#I find I dislike it less when I write the script in real time and write it as I'm lettering

[bleaksqueak]

realizing I did not letter the next page that goes up this week and that I have to do that still...

[h-worksrambles]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: I wanna talk about Tora

With the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 less than two weeks away, I’ve been thinking a lot about Xenoblade and the Xeno series in general. And I wanted to use this time to talk about a thought I’ve had for a long time about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 specifically. That being, the one character in the main party who had severe missed potential, the Nopon inventor, Tora.

Now, before I go on, I want to pre-emptively state something. I love Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It’s one of my favourite games on Switch and I go back and forth between it and Xenosaga Episode III as my second favourite game in the whole Xeno series. Furthermore, it has overall my favourite cast of characters in the franchise. It’s full of likable, complex figures with great chemistry. But no game is perfect, and even a wonderfully realised title is going to have missed opportunities. I know how much flack 2 gets from portions of the fanbase and I don’t want this post to either become a rallying point for bad faith criticism, or for fans of the game to feel like their game is gettting still more unneccesary hate. Plus, much like the last time I did one these character critiques/rewrites, I must remind you that writing from scratch is incredibly hard, and me playing script doctor after the fact is not me claiming to be a better writer than the people who worked on the game. Everything I say comes from a place of love for this title. But I think Tora is the victim of several missed chances and poor writing choices that result in him being the weakest member of the party by a long shot, probably the only one I dislike. And I wanted to talk about how he might have been improved. Also full spoilers for Xenoblade 2 naturally.

Tora enters the story in Chapter 2 when he shelters Rex and Pyra from Ardanian soldiers. Tora is a Nopon mechanic who lacks the aptitude to resonate with a Core Crystal and become a Driver. Becuse of this, he and his family have been working for generations to build an artificial Blade, one that can resonate with anyone, regardless of potential. This Blade is the android girl, Poppi. Tora and Poppi befriend Rex and Pyra and join them on their search for Elysium, as Tora hopes to one day find his father, who vanished several years ago.

There’s a lot about Tora’s character that does actually work. Tora is very different from previous Nopon party members. Unlike the deceptively mature Riki or the outspoken, sometimes cocky, Tatsu, Tora is an introvert who spends most of his time tinkering in his home. He doesn’t have much in the way of friends or a social life and latches on to Rex very quickly. To him, Rex, this ordinary kid who became a hero by wielding the legendary Aegis, is exactly what he wishes he could be, and he respects him greatly. He’s basically a nerdy shut-in orphan learning to get out and make friends, all while fulfilling his dream of being a real Driver.

Unfortunately, whille Tora is pretty well established as a character, between a lot of ideas not being fully explored with him, and poorly executed comedy that actively makes him less likable, he falls short compared to the rest of the characters. I think the first step to fixing Tora is pretty obvious to anyone who’s played the game: We’re taking any of the ‘jokes’ about him being into maids or moe, and we’re throwing them out of the window. I was gonna talk more at length at this, but frankly I believe it’s self explanatory. The last thing we needed was to make this character into Mineta 2.0. Stuff like this casts really ugly implications on to Tora and Poppi’s relationship, which we need to buy into for this character to work. But it comes up in Poppi’s very first scene and makes an awful first impression, especially considering Poppi goes on to be arguably one of the best characters. And it’s not like it’s in service of any character arc. Whenever it comes up in cutscenes or heart to hearts, it only amounts to ‘Tora does/implies something creepy, the other characters get annoyed, but he gets off with just a slap on the wrist’. I think a lot less people would deride Xenoblade 2 for being ‘too anime’ if it didn’t pull stunts like this. Not funny. Never funny. Always gross. Stop it. The other issue is that Tora is relatively tangential to the story, with his only big moment of relevance being Chapter Four. Problem is, Chapter Four...kind of sucks. It’s a filler episode full of half explored ideas, cringy jokes, and the worst dungeon in the game by far (Screw you, Old Factory).

This is where that plot about Tora’s missing dad gets resolved. When the party is in Mor Ardain, they find another artifical Blade, who Tora recognises as Lila, Poppi’s prototype, who was stolen the same night Tora’s father, Tatazo, vanished. It turns out that Tatazo was kidnapped by a group of Nopon, led by Charmain Bana, who wanted to use his research to create weapons of war to sell to the already tense countries of Mor Ardain and Uraya, lining their pockets as the people of these Titans go to war.

I think this is a great idea to introduce to Tora’s character. Tora and his family designed Poppi with the best of intentions shut up that other thing isn’t canon in my version. They wanted to become Drivers, and to allow even those like them who lacked the aptitude to do the same. But now that same technology is being used by selfish people as a tool for war. And it gets worse, because by Chapter Six, Torna are using that same technology against the party. Tora’s family legacy is now being used by a group of murderers who want to destroy the world and kill his friends. This could have been used to make the young, naive Tora reflect on his part in this, since he and his family effectively opened the door to allow them all to do this. Heck, we could have even seen him wonder if it was even right to create Poppi at all. But he doesn’t. Tora gets briefly mad at Bana but otherwise never brings it up again , nor does his outlook or attitude change at all. Sure Poppi gets a power up, and this is actually a great moment for her. But this is supposed to be the resolution of Tora’s character arc and he doesn’t do or say anything meaningful. Plus, after this he fades into the background, only providing unfunny otaku jokes. Sure, Mòrag and Zeke also kind of fade in and out of relevance, but at least their dialogue and actions in major story scenes subtly show new or changing aspects of their characters as the story progresses. I can’t say the same for Tora.  The thing is, we do get hints of this theme...in Poppi’s arc. In Chapter Eight, Poppi reflects on her nature as a living weapon, on what her technology could be used for down the line, with or without her say in the matter. And this is something Mythra is able to empathise with, having spent centuries being afraid of her own power, and wondering if the world would be better off without her. It’s a wonderful scene for both characters. But I can’t help but think this should have been an ongoing concern for both Tora and Poppi’s characters for most of the game, rather than just bringing it up now with just Poppi. It could have given Chapter Four more weight if its events had more of an impact on Tora, and if Poppi picked up on Tora’s own doubts, before she voices them to Mythra.

You could even have given more substance to the PoppiQTπ sidequest. Maybe make this scene the resolution to this arc as Tora, now reunited with his father, talks through his worries with him, as they work on upgrading Poppi, if he’s ok with knowing that people could use their research for evil, only for Tatazo to sadly explain that that’s the sad reality of being a pioneer. You can’t predict what your discovery could one day result in, and it’s up to Tora to decide if he’s willing to press on despite that. Then after QTπ is complete, we could see Tora and the now almost fully sentient Poppi, discuss this, reaffirming that Tora’s proud of Poppi, that he’s glad they met, and that they both still want to be Driver and Blade knowing the risks. I actually like the subtle detail that PoppiQTπ looks a lot like Mythra. It’s a great subtle expression both of how far Tora’s skills as an inventor have come, and of his admiration of Rex. He’s built a mini-Aegis so he can be like his hero. But I think this side quest could have been a much stronger conclusion to Tora’s character arc if the writers cut the cringy humour, and went all the way with the themes and ideas they set up.  

Truthfully, I didn’t need to change much because the ideas for Tora’s character arc are all there. What it lacks, is any real response from Tora that suggests the game’s story has impacted him in any way. But in the actual game, he feels like the exact same character he was when the game started, and compared to how much growth the various heroes and villains of Xenoblade 2 go through, he sticks out like a sore thumb.

Tora had the potential to be a really sympathetic and interesting character, a lonely boy genius who made a huge step in his scientific field, who gets to see the world with his new friends, but also has to come to terms with the ugly realities of not just the world at large, but his own creation. Unfortunately, the writing doesn’t commit to the ideas it introduces with his character, and drags him down with misguided attempts at humour, that cause many players to dismiss him outright. At best, he’s an accessory to Poppi, who is a far better developed and more likable character. The result is a huge wasted opportunity in an otherwise splendid game. And that’s a real shame.

[marshmallowprotection]

Seeing how many ppl asked for matchups I got curious.... idk why I was so hesitant at first but lets go (if someone recognises me from this no you don't, my identity is a mystery shush)

Both romantic and platonic are fine, whichever you find works best honestly! I’m lesbian but I don’t mind being paired with men since this is all fictional anyways.

Alright so. I’m an ISTP-T and my one hobby is drawing (unless daydreaming for hours on end counts as a hobby). I’m an introvert and I have lots of trouble with opening to new ppl but I really cherish the friends I do manage to make. I love living in my own little world and thinking about my ocs who are basically one of the only thing that truly makes me happy and I love imagining a cosy little future for myself even though I have no real ambitions beside continuing to draw and getting better at it.

I’m very good at school stuff and all (I’m a genius but also rlly dumb and uncultured and lazy), I’m very stressed all the time, I often dislike elements about myself like my appearance or my personality and I’m kind of a cleaning freak. If there’s one thing I hate about ppl it’s ppl who don’t put in the effort to better themselves and their surroundings. If there’s one thing I love about ppl it’s ppl who take the time to understand others and still try their best when things are hard. I think having some kind of drive, even if it’s not what’s considered as a « noble goal » and may seem insignificant or silly is admirable.

Something I think is important to know is I despise the idea of the tranquil committed lifestyle as a concept in fictional stuff (I don’t really mind it irl but a matching would count as fictional so I’m adding it to this). For reference Saeran’s normal ending made me want to tear my brain out of my head bc of how torturingly boring that life would be. The idea of not having any option to get out of something is something that terrifies me which makes me hate when characters talk about getting married, having children, etc. The fact I move very slow when it comes to romantic stuff doesn’t help and is my main problem with the mysme cannon route bc dude we’ve known each others for less than two weeks.

Now this is only about fictional characters so I don’t know how relevant it is, but one thing about me is I have terrible taste. Irredeemable villains? Give them to me. Characters that are universally hated and are so one dimensional it’s laughable? Come here babe, I’ll invent you a whole backstory and make you my favourite character. Maybe I’m a contrarian, maybe I just like blank slate characters bc it gives me room to write them how I like them, maybe my gay awakening being through the bullies/rivals in otome games permanently affected me. But there is nothing more shameful to me than the characters I do actually end up liking.

Anyways that’s it I don’t want to rant too much about myself. I rlly like your writing and I’d like you to know you have inspired at least a hundred hours of daydreaming (though most of it used your aus as base and just expanded on them by going completely off script. But know that I mean this with tremendous respect and it doesn’t take just any old fanfic to get my brain engine going that hard)

I match you with...

Yoosung!

You view the world in a very particular way. You like things to happen realistically. You don't want a suspension of reality. You want to put in the effort even if that takes a lot longer than it would for other people. You just want to know that what you're getting into is going to work out for you, and there's really nothing wrong with that at the end of the day. Everybody has a comfort zone and you know what yours is. You should commend yourself from being able to understand what it is that you want. With that in mind, you need somebody cut understands your perspective and wouldn't try to push you into a corner. 

You're going to have to hear me out on this one because you might not get it at first. If there's one thing that we know about Yoosung, it’s that he’s driven. He gets a little lost in life because of his grief but that doesn't mean that he gives up on everything. He struggles to find himself and it's thanks to your compassion that he's able to have a better understanding of himself and the things that he wants.

His route if given a bit more time would realistically work out for you. Because it goes in such a way where you start out as laughing together as friends before he formally ask if he can be your pre-boyfriend instead of your boyfriend. This would be his first relationship so it makes sense. You're going to work with him slowly on this to build an interesting relationship. You're testing the waters and it's not as if you're exactly dating, but it's figuring out if that's something that you want to do.

You and Yoosung could drive each other to your passions and goals. It feels like that would be a nice balance for you, regardless of if you were to date or not at the end of the day. A little optimism would never hurt so Yoosung would be the counter to your realism. It’s nice to have someone who believes in you no matter what happens, y’know? Be grounded but hopeful, that’s what Yoosung does for you.

[crimefightingspiderguy]

My final thoughts on WandaVision (so it goes without saying if you haven’t finished it, don’t look past Vision)

What I liked:

• I loved the sitcom concept, super cool. And finding out why she hung onto sitcoms for comfort was just *chefs kiss* pay off wise.

• I loved how it started out as a slow build up (but I do think it would’ve worked better to have longer episodes to make things fit better and not feel as rushed towards the end)

• I loved Darcy, Monica and Jimmy’s trio. They were so fantastic together and the actors all did great.

• On the note of Monica, IM SO EXCITED TO HAVE A WOMAN OF COLOR SUPERHERO (especially since she’ll eventually be a main character not just a “sidekick”) 🥳

• I LOVED Pietro/Fietro/Ralph/Uncle P (whoever the hell he actually was). I obviously have some dislikes about the last episode, but we’ll get to that later. I loved how fun Evan Peters was. He really did a fantastic job even though no one knew what was going on with his character, he ate that shit up and left no crumbs.

• Wanda and Visions love story is so much better now that we got to build up to it rather than us just jumping into it (how I felt in Infinity War)

• SCARLET WITCH BOUT TO MAKE ME ACT UP. HOLY JIMMINE CRICKETS WAS SHE LOOKING GORGEOUS AND POWERFUL IN THAT LAST EPISODE

• Billy and Tommy are some of the sweetest children I think I’ve ever seen in a movie/show world and I love them with all my heart and soul and I really hope they do return.

• ITS BEEN AGATHA ALL ALONG 💃🏻🕺🏽💃🏻🕺🏽💃🏻

• “what is grief if not love persevering”

• “we’ve said goodbye before so it stands to reason... we’ll say hello again” IM CRYING JUST THINKING ABOUT IT.

• Wanda tucked in Billy and Tommy so they’d be asleep before they were sucked away with the hex 😭😭😭

• “thank you for choosing me to be your mom” 😭

• That second end credit scene with Scarlet Witch astral projecting was so trippy (I love it) and the boys calling to her broke my dang heart.

• overall the special effects looked really cool

• omg Elizabeth Olsen breaking her back to create the hex was 10/10 she’s so dedicated to the motions/physical acting of it all. Also all her crying scenes, it all felt very real and it really made me sob whenever she was hurting.

Things I didn’t like:

• Episode length. I understand they wanted it to go with the length of a normal sitcom, but it doesn’t work when you’re flashing back and forth between the sitcom and the real world. The time got messy towards the end and things felt rushed like the Vision vs. White Vision battle was just boring because it had no climatic energy to it.

• Too many loose ends/wasn’t clear enough. By that I mean, who was Jimmy’s missing person that led to him learning about the hex? (I’m hoping it was Evan Peters’ character, but more on that later). What happened to White Vision? Does Wanda have Agatha’s power now or did she just make it so she couldn’t use them?

• Ralph Bohner? Really Disney/Marvel? Really? You’re telling me you got Evan fricking Peters just so you could stunt cast and fuck with the audience and end it with a dick joke? Not cool.

• Why no Darcy in the last episode other than 2 seconds :(

• Hayward... Thats it. I just really hate him.

• some of the script/lines were a little questionable... like idk a lot of Agatha’s lines once she was revealed as the villain just were lack luster after her amazing intro and they were sort of tacky.

• I didn’t like how they hyped up certain things just for them to not really be significant (like Monica saying she knew a space engineer who could get her in and it was all mysterious, then not even ending up needing the truck they built or the character not really having much of a “wow” show up)

• I’m back to the Evan Peters thing. Why would they hype up his character’s mystery identity for him to just be a random dude named Ralph Bohner??? That’s such terrible writing (obviously I’m not an expert writer, but I actually did internship at a magazine where I had to read submitted stories and judge them and see if they were worthy of publication. And my minor in college was writing. So I do know a little about story telling, and something is off about the way they did this.). It’s either the fact that it’s just plain bad writing, or it’s a misdirect. I want to believe that Marvel knows how much people would enjoy EP in this show and would eventually expect more from him in the MCU. Now obviously, this is Wanda’s show and she decides what makes it on and what doesn’t, so maybe Ralph is the missing person Jimmy was looking for, but Wanda doesn’t know that, nor would she want it on her show. Maybe he really is Quicksilver but they put him in the Witness Protection Program when he came over from another universe? Or maybe he really is just a nobody who Agatha lived with because his house was conveniently close to Wanda’s. Or maybe he is someone of significance because who just has a random headshot lying around with their proof of ownership of their house and other paperwork and then laughs at their name Bohner even though if they’d had that name their whole life they’d be sick of the dick jokes?? Maybe they left it vague enough so they could gauge audience reaction to EP, if it was good they could come back to it in a mutants movie/show (or maybe even Doctor Strange 2 or Spider-Man 3) or if it was bad, just leave it at he’s a random person who already lived in Westview. Idk all I know is if they don’t end up bringing him back I’m definitely gonna be significantly less interested in any morphing of the XMen and mutants into the MCU.

Lastly, I just wanna say the actors and actresses all did fantastic (especially Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany). They all play such complex roles this time around and it really showed how passionate they were about this project. I loved them all so much and they truly brought this show to life (yes it has flaws, but it was their first attempt at a MCU timeline show, and the actors did what they could with what they were given so none of my criticism go towards them). I really enjoyed this overall (and I’m genuinely sad to see it ending) and I’m looking forward to seeing Wanda being a bad mamma-jamma in Doctor Strange 2.

[chaosandstardust]

yo that ask talking about Kyoani was weird. Pretty sure the surviving family members would be thinking about other things than reused animation.

Anyway, I don’t blame the animators at all, they’ve gotta deal with ridiculously tight deadlines and possibly lots of overtime. And it’s Japan so I guess it would be possible overtime x 10. It’s not like they’re the ones who set the schedule and making directing decisions.

As someone who’s been in the industry, would it be fair to side-eye the upper management? I mean, I do question the people who okayed certain parts of the script. *cough* Rion/Rin comparison, comparing harassment to phone addiction, etc. *cough*

This is a layered issue. Because I do understand where people are coming from when they critique a show, and I understand why people use the term "lazy". I've used it. Because there are parts of Yashahime that do feel lazy. It feels like it was only thrown in there to fill time or because they had no better ideas.

But, on the flip side, if they were given no time to come up with better ideas, are they lazy, or are they just not given the time or money?

I'm going to use Naruto as an example here because Naruto would hit my list of top 10 series I would vanquish off the face of this earth if given a chance. Mostly due to how much time I've wasted thinking about it. It's extremely badly written. There are too many characters, multiple bloated arcs, the themes are a mess, and has less and less focus the longer the series goes on. But is Kishi really to blame for all of these aspects, or was it his boss who demanded a new chapter a week for the fifteen years and overworked him to the point where the man couldn't even go on his honeymoon until it was over also to blame here?

Now, it's totally fair to critique Kishi for the writing decisions that he made. Especially ones that he didn't seem to care that much about fixing, like his "I can't write female characters" BS and how he seems to be determined that Naruto be right all the damn time. But I also think the guys over at Weekly Shounen Jump are just as much if not more to blame for how the series went. If he had been given more time to develop his ideas, some of which I to this day find very intriguing and have borrowed them for my own work, it may have gone a lot differently. He's outright admitted that he was making stuff up as he went because his bosses demanded more chapters. I don't like him, and I think he has the tendency to take the easy way out when it comes to his arcs, but he's working on such a ridiculous timeline that I can't really blame him for taking the easier route, you know?

I get disliking Sumisawa. I have my issues with the man. He wrote a good chunk of the original Sailor Moon anime and I'm very bitter about how that show handled certain aspects from the manga, like the Usagi/Mamoru relationship. Like, I get it.

He still made the bad decisions, like putting Inukag away for 14 years, making his favouritism of Sesshomaru blatantly obvious, and worst of all, putting SessRin together without considering the broader implications or how fans of the original would feel. He didn't even have the decency to build up to it, and as far as I'm aware, hasn't made any real statement about it. He didn't hire any female writers to write the "girl power" show (after the 'sexism is bad' arc, I've decided my take on if you want to write about women and the patriarchy is you need to hire women to help you). These are all things he did and he should be called out for that.

But that doesn't mean that he hasn't been overworked and that doesn't mean he wasn't given a very small amount of time to write the show. The show was announced in March of 2020, his last credited show before that was in August of 2019. I don't know how fast the production rate is in Japan or how involved he was in that show (it just says he was a 'screenwriter' and that could've mean a variety of things), but he could've been on it right until it aired. He may have been given the green light by then, he may not have. My personal theory is that he probably only found out he was making Yashahime a few months before we found out; I literally said that in my video. Then there's all the pre-production, getting a writing team together, making sure actors are available, hiring new actors, etc, etc. This can take months or even years to do.

Or maybe that's not what happened. Maybe he was given all the resources in the world and told to go wild and he pissed it away by being prideful (D&D are my mortal enemies for doing exactly this). But I sincerely doubt that it was just that. Yashahime is a show that feels extremely low budget and like it wasn't given a lot of time to be written or the care that it needed to flourish. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a lot of the writers and the animators on this show see it as a simple paycheque for them. Like do you guys think the people who write hallmark movies do it because they're super passionate about Christmas? No, it's a job. And yeah, you can critique them for doing his job badly, but if they're just looking to bring home some money and they're only given a few months to do it, it's probably not going to be great. All but two episodes of season 2 were written by Sumisama. This is absolutely insane to me, depending on how much control he had over the rest of the production. If there is one thing that all people need to realize about writing is that good writing (and good art!) takes time and care. And all evidence points to that they didn't have the luxury for that.

If I had to point to a person to blame for how bad the show is, I would say it's most likely combined effort. There are way too many factors to consider when making a TV show or movie, it's rarely the actions of just one person that makes something not work. There's producer meddling, prideful writers, editors and animators going off script, advertisers wanting their say, how healthy vs unhealthy the work environment was, it's nearly impossible to put the blame on one singular person. Everything about it screams low budget, though, from the blatant plot holes to the bad animation, and low-budget and fast turnaround rarely lead to good filmmaking.

I do side-eye the high-ups at Sunrise. Just like I side-eye any studio who are currently greenlighting reboot after sequel after reboot after sequel (cough cough, Netflix, Disney, cough, cough) for quick cash by sacrificing the original series and movies because they don't have big fandoms to generate the money that a reboot would. It creates an environment where studios feel like they don't have to try because the "dumb fans" will keep watching because it's more of whatever it was they loved. Just look at how many people are still watching Yashahime because they're grateful that it's more Inuyasha, while still complaining about how bad it is. More and more producers are choosing what projects to greenlight based on marketing and IP, rather than good ideas, and it sucks. Why would studios try when they can make money off of shows that are cheaper to make and take less effort and it doesn't matter if it's bad anyway?

(I'm not blaming fans for this, I've long made my peace with this aspect of fandom. But in all honesty, I'm confused watching how people will be so connected to a piece of media that they'll keep going to it even while they think it's bad. I can honestly say I've never been so attached to a piece of media that I would continue to consume it if I wasn't enjoying it anymore, no matter how much I loved the world or the characters.)

There's also just the fact that a lot of reboots and sequels often turn to the fandom for ideas. A lot of remakes of popular shows/movies (like Cinderella, for example) are going out of their way to "fix" pieces of the original media through reboots, whether it's fixing plot holes or adding more diversity. They're looking to please the masses, first and foremost. A lot of Yashahime was probably written from the perspective of "well, they liked it last time, and look how much they're still talking about this thing, they'll like it here".

So, yes, it's totally fair to criticize and side-eye the guys in charge. Just be fair about it, that's all I ask. Calling them lazy for doing a very common thing that happens in the industry because you don't like them just isn't very fair, in my opinion. Most people who watched the show probably didn't notice the re-used animation. I sure didn't.

The asks about the animation and how "lazy" it was did trigger me a bit, TBH. This culture of saying "lol, fuck the people making it" is very uncool and rampant among a lot of fandom spaces, and it especially sucks when it's coming from people who have no idea how it works. I've seen it time and time again, often over the littlest things like a scene being changed slightly in adapting a movie or a ship not becoming canon or even just things that a writer has absolutely no control over (for example, writers will rarely have much to do with marketing and yet I've seen fans of a certain ship harass a writing team over a marketing decision that "baited them" when again, the writers may not even have been aware of what the marketing team were doing).

My best friend who also works in the industry told me about how in a fandom she's in, the showrunners decided to change a scene from the books that was the beginning of the relationship between a pairing. They provided a pretty logical explanation for why it was changed (one actor wasn't available and they couldn't budget for a different day and it wouldn't have made sense story-wise for it to happen in a different location). She's had to explain time and time again to the people who also ship the pairing why that's a perfectly reasonable explanation. But because they were "too stupid to budget for it", obviously the showrunners hate the pairing and hate the original works and were just too prideful and arrogant with their spending. I've seen the screenshots of fans being like "FUCK THESE WRITERS, THEY SUCK" over ONE SCENE. It's extremely tiring.

Right now, there is a big push for film industry workers to get better pay and shorter hours across North America, and it’s slowly growing. Crew members are starting to wake up to the fact that it shouldn’t be like this. We shouldn’t have to work back breaking hours and never see our families and be told that we only get to have a life a few months out of the year. 

While most of the fandom spaces are in support of this, there was a significant section which are like "you should be grateful! you're working in an industry that you love! does this mean that my favourite show is going to be pushed back a few months? HOW DARE YOU!" And it's very hard for me, as a person who is both a fan and loves fandom while also loving filmmaking and writing and having friends in this back-breaking industry who I want to support to see comments like that. It feels very personal. I love working as a filmmaker. I love acting, I love writing, I love being on set. 

It just brought me back there a bit.

this turned out much longer than expected, LOL. Sorry.

Dunno why I keep apologizing for that because I tell y'all to expect a long answer.

[iamnmbr3]

So far the Loki series reminds me of this god-awful fanfic I read once.

hahaha yup. a lot of the show really reminds me of very bad, very amateurish fanfic. (Though I have to say that while I've definitely read some bad fics I don't think I've come across one quite this bad).

There are several components of it that particularly feel like bad fanfic as opposed to just more generically bad writing in general. One thing is that sometimes when I read a very bad fic it feels like it's about completely different characters that happen to have the name and appearances (and perhaps a few other details) of the characters the story is supposed to be about, but otherwise feel like entirely different characters. It feels like someone wrote their own story and then just swapped out the names and made it about whatever characters the fic is supposed to be about.

I have exactly that feeling about the show. It doesn't feel like a Loki show. It feels like a show about some other character who has the same name as Loki and a few other borrowed details.

Now, that may actually be more or less what happened. Apparently Mike Waldron had written a script already about a time travel story featuring a influencer type character who finds out he ruins the world in the future and tries to change his fate. (He describes this character as "a shithead like Loki.") So I wonder if he took that script and reworked it into the Loki script with minimal changes and that's one of the reasons Loki feels so ooc. Like a couple of times Loki says things that don't make sense for him to say - like looking out the window at the TVA city and refusing to believe it's real - but would make total sense for just a random human who had been sucked into this world to say.

(The other reason I think Loki is ooc is that Mike Waldron has demonstrated in many interviews that he fundamentally misunderstands Loki's character, has a lot of harmful and bigoted views about adoptees and trauma victims, and also seems to strongly dislike Loki's character.)

The other thing that feels like very bad fanfic is the OCs that take over the story. The stereotypical bad fanfic written by young kids is often ruined by an overpowered annoying OC that the author loves and everyone else dislikes bc the author won't recognize their flaws and lets them take over the story to the detriment of the other characters. Mike Waldron has never said anything positive about Loki's character but he cannot stop gushing about Mobius and about the other new characters and the TVA world that he got to develop. Because of this Mobius takes over the show and never gets called on his flaws or mistakes, and constantly gets propped up at Loki's expense, to the detriment of the storytelling.

The writing of the show feels extremely unprofessional. People stereotype fanfic as bad but the average fic is far superior to this. Even average fics have much more in-character dialogue for Loki and a much better understanding of his backstory and character since fics are a labor of love by people who like and are interested in the character. I can't imagine even most beginner fic writers thinking "crap" is something Loki would say or forgetting that he tried to kill himself in the end of Thor 2011.

[ante--meridiem]

do all the hozier ones you haven't already!

Take me to church - are you religious?

No. Religion confuses me to be honest. I was raised in a pretty strongly Christian (Catholic & Eastern Orthodox) environment - my parents aren't really religious either but my extended family is and both Irish and Romanian culture very much are - but I can't remember ever actually believing. I tried to make myself believe a few times when I was younger but the closest I could come that I found convincing was a vague pantheistic "I guess God can be everything if you want" which I eventually concluded was basically meaningless to me as a statement.

Work Song- Is there anyone you’d sing a love song to, romantic or platonic?

Given the quality of my singing voice, I think singing to someone would be less a display of affection and more a cruel and unusual punishment. I did sing with my ex a few times, which worked because I could copy his tune rather than floundering around trying to find the right notes myself. I would sing a love song to my partner on request, but. I advise them against requesting :P.

Someone New- Do you fall in love easily?

Definitely not. I've been properly in love twice, one of the times it took me about four years of knowing them to develop romantic feelings and for the other I'm not sure exactly of the timeline but I think at least one year, probably at least two. My list of crushes might be somewhat longer, but it's hard to tell tbh between the fact that I find it hard to distinguish intense admiration from romantic interest and the fact that most of them would have happened before I realised me having romantic interest in women was even possible.

Cherry Wine- Do you have a sweet tooth?

Somewhat, yeah. I don't like things that are excessively sweet but I do like sweets in moderation.

From Eden- Do you think theres “something tragic about this” life?

Yeah, definitely. Both just in raw terms of "bad things can happen" but also in terms of, like... the things that make tragedies tragedies and not just compilations of awful events: missed opportunities, realisations that come too late, sequences of events that could have been changed from the outside but were inevitable from the inside, so forth. (Someone whose writing I like once suggested that last one as a definition of "tragedy" in literary terms and I like it as a definition.)

Movement - Do you perform in any way?

Not really. I'd say I'd be unlikely to because I'm too socially anxious for it, but actually I think I might prefer performing over other forms of interaction because I get to script it beforehand. I did take part in a few music competitions when I was in school which involved performing, and more recently I took part in an open mic poetry night which was surprisingly fun, but that's about it.

Angel Of Small Death and The Codeine Scene- Any addictions?

No. I know my blog title is a joke about coffee but I'm pretty sure I don't actually have a caffeine addiction, I never really have more than one or two cups a day and I can and have gone periods of time without it without any negative effects (...though I did still have tea). I've enjoyed alcohol a few times but I don't really feel the need for it outside of occasions where I'm offered it. I'm unlikely to ever try any other kind of drugs because the idea of being less in control of myself scares me.

Like Real People Do- Have you kissed people?

Yep. Unsure if my ex counts given he doesn't match my gender preferences but while I haven't had any serious relationships between that one and my current one (which is long distance) I have gone on a few dates in between, one of which did involve kissing. Among other things.

Jackie and Wilson- Do you want kids?

God, no. The thought of pregnancy is viscerally repulsive to me and while I'm slightly more open to considering adoption I can't see myself ever really wanting it. And even if I did have a sudden urge for it, my emotions are too unreliable and hard for me to access for me to be confident I'd develop and maintain the kind of attachment needed to be a good parent, unless I was adopting a kid I'd already formed that kind of attachment towards somehow. Which seems unlikely so blanket no.

Moment’s Silence- What do you find beautiful about the situation you’re in now?

I like getting to go for walks around the nearby lake in the evening. It's peaceful and pretty and I can finally make an attempt to sort out my thoughts.

To Be Alone - Do you prefer other people’s company or your own?

My own, without a doubt. Love other people in theory, they're fascinating, but in practice being around them is confusing and exhausting. There is maybe one exception but even in their case I wouldn't want to be around them constantly, I need time to myself.

In the Woods Somewhere- Have you ever had a supernatural experience?

No.

My Love Will Never Die- Are you dating anyone?

Yes :)

It Will Come Back- Do you like to write?

Yes, though I stopped for a while because I was busy with uni and I've been having a hard time getting back into it.

To Noise Making - Do you like to sing?

Not so much that I dislike it as I'm very bad at it, so I don't much.

Nobody - Who in your life is important to you?

Currently my parents and my romantic partner, mainly.

Foreigner’s God - Do you ever talk to yourself or something above?

Myself, yes. Something above, no, since as mentioned I'm not religious.

[inviral-a]

I  have  a  lot  of  messy  ADHD  thoughts  right  now  & I’m  gonna  talk  about  em.  So  like !  I  really  dislike  William’s  fanon  ??  These  thoughts  happen  when  I  go  looking  for  content   & wind  up  in  old  parts  of  the  fandom  like  from  DeviantArt  lol. Like  he  was  always  an  unpopular/overlooked  character  which  is  totally  understandable  despite  his  massive  role  in  the  background  of  things.  But  like,  I  really  don’t  feel  like  what  little  fanon  exists,   or  what  fanon  I  know  of  that  was  the  thing  “”in  my  day”,”  so  to  speak,  is  anything  close  to  who  he  is.

Because  I  do  actually  play  him  so  differently  to  the  “fanon”,  which  is  what  I  would  assume  to  be  people’s  expectations  of  him.  In  my  eyes.  To  me  he’s  not  a  real  villain.  More  an  anti-villain  if  anything.  I  know  a  lot  people  have  a  terribly  low  opinion  of  him  due  to  said  fanon  but  again,  I  interpret  him  very  differently.

I  understand  kinda  WHY  people  see  him  the  way  they  do  though  of  course.  In  all  his  existence,  game  wise  he's  had  maybe  2-3  minutes  screen  time  NOT  as  a  mutated  monster  & only  a  handful  of  canonly  spoken  lines  as  a  result.  A  lot  of  ideas  of  him  come  from  his  apparent  all  consuming  “obsession”  with  G,  which  is  kind  of  emphasised  by  the  original  re2  but  you  know  what  I’m  calling  it ?  Bad  writing.  Not  that  I  bash  the  original  game  at  all  like  man  I  love  it   & I  mean  it  was  1998 !  Like,  early  RE  games  weren't  exactly  known  for  having  fantastic  scripts  or  even  decent  voice  acting,  point  being. Which  is  why  I  do  love  so  much  of  the  remake  because  I  think  it  really  brought  to  life  what  was  always  meant  to  be.  Despite  the  some  things  I  don’t  use  or  care  much  for.  I  digress  though. My  take  on  William  is  not  really  villainous.  Its  perhaps  true  that  he’s  not  entirely  a  good  person  but  hes  not  exactly  a  bad  guy  either.   I  do  find  William  to  be  supremely  sympathetic  just  personally.  Perhaps  one  of  the  most  sympathetic  characters  in  the  series,  again  just  for  me  personally.

I  mean  when  we  really  think  of  it  William  was  only  a  little  kid  when  he  was  consumed  by  Umbrella.  He  was  heavily  groomed  by  Umbrella.  He  spent  most  of  his  life  with  Umbrella  &  we  know  what  horrible,  horrible  garbage  Umbrella  was.  Its  perfectly  understandable  for  William  to  be  less  than  a  good  person  with  that  in  mind  but  I  don’t  think  that  attribute  is  inherent  to  him.  It  was  simply  ingrained  into  him  by  his  time  with  Umbrella,  groomed  to  absorb  their  twisted  ideals  &  ethics,  which  was  explicitly  the  point  of  the  Umbrella  training  facility  that  William  attended  as  a  kid,  not  to  mention  the  bizarre  hyper  competitive  atmosphere  among  umbrella’s  staff.  ( something  encouraged  by  the  higher  ups.  Everything  Umbrella  did  was  so,  so  very  insidious  on  so  many  levels  & it  was  all  very  calculated  & intentional )

I  could  even  make  a  case  for  Wesker  being  at  large  like  he  is  for  the  same  reasons,  but  those  are  other  posts.

Among  all  the  Umbrella  based  characters  though,  William  to  me  remains  the  most  human  &  the  most  “normal”  for  lack  of  a  better  way  to  describe  it  for  me.  He  could  hardly  help  what  he  was,  most  of  the “”villainous””  aspects  of  him  were  implanted  into  him.  Being  with  Umbrella  had  naturally  warped  his  morals   &   desensitised  him  to  so  much.   A  thing  that  strikes  me  about   William  though  is  his  love  for  his  family  &  thats  one  of  the  major  things  that  popular  fanon  goofs  on,  as  well  as  his  most  major  redeeming  quality.  William  wasn’t  a  bad  husband  or  a  bad  father  per say.  He  loved  his  wife  &  he  loved  his  daughter  to  such  an  extent  that  they  were  obvious  driving  factors  in  trying  to  escape  Umbrella  which  was  MASSIVE  given  what  Umbrella  was  &   how  engrained  in  William  it  was.  He  was  neglectful  but  in  no  way  out  of  malice.  Despite  his  flaws   & his  mistakes,  I  can  never  see  him  as  ever  wanting  to  hurt  them,  only  the  opposite,  which  I  think  is  displayed  canonly.

Which  is  another  thing  I  found  interesting  about  William.  I  don’t  interpret  him  as  neurotypical  in  any  way  which  I  draw  from  the  few  “descriptions”  of  him  /  his  behaviours  from  other  people.  What  I  interpret  from  them  feels  very. . .  Relatable  & I  really  do  think  William  is  something  like  ADHD  or  Autistic  or  somewhere  in  those  areas,  maybe  be. (  I’ve  been  portraying  him  very  much  as  the  latter ). My  most  major  source  of  reference  for  him  comes  from  Wesker’s  report  2  which  is  one  of  the  few  glances  into  his  character  we  actually  get.  Wesker  has  great  admiration  for  William  &  notes  William  is  quite  humble  &  unassuming,  if  not  a  little  odd.  In  the  novels,  if  I  remember  right,  Chief  Irons  notes  that  he  likes  William  for  these  qualities  as  well. &  I  think  both  of  those  could  easily  explain  a  lot  about  William  &  not  only  his  “””obsession”””  with  his  work  but  the  descriptions  of  him  essentially  coming  across  as  very  space-y  &  distant / non-interactive  with  things/people  that  aren't  part  of  his  major  interests.  He  was  able  to  easily  work  for  24  hours  straight  &  forget  important  things  like  his  wife’s  birthday.  Not  for  lack  of  caring  but  because  that's  where  his  head  is.  It’s  doubtful  in  the  times  when  William  did  crazy  overtime  that  he  even  knew  how  much  he  had  actually  done.  Annette  writes  a  letter  to  him  apparently  expressing  this  &  I  think  William  might  have  been  surprised  by  how  long  it  had  actually  been  since  he’d  properly  been  home  with  her  &  Sherry.  This  wasn’t  him  avoiding  his  family  in  any  way.  It  wasn’t  intentional.  Annette  seems  to  have  to  remind  William  how  to  function  outside  of  living.

Further,  people  might  have  interpreted  William  being  stuck  up/scornful  of  others/having  some  kind  of  superiority  complex,  which  adds  to  this  “douchebag  villain”  aesthetic,  but  I  don’t  think  that's  true  because  again,  Wesker’s  report  also  noted  that  William  wasn’t  actually  boastful.  He  was  obviously  proud  of  himself  & his  achievements,  which  he  had  every  right  to  be,  but  it  was  not  a  point  of  any  kind  of  actual  conceit  for  him.  Wesker  notes  that  William  doesn’t  boast  about  himself,  but  that  he  was  deeply  troubled  by  the  extreme  fuss  surrounding  Alexia. Another  part  of  the  fanon’s  poor  interpretation  of  him  I  think  comes  from  the  same  source  surrounding  the  Alexia  ordeal.  I’ve  read  all  the  different  translations  & what  I  practically  note  about  the  whole  ordeal  is  not  that  William  hated  Alexia  because  he  was  a  conceited  jealous  brat.  He  didn’t  hate  her  just  because  she  existed.  His  jealousy  came  from  a  very  understandable  place,  IMO. A  lot  of  William’s  anger/jealousy  didn’t  come  from  her  just  existing,  it  wasn’t  as  malicious  &  immature  as  that,  though  it  could  easily  come  across  that  way,  however  it  came  largely  from  the  way  he  was  treated  by  his  colleagues  as  a  result  of  her.  Its  pretty  well  noted  by  Wesker  & something  he  himself  took  similar  annoyance  with.  It  was  the  way  the  other  researchers  not  only  ENDLESSLY  praised  Alexia  but  the  way  they  began  to  deject  William  as  a  result.  William’s  problem  wasn’t  just  simple,  childish  jealousy,  it  was  hurt.  She  wasn’t  just  being  praised,  he  was  being  scorned.

Which  would  have  been  VERY  hard  for  William  for  so  many  reasons.  Not  just  because  he  was  proud  of  his  position & his  achievements  up  until  then  but  because  literally  Umbrella  &  his  workplace  was  his  whole  world.  Also  keeping  in  mind  how  young  William  still  was  at  the  time.  He  was  only  19.  I  don’t  cringe  at  19  yr  old  William  being  angry  about  10  yr  old  Alexia  as  much  as  I  cringe  at  shitty  30-40+  year  old   men  who  put  these  kids  on  these  ridiculously  high  pedestals  in  the  first  place   &  actively  pitted  them  against  each  other.  They  enjoyed  making  competition  &  animosity  between  researchers.  With  William &  Alexia  &  even  Albert  being  so  young  they  seemed  to  particularly  target  them  due  to  their  own  jealousies  &  the  expected  vulnerabilities  of  people  that  age.  Not  to  mention  failing  Umbrella  could  actually  mean  death  &  not  just  rejection. 

Another  thing  of  note  being  that  its  canonly  mentioned  there  was  attempts  to  flame  a  “”vicious””  rivalry  between  William  & Albert  that  seemed  to  mostly  fail.  Rather,  in  the  toxic  ass  environment  of  Umbrella  with  so  many  douchey  old  men,  William  & Albert  were  just  drawn  closer  together.  I  also  like  how  Wesker  noted  William   &   him  seemed  to   be  subject  of  a  lot  of  “dislike”  which  I  think  was  pretty  obviously  due  to  their  ages &  their  relative  status. &  I  also  think  that  feeds  into  the  Alexia  problem.  Though  William  wasn’t  exactly  a  stranger  to  a  bit  of  workplace  animosity,  in  the  past  it  didn’t  effect  him  so  much  because  the  truth  was  that  he  &  Wesker  had  achieved  things  as  teenagers  that  the  old  assholes  around  them  hadn’t  managed  to  achieve  in  their  whole  careers.  Very  water  off  a  ducks  back  at  the  time.  That  &  the  fact  he  didn’t  pay  too  much  attention  to  anyone  else  anyway  but  the  Alexia  issue  forced  him  to  pay  attention  &  gave  all  those  jerky  older  colleagues  actual  ammunition  to  use  against  him. This  is  a  lot  more  serious  than  I  think  the  fandom  comprehends  because  William  was  essentially  a  “survivor”  of  Umbrellas  training  facility  as  a  chid.  

The  executive  training  programme  in  the  Arkley  mountains  where  William  started  out  was  basically  an  Umbrella-focused  boarding  school  where  young  minds  were  picked  by  Umbrella  to  become  their  top  researches. The  problem  was  they  were  also  using  the  kids  as  research  material.  Doctor  Marcus  routinely  tricked  students  into  infecting  themselves  so  he  could  torture  them  as  part  of  his  experiments  into  the  T-virus.  Students  became  ill  &  went  missing  all  the  time. How  William  &  Wesker  made  it  out  of  there  is  never  really  touched  on.  We’re  left  to  imagine  that  its  because  they  remained  top  of  their  classes  &  Dr. Marcus  took  a  weird  liking  to  them  but  then  then  it  might  have  just  been  luck  given  Dr. Marcus  was  also  noted  as  a  miserable  old  bastard  who  didn’t  seem  to  like  anyone  very  much  east  of  all  gifted  kids  who  could  have  rivalled  him.  There  is  also  an  implication  that  Spencer  convinced  Wesker  &  Birkin  to  steal  a  sample  of  Marcus  T  virus  in  order  for  them  to  gradate  &  become  top  researchers  at  the  Arkley  facility  &  this  is  what  I  work  with. 

This  was  normal  for  Umbrella,  though.  They  routinely  made  research  subjects  out  of  their  researchers.  if  someone  was  “accidently”  infected  the  protocol  wasn’t  really  to  help  them  but  to  cover  it  up   &  use  them  as  a  fresh  specimen.  The  real  fear  William  must  have  felt  in  losing  value  to  Umbrella  was  very  well  founded  &  understandable.  In  my  Headcanon  William  truly  believes  he  wouldn’t  have  escaped  the  training  programme  if  it  wasn’t  for  Wesker  &  his  insistence  in  including  him  in  Spencer’s  plan  to  steal  a  T  virus sample.  But  moving  on  or  moving  back  to  talking  about  Sherry  &  Annette.  I  think  yeah,  obviously  one  of  the  major  motivators  in  the  attempted  divergence  from  Umbrella  for  him  was  them.  I’m  pretty  sure  theres  a  note  or  a  journal  entry  from  Annette  or  William  himself  somewhere  that  implies  a  desire  to  be  better  parents  &  a  more  conventional  family.  I  know  the  general  idea  is  that  William  wanted  to  leave  Umbrella  STRICTLY  because  they  wouldn’t  promote  him  but  I  think  not  only  was  this  something  he   &  Annette  had  spoken  about  at  length  &  were  already  considering  doing  but  the  whole  no  promotion  thing  kinda  played  on  WIlliam’s  constantly  pre-existing  fear  that  they  were  gonna  do  him  just  like  they  did  Marcus,  so  while  it  was  def  a  factor  its  not  the  only  thing. 

Not  only  is  that  a  scary  thought  in  general  but  Marcus  had  no  family,  William  did.  A  family  he  expressed  being  incredibly  concerned  for  because  he  knew  Umbrella  wouldn’t  hesitate  to  outright  eliminate  them  or,   an  even  greater  fear,  turn  them  into  someone’s  test  subjects.  So  while  not  being  promoted  was  like  “the  straw  that  broke  the  camels  back”   at  that  particular  time,   it  was  in  no  way  the  only  reason  for  William’s  attempt  to  leave,  &  even  if  he  had  been  promoted,  again,  it  seems  him  &  Annette  did  have  plans/aspirations  to  move  away  from  Umbrella  anyway.  I  think  this  seed  was  planted  in  William  as  early  as  the  assassination  of  Marcus.  I  mean,  though  William  didn’t  have  a  lot  of  love  for  his  mentor  it  was  still  daunting  to  think  you  could  be  so  much  to  the  company  &  still  get  thrown  away  like  that.  It  should  also  be  noted  that  I  think  the  reason  William’s  promotion  fell  through  was  because  William’s  plans  for  G  was  not  ultimately  to  weaponize  it.

Thus  I  don’t  exactly  portray  William  as  having  that  all  consuming  obsession  with  G.  It  was  more  that  he  just  didn’t  want  to  flush  his  entire  life’s  work  down  the  drain  &  being  so  close  to  finishing  the  project  just  made  “leaving”  Umbrella  without  it  feel  absolutely  undoable.  Actually,  it  would  be  literally  undoable  because  he  would  have  no  bargaining  chip  to  assure  his  families  safety. So  ultimately  I  think  William  is  very  sympathetic  despite  his  faults.  His  behaviours   &  motives,  I  think  are  very  understandable  &   are  so  much  more  than  the  idea  of  him  just  being  some  crazy  douche  bag  obsessed  with  a  virus  he  discovered.  I  believe  infecting  himself  with  G-  although  insanely  ill-advised,  was  understandable  considering  this  was  a  wild,  impulsive  move  made  during  a  time  of  high  emotion/stress  &  in  the  face  of  death  being  the  one  other  option. William  didn’t  think  too  hard  about  his  wife  or  his  daughter  when  he  infected  himself  but  once  again  this  wasn’t  out  of  any  malice  toward  them.  He  wouldn’t  have  had  the  TIME  to  give  any  in  depth  thought  to  his  actions.  He  did  it  out  of  desperation  in  the  thought  it  would  save  him  & in  tern  save  his  work  &  family.  That's  NOT  how  it  went  down,  none  of  William’s  attempts  to  do  these  things  went  how  they  were  intended  to  go  &  that's  the  tragedy  of  it  but  overall  his  intentions  were  pretty  good   & in  his  mind  I  think  it  was  really  a  case  of  ends  justifying  the  means  for  William.  Again, G  was  also  important  to  William  not  because  of  this  wacky  obsession  with  the  research  as  such  but  because  it  was  also  his  literal  bargaining  chip.  Prior  to  the  outbreak  William  didn’t  have  any  reason  to  be  offered  Asylum  from  Umbrella  without  it  &  Umbrella’s  really  not  a  place  you  just  “quit”  from  as  detailed. I  don’t  think  William’s  position  as  a  father  is  considered  very  much,  if  ever  by  the  fanon  but  I  do  think  its  an  important  thing  that  does/can/will  affect  his  thoughts/opinions/behaviours  in  a  lot  of  ways.  I  think  essentially  William  had  a  lot  more. . . Maturity  &  maybe  more  of  a  sense  of  like. . .  Decency   to  him,  so  to  speak,  than  what  we  got  to  see  canonly   &  what  the  fanon  gives  him ? Like  I  know  as  far  as  baddies  in  the  RE  series  go  the  bar  is  sooo  low  given  they’re  mostly  just  apeshit  but  I  think  William  deserves  some  props  for  being  one  of  the  few  who  wasn't  just  an  egotistical  fuck  who  wanted  to  control  the  world.   Back  to  William  &  Annette’s  intentions  for  G:  they  did  not  see  it  as  a  weapon,  they  wanted  to  utilise  it  essentially  for  medical  reasons. My  final  thought  is  that  I  think  G3′s  design  is  kind of  reminiscent  of  this  in  some  way.  There  is  a  clear  likeness,  at  least  ‘shape’  wise,  to  an  angel  in  G3.  I  do  kinda  think  this  is  intentional  &  is  kind  of  symbolic  of  William’s  apparently  good  intentions  turning  out  so  evil/wrong.  This  monster  that  has  the  shape  of  an  angel,  humanoid  with  what  looks  to  be  enormous  wings  sprouting  from  its  back,  while  the  creature  itself  is  so  demonic   &  twisted,  brings  to  mind  the  saying  “the  road  to  hell  is  paved  with  good  intentions.” To  me  that's  somewhat  an  overarching  theme  with  William.  Because  again  I  don’t  believe  he  was  truly  evil  & out  of  all  the  Umbrella  based  folks  William  +  his  wife  are  the  most  “normal’ /  human.  He  doesn’t  appear  to  have  any  particular  megalomaniac,  sadism,  narcissism   or  hatred  of  humanity.  For  William  he  wasn’t  in  it  for  those  things,  he  wasn’t  in  it  for  some  warped  shot  at  world  conquest,  he  was  just  there  for  the  science  itself  & for  the  idea  &  fact  that  the  work  he  was  doing  could  be  used  for  good  as  much  as  it  could  for  evil.  William’s  interest  in  the  B.O.W’s  wasn’t  using  them  to  wipe  people  out,  it  was  simply  collecting  valuable  data  that  could  obviously  be  used  for  other  things  such  as  defence,  control,  prevention  etc.  Just  like  Wesker  noted,  researching  B.O.W’s  & researching  B.O.W  counter  measures  are  the  same  research  & William  very  much  has  that  mentality.

The  whole,  weapons  aren't  evil,  evil  is  all  up  to  the  hands  that  wield  them.  Well  that's  really  in  line  with  William’s  thoughts  /  opinions  on  science  &  his  work. To  him  its  a  grey  area  &  its  necessary  because  it  was  better  to  know  the  things  they  learned  in  developing  the  B.O.Ws  than  it  was  to  not  know  & have  someone  else  learn  it  instead.  It  was  work  SOMEONE  had  to  do  &  work  someone  WOULD  do  regardless  to  any  moral  complaints.  But  yeah,  again,  I  think  its  pretty  apparent  if  not  directly  canon  that  William  & Annette  didn’t  intend  G  to  be  a  weapon,  they  were  focusing  on  the  medical  properties  of  G.  G  could  have  been  utilised  medicinally  to  help  fight  illness / diseases  +  improve  humans  lifespan  &  mortality.  ( this  is  also  why  Spencer  Initially  approved  the  project  as  he  was  old  &  sick  &  thought  G  could  be  ultimately  useful  to  him )  

[inmyarmswrappedin]

hello you probably already talked about this but why did you drop robbe season?

Hi anon! 🧩 I have mentioned it before, yeah, but I don’t mind talking about it in a bit more depth.

Admittedly Robbe’s season was already a hard sell for me before it even premiered. I have watched every Eva season, and that has always given me an indication of how things are going to go for the Isak season. Like, even though remake teams tend to go all out for their Isak season, and try harder than with their previous seasons (and I don’t think it’s controversial to say remake teams know their Isak season will majorly increase their viewership, even fandom has pointed this out as a reason Skam NL should’ve stuck it out for VDH’s season), you can already get a good idea in s1 about what they want to keep from Skam and where they’re going their own way.

I love Eva and I also tend to like her remakes. Honestly, I find Eva’s story really interesting, Jonas a good character when handled well, and I’ve generally enjoyed getting introduced to yet another iteration of the girl squad. I like the familiarity of the story beats. I also think how Jonas’ ideas are handled is a good indicator of how politically minded the team is, and how they plan on using their platform. 

And the thing is, despite all this, I found Jana’s season a struggle to get through. I had to try twice because I couldn’t get through the first time. At first, I thought it was because the writers had been super lazy with the adaptation. I loathe what they did with Jonas’ character, how little Jens knows about social justice. I was really put off by how, since they couldn’t write Yasmina into parties, they gave the drink throwing moment to Luca instead, but then more or less kept to the original storyline. Even back then, I was really concerned by how aggressive they made Moyo during the cabin trip clips. But then a friend binged the season after me, and brought up how terrible the pacing was (with Friday clips being moved to other days, destroying the momentum Skam builds through the week), how most of the actors sounded like they were literally reading from a script, and the utter spam of meaningless social media pics (with very few texts to go with it). And so I realized that this season I generally enjoy bored me, because Wtfock is generally just slapped together carelessly. 

Another issue I had was... Well, I’m not sure this comes across given my rabid love for David, but I actually think Skam s3 is as close to perfect TV as it gets. I don’t think this is a season that needs fixing. And as the Isak seasons succeeded each other, I realized I didn’t care for an Isak season that pretty much just took Isak and Even and put them in another country. I prefer the Isak seasons that did something Skam s3 never did, because they were never going to improve on Skam s3, and to do the same thing would just remind me how much better the acting, the music, the photography, the writing, etc. was in Skam. So I was hoping that maybe Wtfock’s Even would be a moc and they’d touch on racism for a change. However I knew the chances of Wtfock casting a trans man or a moc for their Even were slim to none.

But at the time it was kind of unthinkable that there would be an Isak season dropping, and people would not watch. And I in particular was a bit of a completionist, like I haven’t watched most Noora seasons, but I’ve watched all of the Eva seasons, and all the Isak seasons except for the last few episodes of Lucas L’s. These days I’m comfortable not tuning in (esp after trainwrecks like Arthur’s or Kato’s seasons), but at the time it felt kinda wrong to not give a season a chance, you know. Besides, a lot of people whose opinion I trust said s2 was great! Zoe and Senne one of the best noorhelms, if not the best! They really had fixed everything that was wrong with noorhelm, their social media game was so good, etc... I mean, you were there for s3 I assume, you know how people were hyping Wtfock at the time. And, for instance, Druck majorly improved in s2 after a more or less okay s1, so it’s not like remakes had never fixed their shit before.

So I started watching, but right away, I didn’t like the way they introduced Noor. She almost kinda seemed like the actual love interest in how cool she was, and how happy Robbe was hanging out with her that first night. I posted this, speculating about why Wtfock would introduce her that way. I should note that I posted that link on twitter as well, and Bram Renders liked my tweet... not too long after his tweet complaining about fans who read too much into the show would surface. 😂

Since I enjoyed writing that post, I thought I’d post weekly reaction posts in the style of Nat (@lightsandlostbells) and some others. The problem is that I’m just really good at procrastinating (I’ve been promising reaction posts in the same style for my favorite Skams seasons for... years now lol). And I wanted to keep my reactions fresh, so I stopped watching in real time. My plan was to watch the clips when I had enough time to write. This was like... Middle of week 2, I want to say. At the time, Sander hadn’t even been introduced yet!!

Even though I wasn’t watching, I still followed Wtfock-related accounts, like translators and subbers, so I still kinda knew what was going on. I was actually really let down by the way Wtfock didn’t take advantage of having Robbe and Sander in the same location for an entire week. Like, Sander was sticking a sandwich in Robbe’s mouth in a ~sexy way a few hours after exchanging their names, and yet it all kinda simmered down? No tension over social media really. Idk, I just feel like if Isak and Even, or Cris and Joana, or Matteo or David, had been stuck in the same house for an entire week shortly after meeting, Skam, Druck and eskam wouldn’t have let us forget about it for even a second. 

In the end, I never did write those posts, and I ended up washing my hands off the season because the tone of the discussions around the show was legit starting to get to me in a bad way. Like how LGBTI people were attacked for disliking the gay bashing scene. Or the discussions over whether the shower scene had gone too far or if Julie Andem had exploited Tarjei Sandvik Moe just as much. I disliked Moyo but also disliked the way white fans were writing about him. And the Britt bashing was just so gross. I was getting irl upset about a season I wasn’t even watching or following, so I put it out of my mind. 

[biblio-bitch]

Detroit Evolution Commentary Pt. 3 [FINAL]

It’s been a while, sorry. Life sucks ass sometimes and I had to do some transferring to my new laptop. I’ll write down some more fun facts as an apology. Disclaimer: This is all stuff I noticed, inferred, or interpreted. I didn’t write the film, anything I’ve interpreted is just that, an interpretation based on things I noticed using my experiences and knowledge. 

Fun fact #1: I have attempted to write in a proper novel style at least five times. After watching DE and watching @octopunkmedia ‘s script breakdowns and such, I've started writing scripts instead. I’m much farther along in those than I ever have been in books. 10/10 amazing for my visual based concepts.

Fun fact #2: My mental health was rapidly declining and I was losing interest in quite literally everything at the time the film was released. Watching the film and fixating on it for a month straight not only inspired me but helped me regain control of my life. Watching streams by the cast and Michelle while I worked for school made my productivity skyrocket.

Fun fact #3: I recently developed a tic that I now can’t get rid of. It was out of control for about twenty minutes right before I began writing this post. However, when I began re-watching the film (partially because it’s a comfort for me and I’m quite honestly terrified of what’s happening in the US right now) it stopped. So that’s fun.

As usual, spoilers and swearing under the cut! Quick note: If there should be a trigger warning on this or anything else I post, please let me know! I’m horrible at remembering to tag triggers. I’ll also be doing some quick posts on Umbrella Academy and my severe obsession with Jason Todd soon. Have fun!

As usual, here’s a list of people I know the users of in case you’d like to check any of them out. I’m likely missing people so feel free to let me know who I’m missing so I can add them!

Maximilian Kroger - Nines (@ maximiliankroger)

Christopher (Chris) Trindade - Gavin (@ trindabago)

Michael Smallwood - Chris Miller (@ michaelsmallwoodforever)

Carla Kim - Tina Chen (@ carlahkim)

Jillian Geurts - Ada (@ jilbobaggins_nyc)

Michelle Iannantuono - (@ octopunkmedia)

JJ Goller - Lazzo (@ quasar.cos)

Brett Mullen - Cinematographer (@ brettmullendirector)

Austin Butts - Sound Design (@ austinbytts)

Tiare Solis - Valerie (@ tiareleiana)

So I decided to put all of the rest into this post. It’s a long one. Not even that sorry about it bc I love this film with my entire heart. Warning for me getting sidetracked. I use a lot of Supernatural references but it’s because I’m visiting my dad and he’s binge watching the show. I like Dean and only Dean, don’t bully me for it.

The Wrist Grip™️ in the bedroom before Nines moves back

Shoutout to Maximilian Kroger’s muscles u go dude

Lighting Symbolism™️, big theme through the movie, honestly I think it’s beautiful and they did a wonderful job with it.

The little nod from Gavin as he starts talking about his nightmare 

You can see Gavin gearing up to move, like not in a normal way, in a “oh god I don’t know if I have the energy to do this” way and that’s Relatable™️

The little smile from Nines as they sit together

The SHARK PLUSHIE I LOVE HIM (THE SHARK HAS AN INSTAGRAM @ sharktreuse)

Nines being domestic, making coffee and breakfast, being Soft.

Shirt change??? Either I’m blind or he’s wearing a different shirt in the morning (He is. He’s wearing a t shirt at night and a buttoned collar shirt in the morning. Perhaps he changed? He’s wearing normal pants so he probably changed but he’s not wearing that same shirt in the next scene)

Ada eye rolling at them being passive aggressive dumbasses. Same. Apparently Jillian kept fucking with them which is,, so valid. 

The lighting in this scene (the office pt. 2) makes Maximilian look Android-white and outlined in the CyberLife blue-ish color. Very symbolic, I have no idea if it was intentional.

Another shoutout, this time to Maximilian’s eyebrows, the expressiveness is *chef’s kiss*.

“You can thank me later, Casanova.” Nines: *confused Android noises* 

Honorable mention to Michael’s Foo Fighters t shirt in the bar, it’s vintage.

Nines is in fact wearing a different shirt now. Not the same shirt from the morning bedroom scene. I also think he’s wearing a different jacket. Less of a peacoat and more of a leather jacket. Nice.

Shoutout to Tina’s (not irl) wife, Valerie! And her weird crush on Hank! I honestly can’t wait to see her in Seven Deadly Synths!!

Ada DODGING the questions that Nines is asking because she is SHADY. 

Also, he looks to Gavin when he talks about wanting to be more human. Recurring theme of him perceiving himself as lacking because of his ace-ness/android-ness, like he can’t give Gavin what he wants. Honestly I know that the android thing is a thinly veiled metaphor for race in canon but I kinda like thinking of it as a metaphor for being LGBT+ and in Nines’ case, specifically ace. Might not make sense but it does in my brain??

Gavin Senses Are Tingling and Nines is GONE. Leaving the bar for ur not-bf to try to talk things out like adults??? King shit.

Also electric lighter, fun, I genuinely didn’t know those existed

SHIRT WITH UNBUTTONED COLLAR

“You don’t want to help me, you want to fix me.” What a loaded line. Because in a way, it’s almost true? Like, Nines has this entire simulation of Gavin in his ideal world, and obviously that version of Gavin has probably been idealized at least a bit. Nature of humanity, and Nines might not be human but he’s got the Brain Things. And at that moment, it’s nearly true that Nines wants Gavin to be like that ideal Gavin. Obviously Nines wants Gavin as Gavin, but there’s the edge of that simulation there, still. 

But Nines does want to help Gavin, and that’s where he’s wrong. Nines wants Gavin to get better, wants to help stop the nightmares, etc. But by pointing that out, I think it’s partially why Nines can accept letting go of Simulation!Gavin when Ada attacks him. Because he knows that the simulation of Gavin will never be the real Gavin, and this line sort of helps him understand that he can’t really keep Sim!Gavin anyways.

Again idk if that’s legit but that’s definitely something I felt from that while watching.

Nines is constantly very controlled, but when he walks away from Gavin you can see him straining to keep that composure and not let his anger show. 

Ada looking So Done With This Shit when Nines comes back from talking with Gavin outside of the bar

“I’m sure this will be like...every other time.” Oh honey. Oh my sweet child. I am so very sorry. It most definitely will not be.

Ada’s exasperated Eyebrow Raise before taking a drink. If that ain’t the mood sis.

I love Ada’s bat wings on her outfits. 

Gavin being a stalker and putting his hood up. 

“I’m...certain that most of the credit can go to you.” IMMEDIATE ANGER. Must Defend Boyfriend.

I SO WANTED HIM TO SAY “WISDOM” WHILE TALKING ABOUT GAVIN’S SKILLS BECAUSE IT WOULD MIRROR HIM TELLING GAVIN THAT HE ISN’T WISE BEFORE THEY LEFT FOR THE STAKEOUT. He didn’t, but instinct is a better word for Gavin anyways.

Nines has Suspicion™️...press X for doubt... 

*Only vaguely related rant warning*

I do feel that we as a fandom tend to make Connor almost childishly innocent despite him being likely one of the least kind and least innocent characters. The characterization of Nines in this--and pardon me for the off topic rant--where he’s a fully grown man and acts like it is so much more realistic. Nines is a cop, as is Connor. 

Even post deviancy, they were designed and equipped to handle murder. Nines, in a lot of fandom content, tends to come off as an exasperated older brother or a gritty and mean detective, or even worse, essentially a sociopath who feels nothing in contrast to Connor’s childish and extreme innocence. I dislike both. Seeing Nines be a normal fucking person is so relieving, I’m serious. There’s still those elements of ‘oh he’s only been properly alive for like a year, right? He probably doesn’t get Chris’ Casanova reference.’ but it’s not to such an extreme that it overtakes all of his personality traits.

Like, yeah, ok, I get why a lot of fandom content does that. In order to balance what we see Connor do (and in order to further push the Hank as a father line) we over-emphasize the not getting references and such. Honestly I see the same in content for Castiel from Supernatural. Nines, when he’s added, often HAS to be a lot darker in order to make that seem not as jarring and unrealistic.

Doesn’t mean I enjoy it. If you do? That’s great, good for you, but I don’t like seeing those characters be portrayed as such one dimensional extremes. People aren’t like that. On the off chance that someone is such an extreme, there’s still other aspects of their personality.

DE has done an amazing job at not flattening their personalities. Nines and Gavin are three-dimensional and incredibly interesting characters I find myself invested in every time I watch it.

*Onto the commentary again.*

Gavin is still being a stalker

“Particular fascination with the RK line” AHAHA funny. She’s also an RK, and she likely knows more than Nines because her programming is based on information gathering. Her fascination begins and ends with what their programming can do for her.

The little computer details in Ada’s eyes as she copies Nines’ OS, and again in Nines’ eyes when he’s in the alley alone. I believe Michelle did all of that and I am just amazed every time I watch. 

The warped voice effect.

Gavin shifting to hold Nines as soon as he passes out

The ethereal colored lighting is very good for the mood, space hospital vibes

Shoutout to the latex suit they put Maximilian in! That’s not CG! He’s wearing a full body white latex suit. I’m so sorry.

Gavin looks so tired talking to Dr. Maria. His posture is defensive, pulled into himself. Shoulders hunched, arms pulled in. Eye bags, messy hair. Boy looked messed up. Somebody hug him.

Nines’ hair being disheveled and messy in the corrupted Zen Garden, rivaling his assertion that in his ideal world (Aka the normal Zen Garden) his appearance is polished, signifying the loss of control and the loss of the Zen Garden being a safe, ideal space for him. Same concept with Sim!Gavin being corrupted.

Nines: *wakes up in his mindspace*

Also Nines, immediately: GAVIN!!1!!1

Nines believes in CONSENT!! You do not go into someone’s program without asking, ADA.

Ada’s “poor widdle baby” face as Nines is freaking out because she trapped him. Mood.

Tina wearing a low turtleneck and a flannel is Peak Gay, especially next to Gavin “I wear the same leather jacket+hoodie combo every single day and probably the same jeans for a month” Reed, aka the most disastrous and chaotic bisexual I have ever seen. Again, a mood, I honestly felt that one.

The face when Nines realizes that Ada isn’t deviant yet. 

Gavin is blaming himself somebody stop this idiot. 

“Not without Nines.” What a softie.

“The last thing I said to him was ‘I don’t need you’.” BITCH WHAT THE FUCK MY HEART.

Gavin calling Tina “T” in that soft voice is so sweet omg

Ugh the bisexual LIGHTING is KILLING ME, ESPECIALLY as Gavin sits at Nines’ bedside

Tina encouraging Gavin. WLW/MLM solidarity. 

Fun fact: Chris Trindade told Maximilian not to react at all to the big speech but Maximilian literally started crying during it and there’s footage somewhere of the Dramatic Single Tear rolling down his face while he’s still ‘in stasis’.

Yes, I double checked the streams to make sure I got this right, I love the concept though.

Look I cannot get into the speech because I will write 1.5k words on it, but I will say this: It made me cry. The acting, the writing, it’s iconic. The amount of love and devotion they got without even saying the words “I love you” was amazing. Chris is so very talented. 

THERES A TAKE WHERE GAVIN FALLS ASLEEP NEXT TO NINES’ HOSPITAL BED AKSDGAKL IM SCREAMING

Tina is the best wingman ngl

The glitches in Zen Gavin are amazing. The sequence when he’s deleting the Zen Garden is also amazing. I use amazing a lot but it’s deserved.

Nines deleting the Zen Garden and Sim!Gavin is very symbolic of letting go of all of the fake stuff, letting go of the fear he was holding that kept him from confessing to Gavin and I love that

Nines sitting silently straight up. 

Gavin is highly intelligent and I’m so glad Octopunk embraces that. 

*another vaguely related rant warning*

Ok let me tell y’all a thing because this RUINS MY LIFE. People tend to take characters like Percy Jackson or Dean Winchester, whose intelligence isn’t outwardly obvious from the get-go, and remove it entirely. Percy is reduced to an idiot who can’t tie his own shoes and Dean is often shown basically unable to research without Sam. Both of those are bullshit. 

Percy has ADHD and Dyslexia, so when often we categorize smart as only book-smart, Percy’s intelligence as a battle strategist and his actual knowledge gets erased. Dean is usually the more physical and shoot-first-never-ask-questions type, and his intelligence is severely downplayed. He made an EMP detector from scratch. Made a shotgun, remembers how to kill things, is a very good hunter, especially on his own. But that’s thrown away because he’s not book-smart.

I despise when people take characters who are talented and smart in ways that aren’t just reciting the periodic table and reduce them to muscles and angst or drooling children. 

Octopunk having a scene where Gavin is working through a case, already having done the things that Chris, someone who was only recently promoted, suggests, is just affirming Gavin’s intelligence in a way I wish I could be not surprised by. Gavin is smart, and luckily I haven’t seen much downplaying that fact. He’s a detective for a reason. Unfortunately I think it might be because the fandom tends to turn Connor and Nines into actual children, but a win is a win.

Now I’m not saying I don’t love a good himbo character but I literally had to stop interacting with Percy Jackson content because people wrote him as incapable.

*Moving on*

“I think I can help with that.” Bitch why are you so dramatic I love him so much.

Nines’ t-shirt says “Detroit City Marathon” 

“You...undead asshole.” What an iconic line. I need a t-shirt. 

“I...hate you.” “You love me.” Harkens back to the beginning where the roles are reversed. Yes I used that unironically. Words are fun.

Gavin looking scared right before The Kiss™️ 

THE PULSE POINT!! THE SCENE WAS SUPER EMOTIONAL SO MICHELLE WANTED THEM TO DO YOGA ZEN SHIT TO PREPARE AND THEN THEY JUST DID THE THING BUT THEY PUT IN THE PULSE POINT 

ANYWAYS THAT’S WHAT GAVIN IS FEELING FOR ON NINES’ WRIST RIGHT BEFORE THE KISS.

I thought that was cute when I learned it in one of the streams.

Nines’ LED spinning blue when they finally kiss asgladkaf 

“What dipshit programmed you to do that?” “I’m the most advanced android ever made, detective-“ “oh you are such a fuckin’ prick!” “Takes one to know one.” I canNOT with them, I laughed my ASS off

The little broken laugh Nines does

Nines rubbing his hands over Gavin’s while they talk about Gavin’s jacket

Shoutout to Chris’ surprised pikachu face. (Tina is also there) That was a joke take, it’s in the gag reel, too. The face wasn’t supposed to make it into the film but Michelle added it. (In the gag reel, Carla yells “Let’s go to Denny’s!” At the end.) 

And Ada’s leather pants. Honestly?? She’s so pretty. I love her. They’re all really attractive it’s actually terrifying.

Nines and Tina being a part of the Gay Turtleneck Gang

Nines’ untucked turtleneck

Tina being a Smart Girl. (Nines calling her “Officer” and her replying with “I’ll make detective someday.”

Chris being Exhausted during the whole meeting. Me too dude.

Chris and Tina doing literally nothing while Gavin and Nines have a whole heart to heart

The WHITE COAT. Tina in her blues. Chris’ Foo Fighters shirt. They’re such icons but they absolutely look like a group of gay ppl who did NOT decide on a theme.

The fight sequence is impressive, considering that they’re literally not stunt actors. I’m not a fight choreographer or stunt person so That’s really all I have to say on that.

Chris patting Gavin’s gun after he explains what he’s doing. \

As a Jason Todd lover the crowbar is unfortunate (had to, sorry)

Nines’ smirk and the TURTLENECK as he spins away from Ada with the crowbar. Iconic. The Big Dick Energy. Especially for someone who doesn’t have a dick.

Chris being a Dad when Gavin runs off to go stop the body calibration

Ada just YEETS Gavin. Iconic.

Ada: *doing the villain “you won’t shoot me, you’re too moral” thing*

Chris: Shut the fuck up *shoots her*

Deviancy sequence, iconic

“You’re awake now” bitch get your own tag line, Markus became Robot Jesus for this shit

He’s HOLDING HER HAND while DEFENDING HER!! PLATONIC HAND HOLDING

Gavin trusting Nines’ decision immediately. Amazing. THAT’S LOVE BITCH.

The SMILES after Ada leaves!! They know they made the right choice!

Ugh the COLOR SYMBOLISM!! This is one thing that Michelle has touched on herself! Gavin isn’t wearing white in this scene because he’s not ‘fixed’, he never will be! He has trauma and he’s just barely beginning to heal from it with Nines’ help. He’s wearing grey, lighter than his usual, but still grey because they aren’t pure or innocent and they’re not perfect!! And that’s the fucking point!! It’s also a contrast against Sim!Gavin wearing white! Sim!Gavin was an idealized version of Gavin in Nines’ idealized world!! Real Gavin isn’t that!! So he’s wearing grey!!

Gavin immediately understanding that Nines is Ace and that it’s ok!! Beautiful!

“You’ve been a whole person since the day you woke up” YES!! YOU DO NOT NEED SEX TO BE WHOLE!! FUCK YEAH!!! (this is ace excitement. In the months since writing this I realized I’m aro-ace and trans so fuck yeah for ace rep.) 

Gavin being a dick and making Nines tell him about the skin thing

THE KISS!! They slowly move more into the light!! Because they’re getting better TOGETHER!!

Ok before I sign off, it’s only 3 am so I think I’m awake enough to talk about this, I like that they bring up that Gavin has like, actual issues that he needs to get through. Let’s be 100% honest here, I see Gavin as having ADHD, depression, and probably a form or symptoms of PTSD. He’s kinda fucked up and I’m gonna be real here he needs some therapy. He’s got trauma and needs to work through it. 

I like that at the end they explicitly have Nines understand and accept that that’s what needs to happen. As someone who has actually had relationships ruined because of trauma (on both sides) that we were unprepared to work through together, if I had seen something like that? Game changer. As it was, most relationships I had seen were idealized and seemed to “fix” those issues by way of just being in a relationship. Thanks major media. 

Now that the Detroit Evolution post series is over, I’m gonna be a bit sentimental and say that this film quite literally changed my life. Seriously. Michelle is such a big inspiration for me and I can only hope to be the same for someone else. 

If you ever have a chance to check out any of the amazing people who worked on this film, please do. To put into context how big this was: I changed my ideal college major from Forensics to Film. 

That’s it that’s all, ending this post at 3:24 am before I literally start crying over it. Thanks for suffering through my long-winded explanations, I hope you enjoyed. Have a wonderful day.

[thattimdrakeguy]

ROBIN 80TH ANNIVERSARY - REVIEW!! - The GREAT, the okay, the meh, the wait what, and the freaking awful

None of the stories I’d consider bad in this besides the Super Sons one.

They have flaws, some don’t have any but aren’t that great, and just weird choices, with some disappointments.

I’m just gonna be honest about each story because that’s all I can do.

--

DICK GRAYSON’S FIRST STORY: Really freaking good.

My favorite story is probably the first one:

Like the art is the best in the whole issue, and the only real flaw is how mean they made Bruce through-out it.

It’s yet again another story of how and why Dick quit (I guess he didn’t get fired this time) being Robin, but it’s just nice. Nice pacing, timing, dialogue, good art, and because the people working on it are 80s writers and artists, it keeps it feeling classic.

Which is great for a little showing of the 80s world, and I’m no big 80s DC guy at all, but it’s a really nice flashback for that.

One thing that was disappointing but I won’t count as a flaw (since it’s really not, just a wasted opportunity) is that this kid didn’t end up being Tim:

It looks like a young Tim, it’s drawn by the first artist on Tim’s Robin ongoing, written by his creator, it’s about the history of Robin, and he’s an overeager Robin fanboy-- like why wasn’t this kid Tim? He even has that dorky bowlcut Tim had when he was little, just less 80s styled.

A missed opportunity honestly.

The story though shows Dick’s compassion, talent, frustrations as he became his own man, his views on Robin, some of his sense of humor even. So his characterization is pretty great, but it is written by the man that grew Dick his own unique character to begin with, and it’s great to see this story keeps it up. (Prolly gonna find out this is an old script, but hey, it’s a good one.)

A weird retcon story, but it’s a nice callback to the 80s, and I think it’s really well-done beyond Bruce being a controlling grumpy prick to the point it feels like parody.

--

DICK GRAYSON’S SECOND STORY: It’s just alright.

Where the first story is a flashback to the 80s, this is a direct flashback to he 90s, with the writer and artist that started his ongoing solo.

And it’s good. Like I had a lot of fun reading it, good heroics, feels of it’s era, but like the last story that’s the fun.

There’s nothing really to say about it besides it’s good. There isn’t anything too standout about it.

--

DICK GRAYSON’S THIRD STORY: It’s forgettable.

I forgot this was a thing in this, and it just feels like a waste of page.

It’s in no way bad that I seen, but it’s so very bland and one note. Titans fight and Dick acts as leader. Very generic.

The art’s really good though.

--

DICK GRAYSON’S FOURTH STORY: It’s better than that last one at least.

Unlike the last one, this feels like it at least has a point to be here, and it actually feels like it makes sense to be in he 80th anniversary as well.

I’m not a personal fan of the “Grayson” series, it just sexualized Dick too much honestly, made him cheesier again a bit, and the writing was a little on the off-side in a way that just made it all feel empty besides a few moments, but I never read the whole series to be a great judge on it.

But also because of that, I have no idea who these people are for this story to be grand. What makes it feel like it’s worthy of being here though is trying it back to the history of Robin like the first story with these little bits.

Without these moments though, you wouldn’t have a clue why this is there.

Also Dick just suddenly wears this:

Which is super duper off-putting. But Oh-ho gotta have sexy Dick in there somewhere I guess. Just-- wow, was that super sudden.

--

JASON TODD’S STORY: It’s good but this kid doesn’t look right.

The story is very simple and sweet, and I think it works a lot given Jason and Bruce’s complicated relationship.

It’s even written by Judd Winnick who did Under the Red Hood, which is awesome.

But who is this kid they keep calling Jason exactly? It irrationally bugs me, because all the art has been super spot on till this story. They even write him well, but it just genuinely doesn’t look like post-crisis Robin Jason.

Like to show what I mean--

You read it and this is how the kid speaks.

Super snarky,

a bit of a rude edge to it,

practical sounding but rough teen-ish still

yet still mature enough to feel like he can handle himself.

So you might place this around when Jason was 15 given he’s Robin, and when he was 15 and when they gave him a unique design finally away from a generic silver age Robin, he looked like a young body builder--

Like this is what Jason Todd looked like when they settled his look away from a Dick clone:

A young body builder type, strong jaw, working out, mature features for his age

So who the heck is this?

Like this isn’t what Jason looked like besides pre-crisis, but this is post-crisis Jason. They already settled what he looked like during that 80s run, and this isn’t it. He’s not supposed to look like a generic silver age Robin anymore.

Even beyond it not looking like what Jason’s supposed to, it doesn’t fit the dialogue. He’s written as a practical, snarky, yet in his own way still mature teen. Soooooo why’s he look 5?

It’s so off-putting and it bugs me.

However, beyond that, I really like the story, and at least the artist was good at drawing adult Jason.

Them representing Bruce’s and Jason’s complicate relationship of distant but still caring is something I really enjoy. It’s so much more true to character rather than acting like Jason is just a part of the family like nothing ever happened.

More of that dynamic for them, please.

--

TIM DRAKE’S FIRST STORY: It’s pretty good, but it’s missing something.

Not the highest praise ever, but I do like this story. I enjoy it’s setting at Tim’s school. High school was a constant setting for Tim’s comics in Robin, and they rarely ever treat it like that so I enjoy this story bringing it back.

I really enjoyed the connection  between extracurricular activities and what he does as Robin. It’s that blend of relatability and heroics that really made Tim work as a character. So that’s also great they brought back.

One of my favorite things that they bring up is Tim being into eSports, cuz it reminds me of how much Tim was into video games. It’s a very modern version of him being into the arcades in the 90s. Which is great.

However a downside is that it doesn’t really focus on Tim as a character like the other stories did with the other Robins.

Nothing about his never give up attitude, his insecurities, his underdog likability, how hard he is on himself, or things like that.

In-general this story says nothing about his personality besides a mention that he’s geeky. Which is a pretty big let-down because it keeps it from being any better, despite it already being good.

Freddie William’s art is also very hit or miss. It’s so crude sometimes, and Tim seems so buff compared to before in his actual Robin run. It’s very displeasing given that his early Tim work was top 5 Tim art material. However I still enjoyed that they brought him back even if he can’t draw Tim as well anymore. Tim’s still good in the babyface in most panels at least.

BUT-- this is still a pretty good Tim story. It’s just lacking.

Like it just should’ve been more about Tim as a character since it’s a Tim Drake story.

--

TIM DRAKE’S SECOND STORY: It’s honestly just pretentious.

Tim doesn’t talk like this. Tynion has a melodramatic tone to his characters that works great for characters like Batman, I’ve actually quite liked his Batman run so far partially because of that, but it doesn’t work for Tim.

This is not what Tim talks like. It’s so very unnatural sounding for a kid. Yet Tim talks in this incredibly dramatic tone except for a few light hearted spots, when I feel like it should be the opposite.

It’s also trying hard to be a character study, but again it’s so unnatural. It sounds like a fan describing their view of the characters, not the characters themselves. Like since have these guys became each others therapists?

And then he has Dick say these things that makes Tim seem like a Gary Stu and the greatest most talented guy ever.

Also having Tim hang out with Jason when Jason’s using guns even though Tim’s insanely against that sort of thing.

They even have Damian talk like a typical fan person who dislikes Tim based off of superficial things for a bit.

The fact it treats that Detective Comics Rebirth part of Tim’s character history as uber important is also a bit pretentious of the writer given he wrote that too. Despite Tim only being in that run for like three arcs and wasn’t even in-character for most of it.

Best part of it, is the vague acknowledgement that Tim didn’t want to be anything else but Robin to me.

Otherwise it just reeks of awkwardly written fan fiction.

Honorable mentions of quality though, is Dick and Tim being brothers train riding, and Damian’s mini-adult coming out. I’m so sick of them making Damian a generic kid sometimes that I actually liked this part even if it’s through a snarky filter.

--

STEPHANIE BROWN’S STORY: Better than expected, it’s actually pretty good.

I actually really liked this story. Overall I think Steph’s actual Robin run sucked, this is still a good story if I can get past the era it’s set in.

Unlike Tim’s stories, this actually uses her character.

How reckless she can be without it being super exaggerated, her attitude, love that they brought back the diary format for her inner-monologue too. 

There’s not much to say besides I’d actually consider this one of the best stories in the thing, except for the fact Steph clearly disobeys Batman and she was said to get fired for that. That’s a decent plot holes for me.

I super love the detail of Tim being so small that Steph can’t fit in his uniform. That cheered me up.

Them bringing back her Robin era artist was also great. Unlike Freddie Williams, their art actually really improved.

DAMIAN WAYNE’S FIRST STORY: The genuine worst story in it.

It’s so-- baaad.

Fan service can work if it’s in good quality. Like being in-character, or a nice homage. The train riding in Tynion’s story was that.

This isn’t that.

Damian and Jon didn’t get along right away, not even soon enough for this “mostly” part to feel right as a joke, because they obviously didn’t get along mostly right away. They fought a lot. They even show it on the full page them fighting, but they downplay how long they did fight just for fanservice. It took a long time, and even when they did it was still contrived.

Then they have Damian and Jon in the same class, when they aren’t the same age for that to make sense..

They even have Jon help Damian on his tests when it’s constantly shown that Damian is a brainiac who wouldn’t need that.

It’s literally even in the history summary at the end that he’s highly intelligent. So he probably wouldn’t even ever need a study partner considering he’s even said to have actual PHDs anyway. Which makes the study partner thing just plain out of character.

There’s also panels that straight up feels like oddly specific deviantart fetish art, which is so nasty. Especially considering that I know damn well that’s there’s pedophiles who make this same kind of oddly specific fetish art on there. So much so I had to stop using the site cuz of the anxiety it gave me.

And they downplay how mean Damian can be too Jon so much that it irks me.

This is the worst story in the whole comic, genuinely. Nothing good is in it, besides some decent enough art.

It’s certainly pandering to it’s fandom, but to certain parts it really shouldn’t be.

(This sort of stuff was still happening in their miniseries. Jon really shouldn’t want this as a brother. That’s stockholm syndrome.

--

DAMIAN WAYNE’S SECOND STORY: It’s better than the last one, but somethings missing still.

Unlike the last one avoiding talking about Damian’s actual character besides to play it down. This one actually uses it.

It’s just so quick, and empty feeling at the same time that it’s missing something. A bit like an inverse of Tim’s first story. Tim’s story had the setting and interesting story format, but no real character, while this has a lot of usage of the character but no interesting setting or story.

A lot of Damian’s character is that he’s not a natural Robin as far as attitude goes. He isn’t a typical Robin, and I enjoy how they play into that rather than be afraid of that. It’s what makes this actually work for me.

Although it makes you question why he’s still Robin, I consider that a good thing, because YOU SHOULD. You want the character’s to actually acknowledge things as if they’re real and not just ignoring things.

He’s not typical, he’s unique for better or worse. That’s Damian, and that’s what you should show of him.

This goes into why Damian’s the exact opposite of what a Robin normally is. That’s great.

But it’s missing anything memorable about it. However I think that’s cuz it leads into a future issue of Teen Titans which gives it a reasonable excuse.

I’m really hoping it leads into something.

Although i have a feeling they sadly might do the same thing as typical and ignore Damian’s actions more. Avoiding any genuine feelings.

--

OVERALL

It’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Only two stories I’d actually call bad, which is a lot less than I thought With just occasionally sloppy art, not even what I’d call back, but just crude or not drawing the character accurately which will annoy some more than others.

When I heard of this book I got so worried, but only two stories is actually almost relieving how little that is given the potential ego-driven things they could’ve done, which only those two stories then.

To me, I say it’s worth a pick-up, just rip out a story or two to keep it friendlier to revisit

Mostly was just really missing that extra heart in a lot of the stories.

[merryfortune]

Tear ducts of Coral

Fandom: Tropical Rouge PreCure

Ship: Laura/Sango

Word Count:  3.8k

Tags: Out of Character, Body Horror, Gore, Xenobiology, Unrequited Pining

  Minori adjusted her glasses and blinked when something had suddenly caught her attention during the Tropical Club’s latest endeavour: script writing. She turned her head, robotically, to the side and the increasing motion in just one little square of the desks they had bumped together had gotten Sango and Asuka to notice as well. Manatsu, however, was still scribbling away at her Ultra Hyper Pineapple Squad idea, whatever that was.

  “Laura, do you mind me asking a personal question?” Minori asked.

  “Huh?” Laura’s hand flopped around as she lazily, but in a fashion that was oddly regal at the same time which indicated that Laura was now paying attention. Somewhat, at least. “Pardon, you want to ask a personal question?” she addressed Minori.

  Her tail twitched as Laura played with her hair, all whilst she remained propped up on Manatsu’s desk. Speaking of, Manatsu was paying attention as well, she chewed on her pencil as Laura tried to decide if she wanted to answer Minori’s question or not before, ultimately, she shrugged her shoulders.

  “Yes.” Minori confirmed.

  Laura sighed heavily, “So long as its not too personal, I suppose I don’t mind.”

  “Good, I don’t think it is too personal, but you may find it odd,” Minori prefaced her statement, “but how accurate is the human trope of mermaids who cry pearls?”

  “Only happens once in a while.” Laura replied. “Sometimes its rubies, emeralds, it can be anything and everything. There have even been instances of mermaids crying seafoam, seaweed, and even sea grapes. It really depends.”

  Manatsu gasped and then blinked, “What are we talking about?” she asked.

  “The thought crossed my mind whilst I was adapting my novel into the script format of a movie and I recalled hearing notions of mermaids crying seafoam, and even pearls, so the curiosity struck me to ask.” Minori explained.

  “I’ve never heard of any of that but I’m not exactly a mermaid otaku like you, Minorin.” Asuka said and she crossed her arms, glancing at Laura, and her brow twitched, “Argh, now I gotta know, what kind of tears do you cry, Laura? We all cry salt water, if that alleviates the burden.”

  “Crying hurts so I don’t cry.” Laura replied, brusque.

  “O-oh,” Sango piped up shyly, “I thought you would have looked really pretty crying tears of pearls, that’s probably a cruel thing to say.”

  “It is.” Laura sniped but she looked smug about it.

  Sango flinched. She hadn’t meant to be cruel about it and Laura relished the reaction. She laughed. But then when Asuka gave her a scolding glare, Laura let it go. She sighed again.

  “It sounds peculiar to me, that crying doesn’t hurt.” Laura mused.

  “Yep, not at all, in fact, it feels really good after.” Manatsu said. “I cried heaps on the way to Aozora when I was leaving my Dad behind on the island but whoa, I felt tropica-shining afterwards once it was all done.”

  Laura cringed, she was unsettled by the idea that crying could be painless, “But I suppose unless you’ve actually experienced it, its difficult to understand but yes. Crying hurts so I don’t cry. Besides, mermaids only really cry when love is involved,” she explained, “so I don’t ‘love’ either.”

  “I don’t follow?” Sango murmured.

  Laura glanced at the others and sighed heavily, “I mean, yes, mermaids ‘love’ one another. We go forth, procreate, bring more spawn into the world. We love swimming and we love pretty, shiny objects but there’s a love that is uniquely human. More than a means to an end or a satisfaction of greed or lust or gluttony. We are not in possession of this feeling that I see in each and everyone of you each and every day.”

  Manatsu gasped ad her face began to glitter with a huge grin. Laura’s own expression softened in return, pleasing Asuka and intriguing Sango. Regardless, Laura continued after this micro-second of a pause to her speech.

  “Fittingly, it does make me envious, but every boon has its bane, so I am content not being flawed by this particular human characteristic.” Laura checked her nails and her voice quietened, not to a mumble, just became disheartened. “Of course, not every mermaid is as pragmatic as I. Hence, they cry. Poor little silly things who have gone and hurt their hearts. It’s a sickness, a contagion, and I will do anything to remain impervious to it.”

  “I see.” Minori said, her voice calm and even in a way that none of the other girls’ voices could have been had they been the first to respond to Laura’s tirade. “Thank you for answering my question, I can make amendments to my script – and my novel – per this new information.”

  “Your welcome.” Laura replied like she was bragging.

  With that, the conversation finished and when the girls checked the time, they realised it was late enough to end club activity anyways, so they tidied up and left for the day. They parted ways thereafter with an unusual mood to them. It was sombre and peculiar. Laura seemed mostly unaffected by it, based on what she would yell from the Aqua Pot but the person who seemed most affected, but it was Sango.

  She had done her very best to hide it but her old facades were more difficult for her to wear nowadays since meeting and befriending Manatsu. She couldn’t quite suppress herself and her feelings quite so adeptly nowadays. She had thought it for the better but the tremor in her heart of present was disturbing her. Asuka and Minori could both tell but they waved Sango goodbye without issue, nonetheless. Their small gestures looked so out of place beside Manatsu who waved huge arcs goodbye to her when Sango could barely muster flicks of her fingers in reply.

  Sango went home and her head was swimming with Laura’s words. They were blunt but they were also morbid. Sango had never been intrigued by that sort of thing before. She was the type to be scared of her own shadow, let alone of all the bumps in the night and anything else a little unusual but this was something else. Perhaps it was because of how she pined for Laura, to know that it would be doomed because of some sort of incompatibility of emotions – that human love and mermaid love were completely different – or maybe its because she was vain.

  Ruminating with this new knowledge that was ruining her, Sango stood in front of the mirror in her ensuite bathroom. On her tiptoes, she got up close enough to the mirror so that even the shallowest of her breaths fogged it, so that she could see every pore underneath her eyelid. She was the daughter of an accomplished make-up artist and seller, she would be considered scathed if she wasn’t a little bit vain and now Sango wondered what she would look like if every bout of her own cry-babyishness had caused her to be scarred. The notion of her cheeks being scarred by the rivets of tears previously shed was particularly made her shudder.

  In the involuntary movement, Sango felt her heart tremor. She disliked the sensation and what lingered after it. This first twinge that something was amiss inside of herself.

  She had been trying to ignore it all afternoon. To know that her crush could never come to fruition, Sango had avoided thinking about it but now her eye was all that she could see which meant all she could see was herself and her own flaws of being human. A human with a big but fragile heart, no less.

  Her crush on Laura could be pinpointed to one specific catalyst: meeting her and becoming a Pretty Cure. She had been awestruck, seeing a real-life mermaid for the first time, and she had felt her heart flutter. The sound of her singing lured Sango: it was sweet, melodic, utterly incomparable to anything that she had heard before, so Sango opened that door. Beyond it, there she beheld Laura for the very first time, leaving her breathless.

  She was beautiful, basking in the sun and its ray glittering off the surface of the pool as she swam through it. Elegant but slovenly. Sango knew immediately that she wanted to get closer. And so, she did. Hands on the glass, eyes wide, observing this creature that she had only seen before in the wildest of dreams and in the most fictional of fairy tales.

  Given that Laura – and Manatsu – had offered to make her a Pretty Cure, Sango had assumed that maybe Laura wanted to get closer to her as well. Even if she turned her nose up at the idea of storybooks where mermaids gave up their mermaidness for humans that they fell in love with. She had thought, at the time, it was because Laura was uniquely a self-absorbed priss, but she realised now that she was wrong.

  The books were wrong. Sango felt her eye grow wet as she stared at her own reflection distorted by being so close up to it. A mermaid would never give up her tail because mermaids don’t fall in love like humans do. Sango swallowed and the teardrop in her eye shone before turning into a jewel.

  Sango watched, in horror, at the clear bead of her teardrop turned blood red. It streaked down her cheek and her stomach lurched with pain. A polyp branched out jaggedly from her tear duct. Sango squeaked in pain and her eyes watered. Only for that water to twist and form into a tentacle of… of… of coral.

  Sango stumbled back away from the mirror. She clamped her hand over her mouth, and she willed herself not to make a noise. Not a sound. She didn’t want to disturb her mother because she didn’t know how to explain the fact that coral was growing from her tear ducts. Well, she was reasonably certain that it was coral.

  These clusters that edged ever so slowly and so painfully out of her eyes were beautiful. As fearful of them as she was, Sango was awed by their innate prettiness as she tried to understand what was happening. As her vision now had criss-crosses and peculiar formations in the peripheries. Twisting, branching out like they were completely and utterly natural.

  She inhaled deeply and slowly took her hand off her mouth. She could feel her eyes water but the stinging pain of calcium carbonate solidifying in the teeny tiny channels of her tear duct and the veins of her eyes was unimaginable. But she was a Pretty Cure. She would be strong and so, she tested her theory.

  Very tenderly, Sango touched the scarlet polyps that were growing from her eyes where her teardrops had been cried. Her heart fluttered and her stomach twisted as every inch of her common sense told her not touch the delicate branches climbing out her eyes and yet. Sango did it. And they crumbled at her touch with immense pain.

  A squeal of pain escaped Sango’s mouth and her heart leapt her throat. She heard her mother cry out, “Is something wrong, sweetie? Do you need me?” and the lie that she was okay came out her mouth just as easy as the pain. Sango swallowed and she began to cry again. Sango was harrowed as she looked at her fingertips. They were dusted with a crumbly powder that was a pinkish red. Just like coral looked in her mind. And that scared her more than the terrible sensation of cutting and ripping just under her eyes.

  The fresh jolts of pain branched through her eyes and with it, came the blood. Sango was chilled as she felt these thin streaks on her cheeks, and it was a vicious cycle. Every time she was hurt, she would cry and every time she cried, she was hurt. The punishment emphasised by her mind which raced as she tried to comprehend the impossibility of what was happening to her.

  Although… maybe it wasn’t all that impossible that a human in love with an actual mermaid would contract some sort of gemstone lovesickness from a mermaid. Sango felt herself grow hopeful, but it was a terrible feeling riddled with the polyps of the coral that was emerging from her tear ducts. If a mermaid had gotten her sick, maybe a mermaid could be her cure.

  Sango’s hands shook as he made her way back to her bedside table, where her phone was charging. She was very calm as she took her phone off the charger. She opened it up and then her contacts app and then rang Manatsu.

  “Hello! Manatsu’s phone!” she bellowed back.

  Sango whimpered. The polyps protruding from her tear ducts quivered with the reverberations of Manatsu’s exuberant greeting. Sango tried not to cry but more tears escaped her eyes, mixed with blood and calcium, becoming yet more fragile branches of the coral that was growing from her face.

  “Hi Manatsu… I need to see Laura.” she said softly.

  “I can just put her on the phone, you know, she’s not totally out of touch with human technology.” Manatsu laughed.

  Sango swallowed a strangled noise. She adored Manatsu, she really did, there could be no friend truer nor a friend more hard-headed. She wasn’t normally this abrasive but with such delicate structures spurting out her tear ducts, Sango’s tolerance for such antics was less than usual and yet, she remained sweet as sugar with Manatsu.

  “Something has come up, an emergency,” she replied, strained, “so can we please meet somewhere in private?” she asked.

  “Oh, okay, um… oh! What about at the cove! Its nice and private and stuff. Its close by both our houses, too!” Manatsu suggested, her voice very, very loud.

  Sango winced. She could feel flakes of coral burst and twinge and sprout all over again in reaction to Manatsu’s voice, but she hazarded a smile anyway.

  “That sounds good, thank you Manatsu.” Sango replied. “See you there.”

  “Yeah, see ya soon.” Manatsu bade her goodbye and thankfully, she hung up first.

  Sango sighed with relief. She shuddered and she felt more coral break off her eyes but at least she didn’t shed a tear with it. Though, Sango was still worried about what she looked like. Blood and dust and the like so she hobbled back into her bathroom and was sickened by her own face.

  She could hardly recognise herself so frayed with fear. Her own ‘charm point’ mocked by this illness. She saw how the polyps twisted and arched on both sides of her face into sick, love-heart shaped. Her heart throbbed with the whiplash cruelty of that realisation and she felt the polyps move. Their rocky exoskeletons puncturing her veins as she shed more tears that turned into coral.

  Sango put her hands over her mouth again. She felt her heart thud in her chest as she tried to power on through the pain, breathing in and out was so difficult but she tried so hard. When she achieved that shaky equilibrium again, where the cycle was temporarily diffused, she put her phone in her pocket and slipped on some shoes.

  She felt awful sneaking out, but she didn’t want to worry her mother with this exotic, underwater disease. It was difficult but somehow, she made it out of the house in not too many pieces. It was cold for a late spring-early summer night, making Sango shiver and leave coral dander as she slowly made her way to the cove that Manatsu had agreed to meet her.

  Sango had been there a handful of times before. It was a nice little spot that was cosy and even romantic in the daylight hours but at night, it looked a little scary. Even with the cityscape lights behind it and the stars twinkling on the ocean in front of it. Fortunately, Manatsu was there to greet Sango and she waved her down.

  “Oiiii,” Manatsu called out, “over here!”

  Sango was glad to see her. Tired. But nevertheless, glad to see Manatsu as she hobbled closer and Manatsu blinked. She could tell, immediately, that something was wrong with Sango; how she was trying to hide beneath her fluffy fringe and the floppy plaits by her face was uncharacteristic, even to someone as shy and repressed as Sango.

  “You okay?” Manatsu asked.

  “Y-Yes, I’m fine,” Sango lied, “so, um, where’s Laura? I really need to speak with her.”

  “Oh, um, she’s just over there, in the water, you may have to call for her if she’s underwater, but she was floating just a minute ago.” Manatsu said and she pointed towards the eroded cove.

  Even in the dark, that striking image of a twisted love-heart was apparent in the sandstone structure of the cove. The twinkle of the stars above it was dull and below it, the water lapped at the ground. Sango swallowed her fears and her tears. She flashed a smile at Manatsu that was mostly missed.

  “Thank you,” Sango replied, “and do you mind giving us some privacy? This matter it’s a bit, um, a bit unusual and hard to explain.”

  “Er, yeah, that’s fine, I’ll just, um, wait over there.” Manatsu pointed in the opposite direction of the cove with both her fingers.

  Sango sighed with relief, “Thank you.” And yet that didn’t feel competent enough with her gratitude. Nonetheless, Manatsu awkwardly tried to exit from the cove but not too far given that she was Laura’s ride home back to the safety of Manatsu’s place.

  Sango, however, began to draw closer to the water’s edge. Her heart thumped in her chest and she could feel the vibrations in the polyps dangling from her eyes by a thread. They were weakening now that she had all dried up the tears that she had wanted to shed but that didn’t make them less threatening to her senses of security in her body or self. She got down on her knees, sitting, at the edge of the cove and Laura breached.

  Her eyes were suspicious and cynical, even when barely reflected by starlight bouncing off the water’s perpetually moving and choppy surface. She hiked up her arms over the edge and anchored herself like that. Her tail coming backwards, forming a crest of her back and the water’s surface.

  Laura hummed, “I thought humans cried seawater and only seawater.” she teased. “Isn’t that what we established this afternoon at the club meeting?”

  “Well, er, we did but…” Sango said. “But have you ever heard of such a thing?! A human who cries coral?”

  Laura sighed heavily. It was too late at night for Sango to be so loud and in her exclamation, her hot flush of emotions, there was the sparkle of a possible tear in the moisture of her eyes that gleamed in the dark, framed by coral dyed a blood red in the dim. Laura made a floppy hand gesture as she was deep in thought.

  “No, I haven’t.” Laura admitted. “Mermaids crying coral isn’t impossible, of course, but humans? No, not so much… But given when love is involved – and it is, isn’t it, Sango?”

  “It is…” Sango murmured, and she fidgeted with the ends of her plaits.

  “How trite.” Laura’s voice was pithy with disdain. “A human girl has gone and gotten a crush on a mermaid. It is called a crush, yes?”

  “Yes.” Sango mumbled.

  Laura wanted to laugh but something stopped her. Even though she could feel the tickle in her throat, something about Sango’s expression was too pathetic even for Laura to worsen.

  “I suppose it is possible…” Laura murmured aloud in half spoken thoughts. “I did describe it as a sickness. Given that humans don’t look too dissimilar from the top half to mermaids, yes, it is entirely possible that our weaknesses of physiology are capable of transferring.” Her skin crawled. “I better not have any of your disgusting germs. No way in Triton’s good underworld am I coming down with that ghastly influenza you lot speak of.”

  Sango giggled. Although, maybe it was more than a hiccup. She felt just as whiplashed by the unspoken cruelty than if Laura had just straight up addressed it with her jeering.

  “But every sickness has a cure, I suppose.” Laura said.

  Sango perked up, “Does that mean?” she gasped. “Can you help me?”

  “I can think of something, but I have no way of knowing if it’ll cure you.” Laura replied.

  “What do you mean?” asked Sango. “How do mermaids normally rid themselves of this sickness?”

  “The affliction typically goes away on its own, but I believe a token of severance could go a long way.” Laura explained but it didn’t feel like an explanation.

  Sango’s heart skipped a beat and she felt her shoulders prickle as she asked, “And what is a token of severance?”

  “A kiss.” Laura replied all too simply on a breathless voice.

  “A k-kiss?!” Sango exclaimed.

  Laura stared at her idly. She didn’t think it was all that of a big deal. Being stared down by such a cold, if somewhat expressionless, look Sango calmed down. Even though her heart was racing, and she could feel the sting of coral pushing through her tear ducts again, Sango calmed down.

  “If you think it’ll help…” Sango murmured.

  “I do think it’ll help.” Laura quipped.

  And it was upon that cue, before Sango could quite adjust or ask to go slow, Laura swooped in with a kiss. Sango made a noise, but it was smothered in the press of Laura’s lips against her own. Her eyes went wide but Laura’s, curiously, were closed. Her brows twinged as she kissed Sango as hard as she could, like she was trying to perform some sort of CPR. It was awful yet Sango didn’t hold a grudge.

  She softened into the kiss. It was her very first kiss and it wasn’t happening anything like she had ever daydreamed, but it was freeing. She could feel the remaining coral in her eyes and her tear ducts crumble to nothingness. To just flecks of sand that she could bat away with her eyelashes. She felt a wet lump in her throat, and she kissed back. She wanted to be cure so badly of her pain, but she could feel the smirk in Laura’s kiss.

  Self-important with nothing to spare. Perhaps even relishing having this vast power or strength over Sango since Laura deemed the humanlike ‘love’ of crushes and pining to be beneath her since it caused nothing but pain. A teardrop – yes, a real teardrop – rolled down Sango’s cheek and Laura moved her kiss to lick it. Seawater. How peculiar but she liked it even though it didn’t quite have the nostalgic taste of her underwater home, it was endearing, nonetheless.

  “Thank you,” Sango whimpered, shedding more tears, not coral, “for curing me.”

  Laura tutted. She pulled back from the kiss and Sango looked a mess in the starlight. Pitiful and pathetic, crying her tears of seawater.

[a-totally-creative-username]

Are you kitten me?

Patton finds a tiny, black kitten in an alleyway during a rainstorm. He just can’t let that poor thing suffer and ends up taking it home. His roommates aren’t really happy about the new, temporary, addition towards the household, even if Patton’s allergies have yet to act up and they all start to fall in love with it.

Words: 2127

Ships: None

Patton is in the middle of walking home from work when he hears it. A small, sad noise that he manages to just about hear over the pouring rain. He immediately stops and listens for it to come again. He waits for a few seconds and is just about to give up and write it up to his imagination when he hears it again. He locates the noise quickly and starts running towards that direction without hesitation.

Once arrived, in a very small and dirty alley way, he looks around wildly. It doesn’t take him long to find the source of the sound. A small, adorable, very wet and sad looking kitten that is trying to hide from the rain under a nearly soaked through cardboard box.

Patton feels his heart melt while observing the tiny cat. It doesn’t seem to have noticed him yet as it is too pre occupied from trying to stay dry. It doesn’t succeed and soon the cardboard is soaked through and leaves the cat in a wet puddle.

Patton just can’t watch another second of those sounds and takes off his jacket, holds it over his head and starts nearing the cat. As soon as it notices him it starts trying to look intimidating and hissing at him.

It accomplishes nothing except make Patton fall even more in love with it. Mentally he is already going through an adoption and naming process for his new friend when he finally starts talking to it.

“Hey there kitty! Sorry to scare you like this but you seemed for me a little wet on your luck! Would you let me dry you up a little and help you get back onto your feet?”

The kitty stares at him for a few seconds as if trying to figure out how genuine he is before meowing loudly and slowly walking towards him and underneath the dry jacket.

Patton is just star stuck over the fact that he managed to get this cat to come with him and can’t even attempt to stop smiling as he takes the kitten, that he calls Anx according to it’s collar (well actually Anxiety but he refuses to call this baby a disorder), towards his home. The fact that Anx started cuddling and rubbing at him almost immediately doesn’t help his growing love towards it.

Now he can do nothing but hope that his roommates won’t mind a new addition!

--------------------------

Alright, so they did mind the new addition a little bit. Or maybe more than a little bit. Patton doesn’t even get their issue! Anx is adorable and didn’t do anything but be the cutest cat he ever met anyway! He, Logan explained that it is a male cat, flipping fell asleep in the middle of the argument and started softly snoring into Roman’s coffee!

Even Logan had to take a second to regain himself from this beautiful sight before being able to argue against them again. Roman had issues with the situation but it was cute! He kept claiming that the cat had actually drunk from his mug until he noticed that he was caught and acted as if he fell asleep, but that’s just ridiculous!

There is no real reason to not allow his new friend to stay! Patton agreed to cover the costs, his allergies doesn’t seem to react towards Anx (and isn’t that just a sign from the universe to keep the little puffball?!) and they have more than enough space left in their apartment for the new roommate.

In the end it’s Patton’s and Anx’s combined puppy dog eyes and adorableness that gets them the win.

--------------------------

It’s been three days. Three days off looking after Patton’s new companion that he brought surprisingly into their lives and that he, as the most mature person, had to look after for that same amount of time.

Logan, surprisingly, doesn’t dislike the cat. Anx is an interesting and thoughtful addiction to their lives. Yes, he meows loudly when ignored and in need of attention, a way out of the apartment or food, but otherwise he remains mostly quiet and generally just seems to hover in the general direction of whomever he feels in need of attention of.

He does get closer and sometimes tries to climb into a person’s lap, but leaves as soon as he gets a negative reaction as if he could understand them. At least, that is the normal reaction towards avoidance of his affections.

His momentary actions stand in direct contrast towards his past behavior and are nearly enough to get Logan to reevaluate his results. Because the cat is laying right on top of his laptop and his research papers.

Logan left for exactly twelve minutes and thirty-nine seconds to help Patton with a spider related issue before coming back into his room. Before he left, he made sure that everything was at its place on top of his desk. Now that he returned the objects still remain in place, but with the addition of a cat on top of it.

He and Anx stare at each other for several minutes before he breaks it off and moves towards the cat. He tries to get his laptop out from underneath Anx but only gets a hiss in response as well as a half-hearted swipe for his fingers. Curious. Anx had yet to show signs of aggression towards anyone until this moment.

They continue this game for a few more minutes before Logan starts to fell his exhaustion, that naturally comes after over sixty hours of being awake. He can’t seem to stifle a yawn that Anx seems to notice, if his narrowed eyes are anything to go by. He is just about to try working again when he finds himself in his bed and underneath Anx who is curling up on top of him.

His attempts to free himself only earn him a few hisses as well as slight claw marks in warning. Well, it seems like he will remain there for a while. He reaches over and manages to grab his astronomy book. Might as well read a little bit to pass the time. Might as well read aloud for Anx, he has responded positively in the past after all.

Ten minutes later, they are both fast asleep.

--------------------------

“Nothing better to start the day than a nice coffee and a new play to memorize- what the?! You! Patton, come and get your hell beast!”

“What’s the problem Ro? Awww, Anx is sleeping on your script! How adorable! Let me get my camera, this is one for the scrapbook!”

“NO! This is absolutely NOT adorable! You might as well name him Cerberus because I’m as likely to get my script back before he finishes napping as the undead are to escape hades and walk the earth again!”

“Well now you are exaggerating. If you really wanted to you could just lift him up and grab your little script, kiddo. He weighs less than a sack of flour!”

“It doesn’t matter what he weighs as long as he has those daggers that you dare call claws! If he really wanted to he could kill all of us easily, but you would probably call even that cute and let him do as he pleases!”

“Well in that case you should really be clawful around him! At least he only wants that script and not you!”

--------------------------

Roman looks carefully around the apartment. He searched through every room that wasn’t locked in search of his roommates. They of course said that they both would be occupied until well after noon and not back in the shared apartment until dark but one could never be too careful.

After finding no one but the little furball in the living room Roman relaxes and goes into the kitchen to make himself his special sandwich.

He knows of course that neither of his roommates would say anything against him eating his world-famous double meat loathe sandwich, except for Logans remarks that he was going against his died, but they really didn’t need to know about that. So what I he cheated with his died? It’s his body! He can do as he wants!

He sits in the living room and is just about to bite into the deliciousness that he created when the damn cat appears in front of him to stare into his soul and judge his every action like he always does! Or maybe he just wants to beg for meat...

They engage in a fierce staring contest for a few endless seconds before he gives in and sacrifices a few precious scraps.

“Fine, but only this once! It’s not like I like you or anything! This is only so you don’t rat me out to Patton you cat in the hat, understood?!” He stares him into the eyes until he feels judged enough that he feels the need to add something, “Alright, it is also a thank you for preventing me from reading that script in time for auditions. I would NOT have wanted to play that role! I do not know how you knew that the play was that homophobic but you did.”

They fall into a comfortable silence afterwards were they both enjoy their meal until there is nothing left and they can do nothing but lean back and rest. Anx comes to curl up on his lap and he is so satisfied that he completely forgets his dislike for his hairy roommate and starts to scratch him.

Soon he starts pouring his soul out to the little devil and feels the relief from unpacking all his problems onto a safe source.

--------------------------

They are all in the apartment on a lazy Saturday when they hear the knock on the front door. Patton and Logan don’t move from their position with Anx, who is lying on Patton’s lap and getting scratches and attentions from them both, so Roman goes.

He opens the door to a tall, lean man that is dressed as if he just stepped out of a eighteenth century drama in black and yellow. He is just about to ask his intentions when the man begins talking.

“I am incredibly sorry for my intrusion upon your peaceful day off, but I fear you have something that belongs to me.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all and Roman is just about to ask what he means when the man nudges him aside with his shoulder to get inside of his apartment and continues talking, “Or rather, someone.”

He doesn’t stop until he is in front of a very confused Patton with a now hissing Anx underneath his hoodie. The stranger kneels down in front of them and begins talking to the cat of all people.

“I totally don’t know why you are angry with me” a hiss, he pauses and begins nodding knowingly, “You are right, lies have no place here at the moment. My apologies.” Roman and Logan start exchanging looks over the weirdo talking to their cat, Patton continues watching the conversation interested, while Anx comes out of his hiding place enough to stare at the man.

“I am sorry for what happened, I shouldn’t have yelled at you over something so insignificant and I really shouldn’t have sent you out into the pouring rain. You deserve better than that. I overreacted and shouldn’t have let my bad mood out on you.” An indignant meow is to hear from the cat that is now sitting on Patton’s knees. The man just nods as if contemplating the answer.

“Yes, that too. I promise to not do so again and treat you as more of an equal from now on. I already talked with the landlord and you will be written into the lease for the apartment.” The stranger and Anx stare at each other before the former deflates.

“Please come back, these past few weeks have been truly horrendous without you. I am not sure how long I could stand to keep this up. I miss you.” That, surprisingly, seems to do the trick as Anx looks up at Patton and upon receiving a nod, climbs into the stranger’s hat that had been laid out for him to be escorted out of the apartment without further notice.

What?

--------------------------

It is two weeks later that Patton sees the stranger again, followed by a shorter, dark haired man with a familiar collar around his neck.

He catches his gazes and starts smiling and waving at him. The man seems surprised for a moment before starting a shy smile of his own and waving back.

Patton is just happy to know that Anx is happy and healthy. Maybe they will meet again someday in human form and become friends again.

[dreamsmp-megaritz]

my problems with the tone of post-season-1 Dream SMP

Here are some things I often see in Dream SMP post-season-1, which I do not see so much in season 1. Take all of this with a grain of salt, in light of how (1) I am not nearly as familiar with the seasons 2&3 material as I am with season 1 material (so there may be some or many parts of seasons 2&3 which do not have these problems, and which I am failing to give due credit to), and (2) I often cannot pin down why I feel differently about season 1 than about seasons 2&3, so I am not certain how much of my claims stem from objective differences between them vs. subjective biases on my part.

I hope this post can present some topics of further discussion, investigation, friendly debate, and/or analysis.

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Problem #1. Excessive emphasis on making a clear distinction between “canon” and “non-canon.”

It seems that now players often talking about “canonically” doing X and “not canonically” doing Y. I don’t like this much. Back in season 1, people almost never used the word “canonically.” The line was blurrier, and I liked that better. This is a block-game role-play, and given this format, there are many features of the story which really cannot be pinned down with much precision.

As one example (among many), L’Manberg was a “nation” but it also seems to have consisted of only a few people. There’s arguably no way to make much sense of this within any tightly defined “canon,” and I think it’s good that the story has not tried much to do so. The canon should remain loose in some ways.

The blurriness of the canon/non-canon distinction is also good for the intertextual elements discussed in @lucemferto’s video about Philza (which is fantastic, and I highly recommend watching it). This sort of intertextuality is one of my favorite things about Dream SMP-- and I have my own theories as well, which I will write about at a later time-- but I suspect some of these cool elements may require keeping the canon/non-canon distinction at least somewhat blurry.

Of course, I totally grant there is a need for a "role-playing / not role-playing” distinction, or something along these lines. Many of the characters dislike each other in the story, but are friends in real life. Occasionally some of the younger fans get confused about this, and will become angry at content-creators under the false impression that the content-creators are mistreating each other. I fully recognize that some kind of explicit distinction is needed in order to avert these confusions, and to keep everyone on the same page of realizing it’s all in good fun. But the necessary distinction should be sensitive to the loosey-goosey nature of the storytelling format.

Back in season 1, I think content-creators would often correct young viewers’ confusion by saying “It’s a bit” i.e. a skit or game (rather than using words like “canon”). I like this “bit” terminology, because it seems appropriately loose-- instead of using the word “canonically” which seems inappropriately strict.

(Admittedly the term “bit” may be more appropriate to the very early period where there was little to no scripting. I’ll briefly return to the “scripting vs. improvising” distinction a few times. It is related to these other distinctions, but not identical to them.)

--

Problem #2. Some dialogue scenes are too long.

Let’s take a bunch of the one-on-one scenes between Dream in prison talking to other characters such as TommyInnit, like in this VOD and following ones. These scenes involve a lot of interesting story details, but they go on for a frankly very long time. To me they feel incredibly drawn out. They’d be better at half the length. They seem to have a lot of needless repetition, among other issues.

I’m not certain of the cause of the problem, but it seems to be stemming partially from the particular kind of combination of scripting and improvising which they involve. It isn’t always a great combination. It’s like the players have a checklist of story points to cover, but they aren’t sure how to pull it off in a way that sounds natural without taking too long.

I’m not sure how to solve it. Scripting the dialogue more thoroughly might help make them more concise-- but at the cost of sounding less natural, and losing the charm which Dream SMP’s improvisation often holds.

But further analysis would be needed to say exactly how or why the problem is happening. And not everyone might agree me that it’s happening at all. So I’ll be curious to hear other people’s assessments of the problem (if there is one) and what’s causing it.

In any case, I’ll contrast it to season 1. I believe season 1 did not have many scenes that dragged out for a long time. Season 1 has serious moments as well, and it has dramatic weight. But it does not often have the feeling of dragged out scenes. Again I think further analysis is needed to figure out whether I’m right about this or not-- and if I’m right, further analysis will be needed to figure out why the seasons feel so different, because I can’t really say for sure or in detail why it feels this way. So again I’m curious what other people will think about this.

--

Problem #3. Too serious.

This problem seems to be part of the cause of the first two problems. Excessive seriousness may contribute to dragged-out scenes which aren’t fun to watch, and it may contribute to taking the “canon vs. non-canon” distinction too seriously, with an excess tendency to put “serious” stuff on the “canon” side of the divide and put “non-serious” stuff on the “non-canon” side of the divide.

In any case, the storyline after season 1, or at least some parts of it (probably not other parts), seem to have a puffed up air of “seriousness” which really feels off to me.

This does not mean it never succeeds at being serious in the right way. For instance I think serious parts of the Quackity VOD “Quackity Visits Dream in Prison” actually work very well-- even the one-on-one scene between Quackity and Dream, which is one of the best prison scenes. Crucially, this specific prison scene does not seem to have the problems that I’ve complained about for other prison scenes, or at least not nearly as severely. But a lot of seasons 2 and 3, from what I’ve seen of them, appear to have the problem of feeling like they’re “trying too hard” to be taken seriously, and it doesn’t work for me.

Another strength of that Quackity VOD is that the scene with Schlatt at the afterlife gym had a combination of seriousness and levity which I thought was very strong. Whatever one may think of Schlatt’s style of comedy outside DSMP (i’m aware of the myriad controversies), I think Schlatt is incredibly skillful at pulling off an effective combination of seriousness and levity, and I think his chemistry tends to enhance other players’ ability to pull it off too.

And to be clear, season 1 has serious moments as well. But the mixture of seriousness and levity in season 1 seems stronger to me. When Schlatt wins the election, this is a dramatic moment, but it also seems to have a degree of campiness which makes it work well. When Wilbur goes through various scenes of planning to blow up Manberg, this is dramatic and a serious character arc in some ways, but it does not seem to me that it has the air of over-seriousness which parts of seasons 2 and onward seem to have.

However, I can’t really articulate why this is. Some of it may be a nostalgic bias toward the earlier material, and/or the fact that the earlier material had more novelty. And I was in a very particular kind of emotional place when I watched a lot of season 1, due to the pandemic and various other factors, which has strongly impacted how I feel about it today.

However, I think this does not account for everything. I maintain that, most likely, there are also objective differences between the seasons in their style or tone, even though I cannot really pin down what they are in detail or with much assurance.

I also want to add another disclaimer that I’m not sure how consistent this is. For instance, there are plots like the Butcher Army where I simply haven’t watched enough to get a sense of how serious or non-serious it comes across as.

--

Possible diagnoses?

There may be a bunch of possibilities for what causes these issues, but for now I only have the faintest speculations.

One possibility is that seasons 2&3 are more scripted, whereas season 1 was more improvised. This would explain some of the issues, if true. However, I am not sure whether it is actually true that seasons 2&3 are more scripted than season 1.

I can’t find citations offhand right now, but I recall Schlatt once said (at least a lot of) season 1 was heavily scripted, and I think that Wilbur once said season 2 is not as scripted as many people think it is. Now, I grant Schlatt and Wilbur may be using different standards of what counts as “heavily scripted,” and it’s not clear to me whether they agree or not. So there may be some ambiguity. But in any case, the combination of these two statements leads me to think season 2 is probably not significantly more scripted than season 1. And if that’s true, then the degree of scripting is not the key to understanding the problems.

Another possibility is that the difference stems from whether Wilbur or someone else is the main writer. This is most likely a big part of it. However, I am not sure of the details, as I have not researched it enough. I also do not know whether Wilbur has returned to being the lead writer yet (as of late March 2021), or if that is still upcoming.

[unsettledink]

Back in the days of LJ, I used to try and do a post at the end of each year, looking back primarily at fandom and fic. I fell out of the habit when everything moved to tumblr, and then it seemed like I didn’t have anything to say since I wasn’t writing or really participating any. 

But I always liked the idea of it, because I love to be overly reflective on stuff. And talk about my fic. Any excuse! I shuffled around some of the topics I used back then and added a few I’ve seen around that I liked. It got… long, because I TALK, so I split into two sections. 

*

Your main fandom of the year? 

    Marvel (MCU) for sure. Primarily with characters from Spider-Man and Iron Man movies.

Your favorite film watched this year?

    The Old Guard - I saw a couple trailers and everything about it looked like catnip. ‘It’s probably going to be so dumb, but I don’t even care,’ I thought. And then it was so good. It was so much fun and so much smarter than I expected and I loved each and every character and it just made me happy in so many ways.

Your favorite book read this year?

    Red, White, and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston - I read it twice this year actually. It’s so… cute isn’t the right world. Sweet and hopeful and soft and comforting and intense. I liked every single character which is pretty rare. I cried during the sad parts and then again at the happy ending, like straight up sobbed - both times. I already want to read it again.

Your favorite tv show watched this year?

    Schitt’s Creek - I started it on a whim and because a lot of people had said it was good. The episodes were short so it wasn’t a huge time investment. The first season was a little rough, but there were enough funny moments that I hung on, and then… I kept getting fonder and fonder of these idiots as they grew. And THEN… it kept not disappointing me? 

     You grow to expect certain scripts, twists, jokes, especially in queer story lines. To wait for the bad thing to happen, because it always does. Instead, Schitt’s Creek kept going, ‘hey, here’s the set up for that! Guess what? We’re not doing it. Here’s the happy version instead.’ The relief of having that happen again and again - the last season I’ve watched (I’m sort of saving 6) I cried a bunch but it was always because I was happy. 

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?

    1896 - I’ve been waiting for the new Steam Powered Giraffe album so eagerly for aaaaaages. Finally getting recordings of Zero’s songs! Lying Awake remains my favorite off the album, with Eat Your Heart and Bad Days on the Horizon high up there as well. I’m loving what Zero brings to the band.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year?

    I don’t know if I really did discover that much? I stuck pretty closely to old fandoms and the ones I picked up in 2019. Maybe Zodiac? It was definitely inspiring, and I want to write and read more in it. 

    Maybe the couple discords I joined? I still really dislike discord and am not on there much, and mostly lurk when I am, but having somewhere vaguely like the comms I remember makes me feel a little less isolated. It’s the potential, that maybe if I said something I might make a friend, or someone might actually want to hear what I say. 

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

    The Watch - I mean, I knew it was going to be a disaster with every word said during pre production. I wasn’t ever going to be happy with it. And then it came out and was even worse and uglier and … disrespectful not just of the source material but of actual people connected to Terry. I’m beyond disappointed that this is what we got, and it’s probably going to be a long time before we get anything else. 

    Devil All the Time was terrible, but I didn’t have especially high hopes. It still didn’t manage to meet them. Yikes.

The most missed of your old fandoms?

    Maybe MASH? Someone I follow started talking about it and I was reminded all over again of the wonderful fics in that fandom. I went looking and a lot are gone (still on my computer, lol, but not online), but rereading was such a trip. A slightly depressing trip, but still. 

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?

    Hmm. I’ve kind of not had the energy to invest in other fandoms at the moment? When The Witcher was having it’s big moment back in January, I had a feeling I might enjoy it enough to fall headfirst into the fandom, so I avoided watching it. Ikr? I don’t have the time or the energy to actively seek anything out. 

Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?

    SO EXCITED about Winter’s Orbit. I mean, the third Spider-Man movie for sure, with worry. The second Venom movie, ugh yes. I have tentative hopes for Jungle Cruise? Jumanji was stellar and I always enjoy Dwayne. I have both hope and dread for the new Suicide Squad - I did love Birds of Prey, so if it’s along those lines, yay. The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard because it should be some fun garbage, my favorite kind. I don’t know how I feel about Dune, but, uh, I’m anticipating it. It seems highly unlikely it will actually happen, but The Wheel of Time TV series. 

I want to be excited about Black Widow but it’s hard. It’s not the story I’ve been wanting to see, and I’m angry about Natasha not getting a movie until she’s dead.

You know. If any of it is released for real.

The Good: 

I moved to a better place. I got a better paying, better benefits, better environment job that lets me work from home. The house acquired 3-7 more cats depending on the month. I was able to get some serious problems on my car fixed. I have insurance and was able to start on some health stuff. No one I know got sick or died. I wrote a LOT.

The Bad: 

Aside from the obvious? Depression hitting extra hard during the winter. Having to put two kittens to sleep. Have my car be hit three times in our parking lot. Being driven INSANE by one of the cats for months while the vets were all closed. Kidney stone. Dealing with several health problems. Stalling for months on Gotcha.

The Indifferent: 

Not leaving the house often or easily. Enjoying a new fandom but not doing great at making connections (still real awkward, bud). Raising kittens and saying goodbye. Need new tires. Reading a lot of fic but not a lot of books. Having more pay but more expenses as well (wth insurance??). 

*

2020 fic stats

Number of stories: 39

Number of fandoms: 6? Or 2, if you cluster the others under mcu

Total number of words: 152049

Average word count per story: 4kish

Longest fic: Causality (18k, P/Q)

Shortest fic: Can’t, Won’t (1k, P/Q)

Most comments received: Sieche (49, T/P)

Fandom you wrote the most of: MCU Spider-Man - I only wrote TWO fics that didn’t feature that fandom, wow. And one of those was still MCU.

Fandom you wrote the least of: Zodiac (1!)

Events you participated in: Marvel Trumps Hate, Kinktober, IornspidersGeorg Exchange, Starker Festivals Exchange, MCU Secret Santa, Spiderio Big Bang

*

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?

    SO MUCH MORE OMG. I mean, even just counting posted stuff! (I probably wrote a solid 300k of Gotcha this year.) I did not expect or plan on doing Kinktober, so that’s a whole 31 fics right there. I also wasn’t planning on doing any exchanges - I have a History - but then I did three? And beyond that, I did not expect for everything to get so LONG.

Topic you wrote that you would never have predicted in January:

    Tony/Quentin. Goddammit @the-me09 They were like hey, they could be interesting! And while I agreed, I had no ideas for them. THEN they had to go and write Just Bodies That Collide and next thing I know, I’ve got ten fics featuring them and two-six series focused on them or Peter/Quentin/Tony. What the fuck. 

Leitmotif of the year:

    Vulnerability, I think. I had a bunch of things typed up and they all circle back to vulnerability in the end; sex, being seen, being wanted, sharing trauma, asking for help, trying something new. Offering a soft spot in the hopes it won’t be hurt. 

Favorite character to write about: 

    Tony Stark, for sure. There are just a bunch of slightly different takes, and a lot of canon to work with (kind of frustrating too though). And I’m a sucker for emotionally damaged snarky traumatized characters that are viewed poorly both in universe and out. 

Favorite kind of fic to write:

    This year? Fluff and smut combined. Maybe that’s not the right term really. I keep looking for and writing, even in the angstiest fics, for those soft moments. Sure, maybe it’s a super smutty kink scene, but I want the affection to be obvious. Maybe everyone is consumed by guilt, but I want it to be based in caring too much. Maybe there’s no real love, just sex and even that’s messed up, but I want to find that tiny bit of fondness. 

    And I want happy endings. Or endings that look like they’re going to be happy, at least, even if there’s all the angst first. I don’t think I’ve killed anyone this year? Who AM I? 

Biggest disappointment:

    Not finishing the rough draft of Gotcha. I was making such good progress in 2019, from August to December. Even after the move, I basically finished part 6 in January. I fumbled around and fussed with 1 a lot, but that had already been given one draft, really, and I got through half of 4 before I slowed to a stop. I’ve barely gotten anything accomplished on it since June. Bits and pieces here and there, but nothing significant, not like I was doing. I can excuse October, due to 80k invested in Kinktober (yikes!), but aside from that… I’m sad. I’ll finish it eventually, but I really thought I could have the first draft done in a year. I’m sitting at about 480k out of what I’m almost certain will be 700k. 

Biggest surprise:

    Kinktober! It was kind of spur of the moment, decided just a week in advance. I’ve tried month long or even like, 20-25 day long challenges and I don’t think I’ve ever completed one. I thought there was a good chance I’d do so again, so I gave myself a little help and made my own list of prompts, things I knew I liked and hadn’t done much of yet. And it worked? I actually completed it, what the hell? Despite spending five days travelling near the end! Despite falling behind in getting ahead and writing a bunch of stories the day they were to be posted! Despite apparently forgetting how to do short form! 

    I, uh, could have done without the spawning of eleven series or sequels or continuations jfc WHY SELF.

Something you learned this year:

    Ideas breed ideas. I swear to god, the second I sit down to think through a current idea, I wake up the next morning with three more. 

    Words need to be restocked. I need to consume new - not rereads, not fic - content every so often to refresh my word bank. It is astonishing how quickly writing goes again after I’ve done so.

    I can write so much more than I thought I could. I can do so much more than I thought I could. Yes, I can complete challenges without dropping out early. Yes, I can do exchanges and not regret it. Yes, I can write more than 100k, more than 200k, more and more - and I can write 10k+ easily too. Though I wouldn’t mind if I could once again write less than 10k without feeling like I’ve cut off in the middle. 

    My time is shrinking, and if I want to write as much, I’m going to have to make the time. I can’t rely on three days off a week, on seven hours of uninterrupted overnight shifts, on hyper focused writing binges that leave everything else around me on fire. 

Most memorable comment: 

    So, so many! I can’t pick one. I’ve been really lucky to get a bunch of really detailed, enthusiastic, analyzing comments across all different fics. One of the types that always sticks with me are the ones like ‘I didn’t think/know I liked this ship/kink/twist, but fuck, apparently I do? You made me, what the hell?’. 

What, if anything, are you going to try to do differently in your writing in the new year?

So with writing Gotcha but not posting until it’s done, my view of what I’ve written vs anyone else’s is extremely skewed. I’m sitting here thinking, hey I’m 400k in and got another 10k done today, so much writing! While anyone looking at my AO3 account (for most of the year) is like, you’re averaging three months between fics :(

    All that to say I want to try and get something posted more frequently while I’m working on Gotcha.

    Also, writing for kinktober was really interesting - pushing myself to write every single day, often for that day’s post, forced me to get back into shorter form fic. Which used to be all I did? But it was surprisingly hard to just stop and not write more. So I’d like to challenge myself to write more fics under 10k at least. Maybe even under 5k though that might be asking a lot lol. I might get there with the many continuations of those fics I’d like to do. Does that count?

Goals:

   I want to hit 365 fics. :) I’m only 32 away!

    Aside from writing - 

    I’ve really enjoyed the reading record sideblog I started this year. I’ve let it lapse a little the past month or so, but I’d like to keep it going strong. 

    I’d like to leave a lot more comments. I want to get better about allowing imperfection - I want to write The Best Comment, but in the end? Probably 90% of fic writers are going to be happier with a comment expressing enjoyment in any way over no comment at all. 

And not just on fics, but on general posts as well. It’s hard not to feel… weird and stupid and invasive and rude leaving any sort of comment on someone’s post if I don’t know them at least a little. I have godawful rejection sensitive dysphoria and a lot of interactions that ended poorly; I’m really not good at people. But as dumb as it feels to say those things, I know I am thrilled and warmed and happier when there’s a reblog with tags or a note or a comment or an ask or just, any small interaction that shows someone out there notices and cares, at least a little. There’s no reason I can’t at least try to offer that to other people. 

    I’d like to make/run a couple challenges of my own, later in the year. I’m still figuring out what I want to do and what I could do. I’m really interested in doing something that’s not focused on creators, but the readers; some sort of comment or rec challenge maybe.

    I want to find a cheerleader for Gotcha. I’m struggling to keep up my motivation to write it when it’s already in my head, where I can ‘read’ it any time. There’s a line between depending too much on external validation and trying to generate all your validation yourself, and I’m getting to a point where I think I need to ask for help (gasp! The hardest thing EVER). 

*

(Part Two: Pick Some Fics)

[paramedictk-archive]

s6 theory

i know that skamfr is pretty much the epitome of lazy writing at this point so it’s kinda useless to come up with theories but at the same time it’s a good way to entertain myself. so. theory time and spoilers ahead

i want to talk about these pictures first and i just want to say in advance that both were posted by crew members on twitter and instagram respectively so pls don’t @ me about leaking stuff because that’s not the case lmao

anyway. those pictures are definitely from the same scene. it’s clear lola’s been spiraling for a while now but she will most probably hit rock bottom in ep5 in true skam fashion. this season has been pretty predictable for the most part so i guess we can expect another argument between lola and daphné/maya/papa lecomte which will make lola go out and get high again. i’m not even going to talk about the possibility of an OD here because i want to believe skamfr wouldn’t do that but at the same time i can totally see them going for that plot. either way, this party scene seems different, i think it will be a turning point in the season so it’s probably from ep5. that eliott picture was deleted from the trailer but i think it’s safe to say it’s from the same scene too. the bluish lighting, the room spinning... it looks like it’s shot from lola’s pov

ngl this whole thing looks a bit creepy but this is skamfr so i guess that doesn’t matter. eliott will probably play a bigger role in the second half of the season and it isn’t that hard to imagine why if you really think about it. things aren’t looking good for lola in ep4 already. she hates daphné and her dad again. she has no friends at school. maya will probably continue to ghost her this week and they might have some kind of drama in this ep or in ep5 (in, again, true skam fashion) and maya is her only connection to lamif too. so all in all she might find herself totally alone by the end of ep5 which could conveniently be a good time for eliott to reach out to her again

we know lola reached out to maya in ep4 when she wasn’t feeling well but if maya is ghosting her she’ll have to call someone else. she probably won’t try to call daphné but she does have one friend left and that’s benny. that’s how the benny reveal could happen if it’s indeed eliott. maybe she texts benny her location or shares a story/post on instagram from the party and eliott shows up all of a sudden at the bar. obviously there’s a chance eliott isn’t benny and he’s just there having fun with his uni friends or something. or maybe lola just straight up calls him since we saw them starting to bond in the video store clip and she might realize he’s the only person she can count on in that moment

when this photo was released a lot of us hoped this could be eliott pov but it might just be another eliott/lola scene. could be the day after that party. maybe eliott wants to make sure she gets home safely but lola doesn’t want to go back to daphné and her dad while she’s drunk/high and eliott is obviously not going to let her sleep at tour pleyel. so he might take her to his and lucas’ apartment and let her crash on their couch (but tbh part of me is still hoping this is an elu scene, maybe from a later ep when they talk about the whole lola mess. like a lundi 17h21 parallel)

i know eliott being benny could be a bit of a reach but i don’t want it to be daphné either, there’s enough drama between daphné and lola as it is. eliott being benny could also make their interactions seem slightly less creepy (but it will still be like 90% creepy to me). if eliott knows lola it would explain why he tries to not-so-subtly initiate conversations with her all the time to make sure she’s okay i guess. i posted my theory about eliott being benny on twitter a few weeks ago. if they want to draw parallels between lola and eliott it could be through MI and their different coping mechanisms. maybe eliott went through something similar, maybe he was in rehab once too and he signed up for some kind of virtual pen pal program to help other people

i would just like to point out how i came up with the concept of this virtual pen pal thing in april and then yesterday eliott posted about mary and max, a movie that’s basically about the main characters being pen pals. it’s also interesting how benny and lola had the exact same conversation at the beginning of that video store clip as lola and eliott did later when she walked in. obviously this could all be a red herring but i personally think them making daphné and benny message lola right after each other all the time is them trying to throw us off whereas eliott posting about mary and max is a clue, rather than a red herring

now, the cursed spoiler. we obviously don’t know the actual context yet besides that it’s for that school project eliott talked about in the video store clip and apparently it’s eliott going behind lucas’ back in some way. again. imagine how tired we are. i’ve been thinking about this and i could only come up with one possible version of this that wouldn’t make me dislike eliott and want to strangle the writers:

lola and eliott start hanging out more from ep6. they probably bond over movies, lola visits eliott at work a few times and he starts giving her movie recs. eliott could mention his project (which ISN’T polaris) to her again and ask her to help him, maybe because she seems interested in movies in general or maybe because he wants to distract her from her unhealthy coping mechanisms and that’s his way of helping her

david kept saying eliott is some kind of big brother figure this season so i guess lola could also talk to him about maya (especially if eliott is benny so she wouldn’t find it that hard to open up to him, considering they already kind of know each other). that would give eliott the perfect opportunity to play matchmaker. if maya is still ghosting lola, eliott could ask lamif to help him with the project too and that would bring maya and lola together again. lamif wouldn’t miss this chance to help urbex king otteli and besides, we can see max in the pic that was leaked by hippo so we do know they’ll be there

i’m not sure about the kiss but i really want to believe eliott will listen to lucas when he asks him not to do it. there’s at least another person standing behind max in the pic, holding the boom mic so that could be maya. maybe eliott writes the kiss out of the script but lola takes matters into her own hands and still goes for it because she wants to make maya jealous. i guess it could be their call your gf scene, skamfr seems to like elu/mayla parallels this season

this way the whole elu misunderstanding plot could still happen i guess and it wouldn’t be 100% eliott’s fault so yay... the kiss will definitely affect mayla too and they need time to resolve that so i guess we can expect this to happen in ep7 or ep8?

90% of this theory post could still work even if eliott isn’t benny or if it’s lola who wants to help eliott with the project and it’s her suggesting they get lamif involved. i guess it’s also a possibility that lola just starts hanging out more with eliott because she wants to run into maya at one of the urbex parties

so in conclusion i know this is probably not how things will go and i wasted my time writing this lmao but at least this version kinda makes sense for the characters i guess? i’m basically trying to salvage what i can at this point since they already messed up by even including the elu drama plot in the first place. anyway, s6 lost its real-time vibe so whatever happens i guess we can just pretend it’s not canon because it’s happening in a parallel universe and we can go back to rewatching s3 🤗