#but on a deeper level. fanfic as such didnt exist in the same way before the 60s

[thenextchapterbegins]

You must have the strength.

{this is a drabble and  isuppose “smol fanfic” or a potential fully typed email written by the main character phillip from the penumbra series, specifcally the email sent at the end of black plague. I suppose i wrote this for funsies as well as a nod to the series that got me into horror gaming. anyways enjoy.}

execute: email.exe - compose

There are things i need of you, things you will not understand, things you couldnt understand, things you may not even believe but i implore you to listen all the same and to understand you must know where i came from to send this to you now.

I didnt know my father, he would out of me and my mothers life before i could understand the world around me, and it wasnt until my mothers death that he would finally send word, No letter, call, or otherwise and suddenly my father sends me something out of the blue...directions leading to a bank i didnt know existed with a deposit in my name that was always mine because the entire world claimed him dead 30 years ago.

Inside was a safe deposit box, and instructions to destroy all inside. To never let anything that was set inside to be seen by any other eyes then mine and to quickly rent asunder.

If i was a smarter man, i would have done so, i would have tossed the curiousity..but instead i looked, and i poured over notes i couldnt read, calculations that didnt make sense,  what looked like mad ramblings in short hand my friend who knew language better then i couldnt make work of it either...what i could decipher was the location of some sort of base located in upper regions of Greenland uninhabited, barren wasteland of snow., in the barren wastes...Armed only with the knowledge of my schooling,  psychics...

I went, against my fathers wishes.

I got lost you have to know how curious i was.

I found a shaft leading to a mine...an escape from the bitter cold, you have to know how DESPERATE I WAS...and these mines, were hell on earth...worms the size of soccer fields, rabid dogs  barely hanging together, spiders the size of  a  mans head. 

Lead barely by a man named only by a color...RED. A man driven mad by time and things beyond my understanding..you have to understand HOW LONELY I WAS, and despite surviving all that i did, all in the search of answers for why my father came, i only found scraps, madness, impossibly geomeotry, the walls themselves screamed my name.  Notes indicating people lost their minds and brought the caves down on themselves.

In the end the man who was supposed to give me answers, to explain..did not.

Instead he asked me to kill him.

I did so.

You have to understand how GUILTY I felt.

If i was a smart man i would have listened to red’s warnings..i would have stayed, maybe pulled him out of that furnace...anything, better then what occurred. 

I was not, i descended further...i felt maybe, i could survive what others couldnt..be it pride or ego.

Instead my pride lead to my capture, now deeper underground in research labs...this archaic society, this foundation. They cracked something they shouldnt have, unleashed. This tuurngait, a hivemind intellgience, a virus, that spread like madness throughout all levels of this hell, twisting the minds of some, mutating others, some into the very creatures that caused their madness, others..changed, in the other ways. A man became like the spiders he ate from, another became like the dogs he took care of. 

It infected me, forming as “clarence” the same entity that tortured my old friend, refusing to let him die...manipulating my senses, forcing me into nightmare scenarios, i couldnt believe what i saw, every step of the way jabbed at to simply end it all and free us both. 

Those i met, survivors...i killed, due to this infection..due to this virus, potential allies turned to foes in my mind. 

Despite it all, i won.

You had to know how stupid i was to believe this. Cured myself, and then the tuurngait turned to me, it revealed the secrets of its being, the secrets that it revealed to my father who had long truly been as dead as i had known deep within myself. 

It left me with a task, to send you this message, to tell you to destroy all evidence of its existence. 

I however am not my father, i am  not it...we humans are something to be rightly feared, for we do not think like it, and when pushed we all pull in the same direction but with a fierceness it has come to fear. 

I am no monkey, that clarence and they believe me to be...

I will not make the same mistakes.

You have the foundation of this knowledge, you must carry the strength i could never have held, you must put an end to this.

If i am lucky by the time you read this. I will be dead.

If fate frowns, we all perish.

The north-western mine is located at reference. N81.6914, W58.3154.

Kill them

Kill them all.

-phillip 

[tomwambsmilk]

Television and movies are such an insane storytelling medium because of the finality of them. You write a book, anyone who reads that book can make the images look like whatever they want in their head, can hear the dialogue however it makes sense to them, can imagine the characters and the settings however they want. You write a play, every actor who performs it will look different and move different and play the character with their own unique spin. It's the same story, in all these cases, but it's constantly being filtered through the imagination and creative life of someone who is not the original author, and that's a crucial part of the way the recipient of the story understands it.

With movies and TV, you write a story, and then one singular person is cast as that character. And their performance is definitive. Sure, the audience can still interpret it a variety of ways. But the gestures they make and the inflections in their line delivery are an irrevocable part of the canon of that character. A character says a line and that is the way they say that line, definitively and forever. And that doesn't even get into things like costumes and setting - in a book, usually most of that is left up to the imagination of the reader, because the author will focus on whatever elements are crucial to the story. A play will have a different set each time its performed. Not only are movie sets permanent, but they feature a level of detail that isn't in the reader imagination or the theatrical production, and again, that detail is definitive.

I'm not saying this as a criticism - I love TV and film, because I think the medium gives us lots of new interesting ways to tell stories. But I think the way an audience relates to storytelling in that medium is so different, and I think maybe the prevalence of movies and TV in modern culture has changed the way we relate to stories in general. I don't think its a coincidence that modern fandom culture really didn't exist before the 60s, about the same time when televisions became exceedingly common in most Western homes. I wonder if the elimination of some of the creative engagement with storytelling - more and more people becoming used to consuming a visual, unchanging story somewhat passively, rather than engaging imaginatively with the written word - directly fed the growth of things like fanfic and fanart, which do allow the audience to engage creatively with a story. Stories with this kind of finality are such a recent thing in the history of storytelling, and I think maybe we don't always appreciate that enough.

[gizmosisbuttons]

Episode 4 was a fandom wide callout post.

all you fools too busy being pissed bc Coran went all show crazy and basically re-characterized the paladins to what the masses found entertaining, to notice that the entire episode was literally a fandom wide call out post. they literally called us out guys. 

lets go over the list of things Coran said/did in ep 4 and compare them shall we?

let me preface this by saying he literally wasn't himself and i still love him just as much as before, my gorgeous man.

”I worked up very specific personas for each of you. This is going to help the audience connect on a much deeper level with each team member.” 

as if they didn't already have defining personalities that make them very likable and awesome? sounds familiar right? its one thing to speculate and theorize based on what we know about a character especially if we don’t know a lot about said character. the writers put a lot of time and effort into developing these characters and even said during an interview once that one of the things that bugged them about og Voltron was that the only properly developed character was Keith. the other guys didn't get a chance to be loved. and that was what they aimed to do, to give every paladin and character the chance to be loved. since the beginning the fandom has been bad at this. taking one teeny trait from each character and twisting them so that the only thing that matters is that trait. 

         “lover-boy lance”

throughout the series lance is known  to flirt with...pretty much every cute alien girl. of course. hes handsome, charming, girls love him. Coran wipes away all of the actually relatable things about his personality in favor of this charming flirt who would win over girls. Lance is insecure, he’s witty, he is the freaking sharpshooter, the teams sniper and their glue. he’s voltrons right hand now for a reason. he got into the garrison which is a military space exploration base, not just anyone gets in. hes incredibly intelligent and a great pilot. amazing really. bc simulations are always absolutely terrible and rarely help. oh yea, and hes charming.but god forbid anyone forget that hes a flirt. who cares about the other stuff that will actually help the audience connect with him. 

        “science wiz pidge” 

its no secret that pidge is incredibly intelligent. she is one of the characters who haven't gotten their developing points until this season. in one of the first flashbacks we learned she nearly gave up studying because some kid decided to be a dick and bully her. Matt pulled her out of it and encouraged her to work hard. later on in ep 4 coran says that her science doesn't need to be factually correct because noone will understand her either way. he undermined her intelligence because . well. noone cares what she says as long as it sounds smart. fanfic writers do this a lot. like. a lot. i understand that you may not have the same knowledge that the girl who hacked herself into a military school base undercover at he age of 14-15 (if the theory that the garrison is a high school program is correct) because she had gotten banned for sneaking in and hacking into the computer system, but if you really do insist on focusing her on her smarts, do some research. no to mention. pidge may be the youngest, but she really is more than science and calculations. shes intelligent yes, but she can hold her own in battle (at the age range of 15-17 with no prior battle training), shes afraid of the possible reality that all her efforts are wasted and Matt and Sam are dead, she is actually pretty social with the paladins (she can even be seen hanging out in the kitchen while hunk makes glass cookies.) and beyond her intelligence, shes wise. shes not just random science facts, she knows how to hold her own in situations outside of battle and books. shes street smart. 

       “lone wolf keith”

now i know this was said to allura, and ill get to that. but if the keith vlog showed us anything, its that  hes not just a moody loner teenager.  i am very guilty of this myself. i portray keith as a human disaster. we don’t know hen he was left alone, we don’t really know much of his story. i head canon that his dad left him to fend for himself but every month woul drop off food or money or something. i head canon hes terrible about taking care of his body. but at least i don’t call him moody and move on.  i give him a background to fill in the blank space, but sometimes i forget and focus too much on his folded arms and  pouty face. he smiles. he laughs. hes an actual precious bean.  but hes also afraid of being pushed away. hes guarded and does his best to be strong. he hides his feelings and protects his heart with everything he has. (geez boi who hurt you). he is not the human embodiment of “teenagers” by mcr. aka he has feelings too. not to mention he also got into the garrison, and was the top pilot regardless of how he got in, if it happened to be by recommendation like most people think. 

      “humourous hunk”

as a hunk stan this one annoys me the most. throughout the episode hunk is consistently embarrassed, and even protests the fart noises, fart jokes, etc. he is purposely tripped for laughs. the fandom forgets that hes not just the fat funny guy, or just the personal chef. hes overcome so much since babies first lion flight, he used to get sick, constantly had to be the voice of reason to keep his teammates out of trouble,  he is just as intelligent as pidge and is actually one of the only people that can keep up with her science stuff. keith and lance even stated that they didnt understand anything they'd said. hes a fantastic engineer even if he had a few tummy mishaps. hes an amazing pilot too, and extremely sassy. he and pidge probably rigged the game console to work in space, And hes pretty friendly and cautious. he is NOT meant to be the comic relief. (say it louder for people in the back)

     “shiro the hero”

a lot of the fandom has taken to calling shiro daddy, sexualizing him (”now put on this tight shirt”) and focusing on shiro and only shiro (shiros the “favorite character” of corans little show). hes great. he really is. and the man needs a break. voltron is a kids show. he isnt meant to  be sexualized, none of them are. hes more than his arms and his leadership abilities. the biggest issue i have with the whole shiro thing. regardless of if hes a clone, when shiro returned he cut his hair differently, and wore short sleeves. everyone i know, including me, said they'd be fine with the clone if he had kept his hair long and “as much as i love the arm view” and didnt change his outfit. its a kid show. his body shouldn't matter.i am also guilty of this, and ep 4 opened my eyes to it. coran lifted shiros arm as if to prove that thats what the audience really wanted. he treats shiro differently bc hes the real star here and everyone should know it. ofc, hes the black paladin. (i wonder where the whole “the black paladin is the only one who really matters here” mindset came from. looking @ u ‘84). shiros may have ptsd, and hes constantly trying to hold himself together for his team, and its obviously not easy. maybe thats why hes got a cute white floof. the stress. 

      alluras erasure  

another point that always bugged me. the fandom either forgets allura exists, or that she is just stealing lances place temporarily. Allura is the blue paladin. while keith is gone, she is not filling in. shes a paladin now too. for coran to call her keith, and constantly call her keith, even though she obviously has a few choice words to say about it, its distrespectful. she says his plan is working and he replies with “why thank you keith...i like to keep you in character” once again, erasing her existence. now im not as well versed in this particular topic, but id like you to keep in mind that he talks to his princess with that mouth, and that she IS the princess and not a fill in while keith leads. feel free to elaborate on this more. 

     coran “fires “ team voltron. 

this. i find extremely entertaining. remember that legal trouble last year bc of the leaks? and right around that time the klance shipper started threatening them if they didn't make it gayer and put keith and lance together? the  fandom, who wanted all of this to happen their way, were threatening to get it cancelled and such just because things didnt go their way. shiro, the leader, disagreed with coran and tries to shut him down. and coran in fit of rage says:

you're a bunch of quitters! quitters! i’m a visionary! i have thoughts, ideas, i dont need you anyway. ill rewrite the show, get rid of the whole lot of you, replace you with new paladins! and the show will be better than ever before!...except for you shiro, ill never get rid of you, you're our most popular character!

this is essentially what the fandom was saying. now, was this definitely their plan, to call us out with this bit, in not sure, but honestly, its almost too coincidental.

the writers have made it clear that they heard us, and have always been listening. and really, thats why i love ep4. you're angry because you know you got called out but haven't admitted it to yourself. the writers do their best to bring us the best show possible, but they cant satisfy everyone. why cant we just be happy about Actual Meme (tm) Matt, and look forward to season five instead of fighting them because we got our shit handed right back to us. weve gotten a  taste of our own medicine, so chill. i enjoy them keeping us on our toes, surprising us with every turn, theyre great writers.who cares if one or two things pissed you off? we both know youre not gonna stop watching.