#I'm really happy that you find my portrayal likable! Really!

[kingcedricthegay]

So I read the first chapter of your Cedric x Reader fanfic and came to share my thoughts.

I will say, I'm not too fond of x Reader, I'm more about reading about characters instead of being one. That being said, I liked that there was an effort to include other characters from stf, and I actually got invested from how the fic was formatted as a genuine stf episode.

I don't want to be too critical of the portrayal of some of the characters, but as a Roland enjoyer, I felt your portrayal of him was quite decent until it came to Cedric. I'm not sure at what point the story is supposed to take place in besides being between Great Auntventure and Day of the Sorcerers, but I feel that Roland being unhappy about Cedric coming along doesn't feel in character. At most points in the show, Roland is shown to not mind Cedric, let alone with Sofia. Cedric's Apprentice was an episode where Sofia literally became Cedric's apprentice so he could help her for a test, and Roland never once objects to her being with Cedric. I think Roland doesn't have as big of a gripe as people think because he's more disappointed at Cedric not being able to do magic than him as a person overall.

That being said, I love how you wrote him as someone who respected Sofia's wishes and let her bring Cedric along to the carnival. That is very much like Roland to see that Sofia likes something and sets aside his biases for his daughter. I can understand headcanoning Roland not liking Cedric as a person, and It's not something I'd agree with, but I absolutely agree with him respecting his children and their wishes.

As for the royal family as a whole, I didn't expect them to take as much of a focus as they did, and it was a pleasant surprise to have the children interact with Y/N. In fact, the format of the fic was so creative, with the royal family being so involved, I found myself being invested more in that than the x Reader parts. That's just me liking things not involving Cedric more because of how focused he is in the fandom. I wanted to talk more about the other aspects of the fic because I think people would find these elements such a treat.

While the royal family isn't THE main focus, I found Amber and Miranda to be a bit weird as characters. The fact I preferred the writing for James over them says something. With Miranda, I felt she wasn't a character like everyone else. The only role she seemed to have was as a mother and nothing else. The way she didn't have as much of a prominence as the others bummed me out. And it's not that she had to have a bigger role, but I felt myself questioning where she was.

My thoughts about Amber are based on my opinion, but the way she was written felt mixed to me. There were parts where she felt like Amber, like her excitement at getting her fortune told, but her being interested in whether she has a spouse?? I don't know, I personally don't think she would be too interested in that, or at least would be more interested in other aspects of her future. Plus the "I AM EASY" part caught me off guard. That part with the part before of Amber eating fast but elegantly did not pair well. It felt like Hildegard core.

These are just my thoughts though. I really enjoyed reading this fanfic despite some parts I didn't jive with. I would recommend it for anyone who likes a storyline with their smoochies with Cedric rjdbhdidjdjdjrj

Thanks for recommending me this fic /g /vpos

I ain’t reading all that I’m happy for you tho or sorry that happened /ref

No but seriously thank you so much for writing all this 😭😭

First of all I always try to make my one shots feel like they could more or less happen in the StF canon, so I’m glad it works!!

Regarding Roland, I know that you love him but I don’t necessarily like him that much. I think he’s okay most of the time, I just hate him for fun lmao (that’s probably why I wrote him as less likable than he actually is)

About the characters overall, this was my first piece of StF fan fiction and when I was writing this I hadn’t finished the show yet (I was maybe at the beginning of season 2) so the characters hadn’t gone through all the development they had to go through yet, and I guess I didn’t have that good of a grasp on their personalities. Now that you point it out, looking back Amber was never boy crazy so I agree that that bit doesn’t make any sense (😭), and yeah I guess Miranda ended up being just… mom.

All in all thanks for the feedback! ❤️❤️

[agent-cupcake]

Dimitri’s characterization made me wanna put my head through a wall in three hopes. Azure Moon was my fave route in three houses but in hopes I have barely had the will to finish his route. Which makes me sad cause the little extra tidbits of lore the game offered had potential, but the pay off just doesn’t feel worth it.

I’m sad this is how we are probably gonna leave Fodland.

Were there any characters the game actually made you like in this game better then three houses? I was actually surprised that I actually liked Rodrigue a little bit more.

Feel free to ignore if you want.

I think Yuri is the only one I feel like was just better in Three Hopes. They made him feel more mature and intelligent, and I bought his whole criminal persona a LOT more when you're not cutting to supports that require him to be a soft uwu boyfriend. He feels less edgy for the sake of it and more like a character, I cannot understate how much I love Yuri in Three Hopes.

I agree that giving Rodrigue more development made him more enjoyable. I've always liked him for what he added to Dimitri's character, and the further mirroring of Dimitri and Felix that he provides in Three Hopes is very nice. Not to mention he himself comes off as a more likable guy. In general, the "additive" character work they put in was pretty effective. Sylvain, for example, feels a lot more well rounded and interesting. Doing things to show that he is an incredibly intelligent person with a darker side did a lot to add to characterization he already had from Three Houses. His complicated feelings about his family and position in life were elaborated on and I loved that aspect. Felix's transition from "boar prince" to "Dimitri" doesn't feel as forced, although it was somewhat hollow just because of the low stakes emotional narrative. I'll take it though, the BFF dynamic between Felix and Dimitri, in general, was far more believable in this game and it makes my heart happy. I don't know that I liked any characters better for their portrayal in Three Hopes, but it did add to characters I liked already.

As to your first point: I get it and now I'm going to rant and it'll be messy and contain spoilers for all of Azure Gleam.

All throughout Azure Gleam, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Dimitri to have that moment where his emotions got the better of him and just derailed everything because that is Dimitri's THING, he's an emotionally volatile person and it's inconvenient and ugly and painful. When he was taken hostage, I was so PSYCHED that it was gonna be his moment. Like, Shez was gonna show up at the palace and Dimitri would have beheaded Cornelia, slaughtered all of the guards and you'd find him kneeling at the empty throne talking to Lambert and promising revenge but this time against Slithers rather than Edelgard and it would be a whole mess that ruined all of these carefully laid plans and broke the trust of his friends and Shez and... Nope. He was fine, just got put in time out for a bit. And then the game acted like THAT was the big Battle of the Eagle and Lion payoff??? Dimitri comes back and the other characters just make some vague sweeping statements that he's recovered from issues he never even really showed he had and everything is fine now because he's a good king. He was a fine king before!!! This doesn't even stoke his hate fire, it makes him more dedicated to do what he was already doing. I adore his support with Felix where he calls his hallucinations "waking dreams" but it just feels so cheap that the internal demons Dimitri fights so bitterly with are reduced down to sad conversations with his friends where he is capable of being honest with them and seems to take their words to heart and accept their emotional support. And it's not even like his friends have a massive hurdle to jump through to support him, Felix is the only one who has seen Dimitri do unthinkable things as a result of his delusions. He has been a pretty consistently good leader who does what he must through the entirety of the game, even his quest for revenge is mostly just a stated motive that doesn't interfere with his duties. The things he does are brutal but necessary aspects of being a king during a civil war and he has to make the tough, unfortunate choices. Everyone else understands this. They have also all done terrible things because, again, they are soldiers in an ugly, bloody civil war. Even his involvement with the Church is a practical matter of state and not at all shown to be a personal thing that he cares about. Like, the game goes out of its way to explain that Dimitri helping the Church is the best choice he could possibly make and doing anything else would be reckless and actively stupid so it can't really be seen as a character flaw. Being religious would ruin his appeal too much, he's just got some vague faith and has to support the Church because politics. Awesome.

FURTHERMORE None of the choices Dimitri makes at the end of Azure Gleam feel like they are choices he wouldn't have made at the beginning, he's just making them now but he's less sad because he has the support of his friends. Compare the final scene of Azure Gleam to that of Azure Moon and its, fundamentally, the same. Except Edelgard has no agency and is an empty lobotomized husk (an entirely separate matter and a huge yikes) and Dimitri has not changed or grown as a character in any meaningful way. It's not even like he's been burning with some insane need to kill her anyway, they've had a single violent interaction and several non-violent interactions and he doesn't even really believe that most things are entirely her fault so the idea of Dimitri sparing Edelgard isn't indicative of any shift in his perspective. AND THEN Dimitri isn't forced to do something that would make him feel bad anyway!!! I wouldn't want him to kill an unarmed woman who has regressed to a child-like state! His refusal to do so is not the tragic, heroic choice the game frames it as. It would be objectively evil of him to kill Edelgard at that moment. There is no complexity to that situation, his emotional response is just like... okay, fine. Besides, he can wait for the Church to sweep in and potentially do much worse to her. Great, that was noble. Sure would suck if Dimitri was forced to do something he didn't want to do because it was necessary, cementing the idea that Dimitri is a tragedy on legs who is constantly pushed into violence that hurts him most of all. And Dee. Fuckin Dee. Three Houses is a goddamn mess of a game but the final scene of Azure Moon is a masterpiece. No words. Just music, evocative shot composition, and the trust that the writers have in their fantastic characters and strong story to convey all of these emotional payoffs to the player. I wouldn't ask for Azure Gleam to do the same EXCEPT for the fact that they tried to do something similar as if to point out the mediocrity of what they created. That, more than anything, is what gets me. Three Hopes sacrificed a lot of gameplay that was in previous titles presumably to tell a better story, that's fine. But the story they did end up telling was lackluster and terrified of doing anything to step on the toes of Three Houses while also being unable to help themselves from mirroring Three Houses in all of the worst ways. Make it make sense.

Okay sorry I had more to say on the matter than I thought I did

Whoops. Hopefully some of this made sense

[make-it-mavis]

Ace Mavis, ace Mavis, ace Mavis, ace Mavis, ace Mavis, ACE MAVIS!

Yes, asexuality doesn't get as much attention as it should, so seeing a person make an extremely likable yet "shit-goblin" character ace is something I needed to hear right now!

YALL I'M SO GLAD THIS MAKES YOU SO HAPPY! Representation means a lot to me as a Queer person and everything I make is basted in copious amounts of Queer Juices so to know my portrayal of something means a lot to people is very rewarding. I'm not aspec myself but I have many friends who are and they're all very dear to me.

The ace spectrum is also so wide and the ace experience is so diverse, I really wish we could see that represented more. As a huge nerd about sexual psychology I also find it all so very interesting to read and write about? So I've really enjoyed having Mavis be on the far ace end of demisexual. It's just made for some real fun and interesting character development.

[comingoutofthecauldron]

Sometimes I'm like broooo how did leigh make such good books with soc and ck with such good characters and plots and wordbuilding but she had made a (very entertaining) trilogy but with so many grating 2D characters and sometimes the plot was just ... not it

Like soc and ck obviously have their flaws too but not to the same extent as the trilogy

Like did you feel leigh was very unnecessarily sympathetic to the darkling and treated Nikolai as a mostly good character in the text even though he did sooooo many shitty things

And that zoya was treated (unknowingly) with a lot of misogyny in the narrative which has caused many people in the fandom to hate her

And alarking and nikolina were romanticised in the books and in the fandom far too much

???

YES OKAY so this is a Big Thing for me. very controversially, i prefer tgt to soc solely because i find it much more enjoyable to read. HOWEVER, there's no denying that leigh's writing definitely improved from tgt to soc, i agree.

while i think that leigh clearly portrayed the darkling as a villain (she didn't tamper down his crimes or make them seem less horrific), i agree that the narrative was definitely (arguably too) sympathetic towards him. i could use a lot of examples for this, but none work quite so well as:

“Once more,” he said. “Speak my name once more.” He was ancient, I knew that. But in this moment he was just a boy – brilliant, blessed with too much power, burdened by eternity.

“Aleksander.”

His eyes fluttered shut. “Don’t let me be alone,” he murmured. And then he was gone.

leigh's choice to have alina, one of the people who suffered most at the darkling's hands, sympathise with him and even grant him his last wish, was a bad one. this man is a thousand year old p*dophilic mass murdering sex trafficker and she had the nerve to describe him as "just a boy" and "brilliant [...] blessed [...] burdened". of course you can argue that this is the residue of his grooming of alina, but i just think that after all the shit he'd done by this point, after a whole book of alina talking about how manipulated she felt and how much she hated him, these few words offer him clemency from the narrative that he does not deserve. all he did to earn alina's kindness (not forgiveness, to be fair to leigh) was die.

and yes, nikolai was hero worshipped by the text for absolutely no reason. even though we see both alina and mal put up a lot of resistance to him + the shit he pulls (punching him, criticizing him etc), the narrative basically shoves their eventual "pity" and "admiration" for nikolai down the readers' throats.

“[...] Nikolai might never have made it out of the Grand Palace.” It hurt me to say it, but I forced myself to speak the words. “He could be dead.”

and

The too-clever fox. Even once he’d abandoned his disguise as Sturmhond, that’s who Nikolai had been to me, always thinking, always scheming.

and

[to nikolai] “I’m just happy you’re alive,” I said, hastily blinking my eyes clear.

imo this sympathy + romanticisation is much worse and much more prominent throughout the latter half of s&s and the whole of r&r than the sympathy with the darkling, purely because the bad things nikolai does are essentially never acknowledged. there is (unsurprisingly ig) no talk of his imperialism, no talk of his pursuing alina when she's a minor, no talk of his racist remarks and generally very little talk of him being an asshole (particularly to mal).

moreover, i agree that nikolina + darklina were too romanticized by the text. i have a very complicated relationship with leigh's portrayal of alarkling, because a lot of alina's earlier feelings and sympathy for the darkling stem from his grooming and manipulation of her, which i think this quote from the start of r&r shows pretty well:

Even now, after everything he’d done, I wanted to believe the Darkling, to find some way to forgive him.

but then we get the whole mental house call thing that alina + the darkling do, in which they can visit each other and no one else can see the other. that was a mistake narratively. the ability to do this implies a sort of deeper bond, and even though the darkling then uses this bond to show alina the corpse of the only mother figure she'd ever known, it still carries almost romantic connotations with it throughout the rest of the book(s) for some reason. this dynamic is similar to a lot of "soulmate bonds" in mainstream ya (namely sjm's mating bonds), which helps to explain why so many people ship darklina; it is written & coded the same as the majority of (abusive) ya relationships, so readers pick up on this as a sign of romance rather than some attempt at narrative foils or something (bc in reality zoya is alina's foil). this isn't even mentioning the repetition of alina's desire to forgive the darkling and her confusion over her "feelings" for him, which once again just reinforces darklina as a viable ship in a lot of readers' minds.

as for nikolina, as a less prevalent ship in the series it gets less attention in the fandom. most often, i see people turn to nikolina because they don't like malina or the darkling, or because they wanted alina to become queen (to which i remind everyone that alina never wanted to be queen). at first i was alright with leigh's portrayal of them because alina punches nikolai + is angry with him for kissing her non-consensually etc, which is the closest the narrative ever comes to condemning him for his actions. but later on alina seems to forget all this and considers marrying nikolai, even joking with him a little when he proposes:

[during nikolai's marriage proposal]

“Stop that,” I said, still grinning.

“What?”

“Saying the right thing.”

there is zero acknowledgement of how predatory nikolai is, and instead the narrative goes on to sympathise with nikolai and have alina feel guilty for rejecting him. imo alina's characterization (her initial disdain for nikolai, which was much more in character) was sacrificed to raise up nikolai, and also show him to be a plausible and "likable" love interest for zoyalai, which is where leigh obviously intended for nikolai to end up (zoya is even mentioned during nikolai's proposal).

finally - yes, zoya in tgt is basically a manifestation of leigh's internalised misogyny. from alina's initial slut-shamey disdain for her, to leigh weaponising her against malina (repeated sexual encounters with mal), to zoya being seen as evil & a bitch by the other female characters just because she's powerful + isn't "nice", zoya's character was assassinated before it even had chance to materialize. even though zoya was also a victim of the darkling and is, as i mentioned before, alina's narrative foil, alina has very little sympathy for her and assumes that she's an evil bitch. tbf, this gets better with each book, but even in r&r there's a lot of tension between zoya and the other characters because she's seen as unlikable and difficult. i can't speak to her characterization in kos or soc, because i haven't read one and don't really remember the other, but i have heard that it improved from tgt to kos.

anyways this has been a long ass rant and i'm very sorry to anyone who scrolls past it on their dash. fuck the darkling, fuck nikolai lantsov, and stan malyen oretsev

[catgirlxox]

BenKai is weird because I'm pretty sure I know what the writers are going for and intend for the pairing. They wanted BenKai to be seen like a bickering old married couple who who eventually smooth out their edges and get softer to each other (as seen in some of the future scenes where they do look like a happy family). But from a fan perspective I'm left wondering why the execution was so terrible. Kai never really stood out as 'Best Girl' material for Ben because she never acted like -

like she wanted to be in enough obvious way (for fans and Ben). Again I think I get it. Maybe the writers were trying to go anime style on us and do some class is Tsundere love interest who is too stubborn to admit her interest. Like I get it. She smiled and blushed when Ben accidently kissed her. Her only complimenting his alien forms is her way of denying admitting anything to Ben’s face. But yeah I’ve seen plenty of anime who did it better. Kai’s problem is that the writers didn’t care to make her a fully fleshed out character with enough depth to stand out as interesting on her own. She’s pretty simple: loves archeology. Furry lover I guess. Not nice to Ben 99% of the time (who is her main source of interaction in the show). Also they kept the dynamic stale but not throwing in softer moments that showed growth from Kai. But instead of getting support/understanding/compassion we got more bickering and mocking. You can say Kai could work because she’s such a blank slate. Which kind of reminds me of my Hunger Games days where I loved the story for its story and characters but some fans were obsessed w/pairings and Gale/Katniss had a following. Gale is better then Kai character depth wise but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why enough people liked such a bland character they could project any personality into. He felt entitled to Katniss. Hated the capitol. Looked down on anyone who wasn’t his family or Katniss. Every Time I read a fanfic his personality changed. I realized some fans didn’t care. They liked shaping his anyway possible because there was so little to define him in the first place. The fact some fans thought he was better for Katniss made me confused since almost every interaction post HG was negative. She went through all this trauma but he acts like a huge jerk to her whenever she cares about someone else or has surviving/protecting loved ones on her mind over romance w/him. Sorry for the rant but it got on my nerve every time Katniss was having a moment contemplating the inhumanity of it all and how likely it is she’s going to die or watch someone she loves die. Then Gale shows up to be all ‘gee golly Katniss pay attention our love triangle problems!’ Got me every time. Boy she’s having a crisis you can’t understand. Don’t push her around like you own her or know better. But yeah terrible relationships w/mains you love is terrible. Doesn’t hurt in omniverse Ben never acts like he wanted to be in love with anyone. Briefly I actually thought he was going to end up alone because that’s what he wanted. =P In the end the writers botched up. Romance isn’t a big deal in Ben 10 and they made Gwevin act like a couple. You think giving Ben a minor healthy romance wouldn’t be that hard but no I guess it was. They failed to make Kai a actual character (They put more effort in Skurd and his relationship w/Ben. Let that sink in) or the 2 invested in each other in likable/healthy ways.

 (I don’t know how much I like that formatting but I felt keeping the numbers was distracting. Anyway…)

I actually haven’t seen the Hunger Games, so I can’t really comment on that. However, I do see where your perspective is coming from in relation to the character dynamic. You bring up an interesting point:

“People liking such a bland character they could project any personality into.”

I feel like that’s what it is. 

I feel like people only like Kai’s character when they step away from the canon presentation of her character. 

When they begin to project their own values - things like being a good representation for Native American people, and appealing to feminist values through ambition and independent success - they see the potential of a character like her, and then believe that is what was attempting to be introduced to the audience through the Omniverse portrayal of Kai. 

While being an ambitious, smart archeologist interested in history, or a strong, independent female who empowers women are good traits, it was not heavily focused on in her actual canon presentation, unfortunately. 

Instead, what was majorly focused on is this “Tsundere” type personality, likely for the reasons you mentioned above. 

Now, just to be clear, I don’t personally think there’ s anything inherently wrong with projecting on characters. I mean this in the sense that writing divergent interpretations of canon characters is, in itself, harmless. Whether it is done out of creative expression or for personal reasons, the point is that those people are still able to make the distinction between the canon portrayal, and their portrayal. 

However, with a character like Kai, the trouble is that, because her canon portrayal is the way it is, when people project on her due to this idea of her “potential” and what she could have been (but wasn’t), she becomes out of character very quickly. At this point, it’s expected that she act like she had on screen. 

When I read a fanfiction, and the author chooses to have her be mean to Ben in inappropriate situations, it’s in character.

Change that, and insist that she is an angel, and now you’re just straight up lying to yourself.

It’s the same thing as insisting that Ben is a “sexist sociopath.” We all (most of us, anyway) know that is a lie. Even the writers would find that ridiculous. It wasn’t their intention in the slightest to consistently give us that impression, but it was their intention to consistently give us the impression that Kai is mean to Ben for whatever reason. That’s undeniable. 

As for Ben and Skurd’s dynamic, while they did end off on a good note, I feel like their dynamic had their own issues. I was always pretty indifferent to Skurd, but @karkalicious769 had brought up a very interesting perspective a little while ago in this post which I have to say that I agree with.