#also why I put multiple things in one post

[olderthannetfic]

Someone recently left a comment on one of my fics that they were disappointed I wasn't addressing any of the criticism or comments I got on Goodreads. After all, I reply to comments on the actual fic. Why am I ignoring the Goodreads commenters?

Well, 1. I didn't know there was a Goodreads page for my fanfic 2. I think if they wanted a reply they'd say it where I'm known to reply to every single comment without fail and 3. the kind of dumbass who treats 800k of free fanfics in a series like something they paid for is not the sort of person I want to engage with. If 800k of stories, with main stories, tie-ins, prequel asides, missing scenes, etc. for free wasn't to your liking, just... go read another? We have stories in this fandom whose whole series clock in at over a million words. We have stories where people have done fan songs and fanart and fancomics tying into their main work. We have stories with multiple timelines. You have so many options, all of them totally free and easy to access. If my stories, which I fully admit ares flawed and show some of my weaknesses as an author, don't do it for you, you have options. You have wonderful options.

If I had an editor and a publisher and my stories were actual books, I wouldn't have this reaction to this comment. But these stories have one person working on them total. I'm not making income off of this. This is what I write while working two jobs, for fun. As much as I do view writing fanfic as something that helps me learn the ins and outs of writing and put my all into it, it's going to be rougher than if I'd had help with it or had time to do more drafts than the three I normally do.

And if I was known for ducking criticism, I would get having comments on another site. There are authors in my fandom who delete anything that's not praise. But I have had long conversations with my haters in which I take everything in good faith and explain my writing choices, word choices and ideas. I have my tumblr which is just about my fandom stuff listed in the AN of every chapter. DMs are open and anon is on. My Dreamwidth account, also under the same name, also has DMs open. I have publicly stated when I have made shit narrative choices and owned that yes, sometimes I have genuinely dropped the ball. This has influenced later chapters where things go off of the original outline in order for the shit choice to have consequences in a way that makes sense and feels true to the characters in the story.

So "why are you hiding from the Goodreads commenters?!" feels like the most baffling thing I've ever been asked. I tried to be nice about it, but all I could think was, "why didn't the Goodreads commenters who wanted a reply post their comments where they know I 100% would've responded to it?"

--

Madness!

(Also, lol, half the pro shit with a lot of comments on Goodreads is barely edited. Maybe they were bitching about content? But if it was whining about craft, the bar is in the floor and they have nothing to complain about.)

[appleflavoredkitkats]

i will make a proper analysis post for this one day but i genuinely think the "fundy's mind" stream is fundy's magnum opus. it does so much in one short stream. it perfectly portrays the fundamentals of fundy's character while also leaving so much to be interpreted and decoded.

like of course half of the metaphors and mysteries put into that episode hinted his involvement w las nevadas. but, and i think this point stands better considering how his story was executed and concluded, i think the stream was such a perfect encapsulation of the cyclical nature of fundy's abandonment and self-worth issues. it is "fundy's mind" after all.

we see glimpses of wilbur, literal monologues of how he feels brushed aside. i think back then, our interpretations of the books were a little too literal— which was not wrong to assume at the time. fundy was having prophetic dreams, of course it was normal to think he could have been a time traveler or something of that sort.

but, in the present day, i feel like if you look into the texts of these books in a more metaphorical sense, it makes a lot more sense. there's definitely a theme about "waking up" in a metaphorical sense, but the dreams flip this phrase on its head in some sort of way, as if dream!fundy was trying to get fundy to look away from the books.

i posit that dream!fundy demands fundy to wake up because it actually shields fundy from the painful truth deeply embedded in his psyche. meanwhile, sleeping actually causes fundy to dig into this truth more as it causes him to stay into this dream world. so when fundy chooses to sleep, he's not shielding himself away— rather, it represents the metaphorical "waking up", beholding truths that he typically shies away from.

but then what is this "truth"?

well, when dream!fundy gives up scaring fundy off, he confesses to an evil someone who will destroy fundy and everything he ever loved. of course, this pertains to quackity, but here's the thing. if dream!fundy wanted to protect fundy, then he would have obviously warned him about quackity without hesitance.

i'd argue that quackity being some big baddie is half the "truth" dream!fundy is trying to warn him about. then what is the other half that's missing? i think it has something to do with the "you're not real" statements.

those seem like a scare tactic at first. if not, it does not feel like it's meant to be the "painful truth" dream!fundy is trying to shield from fundy because he says it multiple times before the actual "truth" is revealed. but i think the reveal actually becomes more impactful if you read it as "there will be an evil person out there, always, that will make you not real."

and i guess to explain— there's, like i said, a cyclical nature to fundy's issues. he follows someone, dedicating himself to the country until it all inevitably becomes futile in the end. it happens with all iterations of l'manberg and las nevadas. i've always stated that fundy is the embodiment of the nations he's apart of, and he dies alongside it whenever it comes down to it.

so when the book mentions, "you are not real", "this place isn't real", and "but he [those who left him, specifically quackity] is", i feel like it's not just talking about quackity and las nevadas. rather, if we think about it, this is literally the formula in which fundy's arcs literally follow. he becomes nothing alongside the dissolvement of a nation, because those he trusted and followed were real threats.

and what i think this dream hints in particular is that, las nevadas would be the last straw. after this, his existence becomes virtually nothing. he is rendered nothing.

which is literally what happens in the end.

fundy's storyline has always been about being sidelined, always forgotten or used as a punchline for a joke. in this case, i feel that the dream isn't just warning him about this, but rather it's literally his destiny to be forgotten. that is the painful truth dream!fundy doesn't want fundt to know. that's why he sounded so defeated by fundy's stubbornness and curiosity by the third book— he does not want fundy to know that it's literally in his fate that he ends up becoming nothing.

and, well, it's true. the last we see of fundy is when he jumped into the l'manberg crater after cutting himself off from wilbur. it's even stated that fundy didn't die to end it all, but rather to "get away from wilbur". at the same time, we see fundy donate schlatt's sword, one of his prized possessions, to the museum.

he literally cuts off one of the most integral, most defining, aspects of his character— his devotion to nationhood and those who embodied it. and after that, we never see him again. when fundy chose to choose things for himself, to separate himself from l'manberg, physically and ideologically, he's gone.

it's as if he's not real.

we never really know if fundy left for the best or the worst, really. but in the narrative of the dsmp, separating himself from l'manberg literally makes him null. that's the truth his dreams were trying to shield himself from.

[quibbs126]

More pop culture references, now in the coliseum

Also for the name thing, it’s more than a one off joke, as certain people do call you by whatever you call yourself here

Personally I always pick Mega Clink, because in the first game the main character is Clink, you know it’s Clink -> Mega Clink. If I were to have an Evoland 3, there should be a point where you’re able to call yourself Super Mega Clink, just to continue the joke

Ah, so we meet Emperor Lothair. I’m still not sure why he’s allowed a talk sprite but Arthus, his Demon counterpart, isn’t. Because spoiler warning, this is the ONLY scene where we see Lothair, he never shows up again. So why doesn’t Arthus have one? Yeah he’s only in one scene but again, so is Lothair. And it’s not like he isn’t important, at the very least he’s important to one of our main characters! Why didn’t you give him a sprite, Shiro Games?!

…*ahem* sorry, I just get heated when talking about that. I’ll probably bring it up again whenever Arthus shows up

But going back to the actual dialogue posted, yeah I’d imagine he’d want to be there, given who this challenger is

And as for the three shown here, from left to right the rankings go: honestly not a bad guy, you’re decent but I don’t know enough about you, and die

…oh you ain’t wrong there buddy

Wait, you DON’T know who this guy is?? How??

He’s pretty important to the Demon cause, how do you NOT know who he is? You had to have met him at some point, right? I mean you weren’t JUST made Emperor

And even if he knows the guy, it’s just that no one told him who exactly the Demon was, why didn’t they? Again, he’s important to the Demon cause, and he has to be known amongst the Empire’s ranks because of it, did no one think to tell the Emperor about who they just captured?? I’d think that’d be pretty important news, plus, you can use him in a hostage/exchange situation! You probably could have ended this war if someone had just told him! Lothair isn’t about mercilessly killing Demons, he wants this war to end “quickly and cleanly” as he puts it

Anyways, I think that’s about it for this place

[7roaches]

sick asl rn nd drew these laying down

[starkidlabs]

Creepy guy liking all my posts on Instagram and commenting “U always look so beautiful” etc. etc. Why is my life like this. I want to die.

[lunar-fey]

ohhhh my god. okay. so. my aunt does like, she buys random junk in bulk from retail wholesalers and then resells it on like, facebook marketplace and ebay and stuff. whatever. so my mom works for her. makes a flat $50 a day, regardless of the fact that shes disabled and doing hard labor for at least 8 hours a day, often 10+. and min wage here is $10 an hour but mom argued that $50 a day is still more than what she would make working the same hours at an actual job because of taxes...like girl that would be 50% taxes. you do not pay that fucking much. so thats already Bad.

but today mom shows me a video of a knife theyre gonna sell, and i watch 2 seconds and i realize its an automatic knife, and i tell her hey. thats illegal to possess in this state. let alone sell! and mom is like ohhh [aunt] knows what shes doing itll be fine.... we sell knives on there all the time she just doesnt put pictures and calls them something else on the listing to get around fb/ebays policies :)

LIKE. HELLO. THATS NOT BETTER. YOURE COMMITTING MULTIPLE CRIMES. *AS YOUR JOB.* and she was just like "its not a big deal she knows what shes doing." folks, this is the same aunt that, very illegally, paid me to sort through her clients confidential tax documents and bank records and stuff. because she works for a bank. and took the records home to sort them. i dont think she DOES know what shes doing, actually!

[chibishortdeath]

I cannot explain how often I think about this part of the Simon’s Quest story. Ough I wanna try to explain every tiny line of this in detail, but I can’t think of words rn aaa, so I’m gonna dump random disjointed thoughts in the tags for now.

I’m putting the links to the English translations of the first two games’ Japanese manuals because their stories are so much cooler than what the western releases got. The second I get everything I can or have thought about this guy together I’m doing in depth story and character analysis for some silly whip man NES games tho—

[unproduciblesmackdown]

also it's something (better) like, the exercise of deliberately [art imitates life imitates art] holding up Billions to My IRL Things Perspective and going like whaaat would i want for winston. first answer is you want any character to not have been within the scope of the show in the first place, and to exit it since they are. and you kind of get that in the accidental reward in banishing winston, since like in the end it's just that the show doesn't care about him existing at that point But like it's winston sitting there quietly as everyone leaves & turns out the lights & Then he can leave too; others have peaced out & nobody remembers he exists so Now he can go off & do whatever.

but like in true form i think they definitely accidentally baked in another divine reward for winston in that, like, the way he's kept around as fodder for these fun little [pov: enjoy abusing this guy] asides with him, where it Just So Happens that he's autistic as something they're unaware of but is completely relevant to the expectation we understand him to be inferior(tm), it Just So Happens that he's also ""bad"" at not ""causing"" abuse to be turned on him. he's ""bad"" at staying in line. like well yes Yes that's what i want for him. just like In Real Life it's like yeah Ideally i'd want people to be able to extricate themselves from where they're trapped in power structures & i'd want them to have the perspective about it of understanding they're not Inferior / i.e. they are as much a person as anyone else and they're not corrupting everything good / i.e. it wasn't them Bringing It Upon Themselves and it's not them being Destructive by toppling a jenga tower of a hierarchy that happened to be pressing down on them. and winston is the kind of [the ruinerrrrrr] who is Turned On exactly because he keeps acting like someone who's on the verge of breaking out of the [being in line] someone demands of him as autist, employee, whatever other supposed manifestations of [inferior]

like in the 5 second stretches in which winston's allowed to speak before retaliation, it's because he's like "matter of factly" delivering whatever Information that's useful for another plotline. then he Brings It Upon Himself by making people aware that he's Also existing in his own right as a person rather than what they think serves their own deal / what they want from him at all times, perhaps by expressing his personality (didn't appeal to them! so it was Wrong) or not b/c of anything in particular said or done at present, just b/c people have a constant / accumulating contempt for him so their being in the same room as him & able to see & hear him is already dangerous. the [we're just seeing Any Abusive Dynamic in action] continuing apace.

and it's like, well, right there. he's written as acting like someone who doesn't blame himself for how he's treated, which billions frames as being Rude & Mean, and so too does everyone's abusers lmfao like and that these are his moments that are written to be Bringing It Upon Himself. and it's like hell yeah he doesn't blame himself. hell yeah that his self-esteem can manifest as anger at all. hell yeah that he keeps expressing himself with personality & confidence & doesn't even disguise his having been hurt, & it's this [his ass is Not grey rocking] that billions frames as both him "causing" his abuse & making that abuse "successful" lol, wrow just like real life!! and when like speaking of real life yeah it's not "bad" that people Do engage in strategies to mitigate & survive, including things like blaming themselves or being too "boring" to be anything but a non dialogued background character b/c that's all that goes unpunished, it's bad b/c it's done to them at all, not [ohh they're doing it to themselvesss] and like i'm asking myself like Ideally. what do i want Ideally. and i'd want winston to know that it's being Done To Him & i'd want him to find as much room for his personhood & autonomy as possible. and that's basically how he's written anyways, and billions hates that like You See this is why he deserves it this is why he's doing it to himself. and i'm like my god if that's not Inspiration for like "so what if people don't find you Personally Likable" and not preemptively holding back all personality or anything that'd draw attention as if you exist as a person in your own right & not something that only either gets in the way of or serves their wants of a Real person (someone with more power) like hell yeah you have him out here doing it =']

another fun addendum is like, billions isn't getting into it much b/c it doesn't seem to care much about "what if some people were peers & seem to have a genuine, recipcrocal relationship?" but that it just so happened to be like "oh tuk as the next closest loser who deserves it might be nice to winston" while it's framing winston as the "worse" Loser as being....unconditionally supportive of tuk. while the one downside of billions Also giving bentuk as much as it is is that it also inevitably has that shadow of "but ben is Superior to tuk" and like that it's correct that everyone encourages tuk to Stop Bringing It Upon Himself and start being less of a loser; it's wrong for winston to be like hey let's go have a foursome. like yeah probably don't make a list of the women you work with you'd be dtf but it's not like i'm convinced "ah billions and it's strong anti misogyny stance like" roflmao and billions is Not reflecting on "the downsides of unconditional support?" there when winston was beaten up for criticising taylor earlier like we WILL take his ideas while looting his [beaten unconscious] body there but he WAS wrong to express them as though he's BETTER than taylor!!! mafee's beautiful show of loyalty in kicking his ass even when he might agree with the argument and then benefit when it's adopted by taylor anyways! so it's as usual actually purely based on hierarchy & who gets to be in charge of people. it's correct for ben to be in charge of tuk, unless he has to step aside for that bizarre dead-end subplot about how it's tuk's fault if he's treated badly, b/c it's really his own Failure to have Confidence to know he has good ideas [raising our voice to deliver this message over the sound of breaking desks and chairs and computer monitors over winston because he had the confidence to act like he deserved to talk to someone and because he knows his ideas efforts & results are good & valuable around there] like. and isn't it sooo fucked up to talk about who you're dtf in the episode that has it be neutral if your boss is dtf & lets you know but is nice about it (and you're already Correctly tending to their ego, which you're responsible for!) like hey no possible problem! it's not even so much of a problem for a boss man to have the sex they're entitled to & be rude about their leveraging their power in that acquisition that it Stays a problem into the next season. ew, winston is Known (Inferred) Dtf??? we'll use it to exploit His vulnerability, exacerbate it, & punish him further for good measure in another episode that just revels in abuse & violation with a sexual aspect once again, but like, hey tuk don't do that, winston's such a Bad Influence for being like, shrug, kneejerk intervening with the Good Friendship where the One In Charge leaps in & Tells tuk the Correct thing to do. obviously there's also the tragedy that billions will Never let winston push back against Real Winners like rian or taylor in A Way That Matters (actually gets in their way at all) lol like. one thing that would have really been fun, winston should've literal kneejerk started physically fighting wags in either pertinent scene in 7x03 for real 110%. i wouldn't be like Gasp Violence Is Never The Answer if he just hit someone to hit them b/c fuck you. or broke anything on his way out etc etc. billions would Never let him. which is the other side of the same coin of [why he should get to]

tl;dr how great that winston's being "out of line" means he's basically always noticeably flouting & rebelling against the [He Deserves Abuse] agenda lol. that IS what i want. his being "beyond hope" like ohhh he's sooo stupid he doesn't realize how much he has the bad tastes & wrong interests & annoying personality He Will Always Be This Way like hell yeah!!! billions like oh no winston's personhood will never stay tamped down & locked away such that some godawful person tolerates keeping him in their inventory :( ohhh the ABA will never work :( that's right!!!!!!!!!! although they're not sad about it because it's about relishing the promise there will always be True Inferiors you can enjoy abusing with your righteous power over, but like well you wrote him escaping anyways even while dragging other "better" characters into standing around to serve axe's need for more than 1.8 employees and [crickets, reverberating cough, sneaker scuff] like. another ""wrong"" thing for winston to do, another thing for him to not "deserve," which is itself godawful actually lol like lord what it "rewards" its Good, Deserving characters with, no thanks. meanwhile winston's punishment is that he's autistic and """bad""" at being abused like lmfao good for him, fantastic for him, just what i want

[tsukikoayanosuke]

(posted this on Twitter, so let's do this here in Tumblr as well)

Okay, for funsies.

For now, I only have enough braincells for one but I might touch the other as well.

[dontwanderoff]

i just want nice display lettering that i can use to make nice headings for each subject for on my pin boards in the classroom that are easy to use, not wasteful to print and make nice colour combinations when using letters not in alphabetical order, is that so much to ask for????

[scarletiswailing347]

just finished reading delilah's statement, there was a lot of things in it that was either only tangentially related to the allegations or straight up unnecessary to put (in particular: putting in media references and cc metrics several times as flavor text, detailing the don turnt situation with no claims of whether or not permission was granted by the affected party, namedropping certain ccs who had nothing to do with the allegations, and putting the tweet and yearbook photo of one of the ppl who put forward that zam was a bully with no claims of whether or not permission was granted) which contributed a lot to the 47-page length

honestly so far what im getting is that there was a Lot of toxicity on multiple sides like not even just between zam and delilah

[devotedlystrangewizard]

Well now I absolutely have to know what character you were wrong about

the good old days of almost 6 months ago when this was still kind of a joke <333

[7-oh-ta1]

This is a horror game post don't freak out lmao

I can't decide which I think is canon: Kohei broke and killed everyone in the apartments BEFORE the landlord killed him, or if I think Kohei (as a spirit) killed everyone AFTER he was killed

[lukeskqwalker]

my line of thinking is that if i post enough untamed stuff then i'll either a) make more mdzs friends or b) lose followers and both are a lowkey a plus so

[nexus-nebulae]

"hey. what the fuck, man"

- one of our fictives coming to front for the first time in eight months and immediately scrolling past fanart of him even though we literally haven't seen content from that fandom much less of that character since we left it eight months ago

[skrunksthatwunk]

playing dmc1 with my earbuds in (but on low volume bc they're being weird) while my roommate and her shitty bf argue. i feel like i'm recreating the very specific experience of some child of divorce out there