#That’s all for now

[martyfive]

afterparty

[goldenwilmon]

Thinking about how growth isn’t linear. Healing from grief isn’t linear. Healing from trauma isn’t linear.

[thecheshirerat]

On TAZ-

Wow that sounds like I’m about to summarize some sort of discourse but I promise I’m not. I guess I’ll say that I really like this show and I will keep listening even if my worst fears come to pass, so keep that in mind!

For reference, I started listening near the end of Amnesty.

I’ve noticed, with the past few arcs- really since Ethersea- the narratives have just… not been fulfilling their promises, so to speak. They’ve been placing a lot of guns that don’t go off. What I mean by that is, the characters are great. Excellent, really. Lady Godwin? HELL YES. Emerich Dreadway? Fuck yeah! And so on! And the settings and premises have been epic- the goofiness and also horrifying nature of Engrave, the mad and thrilling world of Steeplechase- these things are COOL AS FUCK.

and then the actual narratives keep flopping?

And honestly, I notice it most in the endings, because you can really tell when an ending doesn’t land. You feel the sense of disappointment. But with vs. Dracula, for example, I could kinda see leading up to it that the ending couldn’t really BE anything special, because they lowkey didn’t set themselves up for it.

They spent the campaign fucking around in Engrave, finding clues and solving problems and not really experiencing any particularly meaningful character arcs or growth or, idk, forming relationships? So there wasn’t much to pay off, I’m not gonna lie!

Of course it doesn’t feel quite as dissatisfying when you’re in the thick of it, because they’re funny and the stuff is cool and- oh hey! Lady Godwin’s been turned into a werehorse against her will?? that’s got some real potential for a LOT of allegories and exploration of some fun character development! And then it’s kinda played as a joke. And then they do that again and again.

And they actually said that that was a move they made intentionally, in the TTAZZ. I’m not quoting them perfectly here, this is from memory, but I do remember them mentioning that they wanted lighthearted comedy without the burden of real life story stuff. And I get that, honestly, but… it’s not the choice I would’ve made. I do think you can keep a lighthearted tone while also, idk, forming relationships and wholesomely engaging with some amount of emotion. And sometimes going way too deep is funny as a tone shift!

But I digress. One thing that’s also popped out to me is the almost complete lack of any kind of romantic storyline or even references. This becomes obvious if you’re in a fandom because everyone is always dying to ship SOMEONE, and you can tell when people are really getting desperate. I don’t blame them for not wanting to roleplay romance with their family, and I do think stories lacking romance are COOL and SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED!

However if you can’t find ANYBODY to ship together… that may mean you just don’t have character bonds. The growing popularity of the PC polycule is interesting to me; I wonder if it’s partially because

a) none of the pcs have significant relationships outside of their party and

b) even within the party, there doesn’t seem to be much chemistry between any given pair of characters…? I hope I’m making my point well here- the PCs all seem equally close and have more or less the same relationship to all of their compatriots with little distinction, meaning, essentially, no shipping fodder that doesn’t involve just all of ‘em.

Either way, it makes me wonder if I can blame the “Graduation has too many NPCs!” critique. They really stopped giving the parties tag-along main NPCs after graduation, with the exception of maybe.. Urchin? Kodira? Shlabethany? Poppy? and even they get relatively little “screen” time. Steeplechase has great NPCs, I love them to death, but none of the PCs seem to ever have one on one conversations with NPCs or each other that do not explicitly focus on the plot. And I think that’s part of why the characters feel so underdeveloped despite having spent a lot of time with them- because in this character-driven genre, we get very little insight into their feelings or motivations or even their rudimentary backstories.

I started watching Fantasy High recently and it made me realize a couple things about TAZ.

1) Recently, TAZ has sooo few core NPCs, and it’s weird that the characters aren’t doing more one-on-one purely character based scenes. And that makes it really tough to develop them.

2) TAZ is- and I should have realized this before- one of many good dnd podcasts. They’re probably looking for a niche they can master.

And it sounds like they’re trying to get back to that old “Here there be Gerblins!” energy. They’ve referenced it so many times in recent TTAZZes- they wanted to be job-focused, allowing story stuff to happen organically, so they tried a more open world vibe with Ethersea. They wanted to be less afraid to kill stuff, so they tried playing criminals (and were still afraid to kill stuff). They wanted to be silly and light on character, as they tackled with taz vs dracula. Now they’re trying to bring in the silly cartoon vibe with Abnimals. I think they’re trying to make that family-friendly, funny and goofy show their niche. Something other actual plays can’t be better at them at.

And honestly it kinda makes me sad, that they keep trying to go back to Balance while ignoring everything they learned during it. Because I loved Dust. Because I loved Amnesty. Because I loved Ethersea. I loved these past arcs! But they keep doing their brilliant characters dirty for some reason!!! And i don’t know why!!!!

You know that meme about people who ask questions in movies and then the person responds “Have you ever been to a movie before? You watch them and the information is revealed.” There have been so many times in TAZ recently where information has Not been revealed and if they keep doing it the audience will stop bothering to suspend their disbelief, because the trust just isn’t there.

What is Montrose’s deal? What on earth was Carmine Denton’s whole thing? Tell me more about Zoox’s feelings, about Devo’s past, about Amber’s future. Show me how Lady Godwin feels about the body horror that is her life- like, seriously! WHY DID WE HAVE TO COMPLETELY DISMISS THE OPPORTUNITY TO DISCUSS GENERATIONAL TRAUMA IN MUTT’S LIFE FOR A JOKE??

Do you remember in Steeplechase where the boys were getting medical attention or something- i don’t remember, but they were all in one room and only talking about The Plot. And Poppy literally banged on the door (speaking for both Justin and me, tbh) and was like “does anyone want to share any feeeeelings??” and they were like NOPE! and they moved on!!

like. cmon. you can’t just put a character like montrose out there and then leave them severely underdeveloped to the point that what would be interesting in proper context, with audience insight, becomes confusing and chaotic.

I just wish they would take their stories as seriously as we do.

It feels to me like they don’t believe in themselves, and it makes me sad. Maybe they didn’t get the response they wanted from Ethersea and so they’ve been trying to pivot, hoping to recapture whatever it was that earned them a loyal audience.

Again, I love them. They’re so funny and I’ll keep listening until the day they stop making this show, and when it happens I’ll cry.

But i KNOW they have more in them. Remember the “we’ll grow gills” monologue from Justin in the Prologues? Remember Travis’s SOLID acting with Devo? Or his awesome choice to give Lyndon/Beef a clearly delineated work/irl identity? His excellent narration and prose? Remember when Montrose described being lonely?! Remember all those moments where Shit Got Real and you cared??? The nanofather said some dope shit! dracula and victor and sweater dracula had such a wild dynamic! Clint’s acting in Dust 2- I can’t remember the characters name right now- was ASTOUNDING, I genuinely didn’t know he had that in him and it blew me away!

I’m not referencing Balance on purpose, both because the fandom is way to hung up on it and because I want to prove that you don’t even have to look at Balance, or even Post-Balance arcs, to see this kind of good cool stuff!

GAAAAAAAGHHHH!!! I want them to have fun. But also. We’re starving out here.

[btggf-ale]

.🖤

[myjealouseyes]

Harry pleasseeeeeeee :((

Using this as an opportunity to talk about Harry and hufflepuff!sunshine!reader 💛💛💛

He LOVEEES her actually. He’s so down bad. Very outspoken about the fact that he’s dating her. He loves letting people know. (Especially when someone is flirting with him)

I like to imagine they met through Luna. She and Luna would be best friends because they understand each other in a way no one else can. (They like strange animals and partaking in strange hobbies.)

Luna watching her two closest friends dance around each other blushing like lovesick idiots until she just bluntly tells them to get it together and go on a date. (Just what they needed tbh)

ANYWAY. She definitely makes Harry sweaters and scarfs and things like that all the time. And when given an excuse to wear them he will. Everytime.

[predoom]

[littleandless]

season 2 episode 8 predictions:

rhaena claims sheepstealer and goes to her father at harrenhal

aemond asks helaena to ride to battle and she kills herself instead. or she does go to battle but kills herself after witnessing the horrors of war

ulf does something stupid

aegon ii makes a tentative comeback

[kiteou]

Small sketch dump

[catparty41]

Flightless birds

[arekayic]

had a dream where there was some kind of competitive team based minecraft event (not mcc) where jschlatt and etho were on a team together

[mangoposts]

list of your man’s? (Husbands)

-🍔

- Chris sturniolo

- Ross lynch

- Ethan cutkosky

- Benoftheweek

- Cha eunwoo

- Cillian murphy

- Central Cee

- Colby brock

- EVAN PETERS

- Chris sturniolo

[dannybobany]

So I’m sort of composing a Basil au of some general kind- I’m hesitant to call it an au but it is, just not in the usual way

The general idea is just to tell omori from basils perspective, give looks inside his mind and what he’s thinking and delve more into his personal non-sunny related trauma that doesn’t get explored in the game, it’s an au in the sense that I deviate from canon to tell his story in a way that gets around all the missing information (namely stuff about his parents)

In my mind Basil doesn’t have a headspace or a whitespace but he does go somewhere in his dreams and when he spaces out, Basils mind and its locations are comprised of memory’s and vague ideas of places he may or may not have been, very little in Basils mind is entirely new or even warped fantasy versions of real life, it’s more like … decoupage

Also Basils mind is significantly more fucked up in the sense that he doesn’t compartmentalize his trauma like sunny does, it’s just there, right next to the good memories no matter how jarring the transitions are, he can’t hide like sunny can, in a way he doesn’t really want to, in a way Basil sort of wants to be miserable; he thinks he deserves it

I plan on making art for this au soon and maybe even fully writing it- I’ve talked about it a little bit once or twice and if I can I’ll go back and add those posts to the tag I’m about to make- which for the time being is omori!marzenie (marzenie meaning dream in polish, basil is polish by the way that’s my headcanon for him and it’s kind of important to this au idea I have)

Anyway, if anyone is interested and has questions or requests, that’s what my ask box is for! Feel so so free to use it

[rubberduckrobin]

I WANT A BEAR HUG FROM DIAVOLO!

[lnmei]

女侠

[anxiousbabybird]

One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone comments on a HC post I’ve done to tell me “no, they wouldn’t do that” or tell me they think I’m wrong. You don’t have to agree with my HCs. I didn’t write them for you, I wrote them for me. I also write them based on my current knowledge of characters and would definitely appreciate someone not backing up their comment with spoilers for things I haven’t seen in the game yet. If you don’t agree with me, that’s fine. But don’t comment on the fic to tell me that. People who write on tumblr (and I’m using write loosely in this sense because this was a HC post and not one of my fics) already get so little feedback and engagement from other blogs (aside from a like) that it doesn’t exactly make us feel good or want to share more thoughts or writing when the engagement we do get is some nameless, post-less blog shitting on what we wrote

[kvanderquack]

Immediate pjo thoughts

Spoilers

The Minotaur looked so cool!

I love Grover he’s the only one with common sense

Did they write out the oracle?

Luce already convincing Percy to like him and value glory over the gods

No dolphin threats yet :(

“Sunshine”

I would kill for the trio

Chiron being a dark brown horse instead of white is correct

Percy burning the candies killed me

Get these children therapy