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rxttenfish · 4 months

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Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#monster prom #asks #vanillabeenflower #this is. so long i am so sorry.#and its still not my entire thoughts because i have so many thoughts #this is an unedited ramble tbh and im very sorry for that #i have more complaints like #how fucking snide and condescending the narration is to its own characters #which it already had but gets even worse in the later games #which is why despite loving aaravi i dont want to play moncamp at all #where a character says they like something or feel something and the narration has to be so. sarcastic about it?#like how i mentioned about how it feels like how its looking down on them as people #instead of whats probably the intended read which is #more jokingly calling them dumb in an affectionate way like how you might do with friends #and ofc theres the whole miranda rant #i hate what theyve done with the merkingdom and i HATE adrien as a concept i wont lie #just. cool. this female character is too stupid to count as a lore character. we obviously need a MALE character to fill in instead #we cant just have miranda talk about this or center any of the other female characters #and how they feel about this and whats going on for them #no we need to make up a new man to talk to instead #im. im still really bitter about it i wont lie.#like i said i could go on and get way more specific about it #i just feel like any and all emotional weight to this has died and the characters are more and more obviously actors on a stage #for your own self gratification rather than their own people living their own lives #this is so bitter and i really shouldnt put this in the main tag #i am so sorry everyone who will see my rant. but my peace must be made.#dont worry im already asking myself if im just making all this shit up myself #what if some of us liked that the characters were so mean to the player and had no qualms about aggressively rejecting us #because it gave some illusion of them being able to make their own choices and decisions in what they wanted

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dissentersrising · 11 months

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hmm. retainers.

actually, let's first talk about the leylines of sornieth. the network of magic running beneath reality that all magic flows through. the world's natural mechanism for cycling magic.

all magic flows from the leylines, returns to the leylines, and is broken down by the shade within so the cycle can start anew.

(as you might have noticed, the leylines and the shade both are the source of many superstitions and misunderstandings, but this isn't about them.)

near-to-all creatures on sornieth are magical in some way, which means that their magic, too, will return to the leylines upon death.

all that is to say that the leylines are the afterlife. purgatory. whatever. which means that every now and then someone will realize this and try to break out. because that is something people will want to do, because a good few people do not want to be dead and/or do not want to simply fade into oblivion. and because that is something you can do, since magic can, in fact, flow out of the leylines.

(which means that you can, in fact, revive someone if you drag them back out but WE'RE TALKING ABOUT RETAINERS HERE.)

retainers aren't actually dragons. they are just kind of... spawned in by purgatory to keep people from breaking out of the afterlife. luckily, they're usually passive. won't bother you if you're just chilling (or, more likely, dying a second time) in purgatory.

they'll beeline for anyone causing trouble though. this includes people trying to break out, people trying to break in, or people who have already broken in and are running around in the leylines while still being very much alive. they will not pursue people out of purgatory, but they will remember and they will come for your ass once you die again.

physically, they're pretty damn big. about the size of a particularly large imperial. they don't have any limbs by default, but they can grow any number of them so one can absolutely have, i don't know, twenty arms if it needs that many. their wings and haloes (for the ones who do have haloes, at least) are not quite solid, but you'll encounter some resistance if you try to touch them.

they can technically be killed if you fight them hard enough, but so long as they retain a connection to purgatory they simply will not stay dead. "killing" one is a pretty tall order in the first place. they're stupidly big, they can channel lightning (not actually lightning- just raw magic. remember, purgatory is inside the leylines) they're able to teleport, and they can straight-up change the geography of purgatory at will. if you want to get out of purgatory, you're better off trying to avoid these things instead.

they seemingly answer to the employers, despite the employers... not actually having created purgatory. still, some of the employers have taken it upon themselves to watch over purgatory and have managed to intertwine their own magic with that of the leylines. as a result, they have some degree of control over both purgatory and its retainers.

anyways out of universe um. hi it's me i'm being insane about madness combat and making fandragons of the most random things. gabriel ultrakill is here because it makes the most sense. he's a retainer now because it's my lore and i get to pick the writing also i use "the leylines" and "purgatory" pretty interchangeably above because they are interchangeable. two names for the same thing. btw sorry i keep drawing things that are not actual flight rising dragons who are actual flight rising breeds. it Will happen again

#flight rising #/etc/art time #/etc/lore time #also deimos is here too but i'm not tagging him for a silly space filling doodle.#what the hell has my lore come to though. three-way crossover of a fucking sketch page #whatever. if it fucking sparks joy #and boy does this spark a Lot Of Joy :]#maybe i'll write up a better explanation of the leylines/purgatory later. still gotta talk about the fact the internet is the afterlife lol #but for now. this should be enough context #also the two drawn with lightning are dragons i actually own (or intend to own). also gabriel too obviously.#but yeah the other two are my actual retainer fandragons. just a cool fun fact #the one with smoke is because i gave it carnivore and figured i could do something with that lol #second one is based off octopus/plating secondary/tertiary

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unicyclehippo · 2 years

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Hey, if you still want imodna prompts, raise and/or arise? Love your work (especially he most recent ones)!

forgive me, brain broken, im just gonna do a couple real quick things as fast as i can

‘do you think we should talk to her about it?’

orym, of course. ever cautious, ever sensible. it’s not a word she used to think synonymous with kind but it is now. it’s sensible to make sure everyone is safe and warm. it’s sensible to protect your friends with your body, if you’re faster, tougher. it’s sensible to make sure they are alright. imogen doesn’t think these things have much to do with sense but orym does; his mind is built so thoroughly on duty and care that kindness is as sensible to him as making sure his sandals are nice and snug.

‘about what?’

‘what she went through. what we went through to get her. literally. imogen, we went through her mind. or her memories, maybe? and—‘ he sighs. ‘i knew most of it already and she told me some, but i don’t think she’d told the others much about it. about what happened to her. she’s private. as - as eye-catching as she is,’ he says with a curl of a grin, ‘she’s private about things that hurt.’

‘i know that.’ imogen doesn’t mean for it to come out sharp but it does. the words have a heat to them because of course she knows. orym has travelled with laudna for all of a month; she’s been with her for two years. of course she knows. tempering her tone, imogen says, ‘i know. but she hasn’t brought it up and i get the impression she wants to forget about it. and unless she tells me otherwise, i’m gonna follow her lead. about all of this.’

orym frowns but nods. ‘i won’t bring it up.’ he adds, with a stubborn set to his chin and thoughts, ‘i still think you should.’

‘orym-‘

‘when it comes to laudna, you’re different. she’ll talk to you,’ he insists.

‘it has to be her choice.’

‘then give her that choice.‘ he takes a breath. braces himself. ‘now isn’t the time to be a coward, imogen temult.’

for a second after he says that, all she can hear is the roll and crash of thunder in her ears; when it dies down, when she lets her breath out nice and slow, she realises it was her own angry pulse and lets it fade and fade, opens her hands out of the fists they’ve formed at her sides. she turns on her heel and storms away. it’s tempting to glare at him but from the way her eyes feel hot and dry, they might have been without a halfling if she had. better to walk away.

she goes to laudna. of course she does. orym’s question, suggestion, prodding aside, imogen is always wanting to go to laudna. it’s been three days and she’s mostly recovered—physically, at least—but laudna seems to be dealing with it far better than imogen.

each morning, grief loops around her neck, her throat, and only eases up its strangling hold when imogen lays her eyes and hands on laudna. each moment of the day, she’s looking for her. she wants to slip into whatever space delilah hollowed out in laudna’s mind and fill it, leave a portion of her mind tucked away inside of laudna’s, always. it’s sick and wrong and awful. and yet, imogen wants it so badly. feels the want physically, nearly drooling with it, tongue to teeth, hands clenching tight to her skirt to keep from reaching out and taking.

there had been a moment, the day after laudna was raised, when they had been alone and imogen had woken to a cold, still body. terror dropped her walls and she had plunged into laudna’s mind. like diving off the cliffs into a cold lake. she wants to be there always, in the cold and dark and strange stagnant waters. wants to take laudna’s mind into her, open her mouth and drink it, fill her lungs with it. wants to know laudna inside and out—wants to take her apart, set her memories out, chronological, beside scarred skin and bones to look for fractures and breaks, beside organs, blood, gristle and guts, beside whatever form her magic would take. wants to know it all like these physical things might contain every secret every moment of laudna.

she had left laudna’s mind in an instant. hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t looked for anything. she wants to return, always. to her side, to her mind.

so she does.

‘hello!’ laudna smiles brightly when she enters the room. she’s perched on the edge of the bed, packing everything away neatly as she always does. ‘is it time to go?’

the walk has eased most of her fury. a few lavender sparks crackle at the ends of her fingers, in her curling hair. she wills it to stop, and smiles back.

‘no. take your time. i just—‘ she touches her head.

laudna coos, sympathetic. ‘too much?’

‘mm.’

‘sit, sit, let me get you some water.’

not all her irritation has left; it comes out, makes laudna’s name harsh when she goes to stop her from standing.

‘just—you don’t have to do that,’ imogen hurries to say. ‘i should be taking care of you, not the other way ‘round.’

laudna blinks big, black eyes. quietly, she says, ‘i just want you to be alright.’

‘i know.’ imogen steps deeper into the room, and then makes up her mind—damn orym—and crosses it entirely, sitting beside laudna on the bed. ‘it’s important that you rest, though.’

‘y-es, of course,’ laudna demurs, lowers her head.

imogen tucks a finger under it. lifts it, with a smile. ‘hey,’ she whispers. ‘please? let me take care of you?’

‘imogen-‘

‘please.’

‘of course i do, i will,’ she says, and fritters with her skirts, fingers crooked tangling when imogen only looks at her, pleading, waiting for her to mean it entirely. for as long as it might take. ‘such a rotten task, caring for someone like me,’ laudna whispers. ‘dead twice over.’

imogen shakes her head, a tight sharp movement. hardly enough to convey how much she disagrees with that. she’d like to explode everything around them to show the force of her denial.

‘no. no. it’s not, not to me. it’s -‘ she swallows. ‘everything. please, let me.’

laudna nods slowly. holds her hands out for imogen, who takes them. rubs sore knuckles. presses a kiss to those aching joints.

‘i’d like to talk to you about it. at some point. whenever you like. i want - to do it right. and i don’t know what that is. but i want—‘ she shakes her head again. ‘however you feel about it, i want to hear it and know. and help. i should’ve told you that when you - when you woke up. sorry,’ she adds, a little awkwardly.

it’s hard to talk, she finds, when she’s holding laudna and her heart both in her hands.

#tagging my stories #prompt fill #cr tag #imodna my beloveds #hm longer than I intended n sorry for no read more im writing this on mobile so

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sqlmn · 9 months

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I was looking at my older plot folders and I can't believe I forgot how funny Louis was. He also had a shirt that said "Friendly Pessimist" which sums him up.

#stereotyping affiliations is lame #i guess that can be the plot tag ??? it was just a bunch of students with powers #like louis who is super chill in all the wrong ways is earth #the lighter blond is a loud and blunt guy with wind powers #the sadistic girl in blue is water and she is super cute and smiling while talking about how shes gonna fuck you up #cause i see a think of really grounded characters (pun intended) who act as a voice of reason with earth #and with wind its normally a carefree person to me #water in my mind is associated with calmness more than rough despite a lotta rough waters but i might be biased to water bein calm #there were more but i havent actually drawn them recently so id have to go find the paper doodles #and i have like five big binders filled with oc doodles

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fromtheseventhhell · 1 year

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So I’m still fairly new to asoiaf tumblr. Why is it racist to depict the Martells as POC? They’re “salty” dornish and are said to have olive skin—which is definitely a characteristic of some white populations, particularly in the Mediterranean region, but can also apply to MENA people. The “sandy” dornishmen are said to be darker too. Personally I’ve always imagined the “salty” and “sandy” dornish as Mediterranean but I don’t fully comprehend why it’s inherently racist to imagine them as MENA or Indian. I’ve seen stuff that’s definitely racist, like depicting the dornish as south Asian or MENA and drawing them all in extremely revealing clothing compared to other characters, or the assumption that because Elia was dornish she would’ve been okay with Rhaegar and Lyanna, but I’m having trouble seeing why POC Elia is inherently racist

Hmmmmm...this isn't really a very prevalent idea in fandom though since the majority of people accept the Dornish as POC. I can't say I've ever seen this being a major topic of discussion.

That being said, I personally don't care if people have that headcanon it's just annoying when people discuss it as though it's a fact (if your point requires arguing with the author that should tell you something). Even more so when said headcanon gets used as a prop. Wanting a specific group to be POC just to use it as leverage is uncomfortable, to say the least. It's very tiring to hear that [x] character is racist because they did something Martell stans didn't like. And a lot of it is coming from Elia stans who fetishize her suffering, want her story to be even more tragic, and want reasons to hate Rhaegar and Lyanna. Then a lot of said discussions aren't even given any nuance. It's just "her treatment is racist because she's a woman of color". So is it racist to depict the Martells as POC? No. Is everyone who does so using their identity as a prop? No..but a lot of people do it for the wrong reasons and that is an issue.

#ask #anon #also assuming that Elia would've been okay with r+l isn't racist cause...she isn't a woman of color #the book is filled wall to wall with white people so naturally we're gonna have some variation in how they're described #sorry I'm just not down with weaponizing the identity of characters who aren't even intended to be poc by the author #anti martell stans #???#I doubt that's a tag but it is now 🤪

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thereareeyesinsidethetrees · 1 year

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Okay, so Ford and Stan's dreamscapes probably change when they start sailing (or after they've been sailing a while). This is sort of a headcanon for how exactly I think they change.

(Should probably note: the wheat field and stuff definitely have symbolism, but I didn't look extensively into anything like that when I made this. I was more interested in stuff like the swings and broken shack and what that all means...stuff you can figure out without having to google anything.)

Anyway, the actual headcanon stuff:

Stan's dreamscape is originally shown to be the shack, all messed up and hanging partly over an abyss. It's greyscale and has a sort of tv-static thing going on. There's an 8 ball moon in the sky.

I like to think that the forest changes to be a dock or something. Instead of the broken shack, you've got the Stan O' War II. Definitely not pristine or anything, but also not falling apart at the seams. The Stan O' War II isn't in danger of falling into the abyss and being lost forever. It's something that can be used to traverse it probably.

It's still got a monochromatic, tv-static thing going on, but there's a slight sort of color filter over everything now. Blue, red, some other color? I'm not sure. Red is more stan's color, but (especially considering weirdmaggedon) it doesn't tend to be associated with good things. Maybe just a warm color in general.

The moon is now a sun. It's to match Ford, among other things. You'll see what I mean in a second.

Oh, also the swings are still there and they've been fixed up :)

Ford's dreamscape is a seemingly endless field of wheat. You've got a massive (emphasizing that its bigger than it is in reality because woah isn't that interesting) broken portal looming ominously in the distance, plus swings and the first Stan O' War. The atmosphere has dirt or smoke in it. You can tell because the sun in the background is tinted reddish orange.

(Bonus: the field also has an image of bill burned into it. Considering how dreamscapes work, it makes me wonder if that had any effect on Ford's actual mind.)

Anyway- all that grime in the air probably clears up at least a little bit. The sun looks pretty harsh in Ford's original dreamscape, so it probably isn't as horribly blistering as before, if it's even still there. Maybe the sky changes.

Breaking my rule here- a starry night sky can represent a revelation and be "an expression of pure joy". Of course, it wouldn't be "pure joy" in this case, but he's definitely a lot happier than he was before. The revelation could be that he has a family that maybe (definitely) cares about him and he's not alone anymore.

Tiny bits of wheat are starting to regrow where bill decided to just. Burn a wonky crop circle into it.

The wheat field is still there, but it's not endless like before. It's more of a really big forest clearing, with trees surrounding it (I also broke my rule for this one- forests represent endurance, resilience, and hope). You got some nice green in there now.

Portal's still there, it's probably never gonna leave. But it's not hovering terrifyingly in the background anymore, it's more broken down than before. Probably looks like those pictures of abandoned buildings and such being reclaimed by nature.

Swings are still there. The Stan O' War is replaced by the Stan O' War II.

Those are all my thoughts (I'll be honest. A lot more than I was expecting to write). If you also have thoughts, I'd love to hear them (not pressuring of course, don't do anything you don't wanna do. I just like discussion, and this seems like something that could be real fun to talk about).

#i wasnt planning on tagging them but this uh. turned out to be a lot more than i originally intended.#ford pines #stan pines #the full first name tags always seem to be where the deep analysis stuff goes so i guess this belongs in those tags too #stanford pines #stanley pines #all the writing is stans dreamscape is in code. is that an 'oh you cant read in dreams' thing?#is that a dreamscape in general thing?#is that stan specifically. does he just. dream in code.#has he been staring at the journals too long (yes) and now his brain is filled with codes?

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