#FIRST REAL ACTUAL OG POST HERE !! thought about putting this on main but decided i oughta get the ball rolling here | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

qqueenofhades · 3 years

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so…now that we all know what you DISLIKE about star wars (and 400% fairly so, you have my full support here)…

what drew you into the universe, what keeps you around?

favorite characters, ships (OTPs or actual spaceships lol), overall themes, do you have a favorite random weird creature or robot that you adore? whatever you wanna talk about!

go off honey (again, but supportively 💖💖💖)

tax paid: the very nerdy star wars punk vest i made and the even nerdier matching vest i made for starsky

Lmaooo, entirely valid. You were like "star wars?" and I was like the drunk person at the bar who can't stop shouting about how much their ex sucks. But now that I have gotten all that off my chest, let's talk about why I love it (since if I didn't love it, I wouldn't have such strong opinions). Basically my feelings on the OG SW trilogy are similar to my feelings on the OG LOTR trilogy, as that tumblr post floating around somewhere put it: sure, they have flaws, but also, they're perfect. I have a complicated relationship with the prequels, as do we all, since George Lucas cannot write dialogue or direct actors to save his life (stick to what you're good at, George, hire other people to do the rest), but even they have their moments. Like. Hit me with that "Across the Stars" love theme, John Williams. Gahh. Just like that.

Because... Star Wars wasn't actually this omnipresent corporate global entertainment monolith when it started out. It was a dorky low-budget indie sci-fi film in the 1970s which everyone thought was going to bomb. But it told a simple and compelling story in an interesting way, everyone agrees that ESB is one of the best films/sequels ever made, and then ROTJ gave it a happy ending while it was still okay to do that. My main thematic gripe with the Disney trilogy (I will try to keep those to a minimum, lol, but I have to bring it up to compare) is that it very clearly fell into the "actual happy endings are naive and unrealistic and a cynical postmodern audience won't accept anything less than things being Bad" trap that, yet again, we have GOT to thank for. It obviously existed to some degree before that, but GOT blew it up to huge levels, where the only valid situation or character is that which is Grimdark and Depressing. Which, in my view, misses the heart and soul of what SW is all about??

Like. ESB is genuinely dark. ANH was this fun plucky little sci-fi film where the scrappy good guys won the day against the Nazi stand-ins, as they were supposed to, and then ESB comes along (speaking of John Williams, let us all chant together, DUH DUH DUH DUHDUHDUH DUHDUHDUH, DUH DUH DUH DUHHHH DUHHH DUHHH DUHHHH) and things go... wrong. Leia and Han are on the run for most of the movie, then get captured and tortured by the Empire and and betrayed (however unwillingly) by Lando. The Rebellion is attacked on Hoth (I tell you, those fuckin AT-AT walkers were SCARY when you see it as a young kid for the first time), and forced into hiding. Luke loses his hand, doubts Obi-Wan and Yoda and realizes that his mentors are fallible, makes dumb mistakes, and of course gets hit with The Most Famous Line In Movie History. But it's also just adrenaline and excitement. THE ASTEROID FIELD! THE HAN-LEIA BANTER! THE FIRST LUKE-VADER DUEL! THE FACT THAT YOU HEAR TWO FRICKING NOTES OF THE IMPERIAL MARCH AND YOU'RE JUST LIKE OH YEAH OH YEAH OH YEAHHHH!

But also then... Return of the Jedi. It gets shat upon for the Ewoks and reusing the Death Star as the Big Bad and being supposedly cheesy and not as Thematically Dark as ESB. Which is all kinda silly, in my opinion, but also, can we talk about Luke Skywalker's character arc and how he chooses possibly the most radical compassion ever demonstrated by a hero in an action movie, let alone a space opera. He insists that Anakin Skywalker is still in there somewhere and puts his own neck on the line to prove it. Luke doesn't save the galaxy by being a Badass Jedi. He saves it by throwing away his lightsaber and saying "I will not fight you, Father." He saves it by trusting that even in the depths of darkness, Anakin can come back from the charred ruins of Darth Vader and finally do what he was supposed to do all along. He can end Palpatine for good and all (we don't talk about "Somehow Palpatine has returned" because it's nonsense, obviously). Anakin can avenge the Jedi and what was done to him and all the lies he believed and the pain he wreaked on the galaxy, even then. It's not too late. It's not too late. Like. I don't care if this is Lightweight or Childish or whatever. It makes me CRY every time I watch it. Especially the moment where Luke takes off Anakin’s helmet and sees how ruined he actually is under there, and yet the downfall and death of the trilogy’s chief villain is not triumphant at all but instead utterly heartbreaking. “You were right about me Luke... tell your sister... you were right.”

Excuse me, I need to just /CRIES INTENSELY/

Luke won't be tempted to the dark side for his own sake, but Leia's ("If you will not join me, then perhaps she will"). I likewise hold firmly that Anakin/Vader is one of the best movie villains/antiheroes of all time and likewise have many feelings and Strong Opinions about his arc, prequel writing clumsiness and eye-rollingly tepid love story aside. (See: he and Obi-Wan were deeply in love and in a way they still are, don't @ me. I have no problems with Padme and obviously stan Natalie Portman at all times, but Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship is the real love story, the heart of the prequels, and in some ways even the subsequent movies, the end.) And “so this is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause” is... raw af as a line. For being in a Star Wars prequel movie. What?? (Also, the Revenge of the Sith novelization had no business being as good as it was. If only that dude had also written the movie.)

Anyway, my point is: the OG trilogy had plenty of moments of staggering emotional weight and where things genuinely sucked for the good guys and the outcome wasn’t entirely clear. The difference is that it didn’t choose to dwell on them, and it allowed for a transformative fictional space where a happy ending, fiercely fought for and squarely earned, was the right outcome. We didn’t need to go back thirty years later and make everything suck for fear that a cynical modern audience couldn’t connect with it otherwise. (Like I said, we didn’t need the new movies at all, but Disney heard that Cha-Ching of the Almighty Dollar). Star Wars was sci-fi, sure, but it also had the fantasy elements that allowed a happy ending to be the right choice for what we saw the characters go through and the philosophy that carried us through the original trilogy.

Likewise it’s just... Peak as far as dynamics go. C-3PO the fussy metal butler who worries about Everything and R2-D2 who is the droid embodiment of YOLO? Flawless. Sassy scruffy space pirate and badass politician warrior princess bicker constantly, butt heads, drive each other crazy, and then fall in love? Iconic. (And has shaped my ship tastes for... all of eternity, oops.) The above-discussed transformation of Luke Skywalker, whiny ordinary teenage kid, to the truly great man who fulfills what Obi-Wan, Yoda, AND the rest of the entire Jedi order couldn’t manage to do, because of their own flaws and blind spots and black-and-white moral views that didn’t know what to do with a man who loved as passionately as Anakin Skywalker, for better or for worse? The guy who managed to save the galaxy with love? STAN.

So... what? The Disney trilogy decides to retcon all that, throw everything that they’ve fought for out the window, make Han, Leia, and Luke miserable and rejecting the roles they grew into in the original trilogy, and die without ever really reuniting or seeing each other again as a trio? The underlying message was that “these happy endings aren’t satisfactory/realistic/sophisticated enough” and idk, maybe it’s just the shitshow of the last few years, but I’d like to see some entertainment that had the cojones to tell me that despite all the darkness and despair, maybe there’s a chance for hope. (”Rebellions are built on hope,” thank you Only Valid New Star Wars Movie Rogue One.) And Rogue One worked so well, despite being utterly GUTTING as all the heroes died one by one, because we knew what was coming next (A New Hope) and that their sacrifice was going to be worth it. I don’t care if that’s “realistic” or not. As I’ve said before, that’s what stories are for, and if I only wanted things that were Real Life, I would only read the news. Besides, the idea that happy endings never happen in reality is equally bullshit. We as a culture need to accept that more, instead of finding reasons to tear everything down.

So just... yes. The original trilogy might have flaws, but also, it’s perfect. And do I want to rewatch it all now? Kinda.

(Anyway. I warned you this was gonna be long. Oh look, it’s long, and I’m sure there is even more I could say, but still. Ahem.)

sleepover weekend asks

#buffaluff #ask #star wars #long post

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shiroandblack · 3 years

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Finwë, the Progenitor of the 'Fins'

[Disclaimer: what you are about to read are basically my thoughts and interpretation of Finwë. So if you have different thoughts and opinions that's perfectly fine]

Oh, and I'm totally not doing this because I'm procrastinating on the Fëanor thought-vomit I have going on in my head. Pfft, absolutely not!

Finwë, High King of the Noldor, Daddy to Fëanor, Findis, Fingolfin, Lalwen, and Finarfin (not that kind of daddy, get yer minds out of the gutter), husband to both Míriel and Indis, the Ned Stark of the Silmarillion, (depending on who you ask) the Fin to Elu's Finelwë -

I should stop.

First of all, we have no idea where this guy came from (I think?). He just suddenly popped out as an ambassador who basically went out with his buddies (OG Goldilocks and Tall Boy) to scout Valinor and see if the elves should move there or not. Prior to that, Finwë is not mentioned anywhere. People are generally divided if he was Tata's son as was Ingwë being Imin's son and Elwë being Enel' or if he's Unbegotten. Some also headcanon him as an orphan with his parents gone via Morgoth Kidnapping which was why he was chosen as an ambassador. I mean, magical guy on horse saying he'll take their society somewhere? I wouldn't really send the heirs or chieftains, I'd send someone competent enough to be a diplomat but ultimately no great loss to the tribal society of Cuiviénen (my god did I spell that right) if magical guy does pull a Dark Rider. Personally I do think that if he was indeed an orphan, it would explain some things in particular, like his want for many children and just a big family in general.

Anyways, the three go on their joy trip to Valinor and come back and go like "come, come, there are two pretty trees and no Dark Rider". I personally would have gone because of the no Dark Rider part but hey, if you like shiny, glowing trees and that's your main motivation, no judgement. Right after that, we don't know what happens to Imin, Tata, or Enel. Working on the assumption that the three are different people to the three '-wë's then they could have become Avari since the Avari are Tatyar and Nelyar. Interestingly, the Minyar all go and there is no more mention of Imin despite he was chieftain of all chieftains and then suddenly Ingwë is High King of all Elves? I'm gonna go with @squirrelwrangler's Klingon route here from their story 'Of Ingwë Ingweron' because I think there should be more depth to Ingwë and on a completely irrelevant note I have had a crush on 'the boy who would be Ingwë' since I started reading. You probably didn't need to know that, but now you do :)

(As you can see, I'm being very objective.)

BACK TO THE MAIN POINT. THIS IS A POST ABOUT FINWË. So anyways, the Great Journey happened and for some reason he and Elwë decide to meet up in a forest to do what nobody knows. Anyways, Elwë got skadooshed by Melian and Finwë went to Aman forever regretting the fact that he never got to do Elwë - I MEAN DO WHATEVER HE AND ELWË PLANNED in the woods of Nan Elmoth.

There he got married. Now, this is where I actually stop making fun of Finwë (yeah, no) and give you my interpretations and analysis which none of you have asked for but I'm doing anyways. So right off the bat, even when Míriel is obviously tired from giving birth to the baby who is his own crematorium - sorry, I meant Fëanàro - Finwë goes like "oh he's so pretty, I'm sure our other kids will be just as pretty". Which goes to show us that Finwë likely wanted an armada of kids right from the start. Y'all know what happens next. Point is, Míriel's dead and gone and Finwë is understandably a Sad Boy™.

Now, he also exhibits a certain impatient streak after Míriel dies. Surely he knew that the more he bothered Míriel about "hey, when are you gonna come back?" the more obstinate Míriel would be about not returning. I say he is impatient because he is an elf. He technically has all the time in Arda to wait for Míriel to return, but curiously he doesn't wait. Now, Fëanor was born in YT 1169 and Fingolfin in YT 1190 and since one YT is about 10 solar years (I'm pretty sure it's 9.8 years ish but I suck at maths so please have mercy on me) that means that Fëanor was around 200 years old when Fingolfin was born and we know Findis is elder. 200 years for an elf is not long at all, hell to the elven perception of time Finwë marrying Indis is probably like someone going out dating after 40 days of abstinence after a break up. This means that he married Indis relatively quickly after Míriel died, which shows that he was very eager for the marriage to happen.

Why? Was it because he knew Míriel wouldn't return for a very long time? Or was it because he wanted more kids? Or maybe that impatience is just intrinsic to Finwë's character? I actually don't know what to make of his motivations regarding this, so I'd love to hear anyone's opinions.

Finwë supposedly fell in love with Indis when he was going to visit Ingwë and saw her singing and the light was golden and Indis glowed and yeah. Prior to that, they most likely met in Tirion or even in Cuiviénen as Indis was close kin to Ingwë so I highly doubt that this was their first meeting and Indis was in love with Finwë since the early days of when the Vanyar and Noldor still stayed together in Tirion. This does make me wonder that even when Finwë was married to Míriel, were there seeds of feelings towards Indis? No, I am not saying he had an affair with Indis while married to Míriel, but you can feel attracted to someone even while married to another. But considering Finwë's favouritism towards Fëanor, I don't think this was the case and he probably began falling in love with Indis when he saw her singing and being basked in golden light. I do wonder what would have happened if he saw her picking her nose instead but hey, elves don't pick their noses in the Silm because all the nose dirt is removed by the sheer amount of times they must've cried in the First Age. Snotty crying ftw.

Many people in-universe seem to think that his second marriage was a mistake, but I do not think his marriage per say was a mistake. To me Finwë had the right to move on from Míriel, but what I don't agree with was that the Valar basically locked her up in Mandos for eternity. But this is a point of conflict that I feel I should address in a separate post about the Valar. In any case, what I think was the mistake was Finwë's impactful favouritism of Fëanor and his failure to reconcile Fëanor and his children by Indis. As there are a lot of external factors to him being unable to make his kids get along, I will be focusing more on the negative effects of his favouritism.

Finwë's marriage to Indis seems almost like a spontaneous decision, I don't think he actually sat Fëanor down and explained things to him quite well. After all, in Fëanor's mind Indis is the reason his mother is forever dead which is not really the case. Finwë wanted to marry Indis and Indis wanted to marry Finwë. It takes two to make the relationship work, after all. But despite Indis giving him what he wanted which is more children and a big family in general, Finwë still favoured Fëanor. Now I do get favouritism because everyone has favourites, but Finwë's favouritism only served to create more strife between Fëanor and Fingolfin. With one child, he lavishes praise and attention to the point that it's detrimental to Fëanor's growth as a person and with the other children, Fingolfin felt ignored enough to tailor his entire life into proving that he is more worthy to be Finwë's heir to - for a lack of better word - get his father to look at him the same way Finwë looks at Fëanor.

I don't doubt that Finwë loved his kids. I think he did love both Fëanor and his children by Indis, but the thing is . . . his actions always show that he loved Fëanor more. And I think that must have been devastating for his other children and what was the worst in my opinion is that Finwë doesn't seem to realise this. This could be a form of selective ignorance on Finwë's part or it could simply be that Finwë felt that he was giving equal attention to his children and that Fëanor needed more attention because he didn't have a mother. This is a logical thought process for him, but just because something seems logical it doesn't mean it's the right thing. Personally, I think Finwë's feelings towards Fëanor revolve around love and guilt and that guilt over denying Fëanor a birth mother makes him put Fëanor on a pedestal above his other children.

Now I'm gonna dive in to the circumstances up to his death. Prior to the infamous 'point-a-sword-at-traitorous-half brother' incident, the Noldor already had factions brewing under each of Finwë's sons. Which means that there were different groups supporting different sons (I'm just gonna give this quick glance because Noldorin elf politics and succession matters requires its own post honestly), both Fëanor and Fingolfin's group were advocating for these two princes to be Finwë's heir while Finarfin's most likely stayed neutral as throughout the text Finarfin has shown no real desire for kingship as his brothers (well, little did he know that his mother-name would come true in an arguably sad way). What is very interesting is the fact that Fingolfin thought he could be king after Finwë to begin with, which suggests to me that Finwë hadn't formally declared an heir. Usually it is assumed that the eldest son is heir and there would be no formal declaration needed, but the thing is Finwë had sons by a different queen and what's more is Fingolfin and Finarfin were the children of the ruling queen. Why he didn't do a formal declaration, I do wonder, because while it may have embittered Fingolfin for awhile I do think that if Fëanor had been assured of his position then maybe the two could have had some semblance of a healthy relationship. Maybe he viewed it as causing a greater rift between his children?

Now we finally get on to the sword pulling incident. We all know what happens, so I'll just skip on to the aftermath. Fëanor is exiled by Manwë, Finwë views this as an insult to his authority. I do agree that this can be viewed as that because as a Noldo, Fëanor should answer to the king of the Noldor and Manwë is exiling someone who is not his subject. But the thing is, Finwë probably wasn't going to really punish him and that's why Manwë stepped in. Hell, we have no evidence of a trial going on for what Fëanor did. But the thing is, this isn't just a regular Fëanor and Fingolfin screaming match this was Fëanor actually threatening harm to Fingolfin in front of everyone. The guy literally sashayed into the room, wearing armour and drew a sword. This must have been the equivalent of a bank robber drawing out a loaded gun to the elves.

Anyways, ya know what good ol' Finwë did to protest against Manwë's interference and Fëanor getting exiled -

He incited the Fourth Shinobi War -

No, he just yeeted off with Fëanor. Look guys, I have neutral feelings towards Fingolfin I mean he is no victim (in general) because he has done some pretty presumptuous things (which is what makes him interesting, let's be honest), but I have never ever felt so bad for him before. Hell, this is an even worse 'fuck you' then making him cross the Helcaraxë because Fingolfin's main motivation in life thus far is probably to be equal to Fëanor in Finwë's eyes. I mean, he did leave Fingolfin regent (did he? Oh gosh, I honestly forgot) but still dealt an emotional blow anyways.

Right, so we don't get much of what Finwë did in Formenos but maybe this whole thing was just for him to get a holiday. And then Melkor comes and fucks shit up by killing Finwë. Now, I'm going to talk about Finwë's murder and why it is in my opinion the Inciting Incident™ of the Silm, the Chekhov's gun being fired so to speak, the equivalent of Ned Stark's execution in the Tolkienverse. Everything else, Melkor's lies, the creation of the Silmarils, the drama between the brothers, it was a build up to this moment. And everything after, the exile of the Noldor, the War of the Jewels, it was what happened because of Finwë's murder. Prior to this, there were already factions among the Noldor as previously discussed above but none of these factions actually openly made any moves against each other. Why? Because Finwë was still alive, because Finwë was essentially the lynchpin holding the Noldor together. Now, I'm pretty sure that Morgoth killed Finwë just to fuck Fëanor's shit up even more, but what he did was quite tactically brilliant. He has effectively wrought chaos among the Noldor in one single swoop.

And thus the Quenta Silmarillion happens.

In Mandos, he meets Míriel and tells her about his life. Because maybe it went something like this:

Finwë: so yeah, you know I was with our son all the way through and then I died. What have you been doing?

Míriel: oh, you know the usual things one does when one is condemned to Mandos for eternity.

Anyways, he gives up any opportunity for life for Míriel. Which is admittedly a nice thing to do since the reason Míriel is kinda stuck there is related to him, until you find out Míriel weaves the history of the House of Finwë instead of well, I don't know building the Mírindis ship? Yeah, she probably weaved Fingon getting his head smashed open by Gothmog and getting his corpse trampled. Oh and the 'If I Die, You Die' duel between Celegorm and Dior which probably wasn't as badass as Katniss' "If we burn, you burn with us" line from Mockingjay made it seem but more bloody and violent. Also Maedhros throwing himself off into a fiery chasm. Finrod getting mauled by a werewolf.

Good times, I'm sure.

But hey, at least Fëanor comes within a few seconds after stepping into Beleriand to keep him company.

So, I'm done with teasing my analysis of Finwë. Thank you for your time. Have a nice day.

Just keep procrastinating <3

#the silmarillion #lotr #silm stuff #finwë #fëanor #fingolfin #the ASOIAF and Naruto and Hunger Games references you probably didnt need #house of finwë #look at me trying to form my thoughts into coherent paragraphs #ingwë #because i have a crush on him #elwë #because yeah #tags galore #i should be doing something productive

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nagisasstunningpersonality · 4 years

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TINSITOGS, a retrospective (happy birthday)

(yes I’m like two days too late I know I’m sorry)

Why hello followers and ass class fandom, nice to see you there. I’m sure MOST people know about this, but in case you don’t, hi. On AO3 I’m better known as livixbobbiex, writer of maybe one of the most infamous Assassination Classroom fics.

Which I mean like, if you haven’t read it yet you totally should it’s fanlore at this point I promise-

Shameless plug that I don’t need aside, I felt that, on its first birthday since actual completion, I just wanted to share some things about it. Some tit bits about writing it, fun facts, maybe even some author advice TM. I appreciate that it’ll be super annoying if I do that in the tags, though, so that’ll all be under the cut. If you don’t want to read the whole post, then no matter what, thanks for the support in general!

I also want to take the opportunity to announce that I’ve reopened my discord, so if you want to talk about my fics with me (and others), you’re more than welcome to join! (the link is here)

The origin story

I’ve stated this many times, I think, but TINSITOGS was never supposed to be a serious story. Taking you back, quite a long time, it actually started in a facebook DM with a friend. We used to come up with “head canons” with each other, which were basically just very condensed fanfiction plots over a multitude of text messages. I believe I was trying to cheer her up, and I tried to come up with some kind of plot line.

At the time, I was fairly fresh to the Ass Class fandom, and I was joking about how there were no teen pregnancy melodrama fanfictions. It wasn’t that I wanted one, I just thought it was strange for a school centric anime with a bunch of ships to NOT have one. And, back then, I only really cared about karmagisa. So I just decided ‘right it’s happening’. The reason I decided to make it ABO was due to ‘it making sense’. Fun fact: it was almost written as AFAB trans Nagisa, but I decided against it as I didn’t rate my ability to handle it well back then. Looking back on it, I’m glad I made that decision.

Over around two months, writing out the plot of this story took over my life a little bit. I had no idea where I was going with it, but I was having so much fun with the drama that I decided that Karma and Nagisa shouldn’t get together soon at all, and I had a lot of fun teasing my friend with the ‘will they won’t they’. It was only when I got bored that I invented this intense drama plotline to finish it all off.

That period of time was a lot of fun. And whilst that friendship didn’t end well, I still have a lot to thank her for. She chose Daichi’s name because I had no idea, and she wanted to annoy me because I didn’t like Haikyuu. When I couldn’t decide on his hair colour, the purple was her suggestion because ‘why logic?’ Daichi speaking Korean was because of how much she liked Kpop. She even helped me choose the title of the actual fic, so there’s a lot you can thank her for, honestly.

After I finished that story, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Whenever I daydreamed, I used to think about that damn Daichi Akabane, and how much I wanted to tell his story. I’d even come up with extra stuff to fill in a lot of the gaps, and developed his character in my mind. I decided that I was really desperate to write it down. Usually that worked when I had an idea I wanted to work through.

I wrote the first chapter in late 2017, and then the next two as well. I just, kept going, and realised that I could go further still. TINSITOGS was never something that was supposed to be shared, but I decided I may as well. After all, that fated ‘teen pregnancy drama’ fic still didn’t exist, and I thought it would be funny to make it happen.

Yes, as I’ve stated publicly a few times, TINSITOGS was a crack fic. If I wanted attention from it, it was infamy. We even joked about me cursing the fandom if it ever became the most popular fic (whoops?). What I wasn’t expecting was a bunch of people, in a fandom where at the time there were NO ongoing karmagisa fics and it was pretty dead, to really seem to enjoy it. It was enough to have me keep writing it, at least. I still don’t know at what point I actually started taking it seriously, but somehow I did, and the rest is history?

The reception

In my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would be the author of one of the most popular fics in the fandom. To this day, the amount of views TINSITOGS has is insanity to me. For the record, across all platforms it’s on today it has 238,000, which is literally a number I can’t even visualise anymore. Almost quarter of a MILLION. To this day on AO3, it’s the most viewed Ass Class fic that’s an ACTUAL ass class fic (the others are multi fandom compilations). So yeah, I achieved the original goal, I guess?

Now you might be wondering, “omg the karmagisa fandom is fujoshi trash”. And, considering the origins, it is kind of funny. The thing is, though, TINSITOGS was written at incredibly good time. It was written when there were, essentially, very few long form Karma/Nagisa stories. If any other fics did get posted on occasion, they were usually just oneshots. I was also, at that point, writing very fast. A symptom of ADHD is becoming obsessively productive over certain things. Since I was able to get a 3k chapter out every few days/once a week, TINSITOGS was consistently bumped to the top of AO3′s default view. And some of those first few chapters were altered canon, and transcribing the canon dialogue didn’t take very long. The more views it got, the more people would read it out of sheer curiosity.

I think it also helps that, at least after it started getting some positive feedback (which was honestly after the pre written chapters), I purposely tried to make it ‘not terrible’. I mean, I personally think the first chapter is pretty weak and if it wasn’t somewhat iconic to a lot of people I’d rewrite it. But in general, I purposely tried to make the world of ABO my own, to make it more accessible to those who don’t like that genre, and stay away from the inherently grosser stuff as much as possible. I genuinely do get comments about how I introduced people to the genre as a whole, still not sure if that’s a GOOD thing but hey, it happened.

TINSITOGS turned into a lot more than just a joke. It turned into my favourite hobby. It turned into a research project (honestly, you would not believe the amount of mummy vlogs and legit scientific articles about child development I consumed). It turned into something that, at least I believe, was widely loved.

Meaning

I think it might be wrong to say that I don’t have AN idea of when I started to take the fic super seriously. For me, it was around the time someone commented something along the lines of saying my writing meant a lot to them, that they’d spent all night reading it and had been unable to put it down.

Not to get too dark here, but I do have a past in writing a very long, somewhat popular fic (it’s still on my fanfic net profile if anyone’s interested, but I don’t recommend it). However, in the latter part of my teenage years, the depression struck. Writing was the love of my life, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it anymore. Maybe I’d be able to muster an idea or even a chapter at the best points of that, but I’d never completely finished any story. Starting to write again was a huge step in my recovery, and one of the reasons I convinced myself that life was worth it was being able to impact someone’s life somehow. Even to this day, I still remember the fics I read when I was, like, thirteen. How much I still remember them, and how much they meant to be at the time. I wanted to be that writer for someone else. To be honest, it was actually Yuri!!! On Ice that got me out of the super bad, but I still never wrote anything of real consequence. TINSITOGS was the first time in a long time I actually committed to something.

And, to be completely honest, there were a lot of times I was tired of it, and wanted to just quit. But, the thing was, I felt like people depended on me in a way. I got so many comments that were just FILLED with support, telling me how much they looked forward to every update. It wasn’t just empty words, either, a lot of the times these comments would be super engaged with the actual writing. I can’t even describe just how much they meant to me, how much I would look forward to reading everyone’s opinions. And then discord happened, which was a lot of fun.

TINSITOGS went a lot further than I ever thought it would. There were comments, discussions, fan art, fan FIC (which is honestly incredible to me). Someone even added it to TV Tropes, at one point. Not to mention the Cards Against Humanity deck and quiz It makes me so unbelievably happy that I could inspire that much creativity, but it’s a two way street. It was all of that which inspired me to write, too.

Writing

The only real goal I actually had was aiming for around 3000 words per chapter. I had a whole facebook log of plot points as planning, and I was mostly just trying to expand on them into prose. I honestly thought that, at its completion, the entire fic would be around 100k words, if that. Not, at one point, being literally the longest ass class fic on AO3.

There are a lot of aspects that were directly adapted from the original messages, and I tried to stay faithful to it more so at first, even if I later removed some of the pure crack. But the style was also vaguely similar, with the story being told mostly from Nagisa’s perspective with swaps to Karma when it made sense. All the main plot beats, too, are pretty much identical. The plus to this was I was able to add a lot of really fun foreshadowing, and I feel like it’s a fun reread because of it.

Honestly though, if there’s a demand to release those OG message logs, I will. Mostly because it’s kind of funny, and interesting to see. Isogai and Nagisa were engaged at one point, even.

Obviously, it changed somewhat. 3000 was the minimum length, and the time to completion was whenever it felt right. One of my big concerns was about pacing, so it took a lot more fleshing out and maybe ‘filler’ content for some of the main arcs to work.

There’s parts of TINSITOGS I don’t think aren’t written that well, and some that I’m still super proud of. I think you can definitely tell there’s a gradual shift in style, and I get a lot more comfortable with writing them as characters as it goes along. To be honest, my pride for the fic overall is what it represents.

It is funny to think about the places it got written in, though. I started it when I worked at McDonalds with no life direction, then it went through my first year of university with me. It’s been written in at least four countries. Aeroplanes, night clubs, long haul buses, a train through the Japanese southern coastline. Even the start of covid. TINSITOGS managed to see a lot. I even turned a scene in (the boat scene during the India chapter with altered names) to my university as a legitimate assignment.

There were also a few messages I wanted to achieve, once I realised I had the platform to put them across. One of them was, obviously, ‘use protection kids’. It was important to me that I didn’t glamorise it too much, and I think that came across. I also wanted to dispute some of the issues with ABO, and subvert the consent issues as much as I could. An arc I really ‘liked’ writing was how abuse doesn’t always look the same way, and that it can be a drawn out change in behaviour. How the most important part of ‘being a good parent’ isn’t perfection, but genuinely loving and doing the best you can for your kid. How love doesn’t solve everything, and effective communication can take a very long time to learn and build a functional relationship. I mean, there definitely was a lot I tried to put in, and you’re free to interpret it all how you want. But, I like to think some people learnt some of these things, at least.

Daichi

Honestly, Daichi developed almost of his own free will. I had a good idea of his appearance, and that he was smart. Writing him from birth until around nine years old (older if you read the sequel fic) pretty much allowed that fluidity. It was really fun to explore a nature vs nurture development, and let his own characteristics speak for themselves.

He’ll always have a special place in my heart.

This is the first image I ever made. When I was trying to figure out what Daichi looked like, I honestly just edited Karma’s hair (pretty well, actually? I’m impressed with my past skill). That’s where the ‘he looks just like Karma’ meme kind of came from.

This was the first image I actually created of Daichi. I THINK it was on rinmaru games mega anime creator or something, but it’s literally not available on the internet anymore as far as I can tell, so I can’t double check. This was in the pre-piccrew days. His eyes are closed because they didn’t have the right tone of goldish/silver.

His sister, Kaguya, didn’t even exist originally, even though I decided on that ending pretty early on. Actually, she was going to be called ‘Irina’ due to some hijinks. Initially, when Karma found out about Irina’s pregnancy, she was going to get super emotional and mad at him and basically force him to name his first born daughter after her. Karma agreed to shut her up, never intending to have another child, so when the surprise second child later came along they had to live with the pain. However, to be honest I just forgot to write in the actual scene that set it all up, and I decided against adding it anywhere else. The name Kaguya was a very last minute decision, and it was a chance for me to explore some ideas that didn’t fit with Daichi’s character.

Interestingly too, Daichi and Nao were never intended to be a thing. I only decided that towards the VERY end. Even though the reason I named Nao that was because of a ship I had in a J Drama (Good Morning Call). It just kind of ended up happening because I won myself over with imagining the cute.

The music

I used to write with a lot of background music, though not all the time. Particularly towards the start, there was a lot that didn’t really make sense thematically, yet I would write to a lot.

Here’s a link to the spotify playlist if you want it it’s basically all the ones I noted I’d listened to a lot. Not including the smut ones, though, I have a whole playlist for that.

Some of the notable ones:

Five String Serenade - the first scene I wrote of the entire fic, in Chapter 25 New Year Time where they fell asleep cuddling.

Cosmic Love - when I wrote Nagisa’s love confession scene in hospital (I also wrote this pretty early on)

Northern Downpour (though it was actually a cover by Emma Blackery) - The chapter after Daichi’s born (30)

When The Party’s Over - Confession Time Third Period, Chapter 69. I literally listened to this song on REPEAT when I planned and wrote the kind of ‘break up’ scene, and it’s one of the few parts that made me cry writing.

Turning Page - I know I said no smut, but this song actually gave me the idea to have the “I love you” in chapter 108 be less on a whim and actually more built up. In the original plan, Karma really did just say it without thinking. I’m glad I changed that.

Bury Me Low and Numb - pretty much all I listened to when writing the last few chapters, because Evil Nagisa core. So much so that Bury Me Low was in my top 2020 songs rewind.

As for the title, there’s actually quite a funny story. I had no idea what to call the fic, and when that happens I usually just try and find some song lyrics. I really wanted to use something from ‘October’ by the Broken Bells. Not only because it’s my favourite song (has been for years), but thematically it really worked. The issue was, it worked as the WHOLE song, there were no individual lyrics that captured everything. And, if they did, they didn’t flow very well. And naming the fic ‘October’ would have been weird for a lot of reasons. There Is No Sweeter Innocence That Our Gentle Sin really was just plucked randomly, in a desperate search to find any snappy lyrics from any song that had some kind of meaning. After a bit of discussion, we settled that it kind of worked... if Daichi is innocent and they committed a sin or something. It also wasn’t the most obvious lyric from the song (Take Me To Church if anyone doesn’t know) so I just went with it. It works out, I think, because TINSITOGS turned out to be a pretty good acronym and pronounceable word in its own right.

The merch redbubble drama

It’s a well known fact that I’m not very good at art. However, I decided to try pixel art because it seemed the easiest to not mess up. I made Karma and Nagisa, before deciding to also give Daichi a try.

This, to this day, is the only good quality art of Daichi that I actually own. The only one I’m actually happy sharing and thinking it doesn’t look terrible. As much as I love people sending me fanart, it’s not ‘my property’, right.

So, I was kind of joking about TINSITOGS having merchandise. At first I just made two funny quote things, and uploaded it to redbubble. I was never intending to actually make money from this, and I’d agreed to myself that if I did, I would just donate it to charity. I was joking with the quotes, but since I had this artwork I figured I may as well uploaded. Separately, there was also an image that had pixel Daichi next to pixel Nagisa and Karma (which I also created).

Aside from showing up in a few people’s adverts across the internet, there was no real harm with this. In fact, I didn’t make money anyway. It was just... more the joke of it existing. I did, however, buy myself a Daichi phone case, which is one of my favourite possessions.

The funny ‘drama’ comes in when they got taken down due to copywrite. Sure, the one with Nagisa and Karma, I understand. But the other three literally had no mention or anything to do with Assassination Classroom, aside from being from a fanfiction. So basically, someone who owns those rights claimed my OC as theirs. Which makes Daichi canon? Whatever the case, I found this hilarious don’t worry.

How has TINSITOGS changed my life?

This is quite a strange thing to think about. Because, in a lot of ways, it really hasn’t. As I’m sure a lot of people know, I don’t really consider myself to have any real ‘fame’, despite the impressive numbers. Whenever I tell people in my personal life, they seem to think I’m some sort of internet celebrity, but that’s never been the case for me. I mean, it’s hardly a cultural phenomenon.

In a lot of ways, I’d much rather befriend someone than have them admire me. Possibly because being someone’s inspiration is kind of weird... I’m just an awkward duck who likes to write after all. I don’t mind it, though. I genuinely find it an honour, even if I don’t necessarily agree. I also want to take this time to say that if anyone ever wants to talk or message me, you’re more than free to do so. I’m usually super casual with people who do that, I promise.

TINSITOGS was the first story I ever finished in the way I truly wanted to. Start to end, a full narrative. And it took a LOT. There were so many times I almost felt like quitting, or took super long breaks. For me, ADHD queen, actually finishing something was a huge deal. And I know I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t owe it to everyone who read it, and myself, to see it through. You know like, if I were to die tomorrow, at least I’ve left something behind.

In a lot of ways, it’s changed me for the better. It’s helped me develop my writing styles, and way of thinking. It encouraged me to become more active in the fandom, and develop some important friendships. I always feel like my Tumblr and Fanfiction ‘known’ factor is separate. I think most of my Tumblr following is more to do with my theories/Japanese context research if anything, for example, but I know I wouldn’t be so interested in that if TINSITOGS hadn’t lead me to deeply examine character and really look into analysing source material for clues. I also think there’s just... a lot of myself in it.

I was 17 years old, when I first came up with the idea. I finished the story when I was 20. Now, at the time of writing, I’m 21. That time has seen some pretty significant changes - just in general life facts and my own personal human development. For me at least, a lot of that was pretty turbulent, and TINSITOGS stands as a time capsule for that, in a way.

I know I gained a lot of confidence, and it affirmed to me that writing is what I love. Telling stories and sharing them is what I love.

Conclusion

Do I think TINSITOGS is an outstanding piece of writing, or the best fic ever? No. I really don’t. It’s strange to say because I definitely spent a lot of time on it, but it’s not like I put my full unbridled efforts into the story. I don’t fully plan, use a beta, or even read through on my own. And that’s okay - that’s not what I write fanfiction for. Fanfiction is my place to have fun with characters and stories I like, without the pressures of having to stand on my own complete originality. Yes, I’m fully confident that I can write at a “higher quality”, if I really wanted to. I’m also aware that some authors put their full effort into their fics, and that’s just as valid!

It feels odd to say this about my own writing, but I honestly think there’s just something in this story. It might not be written in the best prose ever, and the premise might be kind of dumb for a lot of people. But, I think, there’s some part of this fic that managed to grab people. Somehow, at some point, many readers get captured into the emotions and so drawn in that ‘they just have to finish it now!’ Again, I’m not sure myself how I actually achieved that. Of course, that won’t apply to everyone, but I do feel there’s some truth in it. And it makes me happy, to have caused that.

If TINSITOGS is your favourite fic, or if you genuinely think it’s the best story you’ve read, then thank you. I really appreciate your support, and I’m happy to have been a part of your life, I guess. I know how much fanfics can mean to a person, and that’s why I’m not going to take it down, or edit it at all. And it’s fine too, if you loved the fic for a while and moved on -i t happens. Whatever the case, I’m very honoured to have been able to occupy a moment of your life. Or if you find this fic in 10 years time, even, I still wholly appreciate you.

This story was incredibly important to me, and thank you for reading if it was ever important to you too.

You may ask, what now? Well, this is only intended to be a detailed look back for whoever’s interested, and it’s likely the only one I’ll actually do, a year after completion. Of course, if you ever want to ask me anything or just discuss the story, you’re honestly good to contact me in whatever way I have available.

I’m still writing my ongoing stories, of course, despite taking a small break due to the university work load. I fully intend to complete the stories I’ve already started to tell, at least. After that... I’m not sure if I’ll still write fanfiction. Don’t panic, this isn’t a ‘I’m quitting writing’ thing. I may, however, have bled the Karmagisa genre a bit too dry at that point. Who knows? I am pretty interested in writing something original for once, so maybe that’ll work out.

For now, at least, thank you to anyone who read this fic. To anyone who commented, liked, or interacted with me over it. To anyone who created or learnt from it. I’m really glad that I got to share this story with you all, and ultimately left some kind of mark, no matter how big or small.

Happy birthday, TINSITOGS. I had a lot of fun writing you.

#ass class #assassination classroom #ansatsu kyoushitsu #tinsitogs #karmagisa

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shiny-procrastinates · 3 years

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(re)Watching Magia Record S1 - part 1

Hello and welcome everyone to the first post on this watch-along commentary of the first season of Magia Record! Whether you are just now watching it for the first time, or are re-watching in preparation for the second season, or have only played the game and are curious about the anime (in which case I'd be surprised you even exist) I hope you can have some fun reading these ramblings as I try to put my thoughts into words (actually turned more into narrating the show) throughout all 12 13 episodes.

Before we can get to it, though, I have a few warnings to give:

1 - As much as I'd love to be able to memory swipe so I can watch this fresh all over again, such an ability is sadly still beyond my grasp. In other words, this isn't my first time watching (or second, for that matter; more like the sixth… or seventh…). That being the case I can't claim that these are my first impressions and it's very likely this commentary will be somewhat biased by my previous knowledge. However, I can guarantee one thing: I will do my best to keep this spoiler-free, so you don't have to worry if this is your first time watching.

(I will, however, be assuming that you have watched the OG series and Rebellion, so beware of that).

2 - Please don't come into this expecting it to be Madoka 2

Also no, this is not a continuation of the OG, it’s an alternate universe spin-off.

This one's for first-time viewers.

Well, ok, this sounds like vague tweeting and I'm kind of whining here, but I have seen a number of peeps on the internet saying that Magia Record is bad only for their argument to boil down to "because it isn't OG Madoka!"

Yeah it isn't. I'm pretty sure there's "Side Story" written somewhere in the title too.

Leaving aside the matter of nostalgia glasses and whether the original series was that much of a masterpiece or not (it's been over five years since I last watched it, so I can't say anything either way.) it seems kind of weird to me that someone would bash a spinoff on the grounds of how close it is to the original. Because here's the thing: to me, the whole point of spinoffs is taking an already existing scenario and putting a spin on it to make something new. That's exactly what makes them fun!

MagiReco didn't need to be a Madoka clone or to try hard and beat the original. That would probably have made it bad, actually. What it did need to do was to create an interesting story using the world set up by the OG Madoka and the other spinoffs, and that, in my opinion, it did, so I hope people can give it a chance and judge it on its own merits rather than only compared to the original. I'm not saying you can't hate it, either, I myself have my own problems with it, it's just that I want to see more reasonable reasons than "it's not the OG so it's bad".

3 - As you can probably already tell from these warnings, these posts are bound to get looong, so I'd recommend setting aside a fair amount of time and getting real comfy if you're gonna read it all. I also don't mind if you just skip ahead and only read the interesting parts, I'm not the internet police.

3.5 - I don't want to use it as an excuse, but I think I should make it clear that English is not my native language, so I apologize in advance for any mistakes and awkward/stilted text. It's hard to tell by myself, so feel free to correct me if you find something.

SO, with that out of the way let’s get down to what’s really important:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story: Magia Record Episode 1

Whew, now that’s a mouthful.

You know, in my mind I always thought a “side story” was something that happened alongside a “main story”, like another POV, so I’m not sure that’s the most appropriate title, but who am I to judge?

So here we go, we’re off with some beautiful futuristic scenery already, that’s the Madoka series I know.

As the classic Sis Puella Magi plays in the background, two unseen narrators tell us the tale of the so called “magical girls” as we are shown the reality of being one, meeting our first witch for this series.

Risking your life to save a cat doesn’t seem like the smartest of things. Rather, witches eat cats? That’s mean.

No, you really, really don’t. This narration definitely seems made to make everyone who saw the original say this, particularly with how silly are the wishes these girls suggest.

And hey, look, even this girl who supposedly had her wish granted doesn’t seem very happy.

Hang in there, this is only the first episode.

Man, this scenery really is pretty though.

After an exciting fight with a witch in the train, our girl here silently goes home to find

Whatever the heck this is.

So, our girl here seems to be having strange visions whenever she enters her room, that is very very suspiciously cut exactly in half. Protagonist, you sure have an unique sense of interior decoration.

She goes on with her day, makes two lunchboxes and… oh, it seems she’s all alone.

Is this something you should be telling your own daughter?

Long story short, Iroha’s parents are abroad right now (as is suspiciously the case with many a anime protagonist parents). I actually love the parallel this scene draws with OG Madoka: whereas Madoka’s parents seem responsible and Madoka even looks up to her mom and they’re a happy united family, Iroha comes off as being the responsible one in her family and her parents are gone from the get-go. This way, the lonely atmosphere of the previous scene also starts making sense.

So, it seems like there’s something Iroha wants to do here, and that’s why she decided to stay behind.

Perhaps. Did you wish to save a black cat?

Wow, this teacher is speaking fast. Calm down lady, we’re not here to speedrun the content, geez. Though I guess we should be happy she’s at least giving a proper class, unlike a certain other teacher…

Oh great, it's this guy.

Ok, Iroha doesn’t remember what she wished for and Kyuubei doesn’t know either, although he knows she used her wish for the sake of someone. Kyuubei theorizes that the reason she doesn’t remember might be that not remembering was part of her wish, but Iroha doesn’t think she’d wish for that. I don’t think you’d ever think to wish for something like that until you had to wish for something like that though.

She’s got a fair point. After all, wishing in this universe is basica— the heck is going on in the background there?! O-kaaay…

Iroha was having a weird think-spot mental conversation with Kyuubei there, and missed speedrun teacher’s lecture entirely. Being meguca is suffering.

We get some school motto propaganda, and now we’re on the roof. Oh? Where did all the friendship stuff from the propaganda go? Seems like Iroha’s not following the school spirit. Unless she considers the white weasel a friend, so that’s why she gave him her extra… wait, Kyuubei can EAT? I thought he was some alien machine-like being. H-Huh...

Classmate A: Tamaki-san, maji tenshi!

She’s probably just shy. According to her classmates, Iroha used to be busy doing something or the other, but no one can remember what that is.

Cute.

But maybe don’t do that somewhere someone could easily walk in on you, Iroha.

Iroha gets a call by the girl from the combat scene from before, whose name is Kuroe. I couldn’t tell from their conversation if they’ve known each other for a while or if they just met each other for the first time in the fight before.

On the train, although she’s the one who called her over, Kuroe remains silent. Iroha, clearly uncomfortable, tries her best to make conversation. Poor Iroha, I know the feeling.

We learn from her that the number of witches around has been decreasing. She comments that being unable to get Grief Seeds is troubling, but it’s better than having witches causing trouble. Poor girl has no way to know just how much of a bad news it is running out of Grief Seeds.

What’s with pink-haired girls and lacking self-esteem? Iroha, are you sure you didn’t wish to save a black and forget that you did? You did save a white one just before.

Kuroe finally decides to talk, and she tells us this:

If you go to Kamihama, you’ll be saved. To anyone that saw the OG, the first thought that comes to mind is that they’ll be saved from their destiny of turning into witches, but it seems Kuroe doesn’t know the truth yet. She just doesn’t want to fight witches anymore. I think.

The train lights up, and…

...this is extremely unsettling considering the truth about witches and the conversation they’re having right now. There’s a lot of this, but this just hits different having watched the original.

Iroha’s not inclined to believe what Kuroe’s saying. Of course, despite not remembering her wish, she’s the type that’s happy with fighting witches if she can save someone, and Kuroe’s not being very convincing either. The whole thing is apparently a rumor spread by some girls who saw a dream that told them that.

Except that Kuroe actually had the dream too.

Like most magical girls, Kuroe made a short-sighted wish, and regrets it. She now wants to be saved, so she’s going to Kamihama.

...or she was, but before that, they’ll have to defeat the witch they let escape the other day, ‘cos she’s back for more.

I actually have so many questions about this scene. Weren’t Labyrinths pocket dimensions? How come this one’s moving in physical space? We know witches themselves move and their Labyrinth goes with that, but I thought it was more, like, the entrance to the Labyrinth moves. Then how come witches can escape if magical girls get carried with their Labyrinth when they move…? Just... just... what?

The answer to all of that is probably “magic”.

Like that, Express Witch Labyrinth crashes right into what seems to be a train station. Labyrinths don’t have brakes, confirmed.

Brutal.

Looks like it’s not only magical girls who have territorial disputes going on. Although it’s nice that they won’t have to fight two witches at the same time, this is not exactly a relief when you consider these two were already struggling with the previous one, and this one just ripped it apart like crab.

As expected, Iroha’s arrows do no damage at all. When all seems lost…

A wild singing mini Kyuubei appears! Is this a shiny?

The singing Kyuubei distracts the witch and jumps towards Iroha, who uses her pro white cat catching skills to grab it, and… something happens. Whatever this Kyuubei did, Iroha’s having some flashbacks now. Sadly, the middle of a battle isn’t the best time to be having a BSOD and, despite Kuroe’s attempts to snap her out of it, they’re sitting ducks right now, a black and a white one.

Thankfully for them, though, they’re not alone in this barrier. This mystery blue haired girl spams flying spears and makes short work of the witch Iroha’s arrows didn’t even scratch earlier. She’s clearly at a whole ‘nother level.

Also, chibi Kyuubei’s gone. Totally not suspicious. Nope. Not at all.

So, from this OP miss get-the-heck-out-of-my-territory, who didn’t even bother saying her name, we learn that not only there is no salvation in Kamihama, there are more, stronger witches, and there are currently no Kyuubei. She gives them the Grief Seeds from the two witches before, and passes on a warning to them. Not the friendliest of magical girls. Though if you consider what happens when you run out of Grief Seeds, one could understand why it’d be undesirable having too many magical girls in the same place.

With this, Iroha and Kuroe take the train back to their town and things are totally awkward again.

Welp, seems like Kuroe doesn’t want to chat anymore, so we’ll have a dream sequence instead.

Forgive my lack of words, but this scene doesn’t need them. This is just… you couldn’t ask for a better representation of what being a magical girl wishing for salvation is like. Everyone has their own reasons, but in the end, having known despair, these girls are desperately clinging to this last hope called Kamihama. It’s almost a pilgrimage.

“Let’s go to Kamihama. We’ll be saved there”

And in the midst of all that is the mysterious girl from Iroha’s dreams.

(the track here, Paradero de Memoria, is also great btw)

Now, with various wishes written all over in the background, we get Kyuubei’s spiel about magical girls. I think this is word-by-word the same from the original too.

We now get to finally know what our protagonist’s wish was.

So Iroha wished to cure her younger sister’s illness, but the sister in question is now nowhere to be found. Worse: everything related to her is gone. Even Iroha, who made a wish for her sake, didn’t remember her existence until now. Oh man, that’s no normal disappearance. What happened? Guess that’s what Iroha will have to find out now.

With that, we conclude the first episode of Magia Record(’s s1)!

This is a really strong first episode in my opinion. It decently introduces our protagonist, sets up the mysteries we will be dealing with from here on and also manages to trace connections with the original, while using the viewer’s previous knowledge to give a whole different impression to some scenes. You wouldn’t be like “hell no” at the rumor there at the start if you didn’t know the truth about magical girls, and I doubt that final scene would hit that hard either. It’s just really good at this and it’ll continue doing that from now on. I love it.

Speaking of the final scene, me having watched the original over five years ago might also be part of it but that is really my favorite scene in Madoka overall. I just really really love that scene. (Seriously, I’ve watched this scene so many times I know it by heart now. Help.)

Alas, I lied, the episode’s not over yet, we still have our classic anime first episode ending-opening to watch. So let’s listen, to Gomakashi:

This logo’s real pretty.

So yeah, pretty standard anime opening. If you pay attention, there are some references to Connect too, what with the selfcest and whatnot. Although I managed to mistake this when I first watched, this one’s actually sung by the trio TrySail rather than ClariS. That’s the VAs for Iroha, Asakura Momo; Yachiyo (the get-out-of-my-territory girl), Amamiya Sora and Natsukawa Shiina, whose character we’ve yet to meet. TrySail has a lot of cool songs, so do check them out if you haven’t already. (free ad)

This time, in fact, the episode is over! Whew, I did say this was going to be long, but not even I thought it’d be this long. By the time this is posted I should have a backlog of these, so my plan is to post one everyday until we are done. I hope you had fun reading this here rant and I’ll be looking forward to meeting you guys again tomorrow, same place, maybe same hour, so we can go on and watch episode 2 together!

(P.S.: I am considering doing a series of posts at a later date comparing the anime to the game, but we’ll see. The first few chapters are fine, but the game is stupidly long, so I feel it’d take a lot of motivation and stamina I’m not sure I have at the moment. There’s also the possibility watching the first arc again would bring back my yt copy-apocalipse grief back and that’d suck, definitely don’t wanna go through that again.)

#magia record #puella magi madoka magica #pmmm magia record #this post apologizes for existing

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winxlava · 4 years

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Where Fate: the Winx saga fails

As a winx fan of 14 years (in and out), this fate thing is really scandolous. I’ve seen lots of ups and downs the winx fandom. As I’ve watched all of the development that fate had, I've had some thoughts, but I’ve waited until I watched everything.

This is going to be a reaction to all 6 episodes of Fate the Winx saga. This is coming from a fan of the og show so expect lots of comparisons.

If this bothers you, please don't keep reading. A lot of this is only my opinion. If you like it and think its great, that’s good! I’m not here to ruin it.

There is a list of what I liked most near the bottom of this post. Spoilers Ahead!!

Anyway, back to the post.

What made the Winx work

Lets start with the basic idea of Winx. Bloom, a normal girl, finds out that she has magic powers and is from another dimension. Seems like a simple concept? Well, Seasons 1-3 (and 4?) expanded this idea to the max.

Likeable characters galore and lots of fun, fashion, and magic.

For a lot of us that’s what sold the show.

So lets talk about tone and why its so important

The idea that teenage girls were exploring a world we could never see or experience. And the darkness that came with it.

Remember when Daphne, bloom’s dead sister, clung to life to help bloom figure her life out? When bloom became evil and nearly killed all of her friends? When Flora drowned to save her sister, only to get enchantix? (Actually all of enchantix was like this). When Musa gave up seeing her dead mom to save the world? When nabu died?

The show was full of these small, intense, dark moments. That’s what made winx special. The light came with dark.

By making the show dark and “eDgy” it takes away the impact of the dark moments. I’ve been saying this since the beginning.

Point of view and how Stella is affected

Stella was very misunderstood in the remake and it shows. The thing is, Stella was the first entry point into the magical world in the original show. She carried Bloom and her parents to Alfea. She was the transfer point to a whole world for the audience.

Her spunk and optimism and snark made her a fan favorite, but that’s not what made her character work.

She was Bloom’s first friend, and because of the that, we saw her in a good lens. She was reckless, but a pure heart nonetheless. She was confident, cunning, and powerful.

It was because we saw the good in her first that made us like her. She was good before she was bad in our eyes.

The remake takes all of that away. She’s just a generic mean rich girl now. To be honest, Stella is accurate, but the way she was introduced put her in a whole new light. In this version, she is annoying and trifling, seemingly taking the place of Diaspro in her liking for sky.

Also she hates her mother? Stella would never! She loved both of her parents dearly and was mad simply because she felt they never loved her as a result of their divorce; they never talked to each other and she felt split between the two of them. (See Stella’s nightmares sequence season 1 :https://youtu.be/wuvyw0OHA6A?t=129). She was lonely and her father, though he loved her, spoiled her with gifts instead of the love she desired.

You see this side of her when Chimera comes in and tries to take her place in season 3. Her worth is tied to what she has and looks like. Her title as a princess rules her.

Not only that, Stella learns about “commoners” through her friends. She was spoiled and never saw people who couldn’t afford things; it was new and she was a bit rude about it, but can you blame her, she was always put above everything else in her home country.

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgzCfOQ696rvwa51Z_J4AaABCQ?lc=UgzCDSxfcNaP9XogBSB4AaABAg

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgzCfOQ696rvwa51Z_J4AaABCQ?lc=Ugxl_sOsUSGBXEwagxJ4AaABAg

^^ These are comments of people saying similar things.

Stella also vents to Sky a lot in the remake. She seems like she is chasing him pitifully, something og Stella would never do.

Edit: Check the “liked” section; she has been upgraded to sort of like in episodes 5 and 6.

Aisha

They did Aisha dirty as well. (Just like Bonnie from Vampire Diaries, why am I surprised?) I would write a lot here, but someone else summarized it well:

https://rainbow-whitewashing-jar.tumblr.com/post/639787632624369664/its-just-there-is-so-much-background-on-aisha.

https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugx4WL5rIPTS1suGOed4AaABCQ

Tldr: Aisha was a very lonely princess of Andros. She only had one friend growing up but then they moved away and she was lonely all over again. She copes with her princess duties by being great at sports and even beating some of the men! She stood up to her parents when they wanted her to be arranged married, until she fell in love with Nabu HERSELF. She decided her own future from that point on.

Also, her relevance to the plot has been dwindled to being Bloom's right hand man; the black best friend sterotype! What a let down for one of the PRINCESSES of the original!

She had her own goals, drive, and motivations in the original! She did things for all of her friends; she definitely wasn't only driven by one person!

And she was closer to Musa than Bloom that's for sure!

Bloom

The fact that bloom transforms before everyone else gives bad vibes, considering that one of the reasons she was insecure about magic was because everyone of her friends was better than her and could transform. Why would she feel insecure when they are all around the same level?

The theme of sisterhood

Ever notice that none of the girls had the same taste in guys?

Bloom liked goody guys like Sky and Andy. Stella liked guys who were fun and flirty like Brandon.

In fact, none of the girls ever fought over a guy, they fought over things that actually mattered like someone being rude or a mission gone wrong.

That's what made them relatable. They weren't petty about guys and they mostly respected each other's relationships.

https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugz6TEOmGRV2Cfqy12F4AaABCQ?lc=UgwhLsToVbhLDYpFphB4AaABAg

^^ Look at highlighted comment

Not only that, but the winx represented a positive sisterhood. They stood by each other and respected each other; they never let men come between them and shared their power with each other.

Only the trix, the bad sisterhood, fought over men and power. The trix were foils to the winx and what they stood for! That's what made them some of the best villains in the series!

Instead of that, we get useless relationship drama! 😒

And that brings me to...

Stella/Sky/Bloom & Riven/Dane/Terra

What was the point of Dane? I'm still asking myself that question. He doesn't really do anything except act as relationship fuel for a love triangle.

Don't get me wrong, the representation is needed. But he adds nothing to the real plot at all except that Terra thinks he likes her, and he has a crush on Riven.

In terms of the Stella and Bloom love triangle with Sky, apparently she BLINDED someone because they flirted with sky. What?!? Stella isn't that cruel at all. The show clearly flanderized her to a cruel mean girl so....

Edit: Check the “liked” section; she has been upgraded to sort of like in episodes 5 and 6.

Lets not forget about “diversity”

Male fairies did exist before Fate:

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgziTWMf44kv0fkDt8x4AaABCQ

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgxWAFZRmqt_k3iBMhZ4AaABCQ

Flora/Terra, Musa, and Whitewashing

Terra and Musa are wonderful! Their actress' do a great job; their personalities are so similar to the original (except for musa's mind abilities and Terra's talkative personality)! Whenever one of them interacts with the other main cast, you feel actual friendship chemistry between them!!

But there is an elephant in the room: the whitewashing. If these characters were the correct race, they wouldn't be in this critical review.

Terra isn't flora, but her character was clearly based on her! Also, she has a cousin named Flora, so Flora is clearly in this universe.

Why change her race and swap her out! The personalities are spot on, which makes it even more disheartening to know that they would rather replace two POC characters with white characters who essentially are the same people and have the same plot importance.

What a shame and low blow that is! Especially since I am a black woman myself!

Sky and Riven

Them being bros make no sense really. Before they were more like enemies who were forced to work together.

Why are they friends?? What's the backstory?

Other than that, sky is pretty spot on. He's the pretty boy with good intentions. Not interesting but not very boring either.

Riven is cringy like I feared. He was also sort of cringe in the og but because of the darker setting in the remake he just feels even more so.

Other Criticisms:

- we gets some pretty cringy dialogue (mostly from riven). Some of the clingy dialogue (not from riven) ironically could have worked in a lighter setting and become "campy".

- The fact that there are no wings for 5 whole episodes, just makes the entire thing feel like Witches or something...

- why does everyone have the dead parent trope??

- no tecna

Things I do like:

- bloom missing her parents and feeling left out

- Musa and Sam before Musa and Riven (hopefully)

- Terra in general

- Terra’s dad and brother

- Musa in general

- Stella funny quips

- the scenery is gorgeous

- Stella's clothes are so fashionable! She has great outfits!

- Sky and Bloom taking during the party and/or being friendly with each other

- the magic cgi looks good 👍

- the rooms of the girls dorms and the castle looks great on the inside

- Aisha's personality

- Farrah Dowling is good as well

- Bloom is pretty spot on

- Stella's mom's powers are awesome

- imagine the genocide plot but with the happy fun show vibe and with the trix. The trix want to get revenge on faragonda for killing their cult, who wanted to revive the ancestral witches or something💥💥💥

- Stella in episodes 5 and 6 is cool

- the inclusion of the witches of aster dell (Beatrix said she was born there = witch)

- the inclusion of musa’s mother’s death

-Her transformation was lackluster to me, but I appreciated the effort to include it.

Conclusion

The pacing was all over the place to me; it felt like some episodes lasted forever and all of them seemed to have the vague theme of : be careful who you trust.

By trying to separate the winx from the og and have them have "their own lives" (which they already had), they ruined the intriguing backstories the characters already had in the og. Some were somewhat kept, but others were kind of left in the dust *cough*Aisha*cough*.

They took away with made them special: the teamwork, love, and friendship that brought them together and made them stronger. *They try it in episodes 5 and 6, but to me it just falls sort of flat.*

That said it isn't completely bad, it's mediocre at best, but it isn't Winx and that's that.

Edit: I know that it’s not supposed to be winx per say, but it has characters from the og and even the “winx” name in the title!

Credits: WCD channel on youtube, rainbow whitewashing jar on tumblr, and Youtube videos by the official winx club youtube channel.

#fate the winx club saga #fate the winx saga #winx club #netwinx

38 notes · View notes

goatpaste · 4 years

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WC design/headcannon/ect masterlist- Part B

another chunk of all the headcanos/AU’s/design notes/warrior names for kits and leaders never given a canon one/ect for all the wario cats!

this one is for all the B named cats!

info under the cut

Badgerfang

badgerfang i think a lot of us have a big ol soft spot for, but ought i really care him and his family i think it needs more than jusT the badgerfang death like for real

one of the biggest reasons i wanna learn to animate is because i wanna make a badgerfang and flintfang amv! it would be sdkg more about flintfang because i think he’s a neat character who has a lot of potential for development

like mAN you ever stop and think about not only was flintfang sad over badgerfangs death because it was sad, bUT also because badgerfang was his sisters kit AND to the thought of blackstar is flintfangs brother. flintfang had to deal with playing a hand in badgerfangs death then watch his brother loyally follow brokenstar, then tigerstar 🥺

Baypaw

baypaw was the first of his lil chunk of family i design, i didnt have a sorrelstripe design made yet so i ultimately decided to base his design on his grandpa Lionblaze. smaller fluffy lionblaze.

I know we should be coming up to baypaw getting their warrior name soon

i think a name like Baysong or Baygale

Beech Tail

the only thing i have to say is dgjksh when i designed the ‘beech’ prefix designs it was late and i totally went ‘beech... the beach’ and noT beech the tree sdjkgh. so i designed beech tail like that of a penguin sdjkgh

Beechfur

beechfur , riverclan warrior under mistystar’s leadership

i imagine beechfur is be EXTREMely accident prone, from the first instant of getting sick and healed by leafpool all the way up till the end. He is in and out of the medicine cats den constantly. and through this formed a big ol crush on the pretty medicine cat apprentice Willowshine who has had to full on decline his feelings. he is not the only one who has had this treatment, many a riverclan cats have found themself charmed by willowshine

Beechpaw

Beechpaw, a apprentice of ancient skyclan who were forced to leave the forest territory. i imagine beechpaw was of the few cats who did everything he could to keep the others in good spirit while they tried to find their home, which often came to the annoyance of all his distraught clanmates. he never stopped doing all he could to put a smile on their face until he died.

he was the last apprentice cloudstar named a warrior and only lived a few moons after becoming one.

warrior names i like for him are like Beechshed or Beechshine

Beenose

slight update to my beenose design because i want her to fit my newer darktail group clown aesthetic

another design note is her and her siblings all are themed after a diff color of the rainbow, beenose is yellow. their mom snowbird has a pale rainbow pattern and each other her kits is a diff color of the rainbow

Beetlewhisker

Beetlewhisker is another one of my quiet favorites i have, and it is because of the error of him being alive for SO many books after he died.

like !!! bitch had a HUGE major death and went on to live for a long time aND be listed as a cats mentor (which i think that has been changed now)

i love the idea of in a way beetlewhisker WAS with the clans that long after his death. that due to his death was in a way locked in the dark forest, his soul stuck there. but because of the ways of the dark forest cat’s he was chased out, and unable to enter starclan having died in the dark forest, now cursed to live in limbo.

He walks to the grounds of riverclan watching over his clanmates while they rest hoping that no one else is to be preyed upon by the dark forest like he was ever again.

theres ghost stories of riverclan cats seeing the shape of a cat shining brightly when hit by moonlight. a peaceful spirit of the past who protects them.

and in design 100% his design was made to look like that of a smeleton bones lol

Bellaleaf

the erin team will have to pry bellaleaf and firestar being siblings from my cold dead hands!!

you can’t say they look basically exactly alike and their not related i wont take it sdjkg. i DIE for the idea oh whore jake managing to have so many kids that get into the clans. like the over saturation of jake dna through the clans ruining them absolutely kills me sdjkg

i also imagine ravenpaw having like deja vu of firestar when he looks at bella, cats who knew firestar look at her and can’t help feel she reminds them of someone.

Berryheart

another one of the designfor snowbirds kits, berryheart is the red themed sibling.

she also got a slight design change to be more clowny to fit her time in darktail’s group

Berrynose

i just love berrynose, i think hes very terrible and i love him a lot

i think the books are cowards and i think berrystar woulda been the fUNniest outcome oR like

imagine the powermove if berrynose lived and squirrelflight fucking made berrynose her deputy likE

also berrynose is a lil gay brat, he has a thick country accent and everyone find him weirdly charming. many hate him but cant help but find him alluring.

he actually is a very good warrior, he stays on top of his task and brings in the prey. his biggest problem is his ego and his need to get in others faces all the time

i love when he’s paired with lionblaze because their stupid rivarly is so good i really wish it was more plot important and lasted longer i LIVE for best friend rivals lion and berry

buT i also love him with jayfeather for the simple dynamic of the one cat who would probably hate him more than anyone else but oops he’s in love to

or him and breezepelt because they could be lil shitheads togeather

Birchface

the biggest thing i can say about birchface is 100% birchface watched over mapleshade’s kits, doesnt let appledusk or his own family hurt them. He treats them like his own.

in AU’s where birchface lives i defiantly can see him having a HUGE crush on mapleshade and being much like thrushpelt was to bluefur. being as a surrogate dad for her kits and keeping the secret.

in my main AU with mapleshade dieing and getting a redemption its mostly the same except they become a sweet happy family together in starclan.

he’s a big goofy dad type and his father had hoped he would become leader one day, but worried that he was too lax with the code and not as driven to fight as others and began to think he would have to rely on frecklewish instead. then they both died and he ended up turning to his youngest son pinefur

Blade

this is just a one time ghost cat buT i like the design i made for her.

im all here for dark forest cats having this black oozing mark from where they died, starclan gets being covered in stardust and maybe having from pretty plats or glow or other representative stuff on their death. but ghost cats are loUD with their mark of death. its a nagging weight they carry around based on their inability to move on to their respective afterlives. For blade its giant bright red tire marks that slowly circle around her body.

Blazefire

just a lil boy

i imagine he kinda constantly has crushes on cats from other clans which while some might tell him to hush when he shares his thoughts on the pretty cat from riverclan he gets some loving teasing from dovewing and antfur

Blazefire is also miss nearly all of his tail

Blizzardstar and Blizzardwing

not much here but to say 100% i designed blizzardwing in mind of being that of a grandson or great grandson to blizzardstar

Blossomfall

shrug idk a lot to say about her beyond, i know she’s a asshole character but i remember liking her, i think she’s mean but its kinda fun in a way

i think i also just have this soft spot for millies kits because their millie’s

also i just like my blossomfall design i think she’s v fun

Blossomkit

another shadowclan kit who died under brokenstar’s ruling.

i think as sad as it is, i can imagine blossomkit to be badgerfang’s sister, just another sad thing to think about for fernshade’s litter. the potential idea of all her kit’s dying because of brokenstar

a warrior name for her that would been cute woulda been like Blossomglaze or blossomsprout

Bluebellkit

bluebellkit sure disappeared from the books. she’s one of those kits that like, she already had a mouth full of a name and i wish i coulda seen what they woulda named her as a warrior

but she’s another one of snowbird’s rainbow themed kids, her ofc being the blue one.

i think a cute warrior name for her could been Bluebellwhistle or bluebellfoot

Blouder

i lobe boulder i think he is very under appreciated!!

i think it be very fun to get a novella or something in this POV,,

he’s just hangin out back there yknow,,,

Bouncefire

(bit of an art change from here as i took a break between these two and switched programs)

idk a lot about actual bouncefire, i think the only books with any real characterization in it was ones i havent read

buT id really like to imagine growing up he saw his mentor patchfoot as a father figure and was ultimately the reason patchfoot and his mom got together. and bouncefire being absolutely ecstatic about it. thinking patchfoot is the coolest guy

bouncefire gets along good with his half siblings

gay cat and wanna be emo but just is kinda angy

Brackenfur

my biggest brackenfur AU is my medicat brackenfur which i have info of here

https://goatpaste.tumblr.com/post/631020627780911104/au-where-insteed-of-fireheart-picking-up

and

https://goatpaste.tumblr.com/post/632972589046890496/mmm-writing-out-like-big-plot-point-changes-in-my

the other thing vaguely mention in these but would probably be more prominent in his og story

but brackenfur is quietly the biggest mess in the family. Being on pare with confidence and energy as cinderpelt when they were young, after her accident somethin changed for him. he loved his sister but is a big distant. but its hardly noticeable between the two as they worked very separate jobs in the clan

then his other sister, brightpaw has her accident and brackenfur begins to question something

but when he his the last to leave in the thunderclan group to their new home he stops and looks back at his mother frostfur who is old and frail look, though she wasnt young the damage of the forest hit her hard.

this when brackenfur decides starclan has it out for his family, especially the mollies. they were cursed he was sure.

moons later he is expecting his kits with sorreltail, letting his mind rest on the idea, the crazy notion that some greater force wanted the she-cats in his family dead.

then the day his kits arrive cinderpelt dies to the badgers. he pushes down these feelings down again it was the time. But he couldn’t help but think that, if leafpool was there, if starclan had given them a sign of the badgers, anything. maybe cinderpelt might have lived. but he pushes it back down and tells himself it was a warriors death

and then his daughter, cinderpaw is struck by the tree and the stirring in his mind grows stronger. why has starclan done this to his family

then honeyfern gets bit by the snake. how could starclan be so cruel, their always so young.

then his sweet sorreltail fought strongly for her two young daughters future

and on his own, forced to watch seedpaw drown and lilypaw be haunted by what happened.

the women in brackenfurs family is cursed and he bears the burden of relizing it, of living and watching each of them suffer until the end

to the ones that lived and are happy still, with no burdens in their lives he watches happily making sure NOTHING bad comes their way. he would fight starclan themselves to make sure his family is safe and happy

Breezepelt

in design Breezepelt has a p average length tail. which for him is a huge disappointment. His father crowfeather has a long slender windclan tail, a trait that is held to high standards in his family. a trait passed all the way down from windstar herself who had the longest and most beautifully windy tail.

Breezepelt has a angry spot about this because he feels lacking and especially disconnected to his father. BUT double this with jayfeather having only half windclan blood has a tail even longer than crowfeathers

i also would NOT put breezepelt with heathertail, i dont see any reason for it. like first off this bitch gay, id love for him to have a boyfriend and it think it should be berrynose because one, their both terrible i think it be funny and i also think its funny to ship berrynose with lionblaze or jayfeather so im like, whats another brother (to be clear not shipped all together, this is separately) and two, the idea heathertail and poppyfrost lesbian could exist

then the big BIg thing is, i would take breezepelts character and gut what happened in crowfeathers trial out of both him and crowfeather

i talk about it a bit here, but i think ill re talk about it in full when i get to crowfeather https://goatpaste.tumblr.com/post/190544981670/breezepelt

Briarlight

miss briarlight i love you!!

very sweetgirl

i based her design off sakuras and bleed heart doves. idk what possessed me but when i went to design her i knEW she was gonna be pink she needed to be she deserved it

briarlight buff as shit in her forlegs she loves trying to rope leafpool and jayfeather into lil strength contest she always wins (sometimes she will let leafpool win on days she needs it)

her and jayfeather are wlw/mlm best friends. jayfeather calls her pidge which started as a mean nickname that she simply loved and embraced fully

also in my AU with medicat lionblaze i can very much see briarlight and lionblaze being very sweet friends. like big strong lionblaze who is actually docile and compassionate about his work and briarlight loud and rooting him on

Brick

swear to god until i got back into warrior cats this year i had always thought brick was a lady and her and bone were suppous to be scourges like adoptive bad parents jkdg

anyways im still with that, she/her agender brick who adopts their terrible son scourge and is in a monogamous partnership with bone’s. strictly business defiantly not married, they just have a son together.

Brindlewing

idk a ton about her, but from her wiki it dsjkgh doesnt look like theirs alot

but i’d like to imagine she’s a very anxious girl and struggles in crowds especially around cat she doesn't know. she feels more comfortable when one of her sisters is with her or her grandmother nightcloud. Nightcloud has always been a source of self confidence for her and they love each very much.

Brindlewing also inherited crowfeather’s family long tail that skipped breezepelt. Brindlewing holds the tail in her mouth as a means of helping her anxiety.

Bristlefrost

a biG design overhaul for my bristlefrost design, i really didnt like the old design i made her. wanted her to be a lil darker colored and in general have a cuter design

i gave her diff color eyes to mark her double agent status one eye green like her fathers and the other sharing the same blue i use for ashfur’s eye color

i kept her with the one white paw which i give to any descendent of jake, just because canonically she is ivy and ferns kid.

but in my rewrite their not togeather. Fernsong was a kittypet or a loner who had lost their mate and home and was found by ivypool caring for his three kittens alone. this is more fernsong headcanon, but bristlefrost is there

bristle and all the kits love ivypool they look up to her big time and all wished she was their mentor when they became apprentices.

bristlefrost often confides in her father when feeling guilty or unsure of herself and he is always there for her

Bristlekit

half brother to tallstar

i imagine woolytail’s family seems to have a high mortality rate with their kids with only one maybe two usually making it to adulthood. bristlekit would die before becoming an apprentice and spent time in starclan with finchkit and later rabbitkit waiting for wrenflight and tallstar.

if bristlekit made it to being a warrior id like to think he was named Bristlefeather or Bristlefoot

Brook where small fish swim

teeny update to my brook design to give her small white fish dots matching her brothers spots

her general design is mean to be loosely based on a mountain lion.

she got strong powerful mountain climbing body

i also wish her romance was better developed and wasnt like based in a lot of white savior romance plots given to native and native coded characters

in general the tribe really shoulda just been written better

Brownpaw

brownpaw, brother to littlecloud killed mosspaw as a kit on accident and was apprenticed for it by brokenstar

i imagine him and his brother wetfoot killing mosspaw effect them both deeply. for wetfoot it shook him to the core and made his doubt his own claws

for brownpaw it set him down the path of destruction. brokenstar rewarding him for what happened with mosspaw was the biggest enabler

brownpaw would go on to be a blood thirsty apprentice who would throw his young life away under brokenstars order of attack.

had he been made a warrior i think brokenstar woulda named him Brownmoss claiming he had earned the name when he took it from mosspaw.

Bug

design for bug because i think the book she was in didnt exist when i originally started drawing every warrior cat

love her!

bumblestripe

bumblestripe’s character makes me sad

im SUCH a millie stan and for one of her kids to be disabled then treated like garbage to the end of her life and written super ablest and then her other two kids are total shit heads? makes me sad

i wish at lEAST millie and graystripe had a second little, maybe just one total sweetheart

and its been forever since i read the books. but i remember bumblestripe being a real nobody characters just very generic personality until romance plot for dovewing came into play. and now he super sucks!

i wish he coulda just been a good character who loved dovewing, is sad and kinda jealous of her feelings for tigerheart but in the end respects her decisions and even admires her courage to follow her heart even if it led her over the borders.

Buster/Rippletail

slight buster redesign to fit more in the circus clown look from when he was in the kin

also design note, he’s got an orange themed design to go along with his rainbow themed siblings

Buzzardkit

windclan kit who showed up once in the sight crying and being comforted by a queen

mm i think some good warrior names for them woulda been like

buzzardface, Buzzardshriek or buzzardwhistle

56 notes · View notes

queen-of-my-goofball-army · 4 years

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Favorite Voice Actors

For those of you that know me, you know that my number one special interest is cartoons and the people that voice my favorite characters. Studying my heroes and watching them in interviews became a favorite pass time of mine. A lot of my friends thought that it was really weird and they stopped talking to me because of it. For a long time before I got diagnosed as having aspergers I talked forever about it. I think that both bored and confused people. For me, I love voice acting because anybody can be anything. You can watch a show and years later be like I know that voice it’s insert name here if you’re like me. True, certain actors have something that is brought to every character (I can think of one prime example later on down the list) but it is always about the heart that they put into their characters.

10. Charlie Adler: I’ll admit that I am mostly a fan of him due to the amount of work that he has done and the quantity. This man was the voice of Cow, Chicken and Big Red guy in Cow and Chicken. True, this show was past my time (and if it wasn’t I feel like it would get the Fairly OddParents treatment where my parents would forbid me to watch it.) When I listened to his episode of Talkin’ Toons I found his story’s really interesting and compelling. I can only imagine how much work and effort went into all of his characters in that show. To develop one character is one thing but to be able to switch between them like a deck of cards is a completely different thing. I did however watch a lot of Brandy and Mr. Whiskers when I was younger!! Growing up with that show and hearing him play Mr. Whiskers brought me a lot of joy when I was sick at home and for that I will always be a huge fan of his voice and his work.

9. Jim Cummings. If I were to say that one voice actor had a ton of versatility it would probably be him. I was a major Tigger fan when I was growing up. Not just that but I loved Raymond when Princess and The Frog came out. He is actually my mom’s favorite voice actor. But I also loved CatDog when I would see that on reruns, I grew to love Darkwing Duck and countless other shows that he leant his voice to. Studying voice acting and the people that do it has led to me finding some things out that I would rather not. Especially when I found that he wasn’t actually the nicest person in real life. But, to me that doesn’t matter when it comes to this list. He is here because so many of his characters made my childhood just a little bit happier. When I was thinking about favorite voice actors I considered two things, personality and character content. This one is here just for character content.

8. Bob Bergen: I reblogged a post a long time ago with this man at the helm. What he can do every time I see him do it blows my mind. Bob has been the voice of Porky Pig since pretty much Tiny Toons back in the early 90′s. He has stated that there have been some others but when I think Porky this is the name that comes along with it. Watching him do his thing is something that continually blows my mind. Listening to his life story on Rob Paulsen’s podcast Talkin’ Toons is something that inspired me more than anything. It’s this story of persistence and resilience from a young age. He is one of the few voice actors that actually got to talk with Mel Blanc when he was fourteen. I love his genuine heart and the ability that he has to jump into his character full force. Porky was a big portion of my childhood and I grew up laughing at his “silly” stutter. It wasn’t until I got older and learned that the stutter is an actual art form that I learned something entirely different.

7. Richard Horvitz: Most of you that know me might be surprised at this rather seemingly low placement for somebody that I greatly admire. I mean he was Invader Zim and Billy from Billy and Mandy for crying out loud!! I just bought a print for the man but really when I thought about it, he hasn’t really inspired me as much as my top six have. I love his sense of humor and his love of musical theater but he hasn’t taught me anything life altering. I think that he is hands down the funniest voice actor in Hollywood. I could listen to him make jokes forever and just talk in his voice but at the same time he is so other worldly and knows so much about the craft that it inspired me that way. He is as most of his fans joke “the dad voice actor” complete with dad jokes. I love Invader Zim so much, the show has helped me through a lot of loneliness and emotional moments in my life reminding me to keep laughing at life’s craziness. I also love Moxxie from Helluva Boss. All in all Richard is a fabulous man and actor. He has helped me figure out the kind of person that I wanted to be and I owe him a lot of laughter hours.

6. Greg Cipes: Can I talk about probably my OG hero for voice acting? When I was six I spent a lot of time in front of the television watching the original Teen Titans. My favorite character was Beast Boy his character that he played. When I say that BB changed the way that I think about my life that is not an exaggeration. He was one of the first characters that made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt. Growing up I had to fight people for his validation. It seemed like nobody loved him as much as I did. Cut to me in middle school I’m a bit more grownup and I start channel flipping. I wind up on Nickelodeon and see the reboot of Ninja Turtles. I figure I’ll watch it and see what all the hype is about. I hear Mikey open his mouth and instantly I get this rush of my childhood coming back. It was one of the first times that I made the connection between voice actor and character. Greg taught me so much vicariously through his character. He taught me about fun and laughter, about the importance of feeling lonely doesn’t mean that you’re alone in the world and even if you’re the goofball that doesn’t mean that’s all you have to be. The fact that he is such a relaxed and genuine person only adds to the admiration of this vegan beach bum.

5. Corey Burton: This is a very personal hero of mine. It’s one that I hold very close to me because of one thing. As far as I know, there have been very few voice actors on the autism spectrum. Corey is the only one that I have ever found. He’s the man that actually surpassed every expectation and said screw live performing it makes me anxious I’m going to get my experience through something that I know I’m good at radio. So he does radio and becomes really good at that. Then he goes to cartoons. He does Dale in Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers with a certain feminine icon of mine. He gets Ludwig Von Drake and has been that voice actor since the original DuckTales. Then he hits the peak, he was Mole in Atlantis Lost Empire a big budget Disney movie. I am so often inspired by my top six favorite voice actors. They are the ones that took me by the figurative hand and told me hey you can do get through whatever it is that you are struggling with. It just takes a little bit of laughter through the bad times, and an optimistic attitude that things will slowly but surely get better. Corey was the one that actually got himself to the top of the mountain and got to say that he did it. I admire that about him so much because for a while I thought to myself “Hey, he did it so can I”.

4. J Michael Tatum: In terms of anime voice actors, even though I love a great many, only one has ever remained of legend status. It comes yet again with a rather personal story. I was 17, lost and a little bit confused. I knew that I was ace but I had no idea how to tell my parents. It was around this time when I was getting back into anime due to Yuri On Ice, Space Dandy and Princess Jellyfish. I decide what the hell I’m going to watch some panels of my favorite voice actors for anime haven’t done that since I was thirteen. I had always loved Tatum as Kyoya Ootori in Ouran High School Host Club and France in Hetalia but other than that I didn’t know very much about him. I looked up panels for him and came across one for Florida Anime Con filmed that year. In it, he talked about being gay a lot. It implanted a seed that would inspire me. If he could be out and proud then why was I stoping myself? It might sound silly or stupid to some but to me it changed everything. From that moment on I loved everything Tatum. It led me to discover my love for Rei in Free, Okabe in Stein’s Gate and many other countless roles of his.

3. Tom Kenny: This man right here, he is the OG voice actor special interest of mine. He is the first name that I remember hearing because he did so much for Nickelodeon showing children how he did his most iconic voice. Who is that iconic voice you may ask yourself? Well it’s Spongebob flipping patties Squarepants. If that alone doesn’t put him at this spot then I don’t know what does. Like so many children in the early 200s I spent a good chunk of my childhood with me and my parents on the couch and this show on the television screen. You want to talk about legacy? This man voiced his way into the hearts of millions of children across the united states. I remember the first time I saw his actual face. I was flipping through channels and I saw this man on Nickelodeon. He had a goofy smile on his face and I figured what the hell I’ll give this a watch even though it’s not a cartoon. Then he started talking he introduced himself as Tom Kenny. Then he starts doing Spongebob. My five year old mind was blown. I never forgot his name ever since. Every time I would watch Teen Titans and Mambo would be on that episode I would be like “Oh that’s Spongebob’s voice actor”. It was that moment that changed everything for me. I have never looked back from my main special interest ever since. He has helped me through so much. Whether he be my favorite exorbitant yellow sponge, or Dog on CatDog, or Lazlo on Camp Lazlo part of me will always be with Tom Kenny. Keep making children happy Tom you’ve been doing a great job so far.

2. Tress MacNeille: Hoo boy this is a big one for me. For those of you that haven’t ever been around here before and don’t know the name of my character on my icon her name is Dot Warner (the Warner sister) and this is her voice actress. I hope that she changes your life and inspires you as much as she has mine. When I was nine I had an incredible fourth grade teacher. She showed us Yakko’s Nations Of The World for geography class. She also encouraged us to watch the rest of the show because it was full of educational songs and humor. I went home that day with on thought in mind. I wanted to watch the rest of that series. I go home and I make one distinction, hey that Warner sister I can kind of talk like her a little bit if I try hard enough. It was a little bit harder back in those days and I talk a lot more like her now with the reboot out in the world. This is the first and only impression I can do. I can do Dot and that’s it. And to me that was what mattered I didn’t need to be able to do anybody else. There aren’t a whole lot of woman voice actress’s that can keep working. All we have is Tara Strong, Cree Summer and the one and only goddess Tress MacNeille. Tress has helped me out so much in my life. I have never been the most confident person alive but from a young age hearing her absolutely smack down the actors of her brother’s in the show (Rob Paulsen and Jess Harnell) something about that inspired me. It was around this point in my life that I learned I can speak my mind and just not give a hoot if anybody feels the same way that I do. I can make my opinions known to other people. I was sixteen when I made that discovery and Tress was there for me all the way cheering me on in her Dot voice. I owe a lot to her and I wish that she was more active on social media so that I could have the opportunity to thank her for everything that she has done vicariously for me.

1. Rob Paulsen: If you were surprised by this, we probably haven’t talked before. At least not extensively because my dog do I love this man!! He has inspired me more than any other and he is not just my favorite voice actor but I consider him my ultimate hero in life. Where do I even start with him? There have been so many moments where I’ve fallen in love with one of his characters. I suppose one should start at the beginning. As I mentioned with Tress, my introduction through Animaniacs was Yakko’s Nations Of The World. This moment it changed everything for me because this was the first time that I could actually remember seeing Rob do a role. Yakko was the first cartoon character to actually make an impact on me. It was the first time that I ever loved a character that deeply. It was also the first time I ever made my own character to pair up with a canon character not even knowing that I was doing it. Ever since then a part of me has known okay that’s what Rob talks like. Now thanks to Tom Kenny I can recognize him in other places. And recognize him I did. From there I found that he was Carl on Jimmy Neutron, Mark Chang my favorite character on Fairly OddParents and countless other roles that we could be here all day for. As I mentioned, I was in middle school when the 2012 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were originally airing. When I watched that first episode, Donatello sounded really familiar to me. So I waited to the end credits only to find out that holy hell that was Rob!! The same person that played my favorite fast talking older brother. I found out about his fight with cancer a few years after it happened. This is when he went from favorite voice actor to hero legend status. He fought his way out of hell so that he could continue to sing “United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Heidi, Jamaica, Peru” until the end of his days. Reading his book changed my life forever as it gave me insight to not just the man who made me laugh, cry and cry laughing listening to his podcast but that same man had a whole ass heart and soul that he put into every character that he did. I find it really hard to explain what he means to me. He’s my hero, the one that made me laugh when I was a sad and lonely elementary schooler and the one that continues to bring me back to my childhood every time I see him in a show. I don’t feel the compulsion to give strangers hugs very often but if I ever met Rob I don’t think that I would be able to stop myself from giving a hug and just telling him thank you. Thank you for making my childhood and the childhoods of countless others much better than they would have been without you.

And that’s it folks!! Whew that’s a lot of me rambling but I feel a bit better now. Finals preparation week has officially started for me and I just wanted to give myself this big ol’ boost of serotonin before I went into it.

#Voice acting #Charlie Adler #Jim Cumings #Bob Bergen #Richard Horvitz #Greg Cipes #Corey Burton #Michael Tatum #Tom Kenny #tress macneille #Rob Paulsen

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jippy-kandi · 4 years

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Digimon Adventure: 2020 – Episode 1: Tokyo: Digital Crisis! (Review)

Thoughts on the first episode of the Digimon Adventure reboot series.

Disclaimer: I just want to make it clear that I’m watching and reviewing Digimon Adventure: 2020 in the context of it being a children’s anime -- because that’s what it is. By design, it’s obviously going to be “dumb” to the mind of the average adult. But that’s OK, because it’s for kids. And for a first episode aimed at children? It was pretty good.

The opening credits were 99% Taichi and I don’t like it if it’s permanently going to be this way. But I’m hoping that it will change to perhaps be character-centric to the person being “highlighted” in a particular episode, going through all eight kids, until there’s a permanent one where all eight are equally in it. I also hope the same for the ending credits.

I noticed that Angemon and Angewomon were missing from the opening credits, whereas the other digimon evolutions are shown. So I assume they’re following in OG Adventure’s footsteps and doing the whole “special angel” evolution reveal? I’m OK with that. It seems really interesting how they’re setting up Takeru and Hikari to be included this time (as they were both missing in the ending credits with the other five standing opposite Yamato . . .).

Both the opening and ending songs are fine, but I prefer the original songs, especially Butter-Fly. You are missed, Kouji Wada. <3

The art and animation of this series is really good. Toei Animation are really putting money into this series. I’m impressed.

I have mixed feelings about how they chose to introduce the characters. On the one hand, I think utilising just two characters is great to really highlight them to the audience and not overwhelm them with too much information. But on the other hand . . . I think introducing all eight characters in the first episode would make it appeal to more kids, because they can easily identify with one kid and keep watching the series. But a kid might watch this first episode, not like Taichi or Koushirou, and just switch off from the series completely. But I think what they went for is probably best for how they plan to introduce the characters (particularly regarding what they have in store for Yamato being a lone wolf who joins them later).

Taichi was a bit too generic to me. But, it’s only the first episode, so this isn’t a real criticism -- I’m sure he’ll be fleshed out as the series progresses. He also seems more responsible than OG Taichi. And while I do like his new voice, I think Toshiko Fujita was a lot better; she managed to convey more personality in her voice.

Koushirou was actually quite “cute”. But I’m not sure I totally like that he’s being portrayed as shy . . . he never seemed shy to me in the original series, but just a kid who was super absorbed in his own tech world. But his shyness did make him more endearing? I’m just not used to it so I find it a bit unsettling. But it does “humanise” him more and thus makes him more relatable, rather than just a distant tech nerd, so I guess it’s a positive? I also really like his voice.

I am liking the Taichi/Koushirou friendship a lot. You can tell Koushirou is going to completely idolise Taichi for making him feel included and “useful”. And let’s be real: Koushirou has always been the most underrated character when it comes to popularity, relative to actual impact on the plot, because he’s actually the one who solves almost everything and he doesn’t get nearly as much credit for it as he deserves in the fandom. It’s nice that they’ve spotlighted him with Taichi in this episode.

So apparently Mimi’s family owns a conglomerate because they made both Koushirou’s tablet computer and Takeru’s hat? I always thought the weird “TK” scrawled on his hat was for his name (TaKeru or T.K.), but apparently it’s for TachiKawa! Wow, Mimi is insanely rich this time around (moreso than the first). Princess indeed!

Takeru’s design is so freaking adorable. I still think his clothes are a bit off, but his face is so adorable! And I didn’t really think that of OG Takeru. I mean . . . I guess he was kind of adorable, but not overwhelmingly so like this one! He hasn’t said one line but, OMG, the cuteness. *SQUISH*

Did anyone notice that in Takeru’s room, there is a poster of an ASTRONAUT? OMG I loved that! What a nice throwback to Yamato’s future career in OG Adventure (and thus to the 02 epilogue!). I can imagine reboot Yamato idolising astronauts and influencing Takeru into liking them, too. Awesome Easter egg there!

So the Crests are showing up right from the start. No rehash of finding the Tags and Crests, then! (Or will they find the physical forms later?) I really like how different from OG Adventure it already is, while keeping touches of the old as well. Toei have done a good job with mixing the old and new so far. Keep it up!

I thought Taichi’s meeting with Agumon was super cute and quite “realistic” with Taichi reaching his hand out to “pet” Agumon! Though Taichi is obviously more courageous than the average person, because uh, I would be afraid that dino would bite my hand off, lol.

I thought Agumon’s evolution “sequence” to Greymon was really cool, but at the same time, I did miss an actual evolution sequence like the OG one. It’s probably just nostalgia making me feel that way. I can accept this new version though! It feels very “updated”.

It was very fast-paced compared to OG Adventure. I’m not sure I entirely like that Agumon evolved so easily and so quickly to Greymon in the very first episode, but it also didn’t seem to hinder the episode. But where do they go from here? What do they have planned to pad out this series if things happen so quickly? I’m intrigued to find out!

Oh, remember how I said less than 24 hours ago that I might not even like reboot Yamato? Yeah, well . . . throw that idea out the window, because the dude had two seconds at the end of this episode and HE ALREADY WON ME OVER lmao. He had NO LINES and was still the highlight of the episode for me. My attachment to him is insane. (Of course, I’m hoping he doesn’t turn out to be a super douche, lol.) I like that he was “chosen” before Taichi and was in the Network before him. What have you been up to in there, Yamato?

While I LOVED the ending credits, as I said before, I hope it changes to be central for each specific character (going through all eight kids), before there is a permanent main ending that includes all the characters equally. I really don’t like how Toei Animation seems to forget that there are EIGHT CHARACTERS and not just two. Come on, Toei, do the right thing!

But . . . let’s talk about the ending credits. IT WAS AMAZING. It characterised Yamato so much without him saying a word. I love that he’s still a lone wolf, that music is still a big part of his life (a bass at 11!), and that his love for Takeru is still so genuine. There was also a pivotal scene where it shows Jou, Mimi, Taichi, Sora and Koushirou standing together, and Taichi smiles at Yamato, who hesitantly steps forward to join them. I loved that! It made me think about the discarded plot where “Yamato might’ve separated from the group entirely” -- it seems like this is a reverse version and I can’t wait to see it play out. The scene that inspired that discarded plot idea was when Yamato decides to fight Taichi, and Sora yells at him to stop -- and I just loved her reactions to him throughout that arc. Especially because, if Taichi had turned on the group, I think Sora’s first instinct would be to conk him over the head -- but she gives Yamato a massive pass and then supports him to separate from the group to find himself. My Sorato thoughts are already swirling about how Sora will react to Yamato in this reboot! Will she hate him at first? Will she ask him to join? Oh my, they haven’t even interacted in this reboot and I’m already shipping them, lmao. I hope Sorato still have a connection in this reboot!

Overall, I liked it for a children’s anime. And I never would have watched it if it wasn’t a reboot with the original Adventure cast, as I have only seen a few episodes of Tamers, Frontier and Savers . . . and a few seconds where Yamato shows up in Xros Wars, lol. I’m not interested in Digimon, I’m interested in the Adventure cast. So I’m really glad this reboot exists! I’ll happily watch all episodes of this series because it’s more of my kids goddamnit. XD

Oh, and I just want to apologise that even though the episode was focussed on Taichi and Koushirou, I used screenshots of Yamato and Sora for the episode post . . . I’m sorry, I’m a Sorato blog! XD;

I think I will do a weekly Digimon Adventure: 2020 “review”, because the episodes are only 20-ish minutes long and it’s easy enough to consume and write about. And even if I might not have a lot to say about a particular episode, I can still spam Sorato screenshots, lol. :P

I can’t wait for the next episode! Because: YAMATO. <3

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure:#digimon adventure 2020 #sorato #yamato ishida #sora takenouchi #chosen children #taichi yagami #koushirou izumi #mimi tachikawa #jou kido #takeru takaishi #hikari yagami #review #screenshots #spoilers #is this tag really needed?#just go watch it!

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lexicals · 4 years

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Liner notes for An Echo, An Answer

Okay let's give this a go I guess? I may add more to this if I remember things too lol

Fair warning this is an exceedingly long post. It has ~subheadings~ (ooh). These cover:

Fun Facts

Notes about mira

Notes on actual writing/plot

Post-canon tidbits (to be supplemented by actual post-canon oneshot coming maybe not soon but definitely at some point probably)

Needless to say this contains some BIG OL’ SPOILERS. Please enjoy o:

Some general Fun Facts™:

When I posted the first few chapters of this fic, I didn't have a fucking clue where it was going. I didn't even know how kravitz died until I'd already posted like 10 chapters lmao. This was a stressful way to write and I am never doing that again

In terms of inspo, I remember there being a fic in which taako was a ghost and kravitz was a medium (if anyone knows what fic this is PLEASE tell me I cannot find it) and I think I subconsciously took inspiration from this. Also I’d already written a vampire au and I wanted more undead boyfriend shenanigans, I looove playing with the liminal aspects of kravitz being a dead-but-not-dead character

There was a goof version of this fic where kravitz wasn't from the 1900s at all and died in like. The early 2000s or something. He died having come back from/at a costume party, people assumed he was an actual ye olde victorian ghost, and he decided to just lean into it. Cue fake accent. This was scrapped mainly because I loved the ‘sleepy hollow’-esque man-out-of-time shenanigans way too much and also because I know very little about the early-2000s US but do you know what I do know a moderate amount about? 1900s england

I have not read the cask of amontillado and I did not know what it was until seeing the memes, which was after I wrote the basement body twist. I just wanted to have a cheesy secret basement behind a bookcase c'mon it's a murder mystery in an old spooky house let me have this

Anyone who's followed my content for a while probably knows that I'm a big trans kravitz stan, but I dithered over making him trans in this fic a Lot. This was mostly down to self-doubt abt a story ft. a trans man living as his preferred gender in that time period would be deemed "unrealistic" but in the end I said fuck it I want this & I think that was the correct move. Also I read a fair bit about absolute legend dr james barry & that made me a bit more confident about committing to the decision bc these people did exist & they deserve their rep

You may notice that all of the major OCs created for this fic are women. This was an accident but also I stand by it bc I think it helps to balance out the fact that so much of the ‘screentime’ is being dominated by the male leads (inc. angus, who probably has the 3rd most screentime after taako & krav). They’re also all just, absolutely indomitable people. I have a type when it comes to OCs. Speaking of:

Notes on mira:

Mira was very much a character created to serve a purpose, but she ended up becoming a lot more than that and I'm glad people warmed up to her while reading as much as I did while writing. She wasn't going to have anywhere near as much screen time initially as she did in the end but I just loved her & how her relationship with kravitz turned out so much that I ended up writing a bunch of snippets with the two of them just for me, which eventually turned into the fragment chapters because I wanted to share how gd cute they were. Also they ended up being pretty useful for plot too lol

She and flossy were actually kind of the same character to begin with, being kravitz's best friend who he lived with in a kind of lavender marriage with neither of them interested in the other but being happy enough being friends & pretending. I scrapped this pretty early for a lot of reasons but she was still the cause of his death in that version, whether or not she actively killed him. I think there was a gambling debts element at some point

Whatever iteration of the story, she was always going to be the cause of death. I ruled out actual murder pretty early on because I didn't want to tell a story about a gay, black trans man getting murdered in cold blood in his own home, which in a ghost story only really leaves manslaughter, and an accidental killing by a loved one was an idea that followed pretty hot on the heels of that decision - it's very sad, but there's no hatred behind it, so it's not too outright depressing for what is most likely an audience with a high population of marginalised people. That bittersweetness of tone - sad events, but almost always with loving intentions behind or around them - ended up being a real touchstone for the story as a whole

In terms of post-canon content for her, or I guess just stuff that wasn't mentioned in-fic lol, my idea of how her life played out is that she was a pretty solid pillar of her community for a very long time. She took what kravitz said about thinking about what she wanted to add to the world very much to heart, and her answer was for her to be to as many kids and vulnerable people as possible what kravitz was to her. Obviously in the end she poured a lot of herself into helping others out of guilt for having killed a man who she likely remembered a little rose-tinted, but the intent was always there before that too

I don't know how much this came across in the actual text but mira is mixed race (Black/white), though she is Black-coded in terms of how people see and respond to her (please tell me if I’m using these terms incorrectly). I downplayed a lot of the racial elements of this fic bc I don’t feel like it’s my place as a white writer to delve into those areas, but it is an element of her story that ties into anti-miscegenation laws and general societal attitudes and I didn’t just want to entirely gloss over those aspects, bc that wouldn’t be right of me either, so I can only hope the balance ended up working here, and for kravitz’s story too. I did a lot of the writing for mira’s story before even really thinking about this angle which is something I’ve learnt from now bc oh boy should I have thought about it sooner lmao........

Anyway. I love her. I’m very glad that other people love her too

In terms of story writing:

I used to watch A LOT of crime dramas when I was younger, and got so familiar with the structure of them that I used to predict who the killer was going to be about a quarter of the way into them almost every time. Most of the time the killer is someone introduced early on as someone fairly innocuous, but still notable, before the narrative doubles down on a red herring suspect who's proven innocent about 3/4 of the way through, paving the way for the real twist killer. You see where I took my base structure from here

So, mira is introduced early on as someone important to kravitz, who was involved in his life (& death) somehow, but in general she's more suggested to be a victim than a culprit - because of course she is, she’s a child and she loves him! I'm only just realising now that this is a "person of interest" style plot twist here. (Remember what I said about the crime dramas? Just so many of them.) But then in the end she suffered just as much as anyone else, so I guess you could say she's both a victim and a culprit, even by accident.......

Structurally I'm actually really happy with how this turned out. In my head (BECAUSE OH BOY I DID NOT WRITE ANY OF THIS DOWN! Or at least not in a coherent way) the story was split into three mini arcs - the enemies section ending with the kitchen blowout, the friends section ending with the the bay window scene, and the lovers section which covers the rest of the fic. This ended up integrating really well with the main mysteries/pulls of the story - the first being the will-they-won't-they (they will, it’s fanfiction, but how?) of the romance element, and then once that's tapering off starting to dig more into the murder mystery element, which had been more of a subplot up until then, while the romance moves onto the back burner a little bit. The dual genre was an interesting challenge to try to balance and I think it turned out pretty well!

While I'm on this, setting up my breadcrumb trails for the plot twists was simultaneously very stressful and very rewarding. Trying to keep things obvious enough to be noted but subtle enough not to give the whole game away? Gave me so many headaches lmao. I actually thought for sure that some people would twig about the body in the cellar sooner than ch42, but then actually in ch42 way more people picked up on fisher's sniffing around than I expected. Clues are hard!! But at the same time seeing the handful of people who called mira as an adoptive daughter, or the fact that krav fell down the stairs, or the fact that mira's og parents were involved was very cool and it made me very happy to see people picking up the little stuff and putting it together

QUITE A FEW PEOPLE SAID NICE THINGS TO ME ABOUT HOW CLEVER THE PIANO TUNING ANGLE WAS. I CANNOT TAKE COMPLETE CREDIT FOR THIS. IT WAS A PLOT HOLE THAT I SUDDENLY REGISTERED OUT OF NOWHERE WHILE I WAS IN THE SHOWER & THEN ENDED UP WORKING IN SO I GUESS IT TURNED OUT FOR THE BEST & MADE ME LOOK VERY SMART BUT IT WAS AN ACCIDENT

Something else that a couple of people have noted & that I only realised in the process of writing was the fact that a lot of kravitz's ghostliness in this fic has the potential to be read as an allegory for chronic illness/disability. This was something I only caught onto myself while I was writing the scene on the porch at the end of ch42 when I was writing kravitz's dialogue and was like..... oh shit that's a thing huh. Bc he is, y'know, quite literally housebound and limited in what he can do in a lot of ways, which is part of the reason I really tried to hammer home in that chapter that even though the fic ends with him being 'cured' (because that ending was always the intention from day one before I ever thought about this reading), they would have been happy together regardless. Love is not conditional!

Post-canon thoughts:

Taako and kravitz go into the house. Kravitz says oh my god what is that smell. Taako says he made blueberry pie earlier. Kravitz says okay we're putting bedroom fun times on hold I need that RIGHT NOW

Kravitz eats way too much too fast and spends the rest of the afternoon curled up on the sofa with a horrible stomach ache. He is not used to that much rich food. Taako is not impressed with this

He rolls his eyes and they watch a movie and talk instead and get to the bedroom fun times later

On the topic of food you Know krav ends up with a bit of a tummy from taako spoiling him. He looks & feels great and taako loves how comfy he is

Also on the topic of bodies I think krav does a lot of experimenting initially with what feels good now that he has a lot more freedom in presentation. He likes to mess with his hair a lot. Dresses and skirts are still a bad feel but a little makeup is fun sometimes. Kravitz living his best undeath 2k18 (I took so long to finish this fic it’s set 2 years ago now lmaoooo)

Kravitz lets taako drive him somewhere exactly Once before vowing NEVER AGAIN taako's driving privileges are REVOKED kravitz is going to get magnus to teach him to drive instead.

Taako says what the hell are you gonna do if you get pulled over you are a hundred and thirty and also dead you can't get a license. (He could get him a fake one, but he's not going to, because he's being petty about kravitz insulting his driving.) Kravitz says fine show me yours then. Taako says no but kravitz steals it anyway. A minute later he’s produced his own undoubtedly fake license out of nowhere complete with a fake DOB and a very nice picture

Taako says gasp kravitz that's ILLEGAL. Also you know you have to make this picture worse if you want it to be convincing right

Kravitz starts giving angus music lessons. Angus isn’t a natural by any means but he works hard and that gets him a long way

OH ACTUALLY I SHOULD PROBABLY SAY SMTH ABOUT THE REUNIONS HUH. GINNY THESE ARE FOR YOU:

Maybe it's weird to start with barry but the poor man has to have a sit down. He has so many questions. Kravitz what is the afterlife like it's fine you can tell him just give him a hint please and also can he maybe get like. A blood sample or something. No that's not weird it's for science what are you talking about taako bring him back

Kravitz is fully expecting lup to wreck his shit, and she acts like she's going to right up until she's close enough to give him a big ol hug instead. She says she missed him a lot & that he's much nicer to hug now that he's not a freezy boy, and kravitz goes ;_;

It's a very tight hug though. In some ways it is still a punishment

Also could he maybe hook her up with this death goddess of his? Lup would like to be immortal too, kravitz. Kravitz can you get a resume to your boss and could you write lup a reference while you're at it

Angus!! He’s so happy to have his other uncle back!! There’s a new caleb cleveland book he needs to read so they can talk about it!! All of this after a lot of crying and hugging.

I think at some point they do go over to visit mira’s descendants. Taako says hi remember me? I brought my boyfriend to visit! Unnamed great great grandchild #1 is like um he looks kind of familiar. Kravitz says well yes there is kind of a reason for that and it’s because I’m in that picture on the wall over there, hi I’m your great great grandfather nice to meet you

The family is a little weirded out by this at first but eventually they’re like. Well alright I guess do you want a coffee

Kravitz says yes please god do you know how many people keep offering me tea

He babysits for the youngest ones sometimes. The kids love him and the adults are happy to give him stories in exchange for his time, seeing as that’s all he asks for

Taako says ask them for money and contribute to this household kravitz. Kravitz says absolutely not they’re family and you’re already getting my youtube ad revenue

Yes kravitz has a youtube channel and is also very involved in the local music scene. He can’t do anything that would technically be classed as interfering with the flow of the living world but no-one said he can’t anonymously share some of his music here and there

Johann gets him a gig conducting for his orchestra every now and then. Kravitz is fucking ecstatic and finally gets to conduct some of his own pieces in front of an audience. Maybe they actually get to that biography johann mentioned at some point. Idk I haven’t thought about that part too much

Okay I wrote WAY more than I meant to here but I hope at least some of it was interesting and feel free to ask me questions if there are elements I’ve missed off of here that you want to hear more about! (Bearing in mind some of the answers may be “actual post canon content coming soon/later” lol.) As you can tell I have a lot of things to say about this fic & I’m always more than happy to hear that people are interested!! o:

#wastepaper basket #an echo an answer #God I hope the readmore works on mobile if not I am SO SORRY

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uninterestiing · 5 years

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i liked your post on matteo taking his time to process things, so i'd love to know what your thoughts are on david being outed?

hhhhhhhhh well from what i’ve seen in the tag, i disagree with like 90% of youse and was gonna hold my thoughts till later… but since you asked… yeah i reckon its good writing actually.

(beware under the cut, this is long)

so disclaimers before people get big mad: i’ve actually been in the situation depicted. i’m a gay trans guy who came out in year 12 & to me, it’s extremely realistic. teachers in my last year of high school pulled me aside to say all kinds of nasty shit and the rumour of my transness spread around pretty fuckin quickly. it was a fucked time in my life but i didn’t have any issues watching the last clip, i enjoyed it and found it pretty relatable honestly, especially the teacher bit because its a really common thing trans kids go through to be harassed more by staff than students, but i’ve never actually seen it be depicted before… but i’ll also say, im really not easy to upset and almost impossible to offend when it comes to trans stuff. i work as an openly trans person in the media and my skin is very thick, 17 year old me who was experiencing it real-time would have probably been shaken up a bit.

that said, like i discussed in my other post about this, realism doesn’t automatically equal good storytelling! so what is good storytelling?

big subject obviously, but rn i’m gonna define it as a consistency of theme, tone, and character. (its also how well you tie all those things up at the end but i wont comment on that because… druck ain’t finished yet and we need to remember that!) plus, of course, it’s just… whether you like it? which is completely subjective, and something i can only comment on for myself!

so i think the main issue here is that people expect things from druck it never promised them, and from the very beginning was never going to be.

take the perspective issue for example, which effects tone & character immensely. i’ve seen numerous complaints that the show isn’t depicting the trans issues from an internal perspective. which is interesting, since from the very start, we’ve known that was the case. we knew it was matteo’s season, and we knew how very, very closely skam shows follow their protagonists. everything is from their perspective. so i knew it was never gonna be about trans issues from a trans perspective because david was not the main character, he’s the love interest. that was evident from day one ya’ll it’s how the show is structured. and that is Not Inherently A Bad Thing, it’s just not what some of you wanted.

however… druck has stretched the limits of perspective more than any other version. the texts, for instance, are not just the main’s, and do a lot for fleshing out the background characters. also (and this is thematically important) it showed the way outing / spreading of rumours actually happens irl. re-watching the last clip i noticed that they leave matteo’s POV for a second, and “switch” to david as he’s coming down the stairs, realising what’s happening. not so much as to break the consistency of the show’s structure, but enough to make the audience really understand the gravity of what’s happening. it’s done really fluidly and i thought it was a genius way to both keep it matteo’s story, but also, give that moment a much needed trans perspective, because i really don’t think all that ringing distortion sound was matteo’s panic.

and really, i just don’t think a trans person needs to be the main character of the show for it to be good representation. i think they have done an exceptional job of not tokenizing david by making sure to establish his whole character & his relationship with matteo before his trans identity was confirmed on the show, in the exact same way they do with the other evens and their mental illnesses in every other version. and honestly, when it comes to trans men, there’s very little media stereotypes or negative tropes that they could have conformed to because there’s not enough representation yet for those to have actually formed. like, we know druck won’t kill david off, and i don’t really know any other tropes that exists for trans men in storytelling at the moment. a lot of the show is covering new ground subject wise, they don’t have a script to follow, so some minor blunders are to be expected.

over all, the fandom jumps the gun every damn time. the show decides to have conflict or deal with a social problem and everyone looses it, as if that’s not been the entire ethos of skam since the OG. skam / druck is a teen show that deals with identity issues. every season picks topics to educate on through the story, and they do it with a lot of care and research.that’s the whole deal, it’s why the show exists, fucking of course they aren’t going to brush over trans issues, it amazes me that people thought they would, and that there would be no conflict and it’d play out like fanfiction fluff. here’s another really good post about it.

so obviously, this season is about about being gay and being trans, but specifically about outing, and has stressed this theme all the way through, way more than any other version. so friday’s clip is what i’d call a natural culmination of theme and narrative. in terms of the queer experience, and the trans experience, i think it was a very good idea to take on coming out / outing as a central thematic and narrative through-line, because it’s one of the central things gay and trans people have in common. and then analyzing them both in comparison and contrast throughout the story, really works and makes for good fucking writing, pacing and - yup, you guessed it - consistency.

i find the choice to situate a trans man as the love interest, and therefore, an object of desire, incredibly subversive. and though yes, stories with trans protagonists are lacking, literally any form of story where trans people exist is lacking, and the creators of druck wanting to tell a story about what it means to love & be in a relationship with a trans person is just as important a story to tell as any other, and complaining about what “type” of trans story is more important to tell first, or which aspect of trans existence to highlight more, is ridiculous. at the end of the day, one story cannot cover everything, and the writers had to make choices as to where their focus would lie. and there’s literally nothing wrong with their specific choices in subject matter (being trans in the context of relationship & outing, mainly), other than personal preference.

so like i said in my previous post: wanting a comfort show where trans characters exist, but the trans experience is not plot-relevant, is fine & cool. i really want that too, but not here. getting angry or upset that druck did… exactly what skam shows do… is stupid. and then turning around and blaming your dislike, which is born out of judging a show by the wrong genre standards, on “bad writing”, is just plain wrong. this show is amazingly produced. just… c’mon guys. chill.

(also @ every weird cis person in the tag giving fuckin condolences & saying their askbox is open if someone needs to talk…… stop. literally nobody asked. its so weird. we didn’t put a call out for you to be upset on our behalf. its just a tv show. like its super important rep for us… but its also just a tv show that people can just not watch if its not your cup of tea.)

tl;dr the friday clip was fucking good and made sense because druck is well written, acted, researched and produced, is really not transphobic (in fact i’d say it’s pretty subversive), and it’s also not the creators fault when you’re disappointed by the direction taken in a show that was crystal clear what direction it was headed into!

#druck #ask #well fuck me this was long #please don't @ me i'm tired #mammamiau

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kitsunebishake · 5 years

Text

Why Hríd is such an amazing character who just got done wrong during his “character arc” (SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE BOOK II AND FORGING BONDS)

WARMING: THIS IS JUST ONE LONG ASS LOVEMAIL POST FOR HRÍD

this was originally written as a thread on twitter but i’ll try my best to put it all here because someone asked for it some time ago

I’m putting it here because @chascah suggested i uploaded it here as well for those people who actually appreciate the icy boy

this is basically an analysis to most if not every quote from hríd, also adding some translations and little details from the japanese quotes (and some lore behind the whole idea of hríd’s new year alt)

let’s start then!

lemme start with the fact that hríd only appeared in 3 out of 13 chapters, yet is the character that caught my interest the most (funny because i already had a crush on alfonse, then i saw hríd and was like "oh, hello there")

hríd arrived like a half-dead yet somehow composed prince who somehow (x2) survived by himself in múspell for weeks (maybe even months, there's no exact timeline but it is canon that alfonse and the others spent some weeks in nifl, it probably also took them a while to navigate through múspell until loki arrived as ylgr)

he served as some kind of excuse to not put bruno too much with the main characters, practically a messenger only despite this guy being alive with burns and a broken sword (the crack on gjöll's blade hurts bc he couldve actually lost his sword and ended up defenseless in battle oof)

so, there was no really much use of his character other than being a magical solution for everything

he even helped unmask loki (though they never explain why hríd suspected of ylgr, we only know loki's own take)

btw, can we talk about the fact he probably outsmarted loki while the others weren't yet in múspell? he terrorized surtr's army and even outsmarted laegjarn and laevatein

and since he survived for so long i believe most of his wounds were made by surtr himself

they never really say whether he actually managed to kill surtr or not, but let's say yes just to add up on all of the things hríd does just in the story

at first glance it looks like he's doing nothing, but reading further into it and applying some logic

hríd's... he's pretty impressive for a prince so young

gotta also add how hríd appears less impulsive in japanese than in english

when "alfonse" blames him for being a traitor, hríd gets to the defensive immediately in english

in japanese, he's more in shock, probably because after all he's tried, he's being doubted by his allies (which shows a lot how much he cares about being perceived as perfect, something i'll get on to later if i have enough time)

I added this part in the middle of the whole thing because it was a different thread so excuse the sudden change of topic, kinda. It’s supposed to be from the last conversation in Book 2, where Fjorm tells Hríd she’s going to stay in Askr despite her “condition”.

"I understand your feelings, Sister. By all means, go. I will pray for your safety."

this is one of the quotes i'd like to put in that one hríd character thread i want to make

the feeling behind this quote got completely lost in translation, as there's no way to translate it properly

in japanese, hríd uses a pecular way of speech to refer to his sister here he says "... I get it. If that is what you wish, it's alright to go. I'll pray for your safety." the peculiar part, aside from hríds "..." is where he refers to fjorm, the "you"

hríd normally uses "kimi" to refer to people, which is like a more... gentle? way of speaking? men usually use it towards women bc they want to treat them nicely, and jps in general use it with people they don't know (it's that, or "anata" or "[name]-san")

yet here, hríd decides to use "omae" to refer to fjorm, which is more informal and even rude (specially for someone who normally uses "kimi", it means he wanted to express some kind of anger or frustration about fjorm's decision without saying it directly,,,,,,,,,,,,,which is very japanese to do so,,,,,, *looks into the distant "most japanese people i've known don't directly say 'no' and instead go 'hmmmmmm' '*very indirectly rejects*' and it's probably a fact*)

it feels like instead of being supportive, hríd just understood there was no way of convincing fjorm to stay with them

so he gave up and felt hurt by that

please protect hríd

Back to the rest of the analysis.

now let's talk about forging bonds, in the wiki there's only the opening part transcribed in japanese, the rest is only on english (i curse not having started playing 3 months earlier orz)

the first thing you can notice in the japanese version is how informal hríd is when he's stressed

while he speaks in an usually softer manner, here, he doesn't even greet ylgr and gunnthrá, he goes directly to "gunnthrá... ah, ylgr is here too" (he kinda does the same in the mainstory, where he just says “ah, fjorm, you’re okay... ylgr too :)”)

AND IMMEDIATELY, HIS NEXT TEXT IS HIM CALLING GUNNTHRÁ WITH "OMAE”

ALREADY DEEP INTO THE STRESS OF MÚSPELL INVADING THEM

this shows how easily stressed hríd gets and how much he lets his emotions dirve his attitude and actions (which makes sense with the part where he tells fjorm she should be the one wielding leiptr and not him, he's too emotional despite how much he tries not to be)

in these parts we also see some level of deattachment from gunnthrá, on english he goes "sister..." by the end of the opening conversation

in the jp, however, he stays silent, he doesn't even call her name

idk if it's just me overanalyzing it, but from my experience with animoo and vidya, it feels a little weird that he says nothing there, like he's thinking (this is probably foreshadowing hríd's inner feelings oof)

something that i particularily like about this event is that hríd seems so at ease when he's on the dreams, even in the english translation it seems like that he mentions it might be because he feels at ease with kiran but i feel like it also has to do with the fact they're just a dream, it's not the real world, there's nothing to worry in a world where there's no war

at least, that's the feeling his dialogues give me

the closest thing to that hríd is his lvl40 speech and ny hríd (who's happier)

the only quote where hríd mentions some type of concern for his mother btw

from here on it only gets worse when it comes to hríd, though

he speaks about the invasion and such he talks in a way that implies he's probably taking the role of a commander (same as how it is implied he trains the soldier, or that he trains with them, though since he's been training alone with fjorm for so long, it's most likely the former) aside from that, he's weighting on himself the responsibility of what happens to nifl and what happens to his family

and since he's doing so, here's when it comes the part of hríd not being able to care about himself

this young man is carrying a heavy weight, the hopes and dreams and lives of many innocent and PEACEFUL people who barely even know how to fight, on top of those of his loved ones

it doesn't seem like anyone asked him to, not even his mother or sisters

he just decided it on his own that he needed to be "the perfect prince/king" in order to "protect" them

/even if it costs him his life/

he prepared his sisters for that moment (which, might give an insight that hríd knew more than he says, but let's leave my conspiracy theories aside lol)

and to THAT PART, we can add this from the mainstory

in english, when he's rescued, he thanks them for doing so

but in the jp text he actually apologizes for it

not sure how to exactly translate it, but it's something along the lines of "my apologies...for having to be saved..."

idk you guys, but it sounds like what someone who just failed to commit suicide would say, instead of someone who's grateful to be alive

and it makes sense, with how obsessed hríd seems to be about "dying for his loved ones" despite it not being entirely necessary

i mean, look at that, he survived surtr and was aided by bruno as he escaped (probably? they never say what exactly happened, but since they're looking for hríd and not for bruno, it's most likely that they just found each other by accident)

and yes, even though he seems to calm down with those thoughts during the sequence, it is only a dream and we know he has no recolection of them

he forgets completely about that motivation to keep living, which leads him into further down the path of death (whichinnorsemythologymightbecalledhríd,,,,,,orgjöll,,,ykow?)

im still not done, havent even gotten to his unit quotes lmao

hríd still did his best to survive for as long as he could, but it feels more like his strategic "i'm making time for fjorm and the askrans to make their moves" purely, out of the fact he didn't seem too happy to survive until he saw fjorm and ylgr

hat's all of hríd's quotes from that event, i can finally move on to his unit quotes

let's start with this one, luckily it is practically the same quote in both languages

this immediatelly counters any "hríd is boring" comment

though that is subjective, in my case what drove me even further into loving hríd was how different he was from usual characters related to ice

he might come off as cold sometimes, but it's purely because he's actually really dense/has a really bad sense of humor

in jp he tries to make an ice joke, but says "it's not suitable for him" (which is funny because in english he does have ice puns and i hate it)

1. he doesn't mention his mother 2. hríd blaming himself and being kinda gloomy part 1

"I should have protected my people and sisters, I couldn't play that role... I can never forget that."

this part hurts a lot (it's a little more poetic than the og one, i like it lol)

he could be talking about himself, about his sisters, his people, or all together, since the four of them have expressed desire for peace, and all four ended hurt by such thing

this part is scary, though it's not as much in english

NOT BECAUSE OF THE TRANSLATION, but because of his battle lines in eng (i'll get to that first and then come back to this one)

the most shockingly different skill trigger is the second one

the first one is exactly the same the third one in jp is "this is the last blow" (or smth like that) the fourth one is a little weird to translate (ice upon you works, but "freeze your life" sounds a little scary??)

OKAY BUT THE SECOND ONE ALONG WITH THE VOICE CLIP

IT KINDA SCARES ME A LITTLE FOR MY CUTE SWEET MOCHI BOY

it literally says "no mercy for the enemy"

IT'S LITERALLY SUGAR COATED, hríd went from a gentle giant to a merciless killer (who knows how many muspellians he's killed???) thanks to surtr and his fucking ass

hríd blaming himself and being gloomy part 2

the fact that he has not one, not two, not three, but about 5 to 6 lines that imply he's still dueling over everything that happened during the war is hurtful, he really can't forgive himself for that

he also sounds a little dead to me here (it’s one of the voiced quotes from his status page!)

which brings me back to the initial scary one

hríd is obsessed with earning his peace no matter what

and for that, he wants to get stronger

for that, he's willing to even perish, for everyone's sake

it's so sickening for me since i can kinda relate???? it reminds me a lot of the kind of wording they use for depression-themed japanese works, with the "peace" part and his willingness to just die anytime (which, is actually pretty normal for a warrior outside of FE. outside)

iT MAKES ME FEEL BAD BUT AT THE SAME TIME i kinda like he's written this way

AND EVEN WHEN HE'S LIKE THAT, hríd is still a gentle sweetheart who speaks so kindly you kinda forgets how merciless he is in the battlefield

like, the audio where he holds kiran's hands???? where he speaks about how the order of heroes saved nifl????? EVEN WHEN HE GETS STARTLED

he's always such a gentle and kind person

it makes me hate surtr even more because they didn't deserve this

hríd didn't deserve going through all of this fucking shit HE. DESERVED. HAPPINESS. AND PEACE.

then there's the ny hríd

he's an angel

a happy angel who makes me a little sad bc og hríd is not as happy

From here on everything was written like 2 weeks after the previous stuff :’) i’m sowwy

he's a resolute prince, he has the resolution of saving even at least one person,,,,,instead of being a "king", instead of being a "brother", or a "prince", he just wants to be "a hero",,,

hello, this is my opening statement of why ny hríd makes me cry with just existing

welcome

let us start with something that makes his quotes even better, particularily the previous quote and his lvl40 speech, which is the powerful meaning of this alt itself for a character such as hríd

in japan, new year used to be celebrated not at the end of the year, but at the end of winter, which is where geishun comes into the scheme, as it currently means "new years greetings" but in those old times, it was actually "welcoming spring" (or something along those lines i suck for precise translations)

and that's where our next quote comes into the picture

hríd speaks about nifl's winter, about how it practically symbolizes the nifleans' strength and will power

the alt itself is a more positive hríd, one who's willing to try his hardest for everyone, who doesn't regret his past, but looks into the future and has the purpose of being even better than before

of course, this hríd didn't suffer the same fate as the OG hríd, as he still has all 3 sisters (i want to believe ylgr was with them, just not shown bc of the lack of space for a sixth character) and now also 2 new allies to power their search for peace and strength to defend that peace

so, while our normal hríd is desparate to become stronger and suffers, this hríd is like his pole opposite, it's like the sun and the moon (too bad this hríd has no default special, sol would've fit him so well)

can we talk about how he feels so comfortable wearing the celebratory outfit?

the obi (the.....thing that acts as a belt) should be tied strongly enough so the hakama (the pants) doesnt fall down while he fights, yet he feels comfortable with it

i mean, it isn't as constrictive as a kimono as it doesn't prevent him from moving around freely, but he still shouldn't normally feel as comfortable with it as he is, he's never even worn something like that (it is implied, at least) yet he's loving it, isn't it adorable???

one time i joked about hríd being able to feel when winter is coming or when snow will start falling but

i think this quote pretty much confirmed it (YOU CAN'T SAY IT'S BECAUSE IT'S WARM, IT DOES SNOW IN ASKR WE'VE SEEN IT)

blessed boy munchs a whole fucking piece of mixed flour with FOUR HUNDRED GRAMS OF FUCKING SUGAR

he's got a sweet tooth i know it, i know my people when i see them

it's just that he doesn't seem disgusted, and he also only mentions the mochi so we can assume he didn't drink sake or matcha with it

he ate the fucking thing alone and apparently liked it

we have a sweet angel, guys

i just think this quote is cute, he loves cold just as much as i love him

t HIS IS SUCH AN IMPROVEMENT FROM OUR NORMAL HRÍD HE'S SO POSITIVE AND DETERMINED I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

though in japanese, the last quote is a little more gloomy

im not entirely sure of how to properly translate it *looks at the jisho page of the kanji he cant understand* it's certainly a word

but it could be something like "to be in such a predicament from so early in the year... I'm unable to say it's pathetic..."

i???? imagine he says he "can't say it" because he's trying to be positive?????? or something along those lines, but saying it proves he's taking it way to the extreme

nasakenai can also be shameful or miserable, pitable, disgraceful stuff like that

i'm not sure how to describe this quote?

this time it's the english localisation that kinda throws me off, i don't understand what he's trying to say lmao

in japenese he's saying something about having been graced this early in the new year

7 years speaking english and i still can't break down complex phrases the only reason i've survived this long is through the power of deduction abilities

pray for me

u know hríd's damaged quotes in english are all grunts, right?

in japanese, this hríd has a peculiar quote i find adorable when he gets damaged

he says "as expected from you...!"

hE'S COMPLIMENTING HIS ENEMY, THIS IS THE SAME MAN WHO SAYS NO MERCY AS HE KILLS THE FOE

btw listening to his english quotes is so funny

he sounds so damn cool in japanese and in english he

he sounds like a fucking nerd

I THINK IM TAKING A LIKING TO HIS ENGLISH VOICE ACTING PURELY BECAUSE HE SOUNDS STUPID

compare this (JP) https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/feheroes_gamepedia_en/1/12/VOICE_Hr%C3%ADd_Resolute_Prince_SKILL_2_jp.wav

to this (ENG) https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/feheroes_gamepedia_en/6/6a/VOICE_Hr%C3%ADd_Resolute_Prince_SKILL_2.wav

it's the exact same quote by the two different VAs

HE SOUNDS LIKE A NERD IN THE ENGLISH VERSION I CAN'T

back to translations and analysis

i hate this one

his eng quote is more positive while the japanese one is something along the lines of "I was useless... I'm sorry..."

HATE

look, say whatever you want, but hríd is such a sweet man

he cares for people and he tries his best to be the perfect prince everyone thinks he is

AND FOR HIS *MORE POSITIVE VERSION* TO SAY THIS AS HE IS DEFEATED IS JUST

WHAT DID HE DO TO U INTSYS TO MAKE HIM SUFFER THIS MUCH??

despite how "im so useless...!" his japanese version is

he way he says these two quotes sounds way more positive in japanese lmao it's the same translation, only that he's more "I'll repay you!!!!!!" in jp ( https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/feheroes_gamepedia_en/3/34/VOICE_Hr%C3%ADd_Resolute_Prince_MAP_3_jp.wav )

adorable

can’t use emojis on this pc so i’ll just leave the whole screenshot here

you see this quote here?

this is what it actually says

I DON'T KNOW WHY THEY CHANGED IT BUT I THINK IT'S CUTE BECAUSE I THINK HE DIDN'T JUST SWALLOW THE WHOLE MOCHI

HE ATE IT NORMALLY AND THINKS HE'S GOT SOME ON HIS CLOTHES BC PEOPLE ARE LOOKING AT HIM LGHDSKLGSDFKS

why are u so cute aaaaaaa///////////

this is probably the translation of hríd's quotes i hate the most in english it just...sounds so rude

in japanese it's more like "could you please tell me if i'm wearing these clothes wrong? i'll fix it fast"

he's trying to be respectful to the hoshidans sobs

THESE TWO QUOTES ARE SO DIFFERENT BUT SO EQUALLY ADORABLE AND POWERFUL

THIS 180~195CM OR SO MAN IS THE MOST ADORABLE PERSON IN THIS WHOLE PUTRID PLANET AND IM GOING TO TELL YOU WHY

first, this is my fave quote on english

he sounds so confused as to why people think the hoshidan clothes suit him

HE'S. NOT. AWARE. OF HOW FUCKING GOOD HE LOOKS.

TELL ME THAT'S NOT THE CUTEST SHIT EVER HE JUST DOESN'T GET IT

to make it more adorable, in japanese, the original quote is something like "I wonder what makes a type of clothing 'suit' you..."

HE'S GOING ALL PHYLOSOFICAL ON THAT SHIT probably because people keep telling him he looks good in that kind of clothing

this man's density is so powerful that he can't even begin to understand people find him attractive and that the attire literally makes him go from a 10 to a 1000000000000000000

he doesn't get it and he wants to know if it's really true so he goes out of his way TO ASK KIRAN

i love hríd so much he's so adorabl e

i want to give him a hug

with this i finish my thread for now

for now

hopefully we will get another alt for hríd and i can come back to spam about how adorable his quotes are

please stan hríd he's literally an angel

#analyzing #overanalyzing actually #i read his whole quote set like 30 times for this #it took me a full hour to put this on tumblr from twitter aaaaaaa #I DON'T EVEN HAVE HALF A YEAR IN THIS FANDOM AND SINCE I CAN'T BE UP TO DATE WITH ENSTARS I TOOK IT UPON MYSELF TO ACTUALLY ANALYZE HRÍD AS #A CHARACTER #HE'S AMAZING PLEASE LOVE HIM #HE'S ACTUALLY WELL WRITTE IN CAN'T BELIEVE THIS #could've added facts about his name origin and such as well but #anything to do with his name and gjöll is just theory #pretty sure they sadly just chose a cool name set for the nifleans #hríd #hrid #icy blade #prince of nifl #feh #heroes #fire emblem #fire emblem heroes

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whatadaze · 5 years

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the long-awaited rant

(lol jk nobody was waiting for this)

i’m glad that i took the time to process the clips today + gather my thoughts + feelings before writing down my thoughts bc i’ll be honest, i was NOT a super happy camper this morning lol

but now, i am calm, cool, + collected so here goes

update: this is so fucking long holy shit like this is my warning to you right now lol

i’m just going to start off with where skamnl went “wrong” i guess you could say. i don’t know if it’s mistranslation (but at this point, i’m pretty sure it’s not) but for me, everything went to shit starting from the conversation with marie. don’t get me wrong, i was excited for liv to finally talk to her, after all, she’s the only other person liv would’ve been able to talk to in regards to the party. and i expected her to say something similar to the girl in the og (i forgot her name lol). what made me disappointed was when marie said nothing happened and liv felt relieved. i mean, her relief is understandable because she just found out she didn’t have sex with m*rris, but what happened to her is still...awful. liv has literal video proof of her getting assaulted + i think marie mentioned that she went to the bathroom so the viewers are aware that the video was probably filmed during that time. yes, m*rris was “so drunk he could barely stand on his two feet” but the video was like...fifteen seconds long and who knows how much time passed between m*rris passing out and marie going to the bathroom. anyway, m*rris’s involvement with the video is unquestionable because...it’s his hands...in the video...that he sent to liv...

but anyways,

so liv is relieved that she didn’t sleep with m*rris and everything seems like it’s going to be all good, right? wrong. liv confronts noah at school and everything goes to shit. i think this was skamnl’s attempt at the people need people clip, but it still kinda felt short? like something was missing. which i’ve been feeling like that for the past couple episodes but that’s another convo for another time. noah packs up his things, tells liv he doesn’t love her anymore, and liv let’s him go. she’s obviously upset, but i think in the next clip, it kind of seems like she’s kind of given up? she just seems tired + dejected and on top of that, she has that whole music label thing to deal with. which BY THE WAY, i’d like to mention that i loved how liv finally spoke up and told her dad what she truly felt. (woot woot) liv doesn’t know what to do anymore and it isn’t until ralph + esra kinda give her that PUSH that liv begins to think of a plan (was it a good plan? i’ll get to that in a bit lol)

i’m going to go on a little bit of a tangent that i already kinda talked about before but after the clip i just talked about, people were upset about esra telling liv to go beg for forgiveness because here’s a boy who writes you poems and you’re packing?! i don’t think she meant it that way. i think it was more like “here’s a boy that you love, that “i don’t know who i am anymore” kind of love, and you’re just letting him go?” ms. liv “i don’t have time for love” reijners giving up on the boy who finally got through that barrier she put around herself? esra knows that this isn’t what liv wants to do, and THAT’S why she said what she said.

ok so now we have today’s clips.

let me tell you, i was so frustrated because this is the last episode and we’re having THE most “ooc” clips right before the long-awaited party clip. i genuinely enjoyed the og people need people clip. i thought it was super important + when willhelm jumped out of the car, yes it was cheesy as fuck, but i kind of liked it? but i knew that with noah extra boom hitchhiking, they were going to go in a different route. did i rEALLY think that liv was going to dress up in a wedding dress and show up at his house? hell no. did that happen? yes. lol

but now that i had some time to process it, here’s my take on it.

so noah doesn’t know liv was sexually assaulted by m*rris and he most likely hasn’t seen the video. scratch that, i know for a FACT that he didn’t because i just refuse to believe that he would’ve reacted the way that he did if he watched it. so that being said, people have been giving noah shit since the whole “confrontation” clip but HE DIDN’T AND STILL DOESN’T know about the assault. whether or not liv tells him, we’ll just have to wait and see, but that’s fucking important. there’s already been a shit ton of posts talking about this so i will try to keep it short but if you see things from noah’s pov, his reaction makes sense. okay so with that in mind, liv knows noah doesn’t know. and judging from her reaction after her talk with marie, i don’t think liv is aware of how serious what she went through is? because she now believes nothing happened and everything is okay (maybe i’m wrong on that, but skamnl is portraying it that way). there was no “going to the police” or anything like that and frankly, i don’t think there will be. maybe if the season or episodes were longer we would’ve had that, because it is so important + necessary to include that. but they didn’t and so i’m just going to assume that the seriousness of what liv went through was kinda swept under the wrong (but like i said, we’ll have to wait and see because the episode still isn’t over). that is NOT me saying that it’s not important because I BELIEVE THAT WHAT SHE WENT THROUGH IS FUCKING SERIOUS. with that being said, liv is trying to figure out a way get noah back, to remind him “why they belong together” so to speak. i think she channeled her inner noah in this moment. she showed up at his place, did this ridiculous gesture of wearing a wedding dress to remind him of all the times he asked her to marry him, and told him he looked like a painting. these are all things NOAH would do, so of course it felt ooc. and the thing is, if you think about how guarded + reserved liv was in the beginning, this can be seen as growth. she is stepping out of her comfort zone, doing something that she would’ve never normally done for the boy that she loves. some might see it as a humiliating or degrading act, but i don’t think skamnl meant it to be. we see how nervous she is, we see how she doesn’t really know what to say + when noah leaves, it’s like “okay, i did this thing that i would’ve never done, gathered up all my courage to show him how much i love him, and he still left” so of course she cried in the park, hell I WOULD HAVE TOO. but when i first watched it, i was like, this is so embarrassing. i felt so fucking embarrassed for liv. i hated it. i HATED IT. and a little part of me still does, because i had this idealized version of liv in my head. BDE badass cool chick liv reijners. but the thing is, at the end of the day, she is still a teenage girl who is figuring out who she is, what she wants in life, and discovering what it’s like to be in love all at the same time. that’s a lot of shit to deal with.

so she does this grand gesture, and noah leaves, but he comes back. let’s be real, we ALL knew he was going to come back. noah “i’m out of breath running down the stairs” boom wouldn’t have survived hitchhiking with that huge-ass bag. which like, can i just ask: what the fuck was in that bag because noah wears like the five same shirts so...his art supplies? HAHA anyway, noah probably knew he was being an idiot + i’ve seen people say that he came back without any real reason to. this is what i think:

the clip cuts in and out of liv crying so we don’t actually know how long noah was gone for. we can assume that liv was alone for a while (at least 5-10 minutes or so?) i mean, you have to be crying a shit ton for your mascara to run like that. but anyway, if you assume that it took about that time for noah to decide to come back, he probably took that time to process everything. he knows that liv is sorry for not listening to him + seeing his brother. he’s one of the people who knows liv best, i mean, he was able to read her from the beginning. he knows that what she did took a lot of courage and is something that she would’ve normally never done but she did it for HIM. and i think noah realized all of this + finally went back. and then he sees liv, a sobbing mess, and he probably knew that this girl loved him back. all the insecurities he must’ve felt, the sadness + confusion, must’ve disappeared in that moment. seeing her in such a vulnerable (and embarrassing) state was enough to dispel his doubts.

and finally, after two weeks of hell, these two art dorks made up.

i think i touched on some of the main things people were upset about already but here’s some more things i’ve noticed

i’ve seen people say that the writers chose to humiliate liv + keep in scenes that were degrading or embarrassing to her character. i thought the same things okay!? i’ve felt ALL the things that most people felt the past two episodes + i still feel some of those things right now. but i’m trying to understand from the writers’ pov why they chose to keep these things in and certain things out. i don’t think keeping in the scene of liv chasing after noah was humiliating or degrading. it was important bc it showed liv finally come to terms with her feelings in PUBLIC. she didn’t care who saw her running after a boy or crying after him. she didn’t have her walls up anymore. and noah didn’t push liv (i hate when i see this argument). she fell. does it make it any better? of course not. but it’s important that we don’t villainize characters that shouldn’t be villainized. if anything everyone should direct their hate towards the real villain, fucking m*rris. and liv crying in the park, that was a problem too. why include this embarrassing moment, right? it’s so humiliating + liv would never! and you’re right, liv WOULD NEVER. but she is. because she’s in love. and love makes you do stupid things like cry in the park in the middle of the day while wearing a wedding dress. we’re seeing a different side of liv because liv being in love IS a different side of her.

i’ve seen people say noah was “victim blaming” and i can see where they’re coming from. he tells her “i told you to stay away from him” and then liv apologizes. yup, sounds like victim blaming to me IF HE KNEW WHAT HAPPENED. so here’s what i mean:

if we assume that all noah knows is that liv got super drunk + almost slept with m*rris, then yes, it’s kind of understandable why noah said what he said. is it any less shitty? OF COURSE NOT. i’m not saying that kind of behavior or response is okay. all i’m saying is that i don’t think he was trying to “victim blame” liv nor do i think that’s what the writers were intending. and i’m not even going to talk about the whole “crybaby” thing because there’s already a lot of posts on that + i’m not dutch lol

i feel like i didn’t mention a lot of things but this post is already hella long so i will wrap up with this:

do i think this season is perfect?

of course not.

it IS true that i think skamnl prioritized aesthetics over content. that’s not me saying that the clips were useless because when looking at the episodes as a whole, the clips are necessary. after all, it’s the little details that build up a character + help create the backstory. we learned so much about liv during this season and the characters are more fleshed out than the og + some remakes (i haven’t watched all so i can’t really form an actual opinion on that lol) but anyway, they changed up a lot of the characters and i love that they did that. but the thing that backfired on them is the thing that i love most. they kept the original storyline with completely different characters so sometimes, things they decided to do might’ve felt ooc.

another thing is that i still think the season was supposed to be longer, or at least the writers thought it would be. so if that was the case, then the feeling of something missing makes sense because there aRE things that are missing. TWO EPISODES WORTH OF CONTENT are missing. and it must’ve been super hard for the skamnl team to decide what to keep + what to throw out. do i think they made the best decisions with that? no. but i don’t think they’re would’ve been a perfect outcome either way.

and lastly, cancel culture. guys, this has been said many many times already but cancel culture is so fucking toxic. also, skam is a show that literally portrays imperfect characters making questionable decisions. it’s not supposed to perfect! how can you expect perfection while also expecting skam to be “realistic”. it’s just not possible. sometimes, the person you love won’t react the way you want them to. sometimes, you do crazy stupid things because in that moment you feel like there isn’t any other option. sometimes, you act fucking ooc because you can’t think straight.

that’s life! that’s the beauty of love + living!

so don’t hate or cancel the show because of some questionable decisions in the last two episodes because the first eight were (pretty close to) perfection if i say so myself.

oh! another thing i’ve seen

the girls let liv do this because when has liv ever suggested to do something like this? they all know how much she loves and misses noah. she has never asked them to do anything for her + here she is, asking them to help her with this crazy grand gesture she has planned. what did you expect? them to say no and not support her? it was obvious that they were all confused at first, but they saw how excited she was. she thought this was a good idea + they did what they do best, SUPPORTED HER. so no, i don’t think they were being ooc either.

okay wow.

i knew this was going to be long, but didn’t imagine it would ever be THIS long lol if you read the whole thing, thanks for taking the time to indulge me + my thoughts :-) i love you haha

i’m so sad this season is coming to an end, but i’m hoping that we will get a s3 renewal announcement soon! i love this show and the fandom (most of it anyway lol) and am thankful for all the highs and lows we’ve experienced together. i don’t know why the fuck i’m acting like the season is already over, we still have two more days hahahaha i’m feeling sappy now.

so in conclusion, this isn’t me saying that the two clips were perfect by any means. there were still a shit ton of issues like the lack of communication. the fact that noah still doesn’t know the truth about what happened between liv + m*rris. the fact that the sa plotline hasn’t been mentioned again. liv’s music label plotline. there are still SO MANY LOOSE ENDS. and idk how skamnl will wrap it up. i have a (bad) feeling that things will be “easily fixed” and that bit bothers me, but like i said before, it all boils down to the lack of time skamnl has. if they had longer episodes or a longer season, i just KNOW this season would’ve been (even more) amazing

maybe i’m just trying justify everything skamnl writers did + defend them because i just love the show so much haha maybe i’m just overanalyzing + overthinking (as always) but this is just MY opinion on the matter. if you disagree, that’s great! please let me know, i’d love to hear!!! that’s what i love about this fandom! we can all share our thoughts + feelings!

whew, okay now i’m really going to go now

byeeeeee :-)

#skam nl #why do i keep doing this lol

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sillyfudgemonkeys · 5 years

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My stance on P5 (cause apparently I need to explain myself :/)

So someone just told me someone was vagueing about me on the confessions blog (can’t say my name cause it’s against the rules but they’ll try to get as specific as they can 🙃 if you have issues just be a real anon hater and send to my inbox directly you coward). And I’m not going to do a reblog to that post, because I’m pretty sure that person must be on my blog. Because the post they were vagueing me about was......not tagged.....in the P5 tagged (I did not tag it as P5 nor Persona 5), it was just a post that was on my blog (now if it showed up in the tag or search I dunno why but I didn’t tag it for P5 for a gd reason cause I keep it to my blog). The post was me pointing out how P5 when they first enter Futaba’s dungeon they didn’t have shoes on, but after the cutscene they DID. The post was more comical (with me getting salty in the tags, but then you’d have to go out of your way to read my tags). And tbh, I’m half and half, yeah I know it’s a nitpick, and I’d just chalk it up to an animation error and let it go usually, but it’s P5 and that game is already inconsistent with it’s plot/world building/characters/anything important that I’m like “nah I’mma rag on it cause it’s just one more thing they screwed up” so I’m like half let it go and half rag on it (fun fact, when I saw they didn’t have shoes on I was gonna make a post saying “hey look this is cool, nice attention to detail” and then they messed it up literally 2 seconds later so dklsjf;afa yeah). (oh and btw, it wasn’t just “one” character, it was the whole PT cast at the time 8U” at least get it right 8U)

But the thing is......that was just a post on my blog, I’m not me berating the P5 tag. So that means you, person who vagued me, tend to go on my PERSONAL BLOG. So like....why are you on here? No, don’t ask me about me and P5, I will answer that, but you answer why are you bothering looking at my personal blog? Is it cause of certain content I post? Then just blacklist certain tags (like my “silly plays” tag cause nothing really interesting happens in that tag, or my more negative “persona problems” type tags), I know I need to be better at tagging my asks, but if you like my original content then just.....go to the OG content tags (aka videos/pictures/edits/coloring)? That way you avoid anything not made by me? Or if you don’t have a reason and you’re just here to be mad cause someone doesn’t like your game, then block me. You don’t seem to like me, so just....why are you here? You seem to want to ask why I’m here with P5, and I have my reasons, but if you don’t have a reason to be on my blog then why are you on it?

I’m not saying this to be mean, but I don’t want to be policed, esp if someone is going to be hypocritical about it. And it’s annoying to see vaguing (cause imo you are as bad as someone who sends anon hate, but you don’t have the balls to just send it to me directly XP)

Ok now where’s my stance on P5? I don’t like it, but it’s a part of a larger series and lore which I do LOVE! Which means, considering I’m a LORE WHORE, it doesn’t feel right to just skip a game esp if it could contain info about the MegaTen/Persona lore (or even Character lore) I want to know. In fact, I really hate it when I’m talking lore with someone and if expanded info is brought up from a side game they are like “Oh I didn’t play that game so it’s not canon” No Bethany, just because YOU didn’t play a game doesn’t mean it’s not canon. And no, no one is bullying you over the fact you didn’t play it, you just don’t like being wrong and the person was like “Ok well it IS canon and it’s in the game, you don’t have to play it but you.....can’t ignore this fact, also why are you arguing this part of the lore when it’s heavily established in said game you ignored???? I mean you do you but don’t get mad when someone corrects you. No one’s forcing you to do anything.” Ahhhhrrrrgggh so many convos I’ve seen happen, I’m not going to be on the end that I hate. DX<

Also, P5 is not the entire Persona fandom, so while I put up with it and indulge in it by association, it doesn’t have the ownership of the fandom (like with all the original games+ spinoffs+all remakes/ports and P5S/P5R included, but not mobile games, it’s only 23% of all of Persona in terms of game entries, and that’s overlapping with crossover games, and if we included other stuff P5 is def a minor aspect in terms of entries). It’s not that hard, I’m just a bigger all around Persona fan than I am a Persona 5 critic (I don’t want to say hater, because it feels like it sounds like I’m hating it just to hate it, when really it was a game I was excited for and loved and then it just burned me bad and I’m just dealing with the scorn). Always keep in mind, I loved P5 before I hated it, it’s probably why I’m as salty about it as I am, because I love P5′s potential and....I was just let down (it wasn’t unrealistic expectations, like I said earlier, P5 contradicts itself.....all over the place, it’s hard to ignore and it’s not something that was as big of an issue, or even an issue at all, in other games).

Why do I still post P5 stuff when I don’t like P5 (by which I mean...posting about the OG manga raws, or wanting to do a partial game to anime dub or even would be willing to help with editing a fandub for the anime)? Because I remember being a newbie Persona/Megaten fan, getting into the series, and wanting to know more about it and it’s side materials but then not being able to have access it any of it (because it was still prettty niche when I first joined and I had no money at the time). I want to give people access to it! Sure it’s harder for me to now to devote time to it (than it was a few years ago), but I want to help with giving access to this Persona/Megaten stuff now that I have some ability! And it also means P5 as well gets some of that love. 8U

As for why I was replaying P5, so this is one thing that’s making me wonder if you are a regular on my blog or not because I’ve been talking about playing the Korean version (but in my one post I forgot to type “silly plays P5/Persona 5 KOREAN” so yeah I forgot to specify Korean at the end). So tbh....I’m actually ignoring P5′s writing while I play (cause I’m just going through the gameplay motions), cause I don’t know korean. 8U And I’m mostly using that tag as a means to point out different things in the korean ver (no that much, but yes Ryu’s shoes ARE censored 8U). But why? Well.....I talk about it here and there but anon/person....1) I’m a trophy whore, I love plat trophies and P5′s is super easy I can get it (and I’m not above playing bad games, oh yeah burn, I’ve played a lot of bad games for plats, and I’ve also played the same games multiple times for plats, I do this to myself but really I don’t mind replaying P5 4+ times for 4+ plats esp since I don’t really have to pay attention). 2) I’m a big MegaTen/Persona collector, I want all the plats I can have (I plan on platting the other versions of the all the dancing games on Vita and PS4, P4G, and the versions of Catherine I don’t have, like I legit have a gd excel sheet keeping track of the versions of Megaten games I don’t have yet....I’m just doing P5 cause it’s 1) one of the easiest to do and 2) it was easier to get my hands on them atm). I don’t talk about my trophy hunting on here that much tbh, but that’s.....really a big reason why I’m doing it (plus with the Korean/CHinese ver I don’t have to pay attention to any story so it’s all good! :D) Yeah I do it to myself, but I don’t really mind. 8U And I mean I tend to keep most of my P5 issue on my blog too. I think the only two posts that I put in the P5 tag were 1) a few consistency issues I wanted to meme about (aka the I’m about to head out post, which was actually the 2nd post I made on that topic but I decided to just meme that one, so I thought it was better than me just bitching, at least I tried to make it a bit funny yet informational 8U), and 2) something that I tbh had an issue since I back when I liked P5 (aka wishing they worked on speeding up the loading times and the fast forward feature), so since I was playing the game I was like “That reminds me, man I hope they fix this in the re-release!”. As for english P5, the only reason I’ll be playing P5 OG in english is for either archiving reasons or research reasons (probably both at once so I don’t have to play through it more than once again).

As for P5R, uhhhhh I’m excited for Kasumi (Jose is cool too, and the new dungeon has me interested too, and all the P2 demons coming back to it makes me wonder what else is/if anything is coming back), she’s my main draw. Yeah it’s connected to P5R, but she looks so much like Hamuko I JUST HAVE TO KNOW WHAT’S UP WITH HER! Hamuko’s my girl, and I need to know if Atlus is going to do something with that, or if I need to be pissed for them literally lifting Hamu’s face! Am I gonna get pissy about P5R’s new add-ons (aka, I’m aware that P5R is probably going to keep the issues from OG P5, so I’mma just judge P5R based on it’s new content)? Yeah, if they kept up the same writing P5 OG had. So yeah, I’m probably going to get pissy if they eff it up, but I’m not going in pissy, going in with really low expectations tbh, but I’m giving it a chance. But if they don’t eff up the new stuff then......that’s good! It means they did something right. So far Kasumi is not Marie so we’re off to a good start. I’m hoping the keep that momentum. 8U

So yeah, I think I have valid reasons for staying, maybe you don’t like it anon/person, but they are there.

tldr; someone feels like the need to police me despite the fact they could just ignore me (even tho it seems like they specifically came to my blog to get mad, rather than me clogging up the tag, like I post there maybe once or twice every 2 months). My stance on P5 is that I deal with it cause it’s part of a bigger fandom I’m a part of and the fact I love the lore of that bigger fandom so it’s not like I can ignore it. I also have a Playstation trophy problem. 8U And I’m excited for Kasumi is that so bad???? (also I didn’t mention it, but Anne/Haru are enough to keep me around 8U)

#silly talks #i'm actually on my last 3 trophies for korean so after that i"m going to chinese #I don't mind the new teacher #not my main draw but I'll give him a shot #also mementos mission is a good manga to read #not canon and still perpetuates issues with mako's character #and the fact that those guys totally gave that one shadow a mental shutdown i'm not letting that go (esp since if they did that'd be so #INTERESTING please dont' let that go to waste mangaka ;w;)#but the mystery is really fun and I like it #i really need to post those raws tho #fdklsajf;lakjfl;a i just....oh man......it's a lot #it's easy to find me and look at my trophies #i have 151 plats yeah I have issues #getting plats is fun ok???? :w;#but yeah I'll try to get working on the P5 OG raws #i love anne and haru ok????#sure I have issues with their writing but I just really like them still

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hjertetssunnegalskap1 · 6 years

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Tuesday Fic Recs (17.07.18 - 06.08.18)

Halla! I have taken some weeks off from reccing fics, but here are some of the fics I fell in love with during the last three weeks (sorry if this gets a little long on your phones):

Theme: Pulchritude. by Heroine (Evoxine) (1/1)

Summary: In which Even's family runs a flower shop, Isak literally falls for Even, and Even witnesses Isak cry over a wrap that is too spicy for Isak's poor taste buds.

Along the way, they fall in love.

Comment: Ah, I love this story, it's really sweet! ❤️ I love Isak and Even here, and their friends too. It was just so lovely to see their relationship develop. This fic gives me all the good feelings.

Not the End by nofeartina (8/?)

Summary: Sometimes a connection is so powerful that it can bend the fabric of space and time.

Or the parallel universe AU where Isak and Even find each other over and over again.

My comment: This fic is really intriguing, and I love it. ❤️ It visits some dark places and it is painful at times, but it’s also beautiful, magic and gripping and I’m hooked. I loved the latest update, too!

you took me with a glance by everythingislove (narrylife) (1/1)

“I was just wondering if it hurt?”

“If what hurt?”

“When you fell from heaven?”

The boy sends him an entirely unamused expression. “Did you just call me Satan?”

Or: for a Hei Briskeby video, Even tries using cheesy pick-up lines on strangers. It goes better and worse than he expects.

Comment: This was a really sweet and funny meet-cute story! ❤️ I always love when Isak and Even are dorky and sweet like they are here.

a taste of you and me by skamz (1/3)

Isak finds himself frowning slightly, now. Improvising? Random ideas? Tweaking recipes?

He can't help but disagree with people who have this kind of approach to baking. Honestly, in what world is that the best thing about baking? It can't be, because it's just—

It's just risky, and you run the chance of ruining everything by doing things that way.

Baking involves following specific steps and not deviating from them, and doing so in order to end up with something right and good. In order to not risk ending up with something that's a mess and in order to know what to expect.

It just shouldn't be whatever this guy described it as.

Or: for Isak, baking is a science and for Even, it's more of an art, and they face each other in a baking competition.

Comment: This is such a lovely and sweet story! ❤️ I love how the boys approach learning differently in the kitchen, and how Even challenged Isak so that he tried something new. Now I can't wait to read the rest!

wait for me to come home by allyasavedtheday (6/10)

Summary: It really is a nice place.

And the dynamic between the three of them is one he could see himself settling into comfortably if given the chance.

Less than five minutes later they return from the kitchen with Eskild leading the charge. “It’s official!” he announces. “We want you to move in!”

“Really?” Even asks, feeling a wide smile stretch across his face. It almost feels too good to be true.

He’s finally doing it. He’s going out on his own and living his life on his own terms. And he just secured the first step.

An evak New Girl au.

Comment: Ah, this story is so sweet, it’s perfect. ❤️ I love how Isak and Even is written, and the other characters, too. And the sweet tension between Isak and Even is just so good. The boys are slowly figuring stuff out and they're just too cute, I love it so much!

Masters of their own domain by evakuality (6/6)

Summary: “Get out of my fucking way, Jonas,” Isak is saying as he pushes the box he’s holding into the back of his friend. Even stumbles to a halt behind him, alerted by Isak’s complaint to the sudden blockage in the stairwell above him. Jonas, for his part, flips Isak off behind his back, making Isak shift the box he’s holding with a groan, pressing it against the wall to steady it. That shift pulls the t-shirt Isak’s wearing hard against the planes of his back, which is right in front of Even’s eyes as he stands on a lower step, and that in turn makes Even’s mouth go dry.

Aka, a week in their life after they move into their new apartment.

Comment: I’ll say it again: Oh. My. God. ❤️ I’m so grateful for this amazing birthday gift of a fic. This is so sweet and it has it ALL! The boys are so sweet together, and Isak is so strong and they are just like I imagine them. I love that this is a fic where we get to see the boys together, as a couple. Actually, I didn’t realize how much I missed these boys before I started to read this fic.

Holy Fuck by arindwell

Summary: "Baby?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you please come over here and put your dick in my face?"

Isak looks up instantly at that, with this expression of shock and delight that Even loves, and which makes his heart clench in his chest.

Comment: This was such a cool birthday gift and such a surprise, so I’ll say it again: Oh my god!!! ❤️ This fic is such a firework of sweet, funny boys and hotness! The boys are so them, too. I love it. I really hope I get to read some more smoking hot scenes from this writer.

Two Night Stand by sundaymournin

Isak and Even met on Grindr and are forced to extend their one-night stand because of a snowstorm (based on the film).

Comment: I don't know the movie this fic is based on, but I really like this fic. ❤️ It was sweet, hot and funny. The ending was adorable, too. This fic had everything, really! :)

Uke 27 Even Bech Næsheim by Ane_Rikke_Jegass (orphan_account) (5/5)

Summary: Isak hadde bestemt seg for at disse airbnb-greiene var noe ordentlig herk. Og det var så godt når man hadde bestemt seg for noe. Da kunne man legge vekk den irriterende tvilen, og heller tilpasse seg det man hadde bestemt seg for. Beslutningsvegring? Heller beslutningsmani, si. Bestem deg og tilpass deg. Ferdig med saken.

Comment: Ah, denne var fin! ❤️ Jeg fikk et tips om denne, og det er jeg utrolig glad for. Det var så lett å kjenne igjen Isak og Even, og historien var riktig godt skrevet.

i ain't no hercules by grinsekaetzchen

Sometimes Isak thinks it would be easier if he could tell himself a story. A story of how the world came to an untimely end, of how it burned to the ground and how the few survivors stared on in horror, illuminated by the flames. A story of those survivors going on to save others in spite of everything. And later, when they were successful in repopulating the Earth, they would be called heroes. There would be celebrations in their honour. There would be people alive because of them.

The problem is: Isak may be one of the survivors, but he’s definitely not one of the heroes.

[Part 2 of the Post-Apocalypse AU "if you must live, darling one, just live"]

Part 3 of a universe created by ourselves

Comment: Damn. This is so good. Painful, but good. ❤️ I have somehow missed some of the earlier parts of this series too, so I read three of them in a row. And I'm just speechless. I love this so much.

(you'll always be my) thunder by kittpurrson (3/3)

They’re here for two weeks of pure bliss: rowing, racing, and scouting out the other clubs to see where they’re at before the next racing season begins. All Isak cares about are the lake and the wake--they’re the things that make the difference.

Then, of course, he meets Even. [A Sommersturm AU]

Comment: This is such a good fic, I just love it so much. ❤️ The setting is interesting, and I love how it's all set up. The characterisation is so right and I love the vibe of it all. Actually, I have thought about them several times on my holiday, when I have seen rowers or other things that reminded me of them. Now I kinda hope that we get to see more of them.

tie my heartstrings by Fxckxxp (1/1)

That boy wearing Even's old sweater is really, really cute.

Comment: This is such a sweet, sweet story. ❤️ So cute. It’s really well written, too. There’s not much more to say, really, it’s perfect. I love it and this must be just the right fic to read when it’s grey and raining and you need something to pick you up.

something in the language of trees by scarletbluebird (1/1)

Summary: Meet Isak Valtersen: Premed student by day, insomniac shit poet by night. Future doctor? Who the fuck knows.

He’s passing through the main square when he sees it, pinned up to the message board. Bright pink and flapping in the wind. At first he thinks he’s misread so he stops and back tracks, pressing the paper flat against the board. Nope, it still says the same thing:

looking for a friend for my 23 year old son. Pays 500kr/wk. serious inquiries only please.

“What the fuck?” He squints at it, suspiciously. Could it be some weird project the psych kids are doing?

He waffles for a moment but ultimately decides to take a picture of the flyer with his phone. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say. Plus, Eskild is gonna start selling his stuff online while Isak is away in class if he doesn’t start paying his portion of the rent on time. He tells himself he doesn’t actually have to call the number as he shuffles his way to class.

AU where Isak's job really was to be Even's friend

Comment: I got a tip about this fic and I’m really glad I read it! ❤️ I somehow missed it when it was posted, probably because I was sceptical about the part with the note. But this is really great, and so beautiful. I enjoyed it so much.

in retrospect, better by vesperthine (1/1)

Summary: This whole thing, this night, it’s like a montage; recreating important nights in infinity, calling those moments back like cutting out pieces of photographs. Picking the good parts, amplifying them through the lens of knowing it all turned out well.

Comment: Damn. This fic is so beautiful, lovely and real, and so hot, too. ❤️ I love the banter between the boys, saying a lot about them and their relationship without really saying it. It must be an artform in itself to do that.

nothing sure in this world by withoutwords (1/1)

“What’s this?” Sana asks, pointing at something over Even’s shoulder. “Cheese toast? On a wedding menu?”

“It’s a thing.”

“Right.”

Comment: This is a really lovely story, and so amusing, too. ❤️ I have this ridiculous thing that I kinda avoid proposals in fics, probably because I’m a cold hearted idiot or something, but I’m so glad I discovered this lovely, lovely fic. It was so worth it.

written in the stars by ourlovelybones (2/2)

Summary: Even sits down on the floor beside him, his fingers playing with his laminated VIP badge. “You’re overthinking the crowd thing. They weren’t dead, per se. You’re just a little tired.”

Isak is very tired, but it’s still not the right word to explain the heavy feeling in his bones and the empty weight in his heart. He should be over the moon right now. He should be dancing with Even to the venue’s after-show playlist and drinking beer to celebrate his best friend agreeing to finish out the rest of his U.S tour with him. It’s more than exhaustion he feels but Isak can’t quite describe exactly what it is - and certainly not to the person who took a whole two weeks off of work to come on this tour.

{the one where even follows isak around on tour but isak doesn't want to deal with his feelings}

Comment: Ah, this fic really gripped me. ❤️ Isak and Even are so real and their surroundings are so vividly described, that I get sucked right in. And the pining... The second part was so heartbreaking that I almost wanted to cry as well. Now I only wish there was more.

cut off my fingers to touch your smile by bbyfruit (3/8)

There’s a soulmark on his arm, unmistakable in its swirling colors, blues and reds and purples, and it’s exactly where he collided with the kid earlier.

“Oh, shit,” Even whispers, staring at it, mesmerized.

Mikael looks at him halfway amazed and halfway worried. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yeah,” Even says grimly. “I guess I met him.”

Comment: Ah, I love this story. ❤️ I love Isak and Even and I really really love that you can have more than one soulmate in this verse. Now I’m desperate to figure out what happens next.

_____

I hope you find something you like! For better and more well-articulated fic recs, check out the great rec blogs @evakteket and @evaksbinder . Oh, and you can also check out all the interesting fics and lovely art that come from the Skam Reverse Bang this week.

Good reading!

#skam #fics #fic rec tuesday #I should have said a lot more about each fic #but this is three weeks of reading peeps #check them out #lots of good reads

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