#any given plot

[cinnamnt]

can the hulu era futurama writers please for the love of god understand that not every episode needs to be an ensemble piece

[taraxippos]

I think people tend to assume that any criticism of worldbuilding is ultimately a demand for a story to grind itself to a halt and give the reader 20 paragraphs of exposition, and like. Most of the time good-faith criticism of this nature is coming from a core aspect of the story not being grounded in the setting in a way that outright detracts from the story's quality. You fix it not by Explaining but by Showing it passively in the makeup of the world.

Like the last instance I saw this critique in was like 'you can't expect an author to stop and exposit the nuances of gender roles/Queerness in a fictional society' and it's like yeah I don't, and in fact this is actually one of the easiest things to show in the text without exposition. If a society has gender norms to begin with you'll see aspects of these norms baked into EVERYTHING. You'll see it in its stories, its religion, its taboos, its etiquette, its clothing, its family structures, its language, its insults, its labor, its leadership, etc. It will have massive impacts on how characters interact with one another and how they perceive themselves. It will help Shape your characters.

If you do this legwork to begin with for the core facets of your story, you will find very natural places for these concepts to be demonstrated without derailing the plot and with little to no exposition. THAT sort of thing is what's being asked of you.

[myhyperfixationisiforgot]

"If the Hargreeves had phones every season would end in two episodes!" Babe if there were cell phones in the Umbrella Academy it would be so much worse. Not a single person in that house is capable of conveying information in a coherent manner. Diego has them all blocked. Viktor only listens to his voicemail in bulk once a month. Five developed his own shorthand during the apocalypse that he truly thinks is coherent to other human beings (it is not). Luther, by nature of who he is, absolutely Does Not Text for any reason and keeps calling the others. Klaus is carrying at least four conversations in the same thread at any given point in time. Even if they all managed to remember that they owned phones (unlikely) and then proceeded to convey relevant information in a timely fashion (even less likely), not a single one of them would figure it out. Allison could probably muster the braincells necessary but would not under any circumstances manage to stay on task long enough to do anything about it. Phones would absolutely not help with anything at all.

[cryptidmickle]

hi your amnesiac au has me in SHAMBLES plsplspls im crying sobbing stabbing the floor

im so glad i discovered your blog 😭 your art is so lovely and nice and just. Yes. eats everythibg snd leaves no crumbs /silly

PLEASE i require more info about amnesiac au.

could this happen to the other Beasts? if it can happen to Shadow Milk, it might be possible with the others, should their Ancient counterparts get lucky with their attacks

does Shadow Milk gradually become less of an ass? does he seek answers as to Why he was so awful? does he care at all?

how horrified is he at the revelation that he was such a huge issue for the faeries + PV, if at all? he already doesn't know much about himself, so would not knowing he was such a problem, such an awful person, terrify him, considering he doesn't remember any of this?

idk. i personally would be so so incredibly horrified and terrified that i was so terrible and..well, monstrous, if i may. i kinda project onto Shadow Milk im ngl so that's probably why im saying any of this

IM SORRY THIS IS SO LONG im just so,,, AAAUAGTHYBHLRHTLBFLTTKG /POS abt this entire au. hoenstly it inspires me; both your art and your ideas and concepts

hope you have a good day!! stay safe /gen

SOBS IM SO GLAD YOU LIKE THIS AU!!! i read all the tags on my posts btw so if any of u went crazy in there i saw it and went crazy w u. im deranged and mentally ill if u cant tell.

i would say the cracking of the souljam and loss of power is very possible for the other beasts! the amnesia however is a Very special case of pure vanilla fucking up the spell he cast

the other beasts would be depowered and much weaker, but retain their memories...... actually, would their corruption break as well since the souljam disconnected entirely from them? hm, i think redemption would be more possible if an ancient got a lucky shot, in that case

shadow milk does in fact become less of a jerk! what with no longer being secluded in a spire losing his mind and sense of identity all by himself, his personality is forced to become. eh. LESS THORNY.

pure vanilla is socializing him like a dog and he is NOT enjoying it. but i am. put that guy in situations.

shadow milk does in fact seek answers to why he did so many terrible things! he knows his... current personality isn't the greatest, but he can't imagine doing some of the things described

he feels a certain disconnect to the him others describe terrorizing them to the him of present, while he feels bad for what happened to them he doesn't really feel apologetic because was it really him? how's he supposed to know?

should he feel sorry because it technically was him, just.. evil? would that excuse it if he doesn't feel sorry at all?

this is where shadow milk and white lily have similar dilemmas because they both have previously done terrible things to others, especially pure vanilla. they feel bad about it, they dont wanna hurt him or others like that ever again

but then this is where they separate because shadow milk doesn't feel at fault, he doesn't remember doing all those things, he doesn't even know who that was! you want me to grovel forever about it? pathetic, what's done is done anyways, why not try to do something now?

white lily absolutely despises that mindset as she's competing with pv over who can hate themselves more, and she is winning. she thinks they both deserve to repent forever for their crimes but is constantly reminded of the fact that she remembers but shadow milk doesn't! she knows what she did, why she did it, it was bad and terrible, but she understands and that's what's important and she must repent for it

shadow milk doesn't know, he doesn't know anything at all and theres even more that they can't tell him as he's apparently been evil for centuries. it's hard to argue that he needs to feel bad when the personalities are truly separated.

......i went on a ramble again.

he doesn't feel bad about what he did but he is in fact, very unnerved that he may be capable of those actions again, and with pure vanilla trying to teach him to be good and kind its...... panic inducing sometimes, that maybe he can do something terrible again, that the evil is possibly just lurking under the surface and hes fooling himself and everyone around him

[maverick-prime]

sonic prime would be really good if it wasn’t written for younger kids. i love nine and think his arc has a lot of potential that could be tapped into with a longer, grittier version of the story. i also think sonic having to deal with the moral/ethical dilemma of saving the versions of his friends in the shatterverse versus his “real” friends, from the original version of green hill, is really fascinating. it’s very severance and i think it would be a really cool thing to lean into to accentuate the angst inherent to the whole multiverses-where-everything-is-different thing

[mollysunder]

The Medarda arc of s2 struggled to be good, because the plot viciously smothered it. You can argue that Arcane was never about politics but you cannot say the Medardas were never explicitly a family defined by politics. So when the show shifted it's priorities from a drama steeped in political conflict where even though the setting was fantastical the stakes were grounded to a shift where magic is the end all be all threat to humanity, the Medardas are rendered largely irrelevant.

In s2 Mel's agency over her own story is both largely stripped from her and poorly communicated. Arcane has Mel abducted from the plot to be the Black Rose's captive. Even when Mel manages to free herself it's not through the traits the audience understands are her strengths, her cunning and social intelligence, it's through an innate instinct that natural to her and indecipherable to the audience.

Ambessa as a character is more or less a villain of convenience, which would be fine if she wasn't immediately following Silco's act. Once Mel is removed from the story Ambessa is largely disconnected from any emotional tension fuels conflict between the characters and previously drove the plot in s1. She's there to play the worse bad guy for Caitlyn and then give Viktor the man power for the Glorious Evolution.

It's frustrating to see the Medardas used the way they are in s2 because when they're together I can see how it could be good. When they're together Mel forces emotion out of Ambessa. In Act 1, Ambessa proved she could do circles around Piltover's court, which could actually put Mel in a tight spot.

Their final scene on paper sounds like a good idea where the true resolution to Mel and Ambessa's story was that Ambessa saw Mel's own ruthless behavior as she not only betrayed Ambessa to the Black Rose, but used her as BAIT to double cross LeBlanc. Ambessa died proud that her daughter killed her the way she did, and that's so cool and tragic, but the execution was a flop.

One, their final fight is completely unimportant to the actual Glorious Evolution, Mel's grief can't even be a highlight because it's interrupted by Viktor's mind trap. Two, their fight didn't rely on any of Mel's actual strengths, just magic and the poorly explained MacGuffin LeBlanc gave her. How did Mel even know it would do that?

It's like the writers had the bones for a great story for the Medardas, but then they're like the world's worst archeologists and fit those bones together in the worst way possible because they were convinced the bones made a stegasaurus instead of a T-rex or something.

[sunlight-shunlight]

me staring into the distance:

so the evanuris/blight situation is that: solas managed to, at the height of his power + with all his ancient elf besties helping, seal them into the black city and make the veil. and this took so much out of him that he was basically comatose for 5000 years. ok fine.

but then in vg, his initial plan was to put them in a different jail, while the veil is still up (despite that weakening all magic significantly and making it difficult to even access the black city). and then he wants to tear down the veil afterwards, presumably expecting to still be awake to do so. despite not having his original orb or his ancient elf besties anymore? so it doesn't particularly make sense in general. similar to how he described what he wanted to do with the orb, you'd expect him to take out the veil first and then reseal/move the jail?

(and then he wanted to put them into a Regret Prison when he is the ONLY one out of that entire situation who feels any regrets... 😭)

then his more ambiguous-sounding veil removal motives of being depressed about elves/spirits and unable to see the modern world as worthy of existence... become almost irrelevant. bc it's kind of necessary for him to Do Something? or else everyone fully dies of turbo blight when the archdemons die and the black city inevitably opens?

but then no one really mentions the looming catastrophe of the blight part, and they handwave it at the end, and all act like he's being very unreasonable. which he is! but only bc they made him dumber than a rock and weirdly inconsistent in his capabilities, not bc his motivations were actually proven to be wrong. aaaaa.

[artistdove]

Recently played Epic Mickey: Power of Illusions.

Salty Ozzy is just sidelined like bro doesn't even get an assist sketch. Anyways, bro must have gotten bored the whole time so he just interacts with all the other toons trapped in the castle

[cent-scratchnsniff]

something bad did indeed happen to that man. spent abt 25 minutes trying to find a better picture of that one (1) offical piece with his eyes open that wasnt compressed or tiny

[the-way-astray]

the fact that alvar hating sophitz while there’s little to no conceivable way he could know about sophitz having happened at all is one of kotlc’s lesser plot holes is astounding to me

[insomnova]

playing dragon age veilguard is going to be SO fucking funny because me, the person, the player, the real life human being HATES solas but my "canon" inquisitor considered him a confidant and friend and sometimes even a mentor figure. so while my inquisitor is like "maybe i can still convince him... maybe it doesn't need to end in bloodshed" i'm hovering behind him like

[lambda-core]

I am way too tired/jetlagged to make this post right now, but the reason Armada Starscream is so specifically well done to me actually isn't just the way he's got more depth than just wanting to take over Megatron. It's the way he falls back on this image he has of himself as someone who is solely focused on Megatron. And he is obsessed with Megatron, but the disconnect between Starscream and his image of himself is what gives him actual depth.

The reason this is so cool to me is like, that self-image--that he is single-mindedly obsessed with Megatron and will sacrifice everything else for that goal, no matter who gets hurt--is pretty close to what every other Starscream is. (The selfishness you associate with Starscream is a little more subtle, but it's there in the "no matter who gets hurt" clause imo.)

So if you go into this as a Transformers fan, you're already expecting Starscream to betray Megatron and try to best him and rule the Decepticons. But so does Starscream, even when he's demonstrably proven to both his peers and the audience that he's more than that. It's almost like his past incarnations--or the audience's expectation of him--haunt him. It turns his own internal man-versus-self conflict into this really cool man-versus-narrative conflict.

And what's crazy about this is, through the last moments of this arc, Starscream does grow beyond the narrative we'd expect from other Starscreams! But he never admits that to himself, because it's easier for him to cling to the idea that he's laser-focused on his hatred of Megatron. Every time he helps the minicons--every time he helps the humans--even in his last words, he LIES to himself and everyone around him that everything he did was always about Megatron. Because it's easier to simplify himself than to grasp that he might be a complex character. Because he's a person and he has all the messy conflicts that come with that. He falls back on the same ideas every single other Starscream did, and THAT is his undoing. Not that he is self-centered because he's Starscream. Not that he is obsessed with Megatron because he's Starscream. That he THINKS he is all of those things and he will not LET himself be anything else.

I would argue that that's a bigger theme in Armada, as well. Optimus and Megatron more or less spend their final fight coming to terms with their story roles in Transformers. I really feel like if you sneezed on them, they would realize they do this in every universe and in every timeline. Starscream's is the most interesting example to me, though, because he's such a departure from other versions of Starscream; hell, he acts (and looks, lol) a lot more like some incarnations of Thundercracker. But he's still got classic Starscream in him in this roundabout meta reference. He's like an homage to his namesake. It's so cool! And it works perfectly with the story he's a part of.

[lunarle-old]

quick psa

[rottmnt-residuum]

How do you feel after predicting that Splinter dies pretty much right after the movie/j (sure not in the same way but tomato hamato amiright)

The comics mean nothing to me sksksk

[ganondoodle]

actually, that new totk masterworks thing has the potential to direct my hatred somewhat away from the game and to itself instead

i have seen some early translations and while im not putting my faith into those so far like ... how can you make totk even worse, just stop!! stop! say its an AU and leave it!! its better for everyone!!

and it seems like its trying to tape botw and totk together with retcons and conflicting info, man just leave it beeeeeeeee

(like .. aside from the very concerning timeline mess they are messing with AGAIN, the thing about totk ganondorf actually being calamity gan all of the sudden??? what?? nothign in the game suggest that they are coneccted bc the damn game acts like botw didnt happen, it does everything it can to NOT connect ganondorf to clam gan and didnt they also say in an interview that they arent related?? and now its just the other way around again?? like that is making it all WORSE!!)

[randomtheidiot]

Shoutout to Rebecca Colton from Amanda The Adventurer for being a murder victim in a mascot horror game that’s actually a character with a personality, thoughts and feelings.