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#and this is a fun detail because my brain only included it bc in between the dreams i checked my notifications
elibeeline · 1 year
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Its 'i woke up too early and fell back asleep and had a crazy dream' day 🙃
#two dreams actually! i was still too tired after the first one#where i had moved into a block of flats? in which i had one of my managers share a kitchen with?#and in the magical world of dream land i had a drive thru window#and i dreamt i was working bc i do that too much and then an angry customer comes up and says something angrily#like he's stood in front of this car at the window and i get scared and turn for my mom (because the family all moved into this flat)#and when i do over to her thjs guy at the dining table (dont know who or why he was there) and he grabs my wrist and presses a knife to it#nothing happens injury wise because apparently im more worried about the guy at the window and i just shrug this guy off#and the dream ends when the guy at the window pulls out a gun and starts shooting but i wake up before anyone can get hurt :)#and the second dream! was about a scarecrow#i feel like its an actual movie bc that what the dream told me it was? like we were on the island where they shot the movie#and the scarecrow was still in the water#so we're on this boat ride (one of those touristy ones with a slide) and im hanging on for dear life bc wtf the scarecrow is in the water#and my stepdad had told me there's this really scary scene where he reveals his like. hollow face behind the mask/hood thing#and one fun detail that didn't end up being important is that he's meant to be scared of carved pumpkins?#like there's a border around the island keeping him in the water#and this is a fun detail because my brain only included it bc in between the dreams i checked my notifications#and someone was looking for a pokemon called a pumpkaboo for the next gym and it stuck in my brain bc idk what that was#so ah yes halloween pumpkins and scarecrows in February. thanks brain#but yeah after the boat ride the island floods and allows the scarecrow to come on land#(which was p smart kudos to u scary brain)#and we're all declared as missing bc idk we werent meant to leave the boat place or something when the flood came#and then brain finds all the action boring and skips straight to both my dad and stepdad bringing us back to the flat to mom#where i assume we probably live happily ever after but idk that flat was creepy and felt very unsafe#i do like that brain thought it was necessary to include it in both dreams rather than. yknow. the house we actually live in.#but if anyone wants to analyse those you're more than welcome too hehe ive always found that interesting
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luvfy0dor · 5 months
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Henlo
You know who it is, we all know, henlo
I feel like I’ve been here a lot recently
Just starting off with saying I loved the Dazai piece. It was really cute. Dad Dazai trying his best, made my heart melty
But I think you know why I’m here today
On this day
Honestly the day doesn’t entirely matter but I’m here on THIS one
With the dad Fyodor thought I promised
Cuz here I was thinking to myself. I feel like Fyodor definitely wants his child or children having some connection to Russian culture, since that’s a part of them too, regardless of their other parent’s nationality or background, he definitely wants his included. (Tho his partner could totally do the same)
So I was wondering, would you like a piece of him either teaching his children Russian or making Russian food for them? Or really sharing any Russian cultural thing with them at all. Honestly whatever one is easier for you to write or go into detail with, they’re all equally cute.
Cuz if his child or children develop a connection to that, I feel like that would make him a lot happier than maybe he would fully show.
I hope this ask sparks the creative brain juices in a fun way
Also considering sending a Halloween themed request at some point idk… oh but who knows!We’re here rn and having fun with this, that’s all we need at the moment
Also real glad you enjoy my messages lol. I will absolutely keep sending. Take as long as you need
-the person here attempting to give everyone baby fever because it’s funny
This blog’s Dad Fyodor anon
"da!" - Dad!Fyodor x GN!Reader ੈ✩‧₊˚
Warnings; Google translate Russian, not much reader involvement, very minimal proofreading happened
Description; Dad!Fyodor teaching his child about Russian culture! It incorporates ideas from the first dad!Fyodor part.
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A/n; YESYESYES I one hundred percent agree, I think about this on the regular OMG I hope I depicted this well bc my knowledge on Russia isn't all that extensive lol, if you have any corrections, do tell me!! : ) Also I'm gonna be so fr I had NO idea what to name this so we're rolling with da I guess.............
Headcannons !! ༊*·˚
★ He teaches his child/children classical Russian music when they're old enough to play more difficult pieces. Until then, he'll settle for twinkle twinkle little star.
★ Introduces his children to ballet.
★ His children have a variety of Russian-originating toys, such as Matryoshka/Russian nesting dolls, rocking horses etc.
★ Brings his children to Russia at least once, specifically to Moscow (irl Dostoevsky was raised in Moscow, so we're gonna assume BSD Dostoevsky was too) to experience the culture first hand.
★ Teaches his children the foundations of the Russian language. He would like them to fluently speak it one day, though.
★ Cooks Russian food for them like I mentioned and included in the first part.
★ They learn about Russian history from their father, anywhere from Peter the Great to fur trade and all that jazz
Scenario !! ˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥
(as always, p/t is parental title, d/n is daughters name)
Your head leaned against your fist while you watched your husband and daughter focus on their current activity. D/n carefully picked the colors and pigments she would use to color in the white spaces on her paper, and Fyodor just tried to keep things inside the lines. You could see the little girls tongue slightly sticking out from between her lips in concentration, making you smile.
Your daughter went to pick her next color, chosing a pink crayon to fill in the nose of the cat. "Papa, what'd you say your hat was called again? The one you always wear." She clarifies, even though there was really only one hat that Fyodor would wear at all. His eyes don't leave his thin paper as he replies, "A ushanka, and it's from Russia, malyshka." He answered, pushing some of his hair out of his face and behind his ear. "Russia." She says, the sound not unfamiliar, but not common to her either. "Where's that?" She tilts her head upwards, putting her crayon down to signify her attention on her papa. He puts his down too and rests his arms on top of one another.
"Quite far, but it is in both Asia and Europe. That's how big it is, it stretches over two continents." He says, a smile on his face. Her eyes widen a little. "That is really big. Have you been there before?" Her head tilts and she shifts a bit in her seat. "I grew up there, in the city of Moscow." He says, happy with her clear interest in his motherland.
"We should go there for a vacation one day!" She says, a grin on her face. He laughs a little bit and nods. "I agree, we definetly should." He agrees, fantasizing about it in his head. "Is that why you talk like that?" She questions her fathers accent, skittering around the table and climbing onto his lap. He smiles gently and nods. "Yes, it's called an accent, malyshka. I learned English, but Russian is my mother tongue. There are a lot of different pronunciations for certain sounds in Russian." He tells her, his hands fidgeting with the young girls hair. He parts it into three sections and starts to braid it.
"Is everything different there?" Fyodor hums, thinking as he weaves her hair into a gorgeous French braid. "Well, it definitely very different, but I don't think I would say everything." He says. "There are more historical differences than anything, if I do say so myself." She hums in understanding. "Papa, can you teach me some Russian?" She asks, turning her head to look at him with puppy dog eyes, even though she really didn't need them. He smiled and nodded.
"What should I teach you?" He softly questions, looking into the young girls eyes. She thinks for a moment, tapping her pointer finger on her chin. "I don't know! Whatever you want." She says, just excited to hear another language. He chuckles softly. "я не знаю, что тебе сказать" (I don't know what to tell you) he responds, a small grin on his face. Her eyes widen, almost as if she never believed he could speak a different language. You giggle a bit at her reaction.
"What does that mean?!" She excitedly asks, her mind seemingly blown over this. "It simply means I don't know what to tell you." He speaks. "But I can tell you the simple stuff. Like 'да' means yes and 'нет' means no. Hello is 'привет' and goodbye is 'до свидания'."
The young girl takes a mental note of these words. "привет, papa! I think I said that right." She says. You proudly watch the scene go down. Fyodor gives you a similarly prideful smile. "Yes, you did wonderful, malyshka." He praises her, patting her shoulder. "I'll have to teach you more one day." She nods vigorously, very obviously wanting him to. "Yes! And then we can have secret conversations, no one else will know what we're saying!" She snickers, making him smile.
A/n; I hope this is alright!! I loved this request a whole lot. Oh, also, feel free to send in that Halloween request even though it's November now lol
"Oh, ofcourse. That will probably be rather far in the future, though." He says, removing her from his lap and gently patting her back. "That's okay. If I learn more I'll know more words." She states the obvious. "And I'm gonna learn from the best russian ever." She beams, making Fyodor grin. "That's right, sweetheart."
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spacenintendogs · 8 months
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Sorry for the ask. My brain craves HTTYD-based interaction and the shadowban on my sideblog won’t be lifted for at least a month.
I think the first movie is so special in comparison to everything else. Not only because of Hiccup and Toothless, but because of the dragon riders. They all act so different — like Snotlout is sort of like the leader, Astrid gets along with the twins over the idea of getting a scar in training.
They all just seem to be pretending to be something to all fit in with one another (except, maybe, the twins? Maybe?) and I think one of the main reasons they reject Hiccup is not only because he’s a complete clutz (two left feet, that’s why he lost one) but also because he, too, is pretending… just not well enough. (This mostly goes for Astrid and Snotlout and a bit for the twins, arguably the only one nice to Hiccup is Fishlegs but he’s also pretending to hate dragons, so… I guess this also applies to him.) (I suppose the only one who ever never really dropped the act was Snotlout, which would be why he’s suddenly put in the underdog’s position in the group, even if it’s mostly just seen in the TV shows.)
(Plus, it’s the only one I haven’t got on DVD and I only rewatched it today when it was on TV exclusively for that minute long scene of Snotlout taming Hookfang because I couldn’t find a clip of it on YouTube. Really says a lot about me.)
Yeah. I just think the group dynamics in the first movie are very special. It (from dynamics and atmosphere) just feels so different to the rest of the franchise, including the other two films.
hi! sorry for taking so long! i'm not used to being asked for questions abt this kind of stuff!! i'm usually the one doing the asking or i lurk a bit akdjsjdks
but no u have points abt the dynamics between the gang in the first movie. smth i noticed while rewatching it with some friends is in the beginning when snotlout is making fun of hiccup for messing up the raid through his wrecklessness (tee hee), snotlout after he gets shoved down by gobber, gets back up, and laughs, and looks to astrid. she was also smiling at him, as was fishlegs, as he & the twins made fun of & laughed at hiccup. and then they all just. move on & snotlout deflates
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this tiny little smile says SOOOOOO much <3
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smth tho i noticed u said is that snotlout is kind of the leader, however the film has astrid be at the center & front of the gang or them all looking to her or making sure she is the one they listen to bc she is the leader of the gang. she's THE ideal model viking bc she has to be. snotlout is the most vocal & the second best by far in training, & similar to how he is in the shows & other films he's pushing himself towards the front when he can to get the attention of others & be taken seriously or to be seen as another model viking (like impressing astrid)
there's an intimacy abt astrid & the gang in the first movie that just hasn't fully shown in the other two films or even the shows with tiny details of them fiddling in the background or even the foreground of a scene when someone else is talking & u see them interact. the great hall when tuffnut is playing with his knife before saying "wait? you mean READ?" astrid is amused by him playing with the knife.
but what you said abt them all pretending: they are. fishlegs is still seen as weird but he's friends & in with the gang. he loves dragon knowledge & knowing abt them, but it's for the art of the kill instead of simply knowing them as creatures. the twins love destruction but with all the talk of being on a team & working together with other vikings they bicker more with each other & end up not getting as far bc they get focused on their own shenanigans. snotlout is trying to show astrid he's the model viking & be a flirty teenage boy at the same time lmao. astrid is the one who changes first when everyone saw her as the most steadfast in her ways. The Viking Way™️.
snotlout in the shows becoming the "underdog" is bc he's not astrid, who learned & changed herself but now is such a tryhard she applies herself to the fullest extent in the opposite direction (i love her). fishlegs can actually enjoy dragons & learn abt them without having to fight them (he's the most skittish of the gang), the twins now have direct ways to blow things up & do their shenanigans (after also having learned to work in a team!!!) without worry of there being a war against the dragons (now just other ppl but ppl can't breathe fire... right? lmao). hiccup is the newest edition of the group, the circle, & now he's just?? the leader. they look to him now after snotlout did everything to get astrid & others attention. astrid is by hiccup's side 100% now & bites back at snotlout when she didn't before. snotlout has changed & loves hookfang, he loves dragons, but he doesn't want to change the Viking Way™️ he's known & tries to force the Old Ways™️ and New Ways™️ together in a way that moreso clashes. he wants to still be at the top but forces instead of working to his advantage. his jealousy of hiccup grows to a point where he's basically self destructing in acting out & causes (unintentional) harm to others but then brushes off the consequences of his actions. & then he learns. he's slower to the take, similar to the adults, but he's also got it more quickly than they ever could. he just hasn't stopped pretending like the other kids.
smth i love abt the first film is the explanation as to why the gang all have american/canadian accents (bc of jay baruchel lmao) vs the scottish accents of the adults. to show the generational difference. they are different from the adults & a very clear distinction is made by the accents of their voices. you can almost say hiccup having the most jarring of everyone's voice (so nasally & distinct) ties in with hiccup being the leader. he commands attention but not in the way that's expected. even "the more viking-like teens" (as gobber refers to them) have distinct voices & even if they're acting how the village expects.
it's not rlly them, is it? not fully at least.
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guess sometimes you need a little guidance, & it can come from the most unexpected places. maybe someone who's been in a leader position can give you a little extra push
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& even if you're afraid & don't adjust to the change 100%, you can start coming out of your shell & stop pretending. some stop pretending easier than others, & some ppl are stuck in a lot of their ways. but they still feel they can relax abt smth & stop pretending abt that.
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it makes everyone happier, right? :)
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ephhemeralite · 29 days
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Since you came to ask for my process, I'd like to come over here and ask about yours!! I see you also do drafts, and I'd love to hear how that looks for you 👀
There is no pressure to go as in depth as I did for mine though!!! And there is no rush <333
I hope your writing is going well!!!
hello!! i have written, honestly, so much in response to this. thank you very, very much for asking, because i love to talk about writing!! maybe more than i enjoy writing, even. lord.
one caveat about me and prose: my thing is very, very definitely poetry. i write poetry about every other day and i have done for years. i adore fanfiction -- to write it, to talk about it, to brainstorm about it, to help edit my friends'. i love how collaborative it is, i love its unique sets of tropes, i love when people talk to me about my fics and their own. i LOVE fic. i do not adore writing it the same way. sometimes, i think of it as a means to an end (having a fic i would like to read and am proud to have written). the way that i go about writing fics reflects this, i think.
my process is pretty shaky and i can be bad about sticking to it (i try to 'trick' my brain out of needing the things it needs to complete longform writing. like a FOOL). the general shape of my process is: an inciting idea (a song lyric, a poem, another fic, a tumblr post, "wouldn't it be cool if [blank] happened in a fic?") -> an actual concept (what would actually have to go on in a fic to make [blank] plausible) -> first draft (me telling the story to myself, ugly) -> second draft (rewrite with a lot of influence from the first draft but, like, good to look at). all throughout this process, i tend to take the time to line edit when my brain gets too overwhelmed with the actual writing, since i find editing to be leagues easier. it's a good way to take a break while still working on the fic, but it is deeply inefficient from every other angle. but, hey, the first rule of fic is to have fun and be yourself.
i'm going to go into detail under the cut bc no one's dash deserves what i've done to this ask.
warning (?) for the fact that the fic i'm currently writing is hockey rpf.
i usually start out with rambling to my friends, too! when my hrpf first possessed me, i sent about 15 messages to my friend cara (who doesn't give a shit about hockey or hrpf) that outlined the (hrpf-specific) trope i liked, what fic inspired me (x), and the goal of my own fic. an abbreviated snippet of that:
it could be interesting to play with the two ways the trope manifests (violent/aggressive and protective) (needing to be taken care of/reassured by teammates) via having them both nest. it has the potential to be so tender . . . i have this mental image of ullmark, who is spacy (clue that he's due for nesting on his own) at practice doing drills or smth when he hears swayman yell/yelp/smth (depends on what sets him into nesting, hurt/confronted/whatever) and goes to check on him only to be met with a fully nesting goalie. while trying to calm him down, he ends up nesting, too.
i imagined this as a oneshot with an extended version of this scene and, perhaps, another. i knew what vibe i was shooting for and what content might pair with it. i skipped the concept step, because i am a fool and i hoped it might be short enough to get through writing it with momentum. i did not do that. more on this later.
what an idea turning into a concept should look like:
i want to write a version of the batfamily/white collar crossover that deals with all related topics the way that //i// think they should be handled
into
a two-chaptered fic, heavy on parallels, split between peter and dick's povs. lots of unreliable narration where the parallels draw attention to how unreliable everything is. both chapters should include the same or similar scenes with the characters' first impressions of each other, moments when they clash (insert scene ideas where dick loses agency, peter invades his privacy, a major plotpoint from the show, etc), how that results in a rise in tension, and when that tension breaks in the climax (burning building?? dick fakes his death???), and closing scenes. dick's pov is going to include a lot more family stuff, focus on the issues of the fic, etc, while peter's pov obscures the issues and completely misses the presence of dick's family.
this is only a recreation of what my 'acquainted with the saint of never getting it right' fic's concept would have looked like, since i've lost all of this since i drafted it two years ago, but the thought stands. it's really sparse -- less than your zero draft, even, but the next step in my process is more than a zero draft, so i'd say they hold the same place in my process. i might include references to ideas i have for scenes if i have them, but they're usually few-word clues like "sketchbook" or "peter in apartment for coffee."
since i like to swim without a paddle, my next step is draft one. my goal is to get it down; if the details feel good and come easy, i will include them, but i don't let them trip me up. it's easier to add shit into the next draft than it is for this one to go uncompleted, basically. some word choices from this draft might remain in the final piece, but rarely does sentence structure or much else.
Sway is growling from deep in his chest, projecting the sound out across the ice. The rest of the team is inching away from Sway’s crease and towards Linus, which upsets something in the back of his mind — Sway should have the team around if he's upset. Clearly, with the growling, he doesn't want them close, but that doesn't mean that they should leave him, either. Once he settles down, he's going to want them. Linus knows, he'd had his fair share of triggered nesting episodes when he was younger. Unless there was something specific that’d set him off — then things would be different, according to what he needed — but Linus doubts that. It was mostly likely that this was just a simple rough start and Sway could get into proper nesting the moment he settled down and relaxed in the net. He could show Sway that easily, Linus thinks. His drifting forward comes to a gentle stop near the front of the pack of teammates and coaching staff carefully not crowding Swayman. He registers, in a distant way, that what's happening right now is going to cause a heaping helping of issues for somebody, but he's also not worried about it. At all.  What he's worried about is how Sway needs to feel safe right now and how he doesn't. Linus knows that he's never felt safer than while nesting for this team and that he could give Sway that, if he tried. He just has to get Sway to a nest. All he needs to do is tell Sway that and Sway will surely listen. He lets out a loud chirp, cutting off whatever the head and goalie coaches were trying to say to Swayman. Usually, he'd feel pretty guilty about interrupting, but it's alright. He's going to fix the issue; they'll understand. Sway moves from eyeing up the coaches to staring straight at him so fast that Linus worries about him pulling something; all of the more reason to get him safe and tucked away, somewhere where they can both relax. The growl dies abruptly in his throat, which makes Linus want to preen. Clearly he knows his teammates best. Linus chirps again, eager to get this moving along. Eyes locked onto him, Sway chirps back.
this is a pretty long excerpt, sorry, but a lot happens between the first and second draft and this has plenty left unworked.
the first paragraph is alright -- some imagery i like (the growling and the team's movement), linus' thought process toes the line between coherent and incoherent the way i'd like it to (might lift that, wholesale, to the second draft), although the phrasing "which upsets something in the back of his mind" is... eugh.
the second, third, and fourth paragraphs' main use is to outline where linus' mindset is going, although it's clunky and off-target. i just need the reminder to write his mindset in and its vague shape, for this draft, though. if i kept any of this, the phrasing/sentence structure would need to be changed, but it's more likely that i'd scatter it through the movement and description i'd add into the second draft. my first drafts tend to be either all-internal or all-external, so my second drafts act as the equalizer.
beyond that, my second drafts also make everything... longer. so much longer. it helps me move everything from a barebones "this is what probably happens" to "this is what experts call a nice reading experience," you know? plus, i can move forward with draft one with questions still unanswered, like: i haven't actually decided how i want the narration to refer to these characters, yet. the first name vs last name vs nickname and WHEN debate is an important one, but if i got hung up on that first, i'd never actually write the damn fic itself. instead, we can get it moving.
the difference between a first and second draft might look like this for me:
Nile is in the desert.  Her boots are stiff with sand, her hands grasping her rifle, her body weary under her gear. She's marching. On the back of her tongue, she tastes blood. There's not another person around for miles. No squadmates, no commander. No civilians, no insurgents. The sun beats down on her from its place at perfect zenith. Nile stumbles to a stop, heaving for the heat. She casts about for her water, but it's not where it should be or anywhere it shouldn't be, either.
vs
Nile is never going to get out of the desert. That’s most of what she knows. There are other things, like: her boots are stiff with sand, her hands are grasping a rifle, her body is weary under her gear. She’s marching. On the back of her tongue, she tastes blood. She’s alone. From horizon to horizon, the terrain is empty of everything but herself. Her squadmates are missing, her commander absent. There are no civilians, no insurgents.  The sun beats down on her from its place at perfect zenith, millions of miles away. She stumbles to a stop, heaving for the heat. She wishes, desperate beyond words, for water, but her bottle is missing. It’s not hooked onto her vest or around her hips; she’s never spent a moment more aware of each of the trillion grains of sand that surround her, dry as dust, as in this moment.
(this fic, even the sun knows where you sleep, has been languishing as a half-finished second draft since may of last year. it's a crossover between the old guard and the sandman, where nile has a series of dreams influenced by morpheus. this is one of them) the first draft of this fic is about 5k, but the finished second draft could end up around 15k. long as hell, by my poet standards.
this second draft is lacking line edits, but bloop (my beloved sister, muah, ily, etc) helped me comb through it months ago so the proposed changes are available. the phrasing is prettier, the structure less repetitive, the imagery and setting clearer. the parts of this that are written are just a stone's throw away from being of posting quality. unfortunately, i'm also of the camp no-posting-before-completed, so it won't be.
i have a gomens fic sitting unfinished on my account because i lost steam and interest before i finished the second draft of its last chapter, which is just... so unfortunate. i'd love to finish it, and eventually i might, but i've acquired a bit of distaste for gomens in the meantime and (in the spirit of being myself and having fun) i'm not beating myself up about it. but, like, lesson learned.
back to the point: sometimes, the second draft can change more of a fic (warning for non-graphic violence):
Nile is standing at the window at the top of Merrick's skyscraper, Andy's labrys in hand.  The window is shattered again, though there's no other proof of their battle that Nile can sense. Andy is nowhere to be seen, nor is Merrick. Nile doesn't look down through the window, but she knows there's no crushed car or mutilated body, either. There is Nile, standing at the shattered edge, weathering the sharp breeze snapping against her. There is the ax in her hand, the wooden handle rough. Grainy. It hasn't been smoothed by use or through craftsmanship and Nile can feel splinters bite into her grip.  The wood is hot, she realizes suddenly – not skin-warm, but the type of hot that comes from holding something porous as it burns and vents heat through places yet untouched by the flame. In panic, she raises her head to find the source and is blinded, completely. The shock of it is such that she stops moving entirely and blinks, uncomprehending – the sun.
vs
Nile is standing in the moment before the fall. The precipice.  She’s at the top of Merrick’s tower again. Behind her lies a cold and empty room, made more of shadow than substance. She knows that she is supposed to continue through – see the moment to its end – but she has been given the opportunity to pause, as time comes to a standstill. Some things have changed; Andy and Merrick are missing. The evidence of their fighting is gone, except that the window is already shattered. A cold wind rushes through the absence, knocking sharp teeth against her body, frozen in its lunge forward toward empty space. In her fist is the labrys that should be cutting into the meat of Merrick’s shoulder. Nile can feel the tackiness of blood in her grip on the wooden handle. She wonders at the grainy texture caught beneath it, surprised that time nor craftsmanship hasn’t smoothed it over, before she understands that this is not Andy’s handle. Instead, the roughly-hewn lumber extends from the floor to a place over her head to become a sort of halberd, its point on the floor supporting most of her weight.  It's hot, too – not skin-warmth, but the type of heat that comes from holding a porous item as it’s being consumed by fire, venting heat out through places yet untouched by flame. Nile isn’t injured by the blister of it, but the sensation of burning without pain unnerves her and she raises her gaze to find the blade and the flame. Only, she doesn’t make it that far. Lifting her face out of her hunched position brings it to look toward the window, where she discovers the opposite of Merrick’s abyssal building as it inundates her: an immense deluge of light.
there's a lot more definitive changes to structure, phrasing, and imagery here than in my last snippet. i do, in a literal sense, go through and rewrite each word of my fic between drafts, but how many of those words are carried over from the first to the second can vary depending on the quality of the draft. it's way easier for me to rework a pre-existing piece than make something, wholesale, which i'm well aware of and try to cater to. this is the method that's seen my writing improve the most, even though i think it's wildly impractical and unwieldy. i've even done it with this exact post, which part of why it's taking me so long to finish it!
i'm trying something new with the process on the hrpf, since it's been giving me so much trouble. the theme's changed a bit, with a wider scope and something specific to say, but i also want to incorporate a social media/journalism/outsider's perspective element, which will let me move around outside of the characters' narrations while establishing the wider world of the au. this new step is as close to a zero-draft as i've gotten, even though it's still way less detailed. it looks like this:
MOST VIOLENT VS MOST AMIABLE GOALIES TO NEST IN THE NHL listicle Sway and Linus discuss nesting, Linus has settled into a pattern Could gentle-nester ullmark be a calming influence over swayman or will he dull his edge? speculative piece, focus more on the first option maybe to contrast the move towards understanding anger. Bruins vs buffalo, ullmark in net (dec. 7 game? If the timeline for that works), linus is upset at the loss/it goes bad somehow. Sway is supportive in a more assertive way than typical. It doesn’t start here but it turns here Can’t decide if tweets or something would be good here Internal, staff-only memo advising to keep sway away from linus when he’s feeling broody.
each line represents a separate 'chunk' of the fic. with the added elements, i need to know what will go where so that i can make sure the storytelling tracks throughout. i'm still on this part of the draft, but i'm having a good time with it again which is what i think is most important.
anyway, thank you for asking!! i definitely love to talk about writing! i'm always sooo down to chat, too, except for maybe right now because i am going to pass out asleep i think. <3!!!!!!
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sunsetbullets · 8 months
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religious trauma & the good omens 2 finale
! ! ! spoilers ahead and also a very confusing rant bc this finale made me think about my religious trauma and how it stills affects me ! ! !
i'm a firm believer that azi just made the most terrible decision ever seen on earth instead that the fuckass metraton drugged his coffe or miracled a change in his heart . . . because religious trauma can just get into your head in a way that really fucks u up . . .
like what comming from and being in the "good" side does to aziraphale is pretty well developed and showed across the episodes from both seasons. even that now he's together with crowley in their own side, he stills firmly believes in heaven = good, hell = bad.
and because of this belief that is deeply rooted into him, he can't help but associate all the things that made him love crowley to little remaining pieces of heaven inside her. for aziraphale, what makes crowley stand apart from other fallen angles angels is that she saw the flaws in the great plan and choose to fight it.
but i don't think that aziraphale believes that it was crowley's free will to go against the great plan, but the remaining bits of heaven inside her fighting the bad demonic side and making her fight for the right things, the way god planned it all.
he mistook crowley's kindness and goodness with humanity because he's blinded by the perception that all good things and influences belong to god and to heaven.
the heaven that aziraphale chose to return stills the same heaven that hunted him and almost burned him to non-existence simply because he did what his heart told him to do, because he saw the flaws in the great plan and choose to fight it, even if his morals constantly made him think that he was doing wrong by being against god's wishes.
and we can't deny that he tricks himself away from guilt by believing that's all part of a bigger god's plan, that all he did was right and god proudly agrees with it even if the entirety of heaven does not to.
when this is the aziraphale we know, is not hard to believe that the metraton would not have much work to do in convincing him to going back to heaven.
and the metraton is said to be the voice of god herself ... this is such an important detail to remember, because aziraphale can deal with being rejected by heaven by reling in the omnipotent & silent presence of god silently telling him that he did no wrong. but when the voice of god speaks, how can he not hear it ??
like,, do you guys have the slightest ideia of how many times church people say the most evil and hurtfull things in the name of god, just like the metraton, to manipulate and trick people into staying into religion ???
and one of the main points of churches that make people stay, is the feeling of belonging, even that they are saying things that hurt you deeply inside using god's voice, they also make you feel loved and seem.
even after being kicked out of heaven to their own side, aziraphale stills deeply believes that heaven is the only right choice, in his heart he knows that he is a good being, and so is crowley . . . he feels that they belong to heaven, like all good things.
he can recognize all heavens wrongs such as killing job's kids for a fun bet or drowning everybody else but noah's family and some pair of animals, or to end the entire world just for a war between heaven and hell. and he desaproves it all, to the point of going against it because he choses the good side and all goodness belongs to god (even if god's wishes for all this harm to happen anyway)
and you guys realize how tempting it is to go back to the good and right side but also to a position that offers you the power of changing all the institutional failures of heaven ?? not only that but also allows him to still being by crowley's side ??
his angelic brain got corrupted to the point that he can't see that all heaven (him included) do is to hurt people but geting away with it by using god's name and goodness.
he can't see that being back in heaven would hurt crowley more than leaving him behind. because he believes that she deserves forgiveness and deserves heaven.
he got heartbroken after she refused his proposal but he didn't run back to her (even if crowley stayed there and waited and hoped for it to happen) because aziraphale is certain about his beliefs and if he cannot change heaven with crowley, he can change heaven for her.
that's why aziraphale smiles in that lift ride.
he thinks he will comeback to get crowley to heaven and finally be able to be toghether with the love of his life after he changes heaven for even better . . .
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mybrainproblems · 1 year
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Hi I keep thinking about your endverse!Cas in s13 and the brainworms won't stop. Like endverse Cas lost his powers when the angels left so I'm gonna make the assumption that when he comes to this world, his powers will be back. But he's so full of self loathing and so hateful towards other angels, and he literally still thinks of Jack as an abomination because he didn't have any of the s12 arc. And on top of that, he'll learn that Chuck is God and a writer and he couldn't be bothered to save his world, but brought back this Cas, the one that Dean loves and grieves instead of sending Cas to his death, the one that Sam trusts, and he would feel so fucking LONELY. I'm gonna CRY, Alex why do you do this to me
gshdbsjsk I don't want to be starting to answer this at midnight but it's spinning in my brain like the doner at the Lebanese pizza place I used to go to.
So. I think they still get Cas back at the end of Advanced Thanatology but it's endverse!Cas (Jack does still wake up "our" Cas tho). We still have Dean getting the call at the end of the ep but Cas asks where they are and he'll come to them at the bunker. He has his wings now so he's there immediately and is so caught up in DEAN IS ALIVE that he just grabs him and lays one on him. Which Dean kisses back for a moment before realizing that this isn't his Cas but he does know this Cas.
Sam walks in and is super confused. Cas freaks out since the last time he saw him he was Lucifer's vessel and he hasn't quite worked out the details of this timeline besides that he can feel his grace starting to come back and there are no croatoans and everyone is alive and the world isn't totally fucked. They're halfway to reassuring Cas that Sam isn't Lucifer and Dean is trying to get Sam to trust this Cas while also being giddy that a Cas is back while also deeply mourning the apparent loss of "his" Cas. And that's when Jack walks in which touches off a whole round of Cas freaking out that there's a nephil and now he has to deal with a blood freak abomination and a nephil abomination. Jack then gets upset when he realizes that this isn't the Cas who was supposed to be his father and thinks he fucked up trying to bring back Cas.
Somehow Dean manages to get between everyone and get them to chill so they can fill in this Cas on wtf has been going on in this world. Cas continues to lash out at Sam and Jack and sticks close to Dean which Dean knows he shouldn't be happy about but can't help it.
Skipping ahead a ways I do think that Dean sees how Cas treats Jack poorly and feels sick at how much it feels like watching his childhood on replay and eventually tells Cas he needs to leave and check in with heaven which sends this Cas through the fucking roof. Especially now that he's found out about Chuck. He's a huge asshole to everyone but a lot of it is just raw grief for how much he's suffered and lost and this is a Dean so much more whole than the one who sent him to die and yet he's almost as distant. (Tombstone is heartbreaking instead of fun.)
Cas does opt to go out on his own bc he realizes that he just does not fit in with them and it's not fair to anyone (including himself) that he continue to stick around. So now endverse!Cas is on a walkabout on his own...
The above is only like, one or two episodes. "Our" Cas ends up finally clawing his way out of the empty at the end of s13, basically in time for Dean to say yes to Michael. Endverse!Cas having kissed Dean makes things a bit awkward with Cas being back and Dean doesn't know how to act bc this Cas isn't broken the way the endverse one is and clearly that relationship was the result of Cas being corrupted and cut off from heaven so everything else happens exactly the same with the empty deal and confessions. There's just a lot more explicit longing and yearning from Dean.
Endverse!Cas does end up coming back and meets huntercorp!Dean and they fuck off to Brazil together.
I have lots more thoughts but I'm getting incoherent and really need to not totally fuck my sleep schedule...
@doemons-blog, tagging you as well since you sent the initial ask and idk if you're interested in additional thoughts :')
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loosesodamarble · 7 months
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Too the character ask game my dear Loo it’s burn in my soul 🌝
Nacht Faust „18‘19‘20
And Ida Faust „‚1“11
Have a good day my dear Loo🤭
Thank you, thank you for asking these questions, Marune~!
I see you're asking about a canon character and one of your own ocs! Not something I expected to happen from this ask game but hey! I'll definitely answer!
..........
Nacht Faust
18) How do you think they were as a kid? (Like, were they shy, noisy, wild, etc)
Canonically, Nacht has always been a troublemaker. Maybe not a straight up delinquent but I imagine him walking out of boring tutoring sessions and intentionally showing bad manners in front of guests that pissed him off. He'd use his Shadow Magic as a tripwire or use it to pick pockets. Nacht was likely a precocious smart-mouth too, catching onto subtle social cues and talking smack under the guise of gentlemanly banter. Small and ultimately petty things. He'd only up the ante as he grew older.
19) The most random ship you've seen people have with them
Nacht x Vanessa? It's two pretty people, I guess, but I don't see any chemistry between them, neither friendly (what I imagine for Nacht and Finral) nor antagonistic (Nacht and Zora). I dunno. The most I see happening between them is Nacht not being under the effects of the Red Thread of Fate spell for the longest time because Vanessa just isn't clicking with Nacht so the magic doesn't work on him. RIP.
20) A weird headcanon
Nacht's hair is eerily silky and smooth. Even when he was bleaching it and not putting extra effort into caring for it, it was only once in a blue moon that Nacht got a split end or knot. And bedheads? Non-existent to this man. Even Nacht can't explain why his hair of all things is so pristine.
...
Ida Faust
1) My first impression of them
Initially, I was intrigued by Ida's profile. As well as confused and concerned. Her connection to the Faust family definitely meant I was immediately invested in how the Faust tragedy would effect her. I thought it was kinda wild that a 5-6 year old kid would run away from home (this was before you explained things in more detail). Reading Ida's profile for the first time was definitely a "oh I need to see where things go with this oc" impression/experience.
And now I'm very glad that I've seen you write and develop Ida. Cause now I really love her as Morgen and Nacht's sister (and Josele's sister-in-law 💖)!
11) What’s the first thing you think about when thinking about the character?
A fun, chaotic oc~! One of my favorite ocs for BC (not including my own, obviously).
Also, I keep on wanting to write a scenarios involving Ida interacting with Nacht and Josele's children but then my mind draws a blank and I feel so bad because I want to write something for you involving Ida but my brain isn't doing it and kjfjdfhais! 😭 Since I'm mentioning it now I might as well explain the ideas that I've had but have been unable to develop: -Sterling and Ida's first meeting -Dawn seeing Ida's black blood and being like "that's so coooool! I wanna bleed like that!" -Ida sneaking Sirius coffee candies since Nacht won't let his son drink coffee straight -Merel and Ida cuddling because ice skin Merel and fire skin Ida khfaisurht!
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beyondd-dazedd · 3 years
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EPISODE👏 REVIEW👏 hsmtmts season 2 episode 10: get ready for some enthusiastic writing and a little too much looking into details
first off seb doing the intro made my heart happy i love him
ok i know everyone has been saying it but there is no way in hell they’re winning the menkies. unless the writers just go with the main character favoritism route, there’s just no way. however for the sake of comedy, watching ashlyn give us everything in the transformation scene and ricky being an absolute disaster is SO funny to me. like shout out to joshua because that scene made me laugh so hard. also a trio i need more of is kourt, red and ej. i just feel like they would be dramatic gossipy bitches and i love that for them.
normally i think ms. jenn’s reactions are over the top but after seeing the shit show that just occurred 2 mins before... i think her reaction is very valid because oh god.
continuing with the theme of friendship dynamics we haven’t seen a lot of but we absolutely need more of, ashlyn and ricky!! that scene was so sweet and wholesome. i’m so so so glad the writers didn’t fall into the trap of making characters take sides after a break up. i just feel like it’s been done a million times before. but seeing ashlyn being so genuine when checking up in ricky made me so happy. the caswells remain being the superior characters (including gina obvs)
ms. jenn and mr. mazzarra are cute don’t get me wrong but they should’ve spent more time developing that relationship instead giving ms. jenn like 3 random love interests and that’s all i’ll say on that.
i love imagining what characters are saying when they’re just ad libbing. like what could ej, gina, ricky and red be talking about before carlos shows up to start the scene?? my guess is they’re all gushing about how amazing ash is and no i don’t take criticisms on that.
alright i’ll say it. the seblos drama is weak at best. they didn’t spend enough time developing it and kind of pushed it to the background so when it was one of the main focuses of the episode it was kind of like ok?? HOWEVER i did love the resolution to it and the deeper look into their individual characters. (i’ll talk more about this later)
carlos calling ms. jenn mother and everyone immediately knowing who he was talking about sent me omfg. but also who the fuck let these high schoolers try to figure out this transformation scene by themselves?? they collectively have 2 brain cells and they just bounce around between the 9 of them depending on the scene. but playful sleepover competition!! also gina nudging ej when he goes a little too ej 1.0 was everything.
i hate lily and i love sassy red. that’s all.
(im going to talk about the boys/girls sleepovers like they’re each one continuous scene respectively because it’s way easier than switching back and forth)
fun new friendship dynamics!! the boys!! sebbie and the girls! iconic. i know that the show is meant to be in a mockumentary style so we only see parts of the characters lives but i would give my left arm to see the boys getting closer and becoming friends. this is also the first scene where i really noticed ricky’s shirt. ricky is queer disney are just cowards. i’m not a big ricky/ ej shipper but the pretty boy had me feeling some type of way. carlos being worried about seb and their relationship and then red being like well this is why. bc he’s got a spy on the inside was peak friendship. but seriously disney?? just say gay. it’s not a bad word. now imma freak out about PORTWELL OMFG I WAS ALREADY FREAKING OUT DURING THIS SCENE SO YOU CAN IMAGINE HOW WELL I WAS DOING LATER ON. but ej just being like im not ready to put myself out there because of nini i don’t wanna get rejected... again. my heart went out to him. you can really see how much he’s grown as a person. but sure ej y’all are “buddies” also him saying the one thing i’m proud of from my time with nini was letting her go and ricky’s reaction to that hurt me to my core.
alright let’s talk about the girls and seb. first off i love that they’re actually working and the boys are doing fuck all LOL. seb actually talking about how he feels?? good for him. i hate that he thinks that carlos is only with him because there’s limited options but at least he’s talking about it. a moment of silence for ash’s scissor bucket (i won’t make a gay joke. i won’t make a gay joke. i won’t-) anyways... i really thought that maybe ash would know about portwell but it’s fucking EVERYONE. like y’all are that perceptive about other peoples relationships but not your own?? that’s why all y’all have relationship drama. gina not wanting to put herself out there because she’s afraid of getting hurt?? ouch. gina thinking ej is just being nice?? ouch but also gina, sis?? what. also nini reacting that way to the chocolates is so out of pocket. like 1) y’all aren’t dating anymore so what’s got you so pressed? 2) gina made it clear that they weren’t actually from ricky 3) nini you know they had some sort of chemistry before you and ricky got back together so this really shouldn’t be that surprising.
anyways the scene with ricky and carlos broke me. the decision for ricky to not show nini the song was so mature. despite wanting to get her back, he KNOWS that that would only drag her back and that’s not fair to her and he knows it. but his awareness of seblos’s relationship and wanting to help carlos work things out with seb was so wholesome and so sweet and is kind of a big moment of character development for him this season. like he was generally very selfish this season (again i’m a ricky apologist til the day i die but he was so selfish) and seeing him take the focus away from his problems to help carlos out was so sweet. also i need more ricky/carlos friendship moments.
kourt talking about howie learning her love language?? bitch you mean espionage?? i mean me too but that’s so fucking funny
ALRIGHT THIS IS THE PARAGRAPH WHERE I SCREAM ABOUT PORTWELL!!! i am so so so so happy right now about this. the fact that ej asked about risotto but for real was so satisfying and was blatantly like him saying i know we faked being in a relationship but what about it not being fake and omfg that’s so amazing. also gina being skeptical and asking if ash put him up to it and him saying not that i know of?? THE PARALLELS?? also gina this whole season has been talking about signs and finding reasons to stay, finding signs to know if someone is right for her and you can literally see the moment she realizes she said the same thing about the duke sweatshirt to jack. SHE KNOWS THIS IS HER SIGN and that’s so special to me. also ej’s nervous laugh after she says yes?? omfg. let’s look at ej’s character. historically he’s confident, cocky and generally puts on this facade of having his shit together but gina makes him nervous (in a good way). he doesn’t feel like he has to pretend to be confident around her. he’s showing her that he’s just as nervous as she is about this and that is just *chefs kiss* honestly not to be an andi mack stan but ej’s little nervous chuckle and ok after she says yes sounds like he’s letting out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding which seriously parallels tj after the tyrus confession. i’m just saying. ALSO GINA’S LITTLE EXCITED WALK BACK TO THE GROUP AHHHHHH
the seblos song?? i have no notes. it was incredible. frankie killed that shit. it was such a good song. so sweet. so wholesome. also ricky and carlos’s hug was so fucking meaningful to both of them and you can tell. ricky was absolutely beaming because he helped the two of them and it feels like a little bit of season 1 ricky shining through.
WHO THE FUCK LET A BUNCH OF HIGH SCHOOLERS RIG A KID IN THE AIR COMPLETELY UNSUPERVISED?? of course ricky fucking fell. that group shares 2 brain cells. obviously some dumb shit was going to happen
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f-117-nighthawk · 3 years
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Playlist Update? From MY Brain? More Likely Than You Think
can't remember the last time I posted these all together but I just put a few new songs in. I've been playing Arknights bc STARSET songs keep being used in the trailers, and then I was listening to Transmissions while making dinner, and uhhhhh there's two new Transmissions songs on the playlists, plus whatever else the spotify links needed to update to my ever-changing apple versions.
This is just the main playlist, because this one is now 3h 40m, and the other three playlists are about an hour each. I’ll give them their own post tomorrow. Under the cut, because it's also Write Random Snippits and Include Important Lyrics time
Dark Matter
Surprise surprise, this one’s got probably the most work done on it. A lot of that is moving things around, a few deletions, and the additions.
DM now starts with Your World Will Fail, Dark Matter, and Eater of Worlds. Turn the Lights Out still kinda applies, but I stopped vibing with it starting everything, and wasn’t really sure where else it should go so it got dropped. It’s role is sort of picked up by a UtA song later? Anyway, the opening three are still very much about not only the birth of [REDACTED], but the birth of the universe itself. And that’s why it feels better to start out with YWWF. Because it is the start.
(Your world will fail my love/It’s far beyond repair/Your world will fail my love/It is already there)
(Bring me your soul/Bring me your hate/In my name you will create/Bring me your fear/Bring me your pain/You will destroy in my name)
(Can’t imagine the violence/The rage and the love in my madness/I am the eater of worlds and I’m looking for someone to feed me)
Remnants of Stars is a hook to Filaments at this point, but stays way up here because the thing it’s about connects back up to those three ^ and is something slowly realized by the Paladins throughout the series. There’s kinda three different points that they realize something new about this (at the moment, I Am the One, Cosmic Vertigo, and Centigrade).
(Shed all you know and make way for a galaxy of light/Answers found hidden inside the smallest stone/Bringing forth a new way of life/Open your heart to the sky)
Apocalypse 1992 hasn’t changed. Still about The Fall, still the turning point for the entire damn war. Still about poor Krolia. Still the Rogue One of DM. It happens between parts of Awakenings, detailing the rise of [REDACTED] and the final hours before the destruction of everything sentient species knew beforehand.
(Fly high through apocalypse skies/Fight for the world we must save/Like tears of a unicorn lost in the rain/Chaos will triumph this day)
Apex is the final moments of Apocalypse 1992 from the Red Lion’s perspective, and connects nicely (just as in the albums lol) to the next UtA songs. Which we’ll get to in a bit.
(Brother mountain/Now we sleep/For a thousand years/I will see you again/Something is coming/Coming for me)
You Keep What You Kill covers the slow degeneration of the Empire between The Fall and the Battle of Arus. The knowledge harshly taught by the Thuanial War is forgotten under the influence of Zarkon, Haggar, and [REDACTED]. Marzin and Galraasa quickly rise the ranks as the Empire’s left and right hands, like omens of destruction before them. The four are the ‘holy half-dead,’ the ones who shape the devouring of the universe before them.
(Defying dimensions/These ruthless creatures will steal your soul/Breaking away from the chains of mortality/They won’t be taken down/Bow now to the holy half dead/The master to death mongers calls)
The Glory and the Scum is partially here bc I missed having Delain, I’ll freely admit that. (Delain split up! Like six months ago! I’m still sad!) Here, it’s (most) of the reason why Krolia isn’t around until MGHM. Think Winter Soldier-ish. It’s also from Krolia’s perspective as she’s talking to Kolivan in a conversation I implied in Shatterpoint. Perhaps it shall see the light of day.
(Look at what we've done/Take a step back/Shake your head at what we have become/We're the glory and the scum)
The Seven Sisters is about Keith, mostly, and connected to Closure via its influence on Child From the Stars (Lost in the Dark) and also to Memories of a Girl I Haven’t Met. Also the thing about the Pleiades has kinda become A Thing associated with my two favorite halfbloods.
(I cast my hope upon The Pleiades/The Seven Sisters who would come for me/They’d fall to Earth to grant a child’s dream/But I’m still waiting)
Starlight is the Adashi song. Here, it’s the sad part, based around the time that the SFSS Genesis launches for Kerberos. It also is sort of about Shiro’s thoughts throughout the war as he watches ‘from distant skies’ (and influences String Theory kinda)
(At night the earth will rise/And I’ll think of you each time I watch from distant skies/Whenever stars go down and galaxies ignite/I’ll think of you each time they wash me in their light/And I’ll fall in love with you again)
Waking Dream and Abyss are Awakenings. They’re specifically the Red Lion waking up on Sendak’s ship to her new Paladin, but also sort of the rest of the Lions as they find new Paladins for the first time since The Fall (and, also, an accidental hook to the end of Filaments just by virtue of being on the same UtA album…)
(Centuries like flowing streams as years go rushing by/Waiting in the dark for afterlife)
(Open my eyes in a daze/How long has it been? Am I so out of place?/Warmth I can no longer feel/My mountain is gone, I’m surrounded by steel/The strangest of structures arises ahead/Seems to be held up by nothing/Where have I gone, do I dream?/How can the stars be all I can see?)
Who Will Save You Now is about the Paladins in First Contact. It’s the video messages they send to their families, the warning that Something Is Out Here that they need to prepare for. It’s a declaration of protection for Earth, but a recognition that the Paladins may not be able to do what they say.
(I will not take from you and you will not owe/I will protect you from the fire below/It’s not in my mind/It’s here at my side/Go tell the world that I’m still alive)
Then there’s The End of the Beginning. Which is, well, the eponymous fic. And don’t forget the String Theory connection! Fun fact: part of the last chapter leads directly into part of String Theory at the moment.
(Every night I die just a little/All this time, I’m caught in the middle/All your life, you fought with no winning/This is just the end of the beginning)
A Simple Plan is about anything but a simple plan. Lotor is making his secret bid for the construction of the Sinkline ships, but there’s one more thing he needs before it can come to fruition. Haggar has suspicions, and knows one thing that she needs to keep from both him and Voltron. Team Voltron is still struggling to fit into their new roles, especially with a Black Paladin who adamantly does not want to be Black Paladin, and is in desperate need of one thing to fix the last of the damage done during the Battle of the Sarnan Nebula.
(How long can we hold off ending?/How long can we pretend we’re ok?/No one goes on fighting it forever/I know I’m better this way)
Memories of a Girl I Haven’t Met. Such a short song for such an important fic. It skips all the way over Naxzela to the Mission to the Baaria Shipyards, the first major offensive that isn’t somehow connected to canon (even if only a very very small part of it is actually at the shipyards lol). This is also the song that solidified Keith’s very queer identity in Dark Matter. And more Pleiades stuff!
(In this lonely place, bathed in silence and thoughts of you/I can’t see your face but I’m trying to envision you/So are you really out there? Are you awake with memories/Of a boy you haven’t met yet who’s wished upon the Pleiades?)
There’s another fic in here that I’m still waiting for a song to catch my ear, but it’s pretty big so I’m putting it in here. For the moment, it’s called MGHM 2.0: Electric Paladinloo. Featuring the Whispers, Voltron, and a few mullets.
And then. Hoh boy. The beast of beats. TRIALS (reimagine), Dark On Me, String Theory, and I Am the One. We’ve got [REDACTED], we’ve got [spoiler], we’ve got the first major turning point in the entire war, and the first revelation of the true nature of [REDACTED]. Hence the honor of being the separation point of my two main DM folders. TRIALS is the first part, the horrifying realization. Dark On Me and String Theory itself are from Shiro’s perspective. I Am the One is… an image song? I guess? That’s all I’ll say on that. (I would like to note that the STARSET songs bar OWtT tend to be about the Shiroganes…)
(Hear me from the bottom/Forged in regret, I'm the silversmith/Doomsday, you we had it coming/Marching the streets with an iron fist/Obey no more in silence/The steel in our hearts will be monuments/Today, they'll hear the violence/We'll rise from the dark like Lazarus)
(You're the cause/The antidote/The sinking ship that I could not let go/You led my way, then disappeared/How could you just walk away and leave me here?/Light the night up, you're my dark star/And now you're falling away)
(You don’t believe in space/You don’t believe in light/You don’t believe that anything is well beyond your might/We walk across the sky and beneath the ocean floor/We’re never going anywhere we’ve never been before)
(I am the one/I am the architect to rule your fate)
House on Fire is the aftermath of String Theory, and a large vibe of We ARE Struggling Together! It’s about family, never letting go of something you care about, and the slow act of trusting.
(So I’ll just hold you like a hand grenade/You touch me like a razor blade/I wish there was some other way right now/Like a house on fire we’re up in flames/I’d burn here if that’s what it takes/To let you know I won’t let go of you)
Belgrade is The klance song! It is a) a bop b) always stuck in my head because it is That Good. The line in the chorus about ‘sweet songs of seduction’ is eternally funny to me bc a)they’re both ace and b)QPR’s don’t usually involve seduction. Belgrade also leads almost directly into…
(We pretend in the darkness/We pretend the night won’t steal our youth/Singing me the sweet songs of seduction/Let me be the fool, fool, fool/Who will live and die for you)
Here to Save You is about Sam. Mostly. It’s also about Pidge. And Zaivorge cannons.
(A slave for humankind/I made sure I would survive/To stay alive/Now it’s time to move on/When there’s nothing left to prove/I’m coming to get you)
Iron is the third Closure fic (the second is End of the Beginning, forgot to mention that. They’ve slowly moved away from actually being related to it in anything but name and general idea). It’s about Keith coming to terms with parts of himself, and learning how to use them to great effect. Also has a huge info dump about the Blade.
(You can’t live without the fire/It’s the heat that makes you strong/‘Cause you’re born to live/And fight it all the way/You can’t hide what lies inside you/It’s the only thing you know/You’re embracing that, never walk away)
The second major turning point in the war is Monarch, Birthright, and Firewall. I really recommend reading the whole lyrics for Monarch, because the entire thing is very much a Lotor song. I had a bit of trouble picking a lyric to use here. Monarch is here because Lotor is also the ‘singer’ of Birthright, and both songs are to a very specific high-level target of the Coalition. Firewall is a little different as it’s a Team Voltron song not a Lotor song, but happens because of the same thing the other two do. They’re all not exactly a direct result of Iron, but they wouldn’t happen how they do without it, and then [REDACTED] swings back into the fray and things learned in String Theory/the framing story for Through Apocalypse Skies hit in full force.
(I am not the person you remember from before/The one you patronized and stepped on, the one you hurt/And I have pulled the arrows, now my skin has become stone/No longer am I prisoner to your empty fucking words)
(The voices in my head have all begun to sing/(The voices in your head have all begun to sing)/And they sure as hell hope I am listening/(I sure as hell hope you are listening!))
(They come to your dreams with illusion/They come to bring shape to your mind/You know how to stop the intrusion/We all have to fight for our lives)
and then, The Day the Earth Collapsed
(How much time has been elapsed/Since the day the earth collapsed?)
Here Comes the Reign doesn’t come into full effect until several months after Birthright/Firewall, but starts with The Day the Earth Collapsed. It’s largely about Haggar and [REDACTED]
(You made something they can’t take away/Now bring the fire of the burning sun on everyone)
Supersonic is here… kinda as a placeholder? Things have shifted around since its original purpose, and frankly it’s here still as a framework for what I like to call The Meme Battle. It’s generally about the increase in Coalition support and general winning as they go after warlords in the aftermath of Feyiv, culminating in I Need a Hero which is, of course, The Meme Battle.
Yes, it’s the Shrek version. It’s the Meme Battle.
(Supersonic, polyphonic, this is our war/Mustering the armies, marching faster than before)
(I need a hero/I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night/He's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast/And he's gotta be fresh from the fight)
But Tonight We Dance isn’t exactly a klance song, but it’s here for them. On a diplomatic mission gone wrong, the Red and Blue Paladins of Voltron uncover a literally-buried government conspiracy, a rebel cell, and nearly die. A normal days work for the two of them. But they’ve really gotta stop having relationship milestones in the middle of a warzone.
Another reason it’s here is Tonight We Dance is a very aro song to me. “A language universal, but I speak not its tongue” hits hard. I felt like I needed a bit in here to remind listeners/readers that romance isn’t a language Keith speaks. And it becomes very explicit in this fic, just like Belgrade.
(Tomorrow we might wake in servitude and silence/I will give you everything if only you would have me/Tomorrow we will sweat and toil/Our hands will quiver, caked with soil/Tomorrow we'll give it one last chance/But tonight we dance/But tonight we dance!)
But Tonight We Dance is the last of the Closure fics, which is why it’s here. Closure in general is a lot of Keith’s character development and some of the struggles he goes through to accept his place in the universe and the fact that yes, he does have people that care about him. The last fic is me shining a brighter light on Closure’s chorus and taking a ‘last goodbye’ as never needing to say it again
(I am the child from the stars/That got lost in the dark/Between heaven and hell/I am forced to live on/I am the cause when you sin/I am the demon you skin/But there is no more tears to beautify/This is my last goodbye)
Then we step back into the universe-level action with Soulbound. Revelations from String Theory and Firewall swing back in with a vengeance on a joint Whispers-Voltron mission, leaving them reeling and Krolia questioning her very identity.
(Soulbound, endlessly forever/Locked between the darkness and the light/Don’t drown in the swarming, blackened rising/Hold on to humanity and fight)
About three months after that is My Darkest Hour and Faster Than Light. Haggar realizes something and goes searching for her fifth [spoiler], sending the Blade and the rest of the Coalition scrambling. These also lead directly, and I mean directly, into…
(When the sun comes crashing down/When the world is spinning round and round/I will face what must be my darkest hour)
(Once more we’re flying fast as light/Dark matter passing in the night/Pursued by a force we can’t outrun/As we hurtle towards a dying sun/We maneuver through the remnants of a moon/On the solar winds of supernovas/There is not a place to hide, the Matriarch is close behind/It’s plain to see she’s coming for us all)
Cosmic Vertigo and Other Worlds Than These. Together they are the second of two revelations in what, exactly, is [REDACTED]
(Banish me like burned down planets/Write my fate with sparkling lies/I am the universe; you're just one sky)
(Pull the wool out from your eyes/It won’t shade your frail belief/In the end we cannot hide/There are other worlds than these)
Godhunter is Team Voltron, well, hunting for gods, even as one of them disappears.
(She’s been watching for a century/With hatred, and with scorn/If you know the hunter’s coming/Then you hide or keep on running/'Cause she’s slain the gods before)
Trophy Hunter, Ember, and Redemption are the culmination of Godhunter. I’ve been thinking of them as akin to the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2, if that gives you an idea of what the hell they run into. Also I switched which specific Redemption is on the playlist, because I was listening to Red Handed Denial again and their Redemption was vibing way more than the Hammerfall one. They link up to Godhunter and Soulbound in subject matter, and lead directly into…
(You, you won’t escape me, I’ll rise from the deep/In this final moment, no words left to say/I can’t let you be when a life fades away/You, you won’t escape me ‘cause I’ll set you free)
(Dark matter falling from the sky/Dancing flames reflecting in your eyes as you watch them burn/Watching all your riches witches burn)
(Remember me not for the mess I’ve made/But who I could have been/Finally I’m going home)
World On Fire, This is a Call, The Reckoning, The Wind That Shapes the Land, and Louder Than Words. Switched the order up a bit so it makes more sense chronologically, because the message ‘sent by forces beyond salvation’ has to get there before the reckoning can begin.
(World on fire with a smoking sun/Stops everything and everyone/Brace yourself for all will pay/Help is on the way)
(This is a call to action/This is a call to arms/All lives for one, together/There are no false alarms)
(I see your face, find peace of mind/Between the madness and the sadness and the fire burning/The end of war, the great divine/We’ll see the day of reckoning)
(Search within/Uncover the will to win/Turn against the tide that washes o'er/Find the strength to fall and rise again/Open up the gates, unleash the force/I am the wind that shapes the land/Old as time and twice as strong/Oceans arise at my command/I alone can carry on)
(We have the force to fight/We have the blinding light/A war is more than heard/Coming in louder than words)
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into-control · 3 years
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Into i need help. I bought a oculus quest 2 right and i tried to connect it to my laptop and it wont work so I realized i needed and actual pc gaming setup you know, problem is idk anything about PCs and i dont wanna get scammed. Can you help me? Ive looked online and idk wtf im looking at tbh. Can you give like advice and shit lol 😂 love you into 💕
well i'm not a professional at pcs by any means but i've always had a huge fixation on them so i can try to help as much as possible and i'll even try to put it in simple terms. fair warning, i talk A LOT in this post because i love rambling about computers :') i tried to use the simplest terms possible since you seem confused but if something doesn't make sense just ask and i can try to reword.
it all depends on what you want out of your pc. and do you want to build one or get a prebuilt one? if you want my advice i recommend building one. getting a prebuilt pc is the easiest way to get scammed because retailers tend to overcharge and they think they can get away with it because they stuck a flashy high end graphics card and colourful lights in it even though it has shit airflow and they cheaped out on the motherboard and power supply or something like that. if you're going to get a prebuilt pc make sure you look at allll the specs and consult some online reviews to see if they're any good, and figure out if you're going to be overcharged. now i'll talk about building one. a lot of this will still be useful if you're considering buying a prebuilt though.
the very first step is deciding your budget. idk where you are but in USD the typical amount to spend on pc parts is i think like $1000 - 1500 (you can spend less but that's if you don't have a lot of money to spend and are still desperate to have a gaming pc). i'm spending around $1700 CAD (before taxes, eugh) on mine bc i want to get into more demanding games eventually. it sounds very costly but computers like these can last you a decade and are very multifaceted. figuring out your budget first instead of going right ahead and buying stuff is important because each component should take up specific percentages of your budget. another important thing to consider when deciding your budget is if you want RGB (the colourful lights as previously mentioned), because components with that capability are slightly more expensive.
after deciding your budget, your first move is deciding what graphics card (GPU) you want. the GPU is responsible for processing and presenting the visuals on your screen. theoretically it should take up between 35 - 40% of your budget because it is the powerhouse in a gaming system. you have two developers to choose from here: NVIDIA or AMD. from what i've seen people tend to prefer NVIDIA but AMD cards aren't bad and they definitely compete in performance. i'll talk about nvidia though because that's what i know more about. by searching up the oculus quest 2 system requirements it tells me you at least need an nvidia geforce gtx 970. this card came out in 2014 and is by no means bad however it is actually the same base price as a lot of newer cards. if you want to go better than the minimum requirements, first consider what your monitor is capable of. if you don't have one yet, consider what you want it to do. monitors are not considered a part of the budget i keep mentioning by the way. idk how much this matters to you since we're talking about the oculus quest 2 but i'm just kind of assuming you're going to use this pc for other games too. the main two things to take into consideration are max resolution and refresh rate. my monitor has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a 144hz refresh rate. what the resolution means is that there are 2,073,600 pixels in the screen, and can go up to a resolution of 1080p in video games. the refresh rate means the monitor can refresh the picture on the screen 144 times a second, therefore can show a max of 144 frames per second in a video game. to put that in to perspective, most screens have a refresh rate of 60hz, such as regular laptop screens, iphone screens, etc.. monitors come in mainly 60hz, 75hz, 144hz, and 165hz, and for resolution they mainly come in 1080p, 1440p, and 4k. seeing as i don't have any plans on upgrading my monitor any time soon, dropping extra money on a GPU that can achieve more than 144fps and 1440p/4k would be pointless. but forget about the monitor, the oculus quest 2 has a max refresh rate of 120hz and its resolution lies somewhere between 1080p and 1440p. if you know what kind of games you're going to be playing, look up how they perform with different kinds of cards. i'm fairly certain anything above an nvidia geforce rtx 3070 would be pointless because of your display limits, and anything below the nvidia geforce gtx 970 simply won't be enough for the system. you can look at all the GPUs ranked here. after deciding which GPU you want you need to figure out which brand of it you want (NVIDIA themselves, asus, gigabyte, evga, etc), because they all perform at slightly different levels, although the difference is usually only a few frames so it's better to save money. something to watch out for is the quality of the fans in the GPU because if they aren't good, it will overheat and underperform. i'm aiming to get a 3060 or 3060 ti, if that helps. the only problem is that there is currently a worldwide GPU shortage due to covid, tariffs, and the cryptocurrency mining boom (gpus are used in bulk to mine). fortunately there is currently a crypto mining crackdown happening in china, where majority of mining in the world happens, so the demand for GPUs will hopefully start going down soon. you wont be able to build your pc right away but the market is looking better than it has in awhile. this is just about the only argument i have in favor of getting a prebuilt pc, because they have GPUs in them and are more readily available. i don't think that's a good enough reason though especially since part of the reason i'm building my pc is because it looks fun lol. another thing to note is that you should not overspend on your GPU. the shortage has caused a lot of GPU prices to skyrocket into the $2k-3k range but none of them should be above 1k except the highest end ones. when deciding on a GPU, search up the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP). cards made by brands other than AMD and NVIDIA will almost always cost a little extra, but do not pay hundreds of
extra dollars. but anyways!! the GPU is now out of the way and is definitely the longest paragraph here because it's the most important part.
next up is the central processing unit (CPU), which you should be spending about 20 - 25% of your budget on. its job is essentially to retrieve instructions from the RAM and execute it. i suppose you could call it the brain. again you have two developers to choose from, this time between intel and AMD. i've had two laptops with an intel CPU and my current one has an AMD CPU and both are very good, however the general consensus is that you can get the same performance for less by going with AMD. CPUs have cores, and each core can run its own process. the more cores you have, the more your pc can think about basically. you can get CPUs will all sorts of amounts of cores but for gaming, 4 or 6 cores is all you really need. 8 is actually already a bit overkill. so you really don't need to get the best CPU out there. the one you get should depend on what GPU you get (hence choosing that component first). you don't want to bottleneck your GPU by getting a CPU that isn't good enough for it, but bottlenecking your CPU with the GPU by a small amount isn't as big of a deal because the goal is to allow your GPU to be used to its full ability. another detail about CPU is clock speed, which determines how quick it can complete tasks. the higher the faster, obviously. my (non gaming) laptop's CPU clock speed is 2.30 GHz and has 4 cores. the cpu i have for my build is the AMD ryzen 5 5600x. it has a base clock speed of 3.7 GHz but it can be maxed out to 4.6 GHz, and it has 6 cores. the oculus quest 2 has a minimum requirement of the AMD ryzen 5 1500x or the intel i5-4590, which is a little low on the performance list. but like i said the CPU should depend on the GPU. all it takes is a google search for which CPU goes best with the GPU you've chosen and you can find several answers depending on if you want the best possible performance, best budget performance, etc.. a nice little fact about choosing AMD over intel is that most AMD CPUs will come with a stock cooler, which is absolutely necessary otherwise your CPU will overheat (this is another thing prebuilts will cheap out on). this only adds to the whole price-to-performance thing. the stock cooler will most likely do unless you push your pc or want the build to look prettier.
next on the list is a motherboard, where all the parts come together in unity. you should spend 8 - 10% of your budget on this baby. it's easy to over and underspend on a mobo. the most important thing when it comes to choosing a mobo is that it supports your CPU. you cannot use the same mobo for intel and AMD CPUs. fortunately the product page will straight up tell you which CPU brand the mobo is meant for and will typically have two versions of the same board. it's important to note that motherboards don't always have onboard wifi, meaning it wont be able to connect to the internet via wifi and instead needs an ethernet cable or an external wifi adapter. if you can't get an ethernet cable to the room where you want your pc, you're going to need onboard wifi, or a wifi card/usb. onboard wifi mobos tend to be more expensive so it's up to you, but i personally bought one with wifi included so i wouldn't have to worry about it because our ethernet cables are in the basement and i'm upstairs. another very important thing about motherboards is that their BIOS version (operating system i guess?? idk how else to describe it) doesn't always support your CPU out of the box and must be updated before using it. this can present as a problem if you don't have another CPU to perform the update with, however some motherboards allow you to 'flash' the BIOS with a only usb drive as long as it's hooked up to power. there are plenty of step by step youtube videos about how to do this. i will have to do this with my motherboard when the time comes because it doesn't support ryzen 5s out of the box. don't let this deter you from getting a certain board as long as it has a BIOS flash feature. next up is what I/O ports you want, which are the ports (usb ports, headphone/mic jack, hdmi port, etc) you'd find on the back of any desktop computer. that is the side of the motherboard. basically just be aware of how many of each ports you want, and remember that there will probably be even more ports on the front of the case you get. the last thing i can think of right now is making sure your motherboard has all the headers (where you plug components in) you want it to have but i'll get to that later.
next up on the list is RAM, aka random access memory. this stores short term data. the amount of RAM you have kind of determines how much your pc can multitask. RAM sticks typically go up by some multiple of 2GB. most standard laptops and desktops nowadays will come with 8GB of RAM, which is enough for day to day use. it can be enough for mid and low end games however it cuts it pretty close most of the time. 16GB of RAM is the sweet spot for gaming and anything above that is pretty much overkill (and once again a waste of money) as long as you don't have a billion unnecessary background processes. a large amount of RAM is typically needed for video editors or computer programmers. you should always make sure your motherboard can support the amount of RAM you want although any good motherboard will support 64GB or even 128GB. the best option is to get a 16GB RAM pack, which will include two 8GB RAM sticks. splitting RAM between two sticks will increase efficiency. this is called dual channel. i also recommend getting DDR4 RAM, which is simply faster than DDR3. a good speed to have is around 3600 MHz. make sure your motherboard supports DDR4. you also want to be weary that your RAM is compatible with your CPU brand because they do have to interact for your pc to function.
next is storage. there are three-ish options here depending on how much you're willing to spend. generally you should spend 8 - 10% of the budget here. you can always get a good ole hard drive for the cheapest, however they are the slowest and physically biggest option, meaning whatever you put on it will take a bit longer for your pc to retrieve and open (they can load about 100-200MB of data per second). the next option is a solid state drive. they are a little more expensive but can load as much as 600MB of data per second and take up less space. the last and most efficient/expensive option is an m.2 nvme drive. these things are physically absolutely tiny and can load up to 4GB of data per second. anything you put on these will open very very quickly. the fairly standard solution for this is a combination of two of these three. personally i'm using one m.2 drive and one hard drive. the hard drive i have can store 2TB while the m.2 drive can only store 256GB. funnily enough these two drives are roughly the same price. the idea here is to install your operating system on the faster drive. this makes it so it only takes like 8 seconds tops for your pc to start up. you can also put any other programs you use most often on there (like your main browser and favourite games) and they will open very quickly, while the bulk of your games and other files will go on the bigger drive. that's all there really is to say for storage, just make sure the reviews are good on the drive you want to get, but that goes for any component.
next is your power supply (PSU). very very important to not cheap out on this. 6 - 8% of the budget should go to this. the function of the PSU is to do exactly what its name implies: supply power to all the components. this is where the website pcpartpicker can come in very handy. not only does it help you build a list of parts that are all compatible with each other, it will also estimate how much wattage you will need to run your pc. 600W is usually enough for a normal gaming pc. PSUs are ranked, and you should never really go below a bronze ranking. you can also choose between non-modular, semi-modular, and fully-modular PSUs. non-modular PSUs have all the cables permanently attached. this can be desirable to people who are confused by what cable is plugged in where but also undesirable as unused cables cannot be removed and make cable management harder. fully-modular PSUs come with the cables all in a separate bag so you choose which ones to plug in. semi-modular power supplies have the necessary cables attached and the rest can be attached need be. it all depends on preference and how much faith you have in yourself. i have an 80+ gold certified fully modular 750W PSU because the thought of unnecessary cable management makes me sick lol. corsair is pretty much the most trusted brand for power supplies. be careful because this is another place prebuilts will cut corners.
now for the case! this one isn't overly difficult to choose and mainly will just appeal to your aesthetics. it's less important to stick to a precise percent of the budget for this one but you also don't want to spend more than 8%. do you want a black case? a white one? do you want a glass side panel so you can see inside your pc and admire your hard work? besides that, you also need to make sure the case is big enough for your motherboard, GPU, and PSU. most info pages for cases will tell you the max size of the GPU and PSU and what size of mobo it's meant for. you also want to make sure there is a place to put your storage drives (unless you only have m.2 drives which are installed on the motherboard). you also want to make sure it has optimal airflow abilities. a case with no airflow will cause overheating. the best ones have mesh fronts and tops to allow cool air to be pulled in and hot air out. it's even better if you can get a case that comes with fans in the front, because they are what pulls that cool air in.
next is the CPU cooler, which i briefly mentioned. if you don't get an AMD CPU then you'll need to buy a separate cooler. you can choose between air coolers (a fan and a heatsink) or liquid coolers. i don't really have much to say about them and i recommend doing your own research on liquid coolers lol.
last but not least, case fans. like i said a lot of cases will come with front fans and also an exhaust fan at the back, however you might want more, or even replace the ones you already have with better ones. pay attention to how many fans your case manual says can fit and plan accordingly. check out reviews to see if the fans you want are quiet and efficient. if you buy a three pack of case fans there is a chance it will come with a fan hub. this makes it easier to control all of them in sync because the hub will connect all the fans to one header on the motherboard. generally 3-6 fans are pretty good for a gaming pc. two or three in the front pulling in cool air, one at the back and two on the top to pull out hot air.
now that i have all the components out of the way i'm gonna talk about RGB lighting. numerous components that i've mentioned have the option of including LED lights to make your pc brightly coloured, which is always nice if you have a glass side panel on your pc. it's an extra bit of money but i personally was willing to sacrifice that because i want to show off my build lmao. motherboards, RAM sticks, GPUs, CPU coolers, and case fans are the main components that can come with RGB lighting. you can also get special LED strips and power connectors designed for PCs. if you decide to go for RGB lighting, do try to stick to one RGB ecosystem, meaning make sure all the RGB components can be controlled by one program. RGB is controlled by your motherboard. for example if you get an asus motherboard you'll probably want to use their program, aura sync. most components can be controlled by any brand's program however if the motherboard itself has RGB lighting it can only be controlled via its own brand's program, along with the GPU. if you want RGB case fans you really have to make sure your motherboard has RGB headers (the thingy on the motherboard where you plug the fan's LED lights into). most motherboards will only have two-ish RGB headers so if you're going to buy a bunch of fans make sure they come with a fan hub, which lets you plug them all into one header on the motherboard. also, never sacrifice performance for RGB. specifically when it comes to GPUs. if you have a choice between a GPU with RGB and a GPU without RGB, always take the one that has better performance (given it's within the parameters i mentioned earlier).
that's all i have to say :) if you couldn't tell i really love this stuff. i will also recommend you watch youtube videos about this, you can see the build process and the reasoning for using each component, and also tips on what to do and what not to do. i hope this helps and wasn't too confusing. i know you said this is mainly because you got an oculus quest 2 but if you're going to get a gaming pc you should definitely consider games outside of the oculus too.
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lycaran · 3 years
Text
Meet Lonnie
So uh...May have made a Hardenshipping fankid.
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His name's Lonnie, an orphan street kid that Archie and Maxie adopted who counts as a fankid in my eyes, god damn it.
I can’t draw muscles or children to save my life.
Originally @cryptidanaphafsi​ did this I with their fankid I believe? 
Info under the cut because I really started to ramble about details...A lot. 
Bad Quality picture, but his adult versions both have a keystone in the middle of their mask that they use for Mega Evolution.
Notes:
RSE canon is Emerald, which leads in Alpha Sapphire in the future, though in this canon way, RSE events get resolved Without a protagonist. Hypothetical game futures for the SM and USUM games.
RSE Version -
-Still living on the streets at this point, 8-10 in age.
-Met a few times over the course of the story, usually found hiding around a corner after an encounter with Maxie or Archie(outside of hideout encounters), seems mostly in awe of how cool the plans seem.
-Selectively mute, if talked to he'll make gestures towards the player but since the player is about ten, all you really get from talking to him is "...."
-Jumpy, running off as soon as the player is done talking
-Vitiligo
-In the Sapphire & Emerald versions of the game, post game, he's absolutely Terrified of Kyogre, developing Aquaphobia as he grows older.
-Sometime post game, Archie and Maxie pick him up bc he still seems to tag along just behind one of them, and hey, the kid needs a home. And when they’ve patched things up, they’re really good dad’s.
ORAS Version, constants-
- Adopted pre-game and raised by Maxie and Archie before they split bc of differing ideals...again.
- Mid-twenties.
- Team Magma Admin.
- Aquaphobia from past trauma, selectively mute.
- I can't draw muscles but he's definitely the strongest person there, thanks to Archie and a bit of Matt.
- As an adult, Vitiligo patches have spread and caused part of his hair to grow in white.
- Personality wise, he's a rather nice man, only really being a sore loser. And takes after Maxie alot in the brains department, including dumbassery. 
- He’s dating both an Aqua Grunt and a Magma Grunt, don’t tell his dads though. A grunt in the Magma hideout asks you if you want to place a bet on that happens when the bosses find out, then realizes you are Not one of the grunts, and runs off.
- Aqua Grunt is named Dew
- Magma Grunt is named Ashe
- I will draw them eventually, they will be mentioned elsewhere.
Omega Ruby -
-he appears somewhat sporadically, usually around Maxie. Fought once at Mossdeep city when the player beats the gym, viewing the player as a threat to Maxie's goal...and wanting to make use of himself, aquaphobia keeping him from following the rest of the team down to the Seafloor Cavern. Team: Crobat, Camerupt, Mightyena, Sealeo.
-A Grunt, Ashe, follows him around and acts as an interpreter. Talking directly to Lonnie is always "..." before the grunt buts in to explain what he's trying to say.
-When defeated by the player, he'll turn to the grunt, signing furiously, only for the grunt to exclaim "I can't say that to a child!" before Lonnie leaves in a huff.
- During the Delta Episode he's fought at the Magma Hideout, without Ashe, absolutely Livid about what Zinnia did to Maxie, and fighting the player as soon as they enter, seeing them as just something else that'll upset his dad. Team: Crobat, Camerupt, Mightyena, Walrein.
- Post Delta Episode, you'll actually find him alone in a house on the Battle Resort. When talked to, he still won't talk, but after interacting with him Maxie walks in to explain that he and his son were there, trying to lay low, relax a bit, and they're waiting on "a certain someone" to show up for a talk.
Alpha Sapphire Version, aka the Canon Version-
- Not very active story wise, always seen rather ominously popping up mere seconds after an interaction with Team Aqua. He doesn't have an interpreter this time, so all the player really gets is "...." then a yes/no text box before he leaves.
- Appears on Mt. Chimney with Maxie to try and stop Team Aqua's little attempt. Maxie will actually translate some of what Lonnie's trying to say, and while it would be nice, he doesn't exactly explain Why Lonnie tends to be tailing Team Aqua, Archie most specifically
-And ho boy. When Kyogre gets awoken, this poor man is having the Worst day.
- In Sootopolis, he's seen quite visibly shaking, signing Something at Archie, who might be having a "Oh shit." moment and a half because his Son is VERY MUCH AFRAID OF WATER, AND VERY MUCH CAN. NOT. SWIM.
- So yeah. Not a fun time.
- Half of what he's signing is ruined by how shaky his hands are. Ashe looks ready to strangle Archie, and Dew is reeling from the reality and Actually starts cursing Archie out as soon as the player leaves to handle Kyogre.
- Tbh if the two boys didn’t start trying to murder Archie first, Maxie might’ve.
- When Kyogre is captured, when the player leaves and all is said and done, he gives the player a piece of Cameruptite with a small little Thank You note.
- Battle Resort/Battle Maison, he is once again found in a house, but this time Maxie is already there. And once the player talks to the two, Archie walks in, but when that happens, the player is asked to leave so they can have a Family chat.
Sun & Moon Games-
- Okay this is just me being self indulgent and including him in my favorite games of the series, plus it’s just neat.
- Basically, he’s there on a honeymoon with Ashe and Dew.
- Even after the teams disbanded, he’s very partial to his Magma outfit. Only real change coming coming from the removal of the Magma symbols on his vest. Still keeping the combined symbols on his mask.
- More or less appears as a cameo. The only reason they’re even having a Honeymoon in Alola is because it has both Water and Volcanos near eachother.
- Shows up in post game, investigating the Altar of the Sunne/Moone as the idea of other worlds really peaked his interest.
- Funny Images: 6′0″ string bean and a 5′7″ man with average muscle trying to carry a 6′5″ man with muscle from hell because the waves touched him and he freaked out.
Ultra Sun & Moon Games - 
- Mostly the same.
- With the addition of the player actually getting his help against Rainbow Rocket
- When reaching the mansion, Lonnie will be there. Along with Ashe and Dew.
- He’ll then “ask” which side the player wants to take on, fighting either Archie or Maxie depending on choice. Vs. Archie, he takes Ashe with him, Vs. Maxie, he takes Dew. The other of his husbands goes with the player to help handle the other boss.
- After this, you can find Lonnie, Dew, and Ashe at the battle tree.
- Funny Images: Trying to get Lonnie onto Aether, a man made island in the middle of the ocean.
Pokespe Version -
- His age is more me throwing darts at a board trying to guess when shit happens.
- He’s alot more playful and joking in this version.
Ruby Sapphire Chapter -
- 16
-Actually adopted prior to the Ruby&Sapphire Chapter, but in a surprising twist, stays mainly with Archie.
- Interacts with Ruby and Sapphire once, maybe twice through the whole Manga.
- Hard for Archie to be intimidating with a giant of a teen in a life jacket clinging to him everytime they get near water, but he makes it work
- He stays with Arche and team Aqua for two reasons and two reasons only
- One, he lacks past trauma with Kyogre in pokespe, thus doesn’t fear water as much and can stand to be around it more. Two, alchoholics scare him more than water ever could.
-Along with that, Archie also has the safer public persona, so win win on his part
- Lonnie, being a teen, does tend to wander though. Barely seen for most of the chapters. When Archie and Maxie have their fight, he's there for a split second, before letting out his Crobat and fleeing.
-I don't have it all ironed out, but basically, the whole battles between Magma and Aqua through the whole arc have slowly built up this fear in Lonnie's brain when it comes to his dad's, and this is the tipping point.
- Sadly, both leaders are a bit preoccupied to notice at first that he's gone, and it's a fullblown panic after the fact.
-Sadly tho, this doesn't slow down their plans. But Blaise and Amber are put in charge of trying to track him down and find him.(Not in a bad way, more in a Extremely worried parents with a missing son way)
- Cue end of arc.
Emerald Arc
-still 16
-Makes brief cameos, he tends to linger around the back.
- Actually, screw it, I'll make this pretty later but he and Emerald do become friends.
- Has a small interaction with Emerald, writing about how he finds his equipment cool, and is in awe of how he calms pokemon.
-And boy oh does this lead to some Fun
- Cut the confrontation with Guile in the cave, the first Jirachi attempt
- Alot changes here.
- First of all, while Jirachi still escapes, Guile lingers for a moment. Looking at Lonnie for a long moment. And while he does 'reflect' back the attacks with his sword, he sends the attack flying off into a wall instead of at Emerald and Lonnie.
- Later, Guile actually snatches the poor kid, pulling off somewhere just to have a few moments to make sure he's okay
- If you know the manga, you know it's gonna be revealed to Lonnie at this point that Guile is, in fact, Archie. And while he tries to avoid the details, he does tell Lonnie he needs Jirachi to fix things
- Lonnie assumes, sadly naive, that this has to do with Maxie and their family. Even asking Archie where his other dad is, only to be met with silence.
- That doesn't settle well with him, actually demanding to know what happens, atleast as much as you can demand when you can’t talk. The last he heard about them was nearly destroying Hoenn so what happened?
- Archie doesn’t tell him, straight up Refuses to tell him what happened.
- This does not go well. Leading to Lonnie once more running off.
- Lonnie keeps in touch with Emerald after the arc is over, basically adopted him as a little brother because they’re both weird looking kids, Emerald being unusually short, and Lonnie having Vitiligo.
- He runs into Amber after this and kind of just, vibes there, treats Amber like an uncle, and that’s who looks after him for the next few years.
ORAS Arc -
- 20
-Lives with Amber, mostly helping the man with fishing and all around, just trying to have someone around he can 'talk' to without needing an interpreter or to write down every word he says.
-Team Aqua....2!
-He does end up joining the New Team Aqua, since he feels more safe with them in Pokespe. Along with this, he’s curious about where they came from and what’s going on here.
-Looks most like my concept sketch for him in this version.
- Eventually just, disepears in the midst of fighting. He's learned enough and doesn't want to face that all.
- Listen when I tell you. When he sees Maxie and Archie, he's pissed.
-And when The Dustening happens...
- He actually does cry. Hell, it's probably the only time he speaks, begging in a hoarse voice he never uses for his dad's to stay there. Just for once. Let them be a family just for Once.
- It doesn't work.
- Funny Images: Emerald, looking up at Lonnie who is like 3-4 times their height: “I AM GOING TO STEAL YOUR KNEECAPS!!!!” Lonnie, amused, signing: “You-can-try.”
-Pokemon Seen: Crobat, Sharpedo, Sandslash.
Sun and Moon Arc -
- 22
-He actually appears here.
- Listen, he's a smart man, and he knows a lot.
-Appears after that small time skip after Sun and Moon disepear through the portals, ultimately he's here investigating the portals.
- He 'talks' with Kukui and Burnet to try and figure out what's going on.
-I don't know how it'd be incorporated, but basically, he's trying to figure out where the Hell his dad's are. And if these Wormholes can help him, by god is he going to use them
- Knows that, most likely, they’re dead and gone for good. But still holds out hope that somewhere out there, they’re still alive.
- He's still wearing the life jacket. Less for Aesthetic, more because he’s scared shitless about being on an island.
- Are this chapter is where he would have started dating Dew and Ashe, having met them when that whole, other Team Aqua & Magma were made in ORAS.
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amerasdreams · 3 years
Text
I have been listening to True Spies podcast on Spotify. It’s apparently connected to a thing called Spyscape, which has a museum/experience thing in New York. They also have an online test for your personality and intelligence.... well those intelligence tests all of course have to do with math. and they are TIMED. somehow I got thru guessing most of them.... didn’t score 0 but didn’t score great. 
so guess what I scored on intelligence!  and personality scores mean I’m more prone to health problems and being unhappy.... :( 
(here I woke up thinking I can be uniquely me, I don’t want to be like anyone else anyway, I can embrace that... but how can I when what I am is this pathetic)
I shouldn’t have done this, I know what these tests do, make me discouraged and hate myself more. they even said I’m not imaginative and creative-- things I value most besides intelligence (and intuition/empathy...) 
they did say the “spy role��� I was most suited for, which is what I’m most interested in, intelligence analyst. But in the more “practical” side, for jobs, it mentioned medical things, technical things, which I wouldn’t be good at and don’t like, business marketing-- working for a business I don’t care about, a job with no meaning....  it even had mathematician! when I’m obviously not good at math. the only jobs I might be interested in are psychologist/criminologist... idk.... to late for me to get any career anyway, let alone somehow what I really want
they did a risk assessment, where you blow up the balloon before it pops to get “money” - yesterday I started it and panicked when the balloon popped the first time and closed the window. then when I was walking the dogs it occured to me it was a test lol and I would just have to keep risking popping the balloon... so today I saw it as more of a game and not the ‘scary balloon popping oh no I lost money!” -not even real money. idk about fun.... all these things were stressful esp the intelligence test. 
today I started the test, thinking it might help me, get insight into what I can do, instead, it discouraged me, I’m what I thought, mediocre and not suited for much, they only gave a “role” to me because they had to give me something. It said the intelligence analyst is inquisitive--when it just said I wasn’t -  idk how this even fits with the test bc analytical? that wasn’t one of the dimensions and doesn’t seem like I scored high on implied analytical powers, same with determined-- 
how can i live with myself being like this, having no role and no future according to any dimension that really counts. don’t want to be plodding away at menial tasks when I want to do something Imaginative, Creative, Intellectual-- ha can’t even do that
oh I’m proving them right, easily stressed and sensitive and reactive -- 
I’m not including the risk assessment bc I don’t think it’s accurate-- I’m really very risk averse in all cases... oh we know that already so. 
~
results (bold/parentheses is mine)
MENTAL HORSEPOWER
Unlike Alan Turing would, you scored moderately low {yay!:(} on this attribute. The result, driven by your performance in the personality tests, suggests that, on the whole, you struggle with complex mathematical and analytical problems. {so how can I be an analyst?} That said, you can usually spot patterns and find links in data – as long as the information you have been given isn’t too abstract. (I like big picture things.... abstract things... apparently I’m not good at it)
IN YOUR DAILY LIFE
Like other people with a moderately low Mental Horsepower score, you are more likely to ‘go with your gut’ when making decisions rather than to apply logic and reason (that’s true.... logic is mystifying. fits with being INFP-- logic is my weakest point). It is unlikely that you will sit down and win a game of chess, and you probably rely on your satnav rather than read a map yourself. (yep.... chess is too much strategy... I can’t see ahead like that .. hm how could I be an analyst)
IN YOUR WORK
Because you are not a very conceptual thinker, you are better in roles where you can do things ‘automatically’ rather than applying any abstract reasoning skills. You are not bad at visual-spatial or mathematical tests though, and with training and practice, your skills will definitely improve.
THE SCIENCE
Mental Horsepower relates to our general cognitive ability and our capacity to think about, reason with, and understand abstract concepts. It particularly links to analytical and mathematical skills, but also covers memory, comprehension, language, learning capacity and judgement. These are hugely significant skills for success at work and in everyday life.
Psychologists have developed all kinds of tests to measure cognitive ability. Some of these involve predicting outcomes from patterns in data (also known as inductive reasoning), while others focus on mentally flipping and rotating images. We use both of these approaches in our Mental Horsepower tests at SPYSCAPE.
Recent neuroimaging research shows that intelligence is linked to brain patterns, and that these patterns are unique to each of us (meaning you can’t change them :(  )– much like our fingerprints. In one study, these brain ‘fingerprints’ were used to successfully predict people’s scores in IQ tests.
While IQ tests are probably the most common method for determining cognitive ability, there is some debate over whether they provide a complete picture. For example, theories suggest that there are many different types of intelligence which are not accounted for in these tests. Still, it is generally accepted that people who score highly on tests of cognitive ability are on the whole better at completing intelligence-related (so that career’s out... if it was ever in lol) tasks in the real world.
~
COMPOSURE
Unlike Jason Bourne, you scored extremely low (low on everything! what a wonderful person!) on this attribute. The result, driven by your performance in the personality tests, suggests that you are far more vulnerable to stressors than most people (I knew that). You are likely to have a very strong emotional reaction to negative events and your brain becomes highly active when you see something you perceive as unpleasant (like this test!). Although this means you find it hard to relax, it also means you are really tuned in to your surroundings ( and what’s the upside of that? nice consolation prize....)
IN YOUR DAILY LIFE
Like other people with extremely low levels of composure, you are highly likely to experience anxiety and burnout. (with things that aren’t really stressful to anyone else. just stepping outside. just being inside-- doing thigns like this.. doing most things actually-- help how can i live) You can be far too critical of yourself (well how do i stop? if this is how I am like), especially when you are stressed (which is almost all the time), and this can make it tricky for you to overcome problems (which is never, which is why I’m still living w my parents). You also dwell on the past far more than people with high composure.
On the positive side, you are responsive to your environment, which means you are more likely to anticipate negative outcomes and find ways to avoid them (like almost everything). You are also sensitive and caring, and your observant nature means you look out for yourself and the people close to you. (what’s the point of that when you can’t do anything, or get to know new people)
IN YOUR WORK
It is unlikely your colleagues will turn to you when there is an emergency or crisis at work. This is because you struggle to keep your emotions in check, and challenging situations can get the better of you. When this happens, you are not great at maintaining focus or making tough decisions.
THE SCIENCE
Composure relates to how our brains respond to stress. In tense situations, your brain activates an area called the hypothalamus, which releases adrenalin and cortisol – also known as stress hormones.
A bit of stress now and then is important for survival, because it alerts us to the dangers around us. Small amounts can be useful, but too much over a long period of time is bad for our health (oh goody). Studies show that the adrenal cortex, the part of the brain that releases stress hormones, is also linked to the healthy function of our immune system – and people who are more prone to stress are also more likely to get sick.
There is also a connection between composure and working (short-term) memory. Composed people perform better on tasks where they need to recall and use relevant information while they’re doing something else – for example remembering the steps of a recipe when cooking a meal.
PEOPLE SCORING HIGH IN COMPOSURE ARE
LAID-BACK
RELAXED
COOL
FOCUSED
POISED
PEOPLE SCORING LOW IN COMPOSURE ARE
EMOTIONAL
SENSITIVE
PERCEPTIVE
RESPONSIVE
VIGILANT
~
Contentiousness
Unlike diligent Mission: Impossible hero Isla Faust, you scored moderately low on this attribute. The result, driven by your performance in the personality tests, suggests that unlike Isla, you find it difficult to keep focused on long-term goals {Idk about this. goals are all i focus on.... well. I think about them often but Idk how to create the steps to get there and so things fizzle out and I get-- discouraged what else is new). You get distracted or bored quite quickly and are often drawn to new ideas and projects instead of finishing what you are currently doing (well.... hm. I finish novels...). You understand what is important in life, but you sometimes skip the details. (I’m not a detail person... I can be but they often seem irrelevant)
IN YOUR DAILY LIFE
Because you prefer not to a follow a schedule, hobbies that require regular training are not for you. In fact, your interests change quite regularly, and you find long-term commitment a challenge whatever the activity. Friends and family know that if they want you to do something, they need to encourage you to get organized. When they press you, however, you do things pretty well.
IN YOUR WORK
You take a relatively flexible approach to work. As such, you get distracted easily and do not always complete the task in hand. Because of your tendency to do this, you are likely to change jobs – and perhaps even career – fairly regularly (I want variety... Idk, this sort of fits, sort of doesn’t).
THE SCIENCE
Conscientiousness shapes how likely you are to follow rules, regulate your own behavior and get yourself organized. The more conscientious you are, the more motivated by goals and tasks you are likely to be.
According to what psychologists call the ‘Big-5’ model, conscientiousness is a core dimension of personality – and one of the five key traits that drive human behavior. Whether you are high or low in conscientiousness can help predict your success in social, academic and professional situations.
If you have high levels of conscientiousness, you are probably more productive and better at adapting to new situations (that’s true, I’m not) that come your way. However, this does not mean that being conscientious is always a good thing, because research also shows that being too conscientious can lead to overthinking. (I do that too...)
Some studies suggest that people who are more conscientious are healthier – and they might even live longer. This might be because conscientious people are more likely to exercise regularly, eat healthily, and avoid smoking or drinking too much alcohol.
It’s hard to say where conscientiousness comes from. One study found a link with areas of the brain relating to attention and cognitive control. There is also evidence to suggest that genes play their part. It’s likely that social factors such as your upbringing influence how conscientious you are, too.
PEOPLE SCORING HIGH IN CONSCIENTIOUSNESS ARE
HIGH-ACHIEVING
ACCOUNTABLE
THOROUGH
DRIVEN
SELF-DISCIPLINED
PEOPLE SCORING LOW IN CONSCIENTIOUSNESS ARE
IMPULSIVE
FLEXIBLE
EASY-GOING
SPONTANEOUS
ADAPTABLE
(I think I’m sort of this, sort of not because I’m borderline INFP -- P is flexible, impulsive while J is more structured-- I’m slightly more Perceiving. goes to show Myers-Briggs is pretty good at describing personality accurately....)
~
INQUISITIVENESS
Unlike Carrie Mathison in Homeland, you scored moderately low on this attribute. Your score was driven by your performance in the personality tests, and it suggests that you are pretty cautious about new ideas, beliefs, cultures and theories.
IN YOUR DAILY LIFE
Like other people who scored moderately low on this attribute, you are not so willing to take on board other people’s views (that’s true). You will consider what people have to say, but you are likely to stick with your own opinion. You feel more comfortable in familiar situations and surroundings (well, yes...), and you do not really feel the need to explore new places (I kind of do, though... I want to but I often... don’t. because it’s too hard).
IN YOUR WORK
Because you aren’t motivated to learn or acquire new skills (Idk about this... depends on if it’s something I’m interested in. I’m learning like 15 languages on Duolingo...), you are less likely to seek out new opportunities at work. And the longer you stay in a job, the worse your motivation is likely to get. In general, you tend to perform better when you start a new position, although you will carry this out using the same approach you always have, rather than approach it in a new way. You like real-world, practical work that has straightforward solutions.
THE SCIENCE
Inquisitiveness is an important trait for discovering new things and building a better understanding of people and of the world around us. Psychologists have developed tools for assessing and measuring how inquisitive a person is.
These are based on extensive research into personality and are designed to evaluate five facets related to inquisitiveness: (i) intellectual curiosity; (ii) aesthetic sensitivity; (iii) active imagination; (iv) attentiveness to inner feelings and; (v) preference for variety.
Furthermore, personality researchers have identified two types of inquisitiveness; ‘epistemic’, which refers to information seeking ( I think I’m more information seeking?) behaviour and ‘perceptual’, which refers to experience seeking.
PEOPLE SCORING HIGH IN INQUISITIVENESS ARE
CURIOUS
OPEN-MINDED
IMAGINATIVE AND INVENTIVE
CREATIVE
ADAPTIVE
PEOPLE SCORING LOW IN INQUISITIVENESS ARE
PRACTICAL
CONSISTENT
TRADITIONAL
HABITUAL
PRAGMATIC
~
SOCIABILITY
A bit like Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, you scored extremely low (yay. well I knew this... and from answering the questions... )on this attribute, which suggests that you prefer to spend time alone and keep yourself to yourself. You avoid parties, meet-ups and other noisy gatherings because you find them overwhelming (wayyyy). If you really have to socialize, you need plenty of quiet time afterwards to help you rest and recharge.
IN YOUR DAILY LIFE
Like others with an extremely low sociability score, you don’t like being the center of attention and often struggle to start conversations. You think a lot before speaking and regularly find it hard to express your thoughts and ideas. Because of this, you often let others do the talking, and you don’t take part in small talk either. This behavior means you might come across as socially reactive, and people may think you only talk to them when you feel you really have to (as in, extremely negative, and I shouldn’t exist. although... i do talk to them if I have to.... haha I do take part in small talk because I think I have to. or people will think I’m rude. but I don’t like it. I’m sensitive to how I’m perceived and don’t want to be seen as too antisocial, but I talk to others out of fear not of want... yikes. no wonder no one wants to be around me. well I don't want to be around them. well - I want to be around people I know well. for limited amounts of time... need less to recharge from people I know than strangers. I want to be with them, I don’t want to be with strangers-- it’s only stress and not fun at all. but how do i get past the stranger part to the friend part if I don’t like being with strangers and it’s all stressful adn overwhelming? How do i participate in society, have people to talk to, have any sort of success??? - shouldn't exist.).
IN YOUR WORK
Because you are more comfortable working independently (please. HOW???? besides working for myself... haha can’t work for anyone else bc can’t get past the interview, these ^ traits are obvious and not something any employer in their right mind wants), you will be more productive – and much happier – managing your own workload, tackling problems alone, and avoiding company brainstorms and powwows.
THE SCIENCE
How sociable you are can be linked to your levels of happiness, positivity, and wellbeing. In fact, sociability relates to a variety of positive outcomes in life, including how successful you are at work, how well you cope with challenging situations, and even how physically and mentally healthy you are. (yay. I’m doomed. I might as well kill myself now)
People who are highly sociable are more positive emotionally (case in point!) than those who are less sociable. In one brain imaging study, people with a high sociability score had higher levels of brain activity when they saw images of happy faces and other positive emotions.
The same part of the brain that processes emotions also helps interpret information from social contexts, which means we can judge a social situation and then respond appropriately (social situations, like math problems and logic, are mystifying to me. yay the things that are highest linked to success--).
There is some evidence to suggest that highly sociable people might be better at detecting and decoding the meaning of social cues –  including how they analyze and read people’s faces (oh, I know that. I have a hard time judging people’s faces, in fact I often think they are mad at me or judging me by their faces when they probably aren’t. I even have trouble finding out what emotions go with what emoji! besides the basics. i mean why, how are there so many emojis....). This means they are likely to find social interaction easier to deal with than others (lol yes. it’s . not easy. why. do i have to be born like this. always been. hell..).
There is also research to suggest that highly sociable people have more connections between regions of the brain that involve visual stimulus and regions that process social and emotional stimuli. (brains are better, we get it)
Sociability might also be associated with the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is linked to reward-seeking behavior. It is thought that people who are highly sociable may have an enhanced response to dopamine in the brain, which makes them pursue rewards such as attention, status, power or pleasure. This would explain why, when they get these things, they feel happier or more satisfied.
PEOPLE SCORING HIGH IN SOCIABILITY ARE
TALKATIVE
FRIENDLY
ENTHUSIASTIC
ENERGETIC
EXCITABLE
PEOPLE SCORING LOW IN SOCIABILITY ARE
QUIET
RESERVED
INTROSPECTIVE
PRIVATE
SHY
^ ALLL negative attributes, I need to just kill myself now, no future. 
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jawnkeets · 4 years
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How are you so clever??? I’m new to your blog and I’ve been looking at your posts (not in a stalkery way but because they’re so cool) and you seem super intelligent! Like you always reference things I’ve never heard of and use fancy words and it’s just really awesome. How did you get so clever? Do you read a lot or are you just naturally clever? If it’s from reading then what books would you recommend to someone who’s interested in literature and also broadening their general knowledge? Thanks
awwww. well thanks for the lovely ask!! this is way too much detail bc i’m procrastinating work but
i read a ton as a kid, mostly horror books - i was obsessed with the supernatural, and especially vampires, and the idea of things changing into other things (in a magical way, but also stories where characters develop and end up very different, tales of betrayal etc). my favourite series when i was little was the spiderwick chronicles, followed a little later by the saga of darren shan. i didn’t read any classic literature at all though, as i’d decided i hated it for some reason. as a kid i always prided myself on my creativity/ imagination rather than my intelligence (it’s a distinction i’d always drawn and still do after a fashion), but i was and have always been obsessive, and also used to sit and play memory games for hours, too; i remember one where i’d have a list of cards and i’d put one down, say what it was, turn it over, add another one, say what the previous one and this one was, turn them over, and continue until i couldn’t remember every single card in order, and then i’d start again. i wrote a lot, especially poetry, and used a thesaurus often because i loved words. i had a very very vivid imagination and refused to live in the real world until the age of about 11 or 12. then from 14 onwards i read almost nothing (apart from like idk two of the hunger games books) until i was 17, when i finally started reading classic literature, triggered by the great gatsby, which changed my attitude to learning completely. until then i’d despised secondary school partly because of the way learning was presented (i got good grades at gcse but went through the syllabus and exams mechanically with little genuine love) and partly for… other reasons, and had almost given up on taking academics seriously. but i got very lucky and had an incredible english teacher throughout sixth form, who encouraged me to take risks and break from methodical, formulaic writing. at the end of the first essay i had to do for him i still remember that he wrote ‘literature is for you. now and always. carry on.’ at the bottom, and that changed my life. he also introduced me to philip larkin and romantic poetry outside of class. after that, i was gripped by the desire to read and discover as much about the humanities as i could, make links between works, discover new ones, recover the feeling that i was possessed by after finishing gatsby. tumblr genuinely helped with art, literature quotes, and making it all seem accessible, e.g. seeing text posts making jokes about shakespeare, keats, etc helped to demystify a bit. yes, dark academia, i’m also looking at you for making learning seem exciting, but tentatively and with narrowed eyes. general knowledge-wise, it helped me to begin to break down the barriers between ‘subjects’ at school (even if you’ve left school, it’s pretty branded into our brains); they’re sometimes very fuzzy and even arbitrary, and to separate into strictly-defined categories like this is not the only way learning can or should happen.
a work that i thoroughly recommend to everyone who asks where to start is letters to a young poet by rainer maria rilke. he relates so perfectly this idea that the first step is to let yourself be filled with how amazing and vast the world is, and how much there is to read, listen to, and see. that’s not something you can learn from reading, and it’s not something you can be taught by anyone (unless being inspired by someone counts). it’s instrumentally important because it will drive you, but i also think it’s inseparable from understanding (and to me, it is understanding, just understanding without the right words yet). this is the highlight, and it was the mantra stuck up on my wall at 17 when i decided i wanted to learn, and learn seriously:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
i was relatively articulate before i started reading the classics/ reading widely, but not exceptionally articulate. here’s an example of two essay openings - one i wrote when i was 16, and one i wrote during my first term at university (2 years apart):
Tumblr media Tumblr media
i’d say that since then my essays have probably improved by a similar proportion, as i’m as embarrassed to read the second as i was the first when i wrote the second, and the typos r annoying me (am too embarrassed to post recent writing :’( - doesn’t count if over a year and a half ago, hence posting the second :p). obviously, then, this isn’t natural intelligence (everyone has to get knowledge, big words, etc from somewhere, right?), this is natural receptivity and willingness to learn, which i genuinely believe anyone can gain at any point, coupled with A LOT of reading the opinions of others (i.e. literary criticism and theory), and reading literature from many different periods to discover how language is moulded by individual poets and by ‘eras’ more widely. but this is also synthesising everything i absorb into a personal vision (this is the hill i will die on soz i don’t think theory should be ‘objective’ like what does that even mean). you can and should put yourself into it!
in terms of what to read - if you like the rilke (really hope you do!!) then depending on what you like about it, you can search from there. try some of rilke’s poetry. or if you like that ineffable feeling it brings, try the romantics (keats’ ‘ode to a nightingale’ and blake’s songs of innocence and experience are good to start with!), or larkin’s ‘high windows’ and ‘the mower’. also try shakespeare’s hamlet, because that is INCREDIBLE (watching it is always easier, and the more shakespeare you watch/ read the easier it gets! andrew scott’s hamlet is the best imo). from there it’s a question of asking what you liked about what you just read (time period/ vibe/ themes/ subject/ style of writing) and finding things similar - often google works and i made use of it a lot to start with, tumblr too, otherwise ask people who you know (on the internet/ teachers/ friends etc). this is a personal journey, especially to begin with, i think (you have to jump in somewhere), and there’s no one who can give you a list of books to read in the order best for you, because - annoyingly, i know - that’s something it’s best if each individual works out through trial and error, and part of the fun in truth. there are western canon lists out there, e.g., which contain some fabulous works, but have very obvious problems. 
a really really rough chronological development of english lit: beowulf, any of the canterbury tales, hamlet, paradise lost, pope’s satire, romantic poetry, victorian novels (e.g. david copperfield, jane eyre), the waste land, waiting for godot (it would also help to read the iliad, the aeneid, and metamorphoses too, and as much of the bible as you can, especially genesis, exodus, isaiah, job, and the gospels, but genesis and the gospels first if ur stuck/ overwhelmed). this is the lightest of pencil sketches, but if they’re works that go some way towards defining each ‘era’ or ‘period’, then it becomes a little easier to search for works branching off from these that are influenced by or chafe against them. you can always come back to me if you’re struggling with what to look for next :+) also, i have a list of my poetry favs, if you want to check that out (it includes the stuff mentioned in the previous paragraph, as well as others).
hope this helps (?!) ❤️
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r0h1rr1m · 3 years
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rambly inception thoughts p.3
bc it got too big in this post i’m gonna start another one of these, ostensibly about my unified theory on what will or won’t fly in dreamshare, tho i’m almost guaranteed to go a little off-topic
the movie says the tech was originally developed as a training tool for the armed forces, and i don’t want to pretend any real knowledge of the american military but i’ve always thought that there’s no way they were there from the beginning unless the very genesis of the idea was already intertwined w the notion of eventually using it to train soldiers. and the tech is so outlandish in premise and would take so much time (even by accelerated movie standards) to become viable and like, there’s an easier way. in the history of dreamshare that i js made up right now, there are 3 main eras. pre-military, where the scientists figured out how not to send ppl directly to limbo immediately upon putting them under (we’ll get there), military, where a lot of the roles/frameworks were discovered and solidified (i will explain what i mean by this, too), and post-military
the last thing i want to add before diving in is a disclaimer. the precise details of how exactly dreamshare works are almost entirely irrelevant to understanding the movie, and so they weren’t included! which means that the beginnings of this will be based in canon, but as i go on, the logic of my worldbuilding increasingly depends on context i js.... made up. so if u wanna go on, js buy into it and bear with me if u like worldbuilding i hope it’s worth it
so i said that before anyone had the genius idea of using dreamshare to let soldiers kill each other over and over and over, it had to exist. which like, duh, but the reason i bring this up is tied into my thoughts abt what limbo is, why it’s possible to go more than one level down in a dream, and why dying would wake u up. come yell at me for refusing to learn anything about lucid dreaming/sleep science, but i’m gonna say that limbo as dreamsharers kno it is the closest a pasiv will get u to natural dreams. “unconstructed dreamspace,” pure subconscious. and it seems like the movie was treating it as an actual place? that would be the same for every dreamer? and u could access it and alter it like a public minecraft server. here my thoughts diverge a little bit into 2 possible scenarios
scenario A) Minecraft Server Limbo: it is an actual, internally consistent entity and not dependent upon each dreamer. which means that the pasiv technology for accessing it isn’t even about shared or lucid dreaming at all, but accessing another sort of other plane/dimension beyond the physical. think cognitive realm a la cosmere, if that reference means anything to you (if not, i’d love to hear what ur analogy would be). this idea is a lot of fun, but doesn’t rly allow for the levels between waking and limbo, or explain why those have to be created new every time.
scenario B) Actually the Subconscious: the way i think about limbo kind of begins w the ideas in this fic, where limbo is unique to everyone. i’m gonna start here in era 1 of my history of dreamshare, by saying that the first experiments w whatever prototype eventually became the pasiv went v poorly bc scientists were js immediately chucking ppl into limbo. like, that’s the default state of dreams w the pasiv, and all the rest came later. so. in a natural dream, ur brain rationalizes anything, and u get the most vividly detailed backstories and explanations for stuff that makes so much sense until u wake up, which is all also true for limbo. this is the reason limbo is so dangerous, is because ur brain’s working overtime to make u forget u’re dreaming and dying to wake up doesn’t work unless u’re absolutely sure u’re dreaming. so the 1st major breakthrough in dreamshare was being able to remember that u were dreaming when u went under.
the first thing the scientists figured out how to do was hold a setting in their head as they were going under so that they could go there in the dream. at this point, they don’t distinguish between settings out of memory and completely original settings bc it hasn’t occurred to them yet. they just knew that trying to imagine a place instead of diving right under puts limits on the dream that help to keep u from getting dragged under and away by ur own subconscious.
to some ppl, the natural thing to do is access a memory. this does interesting things to the makeup of the dream, because memories of places, depending on the person, are constructed from a bunch of different combinations of sounds, smells, visuals, and indefinable ‘feel’ of the dream. to other ppl, the natural (most interesting) thing to do was invent an imaginary setting--mbe a place from a book/movie/tv show (if u don’t watch them closely u js get star trek all the time. so much star trek) if they’re a little creative, or a brand-new fantasyland if they’re a lot creative. these dreams tend to be mostly visual in makeup, since their inspiration is mostly visual. it takes a lot more effort to add details like sounds and smells bc those aren’t instinctively/automatically part of the way the dreamers are used to experiencing, say, the bridge of the enterprise. It’s harder to make imaginary settings feel real, and this is why it’s comparatively more dangerous to dream from memory. the problem is that the way ur brain interprets and stores select information about a place is more concerned with gathering a coherent narrative of the place than with retaining any objective details. recalling this narrative is a subconscious act/uses ur instinctive mental processes while building a new scenario requires ur higher functions. letting ur subconscious run the show instead of staying consciously in charge urself runs the risk of lapsing into natural-dreaming confusion and falling into limbo.
this is the early days of the technology, where scientists didn’t have the expertise to make dreams stable, and the somnacin formula was still crude enough that u could drop from a structured dream into limbo pretty easily, no sedation required. dying in a dream, for example, had about a 50/50 chance of waking u up or sending u to limbo. the brain has no frame of reference for how to experience dying, so it’s completely disruptive to the plot of the dream--it has to end. so depending on how much the subconscious--as opposed to active cognition--was in charge of the dream, either u wake up or ur subconscious takes over completely to smooth over the confusion and u’re lost in limbo. dying wasn’t the only thing disruptive enough to destabilize a dream in those days either, tho. shock--ranging from injury to just surprise at something bizarre--and high emotion could also do it. this happened a lot bc those early dreams were still p close to natural dreams and rly weird shit happened all the time.
as somnacin got more sophisticated, it got better at suppressing the rampant subconscious and putting the rational mind in charge. constructed dreams left some of the psychedelic weirdness behind and started playing by logical rules, but that was still the given value of ‘logical’ that meant whatever the dreamers understood to be true, regardless of how that matched up w real-world physics. also, dying became the only thing disruptive enough to throw u out of a dream, because the somnacin, by reassigning the lion’s share of the mental processing work to the slower, more effortful systems of reasoning, dampened emotional responses a little. it forced the mind to extrapolate how the situation--usually an injury or smth--would play out instead of js panicking and slamming the eject button. the last major effect of the new somnacin was that waking up was now almost the guaranteed effect of dying, and u only went into limbo if waking up wasn’t an option. almost guaranteed, bc it wasn’t perfect yet, and how could it ever be when it comes to messing around w brain chemistry. but almost was enough for the military and they offered funding and soldiers as test subjects in return for use of the technology as a training tool.
this is the end of era 1! and the post is getting big enough and it’s been in my drafts long enough that i want to end this here. i’ll finish later, probably by reblogging this instead of making a new p.4 post, so check the notes!
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Hello and thank you for the ask, obvi I have my own curiosities abt Kat's future life... 😏 If you don't mind, questions 3, 8, 6 and 12 are what came to mind first, though I'm also curious abt 15! I don't want to touch anything that may result in your series spoilers bc it's soo good - but her broader family life after all this I'm very curious about :D
Hi! This took soo long I'm so sorry lmao- Long post ahead From this ask
3. What is MC’s family like now?
I’m leaving here Kate’s direct family. I didn’t include Kate and Charlie’s daughter because I don’t have a name or a back story for her.
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Here we have the Williams part of the family Nicholas (Obliviator) and Aurora (arithmancer and the actual brain behind the family's finances), Kate's grandparents, had 3 children: Evira (professor), Erick (auror), Joseph (dtp of International Magical cooperation). Joseph is Kate's dad.
The Walsh side of the family starts with Bernard (potioneer) and Julie (muggle nurse), Kate's grandparents, who had 2 children: Natalia (journalist) and Cornelia (apparition examiner). Natalia is Kate's mom.
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This is the Walsh side of the family. Bernard's parents were Taidgh (broom maker) and Fiona (owl trainer). They had 10 children (see below).
Julie was the only child of muggles Ronan (fisherman) and Ciara Flannigan (fish seller)
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The 10 Walsh siblings in order are: Imogen(farmer), Muireann (tutor), Paddy(broom maker), Adeline (aurologist), Collin (saleswizard in quidditch games), Cornelia (alchemist, Bernard's daughter was named after her), Brian (magizoologist), Jane (muggle relations), Bernard (potioneer), Seán (squib)
Details of these characters will be on another post about the Ireland fic character list that Im working on. (I might change a few names)
6. How has MC’s style changed?
The first year at Hogwarts was very child-like. She was still that little girl that came from a wealthy and sinister family, always in the shadows and behind doors because she wasn’t allowed to enter most of the rooms. She carried a small charm that Jacob gave her and it was the year she adopted Grimoire in Diagon Alley, first rebellious act since the Williams manor only allowed owls and Aurora Williams’ spider. In her defense, she went to Diagon Alley all alone.  Her style reflected innocence.
There was a huge leap between 1st and 2nd-3rd year. Mom went to Beirut, dad was busy in the ministry, and her brother was still missing. She opted for the same 3 outfits all the time.
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The next big change occurred in fourth year. She started hanging out with Tonks and she absorbed a little bit of her dark style. All-black outfits were daily and she started experimenting with skirts. That dark look in addition with her winning every single game of gobstones, being fearless in duel and her original bad reputation, reflected confidence. Also, mama gifts her a nice bag.
From 7th year and onwards she shifts to more ‘badass looks’. She still favours dark colours like blacks and browns, but her go-to outfits include leather jackets and boots. Before the war, she became an animagus, which is a black cat form. An important accessory is the dragon necklace that Charlie gives her before going to Romania, and she wears it until the war, where she loses it. Another detail that I’m not going to explain now (still figuring it out and I don’t want to give away too much about the next fic) is that she gets a matching tattoo with Charlie: a serch bythol (with some magic properties)
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In her 30s and 40s she is a respectable mediwizard now and she starts dressing a little bit more classy. She is not giving up her leather jacket yet but more blouses and dress pants are added to her closet.
Kate went full witch mode when she passed her fifties. Loving the aesthetic of it all, she shamelessly wears her witch hats to every party, reunion or gathering. Long dresses with pockets are a favourite. 
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In reality, she is a softie, and you know that when talking to her. If you are lucky enough to be her apprentice you will find her elegant, intimidating and very very wise. After a while, you will discover that she has an enormous heart.
8. How is MC’s and Jacob’s relationship now? (If your Jacob is alive)
My Jacob is very much dead. I don’t plan on changing that. If he was alive (let’s imagine that au) I think their relationship will be problematic. He loved her little sister, but she was more of a burden than anything else. Growing up in the Williams manor was the first curse he encountered in his life: his grandfather pressured him to follow every Williams man’s steps and become a Ministry employee, dad did the same, mom was never home, and he had to take care of his little sister because leaving her alone in that house wasn't an option.
When they reunited, he would still see her as the toddler that sniffled every leaf and flower, that collected pretty rocks and buried her little fingers in the soil just to experiment, all while he tried to read his book under a tree.
There would be a slow and long process of getting to know each other again.
In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think Kate would have moved in with Charlie so soon if Jacob was still alive. The two years that they were apart, maintaining a long-distance relationship, she was grieving and living alone in a flat in London that the Williams family provided. If Jacob had survived, they would have moved out of the manor together and it would have taken longer for Kate to go to Charlie.
12. What was MC’s reaction learning Bill and Charlie’s little sister went missing her First Year?
Well, she couldn't do much about it, it's not like she would go to Hogwarts and look for her herself. But she was worried. Some old fears came back, the similarities with her own experience with her brother made her uneasy, but after confirming it didn't have anything to do with the vaults she could think a little bit better. At that time she was a healer trainee at St Mungo’s and Charlie was already in Romania so there was a lot of letter-exchanging just with updates of the situation. 
15. MC’s experience at Bill’s wedding? (Did they attend Bill’s wedding? What did they wear? Did they play a role in it? Were they the bride? =p)
Kate and Charlie attended Bill’s wedding but they weren't happy about it. They love Fleur, and Bill too but with everything that was happening then it didn't seem like a good idea. They were vigilant the whole evening, especially Kate.
Reuniting with Tonks and other Hogwarts friends made her relax a bit and actually enjoy herself. We'll leave the details for a fic I'll write someday.
I shamelessly say that they matched outfits. Kate wanted to wear a pointy hat that Charlie gave her one Christmas with a dark blue dress that matched the inside of the hat.
She noticed the disappointment on his face when he saw it and later found out that he had chosen a shirt to go with the previous dress she had shown him. She changed outfits and with some gold accessories, they went to the Burrow thinking they were the best looking couple there.
I couldn't find a picture of what I had in mind for him because I took the idea from this fanart from cursebreakerglenetive .
That’s the exact outfit. I fell in love when I saw the concept. No tie, of course, the burgundy undershirt and inside of the jacket, the belt with golden dragon details is everything.
For her, a simple but elegant dress, with her golden dragon necklace and long earrings.
Nice experience overall until everything went to hell, we all know that part.
Thanks for the ask! This was fun to make 🖤
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teruthecreator · 5 years
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if you're comfortable, could you say what specifically you hated about the finale? i never got into amnesty but i liked balance so i would like to know how disappointed i should be ://
okay i’m gonna explain this in-detail exactly Once bc i’m trying rlly hard to just forget about the whole epilogue and keep it moving like that shit never happened, so for anyone else who is asking me why i don’t like the finale (and im not saying you’re wrong for asking, anon, it just seems that when you vocally do not like a thing there are hundreds of people who come out of the woodworks to ask you why and i think thats kinda Huh, Weird of everyone but like whatever) i’m gonna lay it all out here on the table and you can take this as you will. 
i’m not gonna be getting into fistfights with people abt this so if you disagree please don’t try and banter with me. i am running on
also, CRITICISM OF ART DOES NOT MEAN CRITICISM OF THE ARTIST. I AM NOT CRITICIZING THE MCELROYS AS HUMAN BEINGS, BUT RATHER THEIR ARTISTIC DECISIONS IN TAZ: AMNESTY. MORE PEOPLE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS A SEPARATION BETWEEN ART AND ARTIST, AND ONCE YOU (AS AN ARTIST) POST A PIECE, IT BECOMES SUBJECT TO CRITICISM. I AM NOT BRINGING GRIFFIN, JUSTIN, TRAVIS, OR CLINT’S CHARACTERS INTO QUESTION; I AM SIMPLY GIVING A CRITICISM ON THE SHOW THEY’VE CREATED AS A WORK OF ART. 
oh, this goes without saying, but i will anyway: SPOILERS FOR AMNESTY (IN GENERAL, BUT ALSO FOR EPISODE 36) 
i’m gonna start off by saying, i don’t think the whole episode was a total disaster. there are two things mainly that have ruined the whole experience for me, but for the most part i thought the like first 2 hours of this episode were a lot of fun! the fight scene was a little bogged down in the rolls imo, but it didn’t deter me too much from the overarching boss battle. the intro was a sick concept, i enjoyed the callback bits spliced in w newly scripted bits from mentioned past encounters, that was all well and good. i loved beacon in the episode, and god do i wish he stayed for the whole thing. 
my problem mainly sits with the epilogue, which is why i think the whole episode turns sour in my mind. because the epilogue is supposed to be what satiates your desire to know more, right? not to reference balance too much (bc these are two completely different stories w different premises, and for people to so readily compare them is kinda wack. that being said, they are two stories made by the same people that use an epilogue to wrap up the loose ends, so im gonna make this one comparison), but the epilogue told us, the listener, all the things we wanted to know about after the day of story of song. we got to know what they did, a little bit of their interpersonal relationships, and we even got a big group scene with the killarey wedding! 
this epilogue, though, feels like it left so much still on the table. one of those things i will swing back to later because it is the largest part of my argument, but after all of this time we still don’t know why everyone at the lodge got exiled! no one talks about it! we don’t know how dani ended up there, or jake, or barclay, or moira, or anyone! they don’t reference the banishments at all, which i think is a huge shortcoming figuring that is the core premise as to why these characters exist in our pc’s world in the first place. 
i also feel like the concept of the worlds being divided for a long time is kind of a dumb way to go about framing what they do After The Fact. like, they could have had those scenes happen without the looming concept of them being divided, especially when their big reunion scene is like 2 minutes long and basically does nothing. what would have been a cooler premise is if billy connected the worlds, and the worlds worked together in rebuilding themselves. we still could’ve had the same bits happen (for the most part), but i just think that whole separation bit kinda alienated the pc’s (especially thacker). 
but everything up to aubrey’s epilogue bit is fine. i have some problems, but it’s fine. where i started to completely abandon the work itself though is duck’s bit, and i’m gonna get into it by saying this: I know Justin Mcelroy is not legally required to make all of his characters gay, but this whole scene was just a big reminder to me that this show is done by 4 straight white men
and yeah, my big problem with this scene is the fact that justin had to make Duck/Minerva a thing. because it adds nothing to the story while also being a very skeevy concept in-general, and it reduces minerva’s character down to the Hero’s Girlfriend trope and it’s so comphet and she doesn’t deserve it. 
my first grievance with this: It adds nothing to the story. 
had justin not even mentioned the relationship part of their interaction before the scene actually took place, this scene would be like every other scene involving duck and minerva prior to this. duck says honey once, and even that could’ve been played off as duck just being affectionate to his friends (which is a thing, i call several of my friends “my love” irl and it isn’t a big deal). minerva doesn’t even use pet names, she calls duck by his full name, which is exactly how she addressed him in every other scene! duck’s speech is a genuine heart-puller, but it was completely soured by the fact that justin had to premise this entire scene by saying duck and minerva are a thing. 
my second grievance: it’s a skeevy-as-all-hell concept. 
this whole premise is nasty seven ways from sunday, and it is my biggest problem with duck’s bit as a whole. for starters, and i think more people need to mention this, minerva meets duck on the night of his 18th birthday. which means duck has literally just stopped being legally considered a minor before minerva appears before him. and honestly, i would still consider duck a minor in this case because he has literally just turned 18!!! his brain has not developed past one of a 17-year-old on the exact date of his birthday, and i argue it will not until he is at least in his twenties. keep in mind, your brain does not stop developing until you are about 25. so while in the legal sense, duck is an adult, in both the mental and emotional sense at that exact moment, duck is still a minor. AND he’s still in high school, as referenced in his response to her call to duty: “i got class tomorrow”. and minerva is old enough to have become the minister of defense for her homeworld, go through an entire war, and have several other chosen ones (including leo tarkesian, who is at least 20 years older than duck) before meeting duck. so that makes her much, much older than duck when she meets him. and i don’t care if they had barely any interaction after that first moment (though they did, as justin legit talks about when he introduces minerva as a concept to the show), that still establishes their initial interaction at a massive age difference. which, regardless of anything, makes their eventual relationship so genuinely messed up. 
sure, you can argue that when you get older age doesn’t make that much of a difference, and i would agree. my mother is 53 and her husband is 63, that’s ten years. but my mother and step mother did not meet at 8 and 18, they met at 50 and 60. the initial interaction makes all the difference between “older people meeting and having a relationship” and “a very messed up situation”. 
also, in this same argument, taking the mentor-student relationship and turning it into a romantic relationship IS SO MESSED UP!!!! GENUINELY AND HONESTLY MESSED UP!!! i feel like i don’t need to explain this because there have been so many examples already as to why this is a relationship you Should Not turn romantic, but i will anyway because it frustrates me so much that justin completely glosses over this!!! the power dynamic of a mentor-student relationship, in whatever way it is portrayed, displays a power balance that is heavily leaning to one side. there is not an equal distribution of power amongst the two because one person is teaching the other. the one person is weak to the others wills and whims because of lack of experience. think of your high school teacher or college professor; if you started a relationship with them, people would raise so many questions because you are not at equals to the teacher/professor. even if they treat you different, and even if they no longer teach you, it all has to do with the initial interaction. and minerva was still duck’s mentor up until either episode 34 or 35, when she handed off the title of Herald of the Astral Mind to duck. that means for nearly all of their interactions, there was a mentor-student dynamic. to have that turn into a romantic relationship is so sketchy and weird and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 
my third grievance: it reduces minerva’s character down to a girlfriend trope, and it’s comphet as hell 
my friend tin (@taako–waititi) phrased this so well in the big group chat im in w her, so imma just quote her on this and then go into the comphet stuff: 
“i was dming max about it and they also mentioned, quote, ‘her story was never about romance. it reduced her down to ‘competent woman becomes endgame girlfriend’ trope’ and they are so right it makes me fucking pissed. regardless of any ‘mutual respect’ and ‘emotional intimacy’ kind of thing going on that some people are arguing for, it’s something that didn’t need to happen because minerva’s character becomes that. my thing is mutual respect and emotional intimacy between two people can. exist. without it being. romantic. like. friendship is. also valid. i personally don’t think that mutual respect and emotional intimacy are two buttons that you press to make the machine churn out a romance” 
not only does it reduce minerva’s character to tropes, but it also is extremely comphet for a woman who is so heavily wlw-coded or lesbian-coded and it just angers me. you could argue that she could be bi, but if we look at canon for just its face-value, the only romantic interaction she ever has is with a man, which basically makes her straight. this isn’t like aubrey’s situation, where travis clearly states she is a bi woman who is just in a relationship with another woman in amnesty. griffin doesn’t state anything about minerva’s sexuality and then she’s paired off with a man right at the end. and you could argue that she isn’t wlw or lesbian-coded, but i am not the only one who is wlw and thinks this, so i feel like i have more of a ground to stand on in this opinion. and this just feels so, like, textbook compulsory heteronormativity it made me feel physically sick when i heard this bit in the podcast. 
so that’s my first big issue with the finale, fully explained. my second issue with the epilogue is that ned’s death continues to be disappointing and his character arc is never completed, which just tanks the whole show for me. 
i’ve talked about this several times since ep 28 about how ned’s death was stupid and did nothing for his character arc, but i’m gonna reiterate my main points for the people who find this post without knowing my whole blog:
1. ned’s main interpersonal conflicts are just brought to the surface and never fully delved into before his sudden death. ned doesn’t ever get to explain his history with boyd and why he had to steal shade tree to mama or barclay or really anyone besides vaguely to aubrey. 
2. every character is just immediately expected to feel sad about ned’s death, despite the tension that still remains right up until the very end. aubrey shouldn’t have even known that the shapeshifter framed ned because that’s all explained once she goes to sylvain, but i think travis just assumed she did because he heard the interaction between ned, mama, and barclay. so she should’ve had Way more conflicting feelings about the whole thing, but ned’s death is just angst-bait so that doesn’t happen.
3. ned’s death doesn’t make roll sense because clint rolled a mixed success and mixed successes, by definition, are supposed to be less severe moves than a failed roll (which gives the gm the ability to make a hard move). there isn’t really anything harder to do to a character than kill them, but even if you wanted to argue that if clint failed the roll the hard move would’ve been ned failing and letting dani get shot, it still doesn’t change the fact that clint rolled a mixed success when slamming into the pizza hut sign at full velocity and came out of that alive (severely injured, naturally, but still alive). 
so, yeah, there’s that. and then theres the fact that griffin doesn’t ever give us any other scenes involving ned directly. ned only becomes a reference from 28 on, which is so disappointing given ned’s importance to the other two pcs. and i understand that the mcelroys have a lot of trauma related to death, but griffin shouldn’t have killed ned off then if he did not want to talk about death in graphic detail. we all have trauma. we all want to avoid topics. but to kill ned off and then never talk about his death in great relation to the others is a genuine disservice to ned’s character. 
the day episode 28 aired was the same day i buried my grandmother. i would have loved if death wasn’t brought up, but i don’t control the podcast. the mcelroys do; they had the ability to avoid this topic in a more servicing way to the characters and they didn’t. that isn’t to say they are bad people for not doing it, but it makes the finale even more disappointing because it means we never get the full rounding out of ned’s character arc. he becomes this like brief reference that is, once again, angst-bait or emotional fuel and i feel like he didn’t deserve that. he deserved a genuine reference, a genuine moment. even a dream sequence i would have appreciated!!! 
griffin had sylvain directly point at ned in aubrey’s flashback in ep 35, and then did nothing about what that could have implicated in the finale. it sours the entire episode in a major way and disappointed me immensely. there should have been more done with that topic and there wasn’t and i will never forget how deeply it hurt me and turned me away from canon as a whole. not to be ned kin on main, but ned was the backbone of this show and the exact moment he left was the exact moment the whole thing went downhill. it turned less into a story about growth and adversary and amnesty and more into a waiting game for when this very loose end was going to get wrapped up. 
i wanted to enjoy this episode. i tried so hard, y’all. but just the thought of ned loomed over me the entire time and i was waiting for a more proper completion to his arc, and it never happened. and coupled with that very bad and skeevy duck/minerva bit i was just so frustrated and hurt last night. 
so, yeah, that’s my whole spiel. you are free to disagree with me, but keep that opinion to yourself because i’m not getting into it with anyone. i will just block you; it’s better for us both, anyway. 
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