#BUT. at 13 i was the actual target audience. so i was right

[forrestsaysdumbshit]

Y’all

Okay, I’m gonna be completely honest here.

What the fuck is up with the mha fandom.

I make edits, so that means I have to search and download photos of the characters.

I make a lot of mha edits, because my sibling love mha, and wanted me to make mha edits.

So I searched for images, and like a LOT of them were very suggestive and weird.

Like, most of the characters are MINORS, and I’m seeing Katsuki Bakugou shirtless and in a provacative pose. What. The. Actual. FUCK

THEY ARE MINORS!!!!!!!!

And it’s not just the fanart and images, it’s the way that the fandom views the characters.

Most of the fandom is OBSESSED with shipping everyone, and there’s CONSTANT fights about it.

Like, I write fanfiction for ships, but I never sexualize anyone, and I focus more on their feelings and experience throughout life, and really just their character. Because they are SO MUCH MORE than just their powers and relationships. They have likes and dislikes, thoughts and emotions, past memories and trauma that shape who they are as a character. Each character is so complex and interesting and unique in their own way, and it’s weird and saddening to see people from the fandom who only sexualize and objectify these characters.

Now I know that all fandoms have people like this, but the mha has a LOT of them.

And it’s weird because the target audience is like preteens and 13 yr olds.

And honestly, for me, it’s really uncomfortable seeing all that stuff.

Like bro, I’m just trying to make an edit for my siblings, I do NOT need to be seeing that stuff.

Anyways, that’s my rant for today I guess.

Sorry about that, been hyperfixating on mha and demon slayer at the same time, so they just live rent free in my head right now

Aight, bye chat ✌️

[thatlittledandere]

At this point you can pretty safely assume that if I suddenly get into a piece of media that isn't like current or relevant to my prior interests it's because Yuri Lowenthal is in it. It's getting embarrassing

[zoe-oneesama]

Now that it’s been brought back to the forefront of my mind in regards to yesterday’s SL asks, it really is genuinely kinda nuts how the potions were revealed in Season 2 and have only physically appeared (i.e. not just been mentioned or shown in a one-off picture or alternate timeline) in 13 out of what’s now 92 episodes (not counting specials) since their closest-to-chronological debut. Even more wild is the fact that, like you pointed out, only 3 out of 7 potion powers are canonically known to date. Apparently That Guy tweeted a few years back that one of the remaining ones is supposed to be a Fire potion (which, if true, may be the one Marinette was trying to figure out the “spicy little rock” ingredient for in Mr. Pigeon 72?) that gives the user the ability to walk on lava and/or a resistance to scorching heat, but they haven’t been able to use it since “Fire is something very difficult to use in shows watched by kids, because we have to pay extra-care that they won't see fire as a cool thing and play with it afterwards. Broadcasters tend to prefer not showing it at all.” To which I’m like?? A) You guys STAY hopping between whether you want your target demographic to be little kids or early teens in actual practice. B) There have to be a million ways that you can blatantly write the idea that fire is dangerous which is why the Fire potion would be NEEDED (or, y’know, have more faith in your audience’s ability to intuitively understand that from the get-go). C) If you already understood that a fire power up was genuinely likely to be a hard no-go with your broadcasters, maybe change your plans to only conceptualizing 6 instead of 7 potions before putting them in the actual show???

Right? And like, he said Lava as well. So do something WITH LAVA if you can't use fire! (I bet it would be easier to animate too!) Or, or! Invent a kind of goo or acid that burns LIKE Lava so they have to use the suit! That could be the debut episode, where it's impossible to get close because of the heat and burn of it until BAM! Fire Suit.

It's not like you have to use the suits OFTEN, they've only used the Ice one like two times I think, just do a debut episode and then use it for Ordinary Heroing, like actually running into a burning building and saving people. Pretty sure even kids don't think house fires are cool, so you don't HAVE to associate fire with a "cool" akuma.

A long time ago when I was ranting about this I was informed by a Anon that the others were "revealed" at some convention or expo and they were things like Air and Space (space hadn't been shown at the time), Sun and Moon, and like...Soul? So, what's the difference between Air and Space? Are Sun and Moon supposed to be Light and Dark, how is that following the Environmental Costume Change of the three we know? Wtf is Soul? Maybe it's a lack of cohesion that's making this difficult for them.

The more I hear about them, the more I think this idea was never fully fleshed out and will never BE fleshed out.

[a-d-nox]

web of wyrd: how to spot a reliable matrix post

i have been seeing a lot of matrix posts lately that have made me question if people are posting without actually understanding what the arcanas mean, what the orbs mean, how the matrix is calculated, etc. the biggest offender right now is not knowing that certain energies can only exist is certain places. so here is how to spot a questionable post...

let's talk math!

1 (magician) energy can only exist in the primary higher self or the public persona orbs.

2 or high priestess energy can only exist in the primary higher self, primary masculine high energy, primary monetary karma, or the public persona orbs.

persona energies can be 1-22 in this orb and this orb only.

1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22 can only occur once a month.

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 can occur twice a month.

primary higher self energy can only be 1-12.

the primary monetary karma orb...

...is as follows 1970-1979 (17-8), 1980-1989 (18-9), 1990-1999 (19-10), 2000-2009 (2-11), 2010-2019 (3-12), 2020-2029 (4-13), etc. i saw a post the other day about energies 13-22 and i was like homeslice half of your target audience isn't on social media any more or isn't born yet.

you can never have 1, 2, 15, 17, 19, or 21 as your primary core energy.

5, 6, and 8 are the most common cores.

13, 14, 16, 18, 20, and 22 are considered rare.

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© a-d-nox 2024 all rights reserved

[jujumin-translates]

★ Main Story | Act 13 - Budding Spring | Chapter 26 - There’s No Place Like Home

*Door opens*

Masumi: I’m home.

Tsuzuru: Aahh~, finally home…

Itaru: I’m exhausted… There really is no place like home.

Sakuya: Welcome home!

Citron: I am phone~!

Chikage: You got back yesterday, right, Sakuya?

Sakuya: Yeah! I’m really glad I got to be the one to say “welcome home” to you guys!

Izumi: We’ve been waiting for all of you.

Banri: Startin’ tomorrow you guys are gonna have a pretty strict rehearsal schedule to follow.

Citron: What a sporkin’ assistant director~.

Tsuzuru: I think you mean “spartan”.

Tsuzuru: Ah, right. There’s something I wanna discuss about the script, can we talk about that later?

Izumi: Sure thing.

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Izumi: Alright, to kick off our rehearsals starting up again, I’ll pass out the new scripts right away.

Sakuya: Did you rewrite the script?

Tsuzuru: Just a bit. I wanted to focus on Romeo’s sword-fighting scene a little more. I got the idea after seeing your sword fighting during our remote rehearsal the other day.

Tsuzuru: I thought it’d be a good way to distinguish things from the original and change the pacing a bit.

Itaru: How’d you manage to rework things in such a short amount of time?

Tsuzuru: Thanks to the training camp, I was able to train my typing fingers to work even faster.

Itaru: Nice.

Izumi: I’ll go ahead and explain how the stage direction has changed to better fit the script.

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Banri: Aight, let’s call it here for afternoon rehearsals.

Izumi: Good work, everyone.

Sakuya: Good work!

Itaru: Aghh… My body is still jet-lagged…

Chikage: There wasn’t even that much of a time difference between here and where you went.

Tsuzuru: Well, it is kinda tiring just being on a plane.

Izumi: Masumi-kun, are you able to have a quick promo meeting after this? Sakyo-san asked me to fill you in on the project we’ve been working on.

Masumi: I’ve actually been doing some research into that too.

Masumi: I think social media ads are a great way to get more votes from streaming and to target the recent theater user base.

Masumi: And we should get a good grasp on outdoor advertisements too… You can put them up for relatively cheap around this area.

Izumi: Really? I see…

Masumi: I think I can probably get us some ad space through my company.

Izumi: Really? Alright, we can put together a budget with that in mind.

Masumi: Got it. I’ll get right on it.

Tsuzuru: Masumi’s really starting to look like a guy who’s in charge of promo.

Itaru: The rate at which he’s growing as a short-term intern is actually just sickening.

Sakuya: That’s our Masumi-kun.

Chikage: And you’re getting even better at sword fighting, Sakuya.

Tsuzuru: I decided to change the script thinking it’d be kinda difficult for you, but it turned out to be no problem at all.

Sakuya: Really? Thank you so much!

Banri: I’m sure you’re able to show the audience that Romeo’s grown up to be pretty damn strong since the original while out on his journey, right?

Sakuya: I’ll do my best!

Citron: I feel like Chikage has also changed since going out on his trip~!

Itaru: True. It’s not quite the same as growing up, but he definitely seems to be some kind of refreshed.

Chikage: Is that so? I wonder if I really have had a change of mental state since I got some closure on my feelings.

Banri: By the way, we got a request for an interview from some foreign press the other day. That ‘cause of you, Citron?

Tsuzuru: Whoa, was it really from overseas?

Citron: I am instanding when it comes to publicity!

Tsuzuru: It’s “outstanding”.

Itaru: Makes sense since a minister’s definitely got a high visibility stat.

Izumi: That said, we’ve only got a limited number of people here who can correspond with people overseas, so it’d be great if we could have your help in this regard, Chikage-san.

Chikage: Understood.

Citron: Maybe I can work with Chikage to develop things directed at the entire world!

Sakuya: I think that’s a great idea!

Masumi: Then I’ll come up with some ideas too.

Itaru: All of you are out here shining while I’m stuck as a corporate slave that’s only gained more fatigue from all of this…

*Phone buzzes*

Itaru: Ah, sorry, it’s the company.

Izumi: Go ahead.

Itaru: Thank you for your hard work. This is Chigasaki.

Itaru: Yes… What was that… Oh, I see. Understood. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

Itaru: Yes, I’ll get in contact with you later. I look forward to working with you.

*Beep*

Itaru: Hell yeah, baby!

Sakuya: Did something happen?

Itaru: Hm~, sorta. I’m just having a rare happy moment where I’m actually happy with my job.

Citron: Congratulations!

Chikage: We’re happy for you.

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Itaru: 《Well then, I’ll leave this matter to you.》

Itaru: 《Also, regarding the matter we discussed the other day, is your schedule looking okay for that?》

Itaru: 《Understood. I’m pleased to be working with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.》

*Beep*

Itaru: Haah…

Itaru: (I know I’m the one who started this whole thing, but God, I’ve been so busy planning this ceremonial event…)

Itaru: (Well, it’s forgiven because of what it’s related to.)

*Phone rings*

Itaru: Thank you for your hard work. This is Chigasaki.

Itaru: End Links is--? Understood, please put them through.

Itaru: Hello, the line has been switched. This is Chigasaki. It’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of talking to you.

Itaru: Thank you so much for your cooperation with this ceremonial event.

Itaru: Yes, both the local fans and Japanese fans have high expectations regarding--Yes.

Itaru: …Pardon?

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Tsuzuru: You got an offer to play Lancelot as part of the overseas KniRoun Stage!?

Itaru: I mean, sorta? It’s just a music concert, though, so it’s more like a guest performance where I’d do some minor sword fighting during it.

Itaru: Hoshii-san called me to tell me that the stageplay of KniRoun is really appreciated among overseas fans.

Citron: It is amazing that you heard that directly from Director Hoshii!

Sakuya: That’s just how much your Lancelot is recognized by both Hoshii-san and the fans, Itaru-san!

Itaru: Yeah… It’s honestly pretty nice to hear.

Itaru: But even though I was the one who submitted the plan for KniRoun for the ceremonial event, I’m still crazy surprised because I never thought they’d offer something to me personally.

Chikage: KniRoun fans both in Japan and around the world are going to be paying attention because of where it’s taking place. There’ll be a lot of PVs from overseas, so it’s a great PR opportunity too.

Citron: It will absolutely be peeling them!

Masumi: Not peel, it’s “appeal”.

Itaru: But the event date’s right before Spring Troupe’s performance. And I’d need about a two or three-day schedule for all the rehearsals and everything…

Itaru: And even if I were to leave there immediately after the show if you add in the travel time, I’d be back home on our opening day.

Itaru: There’s just not enough time. I don’t think there’s any way for this to work.

Izumi: But it’s such a great opportunity--.

Masumi: Don’t you want to do it?

Itaru: Well, of course, but…

Itaru: If I have to choose between it and Spring Troupe, I’m choosing Spring Troupe, no hesitation.

Tsuzuru: …Isn’t there something we can do?

Banri: …You said you’d need about two or three days, right? You could prolly get away with it if you’d be chill with losing out on your off days from rehearsals.

Izumi: Right. We’ve been making good progress, so…

Chikage: There are lots of flights that depart at night and arrive here early in the morning on opening day. You’d be able to make it in time for the start of the show, and you’d probably be able to be part of the dress rehearsal too.

Izumi: It’ll be okay, Itaru-san.

Itaru: --.

Tsumugi: If you need an understudy, I’ll be able to handle it. I practiced a bit with Sakuya-kun the other day.

Tenma: I can help out too.

Sakuya: Please go and do it, Itaru-san!

Masumi: Hasn’t our whole thing been taking on new challenges as much as we can, no matter how reckless they might seem?

Tsuzuru: If you’re hesitating about something, then you should just go ahead and do it. That’s what I thought when I decided to do my scriptwriting training camp.

Chikage: We’ll make it all work, somehow.

Citron: If you love your child, sell them out on a journey!

Tsuzuru: Send, not sell.

Itaru: …Thanks, guys. I’ll go ahead and take this chance.

[ ⇠ Previous Part ] • [ Next Part ⇢ ]

[palant1r]

I feel like you're a good person and smart, so here is a question for you. A fanfic site is bound to be popular with kids. Say a child is being abused, and they go to AO3 and all they see is fics romanticizing their abuse/incestual abuse/ etc. It'll tell them it's erotic and enjoyable and A-OK. If they were to read a fic that portrayed it as a bad thing though, then they can see that their abuse is bad. I know it's unrealistic to ban all fics that portray it as a good thing [1/2]

This ask is full of so many wild ass logical leaps and baffling conclusions that I debated not answering it at all, but you've caught me in a good mood with a lot of time on my hands, so.

First of all: methodological concerns. "They did a poll a while back" who the hell is They? Is this a tumblr poll? Why are we assigning any significance to whether or not half of the users who happened to see a tumblr poll that was likely produced by someone who shared their biases THOUGHT that SOMEONE THEY KNEW had seen pedophilia and incest normalized by fic? That's such an ass backwards thing to base any position on.

You want to save the kids. Sure. Admirable goal. But the premise of your proposal here is based entirely on conjecture and the results of some poll that They did. Also, hey, most underage/incest content on ao3 is WELL TAGGED. Meaning that, when someone clicks on it and reads it, even IF the actual subject matter is "romanticized" there is literally a heading for the reader saying "THIS WORK DEPICTS [THING], WHICH IS BAD"

Say a child is abused, and they read Lolita. They make the same mistake as many, many readers and adaptation makers of Lolita, and they think it's a love story, and that makes their abuse "erotic and enjoyable and A-OK."

...Where do we go from here? Do we now decide that, because Lolita is a complex work with multiple layers and a narrator that deliberately uses purple prose and invokes classical literature to hide his own monstrousness, it needs to be banned?

Why should it be the responsibility of art to impart a beneficial personal and social message not just to its target audience, but to literally anyone who might potentially come across it? Why should the writers of a genre overwhelmingly tagged as Explicit, meaning that people have to affirm that they're over 18 before reading it, on a site you have to be 13+ to use, bear the responsibility of Educating the Nation's Youth on what is Right and Proper?

Your rhetoric is familiar. Very familiar. I got fuckin steeped in it over the last summer when I was reporting on anti-trans legislation, wading through Heritage Foundation summit transcripts and hundreds of pages of bills. Hell, I saw the very phrase "normalizes pedophilia" show up in a bill explicitly targeted at banning queer books from schools. The idea that the very existence of material that is "too erotic" poses an existential threat to children, and that any censorship of art is justified if it Saves the Children, is a deeply conservative one.

A personal story: when I was young, I read The Dragonriders of Pern. This was before I'd had any education on sex ed or consent. There's a rape scene in that series. It's very romanticized. Something about it felt off to me, but it was the only sex scene I'd ever read. I just thought that was what sex was like.

About a year later, I read a Stucky fic with a rape scene. The scene was framed as, if not romantic, at least sexualized in a way that played up the danger and angst of the scene, and it was between the endgame couple. This was, I'd wager, something that you'd want banned. In the beginning chapter note, the author called it what it was: rape.

Two rape scenes, both sexualized, both between an endgame couple we were supposed to root for, only separated by their framing. One taught me a bad lesson. One made me realize that what I had read in that book was, in fact, not consensual sex.

My parents, unbeknownst to me, were going through my search history. They sat me down and said they didn't want me reading erotica, not knowing I already had been in published books. If they had their way — if they'd judged things by YOUR standards — I never would have read those explicit fics. Instead, who knows how much longer I would have gone thinking a man forcing himself on a woman was romantic? Ignorance didn't teach me anything. Experience did.

And, IDK. I think back on news stories I've heard of abused children finding their experiences in books about sex and consent, and seeing themselves in them. Being able to point out what was done to them, because they had a point of reference.

So, no, I don't think that banning every fic that "portrays abuse as good" would be remotely desirable even if it were logistically feasible. And I think you need to move past the idea that art only has the right to exist if it's good for children, saving the children is a goal to which all other ideals should be blindly subservient, and if someone says that something "harms kids" that means you need to uncritically take up arms. I say this without hyperbole: that's the kind of thinking that gets people into QAnon.

[murfpersonalblog]

The Babygirlification of the Modern Vampire - marinashutup

The first half is mostly just her love of Baldur’s Gate 3′s Astarion, and Twilight’s Edward Cullen; but she actually starts cooking in the last ~15 minutes, about major themes about vampires & vampirism in general; and why audiences relate to monsters so much:

Toxic cycles of abuse & vampire guilt (30:58 - 32:56)

Considering the vampire cycle of abuse, is it really any wonder that so many vampires are angsty brooding and hate themselves? 

“This is the skin of a killer, Bella!” (Edward Cullen)

The overwhelming desire to drain innocent victims -like Elon Musk drains Diet Coke cans and Twitter's net worth aside--vampires are basically groomed into believing they need to be sadistic, unempathetic, tyrannical monsters. Sure, monsters don't have a lot of say in their nature, but the culture of  enslaving, torturing, and brainwashing certainly doesn't help.

This is also making me think a lot about the way that artificial family dynamics are replicated within vampire lore.

Cazador is described as the patriarch of his coven, and he repeatedly calls his Spawn his children. He uses infantilizing language, referring to Astarion--a 239 year-old man--as “boy” and “child.” The Zar family is also a literal family lineage of vampires, and there's a whole side story where you learn that Cazador turned his own niece at the age of 13 without her consent. Incidentally, she was kind of a bada** because she rejected the whole creepy family cult thing, changed her name, and refused to ever leave her room. Honestly, Queen Sh*t. 

In real life toxic family dynamics, abusive parental figures often think of their abuse as serving a greater good. In the minds of many abusers, corporal punishment functions as a way to correct perceived mistakes and reinforce desired behavior in victims. The schemas passed down from vampire Masters to their spawn are inherently rooted in a cycle of abuse. 

In vampire mythology, including Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, and Buffy, vampire lineage often requires that all vampires are both victim and predator. The original trauma of being preyed upon by a monster who has power over them, viciously attacked and turned against their will, is part of a cycle of violence that gets repeated every time a vampire feeds or creates another vampire. In many of these narratives, the dichotomy of vampire-versus-prey / Master-versus-Spawn mirrors the abuser-victim dynamic.

The Role of Choice (35:43 - 38:17)

The role of choice is the primary theme running throughout Baldurs Gate 3, but it's also a major recurring concept within vampire narratives. 

In Twilight, Bella spends three and a half long-winded books begging Edward to turn her, to allow her to exercise her choice, and become a vampire--and he just keeps edging her. There's a lot to be said about Bella's motivations for this, and whether or not her desire is valid or rooted in a teen girl's struggle with identity. The books don't really grapple with the weight of that choice in a satisfying or intellectually curious way, but it's undeniably a substantial part of the text. 

In Interview with the Vampire [the 1994 movie], after mortally wounding Louis, Lestat presents him with the choice he never had--

“I'm going to give you the choice...I never had.” (Lestat, IWTV 1994)

But the so-called “choice” that Lestat offers his targets isn't really a choice at all. Mortally wounding someone, and then offering them the option to become a vampire or die is a false dichotomy of choice, that Lestat manufactured to suit his own needs: 

"If I leave you here...you die.” (Lestat, IWTV 1994)

Like, sir!? Have you ever considered the third option of NOT bringing your targets right up to the point of death, and instead simply letting them go?! 

He targets Louis because he knows he's emotionally vulnerable. Louis’ grieving the loss of his wife and daughter, behaves recklessly because he actively wants to unalive himself. He begs for death, but when the moment comes, he hesitates.

"Have you tasted it enough?” (Lestat, IWTV 1994)

Lestat promises that the gift of Darkness will rid him of pain and grief, and Louis agrees, but only reluctantly.

When Astarion first meets Cazador, his experience mirrors Louis. He's similarly bleeding to death when he's given the option to die or become a vampire; a choice he references with a degree of sarcasm:

"Eternal life, or bleed to death on the street!” (Astarion, BG3)

Cazador also leaves out some pretty major details about the consequences of being a vampire spawn, and it's doubtful Astarion would have actually consented to being turned had he been informed of them. I think it's also pretty clear in the way that Astarion talks about his experience that the process of being turned was a major source of trauma for him, and not something that he would choose a second time.

"I don't want to turn into anything else.” (Astarion, BG3)

I think it's also clear in the language he uses to describe his experience that he does not enjoy being a vampire. He pathologizes vampirism with medical euphemisms, describing it as a “condition,” “complication,” and “affliction.” 

Even Cazador himself seems to struggle with the monster he eventually became. If you use Detect Thoughts while Cazador is asleep in his coffin, his thoughts betray an eerie internal monologue.

Abuse Survivors vs Abuse Perpetuators (42:19 - end)

Some survivors of parental abuse unconsciously replicate the same behaviors and ideals from their own abusers. That's why you sometimes see generational trauma pass down within families, from abusive parents to their children, to their children's children.

Astarion's romantic relationship with the player also morphs into this weird power dynamic thing--and, like, I get it, I get it! You can actually have him turn Tav into a vampire spawn. But it's pretty clear that he will then start thinking of you [Tav] as a subordinate.... 

But mirroring his transformation from human to spawn, Astarion's Ascension fundamentally changes who he is as a person--

"Something tells me he's not the same person we knew.” (Karlach, BG3) 

And what I think is so interesting about Baldur’s Gate 3 is that it presents players with the complicated choice between persuading Astarion from making a decision that would clearly damage his progress healing from abuse, and letting him make his own quote unquote choice to Ascend. 

To me, persuading Astarion NOT to go through with the ritual and save the imprisoned Spawn is an essential step in the character's healing journey. Instead of rooting his aspirations in the twisted ideals that Cazador and the vampires before him glorified, this decision shifts how Astarion views himself, and who he identifies with. Truly seeing and valuing the Spawn’s humanity is Astarion choosing to identify with Cazador's other victims and honor the humanity within himself by aligning himself with the Spawn. It means he too is a survivor worth saving. It means choosing to be better than Cazador-- choosing to form his own identity, and choosing to break the centuries-long vampire cycle of abuse. And that's really powerful. 

But of course, you can also choose to let your pansexual elf boyfriend double down on becoming a toxic Alpha Vampire Who Wants to Rule the World. Some players actually prefer letting Astarion Ascend, and live out his fantasy as a kinky vampire Top, creating a polycule of Spawn Submissives.

In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can make whatever choice you want. That's kind of the whole point.

“There are a lot of thirsty people around here.” (Halsin, BG3)

[hermionesmoon]

byers hate/lack of media literacy/homophobia within the stranger things fandom:

this is such a braindead take like tell me you can’t understand media literacy without telling me you can can’t understand media literacy

1. the blatant homophobia- do they even know who the target audience of stranger things is for? like if you have such a big issue with gay characters then stranger things isn’t the show for you

2. calling will and johnathan stale and boring/not understanding will being gay IS a big part of the story- this is actually so insane it’s like these people watch the show with their eyes closed. when johnathan found out about the demagorgan in season 1 he immediately tried to find it to kill it with nancy they came up with a whole plan to capture it at only 16/17 years old. as for will i’m genuinely so mad cause there’s no way. without will there wouldn’t be a stranger things, will MAKES the show in season 1 he went missing and everything revolved around finding him, in season 2 the mind flyer was in him and most of the plot yet again was revolves around him, now in season 3 he did have less of a story which i dislike BUT it did show how he was STILL connected to the mind flayer and could warn everyone when he was near the season also showed how wills childhood was took away from him and how he wanted nothing more but than to have it back also it showed will and mikes friendship changing in season 4 it showed will growing up and realizing he can’t change that he’s gay and he has to learn to except it (which is definitely why the commenter is mad cause they don’t like gay characters obviously), it showed how good a a brother johnathan is the will and how their bond also strengthened, and when they went back to hawkins it tells us that will is STILL connected to vecna which will obviously play a big part in season 5. and i know i said i wasn’t gonna go too much into byler but if we’re being serious byler is literally such a big part in the show in season 1 they wouldn’t have found el if mike didn’t want to go look for will, in season 2 mike stayed by wills side and showed them growing closer, in season 3 we saw a change in mike and wills friendship it seemed like mike was pushing will away for some reason after being best friends since they were 5 then he randomly brought up will not liking girls why would he ever have that thought?? in season 4 we watch mike come to california acting weird and very distant with will to the point where he just started ignoring him for the most part hmm i wonder why??? also he brought up AGAIN about him and will only being friends when will never said otherwise and after that we just see them getting closer and closer while mileven crumbled.

3. saying all will wants to do is play dnd- oh i wonder why.. maybe because at the young age of 12 he had his whole life change in only one night and was trapped in another dimension for a week WHILE BEING HUNTED,HUNGRY,COLD,AND TIRED. in season 2 he was only 13 but was still traumatized about what happened to him on top of still being connected to the upside down and literally living inbetween worlds while also having to deal with bullying then gets possessed and in season 3 he’s 14 the summer finally came and it seems like everything is back to normal so will just wants his childhood back and to play the game he loves with his friends and you’re really gonna get mad over it??

4. johnathan is annoying but shipping stancy- that’s more of an opinion but it’s still not true and simply weird cause johnathan might be annoying to you but he still loves nancy and treats her right unlike steve did (not hating on steve just being realistic) in season 1 steve was just trash and let his friends call nancy a derogatory word in season 2 steve didn’t care that nancy’s best friend had died and wasn’t there for her the way she needed and in season 4 steve was being weird to nancy even tho she had a boyfriend telling her he wants to have 6 kids with her??? like come on now

5.hopes will comes out and everyone forgets about it cause it’s not relevant- this is actually the most insane thing i talked about this in number 2 but i’m gonna talk about how many stranger things fans are homophobic like how the hell- stranger things was created for the freaks/geeks/and oppressed they already have 2 confirmed gay characters and even more queer-coded characters. there’s so many relationships in the show but you’re mad about a boy being gay when it hasn’t even been verbally said in the show while all the other characters in straight relationships are shown all the time when it’s “not relevant” also i noticed how they didn’t say anything about ronin being a lesbian even tho she’s the only one that has come out.. so the person is probably another weirdo who fetishizes lesbians while hating gay men.

can’t wait for them to watch season 5 where most of the season will and mike are together and start dating and hopefully jancy fully comes back together and is endgame

also why do these people act like characters have to be doing something every second for them to be good characters? just because these ppl can’t use context clues and aren’t understanding doesn’t mean certain characters are “stale”

[zapsoda]

Wanna share your 13 reasons why opinions?

YES thank you for asking. i would have done so unprompted but i had a class.

so the controversy was that people were saying its portrayal of suicide "glamorized" the act and would thus make "children" want to kill themselves, and that that meant it shouldnt have aired. i have a lot of thoughts on this so ill go bit by bit.

in response to the criticism, the creators added a little pre-show bit with the actors clarifying that suicide is bad and that 13 reasons why is a fictional show and not like. a how to guide. personally i would have found that irritating and condescending if i was a tweenager tuning into the tv show but whatever. thats whatever in and of itself i dont care.

but specifically theres one part where one of the actors says that if you are struggling with self harm or suicidal thoughts "this show might not be for you." and thats fucking insane right? thats insane? a tv show talking about issues YOU struggle with. YOUR ISSUES. and youre being told not to watch it? that its not actually For You???? thats fucking ridiculous. i understand they intended it as a trigger warning but WOW was that probably the worst possible way to do it. and whats funny is in an interview, executive producer selena gomez says that she Intended the show to help people! who struggle with self harm and suicidal thoughts!!! but dont watch it i guess.

anyways i havent watched the show itself so thats actually the extent of my opinions about it. the rest are about the discussion and controversy.

something i noticed was that. every single motherfucker i saw talking about the show. good or bad. was an adult who made no claims of having experienced mental health issues. and yet they had such strong opinions about the effect the show would have on those groups. as an adult who has tried to kill himself. who was a child pretty recently. i find much of what they are saying to be a load of fucking useless horseshit. i cant speak for every teenager or mentally ill person i can only speak for myself. but i think i have more of an authority than random mother of a teenager #4.

and these people dont even make an ATTEMPT to empathize with the groups they are trying to "protect." every single one of them talks about teenagers as if they are a faceless mass of impressionable statistics rather than people.

and they keep using the word "children" and referring to "children." this show is not for 6 year olds. this show is for teenagers explicitly. it is about teenagers it is making an attempt at representing what teenagers struggle with. and uhhh i think it goes without saying teenagers are a LOT smarter and more developed than people give them credit for. yes they are crazy and stupid and insufferable but they are rapidly becoming adults every day and i think they should be treated with the appropriate amount of respect! what do they think about this, as the target audience? when 13 reasons why first came out, i met a girl who, like me, struggled with depression and self harm. and she watched it and enjoyed it, which surprised me given my familiarity with the drama surrounding it. and i think about that a lot, yknow? what about her?

there is this prevailing idea that, regardless of intent, any depiction of suicide will immediately result in someone killing themselves in imitation. thus, they say, suicide should never be depicted in media and nobody will kill themselves ever again. zero nuance. that doesnt seem right to me. am i crazy? that sounds like bullshit. thats not how anything works.

obviously , i can only speak for myself as a previously suicidal person (albeit thats more than 99% of these bozos can speak for any suicidal person), but in my experience, if i want to kill myself, then i want to kill myself. regardless of whats on tv. regardless of whether its depicted or "glamorized." i didnt want to kill myself because i saw that it was something i could do on tv, something "cool." i wanted to kill myself because i was fucking miserable constantly and i didnt want to be miserable anymore. i find it wring and demeaning to reduce that pain to "oh he watched the wrong tv shows."

there was also the claim that otherwise mentally well people would see it and suddenly become suicidal. i dont even care about getting into this because its basically an unprovable claim. how do you know they were otherwise mentally well, how do you know the show directly caused their suicidality? claims which lack nuance have no place in a discussion like this one and should be Destroyed.

anyways i hate how taboo suicide is. i hate it i hate that you cant say it that you cant talk about it. i find that so fucking unhelpful for destigmatizing and generally improving public mental health .

its even more infuriating seeing mental health professionals PERPETUATING the taboo, saying that suicide should never be portrayed at all. i think thats evil and i hate it. like my personal disdain for censorship notwithstanding i think that is harmful actually. how are you supposed to deal with feeling suicidal if you cant even TALK about it!?

i think the crux of the issue is just that these people are uncomfortable with the topic of suicide and they think that that must mean it is a bad topic which should be sanitized until it is tolerable to them and acknowledged as little as possible. i hate that. sometimes people die. you can talk about that just fine. sometimes people do it to themselves. sometimes they want to. its a fact of life and it would be a fact regardless of whats on tv, regardless of what people think about it, and regardless of what you think about it. people should be able to talk about facts of life. i think its disturbing to cut off bits of reality that you or random mother #4 find uncomfortable and make them off limits or pretend they dont exist.

i dont think the quality of the depiction, or whether or not its "glamorized" matters when determining whether or not a depiction of suicide should be allowed to exist, because that is inherently subjective and every individual will come away with a different interpretation. its not like people are being held at gunpoint forced to watch it!! i think people can generally make an informed personal decision about the media they engage with.

[0zeeraa0]

A little Fnaf Movie rant (don't kill me, I also want this movie to be good)

(this post is pretty big, i understand if you don't have the patience for it)

(if you see any typos: no, you did not.)

Am I the only one who thinks that the fnaf movie isn't gonna live up to the hype...? Like I don't think it's gonna be bad, but I doubt it's gonna be as spectacular as we hope it will be.

One of the reasons that I'm a bit worried is the little girl. Michael's sister. Like in the trailer she's shown wondering around the pizzaria, and than in a TAXI with GOLDEN FREDDY, like????? HUH???? I have a feeling that the movie is gonna make her befriend the animatronics and like prove to Mike and Vanessa that "they just misunderstood🥺" Which like... THEY ARE, but that would be a horrible way to go about that plot line. And I kinda feel like they shouldn't be intelligent enough, or self aware enough to make friends y'know?

Also Vanessa. This one's gonna be shorter. I hope to god they're not gonna have a romantic plot line between her and Michael. One thing I really like about the fnaf games (haven't read the books yet, sorry) that there's absolutely no romance. And I feel like it should stay that way.

Now the "horror". I KNOW that the original games didn't have any gore. And I'm not saying the movie has to have it. I just want it to be SCARY. Or creepy at the very least. The games didn't have gore, but they were still HORROR GAMES, y'know. They're 16+. I remember that the movie makers tweeted something like "we're not gonna hold back on the gore" or "I'm not sure if we can even show this". But... The movie is going to be 13+... So that was a fuckin lie. Because what the hell is a pg13 HORROR movie supposed to be??? Like IT 2017 is rated R, but theres a surprisingly little amount of actual gore. And despite the R rating, sooo many teens and preteens love the move. So who is the Fnaf movie's target audience with it's pg13 rating. The same kids who ONLY played/watched Security Breach? Be so FR.

I feel like (based on the trailers) that the movie is going to take a more comedic approach, wich wouldn't be a problem, but it seems that it's going to be more significant then the horror aspect.

You know how Stranger Things stared out in s1 as a mystery/horror, and by s4 it got derailed into... that. I'm just worried that the same will happen to fnaf... Like it ALMOST happened with SB, but that's a game. It's a lot harder to access, so it still mostly stayed within the fnaf community. Like, 'normal' allistic Jessica (this isn't an actual person, just an example) is a lot less likely to watch a SB gameplay, or more so, play the game. But she might watch the movie because it's popular. And I REALLY don't want Michael to get "Eddie Munson-ified", okay??? I don't want the thing that shaped my entire childhood to get the TikTok treatment.

Sorry this post got really out of hand by the end. I just had to get this out of myself, otherwise I just might explode.

If the movie turns out to be a Masterpiece of fiction, that makes all original fnaf fans weep at how absolutely perfect it is, than y'all can come back here and laugh at me in the comments all you want. I will admit that I was wrong, and I'll do so with pure happiness, for having my expectations subverted in a positive way

And if I'm right.... well.... I will not be happy about it, or proud. I will not say "I told you so". I will keep my mouth shut, and I'll wallow in my misery in silence. Mourning what it could've been.

(theres so much more that i could say about this movie that hasn't even come out yet, but i think this is more than enough)

[authoralexharvey]

INTERVIEW WITH A WRITEBLR — @jezifster

Who You Are:

Astro || He/him

I'm Astro, I'm a trans guy, I'm 24 and native American, I have ADHD and it's a dragon I'm either riding or fighting.

What You Write:

What genres do you write in? What age ranges do you write for?

Action, comedy, fantasy, paranormal, and romance. New adult.

What genre would you write in for the rest of your life, if you could? What about that genre appeals to you?

Romance probably. It's the constant in all my WIPs. I'm corny and I enjoy it, I love to see a couple (or a few) people trying to die for each other. That first kiss is one of my favorite scenes to write. I just love seeing what people in love will do for each other and to each other. It's cute, it's devastating, it's hot.

What genre/s will you not write unless you HAVE to? What about that genre turns you off?

High fantasy. I'm not into worldbuilding, so most of my stories are set in the real world with fantasy elements. I also don't think I could write royalty stories. I think they're neat, but I just much prefer the perspective of the grungy street rat.

Who is your target audience? Do you think anyone outside of that would get anything out of your works?

People who like violence and sex and drugs and anti-authoritarian themes. I think some people do read for my characters, without necessarily loving all the darker topics, and there's always a message that I think would resonate with everyone in my writing. Mainly that those in power don't give a f*ck about those under them and you should tear them down.

What kind of themes do you tend to focus on? What kinds of tropes? What about them appeals to you?

Anti-authoritarian is definitely a big one. Kill God, fight the government, question the system around you. Are monsters actually the monsters and don't heroes just uphold the status quo? I think I channel a lot of my feelings about the real world into my WIPs. I love a lot of tropes, especially the romance ones. Enemies to friends/lovers is so fun. Corruption arcs. ADHD x Autistic pairings is something that's so special to me.

What themes or tropes can you not stand? What about them turn you off?

The main one is the main character being too good of a person. I don't think it's bad, but I love when they get dark. Like yeah pull the trigger, the villain deserves it. Don't be upfront about your feelings and let them rot instead until you do something you regret. I think it's just way more interesting to read.

What are you currently working on? How long have you been working on it?

Bones and Bullet is my focus right now. I've been writing it off and on since I was 13 so I'm on year 11. I really like how it's turning out this time and I know more about the politics and espionage so plotting is a lot easier.

Why do you write? What keeps you writing?

I'm mad at the world and that's part of it. But mainly it's just a lot of fun. I have a blast watching my characters do wild stuff in my head, and I love entertaining others but I've always been the best at doing that through writing.

How long have you been writing? What do you think first drew you to it?

Since I was 8 or 9? I loved reading and I read The Lottery and felt so gut-punched by it I was like… I gotta do that to someone.

Where do you get your inspiration from? Is that how you got your inspiration for your current project? If not, where did the inspiration come from?

The state of the world is a big one. I don't think there's a god but if there is, then why are they letting things happen the way they are? I can make that character and actually ask. For my current project, I really liked action movies as a kid. Especially the really wild ones like the Mission Impossible series. Ghost Protocol where Tom Cruise is suction cupping outside the Burj Khalifa? That changed me. And then later I understood more about politics and the themes of songs like Born in The USA and I was like oh we're not the good guys, so my Agents aren't technically agents anymore, but exploited and discarded ex-agents who are permanently changed by what they went through.

What work of yours are you most proud of? Why?

Bones and Bullet for sure. I think the plot really works and I've always struggled with that, but I'm so excited for the climax of the first book. Plus Shadow and Veronica are characters that I really know very well and I think it shows.

Have you published anything? Do you want to?

No, I just post online. I don't want to do traditional publishing and I'd probably just make my finished project available online and printed independently if people wanted a hard copy.

What part of the publishing process most appeals to you? What part least appeals to you?

None of it appeals to me. Editors scare me, I struggle with constructive criticism, I do not think I could handle a negative review. So that's why I'd make my stuff available for free. Why would someone complain about something free? I would judge them for it instead of taking it personally.

What part of the writing process most appeals to you? What part is least appealing?

I love learning more about my characters. They really become so well fleshed out that they seem like their own people making their own decisions. I just manage the outside influences. The least appealing is the tedious. Keeping track of dates, or names of minor characters, worldbuilding a fantasy transportation system. I just much prefer the people part of it.

Do you have a writing process? Do you have an ideal setup? Do you write in pure chaos? Talk about your process a bit.

Oh it's pure chaos. I plan a lot of scenes while I'm driving in the car listening to music. I write random scenes on my phone, chapters on my laptop. I write when I'm overcome with the urge to, and I don't force it if I'm not. I usually write laying on the couch with my laptop or phone.

Your Thoughts on Writeblr:

How long have you been a writeblr? What inspired you to join the community?

I can't remember exactly but it's been over a year. I initially joined Wattpad but I didn't like some things I'd heard about it. And someone on there recommended tumblr. I've always liked tumblr but never was a part of the creative side.

Shout out some of your favorite writeblrs. How did you find them and what made you want to follow them?

I always follow people who have cool projects, and sometimes they follow me back and we start talking. It's a blast. I have a lot of favorites and I know I'm going to miss someone but @calicojackofficial, @vacantgodling, @multi-lefaiye, @addisons-damn-dialogue, @written-in-gold, @mrnauseam, and @kingkendrick7 are all super cool creators who are a lot of fun to talk to.

What is your favorite part about writeblr?

That you can do whatever you want here pretty much. It's not Twitter or tiktok and that's a good thing. It feels real.

What do you think writeblr could improve on? How do you think we can go about doing so?

I think there should be a way to engage more with readers. It's always nice to get feedback from other writers, but I know there are people who aren't writers but are mainly readers who would like to follow writblr projects who have no idea that's an option.

How do you contribute to the writeblr community? Do you think you could be doing more?

I try to read and reblog when I can. I like to participate in ask games. My dms and asks are always open for rambling at me about projects in. I would like to do more but my mental focus has been struggling lately due to life stuff so once I get that sorted out I'll be more reliable.

What kinds of posts do you most like to interact with?

Character posts are a lot of fun. I love seeing art and moodboards too. Ask games are a blast. Excerpts, of course.

What kind of posts do you most like to make?

I like to share the weirder lines I write as short excerpts. I also enjoy making ask games and full chapters.

Finally, anywhere else online we may be able to find you?

Discord in my pinned. I have an instagram and Twitter but I don't use them really.

Questions For Fun:

1. Got a favorite pairing, either in your work or in someone else's? What about it makes it your favorite?

What is the weirdest line you've wrote? What inspired it?

Some that come to the top of my head are Gwaine and Asher by @calicojackofficial , Hector and Ari by @written-in-gold and @addisonsdamndialogue, and Hya and Amon by @vacantgodling . All very fun couples with fantastic dynamics. It's hard to choose between my own pairings, but Shadow and Veronica have such a special place in my heart. They've known each other since childhood, fight a lot, know way too much about each other, act like they're divorced, but ultimately are incredibly loyal to each other. I have such a hard time deciding if I ship them more as friends or romantically.

"Oh, the sexy but fragile human body, boo hoo, you're hot, walk it off, have a potato, since you're so fond of them."

If your writing was a plant, what plant would it be and why?

It's a scene with Gabe and Satan from Rarely Reverie. Gabe is mad because Satan accidentally shot him. Satan is both flirting with him and annoyed that he's being blamed for it. They're just a lot of fun to write together because they're at odds a lot but have excellent chemistry.

Well I write a lot of stoner characters so I've got to say weed. Cannibis Sativa since there's a lot of action scenes.

[indelen]

This is my reread of the Lockwood and Co. Books, organized by @blue-boxes-magic-and-tea, I'll make a general summary of several chapters and then post bits and pieces that jumped out at me.

Part II, Chapters 7-8:

35 Portland Row is such a perfect home base. An urban Hobbit Hole. Magician’s nephew townhouse. Familiar and homey, yet exiting and unusual. Just the right amount of familiar and unfamiliar things that would appeal to a kid. The tantalizing fantasy of independence mixed with the fear of the outside world that the young target audience first starts to comprehend at that age. The dream of living with your crush and all your friends, eating donuts for breakfast, staying up to all hours of the night, being dashing, running things, having swords, being better at something than the adults who are an arbitrary force you put on a façade and appease and try to get rid of as soon as possible. Your challenge being comprehending mortality, coming to terms that death is a part of life and can happen to anyone around you, even your most loved ones. And your enemy being corrupt adults who run corporations that already traded your future, all your hopes and dreams, all your potential for just a bit more money, prestige, life they desire. It says something that a book for a modern teenager is one about kids just trying to survive in a world adults ruined and how difficult it is to keep a place of your own and your integrity safe and in one piece.

Miscellaneous:

It's sweet that Lockwood sees Portland Row as being not just "his" but belonging to anyone who is part of the agency. This is his home, legally he is the sole owner of it, but he views the house as Lucy's and George's in equal measure because they are part of Lockwood and Co. He opens his home to people not in the manner of a landlord (we don't really ever find out if he charges Geroge or Lucy any rent, I suspect he doesn't although informally they all probably pitch in on maintenance). What I love about Lockwood is he's such a paradox, he's extremely inviting and yet intensely closed off. He both opens his home to friends and craves a family and is also deeply emotionally stunted and detached.

George has lived with Lockwood for only maybe a year or so and the agency has only been registered three months and yet he gives off such intense "Elizabeth from Accounts Payable whose been with the company for twenty years and has weathered every kind of bullshit and is counting down to retirement" vibes like, Sir, how do you sound so 50 at 15?

Lockwood is so funny because one moment he's actually being a good boss and agency head – conducting good interviews, watching for emotional responses, making background checks on potential hires, giving a tour to new employee where he firmly but politely draws boundaries - and then the next moment he's absolutely peacocking to a cute girl like "look, look, I'm also powerful and a big deal!"

I also think it's funny that Lockwood strikes out with Lucy a lot more from the beginning then we realize. Lucy is traumatized, emotionally immature and has not been socialized properly. Her self-confidence has been worn away by her "prettiness is not your job" mother and having to be the breadwinner for her family so early in life. There are these moments early on where someone more adept at flirting would have picked up on Lockwood being a showoff and maybe played with it, but bless her she's 13 going on 14 here, literally no one can flirt at that age so she's just incapable of seeing what is going on or give it any time of day. It's no wonder that it takes them literal years to get anywhere.

Also, who let Lockwood keep that watch? no one right? He stole it. He told the cops there's a shitload of death glows in a garden and they probably brought him along to raid the home of a serial killer to help look evidence or whatever and there was a watch lying around and Lockwood was like “ooooooh for my murder scrapbook!” and swiped it.

The mention of an uncle early on is such a clever thing because it’s relevant to the plot during the interview to show how sensitive Lucy really is, but it’s also a red herring. When George mentions Lockwood losing his parents young and him being “in care” of some relative, the reader immediately thinks "ah yes, that must have been that nice uncle!" It lets us assume that whatever mystery there is about the room it must be about his parents. It's why the reveal at the end of Whispering Skull is such a surprise and shows just how little we know about him.

Yea she's gone.

It took less than a week for her to go from describing Lockwood as looking like "a priest on a toilet" to this teenage horniness. My disaster crush in Gr.7 had about the same trajectory. Also reminds me of Mei's completely realistically portrayed crush on Some Convenience Store Guy in "Turning Red". Flips on like a switch and before you know it, you're doodling the most mortifying thing ever conceived my man. 13 is such a cursed age, my god.

I’ve mentioned this before in a post, but Lucy lashes out at people for things she hates about herself. Her internal gripes about Geroge are not that he’s rude (even though he definitely is to her) she’s not mean about him being objectively less Talented then her, she’s never makes fun of him for being smarter or better educated than she is. Lucy can handle outright hostility pretty well and she’s not self-conscious about her talent or lack of education. But she is, I think, deeply insecure about her appearance. And like so many girls her age it’s the chink in her armor she knows to hide and wallpaper over with dismissal and disdain. She pretends she doesn’t care but she does, and the more her feelings for Lockwood grow the more it shows in how she talks about herself and how she talks about others.

Sometimes you’re reading a book and oooh there’s a romance subplot and A falls for B (often instead of C or D) and you think … but why? why is A in love with B actually? What is it about them that makes the attraction click? But with Lucy it’s so obvious why she is almost immediately taken with Lockwood, but also why she doesn’t realize it. From Lucy’s POV, for all his flaws Lockwood is the opposite of what Jacobs was. He enters with the teams and he’s the last to leave (he even jumps out the burning building last). She doesn’t feel alone and unsupported. He takes accountability for any error on the case, easily and without any shifting of blame. Sure he’s vainglorious and a bit irresponsible and impulsive and all that. He’s 14-15 at most - that’s normal enough and she’s a kid like him, she gets it. But Lockwood is also a kid burdened with a lot of responsibly and I think Lucy is in a unique position to appreciate this and admire him for taking it on as he does. And that admiration neatly tricks her into thinking that’s all there is to her feelings for a long, long time because she can’t tell her feels apart worth a damn.

I’m going to start a Lucy describes Lockwood’s smile count: 6

[thegingerwrites]

What’s up readers?! How about a little show and tell? Answer these 13 questions, tag 13 lucky readers and if you’re feeling extra bookish add a shelfie! Let’s Go!

I love talking about what I'm reading so thanks @betweensaintsandmonsters for the tag!

1) The Last book I read:

The Prospects by KT Hoffman, It's a cute baseball romance but god did it rock my world. I don't know if I'm just the exact target audience for this book or if I picked it up at a good time but it is so tender and joyful. The theme of allowing yourself to want things that seem impossible is just right up my alley. I just loved it.

2) A book I recommend:

This one was actually hard! I feel like whenever I give recommendations it's usually to a specific person who likes romance/mystery/sci-fi/etc. so a blanket, general, just-trust-me-you-need-to-read-this recommendation is tricky! I'm going to go with Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (not a super original rec, I think it just one the Hugo). I read it last year and thought about it for ages after I put it down. Great sci fi, super timely, the structure of the book was unexpected but very cool.

3) A book that I couldn’t put down:

The second to last book I read was The Shining. I was giving Steven King a second chance because of course I've heard great things but I really didn't like the first Dark Tower book. The suspense, the horror, plus the rainy weekend I just had meant I curled up and absolutely did not put it down.

4) A book I’ve read twice (or more):

I'm going to put two down for this: Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson and We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry. Vastly different books but ones I've reread once each and will probably reread again. Frankissstein plays with the story of Frankenstein obviously and ties it to questions of gender, sex, embodiment, technology and humanity. We Ride Upon Sticks is about a high school field hockey team that makes a deal with the devil in order to win States. It's hilarious, does cool things with POV, and hits some nostalgic team sports buttons for me. If you like Yellowjackets please read this book. I have a tendency to go through books quickly so I do like to reread every once and a while to refresh myself.

5) A book on my TBR:

I have four books on hold at the library and a stack at home to read and none of them are on the actual list that I keep on my phone so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'll go with The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune. I read Under the Whispering Door by Klune at the end of June and even though the other is better known and on my TBR (it was just what they had sitting on the shelf at the library). I enjoyed the other book though so I'm extra interested to see what the other is like.

6) A book I’ve put down:

I have a couple that I should have put down but didn't. Most recently for me, that would have been The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon. I thought the discussion of how to love and move on through trauma was really interesting and the way that how they played with identity and consciousness in relation to artificial intelligence but I don't think mecha is my genre of sci fi. It was also the sort of sci fi that hits the ground running, diving you deep into a new world without taking too much time (hardly any) to get you accustomed to the places, social structure, and terms used. I felt like I never really caught up. Usually when I'm not enjoying a book one of two thoughts goes through my head either, I'll read it fast enough that it will be over before I know it whether I like it or not, or, I've gone this far I should just stick it out to the end 😅

7) A book on my wish list:

I don't really know what this question means by wish list but I'm excited for Swordcrossed by Freya Marske to come out in October. I really enjoyed the Last Binding Series and this new book seems like it's going to be a fun time.

8) A favorite book from childhood:

I had a really hard time trying to choose one, I feel like there are different answers depending on what age we're talking about so here's four: Peak by Roland Smith (became obsessed with Everest for a bit), Lily's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes (I can hear my dad saying, "Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better." , Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse (I remember being blown away by the fact that you could write books as poems, tied into a minor fascination with the Dust Bowl/Great Depression, reread it I think when I was in middle school), The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (my first grade teacher showed us this book and had us write a story based on one of the pictures. I think it was the first time it really struck me that you could just write stories. You could just be an author).

9) A book you would give to a friend:

My best friend and I have been trading horror recs but she also recently asked me about like horror I would give to a pre-teen. Earlier this month I read Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell which I think hits a really great note between fairy tale and body horror. The protagonist is a shape shifting monster that eats people to survive and the plot revolves around her learning to let herself be loved. It was very sweet and silly and gross.

10) A book of poetry or lyrics that you own:

Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day by Nikki Giovanni which was actually introduced to me through a Buffy fic

11) A nonfiction book you own:

I don't read a lot of nonfiction (something I'm always looking to do more of!) and I don't own a lot of books But! I went and took a look at my shelf and found A Night To Remember by Walter Lord which is another callback to a childhood interest of mine about the Titanic

12) What are you currently reading:

I just started Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera (as in just started, I'm like 6 pages in) and I can't tell you anything about it, I have no idea where it is going to go yet!

13) What are you planning on reading next?

Listen... I just got a whole bunch of new stuff and may have bitten off more than I can immediately chew BUT! I currently have The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu translated by Ken Liu, The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher, and A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by K.J. Charles checked out from the library, along with Peter Darling by Austin Chant and The Pairing by Casey McQuiston on hold. After that, I'll probably read Doctor Sleep by Steven King to check in on little Danny and see if I want to watch the film adaptation with Ewan.

I love talking about what books and I'm constantly looking for recs. No pressure tags: @renlyslittlerose @usakostar @darthwillies @piecesofeden11 @underacalicosky @zimriya @genuflecting @chasingfictions

[whatmathgodwrought]

Lady Love Dies is the Paradise Killer

Is it possible for Lady Love Dies to have orchestrated the murders and the trial convictions in Paradise Killer?

Now, I know it’s an open ended game, and there are multiple endings, but as the main character and investigator, she is automatically exempted as a suspect. But what if she was the killer and the mastermind behind it all? What would that look like? Let's construct this scenario.

<Spoiler alert for Paradise Killer>

Motive

Also known as: "You would cry too if it happened to you."

At the start of the game we see a timer showing that Lady Love Dies has been in exile for over 3 million days. That’s over 8,200 years. She was sentenced to eternal exile after being deceived by the god, Damned Harmony during Island Sequence 13. Now, maybe eight millennia isn't much when you are immortal, but eventually a social creature would get bored, angry, and crazy. Maybe your idea of justice is warped into desire for revenge. After all, look at the rest of the Syndicate. They're all a bunch of power-mad, egotistical, genocidal maniacs who kidnap and ritually slaughter millions in service of dead gods with little hope of it ever ending. She knows that Perfect 25 isn't going to be perfect either. It will just be a continuance of this never-ending train wreck, and she'll still be stuck in exile. Wouldn't reality be better off without them?

Means

Also known as: "To the left, to the left."

This is tricky. Love Dies is stuck in exile. She can't get out and do anything herself. But she is in contact with someone who can. Right at the beginning of the game we hear the telltale laughter and meet the little demon Shin U'thk Jiggath, a.k.a. "Shinji." Our little Deus ex Machina.

He is able to teleport in and out of anywhere he wants on the island. And look, here is a human that can't go anywhere. A captive audience! Shinji has, without a doubt, made numerous visits to Love Dies over the years. At first she just found him a nuisance, but as the years and isolation wore on, she began to look forward to his visits, perhaps offering him traditional English tea, and Shinji probably smashing the teaset. Eventually her motive takes shape, and she begins actively conspiring with the demon for The Crime to End All Crimes. Shinji is a demon, so naturally he is up for more chaos and destruction to be set in motion against their enemies, and he probably gets bonus points for corrupting a Syndicate member.

So Shinji and Love Dies set to work. Shinji skulks about Island 24 gathering intel, and Love Dies provides context and insider information to further the plan. Shinji complains loudly about being ordered around as a gopher, but secretly enjoys it. Their years of plotting lead them to an opportunity for a specific, calculated strike.

Now there is a problem. She can't just destroy them, much as she would like to. She needs a way to get out of exile, and the only one who can let her out is the Judge. This is an opportunity in disguise. As the island's appointed "investigation freak," she knows she would called upon if there was a murder. So, they need to make that murder happen.

Shinji finds many secrets. He finds the secret of the seals and who lusts for power. He finds out about Henry Division being the child of Eyes Kiwami and Rina Division. He is also good at planting evidence.

So the means of the murders is twofold. First, orchestrate an actual murder, taking out as many targets as possible, using the demon coffin to murder the council. Second, manipulate and plant evidence so that the trial eliminates the rest of the targets. Shinji will teleport around and fabricate as much evidence as possible implicating other members.

Opportunity

Also known as: "We've gotta get out of this place."

So Love Dies needs a murder to get out and investigate the patsies she has set up, but she also needs to make sure there is enough evidence for the Judge to do the dirty work and legally execute the rest of her targets as criminals.

About the murder of Monserrat and the current council:

Lady Love Dies needs them all gone. For one thing, Monserrat has been in charge since Island Sequence 03 and has a long history of blood and failure on his hands. Their deaths are also useful in getting her exile lifted. The demon coffin does its work well here.

Next let's look at the people Love Dies wants to eliminate by fabricating evidence and getting them executed after the trial.

Carmelina Silence:

She's not on the council due to her family being banned, but she is power hungry and wants to fully enact her architect's vision as head of the council. That fact means she must be eliminated, and it also means it could be useful in setting up her downfall. She will be one of the suspects and executed after trial. Carmelina is the mother of Dainongate, and this is usable as leverage.

Grand Marshal Akiko 14:

Power hungry and probably would set up a military junta if she came into power. Doctor Doom Jazz likes her, so that's another strike against her. Shinji finds out her weakness is her relationship to her mortal soldiers. After getting her position from Witness's cellphone, her fate is sealed.

Witness to the End:

A zealot who would likely change the Syndicate's mission to totally focus on resurrecting the gods and probably lose the fight against the demons. He is useful in implicating Grand Marshal Akiko 14 and can himself be implicated with Carmelina. As we'll see later, it is imperative to Love Dies's plan that Witness be eliminated.

Yuri Night:

A petty megalomaniac. Annoying now, but possibly dangerous in the future especially if he gets on the council. He is probably being deceived by the goddess Enchanted Blue. Love Dies is not able to implicate him in the murders, but it seems likely she would be able to uncover or fabricate enough evidence of his involvement with Enchanted Blue to have him Exiled. Shinji or another demon could then finish the job.

Wildcards: Lydia and Sam Day Break.

In order to implicate Carmelina and Witness, the plot requires Lydia and Sam to be unwitting pawns. Lady Love Dies is either distraught and torn by this decision, or totally callous because she is envious of the happiness they have somehow found amongst the unending carnage of the Syndicate, soulmates for eternity, while the best Love Dies can do is on-and-off flings with Crimson and Doom Jazz. Or maybe she feels sorry for them and wants to give them release--in the worst possible way.

Who is left alive: Notice a theme?

Crimson Acid: During the game, Love Dies can trade Blood Crystals for secrets. In this scenario, Shinji is trading or stealing secrets on Love Dies's behalf. Acid is an unwilling participant. Also she is Love Dies's former lover, so she wants to keep her around.

Doctor Doom Jazz: Another former lover. Love Dies needs to keep busy in paradise after all. Also he is a doctor, so has some utility in the future, but has no bearing or usefulness in the murder plot.

The only two people left alive are former (arguably current) lovers. Another motive for Love Dies.

Some Loose Ends

I couldn't find any proof or hints of this in the lore or the game, so this is all baseless (and fun) speculation.

The Judge and the End of the Island.

Island Sequence 24 is ending. Or is it? The Judge has shown the ability to suspend the collapse of the pocket universe to allow for the investigation, and the Judge has literally fused itself with the Island, sacrificing their personhood to become an impartial arbiter of justice. But wait, aren't the physical aspects of the island being corrupted by demons? Isn't it possible the Judge itself has been corrupted by demonic influence? Island 24 is the longest running island, so isn't it possible this Island and the Judge have absorbed the most demonic influence in Syndicate history? Couldn't the Judge, at their own discretion, suspend the end of island sequence permanently? And with Witness to the End dead, who will oversee the island end-sequence? It is possible that Island 24 remains under the influence of a demonically corrupted Judge?

A Deal with the Devil. (Ok fine, they're demons.)

Love Dies makes a deal with Shinji and the demons. "Free me, and help me destroy my enemies, and Island 24 will forever belong to the demons ." This deal works out great for all parties. Shinji has already said that he cannot escape the collapse of the pocket universe and will die when Island 24 ends. This works out great for the demon hordes because now they have an actual place to call home where they cannot be exorcised or expunged. And it works out great for Lady Love Dies and her pals, because she knows that the architecture of Perfect 25 cannot be infested by demons. The only thing that could be possibly be possessed in Perfect 25 is humans, and after Love Dies crosses over to Island 25, she will end the practice of kidnapping humans permanently. There is nothing for the demons to possess and no way for the demons to double-cross her and infest Perfect 25. Perhaps for good measure she even finds the kill switch for Island 24 as an insurance policy.

Final Thoughts:

After enduring over 8,000 years of exile and years of free life before that, Lady Love Dies is tired. Tired of the Syndicate, the politics and power-struggles, the kidnappings and slaughter, the demons, and the dead gods they pointlessly try to revive. It will never end, and Perfect 25 cannot be perfect unless she makes it so.

Exile wasn't so bad with all those annoyances gone. So how could you recreate that? If she's doomed to be mostly alone in her own self-made exile, she might as well have access to a bar and some lovers to play with in Perfect 25. And to hell with the gods. Let's just enjoy ourselves in paradise.

This conspiracy would require a criminal genius mastermind, but she is the investigation freak and has had a LOT of time to think about it.

With these Facts, we have constructed this Truth.

[lycanlovingvampyre]

MAG 145 Relisten

Activity on my first listen: taking a bubble bath again^^

ARTHUR: "Big talk. But Agnes is dead. And I don’t know if you heard, but your little woodland circle’s been broken. So, I don’t really see anything getting in my way, if I wanted to burn the flesh off your snarky bones." GERTRUDE: "Ah. (small laugh) I assume you haven’t checked on, uh, Eugene, then?" [PAUSE.] ARTHUR: "What?" Gertrude is such a badass. No wonder there are so many jokes about her being the 16th Fear.

ARTHUR: "How’d you do it?" [GERTRUDE LAUGHS.] GERTRUDE: "You don’t need to know that. What you do need to know is I can do it again, if I need to. To you, or any of your lackeys, if I need to." Soft magic system + the vagueness of comic horror is such a strong combination in fiction! We don't need to know how Gertrude did it. We just know, that another member of the Cult of the Lightless Flame is shocked that she was able to.

GERTRUDE: "You know, thinking about it, the amount of pain and loss and legitimate devastation I’ve caused among your little cult over the last, what, forty years? I think the Desolation is probably very fond of me." Gertrude really does seem to target the Lightless Flame a lot. So I guess it's very likely that her claim of the Desolation having killed her cat is true. Gertrude is just John Wick xD

ARTHUR: "Alright. Agnes. How’d you do it? Never did understand it, not really." Not really-counter of S4: 12! (Ohhh, this episode's gonna be gooood!^^)

GERTRUDE: "It was the Web. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, and I would call it an accident, but it never is, with them. It’s only after the fact that you can see all the subtle manipulations." Lol, cue for the audience to do at least one relisten xD

GERTRUDE: "It let the Mother of Puppets bind me to Agnes, interweave our existences at some… metaphysical level, as it had with Fielding and the house." Is Elias’ little insurance about the lives of the institute staff being bound to him something like this? If it is true (Elias implies in MAG 158 that he doesn’t know if everyone’s ties to the institute are strong enough). Nevertheless, in both these instances, Agnes + Gertrude and Fielding + the house, the Web was involved and the Spider’s a bit more talented at making connections.

So was it Jason North, the statement giver of MAG 37, who broke the circle? He did drop one of the bottles. And the year, 2009, matches with this episode.

GERTRUDE: "Well, for all the Web bound us together, I never actually met her. What was she like?" Is Gertrude supposed to be lying there? Jon says in MAG 167 that Gertrude met Agnes once. Or was this idea added at a later point in the writing process? There is a bit of a discrepancy in Agnes’ timeline, in which year she actually died. So could be.

ARTHUR: "I… I don’t know. Not really." Not really-counter of S4: 13!

ARTHUR: "Never really knew what she felt ‘bout any of it, not really." Not really-counter of S4: 14!

ARTHUR: "The one thing it never does is just… tell us what to do. It seeds us with this… aching, impossible desire to change the world, to bring it to us." Hm, yeah, I always wondered how anyone got that idea of performing a ritual to bring their Fear god through. I doubt Jane Prentiss had any contact to other Avatars (except Oliver or Arthur, but they didn't say anything to her about rituals and such) and yet she also tried it. Or, her worms tried it. Like Gertrude said, they don't think at all, they just are and they just do.

ARTHUR: "They don’t give a toss about your rules, or systems. They only care about what feels right, what freezes your belly with terror." There it is again. There are no hard rules on the Dread Powers, only what feels right. Soft magic system! (Also, Arthur called the Fears them beyond. I really like that!)

ARTHUR: "But you don’t actually care about them, do you? Not really." Not really-counter of S4: 15!

ARTHUR: "You’d be surprised the misery and pain you can cause when you’ve control over someone’s home." I like the idea that landlords fall under the category of the Desolation! Same with the manager thing, what Eugene had told. I think HR is also right up that alley.

GERTRUDE: "But until then, get out of my Archives." I love that this line is in the podcast XD

JON: "Eugene is still alive, frozen in place by the razor-sharp particles that are mixed up into what he chose instead of flesh. I don’t know where Gertrude stored his head. But I do know it desperately wants to scream." Ah yes, a fate worse than death. I'd guess Gertrude used the concrete method again.

GEORGIE: "Oh! Uh, sorry; I thought, um – Is Melanie about?" So it sounds like Georgie was surprised to find Jon in this office and that she was rather looking for Melanie. Let's keep that in mind.

JON: "I’m… I’m alright. I’m trying to, uh, rest up a bit. Take it easy." Yeah, I totally get that he didn't tell Georgie anything here. It rarely lead to anything helpful, especially there at the end. And Georgie doesn’t want to be further involved. Why tell her then - why did she ask anyway... Yeah, asking "how are you doing" is often a courtesy to which people very rarely want an honest answer. Courtesy question, courtesy answer, simple as that.

GEORGIE: "Really? ‘Cause – I’m pretty sure I heard talking about a screaming headless corpse just now." JON: "Oh – Oh, were you… listening? –" GEORGIE: "Oh, um. Didn’t mean to, you know. These doors are not that thick." Seriously??... So Georgie knew exactly, that Jon was in there. She could have kept looking for Melanie. She could have left it at Jon's polite answer. But she purposefully walked in on him. She purposefully asked him, how it's going and purposefully called him out for not telling her. All this after she decided to remove herself from Jon's life. That is a really shitty thing to do.

GEORGIE: (fast) "I’m sorry to hear that. You should probably get some therapy too." Oh come on... Georgie still has no idea what is actually going on, she can't grasp the magnitude of all this. And that's fair, she didn't want to get involved any further, alright. But then coming in, poking around and giving unsolicited advice to a situation she has no idea about is just really, reaaally shitty. First time listening I way okay with her in S3, except with her being a bit too pushy. The hospital, fine, she's not involved like the others (bound to the institute), totally fair to cut ties. But this scene got me to really dislike her...

JON: "Would you go with me as well?" GEORGIE: "…No." JON: "Yeah. I thought as much." Well done here, Jon! That was a good question to find out if she really wants to help, or just wants to be smart. And that "no" actually sounded a bit unsure, almost like questioning what she just said. Like "Oh shit, I didn't think he would actually engage in that". Like her hypocrisy was caught. And that "thought as much" sounds like "Yeah right, I already knew that you didn't actually wanted to help". People seem to think that Jon’s question was just another wet paper bag example, like "I'm alone and a monster, pls help me". I think it's more of a "Ok, now I'm going to call you out". (After all, in the last few episodes Jon knew how to defend himself, like calling out Basira in the boat.) And Georgie got the message since after that she awkwardly asked again where Melanie is and leaves.

@a-mag-a-day

[black-cat-aoife]

Tagged by @kathastrophen

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

somehow I need to write words before typing the number 55 because otherwise this very functioning website fucks up the formatting

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

77,339

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Sad Cops The last ones were for Blind Ermittelt, Detective Anna, Endeavour and Polizeiruf Frankfurt.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

In Which Everybody Regrets Their Life Choices (Daredevil)

The Tale of the Beautiful Professor (Guardian)

Tee Mit Folgen (Tatort Berlin)

Adam, Vincent und die Eule (Polizeiruf Frankfurt)

A Sickbed Visitor (Society of Gentlemen)

OK, technically there's another Daredevil Fic on 2, but it's a collection of shorter fills for a prompt meme so does that count?

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes. I try to respond to all but occasionally fall in the "Oh yeah I will do that later" trap where I...y'know...don't do it.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I had a whole paragraph here, about how I don't usually write Angst and wanted to name a few sort-of-angsty ones, and then I remembered, that I did in fact write Never To Be Told which is very angsty.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

A lot, but Look Not Into My Eyes has a veeeery sappy ending.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

None yet

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Well, if you equate "crazy" with "nobody but me wrote it" then it's my Ein Fall For Zwei/Tatort Saarbrücken Crossover. But honestly: a crossover between two crime shows that feature abusive dads whose heads make sudden contact with blunt instruments and the resulting fallout from that is not particularly crazy. I also have this idea for a Blind Ermittelt/Allmen one, but as it's so often the case that's all vibes, no plot so far.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I once wanted to, and we even discussed some plot ideas, but then I got ghosted

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

Yeah, Niko/Alex caught me like few others, but I also always will have a soft spot for Till/Felix

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Currently, I'm having a really hard time with my Alex & Sophie pre-canon fic, because it requires writing Alex shortly after the attack, and I am not sure if I can do that.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think I'm quite good at character-voices, both in dialogue and when internal-monologuing

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Getting from one scene to the next. Also in dialogues the right amount of surrounding description. I tend to start off with a screenplay, and then turn it into character says one sentence, followed by three paragraphs of description.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I hate it. Either your POV character understands what is said, and then you can tell the audience what is being said, or they don't, and then you just write "they were talking in XY." Don't make me use Google Translate to understand your fic. And don't make me read phrases like heiße schokolade mit gepeitschter creme, because your foreign language knowledge also comes from Google Translate. (That is an example from an actually published book, but my feelings on that transcend the fanfic/pubfic barrier, and I also read enough bullshit in fanfic).

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter. As in write-write. I don't think I ever wrote down any of the Sailor Moon self insert I made up.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Hmm I wrote A Sickbed Visitor with me as the target audience in mind, and considering that, I am quite happy that it also ended up being reasonably popular. Because this is the fanfiction for a romance series that doesn't feature one of the main couples but the friendship between two halves of different couples. (Yeah. Having fun writing something is nice. Validation is also nice)

And Es Wird Wieder ein Sommer is well...it's not the same, because it is an Alex/Niko fic, and I always meant it to be one, but it's also about Laura and her relationship with those two and that was lots of fun to think about and write.

No pressure tag for @cricrithings and @tatzelwyrm