#I was invested in the story but it in no way compares to the source material and honestly felt more like a parody of Peter Jackson’s movies

[orangecoloreddreams]

I feel like I need to watch the lord of the rings trilogy at least ten times again to wash my eyes after the rings of power. What the hell was that show? I mean it could have been worse but it certainly could have been WAY better. You have one billion dollars and no wigs? The fact that the image of Elrond with short hair will now be forever burned in my mind is violating to say the least.

[lgbtpopcult]

A note from the editors...

On First Kill and What it Says About Netflix, Media and the Undo Burden Queer Women Have to Carry

I have no criticisms for First Kill. The people who worked on it did their best with the limited budget and experience they had. Even with its flaws the concept was good and the story of the two girls alone managed to get more viewership than many Netflix series that are constantly renewed.

I will however talk about Netflix. I have been very vocal of my criticism of Netflix in the past but always put that aside so we can promote wlw media on this blog wherever they came from. But it was always blatant how the idea of queer women leads is viewed on the platform.

Netflix initially launched into mainstream culture in great part due to offering diverse shows like Orange is the new Black (a show specifically diverse in terms of women's sexuality, with queer women leads). Shows that were considered alternative and progressive compared to Network TV. After succeeding in gaining popularity because they offered the thing others didn't, Netflix content shifted. Even though investing in creating a quality show with a wlw main couple had paid off in the past they decided being more like network TV was the best strategy. Any attempt at inclusion for queer women was either carefully veiled behind projects that "are not really about the gay girls, the gay girls are just there" like The Prom, promoted without a hint of the lgbt content like Everything Sucks and Teenage Bounty Hunters or not promoted at all like Feria The Darkest Light, The Half of It and I'm Not Ok With This. They were generally given very little room to succeed. Most of the wlw focused projects were never promoted, had unknown actors and given a small budget.

If the project was big, well promoted and expensive it meant the screentime of the queer woman was limited. Even Warrior Nun (based on very gay source material) and Babysitter's Club (with everyone thinking the lead has to be queer) simply gave a side character 2 minutes to be out as a gay girl and called it a day. If they're investing big you can count on the gay woman part to be small. This came to a head when they changed the lead's sexuality in Archive 81 (who was a lesbian with a wife in the original podcast) and made her wife her gay roommate. "And they were roommates!". It was in some ways laughable to what lengths they'd go to because of their need to limit queer women to side characters in big projects they're actually invested in.

But First Kill was a series putting the wlw couple front and center so we had to believe all of the above was a coincidence right? We gave them another chance and they proved everything we had been seeing was right. They set it up to fail and when it didn't they justified the cancellation by saying it didn't succeed enough. That's the thing. It would have succeeded enough if they hadn't set it up to fail so blatantly.

Netflix will rain unbelievable amounts of money to get the biggest names from the TikTok, acting and music worlds to star in their big budget straight cheesy romances. They gave First Kill 10 dollars and candy to paraphrase a person who worked on the show. They were unwilling to pay for the really good, experienced writing team needed to turn a vampire romance story into a well fleshed out TV show. As a result the writing was acceptable for a vampire romance novel but not for live action TV dialogue. They were unwilling to pay for good cgi. As a result the cgi made CW shows look good in comparison. They were unwilling to pay for expensive, popular actors. They were unwilling to pay for any sort of production value. Why? Because they don't have enough faith in projects about queer women to invest in them. But the wlw shows have to succeed anyway or else we confirm their aversion to invest in our projects was right. We are asked and creators are asked to make a hit out of something without given the proper tools and then told we don't sell.

That is our vicious circle with Netflix even if it's proven that when money and work is put in to a project that centers wlw, people will come. Even if millions are lost on failed projects that center straight ppl. Even in a world where Gen Z is set to rule the world and it's a generation that is more and more queer.

Queer women are expected to consume projects that are lesser than those of straight ppl and even those of gay men. Unfortunately, we live in that messed up intersection of misogyny and homophobia that makes investing in us somehow the last risk to take. As they liberally throw money away on worthless trash. But it's straight trash so...

Good news is Network TV is dying. Netflix imitating their focus on a default basic straight audience (and the white gay pretty boys they can fetishize) does not seem like a good strategy for the future. Other services that are putting real effort into bringing queer women out of the TV margins will become the entertainment providers of the most sexually diverse generation of women we've ever had. Let's bring about that future as soon as possible. Go watch Paper Girls, Yellowjackets, Harley Quinn animated series, Dickinson, Crush... If you're a woman, or non-binary person, and not straight, fuck Netflix. Cancel your Netflix account.

Do fear for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Expect as little from Netflix as possible. That's what they're willing to give you.

Twitter said it best:

[raycatzdraws]

I'm gonna put this here and then probably make it private but I want to say

There's discussion happening in the LU fandom so if you don't care for that scroll on:

But, I love creating with the LU fandom. I don't create in a void. My work is a conversation. I hope that it inspires you to create, to think, to chat with friends! Thank you to everyone who's shared their art and let me be a part of it, and to everyone who's played a part in mine!

to copy paste something I've said on my main:

isn’t it interesting that there’s Jojo’s LinkedUniverse and then also the LinkedUniverse fandom’s LinkedUniverse? That LU became a conduit through which to examine and compare and contrast Zelda games with this cast of characters as a base? That was their original intention and the fans went “heck yeah!” and ran with it? The LinkedUniverse fandom’s LinkedUniverse is a monster of the week story where everyone contributes, it has hundreds of authors and storytellers all working together and trading tales. It’s a scenario in which Jojo’s LinkedUniverse is both the source material and also just one instance in the larger weave. And the LinkedUniverse fandom’s LinkedUniverse lore deviates from (and is much deeper than imo) that of the original comic mainly because of that 1 person building a thing vs hundreds of people building a thing. And isn’t that so cool? But then also with the decline of the fandom I dunno I feel like the LinkedUniverse fandom’s LinkedUniverse has been dying. Updates would spawn a burst of creativity and multitudes of branching ideas and what-if scenarios explored through art and fic and discussion, building on it, adding it in to pre-existing stories. I feel that activity around updates has been ticking more towards exploring the comic within the context of the comic itself (or just reposting clips), and less within the fandom’s takes on it (not taking that step forward of “yes, and,” and “yes-anding” fanworks as well.) Or not updates in particular, but the state of the fandom is deviating from taking this base and running and sharing to something more controlled and wary? Isolated? The LinkedUniverse fandom is a phenomenon to me. And it’s not something I think should be replicated in regards to other LinkVerse comics but it’s also something beautiful and creative? Like, Jojo to a certain extent has or had lost control of the fandom’s versions of these characters. She made them and we respect her wishes for them but they no longer belong to her? The LU fandom’s LU is a collectively written LinkVerse and exploration of the loz games, using these characters and relationships as a base (which is why I think people mistag by accident so much.) Sure, you could use the characters directly from the games or make your own LinkVerse to explore the relationships between the loz games. However, within the context of the LU fandom, you get the advantage of the template already being there for the character’s personalities, meeting, secrets, and an open ended goal, and these things are understood by a large number of invested people, leading to this huge collaborative project. This is what’s so special about the LinkedUniverse fandom to me. Watching this thing be built and getting to be a contributing piece of it. Maybe it shouldn’t have happened. Like, if something like that were to happen to anything I’ve made I think that’d be really scary. But it’s also something incredible? It’s why I have a hard time accepting it when people say they hate the LU fandom. How could you hate the creativity? The shared stories? What’s been made? Isn’t it incredible? It’s another LinkVerse, in a way, one that belongs to many. I'm frustrated by the instances where people have tried to police the way the characters are written, both within the fandom and towards Jojo’s comic, and the issues in communication, and callout posts asjhfksdf Problems in reconciling the LU fandom’s LU, Jojo’s LU, other LinkVerses, and gen loz. But the phenomenon of the fandom itself, the shared collaborative LU fandom’s LinkedUniverse? I think it’s such a cool thing. I think it’s such a cool way to explore and examine the loz games and craft stories with so many other people. I really enjoy all the LinkVerses that are around now. I don’t think the fandom for LU is something that can be replicated. (or should?) (it’s both something odd and a loss of control for Jojo but also a conduit for an incredible amount of creativity and community.) It’s really interesting to me. It’s really interesting to witness. Or to have witnessed?

and now tired rambling, but,, aaa

What I love about the fandom is seeing ideas and headcanons and art and fic be shared and then built upon. The community projects! The LU Zine. The valentine's day cards! The artist and writer appreciation projects! The weekly polls and prompts from the main LU server! The master door post! Long haired Sky! Tick-tac-toe on Legend's forehead! Crop top Roolie! Cheer up buttercup! Seeing small headcanons being adopted into fanon lore and being able to watch that progression. Seeing these tropes develop and being a contributing part of it! It's something we're building together and watching that happen in real time is so special! Again, it's that 1 person building a thing vs hundreds of people building a thing that is so alluring to me.

The creators, and analysis folks, and people who leave comments and nice tags: I see you as my peers! I want to create with you! I'd love to participate in collabs and trades! I haven't been able to be involved as much as I want because of a lack of spoons. But, I admire so many of the people here. Thank you all so much for sharing what you've made! Thank you for allowing me to be a part of it! Thank you for supporting me and my silly ideas for these characters! My art is a conversation and I approach what the LU fandom's made in the same way. It's not content to be consumed. It's an open hand. I'm so grateful to those who have taken it. You've inspired me to create. It's the greatest honor if I'm able to do the same for you. I want to keep making things with you guys.

(To anyone who's made fanart for fic and vice-versa, to anyone's who's seen a headcanon and let the poster know that it's changed how you view the characters, to anyone who's contributed game information to analysis, to those answering asks and doing requests? ya'll are the best keep it up!)

[winterinhimring]

20 Questions for Writers

Thanks for the tag, @musewrangler! This looks fun.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

94.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

852,051. (Holy cow.)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

A lot! Tolkien, Star Wars, Marvel, and Hornblower are the ones I've written most for, but I've also written stories for the 1985 movie Silverado, and for The Three Musketeers, Dune, The Hunt for Red October, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Jat'ca'nara, The War of the Ring, Pirunir Sur'haaise, break my bonds and be bound to me (what. the. heck.), and Ba'slan Shev'la.

I will admit, I was not expecting all of those. The Star Wars ones (all the Mando'a titles) make sense, WOTR is my first and longest fic and also in the Tolkien fandom, but break my bonds is one of the RAREST of rare pairs and despite it being in the Star Wars fandom too, it's focussed on some comparatively minor characters, so I am...very surprised by that.

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

Yes! Always. I love receiving comments so the least I can do is respond to them. Also, I nearly always have thoughts to share with my readers in response to their thoughts on my fic.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Unquestionably Cuyan'e. It's a character study of two very deeply broken men who have both lost everything, one at the hands of the other, and it earns its 'hurt no comfort' tag. The title means "Survivors" because they're both the last survivors of their families. It's very unusual for me to write a fic this painful without putting in a happy ending, but that story pretty much showed up to my brain written the way it is, and when that happens I write what I'm given.

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

That's much harder to answer than the last one! A significant majority of my fics have happy endings, or at least happier ones than canon. However, I'll have to go with Tegaanal, the climax of my Star Wars fix-it series, because it's such an earned happy ending and we watched the characters fight for it every step of the way.

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

Nope! I review my comments on the first couple of fics of any series, until I have an idea of what my reader base is like, and that seems to ward off the weirdos.

9. Do you write smut?

Heck no. I don't need that in my head.

10. Do you write crossovers?

On occasion! Usually because the muses show up and start jumping on the table banging pans together until I write them something.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to the best of my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I HAVE had a piece of music inspired by a fic. I wrote a poem (in Mando'a and in English) for Partaylir, and the absolutely fantastic Siena_Alexandria actually wrote a tune for it and recorded the result. If you like Mandalorians, Mando'a, conlangs, or just good music, listen to it here! (Each chapter is a different version of the poem.)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Yep, several! Mostly with @musewrangler.

14. What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

I don't really have one, as I don't tend to get all that deeply invested in ships. Characters, yes, but not specific ships. I guess I have a soft spot for Walon Vau/Shmi Skywalker, though, since it's a canoe I launched all by myself (see my boggled reaction to break my bonds and be bound to me being one of my most-kudosed fics above).

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

*grits teeth* I. Will. Finish. All. My. WIPs. (There's only one that is arguably in danger of abandonment, Of the History of the White Tree, and I'm going to come back to it as soon as I've reread the source material.)

16. What’s your writing strengths?

Hmm...I would say it's my character writing, above all else. Once I have a clear mental picture of what someone would or wouldn't do, I can basically drop him into situations and just let them play out and see what happens, pretty much trusting the character to respond the way he should. A lot of my fics consist of this, and the consensus from my readers has been that I do it well.

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

Strong emotions, and people who are open with their emotions, are difficult for me to write. Whenever I write a scene that involves feelings and vulnerability, I have a holy terror of becoming kitschy. And people who actually show their emotions voluntarily by default are kind of a mystery to me, so I don't really write them because I don't understand them.

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

Fun to do when I know the language and/or enough of it to get by! I put in quite a lot of Mando'a for my Star Wars stories and I enjoy working within the constraints of its limited vocabulary because it forces me to pare down my usually verbose writing style into just the core of the meaning I intend to convey.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Tolkien! My first, most lasting, and perhaps dearest fandom.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

HOW CAN I PICK JUST ONE???? My favourite fic is nearly always the one I'm writing now, though, so right now it's So We Can Learn to Pick Ourselves Up, the latest instalment of what started as post-Endgame MCU fix-it and has now grown into a live-action Spider-man multiverse fix-it.

No-pressure tags for @ramblingsofachristiannerd, @hollers-and-holmes, @lady-merian, @ghosts-and-blue-sweaters, @thatonebasicfan, and anyone who'd like to jump on!

[angelthefirst1]

Rick's story from season 1 and Beth's missing filming spoilers from season 5. Are they the same? The answer is Yes!

Looking back at the old filming spoilers from season 5 was a great reminder to me, that much funny business went on during filming at the time.

Many fans were EXTREMELY, even obsessively invested in finding out spoilers for season 5. The huge uptick in interest for spoilers was in large part because of what happened at the end of season 4.

We saw Daryl lose the girl that he (let's be honest) fell in love with.

The ship wars began and both those that loved Beth and Daryl, and those that hated them (the darkness) were obsessed with finding out what was going to happen.

Many fans spent hours at the filing locations just to catch a glimpse of who was there and what was happening.

You can read about the unseen Beth filming spoilers here. And all credit to @bethgreeneishopeunseen for the original sources and archives of these spoilers.

Now we don't know exactly what went on and what was really filmed or not but, I remember following the filming spoilers during that time and then seeing what eventuated onto our screens. Mostly what we saw onscreen matched the filming spoilers extremely accurately.

Except for these spoilers revolving around Beth. So it's really odd overall, and I do think the fans who wrote about these spoilers were actually correct in what they saw filmed, but it was never designed to be seen in season 5.

Looking back at Rick's story and knowing now how they repeat everything, even down to the smallest detail...

It inspired me to look again into Rick from season 1 and how those missing spoilers, and Beth footage could be connected to Rick's season 1 story.

It makes more sense now, than it ever did back then.

So I will go through and compare Rick season 1, to the missing filming spoilers to see if they fit together.

I was quite surprised by what I found...

Firstly, we obviously saw this scene repeated already. 👇

After the hospital, Rick makes his way home on a red bicycle, which he leaves out the front of his house before running into the house, to see if his family is there.

The first missing footage of interest to me, that lines up with Rick's season 1 story, are the houses that Beth was supposedly seen filming at.

The white house and the brick house next door to each other...

Almost all the season 5 characters were seen filming at these locations and 15 eye witnesses say they saw Beth, but no one was able to get a photo as she was hidden as best as possible, and rushed inside very quickly.

If they are repeating Rick's story, which they are, then it's no surprise they picked a house that's visually similar to Rick's own home from season 1. The pillars, the steps, the incline up to the house, the front porch, the window and door placement, and the railings. This is Ricks house. But it's got more Brick.

Beth's brick house made me laugh here, because brick is a combination of Beth and Rick, sorry 😂 anyway...

Rick leaves the red bike out the front of the house, but at Beth's brick house there is the red car with the Sheriff star on the wheel left out the front.

After Rick realises his family is gone, he gets hit in the head by Duane, and Morgan takes him to a neighbors house.

Beth's missing spoilers said that both the two neighboring houses were used in the filming and as i have said in past posts, there will be a convergence of signs when Beth (Jesus) returns. You can read more about how the convergence works here

They are converging Rick's story and all the imagery around it, and that is what is shown in the missing spoilers, everything we saw from season 1 together. Let me explain more below.

I found it interesting there is the visual similarity to the interiors of Beth's houses and the house that Morgan takes Rick to.

Rick wakes in a room with floral wallpaper and decorative hanging light fixtures and white trim.

Now, the black and white picture above, is actually the interior of Beth's White House. Floral wall paper and hanging light fixtures with white trim.

The other house with brick (Beth's brick house), its interior has a very similar paint colour and similar floorboards to the neighboring house Morgan takes Rick to.

While Beth's white house exterior, matches Rick's white exterior house.

So we see two houses in the missing spoilers that combined show the two houses Rick went to in season 1, his own white house and a neighbors house.

But the missing spoilers show one more house was filmed at, and that was this house 👇

A yellow house 🏠 💛 with black roof and black trim.

It's funny because the first picture in this collage below, is the exterior of the neighbors house that Morgan takes Rick to.

Both yellow with black.

This is not a coincidence...

Outside the yellow house is bike and a red car! Convergence, inversion, infinity.

Now, what's even funnier is the spoilers' state that the male seen walking with Tara, was playing the role of a character named "Andrew" Rick/Andrew.

The houses do seem to be repeating Rick's story, and this made me sure the spoilers are actually correct.

But there's more to look at.

Once Rick recovers in the yellow house, he goes back to the police station he worked at to get weapons.

Now I can't help but realise that when Rick was in the hospital, we saw the combination of a hospital plus police officers (Rick and Shane) just like Grady.

Rick goes back to his old police station (aka Grady). Does that mean Beth will go back to Grady? Who knows, but there are other missing spoilers from the hospital that indicated she might have.

Once Rick gets weapons from the station, he drives off in a police car.

One of the spoilers also said Beth was seen driving away from Grady in a police car. Rick was leaving the police station to find his family. Was Beth doing the same? or does she go back to get medical attention or weapons?

Now continuing on with Ricks story, he eventually ends up in Atlanta (Grady for Beth), where he leaves Merle on the roof.

We know Merle cuts his own hand off and goes missing. Daryl was absent at the time and when he found out he was furious and devastated.

I believe this scenario will be repeated with Beth. Merle becomes Beth disappearing with her arm in a cast. You could say her cast, 'hand-cuffs' the wrist.

What if Beth has her cast removed and Daryl finds it, questioning who removed it, and that leads him to try and track Beth down, even if he still thinks she is dead.

Merle steals a van in season 1, and they lose track of him, we don't see or hear about him for a very long time.

We see Rick find his family back at the quarry camp and Lori asks Rick if he wants his wedding ring back, he says yes, and she gives it to him.

Now, follow me here for a second.

What I just talked about above regarding Merle, his hand, him going missing, and the Lori and Rick's reunion with wedding rings, is a convergence of the signs of season 1, all summed up with these behind the scenes photos or clues, that Norman posted at the time of the missing filming spoilers.

The bloody hand with what looks like cut marks where Merle cut his hand off, and the combination of marriage and wedding ring symbolism. Nicotero and Norman are 'brother's'...

Now back in season one Lori takes her wedding ring off when she sleeps with Shane, because she thinks Rick is dead (till death do us part)

While Daryl finds only Merle's hand in season one, it seems these hints about the missing spoilers point to Daryl finding Beth's cast but losing the love of his life. Divorced.

Knowing how they repeat everything, and how Daryl takes Merle's hand when he finds it (same as taking someones hand in marriage), eventually he will ask Beth to marry him, but I think that will be later on not immediately.

We know Merle shows up again around the time when Andrea does, this is interesting to me because, next year we are going to see Rick (Daryl's brother) back in The one's who live, and we will get season two of Daryl Dixon -The book of Carol, which is really the book of Beth.

Andrea/Merle + Beth/Rick showing up at around the same time. hmm.

The last thing I want to discuss is the retirement home missing filming spoilers...

Beth was apparently seen filming at what was thought to be a retirement home.

Now, was it definitely a retirement home? We can't be sure, but it really would make sense, why?

Because Rick went to a "retirement home" in season 1.

Now, to start with Rick doesn't know it's a retirement home, he goes there to trade people. Glenn who was taken, for one of their group.

This is Rick's version of Grady.

Rick in order to get Glenn back, Rick is willing to shoot the place up in a gun fight if he has to.

Now you will notice at Beth's houses, the red car and the brick house have undergone a massive shoot out, with bullet holes everywhere. Was someone trying to get Beth back and did shoot the place up? I would say yes!

The leader of the other group in season 1, wants Rick's guns and wants the trade to include the guns as well as his man.

Rick declines, saying the guns are his. So the leader threatens to feed Glenn to his ferocious dogs, he says to Rick "I'm going to chop up your boy, feed him to my dogs, three of the evilest, nastiest, meanest bitches you ever saw. Picked em up from Satan at a yard sale".

Now the filming spoilers also indicate that a dog was filming at Beth's houses. A Rottweiler named Ozzy, and his doghouse is located in the yard (yard sale) of the Brick house.

The owner of Ozzy said the dog had two scenes in season 5, but he was never seen onscreen.

And a sign placed out the front of the brick house said "Beware of dog".

Now the dogs in Rick's story were not really very scary...

The leader of the group gave a very long-winded, over the top, scary caution about how dangerous his dogs were.

In the missing filming spoilers, the sign with 'Beware the dog" seems to have 'the dog' crossed out. Kind of removing the warning, like it's not a threat.

But If Ozzy did indeed have a part in these missing scenes, which it looks like he did. Then the low key warning on the sign, combined with the over the top warning from season one about how mean the dogs were, when they actually weren't.

Points to Ozzy being extremely vicious.

There's actually a lot more i could add, but this is way to long already.

The overall point of looking back at this, is to show the missing spoilers are all too similar to Rick's story to be a coincidence.

We will eventually see them, and it seems to be right around the corner.

One last thing, the episode where Rick gets a reunion with his family is in 103, and it's called, Tell it to the frogs.

Frogs is another way of talking about the french or french people. Linking a big reunion to France...

[cleavetheclover]

Any Nighttime in Las Vegas spoilers/hints/tidbits to keep us fed? 👀

Nighttime in Las Vegas - author notes on future updates!!

Okay first of all, thank you for the ask!! I am extremely honored by your investment in the fic 🥰

Note: I am not sure how heavy you wanted the spoilers to be when you submitted the ask, so I kept it on the more vague side. I hope this satisfies what you were looking for!

This work is my most ambitious to date and has been an inspiring and invigorating challenge. The effort I have put into this work has been enourmous, and I am incredibly grateful for all the attention the work has gotten. Thank you!! 🎉💕

More info below cut! Non-spoiler (chapter 5) updates first, then Major Spoilers (chapters 6, 7, and 8) next.

Chapter 5 (most recently uploaded chapter):

- Chapter 5 (specifically scenes 11/Medbay and 12/Brimstone’s Office) currently being re-written. I thought that scene 11 was pretty sloppily written and there was a lot of key info that didn’t get properly communicated, and the changes are intended to communicate the plot line with better storytelling/use of characters and dialogue. The major changes in scene 11 are complete and I am doing minor fixes to scene 12 to keep the story consistent.

- To elaborate on the above, scenes 11 and 12 establish that: 1) Omen was rescued per his Distress Call, and Cypher was not. 2) Omen needed to be revived, and is still injured. 3) Fade has been sent on a Search and Rescue mission for Cypher. 4) in discussion with Sage and Brimstone, it is discovered that the mission Cypher and Omen were on was not approved, and that the documents Omen has access to are not in the database and likely forged. 5) Killjoy performs an assessment showing that there have been no external threats / sources of tampering that could be responsible for this incident. 6) Sage and Brimstone bring up Cypher’s history of secret missions, defying orders, and otherwise sketchy business. 7) Omen insists that he was not aware of this history, and asks to compare his own mission history to that of the database to see what else he has been unknowingly doing. He finds three other missions of suspicious origin.

Chapter 6 (in the works):

- Chapter 6 will begin with Cypher’s return. Brimstone interrogates him about his actions and motivations and Cypher attempts to gaslight gatekeep girlboss his way out of guilt, but it backfires and only makes him look worse.

- He does not tell the entire truth about himself, but he specifies that Omen is innocent. Omen is thus cleared of all charges of treason.

- Omen, having discovered that Cypher has lied to him about their joint missions, is furious. He has conflicting loyalties— one to the Protocol, his home, his entire livelihood; and to Cypher, his mission partner, his protector and protected, and his good friend. To have one betray the other is world-shattering.

- Cypher is placed under arrest at HQ. His duties are distributed among the other Agents including Sova, Fade, and Killjoy.

- Omen overhears a conversation where Cypher is begging Fade to let him go with her to Las Vegas, stating that she knows what happens to him there and he can’t let the same happen to her. Fade brushes him off and says her Radiant abilities will ensure her safety.

- Omen visits Cypher in jail to confront him. An argument ensues.

- At the end of the argument, Cypher tells Omen to bring the Box to Viper. He thinks she can help.

Chapter 7 (not drafted):

- chapter 7 deals with the fallout between Cypher and Omen.

- Cypher is in jail, but as you might imagine, he tries to break out. He manages to escape Headquarters without setting off any alarms, because well, he built them himself and can take them apart just as easily.

- By happenstance, Omen sees him escape through the portal at headquarters but is unable to stop him. He follows Cypher through the portal.

- Cypher reveals some information about his past, i.e. everything he didn’t say during his interrogation.

- When Omen realized that he can’t convince Cypher to come back to the Protocol on his own, he shoots him neatly in the head and princess-carries his body back to the Medbay.

Chapter 8

- cypher realizes he is stuck in HQ jail again. Screaming crying throwing up (RIP babygirl but he did it to himself)

- Omen takes the box to viper. He tells her outright not to lie, he’s already had enough of Cypher’s bullshit.

- Sabine tells him what she knows.

More notes:

I am doing my best to publish chapters that are well-planned and well-refined. Unfortunately, having ADHD + fretting over details 24/7 means I am not a very speedy writer, and I apologize for the long waits between chapters.

The document I have in my computer is much more extensive and includes dialogue and additional scenes, but I’d classify those as major spoilers and didn’t include them here. I also have plot points planned out for the rest of the fic, but those are major spoilers in addition to being undecided/malleable so I didn’t want to set them in stone here.

[raycatz]

I'm supposed to be doing homework but also,

isn't it interesting that there's Jojo's LinkedUniverse and then also the LinkedUniverse fandom's LinkedUniverse? That LU became a conduit through which to examine and compare and contrast Zelda games with this cast of characters as a base? That was their original intention and the fans went "heck yeah!" and ran with it? The LinkedUniverse fandom's LinkedUniverse is a monster of the week story where everyone contributes, it has hundreds of authors and storytellers all working together and trading tales. It's a scenario in which Jojo's LinkedUniverse is both the source material and also just one instance in the larger weave. And the LinkedUniverse fandom's LinkedUniverse lore deviates from (and is much deeper than imo) that of the original comic mainly because of that 1 person building a thing vs hundreds of people building a thing. And isn't that so cool?

But then also with the decline of the fandom I dunno I feel like the LinkedUniverse fandom's LinkedUniverse has been dying. Updates would spawn a burst of creativity and multitudes of branching ideas and what-if scenarios explored through art and fic and discussion, building on it, adding it in to pre-existing stories. I feel that activity around updates has been ticking more towards exploring the comic within the context of the comic itself, and less within the fandom's takes on it (not taking that step forward of "yes, and," and "yes-anding" fanworks as well.) Or not updates in particular, but the state of the fandom is deviating from taking this base and running and sharing to something more controlled and wary? Isolated?

The LinkedUniverse fandom is a phenomenon to me. And it's not something I think should be replicated in regards to other LinkVerse comics but it's also something beautiful and creative? Like, Jojo to a certain extent has or had lost control of the fandom's versions of these characters. She made them and we respect her wishes for them but they no longer belong to her?

The LU fandom's LU is a collectively written LinkVerse and exploration of the loz games, using these characters and relationships as a base (which is why I think people mistag by accident so much.) Sure, you could use the characters directly from the games or make your own LinkVerse to explore the relationships between the loz games. However, within the context of the LU fandom, you get the advantage of the template already being there for the character's personalities, meeting, secrets, and an open ended goal, and these things are understood by a large number of invested people, leading to this huge collaborative project.

This is what's so special about the LinkedUniverse fandom to me. Watching this thing be built and getting to be a contributing piece of it. Maybe it shouldn't have happened. Like, if something like that were to happen to anything I've made I think that'd be really scary. But it's also something incredible?

It's why I have a hard time accepting it when people say they hate the LU fandom. How could you hate the creativity? The shared stories? What's been made? Isn't it incredible? It's another LinkVerse, in a way, one that belongs to many. I hate the instances where people have tried to police the way the characters are written, both within the fandom and towards Jojo's comic, and the issues in communication, and callout posts asjhfksdf Problems in reconciling the LU fandom's LU, Jojo's LU, other LinkVerses, and gen loz. But the phenomenon of the fandom itself, the shared collaborative LU fandom's LinkedUniverse? I think it's such a cool thing. I think it's such a cool way to explore and examine the loz games and craft stories with so many other people.

I really enjoy all the LinkVerses that are around now. I don't think the fandom for LU is something that can be replicated. (or should?) (it's both something odd and a loss of control for Jojo but also a conduit for an incredible amount of creativity and community.)

It's really interesting to me. It's really interesting to witness. Or to have witnessed?

[planckstorytime]

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: A World Beyond Anger (Part Six)

VI. … And Why It Doesn’t Matter

You thought I was done complaining? No, never.

Doubtless someone will punch holes in my theory, and I wouldn’t even feign indignation. The truth is that none of the explanations posed by fans have established a coherent story. But the fact that this is where our attention has been directed – away from the emotional moments that give stories relevance in the first place – exposes the shallowness of this trade-off. Even if my desired theory comes to fruition, I don’t think it redeems Rebirth’s rendition of Aerith’s death.

The consistency, or lack thereof, between the obnoxious multiverse stuff and the franchise’s established lore ultimately matters little when you’ve already squandered that critical moment that makes us care. From whatever universe you view it, Rebirth demonstrates a puzzling ambivalence to Aerith’s passing. The impact of loss never lands, because moments later you have Zack stepping in for a tag-team match with Cloud against Sephiroth. It’s framed as some fist-pumping “fuck yeah” moment, complete with embarrassingly out-of-place musical callbacks and quotes from Crisis Core (2007). It doesn’t feel like purposeful whiplash to create a sense of disorientation, but rather completely tone-deaf and disrespectful fanservice, all during a moment that should leave the player feeling hollow. And no sooner has Aerith left the building than she rises again like the goddamn Undertaker, kicking ass and eliminating any modicum of loss. Whether she’s in the lifestream or a parallel timeline or a phantom of Cloud’s addled mind is a distinction without a difference. Her death – and perhaps all death in the series – has lost its significance, because it feels merely inconvenient.

Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series and story planner for the original FF7, channeled the pain and shock of his mother’s death into the loss of Aerith. Where once there was a source of joy, now there is only a void that will never be filled. In the original game, you’ll always have that empty slot on your party selection screen to remind you of who you’re missing. It’s an aching, uncomfortable treatment of death in fiction that was unconventional for its medium at the time. It cut straight to players’ hearts. With this is mind, does Rebirth capture anything remotely comparable? Should we call Sakaguchi and tell him his mom is still kicking somewhere?

When asked about the scene by Game Informer, Nomura had this to say:

“Prior to Final Fantasy VII, there have been other titles where characters have experienced tragedy, but many of them have come back or been revived in some ways. But I believe that loss is something that happens unexpectedly, and it’s not something so dramatic or drawn out, but is something in which a person that you have just conversed with is suddenly gone and never to come back. I believe that the person who dies should not return in this title, and that is what we did with the original… I do believe that the way we have depicted it brings about a new emotion and a new feeling for both players who have played the original Final Fantasy VII and newcomers.”

I struggle to conceive what this “new emotion” could be. Bewilderment? I can’t imagine another response when the developers diminish the tragedy of a lost friend because they want you to be more invested in keeping track of the stupid cartoon dog! Nothing can rationalize the cluttering of this sequence with a shell game that asks us to follow the Black/White/Clear Materia. This sequence, and the events immediately leading up to it, should not have been reduced to a gimmick of prestidigitation. We’re not wondering what we’ll do without Aerith – we’re wondering which sleeve she’s hiding in, so to speak. All of these unnecessary contrivances dare you to solve them, encourage you to switch off your Lizard Brain. But if you turn off your Lizard Brain and welcome those higher mammal functions, you’re bound to see how stupid all of this truly is. For Christ’s sake, we’re naming these worlds after dog breeds! Is that really worth what we’ve lost?

Mechanically-speaking, too, I feel the 1997 game better executed the subsequent battle. There’s an often overlooked quality of the Jenova LIFE fight: It’s really easy. Equip the Water Ring you picked up five minutes earlier and you’ve essentially won the fight. This works really well because you’re not supposed to be thinking hard about strategy and tactics or rocking out to Jenova’s awesome theme song – the battle just gives you time to chew on what’s happened, all the while Aerith’s theme softly rings in your ears. Rebirth gives you a complicated, high-flying, multi-stage boss fight that drops your dead friend’s musical motif midway through. Now, your party is dropkicking an eldritch monster and shouting quips, while electric guitars and synths blare in the background. You need to be actively paying attention for the hour-long boss gauntlet that follows, and it feels wrong to me. I didn’t party wipe; I’m not bad at this game (I beat Gilgamesh at level 49, prior to the endgame) – but micromanaging a chaotic battle drains what little emotion remained. I just felt numb in between fits of laughter.

That is to say, the ending of Rebirth feels like a trip to the dentist.

New mysteries take priority over an earnest portrayal of events, and I just don’t think they’re compelling enough to warrant that. Our knowledge of them has barely advanced since part one. We knew going in that Zack was in a different world, denoted by a different Stamp. And now we know… that there are different worlds denoted by different Stamps. For all the rigmarole, we learned shockingly little. The mystery didn’t really progress, aside from showcasing such a circus of inconsistencies that we’re basically forced to accept that it operates on dream logic. The true ending remains to be seen, but if the clues only amount to “the clues not adding up”, then I’d say that this plotline hasn’t felt rewarding.

My gut tells me this all leads to a cul-de-sac. I judge these riddles as cynical mystery boxes with little concrete direction. Rebirth backtracks on several of Remake’s more audacious changes, completely dropping plot points in some cases. I suspect the final game will do the same, and we’ll have something approaching the original. After all, this “adds up” to Advent Children, by Kitase’s admission. The man likewise expressed that the story will likely be adjusted based on audiences’ responses to the ending of the second part. Given that the narrative disruptions have had mixed reactions at best this time, I believe it’s fair to guess that we’re just looping back to the OG plot anyway.

With all of this in mind, attempting to unravel these unknown elements seems like a massive waste of time. I don’t find this ending quite as intolerable as that of Remake, but it still comes off as tacky and desperate. I think the third part will likely still be fun and contain many of the great moments from the latter half of the original. But I can’t hide my disappointment that, even though my worst nightmares about the project didn’t come to pass, it didn’t fully rehabilitate itself in my eyes either.

I won’t lie – when I started to feel that familiar anger rising again, I got scared. I didn’t get the clean resolution that I wanted, and I worried that destructive obsession would take me over again. I feared I was about to relapse into the world’s stupidest addiction.

All of a sudden, it clicked together. I spent 120 hours staring straight at the answer, oblivious to it. Yet it finally came to me.

FULL ESSAY: https://planckstorytime.wordpress.com/2024/05/11/final-fantasy-vii-rebirth-a-world-beyond-anger/

[katsu-curry835]

So you're thinking about reading A Song of Ice and Fire...

Now, it's come to my attention that there are some people out there who are contemplating reading George RR Martin's masterpiece of a series A Song of Ice and Fire, also known as the Game of Thrones books, but they haven't actually picked them up for various reasons. I'm here to convince you why you should read them, and why your concerns aren't justified (some of them are, we will get to that.)

This post is for people who have contemplated reading the books and need an extra push to actually going and buying them. This is your sign to start reading this series if you haven't already. You will not regret it, it's exquisitely written.

I've seen the show, I don't need to read the books.

Oh lord.

The show and the books do diverge quite extensively, especially as they both go on. Book 1 of ASoIaF and season 1 of GoT are pretty much scene for scene the same story, with, however, big differences in plot after that. Body counts are different, character motivations and arcs are different, and even certain major events have very noticeable changes from book to show. Needless to say you will not be getting the same experience by any means if you were to read the books.

But that's pretty obvious, right? Obviously you know the two are different; all adaptations are different. So what's better about the books?

Well, for starters, the books don't have a trash fire ending (yes I know what you're thinking, see concern 5.) The later seasons of GoT were terrible, it must be said. Yet there is not a single moment in the ASoIaF series that I would call bad, especially compared to the final two seasons of the show.

Secondly, the books and the show both have bombastic plots and intricate character arcs that are easy to get invested in. But the books have something the show doesn't: banger prose. I was one of the people who watched the show before reading the books and I was blown away by just how much better these characters that I already loved were because I got to see inside their heads with their internal monologues. This is a series that really lends itself to deep character introspection. And Martin is an excellent prose writer, make no mistake. This, I feel, is often left out when we're talking GoT. Yes, Martin's plots and characters are amazing. But the sheer quality of quotable lines from his work that aren't in the dialogue and absolute zingers from his internal monologues make this more than worth it.

The books are more than their own thing and are, in my opinion, the optimal way to experience the series. The show is easier to consume, but the books are more in depth. They stand apart from the show as the superior telling of the story, and it definitely helps that the people doing the writing of the show were incompetent. If it wasn't clear, David and Dan were not the geniuses behind seasons 1-4 of GoT, it was George RR Martin. The reason it was such good television, was because it was an adaptation of even better source material.

2. The books are really long and complicated, they feel like they'd be quite difficult to read.

There is some truth to this notion; this is not Baby's First Epic Fantasy Novel. This ain't a light read; it's pretty dense with information. That being said, I don't read to much fiction myself and I found it pretty easy to digest.

Here's the deal, if you go into this series intimidated by all the lore and the size of the books, you're almost setting yourself up for failure. My advice is to pretend that you don't know how 'complicated' it gets. Because being complicated is only a problem if you can't understand what's happening because of its complexity.

From my experience at school (this is relevant I swear), I have found that the best teachers are the people who able to explain complex concepts in a way that makes it seem obvious or simple. And I began to notice this when I started to recount what I had learned from my teachers to other people and came to the conclusion that I did not know how much I was learning. I knew more than I thought. Then I noticed a similar phenomenon when I started explaining stories I really enjoyed. I told the story to my friends, and I realized that there was way more that I needed to explain than I assumed. A good writer is a good teacher: they make the complicated seem simple, and make the long seem short. And George RR Martin is a fucking brilliant teacher.

You will fly through these books quicker than you expect, and you will pick up more information than you know you are picking up. The fact of the matter is, they're well written. If you pay attention, you won't be confused.

3. I've heard the series gets really violent and sexually explicit. There's a lot of guts and gore and scenes of assault and violence against women. How bad does it get?

Obviously I cannot tell you personally whether the series is too shocking or visceral for you, since I don't know your individual tastes. People's mileage will vary with this sort of thing. But there are two things I want to say about this.

Firstly, the show has given this series a bad rap in this regard. There are plenty of scenes in the show that have way more blood 'n' boobs than the books did in those equivalent moments. Scenes will fade to black or be referred to off screen in the books where the show takes great pains to show you everything. This is because of the marketing around the show at the time as some sort of 'this isn't you're typical fantasy for nerds, this has blood and tits. This is sexy fantasy, not like lord of the rings!!1!' The show runners relied on this sentiment to make you uncomfortable because that was part of the point. So they embellished. However, I don't want to convince you that this is a light read. There are descriptions of blood and there are some rape scenes from the perspective of the woman being raped, and that can get pretty harrowing.

But this brings me to my second point: books aren't a visual medium. Maybe this is personal thing, but reading a description of a murder, no matter how evocative and disgusting, will never be the same as someone being stabbed in front of you on your screen, it just won't. There are particularly bloody or uncomfortable scenes in the show (the Red Wedding, Oberyn Martell vs The Mountain, that Sansa scene with Ramsay and Theon) that I struggle to rewatch because every human has a tendency to get a little squeamish at moments like that. But reading them/their equivalents in the books doesn't feel as bad, because it's ink on a page, it's words. And as fans of the series will tell you, words are wind.

That being said, if you think a viscerally described sexual assault, rape or murder will be too much for you, or if you cannot handle depictions of those things in general, it's with great sadness that I should recommend you don't read these books. The violence and rape isn't gratuitous, but it does happen, and frankly these books should have a trigger warning in the front covers.

4. The series is problematic

Yeah, uh, a little bit.

No piece of media is ever going to be ideologically pure and it's unreasonable to expect that. As alluded to in the last section, there's some pretty heavy stuff in this series and the line between depiction and glorification/normalization is blurry here. But I'm going to stop you there because if we had that discussion we would be here all day. When people say 'this is problematic' what they usually mean is that the way something is done has some form of unintentional (or maybe even intentional) bigotry baked into it. And there is some of that here.

The way women's bodies are described can be a little weird. There are scenes where Martin will describe a female child as having 'small, tender breasts,' and it's like 'um... sir what is this?' Generally, though, that Martin describes the women in this is supposed to have a point. It could've been done less strangely, though.

Drogo's relationship to Daenerys is v e r y strange when you consider that Drogo is 30 something and Dany is 13 at the start of the series. Yet we as the audience appear to be asked to root for them. Very gross, George.

I'm sure I missed something, I'm not super deep into this discourse and this was just the stuff that I, someone who is not and has never been a woman, has noticed. But there is substance to this criticism, the weird misogyny in the way Martin writes women's bodies is non trivial.

BUT, I can excuse it because outside of this, ASoIaF has some of the most brilliantly written female characters in any media ever. Their motives are complex, they all embody different kinds of femininity and womanhood, and they're all strong, in their own way. Martin is excellent at writing characters regardless of gender, and this series has some excellent women in it.

5. But the series might never be finished!

This is the big one, really, and this is the concern, along with concern number 3, is the one I understand the most.

If you're unfamiliar, George RR Martin has gone on record saying that he plans to release seven books in his series, although if he thinks his characters outgrow that, he will change it to be more books. For now, though, he seems to be sticking to seven. He has released five novels so far... and the last one was released in 2011. Martin is 75 years old. At the pace he is currently writing, we probably will not get book 7 before he dies. And if we do get book 7, it likely won't be written entirely by him, and therefore will not feel like an appropriate conclusion to many.

This puts some people off and I completely understand why. All I can tell you is why I don't mind.

Currently, the five ASoIaF novels that were released are the best literature I have ever read hands down. The first three novels form a semi completed arc of their own, so some can view them as their own self contained story. For me personally, the 1,7 million total words Martin has already written are enough, because they fuck so hard.

If I didn't address a concern you have about reading these books, please just ask, I'd be more than happy to talk about it. Otherwise, thank you for reading!

[jasbaklonbri]

My issues with the Avatar Live action show. (Spoilers)

before I get on with this… rant I guess, I want to stress that I do not “Hate” this adaptation, I actually think it’s pretty…. decent. Mixed in terms of being an adaptation but as its own thing i do think it actually is good. If a newcomer gets introduced to the franchise through this show, I’d mostly be okay with that (though would still stress to watch the original, especially hinting about the rest of the story if they’re really invested) before I go into my biggest problems I should quickly list its positives.

The characters, for the most part, are done well, they meet the core criteria of what made the original characters so beloved. The acting, for the most part, is good, overall the cast does a really good job at their respective roles. Costumes are amazing, sets, while not exactly 1:1, are still overall awesome. soundtrack is really REALLY good, stellar work all round. The action is not only great, it’s BRUTAL AS FUCK, it does not shy away from the themes of war and death and I love that 😈 some of the expanded editions to the lore are really interesting, big shoutout especially to the inclusion that zuko’s crew is also the battalion he defends in the war room, that was actually brilliant 👌 on top of that, references and inclusions of stuff from expanded material I mostly really liked, from the comics, to legend of Korra to even the kyoshi novels. As for the writing and story…. I can accept no adaptation is perfect and there will be changes, I think it follows the moments of the show decently and that the writing is… adequate. overall rating for me is a decent… 6/10… almost was a 7 but… no.

okay now for the stuff that sucked!

The Characters that weren’t good:

Aang is not bad in this, character wise and acting is overall good, Gordon Cormier does a good job, he looks and sounds the part. My issues are how the character is written. Ill get into more about his biggest issues later on as it mostly has to do with writing and a few particular scenes, but for now I’ll harp on how repetitive and annoying his dialogue can be sometimes, way too many times has the character had the same “guilt scene” which hits the exact same beats: he sees devastation, he says “this is my fault”, he’s reassured it’s not. Again and again.

sokka is awful in this. And to be honest it’s not really the writings fault, Ian Ousleys portrayal does not do it for me, his line delivery is too monotone-ish, his emotional delivery is lacking, he has the same blank facial expression throughout the show. He has a decent one liner here and there, but the comedy and character is MILES away from the over expressive, hilarious and badass original.

zukos actor is decent just enough, and honestly it’s a little unfair to compare Dallas Liu to Dante Bascos performance, but admittedly I felt he was comparatively more underwhelming at times. Though if anything I was more annoyed at the look of his Scar. Don’t get me wrong, its leagues more noticeable than it was in the god awful movie adaptation… but it’s still not great. Remember how grotesque his scar is in the animated show, even at a distance, his skin is shrivelled, he can hardly open his eye, even his ear is half burnt off, they could of gone all out in showcasing his disfigurement, the greatest source of his self shame and most brutal showcase of his fathers cruelty and abuse… but no it’s just a dark red patch around his eye, it’s not even ugly to look at. Disappointing.

Bumi, while acted and portrayed really well by Utkarsh Ambudkar, is written very badly. His motivations have completely changed from the original, and no it is no where near as good, unlike in the show were he “toys” with Aang to teach him lessons about the journey ahead of him, offering wisdom and compassion to his old friend, keeping his identity a secret allowing Aang to realise who he is, making an emotional reunion when he realises another piece of his lost past is still alive: here Aang finds out immediately it’s him, and Bumi instead is pissed and petty that Aang left to the point HE TRIES TO KILL HIM, completely disregarding the point of the message and character from the original show. Oh and not to mention the ending scene with him, but again I’ll get to that scene later.

finally, biggest problem I’ll harp on the characters themselves is the diminishing, lack of focus and editing of the three protagonists flaws. Aangs childish immaturity, kataras inexperience, Sokkas rudeness and distrust. There are reasons why the show took these out or didn’t focus on them, but in my opinion this was a huge mistake to do. Character flaws are integral to character growth, throughout the original show we see the characters learn and grow with and out of said flaws to become more rounded and stronger characters, Aangs journey to embrace his destiny and responsibilities, Kataras growing wisdom and strength, Sokka accepting his wrongdoings becoming more open minded and accepting. Diminishing these ultimately take away a lot from these characters and it does them and the fans a huge disservice to outright ignore them at times.

Aang and Kataras bond is there… but it’s Seriously lacking!

I’m a Kataang shipper. Before I go into detail with this I think it’s important to point out a certain bias I might have with this, but regardless of any opinions about the original shows romantic themes, I’d still argue that Aang and Kataras relationship is one of the core and integral bonds of the original show (the others being Katara and Sokka, Zuko and Iroh, Aang and Zuko and Zuko and Azula (book 2 onwards) so getting this right is in my opinion important to any adaptation. Overall their relationship is fine in this iteration, but MAN it’s just not as good.

Imagine my utmost disappointment When in this version: Katara is not the first person Aang sees when he wakes up! Now I know that seems like a petty thing to harp on but really think back to the original show, how beautifully written their friendship was, how they constantly support and empathise with each other, how Aang is a source of Kataras hope, how Katara is an emotional rock for Aang when coming to terms with his loss and grief. All of it starts with the foundation of their first meeting in that first episode. After a hundred years of sleep, Katara accidentally discovers Aang (with Sokka) and rushes to save him, the first person Aang sees as he opens his eyes is her, he immediately, and essentially asks her out. Katara introduces him to her village, she’s enamoured by his playful attitude and abilities, there are hints of a blooming crush between them (mostly from Aang) they promise to explore the world together, they go penguin sledding, until finally, when Katara realises and breaks the truth about Aangs 100 year absence and slow realisation that everything and everyone he knew is likely gone, Katara tries to reassure him mentioning there may be a bright side: Aang responds with “I did get to meet you”. all of that build up and setup of the friendship (and budding romance) of our two leads is masterfully established in one, 23 minute long episode. Really think about that. It takes the original show 1 episode to set the core points of the two lead’s relationship in what takes this show AN ENTIRE SERIES TO PROPERLY ESTABLISH! Not only is all of that practically absent in this iteration, but plenty of scenes and moments are either missing or lessened, Such as when Katara calms Aang out of the Avatar state, or how they begin to train and learn their waterbending together (more on THAT later), cave of two lovers is now given to Katara and Sokka?? (really missed the point of that episode) or how about the mutual understanding of each others grief through their own grief, oh yeah that’s another thing, in this version Katara, nor Sokka for that matter, ever mention to Aang that their mother is dead?! Not once. I don’t even think he ever knows, or maybe he finds out off screen? Big thing to not mention guys??

Now there are plenty of scenes in the show that do help build up their friendship here, but by missing core scenes, especially those from the first episodes, it just makes it harder for the show to establish that bond towards an audience, and again just pales in comparison.

No statue room???

I’ll be a little more brief here, but the fact that this moment is completely missing infuriates me. You have the quintessential moment where Aang is in full view of the scope of his legacy, a monument to hundreds of all the past avatars, a moment for our characters and the audience to visually realise the weight and burden that Aang Carries upon his shoulders… and you completely take it out??? What the actual FUCK???

Kyoshis premonition almost ruins the show! as awesome and badass as Avatar Kyoshi was in this version, this one tidbit is by far not just a weird addition, it’s arguably one of the biggest fundamental flaws of the show, not as an adaptation, but the show in of it self. The idea apparently (according to behind the scenes comments) is that kyoshis premonition to Aang of the northern watertribes destruction is to give him more of an assentive to head “straight to the point”, removing the unnecessary detours and filler of the original. The problem with that is even for that reason, this addition is completely pointless, because Aang already has enough assentive to head to the north: LEARN WATERBENDING!!!

In the original show after Katara and Sokka save Aang from zukos ship in the 2nd episode, they establish that they must find Aang a water bending master so he can begin his first step in becoming the avatar, in fact rewatching the first few episodes, AANG MAKES THE SUGGESTION FIRST TO KATARA SO SHE CAN MASTER HER WATERBENDING! Even the god awful movie understood that that was enough reason to head north! And if you really want more reason and imperative for them to get there as soon as, why not just reiterate that there is a WAR GOING ON! The attack on the south, the genocide of the air nomads, accidentally bringing an invasion to Kyoshi island, these are all good enough reminders for the Gaang to showcase the need for Aang to head to the known one place in the world where Aang can possibly master an art integral to achieving his destiny. But even worse than that, this addition seriously hurts the show going foward, because now, after Aang has been shown the impending doom destined for the north, he STILL detours from it, not once but twice! (And according to one gossiping bartender, possibly a few more times!!) in an attempt to try to showcase his nobility and compassion to always help those in need, every time he decides to stop to help a new problem, HE IS LITERALLY RISKING THE DESTRUCTION OF AN ENTIRE CIVILISATION!!! Priorities dude!!! It’s not like he’s given a time frame, for all he knows this premonition could happen at anytime, it could be already happening??? It is by far one of the biggest, if not THE BIGGEST flaw of the show.

Muddying the rules of the spirits and spirit realm

Aside from kyoshis future sight, too many instances does this show, in an attempt to expand ideas of worlds spirituality, often just make things more confusing. Another example is when Aang accidentally drags Katara and Sokka into the spirit world, which even with the reasoning they give it makes no sense whatsoever and it only serves an excuse to combine moments from other episodes into one. Or how about when wan shi tong… for some reason… explains that spirits can only talk to the avatar and only they can communicate with and talk to spirits… except that rule is completely ignored when Katara and Sokka can clearly hear what koh is saying? ooops???

Hai Bai has no agency or resolution in his inclusion here, he’s not even the central threat despite HIS forest being burnt. Instead of going on a full rampage against humanity for their destruction, he’s now just really angry about being wounded? Instead of hai bai kidnapping people, it’s now Koh, who while still really creepy in this version, his abilities are now greatly diminished. Instead of his lightning quick speed to remove the faces of anyone who show any ounce of emotion in his presence, here he can only prey on negative emotions, and is never shown to be especially fast (except the two jump scares). again it just pales in comparison to the intensity of the original scene.

Kuruk should know why his advice is horseshit!

while I like the inclusion of some details of the lore outside the original show, using it during Aangs scene with Kuruk significantly hurts his first scene, because now we have the writers completely miss the point and lessons of Kuruks life. Kuruks advice to “walk the path alone” to “distance himself from his friends” is not just obviously poor advice on its own, but considering that the past avatars are aware of events after their death, it especially doesn’t make sense coming from Kuruk! Avatar Kuruk HAD friends! the kyoshi novels go into detail about his closest companions as well as his secret deeds of hunting dark spirits. Yes Kuruk did it in secret and inadvertently and purposely distanced himself from the people he loved so that he could in his mind protect them, and that’s excusable because Avatars never have hindsight about some of the consequences of their actions, in fact past avatars often use their mistakes and their consequences as advice and warnings to the current avatar. KURUK SHOULD BE ADVISING THE EXACT OPPOSITE!!!

One of the major consequences of pushing his friends and keeping secrets was that when he eventually died mysteriously at a young age, his companions felt they had failed in their mission to serve and protect their friend, pushing one of them, Jianzhu, to fall into a path of political meddling and corruption, and being consumed with keeping his power and influence through back handed tactics like kidnapping, torture, intimidation and murder, eventually becoming Kyoshi’s earliest nemesis and one of her greatest enemies (highly recommend reading the Kyoshi novels 😍) Not to mention that Kuruks “advice” leads to an incredibly forced scene and trope where our hero attempts to push Katara away and “nobly distances himself to protect his friend”, only for the advice to be immediately ignored a few minutes later, making it entirely pointless.

AANG NEVER LEARNS WATERBENDING???

yes, through the entirety of BOOK 1 WATER, Aang never learns waterbending! Katara offers to show him some techniques she knows in one scene, but for some reason he’s hesitant to take her offer, which would have been interesting to explore, except they never really address it?? Worse even when they finally reach Pakku in the north, all that happens is that he’s kind of scolded for not starting his training, but not once is it seen or mentioned by pakku that he’ll teach him ANYTHING. If there’s enough time to have Katara shown water healing lessons as well as arguing and fighting Pakku to teach her combative techniques, WHY THEN DOES EVERYONE IGNORE TRAINING THE GOD DAMN AVATAR!!! The fate of the world rests on Aang learning the 4 elements, but for some reason they completely leave it out?

Now Katara is mentioned to teach him in the future like in the original, but the problem now in this version is that while Katara is gifted and talented, unlike the original show she’s never formally trained (outside of healing lessons) by Pakku or a master to warrant her to become Aangs official waterbending teacher. They are literally leaving the training of the most important person of their time to an AMATEUR!!!

a baffling diversion?!?!

Finally my last big problem with the show is the handling of the ending scene. Take in mind that the fire nation sends an entire fleet, no, hundreds upon hundreds of ships to invade, subjugate and snuff out an entire civilisation, and to take out the avatar, once and for all. Also consider the sheer loss of life and devastation that was unleashed by the ocean spirit upon them when zhao murdered the moon spirit, they got hit back hard and then some, honestly it was spectacular to watch! The problem, according to Ozai: “it was all according to plan”…..

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKING FUCK?!?!?!

apparently it’s revealed that the North Pole wasn’t the “real target”, but instead a “clever ploy” to instead… invade Omashu?? First of all, who are you creating a diversion for??? We don’t see earth kingdom soldiers coming to assist the fight in Agna Q’ela? It’s not like we ever see waterbenders helping to defend Omashu when we were there earlier, it’s not like anyone outside the protagonists was aware of Aangs premonition (oh by the way why didn’t Kyoshi warn Aang it was a “diversion”??) WHO ARE FUCKING TALKING ABOUT???

and again, just to reiterate, you are saying you sacrificed an ENTIRE INVASION FORCE, big enough to destroy a whole society, which led to a huge loss of life and ships which YOU CLAIM was “to be expected”…. In order for you to take one city???? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING JOKING??? That’s not just bad writing, that is beyond STUPID!!! Oh and just to add, unlike in the show where Bumi willingly surrenders to avoid the destruction of Omashu, instead opting to wait for the right opportunity to free it later, saving his people doing so, here we see him bruised and bloodied after a siege! Yeah, one of the most powerful earth-benders in the world is taken out offscreen!!! CHRIST ALL BLOODY MIGHTY!!!

okay… rant over… 😮‍💨😮‍💨

[seeingteacupsindragons]

I’m thinking a lot right now about pacing, specifically as it applies to characters—particularly protagonists.

Yes, this definitely spawned from the fact that I watched classic 90’s anime and then one episode of the reboot, but this isn't about that. This is about the fact that the contrast in this element between them threw this thought into relief for me. I have tons of examples in this post, and those two are none of them.

I just think exploring it as a concept is good for my brain and going to be an interesting read.

For the purposes of this post, there are two potential primary tactics for characterization pacing:

Shoving all the important/relevant bits about a protagonist as soon as feasible (usually within an episode or two if it’s a show, or the first couple of chapters if it’s a novel, etc.)

Doling characterizations out in bits and drips and drabs to treat things like reveals

The first often has the advantage of making people feel like they know a character immediately. It works well for shorter works, and adaptations expecting its audience to have at least some idea of the source material—there’s not a lot of reveal in Steve Rogers being Captain America, for example, so there’s no reason to play coy with it. It shows a lot of exciting things quickly to get people hyped and invested early.

But telling a story this way can also feel like a lot of information thrown at someone at once, and the character ends up feeling shallower because there’s nothing to explore. No matter how much there is there, if it’s all upfront, it can be hard to sort through it all and see what parts of the character interact with what parts of the story. It can be hard to recognize and discern signal from noise. It can also limit emotional impact and investment in their character—if everything is shared up front, then there’s no build, tension, or emotional investment in the punch, if you’re hoping for one.

There is something very special about reacting with, “Oh God, I was so wrong, I didn’t know, I didn’t know,” about a character, about a facsimile of a person, than there is about a plot, even. The complicated feeling of realizing you didn’t understand someone and now you do, or that you actively misunderstood something, is only possible when you’ve been given time to adjust to a normal without that before learning more.

I’m not talking “sudden character flashback” when I talk about layers, either. I’m talking about things the character is fully aware of and acts on, that simply aren’t made clear to the audience immediately because the story isn’t rushing to tell you everything.

Here, let’s explore some examples that might clarify what I mean.

Consider Yuukoku no Moriarty. William has a lot going on with him. There’s lots of things we don’t know about him at first, despite the first chapter being a double feature length flashback explaining his origins, motivations, and goals. And chapter two established his current situation. Cool.

But you know what we didn’t know about him until volume 6? That he was suicidal. He knew he was suicidal. He was taking actions based on that. You can infer a little bit from some of the odd moments prior to the Reveal. It’s a necessary part of his characterization and the climax of the story wouldn’t work without that being critically ingrained in him.

And yet, the creators chose not to share it with the audience in a clear, stated way, or clearly apparent and undeniable until volume 6. He didn’t change: that was always a part of him. But the audience didn’t know it was there yet. But we had to wait a while to pick up that piece of the puzzle.

Compare to something like, Yuri!!! On ICE, which came out the same year Yuukoku no Moriarty started, so I’m not talking about changes story telling trends of over time. Yuri!!! On ICE wasn’t based on anything, so the reboot factor wasn’t in play. But it’s short, and by the end of episode two, we know Yuuri is stubborn, emotional prone to wild outbursts, obsessed with Viktor Nikiforov, obsessed with skating, and very unsure of himself. No other major character traits were ever revealed in the twelve episodes. Even the whammy of a plot twist in episode 10 was based on those traits: prone to wild outbursts, obsessed with Viktor, very emotional. He grows and becomes more sure of himself, but we never learn anything new about who he was and what situation he was always in that really matters.

And no, this isn’t limited to anime. Take this novel I just finished reading the other week that came out this year from an American writer and an American publisher set in America: the protagonist, in first person, introduced himself in the first chapter or two as a flamboyant, femme gay boy who loves talking too much and is tight with his friends and stubbornly wants to prove himself. That’s fine enough. But even if he grew or changed (a…little), there were no other important character traits that affected the story. We knew all we needed to know right away.

Meanwhile, something like Jeweler Richard, which was originally a novel series, set up that Seigi was a blackbelt in karate, that he was weird about relationships and bad at pursuing them, awkward at making his feelings clear, and even that he had a bad childhood and abusive father. But it’s not until volume 6, from a first-person narrator in the same style as the book above, that he tells us he’s terrified of being in a relationship because he knows the statistics of victims of domestic violence becoming abusers themselves. And everything slots into place. So many of his prior actions and behaviors make so much more sense.

So maybe this is a short vs. long thing? Not necessarily.

The Eden of the East anime only has 11 episodes and manages, depending on if you consider Saki or Akira the protagonist, to show different aspects of their characters toward the end of it: Saki’s connection to the Eden program comes up for the first time about halfway through the episode run, and the reveal that Akira has been changing his name over and over and over comes even later. Now, he didn’t know that, either but I can easily see a show having a flashback of some kind or having it mentioned by another character in the first episode so the audience at least would know how he got there. There are ways to get that info crammed in there if the creators wanted you to know it. We know Princess Aurora is cursed to be The Sleeping Beauty even though she doesn’t.

Meanwhile, I sat through four seasons of My Hero Academia and Deku’s character and story was pretty set pretty early. Maybe something changed later in the story, but I never saw any spaces for it to arise.

Because that’s part of what’s missing in the upfront narratives: any breathing pause for the audience to go, “Hmmm,” and think about the story for themselves and notice something a little odd. There are no questions raised to be answered, because the answers, as far as the characters are concerned, is set.

I don’t think the character necessarily has to know the thing about themselves, necessarily. I think it helps, but there’s also things like Sam’s demon blood thing in Supernatural, which wasn’t revealed until season two, even though it was obviously planned with his psychic visions well before the reveal. The audience was given something to poke at for a bit before it became clear how it fit into the character. I’m talking about things pre-established with a character that aren’t explained why or how they’re reacting the way they do.

I think one method or the other is more common in some genres and some mediums than others, although I can compare within one medium and find examples of both. It definitely depends at least a little on country and culture of origin of the story (Lord knows how much harder a time I have pulling slow examples from American media). And I especially think it depends on when it was written.

I don’t have stats for this. God knows I don’t watch and read enough media to even take a stab at it. But it’s feeling a lot more common these days to make sure everything is easily packaged and digestible up front, as much with characters as it is with plot and the rest of the story.

Maybe it’s because they want to show you their favorite interesting shiny bits as soon as they can and they get excited. Maybe because it’s easier. Maybe because they just like those kinds of stories. Maybe because they don’t want to deal with fans who have no patience or don’t understand that the layers were always there.

Each gives a story a completely different flavor, and it’s a completely difference experience of enjoying and comprehending the story. One is slowly uncovering a treasure box and the other is being given a treasure box to dig into and coo over.

I think the slower approach helps a story feel richer: it gives the impression there’s so much more that could be uncovered and the world is more expansive and the characters full of deeper lives. I think the quick and shiny approach helps a story feel flashy and dramatic, and some stories should be flashy and dramatic.

Do you want an hour-long firework show, or do you want to set off all your rockets in five minutes? You get the same amount of rockets either way. It’s up to you.

[theroyalsims]

SIMBLEDON APPEARANCE WITH ANYA HAS "LEGITIMISED" ALISTAIR AND MARGEAUX'S RELATIONSHIP

There's officially a new royal "It Couple" in town!

With today's Simbledon appearance, royal fans and royal watchers everywhere got a first "official" glimpse of Alistair and his new girl, Margeaux. And apparently, the simple tennis date is much bigger than it seems. One royal expert suggests:

"This was more than just going out to watch tennis. This was Al saying 'look, I'm taken, this is my girl and we're happy together.' The move is a slap on the face to all his detractors and for everyone criticising Margeaux.

For weeks now, since they were first spotted together, the two have been hounded by negative publicity and some even gave Margeaux the cruel monicker 'Princess Rebound.' But with this outing, the message is loud and clear: this is not just a fling. They're legit. Plus, you take into consideration that it came with Anya's mark of approval, you can say Margeaux's very much fitting in quite nicely with the royal bunch."

(Above: Prince Al and Margeaux, with the Prince's security detail, were photographed leaving Simbledon Arena.)

The difference between the Prince's latest relationship is said to be night and day compared to his previous romance with Ximena Kalarmy. A source close to the Prince shares:

"Al and Ximena were together for years, but we actually never got to see them 'out' except maybe for her restaurant opening. Everything else, they were all paparazzi shots of their private dates. But now, we see Al and he's really happy to be out with Margeaux.

With Ximena, there was a point when all the nasty stuff spewed by the press got to her and she was really insecure. That's despite the fact that Al never let her feel inferior. He made sure she knew he loved her. But that was never enough. Ximena got into her own head and eventually, that caused Alistair to call it quits with her. I think in the end, he got tired of having to tell her again and again that she's enough. A man can only take so much."

(Above: Chatting like old pals - Anya has welcomed Margeaux into the royal fold.)

Ximena's fear of not fitting in with the royals was reportedly an issue with the couple as well. The source further reveals:

"Whenever Al invites her to family outings and dinners, she'd shrink back and put up her walls again. It was a never-ending case of 'what-ifs': what if Anya doesn't like me? What if I use the wrong fork? What if I forget to curtsy? Do I have to curtsy? In the beginning it was normal, we don't all get to meet royals and there are certain formalities and protocols, but they were together for over three years, and she never got past that. It was clear to Al that it was always going to be an issue. But still, he loved her, and he was ready to marry her. When he got shot down because of those same issues, he just had it.

The sad part? The royals seemed to genuinely like her for Alistair. Even Prince Jacques thought that she was 'sweet.' All those stories about Anya and Ingrid snubbing her was not at all true. For starters, Anya is incredibly busy and isn't at all that invested with her sibling's love lives. It was Ximena and her walls that kept her distant from Al's family. Ingrid is arguably the nicest of the bunch and even she had to ask Alistair if she'd offended Ximena in any way because Ximena wasn't talking to her."

These revelations seem to clarify the whole Alistair+Ximena break-up, but we feel that it's a tad bit unfair to keep talking about the young lady, especially now that she's no longer with Prince Al. How about we appreciate Al's newest relationship and finally leave poor Ximena alone. Not all break-ups need a villain. Sometimes things just don't work between two people despite both of them loving each other.

[kanohivolitakk]

Close finishing Cassette Beasts and I think I have cemented my partner preference:

Excluding Barkhley, my partner preference is Felix > Meredith > Viola > Eugene > Kayleigh. A few of these are interchangeable, but this is what I think I'm soldified with.

Felix is easily my favorite character-wise. I love his laidback outgoing personality that feels very grounded and beliveable: I geniunely think I'd get along with him (before you ask yes, I plan to romance Felix thank you) . Not just that, Felix had my favorite story-quest to boot: his storyline with Kuneko resonates with any creative who has had those cringy OCs in their youth and man...I feel seen. TBH the only issue I have with Felix is his signature tape: while Fungogh isn't bad it's so dependent on its gimmick that your mileage will depend on how much you like it and...truth to be told I don't like Fungoghs gimmick at all to the point it was the only partner tape I benched. Sorry Felix, you're stuck with Triphinx now enjoy. (I could've gave Felix Kuneko but as a Ramtasm user it'd be redunant to have two AStral types on team, no matter how OP Astral type is).

I LOVE Merediths design and personality so much, but I think she has one of the weaker questlines? Like its not bad and I do love how it adds to the themes of nostalgia and art as sources of memory Cassette Beasts has going on, but it just feels so...insignificant compared to other questlines. Not to mention her Archangel boss felt...so insignificant to her character arc? Like yeah, Nowhere Monarch did prey on her weakness, but it didn't really feel earned thin my book. Beyond that though I do like Meredith: her design is really good, her serious no-nonsense personality is extremely tsundere without being unrealistic (she's arguably the most realistic character besides Felix) and like said, I love what she adds to themes. The best part though? Her signature beast. Like I'd argue Cat-5 is one of the best mons in the game period (especially in the early-game), and thus having her as your partner is always good, even if you don't like her character.

Viola has probably my favorite quest-line next to Felix and easily with the most fitting Archangel boss fight. Like yes, Robin Goodfellow is a b*tch to fight if you're unprepared, but its the one Archangel fight that does actually fit to the character. I love the twist of her being actually a fictional character and just the way she denies that and goes "Who cares if I'm fiction in someones world I'm real and I will show you". Her personality is great too. My only gripe with Viola is how late you get her: both Viola herself, and the ability to fuse with her. Since Robin GoodFellow is one of the last archangels you fight (if not even the last) you don't really have much time to use Viola by the time you beat her archangel and "properly" get her. So that is a really big drawback against a really solid character.

Eugene has really good design and is extremely likable and...that's it. His questline is one of the most frustrating to go through due to the LandKeeper offices being hard to keep a track of. Not to mention, while he is the second partner you get, he has the same problem as Viola where you fight his archangel so late, you don't really use him that much. Its even worse since you can't even bond with him due to partner relationships activating once you're able to fuse with them. Robindam is okay (if a bit too slow), but man is it pain to remaster as Clocksley is outright useless. I also feel that while Eugenes shonen protagonist "be gay and due crimes" personality is endearing, its also unrealistic: compared to the other more grounded and believeable partners it does stand out like a sore thumb. I still like him, but he just isn't for me.

Kayleigh is...solid. Solid design, insanely likable, simutanesouly quirky and relatable, solid quest, has one of the best signature tapes that's really good early-game, geniunely invested in the MC and their quest, is the bestly integrated to the main arch-angel plot....and that's kinda the problem. She has the "poster-girl" syndrome going on where her character is fine, good even, but since she's the first character the player encounters she's designed to be the most widely-appealing character. She gets relagated to the "vanilla" "default" option, and if you're anything like me, that is instantly a downside. Her status as the first/default partner just makes her look boring compared to the other partners, even if shes still an enjoyable character. I also have the issue with her where she's not as grounded as Meredith or Felix, and if anything has kinda the most nonsensical plot with the whole cult stuff going on. I also feel Kayleigh doesn't really have any motivations on her own, and just follows MC because shes attached to them...which is deeply ironic considering her story arc. Good character, just don't like her as much as others.

[elibean]

well this anime season is ending with a lot less shows than i thought it would, lol

there were SO MANY "ok i'll check out the first episode at least" shows on my list this season and i dropped most of them xD

shy-- cute, but nothing particularly stood out to me. also it would've hit way harder if the classmate ACTUALLY died. oh no she was a little more injured than the rest of them. boohoo

bullbuster-- i'm a sucker for anime originals, and this is pa works, right? ah no i'm way off lol it's NUT, same ones who did...deca-dence, i think? yeah, and i loved that one that was fun. but i just generally don't care about mechas, and this wasn't doing anything to really stand out from others shows, so

shangri-la-- ok everyone was praising the HELL out of this beforehand, like they really liked the source material. the first episode was...fine? it just seems like a straightforward "guy gets really into a vr game" thing lol, like maybe sao but without the impending doom. the animation was nice, but there was nothing there to really grab me.

100 girlfriends-- again people were praising the source material here, so i thought maybe i'd enjoy it, even though i usually don't bother with harem or romance. i thought maybe this'd be different. it wasn't. some of the jokes got a snort out of me, but nothing like super amazing. and the heteronormative thing that he can only be in love with girls was annoying lol

i think that's it out of what i tried and dropped. so what i'm following, sequels notwithstanding--

telepath-- ok the premise is really dumb, what high school girl would HONESTLY make a whole dream about ~meeting aliens~. i think younger me would have been more invested in this kind of thing BUT the forehead touch was super cute, and this IS tagged under "girls' love" so i'm....hoping. please. give me like a smooch or something please

yuzuki-san-- awful subs aside, this seemed really cute and promising. nothing groundbreaking, but endearing and i love stories about families.

frieren-- i'm not gonna say it's a masterpiece but like. easily aots, no contest lol. incredible, even if predictable. the idea of her retracing her steps is really interesting, too. and it's a cool storytelling thing to have us retroactively see her journey along the way-- that's just really fun. i'm not sure how i feel about the goal of getting to talk to her dead friend again. it feels like it kind of cheapens what she's trying to do, in a way? unsure, i feel like they might be able to pull it off in a satisfying way, though. i love the idea of her trying to grow and become more empathetic-- that's really interesting. this one deserves all the praise it's getting.

aaaand that's it, again minus sequels. small season, compared to what i thought it'd be lol

[alarrytale]

Hi Marte!

I wanted to talk to you about this post: https://www.tumblr.com/skepticalarrie/749744952065572864/i-hope-this-isnt-dumb-but-i-always-wondered-why?source=share

Especially the part:

But now, so many years later and considering they had the opportunity to come out after the band and chose not to… Well, it's a mystery, and I suppose we'll never know.

This is exactly why I believe when you think/say that Louis and Harry still can't come out. A lot of larries are kind of realizing now that it isn't normal for Louis and Harry to make such opposite decisions (not coming out) compared to what they showed us (fighting with RBB).

Finally, do you happen to know why 80% of the larrie fandom seems to think that Louis and Harry had the opportunity to come out once the band ended but didn't? Like, it just doesn't make sense.....especially because Rebecca Ferguson said it's highly likely for old X factor contestants to still be tied to their old Sony contracts. Rebecca and 1D shared the same contract/label. One question though, Harry said he felt free when he realized his new contract didn't have an image clause.....so I don't know if this completely debunks the theory of them being in the closet by contract and by still being held back by their old contract (because Harry is wearing nail polish, dresses and lipstick...something his old contract didn't allow him to.....so that's a big plot hole..how is he allowed to do those things if he is still tied to the old homophobic Sony contract)

https://twitter.com/RebeccaFMusic/status/1576991531176976384

Hi, anon!

It absolutely not normal to fight as hard to be themselves as gay men and to be together in a relationship, like H and L did back then (and still do), and then turn 360 and be content with the closet. You can maybe argue that there is a difference between being forcibly closeted and choosing it themselves, but that's not what we're seeing happening at all. Louis would not choose to closet himself by pretending to be a father to a kid, are you kidding me? It's hurting his career more than it's helping him! He'd end it right now if he could!

I think some (not 80%) think that they are self-closeting as solo artists, because they don't understand how Sony can still control them both when their 1D contracts under Sony labels are fulfilled and over (doubtful but that's not the point). I believe they think that the explanations for them still being under Sony contracts and clauses are far-fetched. I also think it's a defence mechanisms because people do not want to think about their favourite being controlled and managed like this. They don't want to believe it to be true, because it's too horrible to think about. I don't think it's due to not knowing it's possible, they do know that, they just don't want to believe it. So it's all a mystery to them.

Harry didn’t say he was glad his new contract didn’t have an image clause (it most certainly does), he was glad it didn’t have a cleanliness clause, which is part of what makes up image clauses, but only a part of it. 1D were a boyband who couldn’t smoke pot when their target audience were 8-20 year olds. Smoking pot in front of paps or posting explicit photos would have cost them fans, hence the cleanliness clause. Regardless, the main point is that they signed their image and branding over to Sony in 1D. Sony is doing what's in their best interest to make them all as much money as possible. If that entails dragging their names through the mud in the press or giving them fake babies, so be it. They're protecting their brand and investments to make the most revenue. They believe the way to go is to appear straight to the general public.

If Harry wearing nail polish will make them the most revenue then they'll allow and encourage that. If it's stunting with women they'll demand that. If Harry wants to play a closeted gay policeman on film that resembles his own story, do you know what Sony will demand of Harry to look straight again after? Well, we saw the aftermath of that. Harry is allowed to be gay on stage because it sells. As long as he's not actually percieved as gay by the gp, he's encouraged to do it. As long as the music is connected to his stunts, he's stunting before, or during or after album release, he's allowed. The image clause is basically Sony saying we decide how you will be percieved by the general public. You can be as gay as you want as long as the masses don't actually percieve you as gay. It's all about the balance.

[lake-archive]

The Stories Of A Bard

Fandom: Genshin Impact

Characters: Ann von Lupus (OC), Venti

Ship: Ventann (Venti/Ann) (Developing)

Words: 1,729

Summary: Ann usually pays the bard a visit to listen to his stories for inspiration. But never, ever had they thought about speaking to him...

Monstadt, a small nation compared to most nations. In fact, it may as well be smaller than Inazuma itself. And it is certainly a tiny dot compared to the nation of Liyue and Sumeru, even Fontaine. Well, judging from the few maps they had seen at least. But it was not hard to get lost at least. Or maybe they would just say that because they literally grew up in the small nation of Mondstadt. They had enough time to walk and remembered their surroundings, the outlay of each corner. After all, when they were little they would always wander around and try to discover one thing after the next. A sense of adventure they no longer have yet it had benefited them for a lifetime, as long as they stayed within the walls of the City Of Freedom itself. Oh how ironic that sentence might be on its own since they are free to go wherever they pleased. That was the point. But there was no other place they would rather be. Not even Inazuma, the nation they praised for its novels and being fan of its vast culture. Not even that nation drew them out of Mondstadt. Maybe that was because they grew up here and thus no other nation would hold even a candle to their very own home.

But enough about that. Because there was one other thing they could only find around Mondstadt, though it was by chance and rather recent, at least in their memory. Though they have heard rumors in passing, when taking a break from moving a pen against a piece of paper. A young looking bard being around and playing on his lyre, talking about ancient tales people might have forgotten about. That or he at least makes people remember. His stories were entertaining yet sometimes off putting. Though the way he told them made them intriguing for everyone. They had gotten curious and decided to seek said bard out, finding him with some luck. And even this young person had become somewhat interested in his way of telling stories. In fact, they were invested, to the point they had often forgotten the time and before knowing it the tale had already been sung. It was nothing but a memory of the moment. And yet, it was all so vivid and let more ideas come forward. All because they had heard the bard sing. They had decided to cooperate what they heard into their own stories after all, making for some entertaining twists. Even if it was just one scene, it was enough to make them continue.

Ever since that day they returned for more, though since then never so foolish to not carry a little notebook and one of their pens around to note down everything they could while having a listen, usually from a safe distance. Enough to hear what he had to say yet far enough that they would not be noticed, or so they hoped. They were not interrupting nor did they want to, only wanting to listen. The audience shall enjoy in peace, unbothered by their notes. And they would note down almost every word coming from his mouth, sometimes being able to recite exact passages. Though those pages would become a mess on their own when scribbling things in between, all because they had been hit with a wave of ideas. ‘What if I made a character based on this theme?’ or ‘This in itself would be an interesting plot.’ Sometimes they were just fascinated by certain aspects he had sung about yet getting not enough closure over, thus they marked them and wrote pages worth of these few lines, merely to satisfy their own curiosity somehow. It was the equivalent of an endless source of inspiration. One they enjoyed in peace. Or thought they were…

Today was meant to be one of those days, a day like any other, even when listening to the bard’s story. In fact, it had just finished and they were about to head back home for the day to get started on their latest idea. That would become a delay however. “Young Miss, why don’t you come a little closer next time?” They heard a voice call out to them, right next to them actually. 

They turned their head in one swift motion, being a little caught off guard by the fact that someone had approached them to begin with. Usually people would just pass them if anything else, not talk to them. But even more of a surprise to see who it was – The bard. And apparently he was only a little… Shorter than them? Huh, they had not expected that. Then again, they had only seen him from afar. And he looked more youthful from close up than they had imagined. So there was basically one surprise after the other they were hit with. “Huh!? M… Me?” They asked, the only thing they could manage to slip out at the very moment.

“Yes, you. Who else?” He responded with a smile. “You’re always sitting here by yourself. Isn’t it getting lonely?”

“N… No, not really. I’m busy after all.”

“Busy you say? With wha—” His gaze shot down shortly after, spotting the tiny book in their hands most likely. He then looked up at them again. “You’re working on something out in the open?”

They nodded, though meekly. “You could say that, yes…”

“What is it? Let me see! Pretty please!”

“Ah— I’m sorry but it’s a work in progress! I don’t show those around until publication.” They were trying to argue and yet him having taken a step closer and looking at them with wide, curious eyes didn’t make it any easier.

“Oh c’mon! A sneak peek won’t hurt! Maybe I can help you out!”

“I… Appreciate it but I can tell stories of my own accord!”

“Oh, a story! I didn’t know that! Now I’m even more curious! Please let me see it!”

This was bad… In truth these were just notes they had taken as the bard had sung his latest tale out in the open at Mondstadt, nothing else. There was no story yet to speak of, at least not one from their own mind. And having him see all of this would be embarrassing. “No, I would rather no—”

“Snatch! Too late!” They heard him laugh, just then noticing their empty hands. A quick gaze down and… It’s gone! The notebook is gone!

They were about to scream, wanting to remind him that this was something he shouldn’t look at but by then he had opened it, holding it up to take a close look at it and seeing all the notes scribbled into it. They noticed their face turning red, becoming rather embarrassed and just wanting to sink onto the ground beneath them. This was too much, they just wanted to die. And yet…

“Woha, so you were listening! That’s a lot!” He commented, making them nearly pass out. This was a lo– “Haha, even I kinda forgot half of what I was exactly saying! But you put it all down!” Yeah, this was just too embarrassing now.

Shortly after turning a few more pages he closed the book, finally, putting it back into their hands. The smile did not fade for even a moment, making them feel even more embarrassed and uneasy. He had seen it, all of it! Surely he would think of them as weird now or something! Truly, this had to result in something which would make them quit the work they had decided to pursue. Because—

“Show me first when it’s done! I’d love to read your own spin on it!” He instead said, making them come back to reality and lose all the previous thoughts they had at an instant. They only blinked when hearing that, not sure if they had heard it correctly and let out a quick ‘Huh?’ to accompany said blink. “Hm? Did I say something weird?” He had even asked.

They quickly shook their head. “Ah– No! Not at all! It’s just– Uhm…” They began, quickly falling into stuttering. This was a first. They expected no one to say that. Sure, their stories would always be received well in public and they even managed to sell a few copies of their own works here and there, but someone showing actual interest just by the notes… And not feeling insulted for being a more or less voluntary source for said stories… They expected him to be upset more than anything. Not… This. “Well… If it’s credit then—”

“Haha, calm down! I don’t mind! Just write what you want! After all, it’s how you tell it which will make it unique!” He interrupted, as if wanting to assure them. “I just want to hear about it. But if you wanna pay me back you could bring me some apples next time. Or some wine~” 

Huh? No Mora? Just… Apples? Or wine? This was not what they had expected at all. And yet, they felt like they owed him to begin with, so they nodded. He seemed really outgoing and carefree. Perhaps a little too much. Though at the time they could not put their finger on it, why this had crossed their mind. And it was something they had brushed aside for the moment. Not like it would get them anywhere. “I… Can do that. Yeah.”

“Great great! It’s a deal then!” The bard responded and they thought that had been it. But no, it was not. There was one last question he wanted to be answered. “Oh, by the way, what’s your name? Since I see you here more often I may as well ask~”

Their name!? Not something they thought would be clarified today and yet… He had just gone ahead and asked. Well, maybe that was fair enough though. It was what they had figured at least. “It’s Ann.”

“Ann huh? That’s common but easy enough.” He responded, making them nearly sigh. But maybe it was not a bad thing. He did not make it sound like it and they didn’t feel slapped in the face by his words, not even close. As for his own name… They did not even need to ask.

“I’m Venti. Guess I’ll start looking forward to seeing you more around then Ann. Ehe~”