#bfm lore

[butterfrogmantis]

This was kind of a follow up to smthing I drew yesterday that I can't er. Post but. This was my warm up doodle.

But I'm yours you know And I'll love you still in hell Down we fell And I'm singing

Yo-ho, Sebastian Let's go far away Somewhere where the captain won't be mad Yo-ho, Sebastian I wanna love you good We deserve much better than we've had

Swashbuckler POV: Your crew picks up two strangers and you tell the Captain to throw em overboard but the Captain is like 'lol nah we need more hands up here' so now you're babysitting these weird landlubbers who know too much about you so you threaten one with a sword but then he turns out to be an alright guy and so you become rlly gay and go sneaking around the ship together and then one day he and his brother just feck off with some weird, tall, crabby beardy dude and to your knowledge you'll never see him again

And Clumsy thought he was having problems with his romances

Bonus

Archie (c) The Smurfs

Swashbuckler/Skelly are mine

[bentofaxmachine]

exposed an irl friend to my link click hyperfixation for the first itme today. i think shes scared of me now

[ducksrus]

Okay this is my never ending book playlist. I’ve been hesitant to post bc I keep reading new books and listening to new music as we all do. But I decided to go ahead and share and I’ll just post updates. Obviously the book community is amazing and there a lot of posts like this so if I copied any ideas, it was pure coincidence.

Some of my picks I explained, others I did not explain. Deal with it.

Code: PJO- Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan; HoO- Heroes of Olympus by RicK Riordan (p.s. I used PJO and HoO interchangeably on some); MPHFPC- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children series by Ransom Riggs; BFM- Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall; SoC- Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo ; S&B- Shadow and Bone trilogy by Leigh Bardugo; RWARB- Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, HP- Harry Potter by J.K Rowling, 7HoEH- Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, HS- Heartstopper by Alice Oseman, LO- Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe

[n7punk]

OK I WAS THINKING WDTFD TOO IT IS CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED AND ive literally been spending more time than necessary trying to figure out why, because I would argue it is one of your best and one of the most unique out there in general. You can ignore me if you want but I have a Theory (gonna mark myself with this emoji ⚡️ so you know it’s me)

this is... an absolutely fascinating theory XD i have no clue, to be honest, and always just put it down to 1) being a busy time of year (tho thematically appropriate) when maybe people weren't reading a lot of fic then so it never got that established, and 2) me going dark for a month afterwards while i worked on my novel, resulting in less content to bump me up in the ao3 tag (or on people's dashboards) that might make people check what i'd just done, or help them notice they missed a fic right before it (i have people comment on a new fic all the time being like "OH SHIT i missed the last one, time to binge!").

its interesting to get an outside perspective, because for me personally i notice jumps in interaction around a few fics (knifepoint for example) but i never really attributed a spike to BFM. i was really shocked when i recently saw beg for me was ranked 24th in hit count for she-ra fics (its worth noting that both slas and asdlm rank higher than it, but i also remember lots of engagement with both of those - especially asdlm, there was so much fanart). i dont remember a lot about what was going on when i was writing bfm, so i just assumed it... wasnt a lot XD but apparently it left an impression.

(actually, i did just remember i had anon off while writing BFM because i didnt want people getting Too Horny and crossing into creepy, and that probably had a big effect on the interaction i got and my perception of it)

as far as the smut thing... honestly, no clue, although you might be onto something with vampires being generally slutty (and rightfully so) and WDtFD being lore-focused. i feel like im reluctant to say fics without smut dont do as well, but i think that it might be true and i just dont want to acknowledge it XD i do think that, as far as rating goes, T and E do better than M because... if you dont want smut, you go T, and if you want it, you go E, you know? M is this middle ground i enjoy, but people tend not to be on middle ground with smut XD

i have no clue, but it was fun reading theories, and thank you for the enthusiasm for a fic i really love! to be honest i think if i wrote it a year before it might have been smuttier.... but the idea was also a year old and never had anything but that one scene in it, even if that scene was originally a bit more explicit, so idk. i do tend to go in cycles and whatever i did after beg for me needed to be smut-light because writing beg for me took a lot of time/energy XD see lotd following knifepoint, as well

i really loved crafting a lore fic, i had a whole outline where i tracked what had been hinted at and in what ways, what had been revealed so far, what i still needed to foreshadow/explain, etc, because there was so much stuff i wanted to imply and then reveal, and im realllllly happy with the finished product, so thank you for the love! <3

[seddm]

I understand that the series was very popular until the BFM but began to lower its audience when the startom was prolonging much as the emotional separation of the starco, that makes me wonder if the producers saw these signalsAnd why didn't they do something about it?It was obvious that the public was unhappy with this and even if they kept it.

That played a role for sure, but the main element was plot. A large part of the fandom, especially on Tumblr, expected the show to be more focused on plot and lore, with Toffee’s threat extending well beyond the Battle for Mewni, or at least his actions deeply influencing the rest of the show. But that was never the goal, the series has always been first and foremost about Star, her growth as a person, and Mewni’s changes for the better. When everyone’s favorite lizard was blasted into oblivion and S3 made it clear that he was mostly a plot device for Star’s arc, and lots of Tumblr-fans were driven out, or lost part of their interest.

But yeah what you said had its weight as well, the show’s focus changed in its second half, with less episodes focusing on Star and Marco (Daron said they did it on purpose, at least to an extent, to avoid making the series too boring and to explore other interactions and scenarios), and another portion of the fandom was alienated by that.

[ngame989]

I'll admit, many (including me) who are doubting how important Starco is to the show, and how Star and Marco are the only best fit to each other, and start following the illusions and lies of "not looking deep enough", are still shocked by the way season 3 "really" started. Separating on their own accord, Star returns to Tom, Marco back to square one and is often locked away until he's relevant again, not having dimensional adventures (or fun) onscreen like S1 and S2,etc. And I suddenly got(1/2)

the nightmares of the main characters not getting what they wants because growing up and bittersweet crap. I have guys like you and Seddm, malthuswibble, etc. to thank for making us see that beyond all the grief and heartbreak the show sprang on us, that Starco still lives, and is the most important pillar to this show, and making us appreciate even the minuscule moments of growth and harmony between Star and Marco... Season 4 better make up for all what Season 3 did though. (2/2) 

Well I’m glad I’ve been able to contribute in some part to you feeling better about the show. Season 3 shook a lot of people, I get that, but the duration of time where it seemed in question that Star and Marco really had anything special (both by the show and by each other) lasted about 60 on-screen minutes, between Scent of a Hoodie and Lint Catcher. And considering that section is sandwiched between the entire end of season 2/BFM and the squire vows + all of Star’s reliance on Marco as a partner... I think any doubt is just the shipping goggles at work. And hey, I’m as guilty as anyone else, it took until Deep Dive for me to truly have confidence that nothing whatsoever changed on a fundamental level.

That said, subjectively speaking, I completely agree that Season 4 has some catching up to do. Not that there’s anything wrong with their relationship being deepened through some strife and miscommunication but... I think it’s safe to say no one really wants to see more of that to any significant degree. Anyone who fell in love with Starco during seasons 1 or early season 2 wasn’t saying “golly gee my favorite thing would be if they never got to be happy with each other ever again until the end,” and they’re certainly not saying it now after seeing that in action. Plus, like you mentioned, Marco emotionally distancing himself from Star right when the Star-centric plot kicked up made him kinda disappear for a lot of 3B, which wasn’t the most pleasing thing to see either. 

But hey, considering the entire moral of Booth Buddies is that both of them want to be open, honest, and emotionally close with each other, there’s no reason to fear they’re going to keep doing the opposite of that. Plus, as I outlined previously, this show treats character/relationship development as its shining star, giving it every bit as much narrative gravity as most shows give to their plot and lore. Good shows don’t have the main character train forever and never seem to get past a decent level of strength and then suddenly oneshot the final boss, that’d be dumb and not show them earning their endgame power - in a similar manner, SvtFoE simply won’t (and arguably can’t) justify Starco as endgame-worthy without proving it in action over time, and at least among its contemporaries in animation, this is a fairly unique approach. I’m sure we’re not gonna go back to nonstop wacky adventures like Season 1, but Star and Marco actually having fun together, and having fun being together, can seamlessly integrate itself into whatever potential more “serious” plot might be cooked up.

Glad I was able to tackle at least one ask tonight, now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go pass out after day 1 of moveapalooza. I’ll catch up on asks as I find time/energy.

[seddm]

I've got the feeling that Cleaved had the opposite reaction of BfM from the fans. BfM had an impact that many liked but then it was like something was missing, but after Cleaved (which divide the fans but as time goes by the episode is getting more love) all the dots conected again, also leaving questions but at least some that can be induced

Eh, dunno, I remember A LOT of people complaining about the way Battle For Mewni ended, at the time, just like lots of people complained about Cleaved. This mostly stems from the same issue: thinking that the show’s focus has ever been lore and plot and things like that. Don’t misunderstand me, I’d have loved for Toffee’s role to be bigger and for his demise to be a little less “quick”, but his role in the series had always been, first and foremost, “obstacle that Star has to overcome to grow as a person”. Half the fandom screamed “Deus ex machina!” at Star blasting him like that, but such a reaction (while understandable) ignores that Star being able to dip down to such an extent was the result of a whole season of growth and development to go from “skimmer”

to “dipper”.

Something similar happened with Cleaved: a sizable chunk of the fandom expected more focus on plot, lore, on Mewni’s politics and magic (I did as well, to a much much smaller extent), but the finale decided to focus mostly on concluding Star and Marco’s (and most of the other secondary characters) arcs not in a “everything is fixed forever” way (that’d have clashed harshly with several themes from the series, explicitly addressed in Cornball! and Beach Day), but in a “the characters solved all the most pressing issues and problems at hand and they’re now ready to start a new chapter in their lives”. And I feel like that if the episode is getting more love as times goes by, compared to Battle For Mewni, it’s just because the series is actually over now, and there are no more expectations to be built (also those who have been disappointed by the finale the most probably dropped off the fandom / stopped being vocal).

tl;dr: I feel like both episodes evidenced the same dissonance between what the fandom thinks the show is all about VS what the show has always actually focused on. Which doesn’t mean that nothing ever can be criticized and that things couldn’t have been improved, obviously.

[seddm]

Do you know if the show was originally planned for two or four seasons? Idk, but the show gives me the impression that Nefcy's original concept finished with BfM.

Hard to tell, since Disney greenlights seasons one by one, but as far as I know the renewal for S3 came very early, when S2 was still far from being done, while the renewal for S4 came a bit later (or at leas that’s the impression I got from the comments of some storyboarders). Since S1 introduced Heinous and the Blood Moon so early to then barely address them in S2 I think a third one was planned if not from the beginning from very early in production. It’s possible that they then adapted it once a fourth one was approved, taking more time to explore the characters and the lore, or changing some things around. Would be interesting to get an official answer about things like this, to get to know how the overarching writing for a show like this works!