning Kalego more often as his familiar when he gets into trouble.

As for ships, I’d rather avoid any love triangle scenarios for this canon, so please focus on just one pairing per character (competing for Iruma’s attention is normal for this canon, I’d just rather not see outright romantic competition). It’s self-explainatory for Kiriwo request, but if you want to include some shipping elements into the Kalego request I also ship Iruma/Ameri, Iruma/Alice and Kalego/Balam.

RE:ZERO

I watched the first season of anime, as well as the two OVA, and I’m now following the second one. Please don’t include any spoilers for events that haven’t been yet adapted. I’m fine with mentions of stuff from Light Novel that adaptation has skipped, just please make sure to establish them properly.

Natsuki Subaru & Beatrice  Natsuki Subaru & Felix Argyle & Julius Euclius & Reinhard van Astrea  Natsuki Subaru & Puck 

I love how many great interactions Suberu has in Re:Zero with various people, not just Emilia. Feel free to mix my requests or include any other characters, I love all of them.

Natsuki Subaru & Puck

I adore how Subaru immediately gets along with Puck due to their shared admiration of Emilia. I would love a story where the two of them decide to work together to throw a surprise party for Emilia or to make a present for her. Or maybe they need to work together to protect Emilia against a threat. Or for something lighter, their shared adventures of pranking everyone they can in Roswaal’s manor. Feel free to include as much Emilia as you need for this relationship, since Puck is contracted with her.

Natsuki Subaru & Felix Argyle & Julius Euclius & Reinhard van Astrea

I immediately loved the queen candidates’ knights and the relationships between them. I would greatly enjoy seeing them work together. Maybe someone is plotting to harm queen candidates and they join forces to bring them down. Or maybe the queen candidates are busy with some bureaucracy and the bored knights decide to spend a night at town, which ends with all sorts of shenanigans. Maybe Subaru and Julius decide to have some sort of competiton that hilariously goes out of control. Or Reinhardt and Subaru rope everyone into helping some poor grandma, but her straightforward request ends up becoming much more difficult to execute than anyone predicted. Alternatively, Felix, Julius, and Reinhardt decide that Subaru has been pushing himself way too much recently and with silent blessing from Emilia they drag him into the local hot springs to make him finally rest a bit and make sure that give Felix plenty of time for some additional magical treatment.

Feel free to also include Aldebaran into the group if you want. He had very little screen time in anime, so I didn’t want to make this request more difficult than it already is, but if you want to write him too I would be very happy with his inclusion.

Natsuki Subaru & Beatrice

Beatrice is a fascinating character. She’s clearly very powerful, but ends up hiding herself in the library due to her strongly hinted tragic past. Watching Subaru try to make her open up more to him and other people is very interesting. I would love to see more of his attempts to befriend Beatrice. Maybe he suggests they do a book club and makes Beatrice choose books they should read. Or alternatively Subaru ends up trapped inside a magical book and Beatrice is the only one who can help navigate him so he can escape from it. Or alternatively a witch cultist invided the Roswaal mansion and Subaru and Beatrice need to work together to find and neutralize the threat.

AUs and ships

I would prefer no setting changes for this story, any other AUs are fine. I especially love Subaru’s reset mechanic, so feel free to abuse that if you want. If you want some AU ideas, maybe another character starts remembering bits and pieces of the reseted timelines. Or maybe Otto turns out to be a witch cultist in disguise and uses the trust he earned to cause problems.

I’m okay with acknowledging Subaru’s canon crush on Emilia, though I’d rather it wasn’t framed as an endgame ship. I’m okay with pairing Subaru with pretty much any guy in the series (especially other queen candidate knights) or leaving who he will end up with ambiguous.

MY NEXT LIFE AS A VILLAINESS (ANIME)

I watched anime and read manga for this story, so please don’t spoil me for the parts not yet adapted from Light Novel.

Group: Katarina Claes/Gerald Stuart (My Next Life as a Villainess)

I ran into this manga on accident, but I definitely don’t regret it. I love how Katarina ends up solving all the problems in this series either through her efforts or by sheer accident and how she ends up becoming the actual protagonist. This charmingly comedic story has a lot of heart and I crave more.

I think I like Gerard the most out of all potential suitors for Katarina’s heart and would love to see more of his crush on Katarina and unsuccessful attempts at actually wooing her. We only see him through Katarina’s perspective, who can’t separate him from the Gerard she knows from the game, even though he changed under her influence. I would definitely be up for a story where Katarina starts to notice that maybe her idea of Gerard doesn’t exactly line up with the reality. Or maybe she remains blissfully ignorant and decides to go in-depth investigation into finding more of Gerard’s weaknesses, because she saw him do something nice for Maria and now she is sure the end is near for her and she wants to be extra prepared. Or maybe he takes her on a vacation trip to escape from her other suitors, but everything goes terribly wrong (maybe their carriage crashes forcing them to spend the night in the woods), and yet both of them end up having a lot of fun.

I don’t mind including any other characters, since they are a colorful bunch. I read this manga for harem shenanigans, and you are free to include as much of that as you want.

AUs and ships

I’m okay with AUs and canon divergences. The story is already a huge canon divergence after all, so if you want to twist it even more, that’s fine by me. If you want to play around with characters accidentally getting transported to the alternate world where Katarina is the original Katarina or getting a glimps of it, I would be very much for it. I love the idea of Gerard meeting the original Katarina and having all sorts of complicated feelings about her, but ultimately acting kind towards her, because he believes that this is what Katarina he knows would have wanted. And just imagine the utter chaos that would result in two Katarinas running around.

I’m okay with all canonical crushes being acknowledged, however due the nature of my request I want the endgame ship to be Katarina/Gerard. I don’t mind other characters being shipped with each other.

TOWER OF GOD

I’m caught up with the newest chapters of the webtoon.

Khun Aguero Agnis/Twenty-Fifth Baam | Jyu Viole Grace (Tower of God)

I got into this series through anime but then I binged the rest of this webtoon and wow it was a blast. I love the complicated world of the tower, the colorful cast, and the complicated relationships between characters. And I love Aguero for being a total asshole and schemer, who becomes a better person due to Bam’s influence.

I’m fine with the fic being set at any point in the story, whether it be beginning of their relationship right after they both started to climb the tower or anything else down the line. I love the slow change that Aguero goes through starting as the very selfish person who burned most of the bridges behind him into a slightly more caring but still willing to burn all the bridges if it’s for Bam person. Also, Bam’s arc of slowly finding himself through interacting with others is great. For some ideas, maybe they have to go undercover to achieve some goal and end up pretending to be boyfriends to throw off suspicions (bonus points for Khun making their supposed relationship’s backstory more ridiculous each time someone asks about it). Or something goes wrong while they are escaping resulting in Bam and Khun getting chained together with shinsu-resistant handcuffs, which begins their epic journey to find and defeat the person who has key to it. Meanwhile Khun is slowly losing it, because he isn’t prepared to handle someone’s constant presence 24h a day, especially if it’s Bam. Or any other towe climbing shenanigans. Maybe Khun wagers something he really shouldn’t have (like his memories) and the team has to get them back, because Khun regresses into his pre-Bam meeting self and is even more of an asshole than usual.

Please use the names Bam and Jue Viole Grace respectively in the fic, because that was the official translation when I picked up the comics (I’m assuming it was different in the past from the AO3 tag).

AUs and ships

I would prefer no setting changes for this story, Tower is a honestly fascinating place and I want to enjoy more of it, but all other AUs are okay. For some suggestions, maybe Bam doesn’t manage to escape from FUG. Khun finds him and decides that the only way to help is to make sure that Elders acknowledge Bam as a Slayer, so he starts to climb ranks of FUG. 

I’m okay with mentions of Bam’s crush on Rachel, but mostly in the context of his past feelings for her. Just please focus on Bam/Aguero. For some other ships, I’m okay with Anaak/Ran and Anaak/Endorsi. As for other characters, you are free to ship them if you want, just don’t ship Hwaryun with anyone.

[robophantom]

Characters I’m Excited About But Don’t Have A Game For:

Adelaide Blackwood

Human

Grave Cleric

A young noble woman who has heard the voice of the Raven Queen ever since she was a child. Unfortunately, no one else believes her, especially since she’s always been a bit odd even when she isn’t supposedly speaking to deities. This came to tragedy when her sister brought home her new fiancé and Adelaide insisted to the point of violence that the fiancé was a vampire, and wound up institutionalized. She was proven right several months later when her family was found murdered in their home.

Adelaide became an adventurer when she either escaped the institution or was turned out since there was no longer anyone left to pay for her care. Adventuring parties were much more forgiving of her quirks, and much more likely to believe her when she said there was an undead around.

Aster Crucis

Scourge Aasimar

Divine Soul Sorcerer

Absolute Baby Unlimited. He was raised to be a Pope-like figure as a direct messenger from his god, but he was really intended to be more of a figurehead. He is thus a very sweet, very naive person who is great at public appearances but knows next to nothing about the real world and struggles therein.

He becomes an adventurer due to a comedy of errors beginning with one of his caretakers leaving out a book that detailed a king going out to visit his kingdom and culminating with Aster slipping his guard and getting caught up with a group of adventurers.

Sir Augustus Lucian Fairwell

Protector Aasimar

Devotion Paladin

A big, beautiful man and absolute himbo from a family line that has long been favored by Lathander. The Fairwell have all served the god as clerics, paladins, or the odd celestial warlock or divine soul sorcerer and Auggie is no different. Unfortunately, he’s dumb as a brick, but he makes up for it by being attractive, charming, and just a generally nice guy. He loves his family very much, and will brag about his sister, Ophelia, at any given opportunity. His one major vice is that he’s quite vain and somewhat spoiled due to being the former heir to a noble house. But he’s trying.

Auggie became an adventurer after abdicating the position of family heir to his significantly more clever little sister. Nonetheless, he is committed to serve Lathander to the best of his abilities as a free agent of the people!

Curiosity “Curie” Magellan

Standard Tiefling

Transmutation Wizard

Curie is, much as her name implies, a very curious being. She comes from a large family of tieflings and had a very happy childhood before deciding to study magic. After her schooling was complete, she joined up with a research group working with transmutation magic: her specialty. However, things were always a little odd in the lab, and one day Curie’s curiosity got the better of her. She snuck into the senior researcher’s labs to take a look, and found out that there was some very horrifying and unethical research being conducted. In a panic, she stole or destroyed whatever research she could find and fled.

Curie thus became an adventurer because she’s technically a fugitive. As soon as her sabotage was discovered, she was labeled a criminal and thus doesn’t have a lot of options. She’s making the best of it, though!

Edie Everhardt

Human

Hexblade Warlock

Edie is a simple country gal from a huge family. As the middle of nine siblings, she’s always tended to be overlooked, but she sort of enjoyed the anonymity within her own home, even if it could get lonely sometimes. This all changed when she found a weird sword while out exploring that pretty much begged her to make a pact and take it places because it was so f*cking bored.

Edie herself is very humble and sensible, and is an adventurer mostly to humor the spirit in the sword and raise money for her folks back home. She’s not really interested in the fame and prestige, but it’s an enjoyable enough way to spend her time and she likes the people.

Lady [Redacted] Greye

Protector Aasimar

Monster-Slayer Ranger

For centuries, the Greye family was famous for slaying even the most terrifying of monsters. If you had a problem and regular adventurers weren’t cutting it, you took it to the Greyes. They were duty bound to stand between the innocent public and creatures of the night, and did so gladly. It was thus an unimaginable tragedy (and horror) when one night the entire family was wiped out by an unknown enemy. Or so it seemed. The woman would would later style herself as Lady Greye was unexpectedly away from home that night and escaped the massacre. In her grief, she forswore her given name and dedicated herself to her family’s legacy.

Lady Greye is an adventurer because that’s what she’s always been. She’s just... not used to working with people who aren’t her family members yet. And if she maybe wants to discover the people or creatures who massacred her family and get revenge, well. That’s no one’s business but her own.

Mareille “Marley” Traith

High Elf

Arcane Trickster Rogue/War Mage Wizard

Mareille is the eldest—but illegitimate—daughter of the previous Duke Uthellon. She was born amidst a very juicy scandal involving broken engagements and a possible murder, and despite her father’s attempt to give her a good life the stigma has followed her. After her father married her stepmother and had her half-brother, Syril, Mareille began training to be her brother’s spymaster, though she kept as much of the traditional Uthellon’s magical teachings as she could.

Mareille became an adventurer following her father’s mysterious death and her younger brother’s premature ascension to Dukedom. She wants to use the profession as an excuse to snoop around and get to the bottom of the tragedies following her family and hopefully protect her little brother from sharing their father’s fate.

Nadya Thueban

Half-elf

Divination Wizard

Nadya comes from a long line of diviners in her home village. People came to her to inquire about the harvest, if their lover was cheating on them, how many children they would have, and other peaceful mundanities rural villagers concerned themselves with. Nadya also has a young daughter, age twelve, but was never interested in marrying, and a snake familiar that exists as a really dope tattoo when he isn’t summoned. But all the predictions in the world didn’t prepare her for the day when raiders attacked her village, killing dozens and kidnapping dozens more. Her daughter was among the missing, and it drove her to a grief so profound she still hadn’t clawed her was back out.

Nadya became an adventurer to find her daughter and the rest of the missing villagers. She’s also slowly learning to trust her divination again—although it keeps returning the strangest of messages about a plot she doesn’t understand...

Shinobu

Human

Beast Master Ranger/Samurai Fighter

Shinobu is a quiet, melancholic woman in her thirties. She was actually already an adventurer about a decade ago, but after her party was wiped out, she retreated to the forest to live out her “retirement” surrounded by the wolves she always felt an affinity for. She still struggles with survivors guilt, and has difficulty forming attachments to people knowing they would be killed just as easily as her previous party.

Although somewhat out of practice, Shinobu is forced to leave her retirement by events relevant to the plot OR the resurgence of whatever creature or organization killed her party, necessitating her involvement. She is accompanied by the (grand?)daughter of her original Beast Companion, Kagami.

Shizuka

Half-elf

Shadow Monk/Assassin Rogue

A trained spy and assassin who was raised by a secretive organization. On a mission to assassinate an important noble, they were critically injured and subsequently abandoned by their parter. Luckily they were found by a local who nursed them back to health. Presumed dead and thus free of the organization, Shizuka has tried to adapt to a more civilian lifestyle with... mixed success, not helped by the fact that they are completely mute and very few people speak their version of sign language.

Shizuka becomes an adventurer when some of the noble’s agents come sniffing around and they flee rather than implicate their saviors in their crimes. They are now traveling doing mercenary work while still trying to learn how to become a person.

Ulrike

Protector Aasimar

Abjuration Wizard

Ulrike is a cheerful soul who has only ever wanted to help people. She was a member of an elite team of wizard who travelled about dealing with cursed artifacts and locations. Unfortunately, and their last mission Ulrike got trapped within the artifact they were dealing with. The next thing she knew, she was being released from her prison decades or even centuries later with no idea what happened to her former team. She is now forced to deal with the intense culture shock of finding herself all alone in a future she doesn’t understand with no way to return. She’s doing her best to stay positive, but even her persist any cheer has taken a hit by the circumstances.

Ulrike is an adventurer mostly because she has nowhere else to go. There are few alive who still remember her, and even the organizations she used to work with are long defunct or unrecognizable from when she last last active. She is thus relying on the kindness of the strangers who found her, and perhaps hoping that she might one day find out what happened to her team.

Úna

Firbolg

Gloomstalker Ranger/Scout Rogue

Úna was born with albinism and struggled to live in the sunlight. Other people found her creepy—even her own family—and so she grew up playing alone after dark. Over time she began to adapt to nighttime living, and travelled further and further into the woods each night. On one such night, she stumbled upon a bandit camp. They nearly killed her, but her lack of fear and straightforward way of speaking to them amused their leader enough that they decided to take her with them. Úna had little attachment to her previous living conditions and so followed without protest. She quickly proved invaluable for moving around at night and in dark places, and became a fixture of the group. However; one day they caught a little too much heat for their crimes, and it was decided that it would be best to part ways for a while. After all, a seven and a half foot tall white firbolg draws attention no matter how sneaky she is.

Úna is an adventurer because her skill set lends itself to little else. She finds working under the cover of darkness soothing, and isn’t squeamish about the moral quandaries that follow adventurers around.

Ysara Djimon

Wood Elf

Open Hand Monk

Ysara was a martial arts teacher at her home monastery. A strict but fair teacher, she enjoyed working with the acolytes who passed through the monastery. One of her students was particularly gifted and Ysara found training them to be particularly rewarding. However, many years later they returned to the monastery and nearly wiped it out before departing again. Ysara was left critically injured, but managed to survive.

Ysara set out to become an adventurer once she was recovered enough to walk on her own. Her other skills have been slower to come back to her, though she is confident that she will one day return to her former prime. She left to track down her former student and extract justice and maybe a reason for the massacre.

[avoutput]

Gaps Between Worlds || Mega Man X

Recently I have been searching for the answer to a problem I have been drowning in: Do I still love playing video games? There was a time when new video game releases would get me hyped, and it could just be that I am getting older and my priorities are changing, or my love for games is evolving, but I think there is a better answer that sounds more analytical and less like a platitude. I had to start thinking about what made me fall in love with games in the first place, which was easy enough to do; it was an escape. We need to go deeper. What about games, about the escape grabbed me. Looking back at my most recent completions: Dark Souls, Persona 5, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, most of them offered a balance between challenge and story. For a long time in between the excitement of a title, I had been relying on a game either appealing to the challenge or the story, on a sliding scale in one direction or another. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by my lack of enthusiasm for new games, I pick up a game from my childhood, something that made me feel nostalgic, something like Mega Man X. They have this ability to lift my spirit and invigorate me. That’s when I realized what was missing from modern games: my imagination.

When I booted up my copy of Mega Man X this weekend, it was like it was calling to me. I did it subconsciously. I was struggling with my drive to play Persona 4 Golden, and picked up Nioh, a playstation plus game that had been sitting around for awhile. I was working on a boss, and I just wasn’t feeling it. That’s when I went looking through my games library. I had actually picked up a copy of Mega Man X Legends a while back, installed it, and never played it. Without thinking, just like I did when I was a kid, I just started playing it. The Capcom sound plays and the Mega Man logo flashes across the screen and I am instantly back on my friends bedroom floor, hogging the controller. When the first level starts, it’s instantly chaos, cars flying down the highway, trying to escape the ensuing carnage. You can find out why if you wait for the demo screen that explains the game instead of instantly pressing start, but I never did as a kid, and this led precisely to what I am here to talk about. I filled the gaps with my imagination, even in places where the game didn’t ask me to. I was hungry for a world that I could make cohesive. One that offers a clear definition, a map that leads the eye and the mind to a conclusion, but open enough to let that conclusion be anything that suits you. (The opposite of the Nomura-verse!)

In the era of 8-bit and 16-bit games, the worlds were often presented as flat, layered objects, but drawn to appear in three dimensions like a diorama or, as they often called levels back then, a stage. After you beat the opening level and receive a helping hand from your… friend… or brother… or just some other robot who looks cooler than you, Zero, you are introduced to the classic Mega Man selection screen, but with an interesting tweak. You now can access the enemy’s location via the map screen. This really got my imagination going as a kid and still does to this day. It’s just a minor tweak to the usual formula for the series, but it suddenly added a new layer of depth. I always knew they had to exist somewhere, but it never occurred to me that there was an interconnected ecosystem. They boldly took this approach a step further. Defeating certain Mavericks (the stage bosses) affected another Maverick’s stage. For example, defeating Storm Eagle causes the plane you fight on to crash into Spark Mandrils’ stage. I loved this because as much sense as it made, it also really didn’t make any sense.

Take a look at the map. It is an incredibly dense locale, seemingly made up only of the locations related to the Mavericks. You start the game in some sort of cityscape, but now, you appear to be on some kind of island or peninsula that maybe… supplies all of the needs of the people in the city? Some of the functions of these stages are clear, some you have to make a stretch, and others defy clear explanation. You have a power plant, an airport, a mine, and a factory, all pretty straightforward. As a stretch, we have a forest that possibly processes carbon into oxygen. It doesn’t seem to produce wood, the trees are all made of electronics and covered in a wood veneer. The sea port is also a bit mysterious. It seems more military related than shipping related. All of the robots aren’t the repurposed kinds you see in other stages. They already have missiles and lasers, they are attack focused. So this is probably a military research facility. In the unexplainable, first we have the icy mountain stage, which could be a mine or maybe a research station. I often thought that it produced and controlled weather, but what exactly does a mountain have to do with that? Maybe it is rooted in science, but as a kid, the mind isn’t fully formed, and as an adult, you just know that water becomes clouds and it rains. The American Education system is broken. Lastly, we have a tower that appears to be surrounded by a moat. As a kid, I used to think this was the control tower for the airport, but now I am thinking it might be the control tower for the entire peninsula’s robot ecosystem. It’s not clear, at all, but that's what makes it fun. It is the inconsequential nature of their necessity that makes it fun to explore in your imagination. The bosses don’t speak between each battler or even introduce themselves beyond the shonen bad guy thumbs down, phase in, or muscle flex posturing. If you dig, I am sure there is some concrete answer, but the power is that it ultimately doesn’t matter, it’s just fun to play and explore, either way you go about it.

What also stands out about the construction of the map is how one stage actually interacts with another. If you notice, the Chill Penguin stage is way up at the north side of the map and the factory is to the south, and yet, when you beat Mr. Chill, you Flame Mammoth’s stage is frozen over. There are other stages between the mountain and the factory that are totally in the way of the possible avalanche that would have hit the factory, and yet they are unfazed. I get it, fire is weak to ice, but since there isn’t really an overall method to the madness in the construction of the Map image, as far as I can tell, I just can’t figure why they didn’t move the stages into proximity of the stage that is affected by the defeat of a Maverick master. What is hilarious, the defeat of Launch Octopus causes the forest to overflow, and wouldn’t you know it, they are right next to each other. Same with the airport and power plant, helmed by Storm Eagle and Spark Mandrill respectively. The funny thing about the airport is that because you destroy an airplane in midair, you could have destroyed any stage on the map, and it would have made sense. It would have been even cooler if they had made it so that the longer it takes to defeat Storm Eagle, that changes where the plane falls, and thus the stage it destroys.

It’s not that modern games don’t have these imaginative gaps, it’s just that there are much fewer obvious gaps in the world because they have so much more space to create in. Just looking at the file size between games of the past and today, it’s like comparing the size of Mercury to Jupiter. With that in mind, it could be that I haven’t spent the time to really dive in and find the cracks in modern games. As a kid, I just played the same games over and over again and committed these gaps to memory.

I decided I would use this title to discuss different aspects of the gaps between the imaginative leaps that storytelling asks us to make. Like how we all came up with a particular internal story about what happens inside a Pokeball. I was part of the crowd that thought maybe they get their own personal oasis that suited their type. Or maybe we can discuss the implication of the relationship that Zelda and Link must have based on the minimal interactions we actually get to see them in. Mega Man X has many more facets as series we can dive into, like how exactly his buster arm might actually function and be powered? Maybe it is an internal nuclear reactor offset or totally green and powered by the sun. If it was nuclear, does he leave behind fallout at every defeat? Hopefully I can dedicate more time to this! Thanks for reading.

[streamacademe]

Week 106, Day 735.

My trip to Scotland was a success and I managed to collect some samples! But, I don’t want to talk about that this week. As my 3rd year has officially commenced, I would instead like to dedicate this post to lessons I’ve learned as a 2nd year PhD student and reiterate over my coping strategies.  So, without further ado... 10 lessons I learned as a 2nd year PhD student:

Be prepared to face some dark times with your mental health - I won’t lie to you, it can, and probably will get pretty ugly. At times it will feel like the entire world is on your shoulders and you can’t breathe. I have had countless mental breakdowns this year, which usually involve bawling my eyes out and hyperventilating, before passing out from the exhaustion of it all, then coming around and crying again. Not fun. I have also suffered from insomnia, and, on the flip side, have had many days where I couldn’t get out of bed. I have included some coping strategies for set backs with mental health at the end of this post. 

It will get hard and you’re going to want to quit - I’m sorry to be a bit of a downer, but it’s the truth. For me, giving up is not an option, but even I have had days where I’ve wanted to quit. It’s probably in the terms and conditions of a PhD to feel like this sometimes, but no one ever reads those. How you keep the love for your project glowing is for you to figure out. I always think of the finish line and of how far I’ve come. Or neck a glass of wine, that also helps...

Find a balance between feeling terrified and apathetic, and stupid and self-assured - PhD’s are terrifying, which I appreciate can be exhausting and can lead to feeling apathetic. However, apathy is both a blessing and a curse. It may make you feel calmer and more able, but it sure as hell won’t motivate you to try harder and do better. The same applies for feeling self-assured; yes, you’re clearly a clever bean for getting this far and you should acknowledge and celebrate that, but feeling stupid pushes us to seek knowledge, which is what science is all about. 

Focus on genuine priorities - Procrastination/dedicating your time to non-essential tasks are your no.1 enemies. PhD’s are extremely unpredictable and you have to try and be ahead of the game or you risk falling too far behind. So make sure you know exactly what your priorities are and treat them as such. 

To do lists and GANTT charts are life savers - On your worst days,  refer to these to reorient yourself and stay on track. Make sure they’re always up to date, kept neat, and, most importantly, realistic. 

Self-care is critical - And no, I don’t just mean bubble baths with scented candles every night, although those are definitely helpful. Self-care is looking after your mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Pushing yourself too hard can end really badly. Use me as an example, I pushed myself too hard physically and damaged my spine, which resulted in me taking a week off work. I won’t even mention the amount of mental health set backs I’ve had. So, do whatever it is that allows you to rest your bones, de-frazzles your mind, makes you happy, helps you feel better, and makes you feel like you can keep going. 

You have to learn to say ‘no’ - This will probably be something you’re not used to or are comfortable doing, but I have learned from personal experience that this is literally the most important thing when it comes to  looking after yourself and avoiding burnout. 

Your personal growth is impossible to ignore - Who you are when you start your PhD is definitely not the person you will be at the end. You never stop learning and developing in a PhD, but like, at an accelerated rate. I find it fascinating looking back at my progress reports; something that may have felt impossible 6 months ago is now the norm. 

Rely on your supervisors for help - THIS IS SO IMPORTANT. You DO NOT have to do everything alone. Ask questions, talk to them about your problems, seek their advice. And if they make you feel inferior, uncomfortable, stupid, or make themselves unavailable to you, contact your student support office/r, because a supervisor should NEVER do that. Furthermore, don’t be afraid to voice your opinions and stand your ground with your superiors, they are only human, just like you, and if you feel like they are misguiding or misunderstanding you, tell them. This is your PhD, not anybody else’s. 

Remember that your PhD is your work not your life - As hard as that may be. That is all. 

My ways of coping with the challenges of doing a PhD:

Spend time with animals and in nature - Honestly, if I had to choose just one bit of advice, it’d be this. Animals are the definition of joy, and being in nature always reminds me how beautiful the world can be, irrespective of how dark and rubbish mine may feel at times. 

Sleep - Getting enough sleep makes my anxiety more manageable, my mood better, and means I have more energy to deal with what life has to throw at me. Don’t listen to how much sleep you “should” have, instead listen to your body and work with it. Personally, I aim for at least 8 hours a night. 

Minimalism - I have mentioned minimalism many times on my blog. The benefits of this lifestyle are countless. With respect to my PhD, living with less allows me to have more room to breathe and think. It also means I spend more time on experiences instead of material things. Minimalism also allows me to live intentionally and aligns with my personal values. This in return means that I am more at peace with the life I lead outside of my PhD. 

Save money - Not only do savings mean a sense of security, but having money set aside can be really helpful if you are in need of a getaway or simply want to treat yourself without getting into debt. Furthermore, as there is no guarantee of a job straight after your PhD, or if your funding runs out before you finish, it is essential to have some savings as a safety net to fall on if need be. 

Read - I use books as a form of escape from reality, typically reading either before bed or in the morning before work. It helps take my mind off  the stresses that clutter my brain.

Exercise, eat healthy, and drink plenty of water - I know you’ve heard it all before, but here it is again. It works.

Red Bull (as a last resort) - There are many things in life that have impacted my ability to focus this year, including long drives, bad news, sleepless nights, and mental health issues. However, life doesn’t stop when you want to and so when I’m really struggling I turn to Red Bull for help, and it really does help me. (I don’t drink coffee and tea doesn’t cut it). I always ensure not to drink more than one can a day or drink alcohol within the same 24 hours that I’ve drank Red Bull in. 

How I try to cope with mental health set backs: Disclaimer: ‘Try’ is a critical word here as it is not always easy or straightforward to do the below, and, sadly, sometimes none of these suggestions work. 

Talk about it - I HATE talking about my mental health issues to people as I don’t want to burden my friends, upset my family, or appear weak at work. However, there are times where I’ve had to, and it’s helped. I mainly talk to my boyfriend about it, but should probably see a therapist. Hey ho, small steps. If you really can’t talk about it, write about it, either publicly or privately. 

Perspective - I have been watching a show called ‘New Amsterdam’ recently, which has really helped me see how insignificant some of my problems are. That’s not to say you’re not allowed to feel like crap just because you’re not having open heart surgery, of course you are, but trying to do things that change your perspective can be very helpful in coming out of a mental health episode. Geddit?

Give back - There is always someone having a worse time than you and nothing helps to snap you out of your pity party like lending a helping hand. Whether it’s volunteering at a homeless shelter, running a marathon for charity, or simply donating what you can to a cause you believe in. Give back. 

Headspace - I’m sure you’ve heard of this app/website, if not, here it is. Personally, I don’t like Andy Puddicombes voice, or listening to a human in general, so I don’t use the platform for meditation, but they do have a great range of sleepcasts and sounds, which I use to combat my insomnia. 

Calming medication (natural) - I use an essential oil aromatherapy roller ball to help me overcome an anxious episode or get me off to sleep. Personally, I use Tisserand for these. I also use Rescue Remedy drops for the same reason (these contain alcohol so aren’t for everyone). 

Get the F off of social media for a while - Honestly, your phone isn’t an essential organ, take a break from it, see what wonders it can do for you.

Cut out toxic/negative people - Fill your life with wholesome people, get rid of anyone that makes your recovery impossible, or your life difficult. Be as harsh as you need to be, cry about it, drink about it, but do it, and don’t go back. Here’s a great song to support you through this.  

That is all folks. It took me all day to write this, so I hope it’s at least somewhat helpful. ❤ Peace. 

Photo: A photo of a sunset that made me feel better after an especially difficult day. Source: My camera.

[violent-optimism]

Ranking the Uncharted Villains

Hey Everyone!

I know this post is kind of out of the blue. The truth is I’ve been working on it for about a month or two. It’s taken me a long time to make but it’s finally done and I am ready to share it with you all!

Please enjoy this ranking of all the villains in the Uncharted game series. The order of characters is from worst to best. These are just my personal opinions, and I don’t mean to change anyone’s minds!

Also, please excuse the poor quality of some of these images, I struggled to find high quality ones!

(Note: I will not be including minor/side villains like Ramses, Orca, etc.)

Gabriel Roman – Simon Templeman

So let’s start off with, in my opinion, the worst of the bunch, and not in a good way. Roman is not a horribly written villain at all, but compared to some of the other Uncharted baddies, he’s pretty boring. There’s not much about him that is interesting or unique. He’s just an old British guy hell-bent on finding the treasure before our heroes do. Never seen that before! Although I will give him props for being the only Uncharted villain to actually “kill” one of the heroes…for a limited time that is.

Atoq Navarro – Robin Atkin Downes

Much like his boss, Navarro ain’t that special either. He doesn’t even have that many lines or screen time until the later chapters of the game. One could easily forget about his existence, especially during the more intense areas of the campaign. However, Navarro is slightly better than Roman in one specific way, in that he is revealed to have been pulling the strings all along; and is in fact the main baddie whom you fight in the final showdown. He appears to be far more intelligent than originally shown, which makes for an interesting twist when he betrays Roman and ultimately kills him.

Asav – Usman Ally

For those of you who have had the pleasure to experience the amazing game that is Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, you are probably very familiar with this villain. To put it plainly, Asav is a delusional yet intelligent psychopath who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. While seemingly very intimidating at first, Asav’s plan starts to fall apart towards the end of the game thanks to the insane stubbornness of Chloe and Nadine. In truth, Asav is actually nothing more than a madman who struggles to see beyond his own vision. He is definitely well written (and acted) but he fails to hold up against some of the franchise’s more iconic villains.

Eddy Raja – James Sie

Speaking of iconic villains, it doesn’t get any more iconic than this hilarious baddie from the original game. While he doesn’t have a terrible amount of screen time, Eddy completely steals the show whenever he’s around thanks to the brilliant comedic timing of James Sie. Eddy is an interesting character as he somehow manages to be intimidating and pathetic at the same time. Hot-headed and completely full of himself, the Indonesian crime lord is a classic villain with only one true motivation: treasure (lots of it!). I do acknowledge that Nate and Eddy teamed up before his rather gruesome death, but let’s be honest…he’s definitely a bad guy, no question about it.

Katherine Marlowe – Rosalind Ayres

Looks can be deceiving, and while Marlowe might look like a sweet old lady, she is anything but. Cold, manipulative and incredibly smart; Marlowe is the only Uncharted villain to have literally been at odds with Nate for most of his treasure hunting life. Granted, she needs help from her loyal bodyguards in order to fully enact her wicked deeds, but Marlowe is a very imposing woman nonetheless. Preferring psychological warfare and controlling her enemies through fear, Marlowe is one of Nathan Drake’s greatest adversaries, and rightfully so!

Talbot - Robin Atkin Downes

Probably the most terrifying thing about this Uncharted baddie is just how little we actually know about him. Wherever Marlowe goes, Talbot is never far behind. Throughout his appearances in Uncharted 3, the secondary villain appears to do things that should be impossible. He’s like a magician, a secret service agent and a sadist rolled into one terrifying man. While seeming prim and proper on the outside, Talbot houses an evil streak and shares his superior’s goal of dominating opponents through fear and pain. Oh, and definitely don’t accept any drugs he offers…

Rafe Adler – Warren Kole

Rafe has got to be the worst example of what happens when you spoil your kids. What do all men with money want? More money. With big dreams of finding Henry Avery’s treasure and the bank account to pull it off, Rafe will stop at nothing to prove he is more than just another rich white guy (which he totally is). However, money isn’t the only thing that Rafe has going for him. He does an exceptional job at pretending to act like a sane individual. In truth, he’s a psychotic monster with a temper that’s always bubbling just below the surface. Rafe doesn’t care about being nice and never will, he just wants one thing and I’m pretty sure you know what that is (psst…treasure).

Nadine Ross - Laura Bailey

To be honest, I sort of struggled on whether or not to actually include Nadine on this list. Yes, she is one of the main villains in Uncharted 4, but as we know from The Lost Legacy, she isn’t all bad, and isn’t nearly as loathsome as some of the other characters on this list.

That being said, Nadine is not to be messed with. She literally packs a punch! Capable of fighting two grown men at once, the leader of Shoreline will make you think twice about the phrase: “hits like a girl”. Straightforward, blunt and not one to mince words, Nadine is as strategic as she is lethal. She also has the unique experience of being the only Uncharted villain to avoid death. In the end, she’s all the better for it.  

Harry Flynn – Steve Valentine

It’s impossible to overstate just how entertaining this character is. Flynn is a villain that you love to hate. While not quite as witty as Drake, Flynn does possess a wicked sense of humor; ultimately dishing out some of the most hilarious dialogue in the entire Uncharted series. What is interesting about Flynn is that he honestly just seems like an ordinary guy who made some very wrong choices. His lack of intelligence and pathetic tendencies don’t make him very threatening; especially in comparison to his villain counterpart.

On the other hand, Flynn does seem to get a kick out of fooling Drake and even lands a rather devastating gunshot wound on our hero. Although he tries his best to impress Lazarevic, his efforts aren’t up to snuff, and the villain dies in what is probably one of the most tragic and unexpected deaths of the series.

Zoran Lazarevic – Graham McTavish

Come on, who else could earn the number one spot on this list? In my opinion, Lazarevic is by far the scariest and most dangerous villain in Uncharted. Described as a “psychopathic war criminal” by Elena, the main baddie from Uncharted 2 has no issue with killing his own men if he believes it will help him reach his goal. There is a certain philosophy to him, as he is inspired by the “great men” of history (i.e. Hitler) and wishes to go down in history as a similar figure. He’s a complete sadist and enjoys taunting people with games that put lives at risk. Lazarevic (allegedly) becomes invincible, so much so that even Nathan Drake can’t defeat him. He is utterly insane and if given the opportunity, will snap a few necks and take great pleasure in doing so. Lazarevic is the best Uncharted villain, hands down.

I hope you guys enjoyed my list! Let me know what you think!

[gofancyninjaworld]

Powerscaling follies

Because I can’t stop thinking, I thought I’d build on an excellent conversation from this morning [link].

About the time fans realise that the Hero Association hero rankings aren’t in order of hero strength, perhaps even agreeing with Child Emperor that even if you can measure strength, it means very little in practical terms, they start wanting to rank the heroes themselves.   You will find no end of tiering posts on Reddit and on YouTube.

They’re fun, but there are two problems with them.  First, is how susceptible fans are to presentation.  Second, is that a lot of tiers use disaster levels for hero and monster alike without thinking through what that actually means. 

It’s all in how you present it

It’s even more fun when you realise that most fans are dragged along by presentation like a dog tied to a cart.  ‘Tier lists’ describe well presented and poorly presented a lot more than they describe strong or weak.   It doesn’t seem to matter how explicitly the story spells out the importance of compatibility and circumstance in determining how outcomes fall.  It doesn’t matter how explicitly the story points out that there’s no straightforward definition of strength.  Nope, nope.   It’s a rather pointless pursuit, but I suppose it amuses some.

ONE knowingly plays with the power of presentation to unduly influence viewer judgement and he has two particularly long-running mirror cases.

1. Saitama:  We the external audience see Saitama do amazing feats.  However, within the story, his mighty slayings are presented in such a way that it’s easy for the internal audience to discount them.  Watching Saitama go unjustly unrecognised is something that upsets a lot of fans. 

2.  With great insouciance, ONE in a 2012 interview went “ Genos is rather powerful even among the S-Class heroes.”  [link] And fans went REALLY? WE DON’T BELIEVE YOU.  If he’s so strong, why is he struggling?  That’s the power of presentation for you.

But it’s everywhere.  One year, Stinger is so weak!  One hit from a demon-level monster took him out!

Another year, Stinger is so strong!  He’s working with just one other hero to literally whittle a demon-level monster down to size!

The messy and contingency dependent nature of battle in One-Punch Man, and the way you can’t compare two situations directly is part of what makes the series such a joy for me.  However, for someone used to sports tournaments and tournament-style anime where extreme effort is made to level the playing field to make such comparisons easy, it’s a headache

Disaster Level: Hero

While I’m on that topic, can I say how deeply irritating I find the way many fans think about disaster levels. It’s explicit in the story that the Hero Association started assigning threat levels as a rough guide to what response it thought the threat merited and is deeply imperfect. It’s important enough the story spends a whole chapter spelling it out: https://readms.net/r/onepunch_man/Special/4156/1?auth=1  The Hero Association literally doesn’t have the information to judge a monster perfectly in the moment but has to make some classification as to what people ought to do and what sort of heroes the dispatcher should try to put together to tackle the threat. 

 And yet, you find fans thinking them hard-set and even trying to find graduations in them. Sometimes I wish that the disaster level rankings were renamed ‘be careful,’ ‘stay indoors,’ ‘head for shelter,’ ‘run for your life,’ and ‘just pray.’   It’s exactly what the Hero Association wants people to take from ‘demon’ and ‘tiger’ – and a person wouldn’t be able to argue about a higher stay indoors without looking like a total pillock.  :D

That’s just irritating.  Where it gets absurd is when they lump heroes into threat levels thinking it’s a way to say how strong heroes are.

What kind of threat could heroes pose if they decided to turn on humanity? ‘Even’ Class C heroes are freakishly strong by human standards... and most force multiply with some sort of weapon.  What kind of threat level that hero would pose would depend not just on strength but their capacity to project that power.  As well as how creatively they cared to use their abilities. If Gearsper decided to throw rubble at people, he’d account for dozens of casualties before he ran out of gas. If he decided to use his relatively limited psychic abilities to break major blood vessels in people so they bled out internally and died, he could kill thousands. 

About a year ago, I answered a query about the threat levels Class S heroes could be.  I’ve added some comments since in italics.

A: Really Bad Juju

These heroes have the ability to get to multiple cities rapidly under their own steam and the ability to rapidly devastate large portions of it when they do.  We’re talking deaths in hundreds of thousands to millions.

Top of that list: Metal Knight. Unlike everyone else, he can be in many places at once. His work on large civil engineering projects means that he understands how to cripple cities with an efficiency the others would envy. He is anything but impulsive – no running around randomly knocking shit down for him! Every action will be calculated to exact the most impact possible. And getting rid of his robots doesn’t stop him: he operates on the principle that he’s surrounded by powerful enemies who’d kill him if only they could find him. I doubt even Child Emperor knows where he is. There’s plenty more robots where the first wave came from.

Next down is Tatsumaki. She’s seriously bad news in ways I trust I do not need to enumerate, but she can only be in one place at a time, which is a relief. Also a relief, she hasn’t the most stamina in the world, but good luck exploiting that.

If Blast can fly, then he’s here. If not, he’ll be at the top of the next category down. As best we know, he’s not telekinetic nor a range weapon user, but he is outrageously powerful.

Bringing up the rear of this category is Genos. His being able to fly puts him out of reach of the majority of heroes and ability to destroy wide areas makes him troublesome – particularly if he decides to blow things up rather than vaporize them (what’s the difference? Several orders of magnitude in energy use). Compared to the others in this category, he’s relatively easy to stop, but ‘relative’ is a big word – it only took a multi-kilometre long, heavily-armoured monster with insane regenerative abilities to do that the last time. You totally have one in your backyard, right? And once stopped, he’s liable to blow himself up as a final 'fuck you’.

B: Bad Juju

The good news: they’re not going to be zipping from City A to City B, leaving trails of devastation in their wake. The bad news: they’re still pretty fast. And they’re really, really hard to stop.

Bang

Atomic Samurai

Child Emperor

Superalloy Darkshine

Flashy Flash

Watchdogman

Metal Bat, if you let him get going.

Drive Knight. I’m open to changing this. Nah, I’m comfortable with leaving him here now.

C: Very Bad News

Okay, so they’re not likely to get very far fast and they might not be as hard to stop as the ones in the category above, but you’ll be very, very sorry if you take them lightly.

King. King’s not going anywhere. You come to King. He’s not actually wrecking anything. But he looks like he might. We don’t want to risk that. Long live the King.

Zombieman

Metal Bat if you stop him before he really gets going. If you don’t, so sad. Can also be stopped by cute kittens, it being time to pick Zenko up or the actual appearance of Zenko.

Amai Mask. Find the ugliest people, things and malodorous stenches you can lay hands on and you’ll soon have him corralled.

Pig God.  He’ll eat hundreds of people, but he has to catch them first.

Tank Top Master

Puri Puri Prisoner

D: Bad News

Sorry, there’s nobody here. Do not incite an S-Class hero to rage. It will not go well.

I only wrote in answer to a specific question, but a wider view would see many A and B class heroes being bad news and even very bad news. depending on where exactly they are. And of course, I’ve not considered Saitama. If Saitama ever lost it, the planet would no longer exist.

[dissimulatonoctua]

Mobile Rules

Hello, My name is Lily. I’m over 21. I’m from the US, in MST time zone. I’m pretty laid back, honestly. I have these to make things go smoothly, and it is greatly appreciated when you read and follow my rules. I try to keep them straightforward and simple.

My Main blog that i follow from is: Wemadeemcocoa

Though the world she lives in is not mine, Aurelia is very much my creation. Please respect that. Otherwise, nothing else, icons, gifs, etc. Are also not mine.

I have a promo that I finally found and love, and so I’m putting permanent credit here on the blog. The template for the promo is found here. They have a lot of lovely templates and PSDs as well <3

Rules

-I only RP with RP blogs. (I shouldn’t have to have this here, but i’ve had a problem before soo). Rp blogs must have a rules page and a bio, this goes for both Canon and OC. If you are a canon muse without a bio page, I will treat your muse exactly as canon.

-No Godmodding. Want to hurt/kill my muse? Plot it with me. (also standard rule)

-No Force Shipping.

-I do love to ship though. I ship with chemistry however it is very likely that i will ship it. Just come talk to me if you do too. I’ll be happy. Honestly, I’ve noticed i do lean towards these threads as well. But I am open to all ships (platonic, familial, enemies).

-OCs: MUST HAVE A BIO. It must be easy to find. This is non-negotiable. I need to be able to learn about your muse even if my muse knows nothing, and I shouldn’t have to ask you their life story. Also, do NOT send a shippy meme to start. Chemistry is a must. I’m not against shipping with OCs, but I am against being forced into it. And I’ll be honest, I’m a little hesitant about OCs because of a really awful exerpience, so please have some patience. I don’t want to turn you away immediately though (unless you don’t follow my rules). I just might not follow you back immediately or for a while.

-I’m not picky on grammar, mostly because I know i’m far from perfect. It just has to be good enough to read. And if I have questions (or a correction on if you replied something that shouldn’t have been) i expect you to be cool about it and be open to fixing it.

-I’m picky about following, however I’m not mutuals only. So if I don’t follow you back immediately, still feel free to interact. I’ve just followed back too many people where we never end up interacting. I don’t want people on my dash that I’m not interacting with (unless i followed them and am being too shy to interact)

-I usually only unfollow for the following reasons: 1+ month of inactivity without a hiatus announcement, too much drama, or mostly ooc stuff with very little RPing,. Or if we never interact.

-I’m awful at plotting, mostly struggling to get things started. But I’m all in when I do plot. But I request that if you don’t want to do the plot, you tell me. So I don’t get invested only to see you never want to do to. And if we plot, we keep it going. I get invested in plotted threads, and I hate seeing them die less than a week later. (Obviously if muse is lacking I understand, I just have started so many things that then never get replied to and it makes me sad.

-Please…absolutely NO “bumping into on the streets”. Who seriously has a long conversation or more with someone they bump into on the street? It’s not condusive. Also, I’ve had 90% of OCs approach me with this idea. And it’s just tired.

-Please do NOT message me any form of the message “Do you want to rp?” I am an rp blog. Yes, i want to rp. The overall phrase just makes me feel uncomfortable. I’d much rather something like “hey, i have this idea what do you think?” or even “Hey would be up for exploring this potential dynamic between our characters?” Or go “hey i saw your post about wanting this kind of plot and i’d be down for that”

-I don’t care how you continue an ask. Reblog is directly, make a new post, honestly I don’t care. If you want to continue it, feel free to.

-NSFW will be present on this blog. Smut and violence alike because I’m not picky. Triggers are tagged “*trigger* tw” and my only trigger is Cancer/Terminal Illness. I will not plot these, or write these.

-No anon hate. You will be blocked on site.

-I am okay with crossovers. Just message me and I’ll see about the fandom.

-Reblog Karma: I know a lot of people think this is bullshit. And I do not expect you to send me a meme every time you reblog from me. If we interact regularly a fewthere and there are fine because I understand not every meme is perfect for every muse combo. But I am not your meme source and I will block after 3 repeated offenses with absolutely no attempts at interaction otherwise.

However, there is no reason to not send in headcanon or mun memes. So do not reblog those from me if you have no intention of sending them. Reblog from the source. It isn’t forced interaction and we all want to answer the headcanon memes, and I try to send them into those who reblog them and sent them in when I can.

-Password: “You’re just as sane as I am.”

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Video Games as Interactive Storytelling

As I previously established, video games are a worthwhile form of storytelling, combining the best aspects of books, movies, and comics. They are unique among mediums, however, for being a truly interactive form of media. They are games, after all, and thus incorporate aspects play and choice.

Environment

Because you, the player, control the character, you experience the world as if you were in it, much more than in any other medium. You explore the environment. You fight the boss, and experience the struggle of battle. You help various NPCs, or non-player characters, with tasks. You make friends and allies, and fight alongside them. Although I never like my favorite characters getting hurt in any medium, when people attack my allies in video games, it's personal.

And that's what video games do: offer an incredibly personal experience. Unlike books, movies and comics, where you have to read from start to finish, video games let you meander and spend time in the setting. In games like Zelda, Okami, or Dark Souls, you can discover secrets that aren't necessarily part of the main plot. These can include hidden areas or side quests. Sometimes these add to your understanding of the story or make the main plot more emotionally impactful. For instance, I actually did all those side quests for people in Okami, so the cutscene during the final boss fight was personal to me. I helped those people; they were lending their strength to me.

You can also gawk at the extra details of the world. One of my favorite examples of this is in Skyrim, where you can read books of short stories or admire intricately carved Nordic architecture, neither of which are important to the story or gameplay, but which make the experience more complete and immersive. I like to wonder at the fact that some person was paid to write those stories and design those carvings; they’re neat little details that someone at the studio thought were important enough to put into the game.

Even a game as linear and straightforward as the Ace Attorney series allows for a sort of exploration. Though you can only "move" through a series of set-like locations during the investigation stages, you can click on almost every object in order to hear banter between you and your assistant. While this doesn't generally offer much in the way of world or story building (unless the object turns out to be a crucial piece of evidence) it does let us experience more chemistry between the characters, endearing them to us even more.

Choice

Games in which the player’s choices effect the story obviously offer an interesting experience. Certain games have binary choices—send this character to the safety of the cathedral, or to be experimented on in a laboratory!—while others have branching trees and dozens or hundreds of possible endings. Many games incorporate a morality system, where the more bad choices one makes make for a darker ending, with the best result being the “Good ending” and the worst result, the “Bad ending”; many games opt for multiple bittersweet conclusions.

While some such games have fairly blank-slate, player-insert characters as protagonists (that is, they don’t have too much personality, because the player can fill that in), others have very specific motivations, while still offering choice. My sister was describing her initial frustration, in Red Dead Redemption 2, that she could only make not-so-good choices in some of the side quests. This makes sense, given that you are playing as an outlaw in a gang, but was still annoying in a game that claimed to give one choices. She was later delighted, though, after something important happens to the character (spoiler: they find out they have tuberculosis, which not only makes them sympathize with one of their former victims of the same condition, but also forces them to come to terms with their decisions, as time is running out), and good options start opening up. The way the game presented choices made sense for that individual character while still giving the player the freedom to reject certain choices if they want. Masterful!

Happenstance

I will say, however, that player choice is not totally unique to games, as Choose Your Own Adventure books were and occasionally still are a thing. Programmers can program in more possible choices than can be contained in a physical book, but the storytelling principal is the same. More interesting, I think, is video games’ ability to create random happenstance. What do I mean? Depending on what the player does when, they might stumble onto a part of a game in a different way than other players.

For example, in Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, musical themes for each location play during the day, while nighttime has only sound effects. As anyone who has played Ocarina can tell you, the Gerudo Valley theme is some of the coolest, most adventurous music in the franchise, and it starts playing in the canyon, before you arrive at the desert. In order to get to the desert the first time, you jump your horse over a broken bridge, which feels pretty awesome to a first time player. But for me, it was more. I arrived on horseback at the canyon at dawn, rode to the edge as the castanets of the Gerudo Valley theme started playing. Just as I jumped, the sun came over the horizon and the guitar began! I could have sworn there was even a lens flare, but that might have been my imagination reacting to the epicness of what was happening. It was a totally random, unrepeatable event, and I’ll never forget it.

In Okami, I never knew that going through some torii gates led into mystical areas while going around them led to ordinary shrines, because I always went a certain way. Thus, my mind was blown when I discovered, after following a little sparrow girl through a gate, that what had once been a solid wall was actually a pathway. It wasn't until my second play through that I went around the gate of the first shrine, which led to a glowing portal to a celestial world, and discovered nothing but an ordinary statue in a moss-covered cave. I never knew!

In another Zelda example, every player had a different experience of their first Blood Moon in Breath of the Wild. Blood Moons are events that serve to replenish the enemies in the area, but in-game are meant to be the malice of the main enemy infecting the environment and causing monsters to resurrect. They happen at random, and are preceded by the music changing, the light dimming, black wisps issuing out of the ground, and, of course, the full moon turning red. My brother first experienced it while looking at some goats in a pasture outside an inn, while my sister experienced it after climbing up a tower to reach a treasure chest. Never having heard that Blood Moons were a thing, their thoughts, respectively, were, “What the HECK is wrong with these goats!?” and “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry! I’ll put it back!” I’m sure others have their own fun stories of their initial horror at what was happening.

Social Interaction

Cast your mind back to when this whole diatribe of mine began (many weeks ago), when I mentioned a coworker of mine saying that video games don’t inspire social interaction. Just the opposite is true, and it always has been.

One of the first, if not the first video games was the two-player game, pong. Though not actually a story game, this led the way for more two player, and then multiplayer games. Kids used to go to each other's houses and play Mario Brothers or Bubble Bobble; now, they interact with friends and strangers across the country in online, multiplayer games. There are even games that have “emotes”, special moves you can do to communicate with other players without voice chat. Others let you vote for another player as the MVP of each round to show your appreciation. Lest you think it’s all online, Nintendo is keeping in-person multiplay alive and well with games like Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Smash Brothers.

Single player games, too, invite interaction. Pre-internet, people would spread hints and strategy and cheat codes by word of mouth. “How did we know how to do that move without reading the manual?” my sister asked, recalling some odd special move in an older game. “I think a friend must have told me, and they probably heard it from one of their friends.” Nowadays, internet forums and Let’s Play videos serve the same purpose: a community of gamers helping each other out and spreading information about games.

I myself have talked repeatedly about what my brothers and sister experienced in their playthroughs. Some of this is because some games are too hard for me (like, every game FromSoft will ever make), but a lot of it is just because there was one TV and not enough time for me to start my own game. I’ve never actually played Sekiro or Bloodborne or Last Guardian, but I’ve watched people play all of them from start to finish, so I still have that experience. My brother and I both gasped when we first encountered a Mist Noble and its enchantment in Sekiro (and my advice, “Kill it with fire!” worked like a charm). My sister and I squeed over the griffin-dog-thing’s cute antics in Last Guardian. Unlike books, comics, and movies, which are best enjoyed in silence, video games invite conversation during play.

Online streams offer a similar experience. Even here, choice rears its head. Some streamers play it straight, from start-to-finish, with little editorializing. Others derp around doing a lot of nonsense, or add hilarious commentary, often adding their own layer of storytelling to the mix. Viewers of said streams can type comments in real-time, so that the streamer interacts not only with the game but with his viewers, and the entire experience is like one big conversation. Who said video games don’t inspire social interaction?

Community

Right about now is when I connect this new form of storytelling to something ancient. Books are the new songs and poems, movies are the new plays, and comics are the new tapestries and hieroglyphics. What, then, are video games? As I said before, they take elements from all of these other mediums: video games are the new bard adding their own lyric to a song, or the actor playing a well-known role a different way, perhaps due to choice or happenstance.

But mostly, video games are the new play, that most primal and primordial of all human storytelling. We play as soon as we can think, and play act as soon as we can walk. Children assign themselves roles and act them out together. Humans are communal creatures, after all, who process narratives by interacting with other humans.

To some extent, all storytelling is like this, as it is one human telling something to another rather than keeping it in their head. Video games, though, bring back the communal aspect of storytelling. Wanting to take part in stories—whether as a child going on adventures with friends, or an adult participating in a narrative ceremony, or anyone telling a story around a fire to a group of rapt and responding listeners—is part of being human.

At some point, however, that part of life got chopped off and shunted to the corner, as if adults shouldn’t desire narrative play unless they are writers. Thus, video games are put down as childish, or geeky, or not as valid as books. Oddly, they are stereotyped as being something beloved by loners, which ignores the vibrant and vocal gaming community.

I’m not sure where the animus towards gaming comes from. Why is immersing oneself in an imaginary world while staring at a book is considered high-brow, but doing the same while staring at a screen considered low? I don’t know, nor do I want to. What I do know is that some of the most unique, innovative, and emotional, stories I’ve ever seen have been those in video games, and I hope that in the future, more people give them a chance.

And those, dear readers, gamers, viewers, and story lovers of all stripes, are my thoughts on video games.