#fuck it i'm going to write some mediocre lines and see what happens

[sarah-sandwich-writes]

“My ear is burning, my ear is burning.”

“Well if you would hold still—,”

“You’re taking forever.”

“It’s a process! Here, wipe off your ear.”

“Gross, is this your sock? I’m starting to think you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I don’t. I told you that. It’s not my fault you didn’t think to download a tutorial before we went to space where there’s no YouTube. Either use the sock or suffer the chemical burns. I don’t care anymore.”

“Ah-ha! So at one point you cared.”

Peter stutters into silence. He’s 90% sure Harley is just bickering to fill the silence, as they do, but that 10% is compelling in its insistence that Harley isn’t going to gloss over Tony’s spilling of the beans for forever. At some point he’s going to want answers. Or rather, to let Peter down easy into the garbage compactor of ‘I’m flattered but I don’t think of you that way.’

HELLO??? Past Sarah where is the rest?????

[genericpuff]

Lore Olympus just pulled off the biggest whiff in webtoon history.

I promised I would choose one of two headlines and of course, this is the one we wound up with. But should we really be surprised? Rachel herself seemed to be telling on herself down to the minutes leading up to the finale, fully confirming to us that yes, she's been writing this comic at the last minute, by the seat of her pants, for ages now.

(that second one was literally posted TWENTY FUCKING MINUTES BEFORE THE COMIC UPDATED.)

Welp, let's get into it. Possibly the last essay I'll ever write about this dumpster fire of a comic (but probably not, let's be real LOL)

CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND FASTPASS SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FINALE AHEAD!

Holy crap, where to even start with this. I knew it was going to be bad. I knew it was going to be rushed. I knew it wasn't ever going to live up to what I had hoped it would be years ago when I was still a diehard fan.

But I didn't think it was going to fall quite this hard. Despite bracing myself for the worst, Rachel has once again let my expectations down through a final display of explosive mediocrity and disappointment.

Yes, the episode is called "You're Welcome", and yes, that instant "ick" you're feeling is the exact same as what we're all feeling. This title plays into the dialogue later, but what a shitty, lowkey mean-spirited title for the series finale.

Now, before we get into the actual episode, the WT ads for this are just... so desperate and misleading.

They are trying SO HARD to hype up something that isn't there, and at the last minute to boot, because Rachel definitely hadn't written any of this ahead of time.

First off, the bit about the gods being in "eternal chaos" of course isn't a stake worth worrying over because Gaia literally does away with Ouranos in the first 5 panels.

Did you really think I was joking about that 5 panels thing?

That's it. That's the death of Ouranos. As mysteriously and quickly as he arrived, he was gone, after Gaia ripped out of him what appeared to be some purple sunny side up - but it's actually, in fact, Apollo.

And that's when we start to get some of the worst dialogue I've ever seen throughout LO. Remember when I said LO's dialogue was like Shenmue 3? Welp, the finale decided to continue that tradition and further fuel the suspicion that this entire thing was written by ChatGPT.

Oh, by the way, that "thank you, ma'am" was Artemis' first and last line of the episode. So once again, just like in Episode 248, we're completely robbed of her reaction to Apollo being a rapist piece of shit and the character development she could have had as a supporting character. The women in this "feminist retelling" really couldn't be more half-baked.

Gaia stumbles upon Persephone, and I'm not even gonna fucking bother showing the panels where Gaia says it's time to "make things right" because they literally don't matter. Why don't they matter? Because Rachel just had to get in one more pointless time skip.

We're shown a sequence of pointless images that I'm not gonna show as I don't want to waste my image limit on them, depicting Hades having a sad day because his small wife isn't with him and oh nooo what could have happened?? Did Persephone finally divorce him ??

Nah, we couldn't possibly have an actually happy ending in this comic. Instead we get a completely pointless phone conversation between Hades and Hecate-

Not only is the grammar particularly bad in this episode, but the actual script-writing is atrocious. We literally did not need this phone conversation to happen because-

-we're cutting BACK TO THE PRESENT THAT WE JUST CUT AWAY FROM FOR A 3 MONTH TIME SKIP. FOR NO REASON BESIDES SHOWING HADES BE SAD OVER SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY ISN'T THAT BIG A DEAL, AS YOU'RE ABOUT TO SEE.

I- I LITERALLY HAVE NO WORDS. I HAVE NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE WHAT THE FUCK THIS IS. ALL I CAN HEAR IN MY BRAIN IS THE LEGEND OF ZELDA ITEM GET MUSIC-

-BECAUSE THIS WHOLE THING SUDDENLY SOUNDS LIKE SOME CONTRIVED FETCH QUEST. WHAT DO YOU MEAN HADES AND PERSEPHONE HAVE PROVEN 'TRUE LOVE' IS REAL? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY HAVEN'T USED 'LOVE' AS A FORCE FOR DESTRUCTION?? ARE WE FORGETTING THAT HADES MUTILATED A GUY IN THE NAME OF 'LOVE'? THAT PERSEPHONE LITERALLY INVADED THE HOME OF HADES' CANONICAL FIRST WIFE BECAUSE SHE FELT MILDLY THREATENED BY HER?

This whole concept of "true love" that Rachel is trying to convey feels so juvenile especially for a series that has sold itself as being mature and thought-provoking and progressive.

HAHAHA SO FUNNYYYYYYY why does Rachel write like this. this is, at best, the writing of a 13 year old on fanfiction.net, which I SHOULD KNOW, because I WAS ONE OF THEM. BUT I'M 28 NOW AND RACHEL HAS ANOTHER 10 YEARS ON ME.

Okay, this is the part where I'm CONVINCED Rachel either just mashed this into the episode in the MINUTES leading up to its release, or she used ChatGPT or something. Because NONE of this dialogue makes any sense. Beyond how stilted and lifeless it is (seriously, this dialogue reads like something from Empress Theresa) Gaia is clearly meant to 'replace' Erebus here which I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO EVEN EXPLAIN IS SO FUCKING DUMB, but ALSO what is even Persephone trying to communicate here? "That is true, but it was a deal I was willing to make and ties me to the Underworld. Please don't change me." What? Gaia hasn't even insinuated that she's going to do anything to Persephone, why is Persephone immediately jumping to this conclusion? What does 'changing' her mean? Is she asking Gaia not to force her to sacrifice something (which she never did)? Or is she asking Gaia not to strip her of her Underworld status? Because again, why is that even something Gaia would do?

Maybe this is harsh but I'm pretty sure even Empress Theresa is more coherent than this, what in the flying fuck is Gaia talking about?

"I can just see the potential for conflict! To relieve you from the burden of the whats, the hows, and wheres." Like... okay, first of all, that second sentence isn't even a complete sentence, it's a dependent clause left hanging, but also what the fuck does this MEAN. Is she EXCITED for the conflict but then contradicting herself by saying she wants to relieve Persephone of that conflict? Or is she saying she can see the conflict it would cause for Persephone to have to perform duties in both realms and trying to insinuate that she's going to relieve her of those complications?

Here's what I think happened - I think that second 'sentence' wasn't supposed to be a sentence, but the start of the sentence to the next panel-

So with that theory in mind, the sentence becomes, "To relieve you from the burden of the whats, the hows, and wheres, you are to spend three months in the Mortal Realm to do spring and the rest of the year in the Underworld. That seems fair to me."

It's still a very poorly written line of dialogue, but at least with that fix in mind it makes sense. But man, you can really fucking tell this episode was submitted at the last minute because that's a serious syntax error that should NOT have happened in this two-time-Eisner-winning comic.

Errors aside, it's clear that Rachel is following through on having Persephone spend only three months in the Mortal Realm, rather than the traditional six. There ARE other translations that have that number closer to four, but those four are the time she spends in the UNDERWORLD, meaning she's always spending either equal or MORE time in the Mortal Realm. Of course, Rachel doesn't want her self-insert small wife power fantasy to actually have to be separated from Hades despite this being a retelling of The Abduction of Persephone, so instead of her spending three months in the Underworld, she's now spending them in the Mortal Realm, literally doubling the MINIMUM amount of time (four months) she was originally meant to reside in the Underworld.

But oh no, apparently those three months are STILL NOT SHORT ENOUGH FOR PERSEPHONE-

Of course, Rachel "Retcon" Smythe had to have her cake and eat it too. I always worried something like this was a possibility, but I never thought she would actually prove me right - not only is Persephone only separated from Hades for three months out of the year, but actually he can visit her any time he wants to, so really, they're not separating at all.

I think Rachel needs to look up "reunion" in the dictionary, because if you can visit each other any time, then that means the 'reunions' are no longer special occasions. This completely removes any semblance of depth or meaning from all of the storytelling leading up to this, all of it with the expectation that this was a retelling of the Abduction of Persephone, because that's what Rachel said it was going to be. At this point it's safe to say that Rachel has zero business attempting to "retell" mythological stories, because she doesn't even seem to grasp the concept of why they were written the way they were to begin with. Either that, or she really just doesn't care, and the only reason for making LO a Greek myth comic at all was to propel her career.

This also brings me back to those promotional ads, the other one that posed the question, "Will sacrifice be enough to bring these two back together?"

This is stating the obvious, but I need to make it perfectly clear - Hades and Persephone have never sacrificed a single thing. The only thing they could POSSIBLY quantify as a "sacrifice" is "not being tied at the hip for a few hours", because even Persephone going on the equivalent of a work trip next door is apparently enough to make Hades sad as we saw in the 3 month time skip panels. Why is Hades so sad and lonely if he can visit her any time? Why is he acting like he hasn't seen her in years when he's actually on his way to reunite with her? Why is Hecate calling to ask him if he's "okay" as if he JUST got separated from her, but actually he's about to literally go to the Mortal Realm to reunite with her?

Hades hasn't 'sacrificed' a damn thing, neither has Persephone. They've both always gotten exactly what they wanted, even at the cost of breaking the story's own established rules. Their 'sacrifice' is equivalent to what billionaires think are 'sacrifices' when they can't buy another yacht or go on that third overseas vacation for the month.

And even outside of this episode, when have these two ever sacrificed anything?

I've tried so hard to think of what sacrifices have been made by the characters within LO, and I genuinely can only think of one - and that was when Artemis chose to go to the Mortal Realm with Persephone instead of staying with her family in Olympus. That was a genuine, selfless sacrifice, made by a character who has been shelved in favor of focusing on the self-centered pink and blue airheads.

Being forced to be apart for a couple days to do the equivalent of a day job and whining about it the whole time is not a 'sacrifice'. Neither of these characters have ever sacrificed anything, they just feel like sacrifices because they have the integrity and empathy of soggy cardboard.

sigh Anyways, we're back in the present and Hades and Persephone immediately decide they're gonna have sex because ofc, and then we get this gem of a panel-

MMMMMM

FUNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY JOKE

For some reason it's just a common thing for people to just be in Hades' home, and they can't seem to get any privacy as a result of this, but I digress. Turns out they still need to have that coronation for Persephone.

There is... so much wrong in these three panels.

First, to state the immediate issues - why the fuck are they mentioning Apollo at Persephone's coronation? Like first of all, no shit Apollo isn't gonna be there, but also, if this is supposed to be an event for and about Persephone becoming Queen of the Underworld, then why in the WORLD is Apollo even being mentioned? This is supposed to be a "feminist retelling" where the victims are empowered and heal from their trauma, but LO once again can't try to show any sort of positive growth for the victims without bringing up the assaulters and giving them screen time. It just goes to show that Rachel's idea of "healing" is purely rooted in the revenge, and not the growth. It's a very high schooler approach to this subject, hellbent on showcasing how all the meanies from the past are losers now and life just sucked for them forever, but inadvertently proving its own point that the victims haven't and can't move on because the narrative is spending so much time on caring what's going on with the abusers. It's the "I don't care! Look at how little I care! I'll prove it to you by putting in the effort of showing you how little I care!" approach, it doesn't really feel like moving on.

It's not about how Persephone and his other victims could have grown and healed, no, Rachel always needs to highlight just how much worse the bullies and haters and abusers are doing to make the victims seem like they've healed by comparison. Don't get me wrong, I can understand wanting to showcase the downfall of a character like Apollo, but this just... isn't the right context for that? Because it's once again taking attention away from the victim to focus on the abuser. It's once again spending screentime on the voices of the oppressors rather than the oppressed.

And speaking of, what the fuck is this punishment even? I knew Rachel wasn't gonna be able to resolve this plotline properly, she never had the capability to, but ... community service? Are you fucking for real? What is this even a punishment for even? Was this EXCLUSIVELY the SA, or does this ALSO include his attempts to overthrow Zeus by poisoning him, nearly killing Daphne, Eris, Eros and Psyche, trapping Eros and Psyche in an enchanted basement, and framing his father's 'death' on his half-sister? Because if so, how in the world is anyone content with community service? He hasn't even been turned into a mortal, HE'S STILL A GOD, so what's to stop him from going "WE'LL MEET AGAIN, SPIDERMAN" and trying something else? How is this a reasonable resolution in ANY context?

This is why I talked at length about what an issue it was to hide what Apollo really admitted to. Because now we really don't know what exactly he confessed to, and thus we can never really see the point of views of the victims outside of just Persephone - and we still don't even get Persephone's, because she just walks away from him and then he gets eaten by Ouranos and next we see of him is him doing community service! Once again, any emotional development that could be given to Persephone and the other victims is stripped away to make room for the point of views of the oppressive men. In this, the two-time-Eisner-winning "feminist comic" that is LO.

And that brings us to the "where are they now" segment. Yes, as we all feared, there's a "where are they now" segment, and it's as rushed and underwhelming as we ought to have expected it to be.

There is just... so much to unpack here, and yes, all of it is delivered in the dumbest way possible that only raises more questions than answers.

So Rhea and Metis are just back and we're not gonna talk about the implications of them being alive again?

Dionysus is a 3 month year old in the body of a teenager / young adult, and his mom is just alive now because Hades conveniently got his hands on more ambrosia and brought her back to life offscreen? But somehow Triptomelus and Hedone are still child-sized relative to their ages?

How did they 'heal Zeus'? And why is he so content with losing his power as King and Apollo being sentenced to community service after making an attempt on his life? How does he feel about the letter that Hera gave him? Did he even read it?

Where the fuck is Hebe in all of this? Is she okay? Do people still think it was her who put Zeus in a coma? Or did Apollo confess to that, too?

You're telling me Hera and Echo are just in a relationship now despite the fact that Hera is literally racist towards nymphs and there is ZERO reason for them to have a relationship in the comic beyond the fans making gratuitous headcanons out of it? How is Rachel, a bisexual woman, so bad at writing actual lesbian relationships and giving them the same amount of attention as the heterocis ones without shoving them into the background as props for insincere queer rep? And what about Hera herself? How did she overcome her role as the Goddess of Marriage to finally divorce Zeus?

"Ares is still a dog!" Haha! Ares is still a Persephone simp! Happy end!

Why is Eros just standing there smiling at the camera struggling to be seen past Hedone who's just floating right in front of him? You're telling me there wasn't a better place to put her out of that entire panel?

"Hades and Thanatos have been making more time for each other. Sometimes they even have a conversation." I'm sorry, is this supposed to be funny? The man abused Thanatos for years, treated him as just a lowly employee when he was literally his adopted son, and now you're trying to play it off as a joke that they're "making more time for each other"? What the fuck is this?

TGOEM disbanded? Why? What about the women who were genuinely a part of it?

Also, Artemis and Selene are just good friends now because reasons? Because they're both affiliated with the moon, I guess? Why is Selene even in this comic-

"They are still looking for Kassandra". Who? And why? This feels like such a last minute addition to acknowledge a character that the comic spent WEEKS foreshadowing only to have her finally appear as a pointless McGuffin, but it's so last minute that it does nothing. I'm assuming it's Eros and Psyche looking for her, but like... why can't they find her? They're gods, tracking down one mortal shouldn't be that difficult LOL ???

And also, where the fuck is Leto?? You're telling me she was an accessory - maybe manipulating Apollo, maybe not - but we don't see what happened to her? Is she just back to being a social outcast then? jesus christ this comic isn't finished-

Kassandra is where the "where are they now" sequence ends, and we're treated to one final horribly written dialogue scene between Hades and Persephone, where they tell each other how much they love each other in a desperate attempt to convince the audience that this is, in fact, a romance.

There's this thing in romances called chemistry, and if you're good at writing it, you shouldn't have to write dialogue like this. You should be able to see how much the characters love each other through their actions, through their small behaviors around each other. It's not always about what they say out loud, it's about what they don't have to say, because when two people really share that close of a bond based on love and trust and chemistry, words often aren't necessary.

Hades and Persephone do not have that chemistry. It has been apparent for years now, but this final exchange really is the nail in the coffin. There are no microexpressions or subtle emotions, no subtlety in their word choice, and nothing unique setting their voices apart. It's all just "wow thank you for being such a wonderful amazing partner, you are amazing and I love you" word salad that has to do all the heavy lifting for the completely non-existent chemistry that's been at its absolute worst throughout this entire season.

And worst of all, despite this story trying so hard to be focused around Persephone, around her story, her trauma and her healing, her voice... it's still all just about Hades. In the end, she's thanking Hades, and forcing him to say "you're welcome". All of it is trying so hard to convince us that Hades has been a positive addition to her life, that she 'owes' so much to him, but we've obviously seen plenty throughout the comic that begs to differ. And even if he were a better person than he is, it still doesn't change the fact that once again, the men are being held up above the women, with the women being grateful to the men who choose them. LO can try its hardest to convince people that it's feminist, but it is, at best, reinforcing the very same structures of the patriarchal system that it claims to despise and rebel against.

We do get one line from Hades acknowledging Persephone's part in the relationship-

-and it falls so fucking flat because it's still about him and what she does for him, and because nothing about their relationship was built on any sort of organic chemistry. There was a lot more chemistry back in S1, but it was still predicated on Hades lusting after a vulnerable 19 year old girl.

Yep, and that's it. That's the end.

Except it isn't because Rachel wanted to try and be smart by including an 'epilogue' that's really just stretching the episode out pointlessly for another few panels. And of course, we had to get another time skip, just a final dose of salt in the wound, this time to years ahead when we inevitably had to reconnect with Persephone and Hades in the future after Melinoe was born.

To recap, Melinoe doesn't remember... because Hades had Morpheus erase her memories.

This plotline has really started to give me the ick because it actually feels very familiar. Bear with me here, because I'm gonna go on a bit of a tangent about my own original work, but it's because I wrote a plotline exactly like this years ago.

There's this... turning point, in Time Gate: Reaper, when the main character Uzuki is kidnapped by a Reaper (see: undead) who wants to experiment on her in the hopes that he can somehow gain her abilities to bond her soul with others (which later allows her to literally possess people after she becomes a Reaper herself). Mitsuhiro, the male deuteragonist who kickstarts the plot by telling Uzuki she's got a limited amount of time left to live (which he knows thanks to his magical death timers that mark themselves on his skin), feels an immense amount of guilt after finding out she was kidnapped by the Reapers (at this point she's been gone for three months), as they were originally after him; he worries that she was made a target simply due to him associating himself with her, and vows to rescue her.

With the help of some other spunky teenagers and anime trope characters, Mitsuhiro does eventually rescue Uzuki - but for the three months she had been gone, she had been tortured, abused, and experimented on, causing her mind to split and for her to lose any sense of awareness of who Mitsuhiro or her other friends were. She was no longer herself after the hell she had been through.

Mitsuhiro's solution to this is to have Springlock - another Reaper with motivations that are not yet clear to the cast - erase her memory. This is not a light decision that comes without consequences - for the remaining duration of the story, Uzuki is plagued by night terrors and panic attacks, unable to really remember what happened to her aside from whatever brief flashbacks her brain recalls in its haze of memory loss. She is traumatized, both physically and mentally. She has lost three months of her life and memories, and doesn't know how to explain why she's covered in scars that are still healing, why she's missing organs, why she's now blind in one eye, and why the sound of scraping metal and ticking clocks gives her panic attacks. Mitsuhiro has convinced her friends that she's suffering from memory loss due to trauma, but only he knows the truth that he forcefully took her memories away from her, without her consent. This was not the right choice to make. It was not noble of him, it was not a grand gesture of love, he made a decision on her behalf without her consent that has now resulted in her becoming a nervous wreck. Sure, she still would have had PTSD if she remembered what happened, but at least she would know why and could then seek adequate help. Without those memories, she has nowhere to begin to heal. And so we see the consequences of this throughout [AFTERBIRTH] and even the upcoming Thread of Fate. It is a long-term problem that is not going to be solved overnight, especially not with Mitsuhiro withholding information from her.

Reading about Melinoe having dreams about her experiences trapped in Tartarus with Kronos ... it felt familiar enough that I had to talk about why the insinuations of this are so fucked up. I know there are people who are gonna handwave it away as "she's just a kid", "these are gods so what does it matter", etc. but ... it just feels like such an oversight to have Hades effectively erase her memory of her trauma and then hint at them still being present in her mind through her dreams. She did not ask for that. And the fact that she's now dreaming about it all does not bode well. But we're supposed to think Hades made the correct choice, regardless.

But none of this is effectively expanded on or explained, because we get one final scene of Melinoe and Demeter visiting Persephone, who has just given birth to... Makaria?

So it turns out Persephone and Hades are just able to have biological children now. Don't know why, but of course they both look exactly like Hades.

What I was really confused by though is the fact that it's Makaria and not Brimos. Do you remember Brimos? The child that was foreshadowed in Hades' original fantasy dream sequence about his future children about Persephone?

Either Rachel completely forgot about him, or she saw all the criticism over the fact that Brimos isn't a confirmed child of Hades and Persephone (rather, an epithet that can apply to basically any Underworld god including Persephone and Hades) and that her "research" was dependent on a book she read when she was 13 and decided to axe that. But she went to the effort of establishing that all the dreams Hades had were , in fact, canon visions of the future, so good job Rachel, you created yet another plothole on top of the hundreds of others.

And that's where the series ends, on a final nuclear-family-photo of Persephone, Hades, Melinoe, and Makaria. Of course, Dionysus and Thanatos aren't present in this shot because this is Lore Olympus and only biological children count /hj

Why Rachel couldn't move the "the end" portion to THIS part, I don't know, but I'm also expecting way too much of the person who finished this 20 minutes before it was due.

So that's it. Six years and that's what we get. I didn't expect much, but I was still incredibly disappointed, as were many others who walked away from this dazed and confused. Maybe it's all the "haters" deserve at this point. But what of the fans? While many of them are celebrating this ending at best and tolerating it at worst, I can't help but think of the fans of this comic who hung on for so long in the hopes it would "pay off", just for it to go out as gloriously as a wet fart.

As for me, I have such mixed feelings about Lore Olympus ending, but none of them pertain to the comic itself. Most of what I'll miss from this comic isn't the comic itself, but the people who have made reading it every week so fun, the artists and writers who have enriched the content with their own interpretations of what could have been, and the experiences of being part of such an amazing community made up of people who are as long-term-obsessed about this piece of media as I am.

I get people who ask me a lot if it's "worth it" to be so engrossed in the LO slander, who assume that I'm going to "regret" ever being a part of it all... but from where I'm standing right now, I couldn't ask for a better view.

Even if I didn't love every minute of it, everything I have here I owe to this comic. This stupid, wonderful, boring, amazing, pile of shit comic.

[brettanomycroft]

My brother in christ how was I not following you. Anyways I'm going to pretend you reblogged the character bingo because PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT MARTIN!?

I only just came back and realized I wasn't following YOU until like yesterday but now all is right and good in the universe.

Okay hoo-ee whooo boy let's talk about Martin. Fucking. Blackwood!!!

A lot of characters in The Magnus Archives are truly tragic (see: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Sopping Wet Meow Meow Institute) - they are victims of their own Fears and pride, or are manipulated to literal Hell and back, lose or destroy the things most precious to them, succumb fully to the machinations of horrible Eldritch abominations, or just straight-up get dead.

But in my mind, Martin is one of the few characters who in not really a tragic character. Does bad stuff happen to him? Oh yeah. Does he make bad or morally questionable decisions? As the Antichrist's plus one, absolutely. Is he kind of wheedling and pathetic at times? Definitely. A manipulative little shit? 100%.

But there's very little that happens to Martin that he doesn't in some sense own. He puts himself in horrible situation after horrible situation (from willingly letting his boss force him to relive a twisted version of his own deepest trauma to agreeing to jump into a tear in the space-time continuum) with a very clear-eyed view of what he's getting into and why he's doing it. Martin sometimes gets accused by characters in the show of being foolish or bumbling or just following orders, but he makes it clear time and time again that He Understands What He's Doing. More so, it seems he really understands what he's doing without the sort of illusion of trying to maintain objectivity or trying to "do good."

That's not to say that Martin doesn't care - he cares fiercely about the people he loves and is willing to make the hard choice when it's the right one - but his gray morality (especially when it comes to himself) is part of what makes him such an appealing character to me. He knows that the choices he's making will hurt him, or are morally questionable, or may cause a bigger problem down the line. He also knows that at the end of the day, he's still going to make those choices. I think ultimately that's what lets him support and push John in the final season: Martin has few doubts about the path he's taken to get to this point, and so he's able to shoulder some of the shock and trauma John is rocked with when it hits him that he's at the catalyst for a literal apocalypse and spirals into unknowable "What ifs."

OF COURSE A LOT OF THE REASON MARTIN IS ABLE TO DO THIS IS BECAUSE MOST OF THE TIME HE HAS LITTLE SENSE OF SELF-WORTH OR VALUE WHICH IS WHY INTO THE SALAD SPINNER HE GOES!!

Anyway, as someone who is a recovering people pleaser and is same hat when it comes to "Mommy issues" and "writing mediocre poetry," I really resonate with Martin's character in a lot of ways and think he's a lot of fun to write. Martin has a lot of nuance in his ability to seem unthreatening, using it to fly under the radar and still get what he wants (and in the end! He gets what he wants!!). I've read about people pleasing as a form of manipulation and, yeah, that's Marto to a T. But he's still also a soft and loving boy even as he advocates for his monster boyfriend to kill their enemies.

Personality aside, Martin is a canon Big Guy and there is something about trekking through the apocalypse with a guy who is big and tall enough to wrap me up in him that just makes me 😳😳😳😳 Like same, John, same. Some of my favorite Martin fics/Fanart feature situations where he's like a strapping farmer or breaks a zip tie with his bicep or just hauls people around and I am looking *so* respectfully.

[koreandragon]

Kdramas are in such a sorry state lately it's so sad. We're getting all these sequels for shows that mostly weren't supposed to have multiple seasons so they're a mess bc they have no story to tell. They're all dazzle razzle and no actual decent writing (taxi driver, nine tailed fox, romantic doctor etc) and then we have the 500 crime/thriller shows which are mostly deeply mediocre or downright awful. At least with romcoms if the chemistry is good and the character work is decent enough you can have a really fun show. With these dramas most of it hinges on a well written plot at which the majority fail spectacularly. News came out a few weeks ago that there are 80 dramas made that might never air bc they have no platform bc all the big ones cut the wen-thurs slot except jtbc so there are 80 dramas that will most likely rot after so much hard work and these could be great dramas, because their criteria is it will air if it has big names in it, so this is not a quality issue. Netflix really f*cked us, not only did it start the collapse of the us industry( writers are striking, actors are about to strike, shows are getting cancelled after 1/2 seasons and 8 episodes, shows getting purged for a buck, everyone is only looking for IP with big names and no one cares about good ideas or creativity) it also insidiously burrowed into the kdrama industry and changed the genres of dramas we get, the number of episodes we get, even the sequels bc it used to be no matter how huge a shows ratings were, the worst they could do was an extension, sequels weren't a thing that happened except very rarely in prodecurals like ten or vampire prosecutor. The entire thing is a sad state of affairs, another case of tech bros devastating an industry (I'm referring to the US tv/movie industry) they don't understand to line their pockets and moving on to the next one while the wreckage left in their wake will never be salvaged.

anon i absolutely agree. this is such a depressing topic for me especially because i just love cinema so much. my parents raised me to love movies then i eventually fell in love with tv shows and kdramas and it literally kills me to see the downfall of these amazing comforts in my life. i think the main reason why i haven't been here is because i just wasn't feeling like dragging through another kdrama with a medicore plot. y'all know what i was doing instead? watching old movies i've been meaning to watch for a long time or rewatching classics. you hear this every day and you could jump me for it but...they don't make them like they used to anymore. and idc how corny it sounds cause it's fucking true. exluding some very good recent movies where people making it still care about making an enjoyable piece of media (i don't give a fuck what anyone thinks of tom cruise or top gun, maverick was the only new movie in a long time that made me feel like i used to while watching movies and i literally cannot wait for the new mission impossible film). i'm a 100% with the writers strike, i really hope that they can get what they want and we will finally get back at least a fraction of something that was lost along the way. netflix was supposed to make things accessible, not turn the industry upside down and inside out then light it on fire and piss on the flames. every time i read a season 2 announcement of a kdrama i just go UGHHHHHHH. why are we adding seasons to a show that doesn't need it and why are we cancelling seasons for shows that needed to go longer to tell a story? what's the fucking rationale? oh oh OH mONEy???? netflix don't have enough MONEYYYY??? can't pay residuals to writers or renew a show that has moved people and has more story to tell but has money to make a squid game IN REAL LIFE (which is in itself like....the point flew over everyone's heads) and renewing shows NO ONE ASKED FOR?? oh what? what? more and more people are unsubscribing from your service? how could that be.....only if there was a solution to keep your subscribers by offering them quality content instead of mindless cash grabs....

i'll close this with probably one of my favorite posts on this site

[yellowjacketslesbian]

7, 9, 17 for the fic asks :)

FINALLY answering this weeks later lol

7. best friends to lovers, second chances, and doomed soulmates are three of my absolute favorite tropes in fiction, which is honestly kind of the biggest reason I was drawn towards taivan as a ship because they're really all three tropes rolled into one. it was also a big factor in why they were the first ship I was comfortable writing fic / actively participating in fandom for. however, I can't force myself to write a sad ending ever, so I usually gravitate towards writing best friends to lovers and second chances.

9. it honestly changes all the time for me, but here are a few that I'm most proud of:

this is my favorite taissa line I've ever written from let’s not do the wrong thing and I’ll swear it might be fun:

“The shrine to the mediocrity of men that they put up as a consolation prize to make them feel better about the fact that they’re going to peak in high school? Yes, I know it well.”

this line from To Leave the Warmest Bed I've Ever Known:

When you’re so used to the pain of being left, you learn to leave first. Promises to stay start to feel like promises to get hurt. Having Tai again may be worth getting hurt.  

this excerpt from Just Tai Me Up Already:

Their kisses grew even more intense as they murmured “I love you” against each other’s lips. They said it so earnestly, like the words could somehow fix everything that had happened to them in the last eight months. Like “I love you” could fix what was happening to Tai, to them. Like “I love you” could bring back their dead friends. Like “I love you” could save them from starvation or worse. Like “I love you” could make them never get on that plane, maybe Van spent the night before the flight at Tai’s instead of in her own bed, and they overslept together. Like “I love you” could make them wake up in some college dorm room tangled up in the tiny twin bed on a long weekend together. Like “I love you” was a promise they knew they could keep to each other.

this excerpt from Don’t Say You’ve Missed Me If You Don’t Want Me Again of Van reflecting on what they really meant during their S1E7 NYC monologue 25 years later:

Maybe, they should’ve wished for more for them that day twenty-five years ago just days before one of the worst days of their life. Perhaps, they set the bar too low in their adolescent mind for their relationship when, if at the time, they got back. Like one romantic gesture on one day would ever guarantee them a future together. Perhaps, no amount of grandiose romantic gestures could’ve saved their relationship once reality began sinking in for the both of them. Perhaps, they had meant more by that at the time, when they told her about that dream for them out there. Now they realize when they said “I’m not going to die out here without at least trying to get there,” “there” meant something beyond a daytrip into the city. “There” was train trips on the weekend down to DC to see her. “There” was exchanging promises to stay together under a trellis of lavender in front of all their friends and family. “There” was just lying beside each other reading a book they would talk about over a cup of coffee in the morning. They had known that “there” meant more at the time, too, if they’re completely honest with themself.

this line from Your Love Is Tried & True Blue:

They stay like that for a while, making out on the sidewalk with Henreitta Hudson’s triangle sign behind them, lit up by the streetlights and neon signs of the village. Maybe they’re the new americana of the Y2K era. A fucking lesbian Norman Rockwell painting. At least, that’s how Van feels about them right now.

the countdown to midnight in both Midnight Kisses & Double Proposals one shots:

17. honestly, there a lot of incredible fic writers in the fandom who have definitely influenced me and made me a better writer. especially since I only started writing last year, I feel like I've learned a lot from my time in the fandom even just talking to other fic writers.

however, as far as authors who have influenced me, John Green was one of my favorite YA writers growing up, and I feel like his work definitely has a strong influence on how I write pre-crash / young taivan in fics. especially his informal, straightforward writing style. also, I've moved away from it a bit in fics now, but I really admire how he incorporates music into his stories and really leaned heavily into that in the first ever fic I wrote.

I also really admire Casey McQuiston's writing, especially in One Last Stop, but their influence on my own writing is definitely a bit more vague.

like if I had to describe my writing style for most of my young taivan fics it's kind of just "if John Green were nonbinary dyke vaguely influenced by McQuiston who writes lesbian soulmates"

as far as my influences for writing adult taivan, I'm kind of still figuring it out. like I feel like I can't quite figure out what influences how I write them, but I definitely write them in a very different style from young taivan.

anyway... I rambled a lot, but this was really fun!

[m00nz-writes]

First Encounter (It's a Scream, Baby! chap. 2)

Summary: After getting home and getting ready to play a game, Alyssa gets a call from the killer. Despite her best efforts, she ends up losing and getting taken out as the third victim of the Ghostface.

Warnings: Swearing, graphic descriptions of murder, violence, mediocre writing

When Alyssa came home at the end of the day, the house was completely empty. Alyssa found a note on the prepared dinner in the refrigerator explaining that V had to go away for a week or two to help Dante with the Vergil situation. Alyssa was a little worried because V was still technically a part of Vergil. Sure, they were separated and V got to keep his human body, but what if something happened and she lost him? She couldn't deal with that right now.

Nevertheless, Alyssa heated up the food and went down to the basement to play some more Resident Evil. She hadn't finished it yet, and she was excited to see what else the game had in store for her. As soon as she put the plate down and turned on the TV and game system, the landline started ringing. Alyssa sighed as he walked over to the phone on the wall and pulled it off the hook.

"What?" she asked irritably, leaning against the wall.

"No hello?" the voice on the other line said in a teasing tone as Alyssa rolled her eyes.

"I don't know who this is, but dude, I just got home and I'm trying to play a game." she said bluntly.

"Are you alone, Alyssa?" he asked while Lyss frowned and stood up straight.

"Randy? Is that you? If it is, this isn't fucking funny."

"Not Randy," the voice confirmed and Lyss sighed.

"I swear to God, if this is you, Stu, I'm going to beat the shit out of you tomorrow." she snapped before slamming the phone down angrily. Just as she was about to start her game, the phone rang again and she picked it up. "Fuck off, asshole!"

"Don't fucking hang up on me again, Alyssa!" the voice yelled as Lyss scoffed. "How about we play a little game? You like games, right?"

"Who the hell is this?"

"The question isn't 'who am I,' the question is 'where am I,'" he replied as her eyes widened and she looked around in confusion. "Now let's play a little game, Lyss. You like scary movies, right?"

"I swear to God, if this is a prank call… it's not funny. What the hell do you want?"

"I want you to play along," the man replied angrily. "Now tell me, what's your favorite scary movie?"

"I don't know. Texas Chainsaw Massacre?" she replied as she quietly walked over to the container that held her guns and took out the one that had "Mirage" engraved on it.

"What are the names of all three brothers?" he asked as she frowned.

"Why?"

"If you answer right, you get to live," he said as she looked around nervously, checking the chamber of the gun and seeing that it still had a few bullets in it.

"The brothers are uh… Leatherface, Drayton and… uh… uh… Chop-Top…?" she answered, still looking around nervously.

"Wrong answer." the voice replied as Alyssa frowned before her eyes widened.

"No, the last one is Nubbins!" she corrected just as a masked figure emerged from the darkness. Lyss screamed as she dropped the phone and he ran into her, knocking her down and effectively knocking her gun out of her hand. Lyss struggled against him before kicking the assailant off her and scrambling to her feet, grabbing her gun.

She screamed as the man attacked her again and she felt the knife go into her shoulder. She grimaced at the searing pain before slamming the gun into his head and hearing a familiar grunt, her eyes widening at the sound of the voice. Before she could question who it was, the knife went into her back and she screamed in pain, reaching out to grab it and pulling it out with a painful groan. She quickly got up and kicked the masked man in the stomach before slamming him into the wall and headbutting him as hard as she could, knocking him out. As the masked figure slid to the ground, she dropped the knife and quickly made her way back to the phone.

She turned to look at the figure for a moment before going over and grabbing the mask, trying to pull it off before the man woke up. Lyss screamed as he grabbed her by the throat and slammed her against the wall, stabbing her four times in the chest as she coughed up blood and tried to force him off of her. She screamed in pain and desperation before a strange surge of energy left her hands and shocked him, causing him to let go and stumble away in surprise. Alyssa tried to stop the bleeding as she applied some pressure to the wound and looked at the man in front of her, coughing up more blood.

The man lunged at her again, quickly slashing her throat as she choked, grabbing the wound with one hand and his shoulder with the other. She stared at him in fear as she felt her life slowly slipping away, holding on to him in the hope that he would somehow help her as he just stared at her. She heard him say something, but she couldn't make it out over the sound of her labored breathing and the choking. She whimpered as best she could while holding on to him as tightly as she could with both hands, stumbling as he tried to back away from her. She began to collapse, still clinging to him when he finally got her off of him and she collapsed to the floor.

She stared up at him as tears began to fall from her eyes and she struggled to speak, grimacing before slowly closing her eyes and letting death take her.

[pochx]

don't actually read this please

idk what it is about the confessional of a small (semi) private space online to say shit u really should not tell people so openly that works so much better than my actual journal but uh.

it helps!

anyway. fr this is confessional shit that i'll talk about w/ the new therapist i'm trying to see if it comes up but

i'm that bitch who causes problems and is so good at slow burning bridges. like it's the self prophecy idk why but that's the hardest thing for me to stop myself from doing. my anxiety and fear latches onto one small thing and i make it real because idk! idk.

also wtf is happening outside. whatever, it's distracting

but god it just came out of nowhere this small fear. this small concern that first sprouted during some other deeply anxiety fueled misery moment. and now it's all i can think about. it is all i can think about.

but like god. i'm no fun. i just. i'm barely even here man, barely. when people think of their best moments, the best memories. i have never been in a single one. and not like i have to be but, i just. don't leave that mark on people, they don't have those moments with me because i'm just not that person. and the self actualization or w/e and i make it true, i'm just a fucking drag y'know?

also like. literally random but and different it came to me tonight so like. because of this constant fear right? and delusional tendencies of me to my relationships but idk if ppl realize how heavily i have to rely on what they directly say to me to prevent even MORE constant fear and whatnot. but someone recently (a month ago) said to me "i know my word might not mean much but..." and like damn

it actually really fucking did until then and also now. like i have full confidence and will take ppl on their words because i have to. i cannot play guessing or indirect games, i will be direct and i will assume u are too (do i tend to say things matter less than they do? yes but it matters little for you and more for me to change how i react/feel) but saying that just. ruins the confidence i had in your word until then.

also this last bit is just me whining and being insecure but i can tell that my writing is no good okay and that others think so. i know. a few decent lines or some snarky humor here and there isn't enough. and i'm relatively okay with that but its more frustrating to be told otherwise. i can show u what i write but the radio silence is enough okay. the polite dodging of making any comment beyond something else or the one small good line that there is. it's mediocre and i wish we could just go with that. or that people only ask about my silly oc because they want to be polite or w/e and that no one else literally cares or thinks the same oc w the same concept is interesting. like mint chocolate and mint with brownies are the same thing essentially i know.

sorry.

that's mean. and unfair.

things aren't great mentally. they never are but it's really bad and i'm trying to start getting some help. i just. need to be a genuine selfish dick for a bit (even more than i already am<3 self absorbed icon<3)

whatever. it's okay. my birthday is next month and, i'm sure it'll be forgotten again. i'll just keep being the little clown i am and accept what i'm given because it's not like i can ask people to change their habits for me right?

again. sorry. not what i normally actually feel or think. i just need this moment to be a dick.

(actually what i really need is to stop being a jug with the bottom cut out so the care that ppl give me isn't instantly lost but u know. sometimes a bitch just needs to be told that ppl are glad to have them in their life over and over again and that they do something that actually somehow improves it) (this is too much. it is needy. it is insecure and like a baby without object permanence. it will be annoying if not already)

wow. uh that was long. whoops. really hope no one read this. quite pathetic innit? bit much really.

[fyeahnix]

I wanted to write a longer "review" of Dying Light 2, but also fuck that I don't feel like it.

Some things:

The story is mediocre at best, and somehow is worse than Dying Light 1. The first game's wasn't terrible, I enjoyed it except for two extremely specific things I absolutely hated. This story? Fucking sucks imo.

Aiden is a boring protagonist and unfortunately very stupid. I'm not sorry. He's not that smart. For someone who spent his life on the road and had to interact with people at, I'm assuming, many different settlements, he's just...ugh so naive. And he seemingly never grows much through the story unless you specifically decide to care about the people you interact with, especially Lawan. Speaking of Lawan...

Lawan is the best character in the game and she does not deserve what bad choice you could make for her at the end of the game. Should have been the protagonist. /j

God oh my fucking god I love her and I'm so glad you can't romance her.

Not sure if this happens during the Peacekeepers route, but the game tries so fucking hard to push you to help them when you're siding with the Survivors and it's ESPECIALLY SHITTY when you find out what Jack Matt tried to do right before the Epilogue!!! WHAT THE FUCK.

Survivors >>>>> Peacekeepers. Fuck the PKs. Free people all the way.

I do not agree with walling the Crossbow off behind supporting the PKs.

We should have had the option to investigate and support the Renegades.

Faction system is....okay. Every game just has a faction system nowadays and it's...ugh. Could be better.

Quests are....not terrible. Thankfully not all fetch quests, but I do really question why they wrote some of Aiden's responses the way they did. It's possible to sequence break some quests like the quizzes because you can take them before you've experienced some things or met some characters and Aiden just...knows some of the info somehow????? Eh...

While I think it's fine to wall off quests behind faction choices, I am NOT okay with quests being missable due to you progressing too far through main story events. If that's the route you wanna take, at least make it clear that you're going to be failing some quests before you accept the new one. I spent more time playing the game because of this reason.

Parkour is EXTREMELY fun in this game. Definitely better than 1. There's some things that could be improved. It feels floaty because of Aiden's background, and I'm not sure how they'd rectify that in a potential third installment.

Paraglider is great but needs a nerf. Lots of stamina makes this a more appealing option than parkour. Would love a wingsuit over a paraglider tho but that might be too much.

Grappling hook is much better than the first game because of its dual utility to let you swing like Spider-Man and also function similarly to how it did in the first game. They should build on this more because it has a LOT of potential to be better.

Combat is okay. Definitely better than the first game but could still be improved. Again, I don't look at this game as the pinnacle of combat, but the inclusion of parkour within it opens the doors for a lot of much cooler shit down the line. Keep going in this direction. I could see in the distant future of them splitting combat into two trees—weapons combat, and parkour combat.

Blueprint system is better but still flawed. Mentioned this in a previous post but basically it has potential. Letting us upgrade them is a great move as it opens up a LOT of fun play with stronger blueprints. The first game just lets a lot of blueprints stay stuck at the level they're given, and some like the Molotov never got stronger. It was useless after a certain point in the game. Upgrading is GOOD. What's not good is the grind to get all these blueprints to higher levels. I get that's to allow people to spend more time on the game but it's tedious and boring. I don't know how to get a good middle ground here to fix this, but my first inclination would be to just let people max them out in like...100-150 hours of normal gameplay.

The map is....questionable. On one hand, it's cool that it's large and open and there's a LOT of verticality in downtown, which is what I wanted after 1, but a lot of the map is SO BIG that areas look very same-y. Bigger is not always better. And living in a city with such diverse architecture myself, there is WAY more they could do to make some landmarks stand out. At this point I'd much rather prefer a map that's smaller and much denser with content and detail than openness for the sake of openness.

mfw this ended up being long anyway lmao

[qqueenofhades]

(1/2) Honestly, Hilary, you are a blessing. I want to scream about your amazing Fic, how I love Immortal Husbands and the whole Immortal Family and how I had more fun learning history from your writing than in my whole damn school. But I also want to appreciate your TOG answers and meta. All the more because my friends outside the internet saw TOG as some boring movie with shitty plot and I'm just here in the corner, wanting to scream at someone who will understand about FINALLY seeing...

"(2/2) ...some GOOD queer representation, without throwing stereotypes in our faces, and I can't even begin with the found family trope because THE FEELS. Anyway, what I was trying to say with this rambling: thank you. <3"

....I’m sorry what. Who. Who is saying this. Straight people? I feel like the answer is definitely straight people. Because they have had EIGHTY FUCKING THOUSAND shitty action movies with the Boring White Man Hero, the disposable Muslim-coded (or actually Muslim) villains, the equally disposable eye-candy female love interest who either gets fridged or is secretly evil, Grimdark Everyone Is Secretly Bad And Nothing Matters crap philosophy, Moral Hand Wringing Over Superhero Violence, on and on. So of course they can moan and whine about “iT’s nOt OrIGinAL” and apparently not sufficiently Grimdark and Amoral, and how the dynamics of the team are completely reshuffled in a way that actually doesn’t prioritize THEM, and like.... this is why I never trust media only beloved by straight people, and only ever watch anything after it’s been recommended to me by a trusted queer friend. Because sometimes I remember the difference, and WHOOF.

Because: the gays and people of color DESERVE formulaic action/superhero movies as much as the Generic White Bro (in fact, we can all agree, far more than the Generic White Bro). This is the trap where every piece of media that’s not made by a Mediocre White Man has to be the best all-time of its genre, apparently, rather than using some of the same well-loved storytelling tropes but recoding them and re-deploying them for a more diverse audience. Instead of the Hard Bitten White Man Action Hero, we have Andy and Nile (two women, and Nile as a young Black woman who literally cannot be shot to death, in the year 2020, is fucking revolutionary on its own don’t @ me). As I said in my first meta, even Booker, who comes closest to fulfilling that trope, is made the closest thing to a “villain” there is on the team and even then for entirely sympathetic motives that rest on him having teary-eyed conversations with Nile about how he misses his family and feels like he failed them. His emotions help drive the story in an actually GOOD and useful way, rather than sacrificing everyone else to coddle him through his feeble heterosexual manchildness (why yes, I AM staring directly at the Abomination without blinking). Nobody in the story is EVER penalized or made a fool of for loving their found family (itself an intensely queer trope, even before the queerness of the individual characters) or trying to do the right thing even in the middle of the horrors, and frankly, I just want to consume more media with that as the main message. I’M SO FREAKING TIRED OF GRIMDARK. GOD. IF I WANTED THAT I COULD JUST TURN ON THE NEWS.

And of course, my BELOVED Joe and Nicky: an interracial, interreligious gay couple that has been wildly in love for literal CENTURIES and gives me the opportunity to do things like write the most self-indulgent historical romance backstory fic ever with DVLA. They met in the embodiment of religious conflict and have transcended that, there are never any cruel jokes or expectation for you to congratulate the narrative for being so beneficent as to give you “an exclusively gay moment” (fuck you Disney!). Joe and Nicky’s love story is central both to who they are as characters, doesn’t revolve around them being suffering or being Tormented over being gay (when the cops pull them apart for kissing, they beat the cops the fuck up, WE STAN), gets to unfold naturally in the background of the story with these beautiful little beats of casual intimacy (the SPOONING /clutches heart) and since THEY LITERALLY CANNOT DIE, no chance of the “burying your gays” bullshit. Even when they’re captured first by the bad guys, and I briefly, upon first viewing, worried that they were going the Gay Pain route just for cheap emotional points, they remain constantly united and fighting together and able to do stupid things like flirt when they’re strapped to gurneys by a mad scientist. Then the rest of the team ends up right there with them, so it’s not something that happens to them alone, and Nile comes in to save everyone’s asses, and Joe and Nicky get ANOTHER beautiful moment of fighting the bad guys and being worried about each other and tender even in the middle of this chaos and GOD! MY HEART! MY WHOLE ASS HEART! I LOVE THEM!

And just the fact that it’s not the Evul Mooslim Turrorists or Boilerplate Scary Eastern Europeans or whoever else who are the bad guys, but Big Pharma, nasty white men with too much money and not enough ethics, the CIA (at least tangentially; they could have pushed a lot harder on that but I’ll give Copley individually a pass), and the very forces that want to stop the Old Guard and discount what they do (helping the little people) as worthless... GOD. That is fucking POWERFUL. They literally take the time to explain with Copley’s Conspiracy Wall that even the little things the team does, when they can’t see it themselves, spiral out through centuries and have positive effects down the line. And it’s NOT just in the Western world (no scene in the movie takes place in America, none of the main four characters/heroes are American, and they only go to England when the English villains capture them). They’re in Africa, in Asia, in South America, in all these places where the Western/imperial world order has harmed people the most and in a way that Euro/American audience often gets to forget. On the surface this might be an action movie with Charlize Theron beating up men (which I mean, that alone is fine if you ask me) but there are SO MANY WAYS in which it achieves these deeper moments of meaning and subversion of the narrative that we are so often fed and the ways it could have done this (i.e. the same old Mediocre White Man ways).

I love the fact that the team unabashedly LOVES each other as their family members (I will never get over them all liking to sleep in one room even in their safe house in France), even when they struggle, and that they continue trying to make it right and never consider leaving Booker behind, because he screwed up but they still love him (and he them). I LOVE LOVE LOVE that this movie gave me not just Joe and Nicky but Andy and Quynh: two completely badass queer couples who kick tons of ass and have romance and Drama and rich and well-realized lives outside being used as emotional manipulation or suffering porn for straight people. (I realise it’s only been two weeks since the first one released, but where is my sequel, I have Needs. Especially Andy/Quynh and Quynh/Joe/Nicky needs). I was disappointed that they’d gotten rid of Quynh in a Bad Medieval Way to cause pain for Andy and then shocked and DELIGHTED when she turned up alive in Booker’s apartment at the end of the film. I LOVE that this movie gave me Nile Freeman and everything that she represents in the middle of this hellish year. I even love Booker! BOOKER! When he’s usually the character type I can’t stand and have the least patience with!

So yes. I have watched it three times already. I am sure I am going to watch it several times more. It just makes me so happy.

[retphienix]

I Have A Lot To Say So I'll Read More This.

The short of it?

I'm glad I played Joker- I played it because I wanted to know how DQM evolved when it reached the DS and I got my answer.

It's mediocre. Not bad exactly, I enjoyed playing it, it adds some REALLY appreciated features to the DQM series and if you were playing it at release it had online play which plays well with the post game content which I haven't touched by the time I wrote this:

-but there are some engine/console specific things that made it a drag and there are some parts of the game that are just weaker than the previous games which is amusing since the previous games were simple GBC titles.

And finally, I don't really recommend playing through Joker 1. Can't speak on the sequels, but Joker 1 was a pretty middling experience for me so I'm the wrong person to get a positive recommendation from.

And since the opportunity presents itself: If you like monster RPGs and haven't tried it- go emulate Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 for the GBC, it's really good and also if you emulate you can fast forward the GBC era grind if that's your taste- really a win all around.

On to my rambling:

I debated on writing, rewriting, rewriting, and better presenting my thoughts on this game and the series as a whole but nah, Joker ain't getting that, I'm ramblin'- lol

I will split it slightly between "The ending" and "The game as a whole" though.

Ending:

1:07 - This is slightly a 'game a a whole' thing but honestly it's funny to me that you unlock a permanent repel in this game by doing the main quest. I entered this dungeon feeling strong enough to beat the game, so I just avoided 90% of encounters entirely.

5:00 - I genuinely got a laugh out of Sparkpug's whole deal in this finale. Not story wise, that's fine, no complaints- I mean that Sparkpug is clearly built to be a monster that can carry an ineffective team. He's clearly meant to be bred a few times and a god tier member of a potentially inexperienced player's team- but I literally never used him after the intro.

So during this scene it's supposed to be like "I'm a demi-god monster, you can't possibly beat me" and I'm thinking "Dude, you're like level 10 and shit tier, you can't win, this is hilarious."

Obviously it's a real boss fight and not 'face the monster you once had' but I was having fun roasting him behind the scenes of this recording.

45:00 - What an entirely unexpected change of pace.

Like, I had it spoiled for me by a screenshot that Dr. Snap becomes a monster or something- but I thought maybe he was always a monster or something, and also I got a bad look at him.

HE TURNS INTO A BODY HORROR BEAST, THAT'S NUTS.

Genuinely a highlight of the game.

52:00 - I fucking laughed what a meaningless exchange where the payoff is saying "He was stupid!", it's honestly just silly and dumb but not necessarily bad just dumb lol

55:00 - Not a great 'you won' victory lap. Like at all. Kinda feels like they should have just made this all a cutscene where I appear back at town and see that Solitaire is the leader now etc etc.

I kinda don't understand why it's a victory lap at all? Because all anyone says is "They picked a weird successor to Snap >:(" or "Snap went to the island? I bet he was stopping the calamity :)"

If you have 2 lines of dialogue prepared, maybe don't make a victory lap???

1:00:00 - What a fucking stupid payoff lol

Like sincerely, Solitaire does NOTHING the entire game! She's meaningless from start to finish! And the 'surprise' is that she's the new commish??? And she got the position because she's a rich spoiled brat??? Like LITERALLY that's why????????

What a stupid fucking ending lol

Now her proposed evolution of the contest is fair enough, I mean it's childish as hell, but to be fair- more contests is a fine idea especially since prior games and this game demonstrated the public's interest in watching monster fights. And the goal being to fight her as the final fight is fucking egotistical and stupid- BUT- it does play into the fact that the player didn't get to fight her the whole game so it's whatever?

1:03:00 - This is both the best and worst lol.

This game has no story, like at all, it's fucking empty front to back, and only explodes with like- 1 event at the very end.

This moment is a montage of memorable moments with your 'best friend' Sparkpug. It's cinematically very nice to be honest! Even includes a moment I don't remember at the arena which probably didn't happen lol.

So visually it's cool- I dig seeing the camera zoom out as we run across the beach, and the flashback moments intersplice over us making our way to the scout memorial- that's very well done.

The content is empty lol

As I said there's no story, these moments are nothing lol

And that's that.

All said the ending was a very nice challenge to face with my team- I had to abuse items like mad but I MADE IT! It was a GOOD fight.

The rest I've already said.

On to the game as a whole:

I have issues with this game, but there's good too. It's really like 4 steps forward 6-7 steps back it's weird, it's really weird.

Positives are neat!

> First and foremost- TRAITS!

Monsters in Dragon Quest Monsters have always had a problem with keeping their identity for long. The way I'd explain it to an outsider to the series is that Monsters DO have special stat variance and intended movesets and all that jazz- but the breeding system completely and entirely destroys that relatively early into the game.

While a monster might normally have really high defense and low other stats while knowing buffing magic- breeding, EVEN UNINTENTIONALLY, will have that same monster come out with 9 billion attack and all ice magic.

Monsters in DQM have a habit of becoming canvases for the breeding effects rather than their own mons- and this is undeniably a downside. It makes the game feel unique, it doesn't 'hurt' it, but when by mid-game monsters are more easily identified as sprites rather than strengths and weaknesses or even types (family) it's a slight downer on the series.

Traits fix this a lot by making every specific monster have unchangeable traits which offer things like "immunity to x type of damage" or "higher crit chance"- it's small, but it gives each monster more identity.

> Second and secondmost- SKILLS!

The older games didn't use trees, it used each individual spell as a potential pass on during breeding.

Each monster could have 8 spells, and when you breed two monsters you pass on all 16 spells to the offspring (they don't learn them all at once, they learn them as they level up) as well as the natural spells the monster would learn by level up.

So in the older games it is really easy to end up with a refined and overpowered list of 8 spells on each of your monsters.

Now spells are tied to Skill trees and your monsters can have 3 skill trees total (which are passed on as OPTIONS when breeding).

All to say skills do a lot for removing the "Master of all, weakness of none" spell lists that the older games made trivial to make, now you have to limit your builds and be more specialized- also they added skills like "Attack up" to add more variance to a build- instead of having spells you might just have high stat buffs as skill trees.

Overall I think Skills are an improvement because coupled with Traits it makes each monster feel much more specialized and unique and less like a sprite with no identity.

> Breeding is improved.

This is very much because of skills and traits- again- but also the system is just improved in general. Instead of being told "That's a monster you haven't had before!" and judging your decisions based on the name of the offspring breed, now you get to see a small sprite of the resulting monster to help you decide- ALSO instead of getting 1 result for every combo (to the point where you have to back out and choose Monster A + Monster B and Monster B + Monster A as separate options), you now get up to 3 results to pick between for every breeding opportunity.

It's just better.

> The engine is impressive.

At least to me. This is a DS title using (from what I read) a rework of the DQ8 PS2 game's engine- it certainly looks like it.

Combat models are nice, using moves looks nice, overworld exploration looks nice- it looks nice.

Now for some negative and general nonsense- all of which is more often than not 'weird'.

> I gotta be unfair and say "The Story" first and foremost.

DQM 1 and 2 are not intense story games. They aren't.

But they both knew how to handle their story well for what they wanted to tell, I can and will praise both for their narratives because they know what they are and do it well.

DQM:J does not. It's fucking bad.

Basically: The overall story doesn't exist- you're told to be a spy, but that comes up 1 time towards the end of the game and LITERALLY doesn't matter at any other moment INCLUDING the one time it comes up.

You have NO meaningful objective from the start up until near the end of the game. You show up and have no goal- so you get told to get some crystals with no meaning behind it (not even a lie because they are clearly evil- not even a lie to motivate you! NO MEANING IS PRESENTED! JUST DO IT! TO DO THE CONTEST I GUESS! WHY? SHUT UP!)

So 90% of the game time you're not doing anything meaningful. So what about the islands? Any small narratives to keep things moving?

NO!

NOT AT ALL!

So you go 90% of the game having no real objective, just kinda wandering forward mindlessly- and then the game suddenly goes "Oh! Guy who seemed sus! He's evil! He's gonna unleash the calamity that you were 'kinda but not directly' working towards with your dog! You know, that plot point that's kept vague and paid 0% attention to the entire game? Yeah it's happening! Aaaaand you're done! GG!"

Basically there's just nothing going on in this game, it's all background noise until the last 10% of the game. And that's lame.

DQM1 had a light story- but from the very intro cutscene you have a clear objective which makes every action you do seem relevant as you are working towards that goal.

From the start of the game you know "My sister is gone! The king says a magic wish can get her back! I'll go do that!" and then you do!

DQM2 has a much better story!

You have a goal from the start (The kingdom is physically dying and you have to save it by getting a new plug!) AND it has stories for each world you visit!

THAT'S MILES BETTER! THIS GAME COULD HAVE DONE THAT FOR THE ISLANDS!

Anywho. Story is lacking and empty and lame especially when DQM2 has a similar format but does every part better- you have a clear objective you're working towards AND side stories to keep the light narrative moving!

WTH!

The spy plotline doesn't matter! It could have been used to build suspicion on who's the good guy!

The islands are so empty of story!

DQM2 has a fun mix on how a rival character works which makes every world interesting to see how they get involved!

This game has a rival that does NOTHING!!!!!!!!!

It's just such a step back from the previous games, it's weird to see DQM 1 land a solid simple story and DQM 2 build a great format to expand the story going forward- and then DQM:J just slams its head into the dirt and wipes out.

> Game's slow.

The engine switch is a good thing overall, but it makes combat slower (a lot), adds loading screens to combat (primarily), and they didn't bother speeding up the grind from previous games.

Because of the grind still existing which isn't a problem in and of itself- the game becomes SLOW AS HELL because the engine makes that grind take longer.

Also world exploration is slow which is to be expected when moving from 2d to 3d, but this is countered by adding things to the world to find or do- and Joker tries but it's still noticeable. The world exploration isn't a problem, it just stands out alongside the combat being slow as hell.

The engine change was a great thing- but it feels like they should have put more work into speeding up combat to counter the slowdown of load times and flashy animations.

A GOOD WAY TO FIX THAT MIGHT BE XP!

> Music ain't great in my opinion.

DQ has amazing music. This game has some weak renditions in my opinion. The CELL HQ theme song is a pretty good poster child for the worst there is, but just in general even the better music is lacking compared to the chiptunes of the GBC or the better mixes of the main series.

Maybe it's unfair, it's a DS game, I don't know, I just know I ended up just muting most of the game because it didn't sound great. I played the GBC games OSTs instead for a large portion of my playthrough. I listened to videos instead for the bulk of the game.

It's just not pleasant to me, sorry to say.

> XP!!!!!!!

I'm being a spoiled ass on this but yeah!

XP SUCKS IN THIS!

There aren't good placed to grind until you beat the game! (apparently)

The first level blatantly has too low xp which makes you grind before you can tackle the boss of the island- and the late game has you mindlessly grinding low xp rewards in order to be ready to face the final boss.

It's WEIRD!

Why is it so low!

> Tech is weird!

I could ramble on this alone but here's the short version:

DQ has a unique fantasy world aesthetic that each game has explored in its own way. It's basically "swords, magic, monsters, and charm- things feel light but aren't afraid to get scary sometimes :)"

This game... doesn't.

This game has fuckin' tech watches, jet skis, TOWER PCS????

This ISN'T dragon quest on a world building level.

It's like, contemporary modern world but with slimes.

And that could be good I guess, but it feels so fucking weird to see PCs right alongside swords and axes and a dracky.

Like... why?

It's a poor aesthetic according to my tastes. Maybe I'm an ass for that. The tech is weird.

All to say, in a poor rambling "I gotta get this out of me" kinda way, is Joker was fine.

I enjoyed breeding. I enjoyed seeing the engine. I enjoyed the unique additions like a 'hero monster'.

But I also had to grind mindlessly on a slower game.

I had to endure a story that forgot to show up until the very end.

I sat there thinking about replaying the older ones the whole time.

It was fine.

It's mediocre.

I'm glad I played it.

I'm done now :)

[cowardsanctuary]

experiment 21 is so hilarious wherhdhfjf,, people are praising the original story on the discord as i'm sure you know. PLEASE read it!! it's not as funny as the comic but it's a Lot

(Experiment 21: Panic Attack is a fanfiction on Wattpad whereas Test Tube decides to conduct a psychological experiment by trapping Marshmallow, Paintbrush, Lightbulb, and Fan in a small, blank room indefinitely.)

(The fanfiction itself contains blood, suicidal mentions and suicide, and it also touched upon mental illness. My analysis only implies a suicide actually turns out it was a murder lmao, but besides that is absent of those themes. Take care!)

actually, i’ve already read it! that is to say, i attempted to read it lmao. it’s not that it was the worst story in the world, imo it’s pretty mediocre as far as horror stories go. it’s the usual “what if x” happened and i can respect the experimentation (knee-slap) of putting characters to the test in extreme situations, but i just couldn’t get invested.

the characterizations were accurate enough. even test tube, the conductor of the experiment, was sort of in-character, but honestly that doesn’t give her a pass, like, at all! the premise of this story is interesting and all (if not overdone), but the reasons for why it happens is very much contrived.

i enjoyed the dialogue and interactions, though i admit some things weren’t realistic and it took me out of the story. the prose is legible, but the fact that everything’s in large paragraphs kind of broke the deal for me. i couldn’t read it because of that: it’d take too much energy for me to power through a story that i personally found boring. there’s only so much of a blank room and routine that you can take, and while that’s the point of the experiment, the job of the writer is to keep us invested. Exp 21 failed me on that front lmao.

i stopped reading at the bonus chapter, Music Box, but i decided to skip to the last chapter just for kicks. am i missing all of the context? yes. i’m so glad the author has started to use line breaks. i have never been more alive. i’m assuming marshmallow has already been eaten? how come they haven’t starved to death at this point? marshmallow’s Already Fucking Gone. (EDIT: turns out marshmallow was burned to death by paintbrush instead of committing suicide i’m SHITTING myself, way to fucking go)

fuck did they regress? honestly i’m super. uncomfortable with age regression and i just want to ragdoll at this point. i give up. i’m not doing this. i can’t fucking believe that age regression is the thing that made me uncomfortable? and not literally everything else? anyways, next on the agenda:

let me be clear. the writing isn’t bad at all! but it’s. okay, at best tbh. and i think a mediocre story is the worst you can be sometimes, but ultimately harmless. however, seeing how this fic appears to be influential to the fandom, i fear to see what people think is good fic and what isn’t. it doesn’t hurt to write what you think is fun, of course! but maybe choose better fics to idolize lmao.

one thing i enjoy is that we all neglect the latter part of the title: it’s called “Experiment 21: Panic Attack,” but everyone calls it experiment 21. it’s a shorter, snappier name. it’s a better name. you don’t need to put “panic attack” in there for the allure lmao.

with that said! my kitten chungus is walking around with a plastic bag and she can’t fucking see anything and it’s one of the cutest things ever!! she’s so fucking confused. it’s been like 5 minutes now. what is she trying to do.

[imsarabum]

Hi I just wanted to bring this to you attention which I find is something a LOT of fanfic writer tend to do. (I understand that it's to keep the fic detailed) For a little bit of context; I am not short, I am not petite, I have large feet, I have broad shoulders and short hair. I have big hands, I have muscular arms and play 3 types of sport per week as well as working out on top of that. Basically, I'm not the kind of person most people write their fics about. 1)

Hello! Thank you for sending me in your thoughts and concerns about the work that I write and upload. I will now discuss your concerns in several different parts to address all the points you made aforementioned. Please ‘Read More’ to see my full answer, as I have made quite a lot of points.

It’s true that a lot of fan fiction writers cater to only one type of person - for example, this person is usually cis-female, white, small, cute etc~ the attributes that society deems somehow more acceptable than others which, of course, is completely despicable. Like you mentioned, human beings come in all sizes, all shapes and all personality types and that is definitely something to consider in our approach to things.

However, I seem to be a little confused - so if it’s okay, I’d like to clarify something with you? My fan fiction blog is based around requests. What that means is, essentially someone requests something off me - gives me detail about exactly what they want and I try my best to make their idea into fan fiction. So for example, someone might send me in the following;

‘Hi Sara! Can I request a BTS Jimin fluff? The reader is shy and quiet and much shorter than him and a little chubby. Can it please be a cute date at the movies?’

So - if we are keeping in line with my original premise; I will write this scenario based on what this person wished. Another example might be;

‘Hi Sara! I’d like a GOT7 Jackson smut with the reader being a more athletic build - not with a cute personality but a really down to earth, strong personality? Thank you!’

Again, same as premise one, I would write this scenario as it is catered to the person who requested it. Does that make sense?

Now; the latter will change IF the requester does not give me specific instructions. Let’s take a look at an example request again;

‘Hi Sara! I’d like a GOT7 Youngjae fluff where they go to the park with Coco. Thanks!’

Requests such as this can be both a blessing and a curse to fan fiction writers! In my requesting guidelines, I have written that I essentially implore the requester to provide me with as much or as little detail as they like. But, when that person doesn’t give me much detail about how they want the reader to be, I tend to just go with whatever comes into my head at that particular moment in time, and admittedly when that happens, I see myself as the reader and I am absolutely guilty of doing that which I am always trying to not do - and I will try to improve that in the future.

Now - in saying that, I pride myself on being a fairly mindful person. To the best of my knowledge, I have always taken, for example, skin colour into account and therefore, I always try my best to leave any and all descriptions of race so that everyone of every skin colour whoever they may be can enjoy what I write, if they so wish to read it.

And absolutely! Not everyone has long hair, small hands and all of your aforementioned points. But the fact of the matter is, I have never received a request from someone specifically asking me to include - as you put it, someone of your description. I write for people who request things off me based on what they request at that time.

I understand your frustrations, as I too do not fit into some descriptions that writers talk about. For one - the cute attitude. And I will debunk this for myself by saying that not all of my scenarios include that. I have had many requests asking me to make the girl badass, or to make her take no shit from anyone; which I have done so! ^^

And I don’t think you’re rude at all, I can completely see where you are coming from! And I’m sure that a lot of readers who are male or who identify with being a male (or who don’t identify with male or female as a further point to make) are annoyed at the lack of boy x boy or they/their pronouns on my blog (which I hope to do more of in the future, but as of right now, I am so swamped with university, my mental well-being, and other things that are causing me a lot of stress that I simply cannot jump to everyone’s attention all at once!)

I would be more than ecstatic to include your description in my scenarios, my love - if only someone would request it at a time when requests are open! I write for the people who request things, I always have from the very beginning. Will this change in the future? Will I allow myself more creative freedom to write whatever story or character description I want? I hope it will; I hope that I can do that in the future, for sure.

And hey, personally I think your broad shoulders and martial arts skills are fucking awesome, and I’m a thousand percent sure that you’re cute - even though it may not be stereotypically as you referred to it as.

You mentioned something that I would like to make a final point on, too. Stories do include description - and I pride myself on offering as much description as possible when it’s needed. But I as a person can only do so much. I am not an amazing, outstanding, revolutionary writer; I am mediocre at a stretch. I don’t know of a way to make absolutely everyone happy. But - with my premise of a person requesting me to write things for them, I thought ‘Hey, at least I can make that person smile based on what they want.’ So please - I encourage people like you and anyone else who feels that they are undermined within fan fiction to request scenario’s based on who you are as a person! With that being said, my requests are unfortunately on a hold right now (for the reasons I previously listed) and I don’t know when they will be opening as I am a very unhappy and overworked Sara at the moment.

Despite all of that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for letting me know your thoughts which I can completely see from your point of view. But I do hope that you can also understand that I write based off of requests. So, I would really love it if next time, someone requested a scenario with more detail about the actual reader so that I can customise it to make them (and other people like them) happy, and smiling ^^