#i did say 'loosely based' in the original post at least lol.

[samcarpentersgirlfriend]

ILLICIT AFFAIRS | BILLY LOOMIS X READER 𖤐₊˚.

summary: you know he’s in a relationship. you know that this is wrong. but somehow, you just can’t seem to stay away from billy loomis.

word count: 1.5k

warnings: angst, cheating, billy isn’t a great guy lol, reader is insecure, suggestive content, swearing, fem!reader

a/n: yes this is (admittedly a little loosely) based off of the taylor song… I never claimed I was 100% original!! idk what this is tbh but I haven’t posted in a while so <3

⨯ . ⁺ ✦ ⊹ ꙳ ⁺ ‧ ⨯. ⁺ ✦ ⊹ . * ꙳ ✦ ⊹

He’s barely opened the door before his hand grabs yours, pulling you out of the rain and into his warm embrace. He doesn’t even complain about your sodden state, lips crashing into yours as he clumsily backs you against the wall.

“I’m glad you made it, baby.” Billy murmurs in between kisses, voice low with lust. “Fuck, I couldn’t wait any longer. See what you do to me?”

God, it makes it so much easier when he talks to you like that. When he talks like he breathes just for you, like you’d hung the stars and moon. It’s easier to pretend that way. 

It doesn’t take long. One moment, your legs are wrapped around Billy’s strong frame and the next, you’re laying beneath him on his bed, sighing as he works on your neck. The marks he leaves are purposeful, and they’ll no doubt be a pain to cover up tomorrow. You tell Billy exactly that, making sure to inject just the right amount of that teasing tone you know drives him crazy into your voice. 

“Good,” he says lowly, “Lets people know you’re spoken for. Can’t have anyone touching what’s mine.” He grinds down as if to emphasise his point, hips meeting yours in a way that sends a jolt of electric thrill through your bones. 

At least, you think that’s what it’s from; maybe it’s all simply down to his choice of words - mine. He knew what that did to you - what visceral effect it must have on you. Knew how much it meant to you to be wanted and desired and cherished by somebody like Billy Loomis. It was all you’d ever wanted. 

Except…

“Except I’m not.” Your voice barely comes out above a whisper. Billy comes to a halt, his lips moving from your collarbone as his brown eyes meet yours. He looks confused and vulnerable in a way that makes you sorry for even bringing it up, but you can’t ignore it. Not now. Not today. 

“You are. You know that you are. You mean everything to me, just-"

“Just not as much as Sidney, right?” Her name tastes like ash in your mouth. It always came back to Sidney Prescott - sweet, smart, stunning, Sidney. The girl who barely knew you yet always made an effort to smile at you in the hallway and compliment your outfits. The girl whose boyfriend you were sleeping with behind her back. 

From the moment he’d flashed you that charming smirk of his, you knew you were a goner for Billy Loomis. And you’d tried to fight it, you really had. He was bad news, all of your friends thought so, and most importantly, he had a girlfriend. Everybody knew him and Sidney were serious. And you were better than that, sleeping with a taken man. 

Except, as it turns out, you weren’t. Not really, anyway. He didn’t even have to try to get you in bed with him, but after the first time, you’d felt so goddamn guilty that you swore it would never happen again. 

Your resolve lasted an entire week. Billy was like a drug, alluring in every possible way and so entirely addictive. You couldn’t stay away from him even if you tried. And although the guilt never entirely disappeared, it sure as hell became easier to ignore when Billy whispered sweet nothings into your ear and made you feel like you’d had everything you’d been missing your entire life. 

“Sidney?” Billy laughs, a sound almost as beautiful as he is. “Sidney means nothing to me. I’m going to blow her off, and then we can really be together, do it right.”

As awful as it is, the thought of that seems completely compelling. You want to be Billy’s, utterly and solely, more than anything on this earth. Besides, anything would be better than passing him in the hallway and pretending you don’t know every fraction of him so completely intimately.  Pretending like he’s not the first and last thing you think of each day. Pretending that you don’t solely wear the single perfume that he complimented once.

So intimately that you know that, at this moment in time, you can’t believe a single word that flows from his mouth - no matter how desperately you want them to be true. 

“Billy,” you sigh, turning your head away from his pleading gaze. 

“Come on, sweetheart,” he replies rather impatiently. “You know it’s-"

“Complicated,” you finish miserably. “I just don’t get why it has to be!”

“Look, I can’t talk about this right now. Can’t we just…” 

He trails off, and his lips catch yours in a passionate kiss. It’s too easy to sink into it, to sit back and just let Billy take the lead and give you just what you want. It’s damn near impossible to pull back, but by some miracle, you manage to do so. 

“I’m just saying,” you protest. “If you can’t stand Sidney, if she’s truly as bad as you say she is, why can’t you just end things with her?” The sheer frustration that laces your tone is evident even to you. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this Billy, it’s driving me insane, I-"

“What, so you’re mad at me now?” Billy scoffs, tone completely accusatory. “Because you knew what you were getting into - you’re hardly innocent here, alright! I didn’t trick you into sleeping with me - last I checked, you're perfectly fine with our arrangement when it means you get to be the one under me! So why d’you even care, huh - in fact, why don’t you do us both a favour and keep the fuck out of my business?”

You reel back as if you’ve been slapped. Not because of what was said - you both know the words to be true, however deep down that is - but because of how much they hurt. You knew you were a horrible person, but you hoped that Billy saw you as more than that - you needed him to see you as more than that. And by the way he usually acted in your company when it was just the two of you, you thought that he did. When you were alone, he worshipped you. Fuck, the boy looked at you as if he was completely and utterly in awe of your mere presence. And he’d definitely never snapped at you like this. 

It’s one thing hating yourself for what you’re doing, but it’s another having the one person you love so deeply confirm all the ugly parts of your personality that you work so hard to keep hidden from the world. 

He can evidently read the hurt written all over your face, and Billy’s once irritated gaze softens. “Shit,” he breathes, and you can’t tell if he genuinely sounds remorseful or if you’re naively hearing what you want to believe. 

It’s easier to go with the latter option. 

You make a move to stand, but you feel a strong arm pulling you back down onto the bed below. “I’m so sorry,” Billy apologises, pushing a stray hair behind your ear. “I’m being an ass, I know that. I didn’t mean to take it out on you, baby.” With your arm still in his tight grasp, it would be difficult to stand up without outright pushing him away from you. But with each hushed word Billy speaks, you find yourself wanting to stay more and more. After all, he was right. You were already guilty, and your dignity was clearly long gone. What would be the use in leaving? It’s not like you could fall any further from grace. 

Your eyes flutter closed as Billy kisses all along your jaw, mumbling apologies under his breath as he does so. “I’ll fix everything, I swear. You’ve just gotta trust me,” he vows before his lips suddenly move beside your ear. His breath is hot as he murmurs, “you do trust me, right doll?” A small, pathetic whimper escapes from the back of your throat, and you find yourself nodding before you even decide to move. 

“That’s my girl.” The honey-sweet tone of his voice is enough to make you crumble, and your fingers desperately start to make work of undoing his belt. It doesn’t take long, what with your hands working practically on autopilot. Billy takes the hint, and he eagerly pulls your shirt over your head with ease, strong fingers unclasping your bra once he’s finished. 

You’re making a complete fool of yourself, a bitter voice whispers at the edge of your mind. He’s spelled it out for you, and yet you’re still here, letting him undress you like this. How pitiful. 

It’s not incorrect. Billy Loomis had undoubtedly made a mess of you. Ruined you. Before all of this - and God, how long ago that seemed now - you were good. You were headstrong and assertive, and you’d never been one to let people walk all over you. That girl was a far cry from the person you were now, and she’d undeniably despise the idiotic fool you’d become.  

You wouldn’t exactly blame her, either. You know that when you get home, you won’t even be able to face your own reflection. You never can. 

But you also know damn well that when Billy undoubtedly comes running back to you, because he does, every single time without fail, you’ll blindly follow him right back into his arms - and right back into his bed. 

It’s awful. You know that, no matter how much parts of you try to pretend otherwise. There’s no sugarcoating it, no justification for your actions that aren’t completely shallow and selfish. You just have to hope that one day, you’ll snap out of it. If Billy doesn’t choose you - accept you fully like the way you accepted him long ago - you like to think that one day, you’ll have the self-respect to leave and tell Sidney the truth. Hope she’d accept your shitty excuse of an apology. But as you lay here in this room right now, back arched and Billy in between your legs, you know that day won’t be any time soon.

⊹₊┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ✿ㆍ┈ㆍ┈ㆍ┈₊⊹

[b1eeding-sun-rambles]

tell me abt your fma aus!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :]

Okay this is gonna be super long but you asked for it :)

Here's like the general senopsis of my FMA aus (plus some of the art I've made for them)

Some general head canons that I have that apply to all of my Aus:

Both Elrics' are autistic and Ed has ADHD (alchemist special interests for both of them obviously. Al also has a cat special interest)

Ed is trans. I love both transfemme and transmasc Ed but typically I lean toward transmasc because I'm transmasc and I am also Ed /hj

Hohenhiem is not white and by extension Ed and Al are mixed (in my modern au that means they are both half Iranian half German because Xerxise is based on the Persian empire which, in modern day, would be Iran)

Gonna start with the one that started it all: my modern au!

I made this au because I was super pissed off about people erasing the Elrics' disabilities in their modern aus lol. (See my #modern FMA rambles for incoherent rambling about that lol) I'm not certain of the specifics for what each character will be doing in that au (I mostly see highschool age Ed and Mustang as his chemistry teacher but I want to do something different) I know Ed lost his limbs in a house fire and I got really attached to the idea of firefighter Mustang so there's a few possibilities with that. I was also thinking the government as a corrupt college that Ed works at/attends could be fun but I don't know exactly how that would work.

The characters I have the most fleshed out are Ed and Al purely because they are the reason I made the au in the first place. Ed lost his right arm and left leg in a house fire. He has a prosthetic leg but no prosthetic arm (hand prosthetics other than hooks only really exists for people who still have their arm below the elbow and Ed's arm was amputated at the shoulder and I don't think Ed would want a prosthetic arm unless the technology got a lot better) I really want to dye his hair black because he totally would but I'm afraid that's a step to far in terms of recognizability :(

Al has an undecided genetic disorder inherited from Trisha yippee! He has issues with insomnia and depersonalization and he's gonna have an arc at some point experimenting with gender identity and expression but I haven't decided yet if he's trans lol. He's an ambulatory wheelchair user so sometimes he uses crutches but he typically just uses his chair. He also has a feeding tube (and list of things he wants to eat when he finally can again). He also has a cat named Cheeto and she's his emotional support animal (esa) because that's what he deserves God damnit.

I'm missing a few loose sketches for all these aus because they're back at my parents house :(

Bonus Ed because this is what his room looks like but I drew him with automail for some reason?

Okay onto my Ed and Mustang role swap au:

Basically Ed is a colonial in the military when Roy joins as a state Alchemist (at age 18). So there's all that goes along with that. The major focus of the story would pretty much be the original story but Ed is mustang and mustang is Ed. Unfortunately my pea brain has decided to focus on the 'that means Ed had to fight in the Ishvalin war of extermination' aspect of the story lol. Oh did I mention Al's armor rejected his soul so he's dead in this au? Because he's dead in this au :)

I've mostly been working out timeline stuff for this one rn. but yeah, this is the super angsty one lol.

Ed had to cut his hair for his service in Ishval.

Don't have much art for this one because it's the newest lol

Last but certainly not least my post cannon au aka the Marco didn't have that extra philosopher's stone au:

This one's pretty much what it says it is. I personally hate magical cures for disabilities and the ending for FMA always sat a little weird with me so this is pretty much mostly about mustang learning to adapt to being blind now :) he's still working in the military to make amends. Also black hyate is his seeing eye dog and I just get to draw a bunch of royai being a great team :))

It's also gonna focus a lot on Al's recovery because that's really important to me :))

Now you may be wondering 'is Niko actually capable of making a fluffy au????' because this all seems super fluffy so far. Wrong! There's a little bit of angst mostly just there is no fucking way that Ed's arm would be fine after getting impaled by a rusty piece of crowbar I'm sorry. So yeah Ed had to get his arm amputated right after getting it back I'm sorry. He doesn't really mind too much because he's used to having automail it's honestly just more of an irritation to him that he's now going to have to relearn how to write for a second time. Al feels awful about it though.

I don't have any of the art for this au anymore :((((( rip that one drawing I did of post cannon Ed that looked weirdly like Brosh you are missed.

I'll try to take pictures of the other au drawings and post them next time I'm at my parents house but no promises I'll actually remember.

[hsslilly-blog]

heres overseer sakura and julian striking the vault boy pose for rad school story. the cropping looks a bit weird on the second drawing but its okay. its fine ❤️ more stuff under the cut as usual!

sakura got to be the overseer after she was chosen by the vault’s mainframe computer. she was the first one to be chosen, so she considers herself the “main” one of the bunch. such thing does not exist, but the fact she thought it did says something about her and means the experiment is working just fine. before being an overseer, though, she was the vault’s loyalty inspector. i went back and forth between this and making her a shift supervisor but i think making her the person who literally inspects if you are being “loyal” and sticking to the rules of the game vault is very sakura-like. also, adds an element to the au/vault atmosphere. no one really likes the censor.

i gave her two traits that might seem counter intuitive (and maybe they cancel out each other in the game? i didn’t check) but for the au i decided to use the traits in a more figurative sense. well at least for the vault dwellers. sakura has a lot of discipline and she has a set of principles she follows very closely, which is both a strength and a weakness. and both the great escape quest (the one this au is based on) and twelve angry classmates (best quest in game) demonstrate this very well. she has a tendency to… take things too far! even when new information that contradicts her is presented to her. whole premise of the au. so both traits work together.

tagged skills for both of these guys were hard because like i said on the other post, i didn’t want to give the vault dwellers any combat skills. i did end up giving sakura unarmed because she does some crazy physical stuff in the original quest and because she is an active person (her parents make her do all of that stuff on her backyard). this means she would have a higher endurance than the other vaulties, which would give her an advantage in a scenario where radiation finds its way into the vault. huh. speech makes sense for her role (in the vault and in the au) and repair = tinkering = cogs = steampunk. really. sorry.

julian was the second overseer to be chosen and as far as sakura is concerned, that makes him the second in command. he used to be the vault’s little league coach because of course he would. i tried making his vault suit resemble a football uniform. also his pip-boy is covered in stickers from the kids he used to coach. i think he would get really into his overseer job and he’d go along with sakura for the most part. i think his reasoning is different, though. while sakura gets stuck on procedure and then on her (stubborn) ways, i think julian truly believes this is the only option they have. he’s… trying. i don’t think he understands the whole radiation thing 100%. either sakura is keeping information from him, or he just didn’t make the connection yet (everyone is going to die because ezra is basically a ticking time bomb).

i chose loose cannon to reflect his anger issues and good natured because julian gets along with mostly everyone. this is why 6 CHA seems wrong for him but i’m trying to stick to a maximum of 40 S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points for each character (which is the limit in new vegas). i also liked making everyone extremely unlucky because lol this is NOT a fortunate situation.

julian has survival as a tagged skill because 1. he’s shown to have survival skills in multiple quests in high school story (he likes camping a lot) and 2. every game of football i’ve ever watched looks like a warzone to me. i chose unarmed for the same reason. barter… i think he’s the match to sakura’s speech in the same way wes is the complimentary barter to the mc’s diplomacy. i think it makes for an interesting overseer dynamic. also, julian used to be a bully and he’s past his days of messing with people but i think it’s a… skill. pushing people’s buttons, i mean. so. he also has a higher endurance than the other vault inhabitants.

that’s it for now. next ones will be autumn and (finally) ezra. and then vault 105 will be complete!

[rewordthis]

Aw pals! What was that episode??? Pandemonium for real!

But first, let me say… Dude, what was that squeal when Yuuji tore mechamaru from his ear??? 🥶 I’m still confused if it was actually him or just a distortion in the sound. 😑

Well, at least the rest of the episode was nice…

I loved Gojo’s disgusted face, as he asked to get boxed already. Like “dude if you’re gonna do it, just do it! Duh!” lol

Naobito gramps barfing up the six pack he downed… He’s a freaking animal (derogatory). 🤢😞 Maki wasn’t kidding when she said she couldn’t stand living in that house. Damn~

Yuuji climbing that building like Spider-Man… 😑 Then the highlight: screaming “Nanamiiin!!!” lmao Here I must say that I so get him, though. For all the embarrassment I get to call up on someone I know on the street and usually end up creeping behind them (and scaring the f!ck out of them of course…), I have done that a couple times. Like, it’s mortifying to even think of doing it, but I admit I can actually be that embarrassing sometimes. If it’s gotta be done, it gets done. End of story. 😶‍🌫️🫠

And Nanami just being there like…

…

Also. That curse user that stabbed Ijichi is so damn annoying… 😠 He kept stubbing him in the same place, but that must be the point ig. I mean, it’s not clear yet — excuse me if I’m stupid and this has already been addressed — but assistants also have cursed energy, right? Like Maki said in the movie; the base requirement is been able to see cursed spirits (these people are windows, correct?) so being an assistant and being able to cast even the simplest barrier should mean that you’re able to manipulate your own cursed energy. Which logically should lead to Ijich being able to do what Gojo did when Toji stabbed him with the normal sword, to somehow strengthen his body enough so he won’t loose too much blood and not get a crucial hit in any vital organs… right? Am I wrong? Uuuh, Nanami will find him approximately after 10 minutes, if I’m not completely off and he’s not dead by then, that is… 😒

By the way… shouldn’t there be a 💢 on Jogo’s head or something when he was arguing with Choso? The characteristic squeak was there but the visual (💢) wasn’t. 🧐

Not gonna pass on Choso’s smirk, either. That was so funny, like… why are you like this you little shit! hahaha 😂

And the twins… Pff~ That rotting brain knew just how to manipulate them, huh? Tsk! Threatening to kill them with the body of the man they worshiped the ground he was walking… that should have hurt like hell. 😔 It should also mean that they hadn’t had a say in the taking, right? It forced them to do its dirty job but they didn’t know how to make it into a binding pact to get the body back after helping it out with its plan… Ah, Geto, you didn’t taught your girls right. Yet, you had the nerve to speak about Gojo not properly teaching Yuuta how to imbue a curse into an object. 🤡

Curiously, though, that ‘slime’ thinks (?) that ‘regret’ can’t be served to it? It sounded like ‘regret’ is a taste it has actually missed? Maybe from when it was an actual human? Like how Sukuna was a human? Oh! But if it’s never been a human, it could be from when it first got born into the world? (I’m speculating— because even with all the spoilers that fly around, there seems to be a lack of knowledge around this thing’s origins. I’m so fucking glad Gege has managed to keep things obscure af!!! CLOWNS CAN’T spoil what they don’t know! Meeeh~ *aggressively sticks out tongue* >:P Eat that! On that note, however, I WILL FUCKING BITE AND BLOCK ANYONE THAT POSTS ANYTHING ABOUT MY BELOVED SUKUNA-SAMA FROM THE FUCKING MANGA AND DOESN’T USE MANGA–SPOILER TAGS!!! EVERYONES LIVES WILL GET MISERABLE IF YOU DON’T PAY HEED!!! THIS IS YOUR WARNING!!!💢👿💢) I mean, as a genuine brain curse — most probably born from the resentment of humans toward intelligence itself — with all that this should entail. Like fear of the minds’ capabilities, understanding, adaptability (which also is part of the cursed technique of that thing: adapting and using the host’s technique), enlightenment even... Or, if we take it seriously from only the perspective of its main ability, aka: taking over a body, then we must be talking about nothing more than a parasite with intelligence. I wonder if that’s how a brain-worm would operate as a curse… lol However, I still think it was once a human. Because regrets are humans’ privilege, in my humble opinion. 😗 Aaah~ I rambled a bit there, didn’t I? I shall put a full-stop here, then. Ok, I lied. Sue me! But I just remembered; what it said about the phenomenon of the memories flowing into it because of the soul so the soul and the body must be one undivided existence… What? How about muscle memory? A body is perfectly capable of reacting to something in its own accord. If there is something to trigger the reaction, then the reaction will take place anyway. Isn’t the soul supposed to be interconnected to the consciousness? Is the soul unrelated to the mind? Huh? It could be argued that the consciousness, the mind and the memory all reside in the brain while muscle memory (essentially mechanical reaction) and unconscious reside in the body and are connected through the subconscious. So maybe that’s what this rotting brain goo is actually riding onto??? Because there is a possibility the subconscious is the only thing that doesn’t reside in the physical world, thus is what essentially and practically cursed energy actually is and where it springs from. Right? Eh? Ugh… Yes, I might not have explained that correctly. Second language barriers you see. lmao Anyway, that’s all I wanted to point out for now. For real this time. 🤗

Also! Not to forget the man himself— Gojo is chill enough to find the time to play around in that box… Like, dude! 😎😅 Be the menace you’re usually being for Nanami and Ijichi and break a deeper crater to sink in, will you? You’re already flexing in there. I’m sure you tried to open the seal from the inside and that’s why it overloaded. Because when a device overloads, it often gets short-circuited and overheats. From there it either bursts into fire, explodes or melts. That’s why the eyes melted— I’m so convinced of this. However, I don’t think the fact that the prison’s eyes turned blue means that Gojo can see outside. It feels more like during the processing the object reflects what it sees inside itself…? If that makes any sense… 🤷‍♀️ (Yes, I will be calling that thing a device because that’s what I see it being. Thanks for not making a fuss out of this.)

All while poor Nanami is about to break down from the responsibilities that just got unloaded onto him! He literally told himself off from complaining, because he was about to!!! 😭 Stupid, Gojo! Don’t make this harder for him, idiot! It was already a lot of work before but now he has to save your ass, too! Baka!!! He’s practically carrying on his back the lives of a whole country’s people right now because he knows you trust him and he also knows his limits and how necessary you are to everyone! I will slap you for the troubles you put him through, Gojo!

Honestly though, I get that sometimes things are perceived a bit differently from me because ‘nuance’ is eluding me but…

Acting like he was nothing but leg below his nipples!

Wait… WHAT??!

[writtengalaxies]

hey hey! im down for a little chat <3

-

i only found this blog like, 2 days ago but i can already feel myself getting the urge to go back and reread everything here. content of the highest quality over here <3 /gen

all the fics on AO3 would be really nice as well imo! although i cant say that i use the site that frequently, it could be a good way for others to find your works! at least thats how i see it

i think its due to how much i simp for this man, but i really love love LOVE the memory files. the trope is fairly common (from what ive seen) but the way you write it? chefs kiss. i am patiently but eagerly waiting for the next part mwah <3

the cup god chronicles were also a really fun read. i dont fully really see content (READ: fics) for him regularly so i was immediately intrigued and when i tell you, i was HOOKED. big fan, i love this doofus <3

-

now imma ask you something. who's your fave ego? my guess is engineer lol

also, whats your pronouns? i havent seen them listed anywhere ^^"

if you dont mind me asking, how long have you been writing? just in general. it seems like a basic Q but the answers are fascinating.

-

and as a last little tid bit of me im willing to share for the night, i read most of your works in around 2 hours. what that says about me is irrelevant,, goodnight, i hope this isnt too big of a text wall to answer <3

WAAAH thank you!! Also all of that in two hours?! Oh gosh! (And you're all good! I like big text walls!)

That was more or less my thought with posting them on Ao3! I know a lot of writers do cross-post them, so I figured "hey, why not". I...might end up doing that today, since I managed to pull a muscle in my back real bad in the night and I'm laid up in bed. gfhj

Ooooh, Lost Memory Files does tend to be a fan favorite. XD I'm really happy people like it! It...actually spun out of a similar idea but with Engineer and a Captain who can't remember wormholes and looping...heh. The next part, based on my loose notes, is likely going to continue the hurt.

Cup God Chronicles was really my first attempts at writing Night, the smug bastardass. The reader being a sarcastic little shit is in part I'm a sarcastic little shit, and in part based off of @ghostf1ux. I did notice there aren't a ton of fics for him that aren't...uh. Spicy. I have a couple more fics planned for it!

Favorite ego is 100% Engineer. "The smartest dumbass" was how I saw him described at one point and I'm like "yes. THIS ONE." There's something about like...realizing that even through all the hurt on both sides of that, he still fully trusts the captain? Despite everything. Never knowing the full extent of everything the captain goes through, despite his own misconceptions...

And well, hope is very important to me. So ISWM being very centered around never giving up hope kind of hit real hard, you know?

I DIDN'T REALIZE I DIDN'T PUT PRONOUNS ANYWHERE. ghjk WHOOPS. Honestly, almost anything! (My one exception is it/it's, and that's just because it doesn't feel like me. Big love to everyone who does though! Y'all rock it!)

I'm a genderfluid menace so they're always changing anyway!

How long I've been writing...the first thing I really clearly remember writing was either HP or Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfic waaaaaaaaay back in the day. I must have been about 10 or 11? So...20+ years at this point.

If I had to think about creative writing and doing it more consistently, that's closer to about...16 years? (I had to think about when I graduated high school and I felt like I aged SIGNIFICANTLY in an instant.)

One of my English teachers really drove a lot of confidence in my writing! Shout out to Mr. Craig, who liked some of my original stuff I had written for his class so much, he still has it and checks in from time to time on what I'm up to.

He's a big reason as to why I have an 111k original fiction novel and a novella I self-published for a while. He also did a front-flip off a stage with a lightsaber for a student-written play.

[wittyandcharming]

re: that pharmacy worker thing, i dont know or particularly care if the original post is true one way or another bc its a story on the internet, but for an example of something like that happening. one time a pharmacist loudly announced to like. the entire store that i was receiving a controlled substance. & i didn't even have to show her id for it, she just asked me to re-confirm my address and she handed it over. like. you're definitely right, it's bad practice/outright illegal, they shouldn't be doing it, and i dont know if the original post is true, but my local community is pretty small so the pharmicist will often be like "barbara, here for your (drug name)?" etc. so whether that exact post happened or not i couldn't say, but the "here's your (x)" doesn't strike as particularly unusual to me bc pharmacists DO do stuff like that, at least here where i live.

sorry to message you about it, i was just so interested when i saw ur tags bc i didn't think twice abt the post really based on my experience. but obvs if ur experience is more on the industry side (?) then you'll know correct vs. illegal practice lol. as opposed to when im just reciting my address 3 times so i can get my meds.

See, if they did that to me I'd be a) surprised, b) kinda mortified and c) could probably get that employee scolded by management at the very least if I were so inclined (I never am but maybe if they caught me on the wrong day). All I know is, in the big chain pharmacy where I used to work, even as someone that worked front end and was only floated to the pharmacy occasionally when it was super busy, even I still had to sit through the training programs that taught me not to do things like that under penalty of disciplinary action at best. We even had the pharmacy line area outfitted with a stanchion that told people to hang back from the counter until called IN THE EXPRESS INTEREST of not letting randos overhear what drugs you're buying. It sounds like your pharmacy played a lot more loosely with that stuff than mine, but admittedly I've never lived in a small town.

[kjack89]

Courfeyrac/Marius, 6? (Insert joke abt titling fics with TSwift lyrics because I know you)

A. Rude 😂 B. Joke’s on you because this one isn’t even a Taylor Swift song.

6. “Show Yourself” from Frozen 2.

Courfius, developing relationship, canon-era.

Marius knocked on Courfeyrac’s door, taking a deep breath as the other man opened the door. “I have come to seek your advice,” he announced.

Courfeyrac arched an eyebrow and took a step back, ushering Marius into his apartment with a sweeping bow. “Advice, hmm?” he asked as he closed the door behind them. “Advice on which of the many subjects I define myself an expert of?” He smirked at Marius. “How to woo a young lady, perhaps?”

“No,” Marius said, much too quickly. “You know there is no young lady I would wish to woo save for the one who is lost to me.”

Courfeyrac looked like he very much wished to comment on that, but instead changed tacks. “How to bed a stranger, then, to clear your mind of thoughts of the one you have lost?”

Marius cleared his throat, refusing to allow himself to get dragged into this. “Believe it or not, she is the last thing on my mind at the moment.”

Courfeyrac smiled, a warm smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I take that as a compliment, you know.”

“It was intended as such,” Marius told him. “But no, that is not the advice I seek.”

“Then what?”

Marius could tell that the tips of his ears were starting to burn red, and he blurted, “I seek sartorial advice.”

Courfeyrac blinked. “Sartorial advice,” he repeated.

Marius nodded. “I have a...dinner this evening. With someone very important to me. And I wish to look my best, and there is no one I can think better to assist in this matter than you.”

“Another compliment,” Courfeyrac said, his voice low. “Keep that up, and I shall think you are wooing me.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?” Marius asked, more to himself than to Courfeyrac, who did not seem to hear the question.

“ Luckily for you, you have come to the right place at the right time, as my laundress has just delivered the best parts of my wardrobe,” Courfeyrac told him. “I am certain we shall find something that suits you.”

“I did not mean that I should borrow your clothing—” Marius started.

Courfeyrac just gave him a look. “Marius, my darling, if you are under the mistaken belief that we shall find something suitable among the unfortunate garments you own…”

He trailed off and Marius scowled. “What’s wrong with my garments?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Courfeyrac assured him hastily as he ushered him into the bedroom. “But that does not mean we cannot do better. Now, tell me more of this dinner. With whom are you dining? That will help determine the outfit choice.”

Marius blushed. “I am...dining with someone very special to me.”

The look Courfeyrac gave him was shrewd. “I thought you had not found your young lady.”

“I haven’t,” Marius said honestly. “But just because I have not found her, and, frankly, very well may never, does not mean that I should not live my life still.” He said it with more confidence than he felt, and undercut his attempt at bravado by hesitating and asking, “Doesn’t it?”

“Of course not, as I believe I have told you many times,” Courfeyrac said. “And yet, not even a quarter hour ago, you proclaimed there was no other young woman you wished to woo.”

“A statement that remains true,” Marius said, flushing even redder before adding, like a confession, “I never said that the person special to me was a woman.”

Courfeyrac stared at him for a long moment, his expression entirely unreadable. “Well,” he said finally. “That is my lesson not to make assumptions, I suppose.”

Marius tilted his head slightly. “Yet you don’t seem surprised.”

“Oh I am surprised,” Courfeyrac assured him. “But I am certainly not disappointed.” He presented Marius with an armful of clothes. “Now go try this on.”

He shooed Marius behind the dressing screen, and Marius reluctantly began peeling off his clothes and replacing them with Courfeyrac’s. “What do you mean that you are not disappointed?”

“I assume this means we are able to count you amongst our illustrious ranks,” Courfeyrac said easily. “And while not expected, I cannot also pretend that I have not hoped it to be the case.”

Marius blushed again, grateful for the dressing screen so that Courfeyrac could not see him. His fingers seemed clumsy as he hurried to button his shirt. “Well,” he managed finally, “at least I know I shall be in good company.”

“The third compliment this afternoon,” Courfeyrac remarked. “A boy really might get the wrong idea.”

“I was referring to Enjolras,” Marius said blithely, allowing himself a small, triumphant grin when Courfeyrac muttered something ungentlemanly under his breath. “Or perhaps Prouvaire, whom I can only assume you took inspiration from for this particular ensemble.”

He stepped out from behind the screen, fixing Courfeyrac with a pointed look. Courfeyrac pursed his lips, clearly trying not to laugh. “Admittedly, it would look better on darling Jehan,” he said, tapping his chin. “Though I think that shade of purple looks quite fetching on you.”

Marius wrinkled his nose. “Even so, I think something else would be preferred.”

“Very well,” Courfeyrac said, and he handed Marius another bundle of clothes, having apparently anticipated that his first selection would not be chosen. “Try this then.”

They spent an hour like that, Marius trying on multiple outfits and dutifully parading each for Courfeyrac, both men laughing and enjoying the simple intimacy they had shared many times over in this very bedroom. Finally, though, Marius adjusted Courfeyrac’s cravat and swallowed before stepping out once more from behind the dressing screen.

Courfeyrac’s eyes widened as he saw Marius, and a slow smile spread across his face. “Well now,” he said softly. “That is much more like it.”

Marius smiled as well, turning so that Courfeyrac could see him from all angles. “So what do you think?”

“I think you look magnificent,” Courfeyrac told him earnestly. “Certain to impress your beau, whomever the lucky man may be.”

“Well,” Marius said, smoothing his vest just to give his hands something to do, “in that case, would you like to accompany me to dinner this evening?”

For perhaps the first time since Marius had met him, Courfeyrac was speechless, gaping open-mouthed at him. “Do you mean—” he managed finally, though he could not seem to complete the question.

Marius nodded, a little hesitantly. “These past few months, I know I’ve been miserable company, and I shall not pretend that I do not miss her still. But you have been steadfast throughout, and a far greater comfort than I could have imagined. Nor can I imagine my life without you.” Courfeyrac was still staring at him, and he swallowed against the panic he could feel building in his chest. And I wished to make this known to you, and though dinner would be a good place to start. I am certain that I cannot compare to the young ladies and gentlemen you normally keep company with, so I thought, if you helped me dress up to your tastes, then perhaps I might have a chance—”

“Marius.” Courfeyrac’s voice cracked, just slightly. “You have never— To go through all this, to try to dress how you think I wanted—” He shook his head. “I owe you an apology.”

Marius’s heart plummeted. “I – I should go,” he said faintly, taking an automatic step back. “I should not have – I mean, I am sorry.”

“Mon amour.” Courfeyrac’s voice was soft and a little husky, and he reached out to take both his hands in his own. “You have nothing to apologize for, just as you have never needed to change a single thing about yourself to compare to any other, because there is no comparison. You have always been the best of them, and only ever by being yourself. And if ever I have made you feel otherwise, the fault is mine and mine alone.”

He raised Marius’s hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “And to answer your original question, I would love to have dinner with you. But not dressed like this – not unless you wish to be. I shall be glad to dine with you wearing anything.” He squeezed Marius’s hands before adding, too gentle still to be in his usual roguish way, “Or nothing at all.”

Marius laughed breathlessly. “I believe we should save that for dessert.”

Courfeyrac laughed as well, pulling Marius to him and embracing him before kissing his temple. “And I do believe that can be arranged.”

[dans-den]

Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers (2022) Controversy?

Hey Everyone! Dan here and today isn't going to be a typical review style post I normally do, rather more of addressing something I found a little...interesting to say the least.

a couple days ago, Disney Plus released the Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers (2022) film which is meant to be a bit of a origin/continuation of the original Rescue Rangers animated series? I'm not sure what this was meant to be, a meta-joke in the form of a film? anyways, I watched it and I thought it was an okay movie, a nice little homage to animation of all types as well as a nostalgia trip and fourth wall breaking style movie like Deadpool or The Bad Guys.

Also it brought back the original Sonic movie design as a joke but instead of a minor cameo, he actually played a somewhat important role in the film as an actual side character which I thought was cool they repurposed the old design, gave him self awareness along with an upbeat personality and made him an actual likeable character. Now I can say I like every version of sonic lol.

Now that I got the good stuff out of the way, lets get into the real dirt, shall we? So this movie is a bit of a crime solver type movie as well. With every crime solver movie there needs to be a main villain, an antagonist to face our main protagonists. Now the main villain in this movie is named "Sweet Pete" and I thought to myself "ah they must be using Petey from the Mickey Mouse cartoons as the villain here" and I was wrong but I was right about Petey being in this movie, but he just makes a brief cameo towards the end. Sweet Pete is actually.....

Peter Pan...but older and greasier. Okay? Sure, why not? Well in this film, everyone is basically a former child actor or former actor including Chip 'N Dale, that's the plot of the movie and is very Meta. So being an actor, Peter would obviously age just like everyone else therefore could no longer work as a child actor because he's not a child anymore. Now I thought that was a lame idea but I digress, but then they start to show how he was starting to spiral into loneliness, depression and made him a somewhat sympathetic villain honestly. If anyone knows the entertainment industry, it's cut throat, even Chip mentions "This business can be so tough" to which Peter responds "Ugh, you said it". So obviously the movie is self-aware of the entertainment industry, Self-aware how child actors are normally cut loose once they get too old for their roles and I find it Ironic how Disney of all companies are making a film that's self-aware of this fact considering they don't have a good track record when it comes to their own child actors.

Now I found this strange in the film but I didn't mind it too much and finished the film. It wasn't until the next day I watched clips from the movie and saw the Sweet Pete clip and I read the comment section which was talking about how this movie's peter was loosely based on the real life Peter Pan. I thought that was strange and I looked more into it and saw the name Bobby Driscoll.

Bobby Driscoll was the first Peter Pan who played the character in the original animated 1953 film. I knew about the name, it was familiar to me. What I didn't know is what happened to him after Disney. It pains me to say it, but he was the original "Disney" Child star. He was the templet for how your typical Disney child actor who be perceived and how child actors as a whole would be typically seen by the public. He actually did work on numerous films with Disney since he was the first child actor to be under Disney's contract. He was their go to child star since the mid-40's. He starred in films such as Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart, and Treasure Island. But his most notable and biggest role in his career was the boy who never grew up, Peter Pan. Now you'd think such an iconic film such as this would elevate his career to new heights right? Well, no. In fact, it was all downhill after Peter Pan released.

The Peter Pan film is a classic Disney film and classic animated film, Bobby Driscoll should have been given deals left and right because of his stellar performance on something this iconic but that was not the case. Shortly after the film was theatrically released, Disney fired Driscoll due to him getting too old for the child actor roles. Which sucks because why fire him for something outside his control? I'm sure they could have casted him for teen roles or some type of young adult role. Even Walt Disney himself said he could have been a school yard bully since he was getting older and was riddled with acne (which he was developing and used heavy makeup on). He was the first child Disney star and they threw him out like he was nothing, just like Sweet Pete in the film? hmm, coincidence?

I can only imagine this was the same look of worry that Bobby Driscoll had once he realized he was getting too old for a child actor gig. Besides this being goofy since Peter never grows up, It's a grim reminder to any young child actors that it's only a matter of time before their run as a child actor is done and they're out of a job. As I said before, child actors can't stay children forever so once that role is up, they try to move on to bigger and better things. Most of them want to peruse an actual career in acting but people always have that perception that child actors are nothing more than just that. They don't have confidence that a former child actor can take on serious roles in major blockbuster films so the former child actors are never given a real chance most of the time. It's because to that stigma that they can't grow further in the industry and their careers suffer because of this.

Going back to Bobby Driscoll, he couldn't get any real work after Peter Pan and Disney, he was taken out of Hollywood and placed in a public high school where he's was alienated by his fellow peers, kids his age saw him as a washed up has been. It's similar to the Jake Lloyd situation where people picked on him for playing young Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace and he was alienated by his peers as well. Bobby Driscoll soon fell into drug use and he would soon clean up his act, get married briefly and have three kids but he fell back into the drug use again. He would get into hot water where he assaulted a heckler with a deadly weapon and would go to prison for possession of drugs. He would try again to revive his career in Broadway but that didn't work so he ended up being an artist. on March 30th, 1968, he would be found dead due to a heart attack from his years of drug use along with excessive drinking.

It sad that this is still a common thing nearly a century later, Disney treats their child actors like cash cows and would willingly exploit them for everything they're worth. People always wonder why these famous child actors like Lindsey Lohan, Orlando Brown, and Adam Hicks fall off so hard like this and it's honestly because Disney along with the rest of the entertainment industry just doesn't care about them, they only care about how much money they can make the company. Once these kids fall out of favor, they just cut them loose just like that. Now I'm sure people can argue "Oh but these kids do terrible things that get them fired in the first place" to which is true, but it's only when it becomes public knowledge that Disney or Nickelodeon cares. As long as these behaviors are out of the public eye, Disney could care less. It's only when it becomes public knowledge that Disney has to cut them off since it would affect their family friendly image and revenue stream.

Now going back to the Chip 'N Dale movie, Sweet Pete's life was very much Meta humor towards child actors, there's no disputing that. But was in based loosely off of Bobby Driscoll's actual career with Disney? Well that's a little harder to verify. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but Sweet Pete's backstory definitely has similar connections to Bobby Driscoll's acting career with Disney and how both careers ended. I don't know if they just chose Peter Pan because he's the boy who never grew up or if they did research into their archives and thought "lets use this child actors tragic career as inspiration for our villain!". I don't know, I feel this was more coincidence but I definitely see this as a bit of a blunder on Disney's end.

Now the movie itself, I liked it. But I can't ignore this detail of the movie. This could have been avoided all together if they didn't try to make everything Self-Aware and did shit that was in the Disney fictional world, but instead you're poking fun at your own industry and the terrible shit you and the rest of the industry have done for over a century. I just feel that this was just one of those blunders that happen because you lacked the hindsight to see poking fun at yourselves for doing child actors dirty may not be as much as a funny joke but rather you guys calling yourselves out for being a soulless money hungry corporation who doesn't care about their employees or actors.

To me this didn't change how I felt about Disney, I already dislike them as a company and this just reminded me why I still do. I feel bad for any child actors currently signed with Disney or any other entertainment company and I wish them all success in their lives.

That's all I have to say, see ya.

[mariaiscrafting]

You know, what think I like when you are critical of a content creator is that you know how to separate a fact from especulation, unlike a blog out there that took especulation as facts.

Example, that night when we were critical of Karl, or any instance you have discussed about him, a lot of anons were saying that he gave them clout chaser vibes to them, and despite your opinion, you expressed that those were only especulation and not the truth, and to keep that in mind. That's good critical thinking.

But this blog had some similar anons, saying that he only is friends with the Feral Boys gro clout- In fact, they said the Feral Boys were only in it to benefit from clout and money. And they took it as a truth. I know you instance on them is neutral, but come one, they are friends. All of them. Karl isn't friends with them for clout. Like today Karl was playing golf with salad gang plus Sapnap and George at first and then Quackity and Dream joined bc they had spared time and it all devolved into typical chaos (Poor Corpse and Tina and Brook, had to endure those children lol/lh /j). Like, the stream wasn't planned with the 5/5 yet they joined, missing Karl and just having fun.

Idk, I guess that blog's superiority (They were a SBI focused blog) just irritated me. It's as if they were putting both groups at each other as if those streamers aren't friends or close. They were singing prayers of one while shunning the other based from especulation. Criticissism is fine, in fact recommended to be critical of your interests, but taking rumors as facts to base your crit is yikes. It's as if I wanted to crit SBI and base it only of "Philza hanging only with people younger than him is kinda weird ngl.." or "Sbi doesn't care about Tommy cuz he joined late" like that dumb Tumblr post did or some fuckers in Twitter imply.

The main reason I take so much care to separate speculation from evidence-backed theories and confirmed truths is because I feel like that separation is what distinguishes us from mcyttwt the most. One of the main reasons for mcyttwt's toxicity, imo - for its relentless cancelling of everyone, for its bandwagon campaigns - is that people oftentimes criticize and defend based on their personal feelings rather than rationale or evidence.

For example, I complain a lot about Dream stans on here, but you know the reason I didn't stop watching Dream directly after the cheating scandal broke loose, even though I thought he cheated? Because of mcytblr Dream stans. Mcytblr Dream stans engaged with me in discussion, both publicly and in DMs, about the cheating scandal, and even those who eventually came to the conclusion that Dream didn't cheat accepted the facts and statistics they were given and kept a healthy skepticism throughout the process. On Twitter, Dream stans were defending him before he even made a video following up to the mods' initial accusations because they felt that Dream wasn't the kind of guy to lie or cheat. They were replying to screenshots of statistical analyses from subreddits and to articles from mathematicians and staticians with extremely reactionary responses because of that feeling, which they believed in so adamantly, they had accepted it as fact. The thing is, to believe that Dream didn't cheat in the face of all the statistical and rhetorical evidence to the contrary is, in itself, speculative. Usually we think of speculation as a baseless theory that something is a positive truth- that is to say, that something did happen. But speculation also applies to those theories of someone not having done something, when the opposite has been nearly proven to be true.

For this same reason, I chose not to ignore the anti-technotwt threads with screenshots of Techno's old tweets in them. For me to have simply ignored these screenshots and continued supposing that Techno never expressed bigoted beliefs and/or currently doesn't would have been speculative on my part, and to boot, blatantly wrong, given the evidence to the contrary.

People in this fandom, and in all RPF/RPF-adjacent fandoms need to understand that almost everything they believe about the CCs they watch is speculative, at least to some extent, because of the nature of the content they make. Even if someone, in your opinion, displays evidence of some aspect of their personality - whether that be some form of bigoted, sweet, rude, clout-chasing, or anything else - because of the extremely one-sided nature of sharing one's life through a screen, that theory of ours will almost alwyas only ever be speculation, not a solid conclusion that can be drawn. We will never know these people's true intentions behind something shared to us via the Internet.

That vagueness leads to virtually every viewer creating a different theory in our heads about the CCs we watch, and we can't treat those theories as facts, especially not when sharing them with the rest of a fandom. I'm not a very big blog, but I consider even over 50 followers to be way too many people to spread a theory too, without at least clarifying that what I'm posting is speculation. If I have evidence, I like to list it or, if I can, provide sources; but otherwise, I take care to qualify most things with phrases or disclaimers that will clue followers into the speculative nature of whatever it is I'm saying. This is because theories and "feelings" can blaze through a fandom like wildfire, especially somewhere like Twitter, where so many things are word-of-mouth or based on summary due to character limitation.

You know why mcyttwt was cancelling Andi? Only a handful of original Tweeters under the cancel Andi hashtags actually knew what clips or tweets to criticize her for, or tried to elaborate on that criticism. But because every other mcyttwt user was getting bombarded by their mutuals hate-posting about Andi on their TLs, the "negative feeling" towards Andi grew and grew, even if most people didn't even know what they were supposed to feel negative about, exactly. Our judgement works on a quick trigger on the Internet because of the amount of information we're receiving, and so, even a single bad word against someone you don't have too strong of an opinion on can fundamentally alter your perception of them, usually subconsciously. If the first thing you see about Andi, who you've only seen on a couple LOH's or a couple Punz streams before then, is a tweet along the lines of, "disappointed in Andi for her homophobia and joking about suicide," despite you having no context, you will most likely be pushed to the negative side of her. Thus begins the cycle of hatred, building up and up, leading to you searching for more and more criticism about Andi, whether speculative or not, until you solidly and genuinely believe she is a Horrible Person. It all starts with the vaguest fucking feeling, because that's all speculation has to go off of, and it snowballs into a fucking wildfire across an entire fandom. I'm not about to be another person to let feelings snowball and spread like that.

Now, I don't know what exact blog you're referring to, but as an adamant SBI enthusiast, let me flip the argument many SBI stans have for their speculation upon the genuity of Karl's friendship with the Feral Bois, onto SBI. What do we have to go off of for the genuity of SBI's friendship, anyways? Our perceived brother dynamic between Tommy and Wilbur could very well just be Tommy capitalizing on Wilbur's brand and continuing the charade until now because it's been profitable. Maybe Techno only continues to associate with SBI because he knows how much his fanbase likes headcanon'ing about SBI, so he puts up with streams with them so he can continue to feed his fanbase with dynamics he knows they're obsessed with. Maybe Phil would rather play MC with people his age, and actually dislikes that he's friends with a teenager, but sticks around because he profitted so much off of Dream SMP and SBI-related content. And what could any SBI stan have to argue with me on any of these theories? Just because SBI laughs around each other and seems fond of each other doesn't mean they're actually like that behind the cameras. They so seldomly stream or make videos together anymore, anyways, so maybe they've grown tired of keeping up the dynamic.

Everything I said could be interpreted as utter bullshit, and that's because it fucking is. I don't actually know what Techno wants to do with his life, or how Wilbur and Tommy actually feel about each other, or who Phil wants to fucking befriend. The same goes for Feral Boys. There's nothing wrong with stating your theories or speculation, but to treat them as fact or not at least qualify such posts with the fact that this is all based on your bias and opinion, and no substantive evidence, is irresponsible. Just because you feel like one or more of the Feral Boys is "clout-chasing" doesn't mean you have the right to tout that feeling as truth. I feel a lot of things about a lot of CCs, both negative and positive, but no matter how strong my feelings, unless they have substantive evidence backing them up, I have no right to treat them as facts with my followers.

[jawnkeets]

probably a strange question but: how did you develop your style when it comes to poetry? I really appreciate how you write and how it's vague and specific at the same time? don't know how to express what I mean exactly, but it's like phrases that you feel more than you really understand them sometimes, and that don't look like they should make sense at a glance but when you really read them they do. maybe you'll know what quality I mean 🙈 I feel like I'm way too literal when I write and I want to be a little more abstract in a say less, convey more kind of a way?

hey anon, thank you! not a strange question at all - it’s actually a very good question, and one that i was asking until recently as well (and to be honest am still asking!). i totally know what you mean.

i guess the shortest answer i can give you is that i think ‘poetic feeling’ is best felt full-on, but expressed to the side. it’s also something that genuinely does get easier the more you try to do it, i.e., is a skill that can be sharpened; to start with, everything feels like nonsense, or not quite right, and i felt like a bit of a fake initially, but as i did it more and more i had more and more tiny breakthroughs and gained confidence (which is a genuinely such a large part of any creative endeavour), and this can happen surprisingly fast and snowball; i switched up my style in maybe 1-3 months, just trying a little bit - maybe 15 lines - every couple of days or so. and i didn’t put pressure on myself, deciding if i hated it i’d delete it and reminding myself that no one had to see. i find writing short poems also really helps with practising: they can help you focus more intensely on each choice.

it’s also not a solo thing, or at least doesn’t have to be - i use random word generators, to different degrees depending on the poem, and also it’s surprising how much even just picking words off wikipedia can help, especially with themed poetry. recently i wrote a poem about the medieval period, and threw in words that came to me with terms from wiki pages about the medieval period (history, art, medicine, etc), to make noun phrases like ‘kaleidoscopic altar vision noise’, ‘law texture’, etc etc. the thing that’s helped me most, though, is reading other poems which i think have this quality, which tends especially to be image-heavy poetry: will stone’s translation of trakl completely changed the direction of my poetry, and lorca, rilke and seferis have also been invaluable. i also find authors that do weird things with syntax interesting, like e. e. cummings and j. h. prynne, but don’t go quite as far as them. i have a list of favourite poems which might help, and which i re-read regularly ❤️

something else i enjoy doing is practising reading and misremembering, which sounds like cheating but is actually an excellent way of generating new material. i remember reading (i think it’s this article) alexandra cook’s 'creative memory and visual image in chaucer’s house of fame' and it was a breakthrough for me. from memory (ironic - wish i still had access so i could properly quote from it/check stuff) it talked about how one dimension to medieval creativity was misremembering - that new ideas and originality came from the gap between what the work actually was and how another writer remembered it. trying to deliberately misremember is a lot of fun; a poem is then borne out of an interesting intersection of skill and contingency, which gives it an energy, i think.

on a kind of separate but related note, the classical ars memoriae, or ‘art of memory’, might be quite an interesting thing to play with in relation to writing poetry. what it is, for anyone that’s not familiar with it, is basically the notion that the way to remember things is by having some kind of system in your head - like spatialising the material (so you think about the room you first encountered it in and all the details to help you better remember it), imagining it in a sequence, breaking it up into sets - there are absolutely loads of ways. if this seems weird or alien, we still use mind maps all the time, which is a great example! to deliberately twist, literalise and tbh actually invert the art of memory stuff (i know this is a bit abstract eek), i’ve been thinking recently that it might be fun to distort ideas (themes, an image you like, a line you like) by running them through various ancient memory systems, because i think medieval thought had a point that these systems subtly distort things even as and precisely because their function is get us to remember them accurately (paradoxically, we bend them to our chosen way of thinking/remembering stuff, which alters the material). using ways of memorising we wouldn’t normally use, and forcing them to interact with material much more literally, can yield quite interesting results. in any case, it introduces different ‘head spaces’ which can be quite useful to take in a very loose way when trying to ‘think to the side’: here’s a starting list. to give quite a crude and simplified example, let’s say i’m obsessed with homer’s wine dark sea and want to write something based on it, but also different and original. what if i try to think of ‘wine dark sea’ as sequential (thinking of material in a sequence being one way of remembering things listed on the above wikipedia link)? i’m honestly not sure what that means, and i can’t envision that. it doesn’t even make sense, and is a deliberate perversion of what memorising things in a sequence would actually look like - ‘wine dark sea’ would be one chain in a sequence if the sequence was, e.g., ‘favourite quotes’. ‘wine dark sea’ itself can’t be a sequence; this would turn ‘wine dark sea’ into something logical, mathematical even. but then the phrase ‘mathematical wine dark sea’ is interesting and unexpected. and you can then play with that or variations of it - ‘wine sea: dark, mathematical’ would make a great opening line, and ‘wine sea mathematics’ and ‘wine dark mathematics’ are really interesting phrases (you know actually i quite like this - might go and write a poem about it now... lol).

that last bit is very speculative and i’m kind of thinking out loud, so feel free to ignore haha. i wrote a post on writing poetry a couple of years ago, too, which might have a couple of useful tidbits. i hope some of this is helpful!!

[xenoblademisadventures]

Also here's a dump of other sketches with my thoughts process. Long post, so everything’s under the cut.

The Mythra:

I really liked my first idea so I stuck with it. My thought process was I wanted to emphasize that she's mecha anime and therefore out of place (she already has a mech). Pants are a reference to Alvis's illegal shoes. She’s wearing a crop top because Mythra reads as the type of person who would enjoy wearing a crop top to me. She has giant gauntlet things on her arms because they look cool. I gave her two giant braids because anime (and I’ve noticed a trend of tsundere characters often having two strands of hair going outwards for some reason? And I figured “might as well copy+pasta lol). Her left eye is partially covered by hair, which is supposed to represent her feeling distant or partially isolated from the rest of the world. It’s also a character design trend sometimes used in villain characters, which I thought would fit Mythra since she’s worried about her power being used for evil in 2 and is being constantly compared to Malos in Torna. I kept the choker from the base design because it looks cool and also relates to how she’s constantly constraining herself.

I also wanted to make her buff because she’s a warrior who wields a giant fucking sword, she should be buff (like, the fight scenes involving her in Torna DLC looked a bit awkward because Mythra was swinging a giant sword around one-handed like it was nothing while also having very shrimpy arms). 

Overall, I wanted Mythra to feel very alien and distant to the rest of the world. If I were to continue iterating on this, I’d probably look at some of Elma’s armor (mim and alien) for reference because doing that would allow for Mythra to look disconnected from the Xenoblade 2 cast but still feel like a Xenoblade character.

Side note: I assumed that the Aegis shape Core Crystal was a requirement. If I had the option to remove it, I probably would. It doesn’t look bad, but if the goal was to connect the Aegises with the Monado, I don’t like that Alvis’s key had to be retconned for that to function.

The Pyras:

A consistent theme here between the designs was the pants. I wanted Alvis's illegal pants to be a running theme among the Aegises because they are stupid and illegal and I like them. They also look like the most vaguely scifi part of his actual outfit, so I figured giving them a shared article of clothing would be a nice way to visually connect the five character designs (Pyra, Mythra, Pneuma, Alvis, and Malos), and I wanted to keep the vaguely mecha theme going. You can see in Pyra 6 that I was tired and just drew Pyra in Alvis's attire. 

I wanted Pyra to look like a mecha design covered up by something that more closely fits the aesthetic used in Xenoblade 1. So not quite mecha, not quite 1. The idea was that Pyra was trying to look more like a common person in order to appear less threatening. If she despises and fears her power, I don’t think she’d want to wear an outfit that embraces it. Putting her in more casual clothing would also contrast with Mythra and better communicate that Mythra is significantly stronger than Pyra. But all that said, putting her in full casual clothing might undercut the emotion Rex and Pyra’s first meeting was meant to invoke (of being like “oh wow, a legendary ancient weapon). And designing her to still look mecha would still be saying that “even though Pyra doesn’t want to be the Aegis, she is still the Aegis and cannot escape her power.” Which is why quite a few designs lean into the mecha aesthetic. The exact balance between mecha and casual clothing was the main thing I struggled with on this design. The final design is the one that more or less struck the balance I was hoping for.

A few of the designs are vaguely sexualized. Specifically Pyras 1, 4, and 7 all have tiny boob windows. If I were to finalize 7, I’d remove the boob window because it looks a bit awkward and I think a belt (similar to Elma’s underboob belt) would look better, but my thought process there was “do I want Pyra to be comfortable?” I don’t want to go over the top with the revealing clothing, but making Pyra wear slightly revealing clothing that she probably wouldn’t want to be wearing could help drive the point that she’s a combination of all the traits Mythra was criticized for lacking. It’s not pleasant or comfortable letting others dictate your entire existence through repeated harassment and Pyra already very heavily acts like the sexist ideas of what a woman should be, so giving her a tiny boob window could help emphasize that point. The main reason I’m saying I’d change it if I iterated on 7 is because I don’t think it compliments the design particularly well.

Another thing that stuck between each version of Pyra’s design was that her left eye is completely covered by hair. I did this for a few reasons: it would follow up on the symbolism of Mythra’s design partially covering her left eye, it would give Pyra a slight air of mystery, and it would faintly reference Alvis’s design (I want the designs to hint at each other but I don’t want it to be super obvious). The earrings were also kept between designs because they were in Mythra’s design and I wanted that to get carried over because it’s a little bit extra cohesion between the two designs. 

I wanted was to use Pyra's hair to help represented Mythra binding herself. Mythra has two braids that are loosely flowing, so she's already semi bound. If I were to start drawing Pneuma, I think I'd want her hair to not be tied at all (maybe a similar style to KOS-MOS and Elly as a reference, maybe not?) or I'd just put her in really long dreadlocks or something because hair go brr. One idea I had was to just have one big braided ponytail, but another idea was to try and tie the hair up (which is what I was going for in Pyra 2). I couldn't find a way to do that in a way I particularly liked, so single big ponytail is the way I went.

You can probably see that there were a lot of ideas thrown at a wall here, so I’ll go over some noteworthy facets of each designs.

Pyra 1 had a key on her chest, it was meant to be reference to Alvis. It didn’t stay in other designs because the reference felt too obvious. The first two designs also had a giant X on her chest, it was meant to look like the outfit was binding her, but I don’t particularly care for it. Pyra 2′s pants had weird patterns on them because I was trying to visually make them look a bit distinguished from Mythra’s while still keeping the same idea, but I don’t really care for them. I also don’t like how Pyra 2 is just wearing a T Shirt. I’m not really sure what I was going for with Pyra 3. She kind of looks like Glimmer in the She-Ra reboot, which wasn’t intentional. Pyra 4 leans more into the mecha than any other Pyra. She kind of looks like a ballerina but not really. I was focusing mostly on making her look a lot like Mythra, but I feel that this design has a lot of similar issues to what I have with Pyra’s actual design where it’s sexy and looks cool, but doesn’t really fit the character. Pyra 5 looks like a heroforge character (or maybe like something that fit Mass Effect’s aesthetic if I’m being generous?). I feel that this one also doesn’t fit her character particularly well. Pyra 6 was a bit of an overcorrection and I ended up just drawing Pyra in Alvis’s outfit. And Pyra 7 is the one I actually went with.

Rexes:

Rex 1 was more of a warm-up than anything. I put him in a vest and some pants. The hookshot and x marking were things I completely forgot about until last minute, which is why they look tacked on. He has a belt with some items in it. I wanted to give him scraffly hair and freckles to better emphasize that he’s just some kid. I don’t really like this design. I feel like if I polished it up, it would still have a lot of the benefits to base Rex while not getting as many people complaining about his pants, but the design is overall a huge “meh.”

With Rex 2, I decided to actually look up what scuba gear looks like. This design ended up emphasizing primarily that Rex has a lot of expertise in salvaging and that he’s a kid with humble origins. His strap on was based on a scuba outfit, same with the shoes. He’s also wearing pull-ups with giant pockets. I felt those imply humble origins because pull-ups get associated with rural settings. The giant pockets imply that he works with machinery. That’s also why his hair’s tied back. If you long hair and you work with machinery, that’s supposed to be tied back so that it doesn’t get caught in anything. I also gave him glasses because we need more characters with glasses. 

The character’s meant to be 15 and I feel that this looks closer to 15 than 12. If I were to make future iterations of this design, I’d try to lean more into making him look 15 because he doesn’t look 15 enough to me. I’d do this by giving him acne.

He has gloves because he’ll be using a sword and it’s generally not good to scrape up your palm while using one of those. His hook-shot also now takes up his entire arm because that’s heavy equipment. I haven’t figured out how the wire is supposed to be stored without having it fuck up his arm. But the hook itself is now in a little hook cubby. I think I’d want to make the bottom of the shoes look heavier than they are since they don’t currently look great for walking around the bottom of the ocean. 

Still, I’m very happy with this Rex. I mostly draw anime girls, so I’m happy with the number of things I feel I’ve gotten right with Rex 2.

Nims and a Dahlia:

I’m a bit unsure of what I want from the Blade designs. I decided to design around their element, their rough personalities, them needing a core crystal, and their element. I also want them to look like they could also exist in the same universe and maybe not look very human? That was, at least, my thought process when drawing Nim, though that thought process was not consistently held, like, at all. A lot of my Blade redesigns don’t look very good because I didn’t have a very good idea towards what I should even be aiming for. The Blades have very generic personalities and overall feel so disconnected from the world that I’d probably just scrap every existing Blade in their entirety and replace them different characters who are better established. Like, maybe because this Blade was born from the Gormott Titan, they look like Gormotti or part giraff as a result and are more likely to have the earth element? And how many hands they’ve been through and the personalities of their previous drivers stack up to subtly influence their appearance? Like, a Blade from Gormott that ended up in Uraya for 10 lifetimes might be an earth-type cat-person with fins or something? Or maybe the more developed a Blade is, the less it resembles a human? But doing that would require writing a lot more lore per individual Blade than is actually provided. But just having something to better frame the Blades as something other than “random (mostly) anime girls that you pick up along the way” would be necessary to give them good designs.

Anyways, with Nim, I figured giving her a Saytr like appearance would be good. She has a strong association with animals and nature, which, for me, translates to “naked.” Alongside that, I looked up Nymphs and they’re also usually depicted as naked women. I also completely disregarded to the two foxes on her shoulders. They were put into Nim 1 as an afterthought. 

Nim 1 is the only Nim that isn’t plus-sized because I figured “why not have some different body types among the blades?” A lot of my redesigns for Pyra and Mythra try to keep their body type more or less in tact less because I think it’s the best body type for them and more to spite the idea that them having big boobs is the reason that they’re oversexualized. Like, they are comically big, but they’re only sexualized because of how much attention the camera and design draws to them. But, that’s a side tangent. I made Nim overweight because I like drawing overweight women. Nim 1 gets the vibes of “naked lady” while Nim 2 has the vibes of “big fluffy friend” while Nim 3 is somewhat of a compromise. If I were to make a final design for her out of these, I’d definitely try and fuse some aspects of Nims 2 and 3.

Nim 3 has vines on her arms because Nymphs get depicted with vines quite a bit. The main reason Nim 2 is wearing a sun dress is because I stepped back and thought “wait, maybe some people would have an issue with a naked anime lady running around.” Nim 2 also has a transition between furry legs and no fur legs. 

I didn’t really have any ideas for Dahlia. I saw someone draw a version of Dahlia based off Elsa from Frozen and I thought that might be fun to draw. I don’t really have any further thoughts on this.

Praxises:

This is sort of where I was at the point where I realized that if I wanted to redesign the blades, I’d need to figure out some unifying theme for them all. I was thinking “maybe blades could try and visually represent different aspects of being human?” This idea was only really used on Praxis and wasn’t very strongly represented. I was kind of tired when I drew Praxis 1 and Praxis 2 was a bit of a warm-up sketch. 

Neither of these designs are particularly good. I wanted Praxis to be wearing those 90s bubbly arm and leg warmers because she has a bubbly personality and is a water type. I don’t know why Praxis 2 is a cowgirl. 

Zenobias:

Zenobia 1 is based a bit a wrestler because she has wrestler vibes. I see her as the type of person who would do Dark Souls no armor run on the dance pad. My other thought process was “let me google the word ‘zenobia’ and see what crops up” and I saw something about a Syrian empress but I decided to do zero research, so I have no idea if what I drew was offensive towards muslims. She has a scarf tho because wind.

Zenobia 2 is based on a picture of that empress lady. I don’t think it follows her character in-game particularly well though. 

Two (Blade) Nias:

Neither Nia is particularly finished. The main requirements were that this Nia has to look like a Blade, a catgirl, and like something were she’d be able to hide the Blade parts, but not comfortably. I’m at a bit of a loss here. I think the formal wear used in her base-game design is not the way to go. The outfit just doesn’t feel like it matches her brash and snarky personality, like, at all. The first outfit was trying to throw random ideas but nothing was coming up and that’s what happened with the other. Though, Nia 2 gets bonus points for looking like a cats 2019 character. I was sketching out what parts of her body should be covered, but I don’t think I’d want to go with crop-top and skirt because Mythra already has a crop top. The tail is also debatable since I figured if I kept that, how Nia hides the tail could be a fun part of her driver outfit. I also didn’t really like how Driver Nia and Blade Nia have different hair and ear lengths. It bothered me more here than with the original Pyra/Mythra designs because Nia isn’t the Aegis, I don’t think she should be allowed to material and dematerialize her clothing, hair, and ears like that. I do kind of like the idea of giving her paws since those are things that can be easily hidden by shoes. Giving her spotted skin isn’t a bad idea but it’s not as high on the “keep” scale as the paws are (which aren’t super high in the first place).

Overall, it’s probably a bit anticlimactic to end on some lame designs, but that’s how it goes, I guess. If I were to redesign more of the Blades (or finish the Blade redesigns I started), I’d need to figure out what running themes I want from the Blade designs. I think maybe focusing on the human designs first and working from there could be a way to go. Unsure. 

[tiredassmage]

WoLsDay 10-27-21.

A little belated because I work and go to school Wednesdays, but! This is super cool. Please check out the original post from @mythopoet-of-amaurot​ here!

Tell me about what inspirations and influences went into the creation and development of your WoL/OC. Did you have a vision for them in mind when you created them? Or did it take time and experience to figure out who they were? Feel free to go into detail!

Astor is actually based on a mage OC I’ve had for several years now - starting as just a sort of generalized fantasy mage oc I used to RP with and then traveling with me to be adapted into the various fandoms I’ve been with over time. FFXIV being a fantasy setting, it was really only a matter of time before I brought him over. I had, actually, started my free trial with a Roe female character because I like to at least try out game-specific races when I have the opportunity to do so, but I made Astor shortly after, I think once I’d bought the full game before my Roe had even experienced Sastasha because I was already entranced, lol.

Anyway, his appearance has changed slightly, and XIV Astor is on the younger end of his 30s opposed to to the older end or even in his 40s because the timeline of things worked a little bit better for me that way for this XIV iteration, but he is, at his core, more or less the same. IIRC, “Astor” as a name has some sort of relation or meaning to hawk, and I had just been getting into the Avengers around when I made him, and Hawkeye was my favorite Avenger. So, Astor sort of started there, appearance and name wise. And then in XIV he ended up with blue eyes instead of gray like originally because I was just... I thought he was pretty, okay? And at the end of the day, what is the point if you’re not at least a little in love with your main?

I’m not sure if there was anything I specifically pulled from when I did his personality, but his core traits to me have always been empathy, compassion, and... a little too self-sacrificing for both, lol. He’s always been a bleeding heart, and he was actually always meant to have an affinity for healing magic because of it. But he very nearly started as an archer in XIV because it was my first MMO of this type, and the idea of healing terrified me. Ultimately, I caved in like less than a day, I think??? And I restarted him as a WHM because it felt wrong to his character to not go with the job that literally screamed his vibes.

And I always have to say, to an extent, of course there’s a bit of me or my wants in him, too. I think you always put a bit of yourself into characters you love, but Astor’s close relationship with his mother is probably because that’s my closest familiar relationship. I don’t really have one with my dad, but I didn’t want to entirely replicate, y’know... that part of the experience, so that’s how Astor ended up not really knowing him too well, without it being a major family dysfunction point.

And I have to crack the joke I always do before this gets too heavy for anyone, but I also like to say like... Astor is the kind of man I’d like to know and I haven’t always had a lot of male figures in my life that I felt comfortable looking up to, so... I made my own! He’s my comfort oc, for sure.

And then Shay is like my loving callout post to my friend. Because we made Shay and Airi together to replay the story, and they originally weren’t supposed to end up together, I don’t think, and I think I just kinda... subconsciously challenged myself to make it happen, lmao. Shay’s backstory is very loosely based off an rp character I had a long time ago that I never got to use much, but... admittedly, that character was not nearly as brooding about it as Shay, lmaooo. I kinda think I subconsciously tried to fit as many of my friend’s favorite character traits into him that I knew about as physically possible and it all just fell together so well... and that’s how we ended up with the emotionally damaged angry elf!

Okay, and I also wanted to make him slightly attractive to myself because you know, again, what is the point if you don’t like them at least a little? But he’s definitely just. A loving callout post made flesh. And we love him for it.

Alternatively, his biggest character inspiration that I worked a lot from is Toothless from the How to Train Your Dragon movies. From sort of the color scheme to the whole sort of monster impression, but actually just misunderstood starting points, a lot of it kind of started with Toothless, my beloved. He’s one of my favorite characters ever, so like unrelated fun fact, child me was really distraught and basically mad at Dreamworks for a while after the first movie because Toothless wasn’t actually real and they’d made him so lovable and I was just. So upset I couldn’t actually love on a Toothless. I still low-key like... kinda want like a cuddle sized Toothless, but I... haven’t been able to justify spending a couple hundred dollars on one off of Etsy and the retail ones just. aren’t big enough or made from like. Not cuddly materials. It’s been a struggle that I’ve kinda just shoved off as a wistful dream at this point, but... I still think about it sometimes, lol.

And there’s definitely several other characters who I’ve definitely drawn more specific inspiration from, but this is already getting hella long, god...

Like, just for quickfire kind of things, Ambrose and Ysabel’s dynamic is highly inspired by Dragon Age lore, particularly mages, templars, the Circles, and a little pinch of Tevinter. And I’m just gonna stop myself there because I have... too many characters to talk about.

Which reminds me!!! I am currently very slowly in the process of doing actual character pages for them, so please look forward to that. They are actual Tumblr pages now, so, unfortunately, they won’t show up on mobile, but I thought it was the best way to consolidate information on them instead of just leaving everything up to the tagging void to solve. Astor’s is currently the only one I have finished (though there are... several typos. One day I will go back and fix that. Maybe. >.>) and I’m in the process of working on Shay’s, so there is a link in my sidebar now for that base launch page. I’ll add links to their individual pages from there as I finish them. <3

And thanks so much for these lil questions! It really does help me to be prompted to talk about my kids because otherwise I can just... all of the lore lives in my head. I love to talk about them. But do I know where to start? Not usually, lol.

[galacticlamps]

Tagged by @the--highlanders​ ! Thanks!

How many works do you have on AO3?

13

What’s your total AO3 word count?

76,200

(oh what a nice even number - I should try to mess that up as soon as possible, shouldn’t I?)

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Aw man is this intentionally worded to be really hard to answer? I get that it says ‘written’ and not ‘posted’ but then what constitutes a ‘fandom?’ I definitely wrote fics for stuff I was interested in long before I even knew the word ‘fic’ - I did it throughout my childhood, and then in high school, and while I didn’t do it as much in college, it still happened from time to time. So a lot of the books/movies/tv shows/plays/musicals I wrote things for aren’t really fandoms, and frankly, I had to check my old folder just now to even remember some of them existed. I’ll just list the ones that I know for sure had fandoms, since that’s more fun (and embarrassing), right?

Obviously Doctor Who, classic and modern, Torchwood, Sherlock Holmes (ironically more of these seem to be about the books, but yes, I will admit, some for that tv show too), Les Mis, a couple different Marvel comics & movies, Good Omens, hell, I even found a Night Vale fic in there just now.

And I know there are other older things not even in that folder, some of which never made it to a computer at all, so if I had to ballpark a number I’d probably say around 25ish but really, who knows?

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Across the Gap

On the Spot

Expectations

Shards of Memories & Fragments of Glass

Itemized

(this was fun, I’d never noticed Ao3 even had a stats page until now lol)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try to! Sometimes I take a long time to do so but for the most part, I usually get around to it. The rare exception would be if I first saw the comment when I was super busy/distracted and then felt like way too much time passed before I noticed it again, that it might be awkward if I said something at that point.

I do genuinely enjoy hearing what people think, but I’m also weirdly terrified of making anyone feel like they have to reply to my comments. I know that’s probably a little strange, but it’s actually a large part of why I made this Ao3 account in the first place - my original one, from high school, is followed by some long-time friends of mine who aren’t interested in this fandom, some of whom are involved in art & writing professionally. The thought of anyone like that reading something I wrote out of friendliness or even just curiosity and potentially having to pretend they liked it for the same reasons stressed me tf out, so I like having this virtually anonymous one because I can relax knowing that anyone who reads or interacts with something I wrote has probably done so only because they wanted to, rather than feeling obligated, and there’s no pressure on them to be nice to me about it if anything I write or post annoys them - so I really hope nobody who does just know me as an anonymous blog has ever worried about offending me by not replying to something, trust me, I’m perfectly happy with it!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t think I’ve really written any angsty endings? I guess the answer would have to be Reckless just because it involves the characters arguing about sad/weighty things and there isn’t really any solution to those issues - but even then I think I ended it with a kind of acceptance that stops it from really qualifying as angst? I also set it in the the same universe as other fics, so maybe that doesn’t even count as an ending? Am I that bad at ending things on angst? Lol

Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Obviously none of the fics I’ve posted are crossovers but I’m trying to think now if any of my WIP’s are - I’ve definitely poached setting/premise ideas from other media, but in terms of actual crossovers . . . I’ve got a few cross-era or cross-Doctor, a few involving Torchwood, but that’s already the same universe, so the only thing that’d qualify as a true crossover would be some vague pieces of a fic where Jamie, Zoe, and Two end up on the Enterprise, since I think the 60s series of Star Trek and Dr Who feel kind of compatible, don’t they? In fact, aren’t there like officially licensed crossover comics or something? Or did I make that up? Idk, and the ideas are very loose, so it’s not much of a WIP either

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope, never

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I’ve never written smut, but I’m wondering if it’s possible that could change soon. There’s a longish multi-chapter fic I’ve been working on for a frankly embarrassing amount of time, and the plot does call for a sex scene at one point towards the end, but I can’t seem to make up my mind on how - uh, I guess the word is explicit? - it should get. I know I could easily do a fade to black/implication thing, but it’s kind of a source of contention and anxiety for the characters, so to skip over writing the actual scene and just revisit them afterwards rings of “and they slept together and now everything’s fine!” which feels kinda cheap to me - in this context, anyway - and not the right payoff for a long fic that’s otherwise more of an interpersonal drama/slightly a period piece, if I had to place it in a genre. I feel like my aversion to actually writing the scene might just be prudishness I should get over, or maybe just self-doubt, because I know I’d rather have a well-written, funny, character-development-supporting sex scene than nothing at all, but since I’ve never had any interest in writing a scene like that before, I don’t know if I can do it well, and I also don’t want to ruin a fic I’m otherwise proud of by doing it badly... ugh I have to figure this out

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I seriously doubt it

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I mean, it’s gotta be Two & Jamie. I’ve shipped things before with varying levels of investment, but I’ve never been able to use the term ‘otp’ in a literal sense until I came across them, and now it’s already basically gone out of fashion, go figure!

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I’m not sure if I have one? My WIP doc is huge, but I don’t actually intend to get around to finishing everything in it, so I’d like to think that anything I’ve currently singled out to complete can actually get done.

That said, I do have a few AU’s that I don’t really plan to finish, but it might be cool if I could. Two of them are for all the main + some supporting characters of the Second Doctor’s era - one’s a modern day school teachers AU, and the other is a typical fantasy/fairy tale AU. Another is just Two/Jamie, based on Doctor Faustus (specifically the Marlowe play version) but right now there are two different versions of the ending coexisting in my head. I’ve written parts of scenes & some gen. backstory for all of those ideas, but I don’t know if I’ll ever try to finish them, or what form a finished product would even take - a series of one-shots set in the same universe? one long multi-chapter fic with some kind of overarching plot? And the amount of context/worldbuilding a big AU like these would require might not make them very appealing fics for people to read, so maybe it is better if I just keep them to myself, since in my head I already know what’s going on in those worlds lol.

What are your writing strengths?

I honestly don’t know. I haven’t had a creative writing class since middle school, and since then I’ve only ever shown creative writing to others in a fandom context, so it’s been a while since I’ve discussed it or gotten critical feedback. I suppose when I work in other arts or even academic writing contexts, people usually say I’m kind of insightful or at least detail oriented, which might just be another way of saying I overthink things, but I like to imagine I’m decent at finding little points of interest to expand upon.

What are your writing weaknesses?

If you’ve read this far I feel like you must know what I’m about to say: I do not know how to be concise.

Usually when I’m writing a fic, I put down the dialogue first on its own, leaving out the action of the scene and whatever plot/context led there, even if I’ve already figured all of that out. But then when I go to add those things in, they’re always longer than I wanted them to be. I don’t mind writing something long, but I don’t want my fics to be a slog to get through either, and there can be a point at which the stuff I’ve added for context overwhelms the stuff that I wanted the fic to be about in the first place, so it becomes a structural/proportion issue too. I haven’t completely given up on any fics because of this yet, but there’s one I’ve been struggling with for a couple months now - probably because I’m even second-guessing myself on which scenes need to be written out and which can just be referenced like a recap. Hopefully I figure that one out soon.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

((this is karma isn’t it? i posted a fic last week with two words of gaelic in it and was worried about that and now this is karma))

In general, I don’t want to do it. I feel like you’ve gotta have a really good grasp of a language to write dialogue & speech patterns for someone who’s a native speaker, and since I’m far from fluent in any language the characters I write for are, I wouldn’t feel confident writing any significant amount of dialogue in, say, Gaelic.

As a sidenote, though, I kinda love it when other people do it, particularly for Jamie. Irish (Gaeilge) and Scottish (Gàidhlig) are both languages I’ve wanted to learn for a long time, because my family’s fresh out of living speakers of either & I think that’s a shame, but I started with Irish and at the moment I’m still very much learning it. As different as they are, it still helps me understand parts of lyrics or texts that I come across in Gàidhlig fairly frequently, so when it comes up in a fic I get to feel like I’m being responsible and practicing, and it’s great when I can actually understand what’s being said.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I’m gonna go with Harry Potter even though that’s probably not a perfectly accurate answer - it’s almost certainly the first thing that has a fandom that I ever wrote for, but it was in a notebook when I was a kid and never something that I even typed on a computer, much less posted online or shared with other members of a fandom. But even then, I’m sure it wasn’t the first pre-existing fictional universe I ever set an original story in, because I did that a lot when I was a kid, it’s just hard to remember those clearly or on any kind of timeline.

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I’m very partial to Across the Gap, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that ranked first on the kudos thing above - but I’ve also got a soft spot for So Merrily We’ll Sing. It’s so self-indulgent it feels silly saying ‘it was so easy to write!’ but I guess having a fic that’s already just 100% headcaonons and fluff tied together by a song you really love does prevent it from being much of a labor (I also managed to refrain from making that one unnecessarily long, so that’s another win there)

tagging @terryfphanatics and anyone else who wants to do it - sorry I’m bad at remembering whose tumblr goes with whose Ao3 account, but I really would be interested to read this if anyone else feels like answering them!

[mittensmorgul]

Hi, I have a question, and I hope it would be interesting for you too... Could we talk about angel's wings and feathers?..

I always thought that angel's wings were a part of their true form, a kind of energy which we can only see as a shadows or electric sparks or ash or something like this.

And I didn't think that it could be a real wings with feathers as bird's. Until, while rewatch, I've noticed that angel's feather were mentioned in SPN at least twice (maybe you've noticed more?):

1) In 8.12 when Henry Winchester time travels he uses an angel feather in spell. And then Dean tells that Henry stole an angel feather from the trunk of the Impala. So feathers are reall??? Why did the Winchestets keep the feather in the trunk of the Impala and where they get it? (ok, maybe they found it in the bunker)

2) In 12.13 Sam uses a white feather in spell returning Gavin back in time (we know this spell needs an angel feather)

So now we can see how the real angel feather looks like???

Does that mean that the angel's wings can be presented in physical world like a real wings with feathers and this is not fanfiction? I like this idea so much.

I think that the creators of the show didn't let us to see it, as many other great things, that is sad...

I would really like to know your thoughts about this.

(Sorry for my bad english, it is not my native language...)

Hi there! First off, your English is fine! (lol it’s my native language, and I just typed it “Inglish” by accident, so you’re already doing better than I am :’D)

ETA: DON’T REBLOGGY THIS YET. I forgotted something that @thayerkerbasy just reminded me of, and I’m editing this post... brb... okay NOW YOU CAN REBLOGGY!)

As far as I know, those are the only times in canon we ever see or hear mention of an angel feather, and both times it’s for the same exact spell. They reference that it’s Henry’s spell when they use it again in 12.13, but make no mention in dialogue of it being an angel feather. Yet Sam had a whole jar of fluffy little pin feathers, so the assumption is that they’d been collecting them for a while (unless those were either found in the Men of Letters’ spell ingredient stockpile when they moved into the bunker, or otherwise given to them by Cas at some point).

It’s weird, because they seem like a very limited commodity, especially after the angels fell and their wings all burned up. Even after Cas got his original grace back, his wings never seemingly recovered. When we did finally see his wing prints in 12.23, they were still... not healthy... So my thinking is that any spell that would require them will become impossible to cast when their current supply runs out. All the other angels-- at the end of the series-- were either dead or locked in Heaven with their broken wings. We never learned any of their fates. Maybe they were all rendered obsolete under the Heaven Remodel?

A little behind the scenes from the early days of SPN as a bonus, since it’s tangentially relevant:

When they were filming the very early episodes of SPN, they had a lot of choices to make about what to show us based on what their budget would allow them to portray. Think of an episode like Wendigo, 1.02. One thing I see people say often was that it was a shame we didn’t see more of the monster, but only saw like... bushes shaking, or a vague form moving through the underbrush, or a blur. They made a stylistic choice right there to keep it within budget.

The options they faced were showing us a “dude in a rubber mask” type monster and showing it more, versus one really terrifying shot of a Proper Monster™ dying in spectacular fashion. Rather than go full-on cheesemonster, they chose to leave most of it up to our imaginations, giving us glimpses or hints of the monster.

They went back and forth on this a bit over the years, attempting to show us more on occasion, but most of those times the audience reaction has been varying degrees of wtf... Think about some of the scenes where they attempted to give us more than a glimpse at the supernatural, or a blood splatter, or whatever. It didn’t always work well. Think: the wire fight from 13.23...

I mean, it took us until 11.14 to ever see an angel “flap away,” when we saw Casifer zap Dean off the exploding submarine.

For the most part, I appreciate the fact that they understood the limitations of their own budget and didn’t give angels cheap little wings just to be able to show them on camera. Over time, only being able to see them as shadows, or as char after the angel died, became part of the lore of the show.

I blame Adam Glass for writing that spell, because he probably thought it sounded cool or whatever, that it was effectively a throwaway line because no other spell they’ve ever used has required an angel feather as an ingredient, and in story it was only linked into this larger Men of Letters Legacy plot that in retrospect feels like Chuck tying up loose ends and putting previously “deactivated” plotlines back into play.

I do find it kind of interesting that both iterations of this spell (the second resurrected by Bucklemming) were both tied to Abaddon. Henry’s spell in 8.12 brought her into the story from the past, she eventually travelled to the much further distant past to bring Gavin into the present (presumably with her own power alone, no angel feather required), and then after she was killed, they used the spell to return Gavin to his own time. So in a a way, the spell was part of a closed narrative loop, never to be referred to again.

Kinda wild that we’d never heard of angel feathers being a thing for spells until we learn that Dean apparently had some just stashed in the trunk, though... :’D

As for how corporeal angel feathers are/were, they exist in the earthly plane enough to leave char marks when they burn, when an angel is killed, so they must always have had the potential to manifest physically. I can’t imagine they ever would’ve had a budget to show us anything more than what we usually saw, though. It did give them a LOT of flexibility over how exactly they presented them to us when they DID show us. And I can’t even imagine the suffering Misha would’ve endured as an actor spending all those years wearing some weird wing harness rig. It would’ve been... impractical. And the CGI the show could’ve afforded-- especially in earlier days-- would’ve been... bad...

But what they were able to show us? Was often awesome. Remember when Raphael showed off his wings in 5.03? LIGHTNING!

And when we finally did see actual corporeal-appearing wings in 8.23... it was Dramatique™

And for More CGI Is Sometimes A Bad Thing Science, please have the attempt at Michael’s “true form” from 14.01:

It’s kinda a super-letdown after AU!Michael’s previous shadow wing displays from 13.01, but more specifically from 13.22:

those... were... badass... 

Even the pre-wire-fight wing shadows on Dean were badass:

But if they’d tried to show us more of them, to make them move through action scenes for example, it would’ve been... bad...

So what we’re left with is the knowledge that there is some sort of corporeal element to wings that we simply can’t see most of the time, but clearly angels have the ability to show or hide them at will, even from other angels. Could it be an act of will on the part of the angel that manifests a bit of their grace in the form of a physical feather? Honestly, that’s the theory I’ve personally adopted toward canon. In fanfic, I’ve read tons of various headcanons about what angel wings are and how they function-- everything from “a manifestation of their true form” to “angels share a lot of traits with birds” to “an extension of their grace,” and everything in between.

I personally, in canon, like to think of it as akin to how they’ve used angel grace for other spells. I mean, when we recall that angels haven’t been on Earth much for the last few thousand years (aside from at least a couple of known incidents where angels interfered with humanity, like Ishim and Company in 12.10, for example, and the presumptive extension that the Men of Letters knew of the existence of angels and likely summoned one up a time or two the same way Lily Sunder had, giving one explanation for how Henry Winchester knew of this spell and had an angel feather to use for it, but also recontextualized when Lily Sunder taught us that humans can use their own souls to power spells in the same way angels used their grace... which sort of makes the notion of needing an angel feather AND his own soul to charge that particular spell in 8.12 a bit redundant unless Lily’s knowledge of angelic magic was more advanced than Henry’s... hrmpf.... so much tangent... back to the point)...

We did eventually learn of other spells that required an angel’s actual grace, not concentrated in the form of a feather. The Angel Fall Spell in 8.23 being the prime example. Metatron took ALL of Cas’s grace for that one, even if he didn’t use all of it for the spell and left a “fragment” (Metatron described it as “not a lot, but enough.”). 

ETA: HECK. I have 9.03 on the tv right now and it’s distractedly made me disgusted enough to have forgotten something that Thayer just reminded me of: Lucifer’s “fossilized feather” in 12.07. It held enough grace to restore and heal him after Rowena’s spell in 12.03 had degraded him. Which really only adds to the theory that “feathers” are simply bits of grace that have been rendered solid somehow, but that can be transformed back into grace as needed.

And then there was the Rift Spell for travelling to alternate universes that required archangel grace, as well as the time travel/ward breaking spell that Sam found in 11.14 that ALSO required archangel grace specifically. Would these spells have worked with an archangel “feather?” Possibly, if material feathers are somehow just crystalized bits of grace, but since we never got a full explanation in canon, and never even really saw corporeal feathery wings that dropped feathers or could be plucked, and never even had mention of corporeal feathers outside of their use in this single spell, it’s really up to our own interpretation. And I kind of like it that way, because that way we get to have fun little discussions like this one. :D

I know this isn’t a definitive answer, but it’s how it all makes sense to me, in the hand-wavey sort of way that all of canon works. :’D

[ye-bloodeh-liar]

I just finished AC Valhalla – A résumé.

I finished the "main story" of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. These are some thoughts of mine. (This was saved in my drafts for two weeks or so. But my stance hasn't altered. Actually, I'm even angrier now.)

Disclaimer: This obviously contains some spoilers here and there. You've been warned, but tbh, who even cares about the story at this point. Also, I know I don't have many followers, and I suspect none of the few that will come across this post will actually be interested in it. That said, if you like reading people's rants about things, regardless of your interest in video games, this might be something for you. I just needed to get this out of my system somewhere. This is a rant (well, vent? I'm venting, I guess) written as it came to my mind. There's no real structure, I think. Sorry for that in advance.

After Origins, which I thoroughly enjoyed and actually played again between Odyssey and Valhalla, and Odyssey, which's name was perfectly fitting since it felt like a fucking odyssey to grind through, I hoped, actually, I was convinced, Valhalla would right Odyssey's wrongs. You see, Odyssey had one big problem for me: It did none of the things that made and still make me love Origins. In short: The world was massive, but felt copied and pasted, uninteresting to explore and lifeless. Basically, it was a lot of green sprinkled with some olive branches. A lot of the times the only way to know roughly where I am was pulling up the map because based on my surroundings, I could've been anywhere. Compared to the intriguing world of Origins, where you always knew in which area of the map you currently were, this was a shitshow. I mean, just walking through the desert in Origins had more atmosphere than the whole city of Athens (the main fucking city) could ever muster up. (Oh, remember the times of AC Brotherhood, where Rome actually felt like a city even though it wasn't actually humongous like the new games are? Or how atmospheric the whole of AC II was? I mean, Venice? Hello? M a s t e r p i e c e) But I can overlook that. The combat didn't feel heavy, or to put it better, "impactful" like it did in Origins, but more like poking the enemies to their deaths with something that made sword-y sounds. But I can overlook that. The loot system improved a bit, in the sense of giving the option to modify your loot and being able to combine different armor pieces, however, Origins outfit-system was more up my alley. But I can overlook that. Funnily enough, compared to its predecessor, Odyssey looked worse. In Origins the fabric of your outfit look like actual fabric and, I can't stress this enough, waved in the wind. In Odyssey everything felt more static and somehow "fake". But I can overlook that. To me, Origins' story was masterfully done. Personally, I'd say, that this is the closest we've ever gotten to the Ezio-Trilogy. The voice acting was top notch. Bayek was a great character, and the side characters like Aya/Amunet were equally intriguing. I still remember the first time I saw the first confession cutscene after killing Medunamun. It gave me shivers and goosebumps and got me excited for what was about to come. What I want to say with this, is that Origins made me care; care about its characters, care about their backstory and motives, care about the world, etc. After I had finished the DLC The Hidden Ones I felt like I had actually witnessed the igniting spark of something epic, namely the Assassin Brotherhood, in such a chilling way, even though they basically were just chillin' in a cave. Because that's what character building gives you: payoffs. Well, Odyssey did none of that. All it did made me care about was to get all the loot, because that's what my mind always goes for in any game (I'm that kind of stupid ape). I didn't care about what would happen in the end – I just wanted to get there. I wanted to know how the story would end, but in whichever way it would, I knew I wouldn't care for it in the sense of being disappointed or yearning for a different outcome for the character I was so invested in, because, as I said, nothing got me invested in the character(s) in the first place. That's what bugged me the most about Odyssey. Not the flimsy feeling combat, not the husk of a world I found myself in, not the downgrade in design and animation, etc., but the lack of care it invoked.

Now, when Valhalla was originally announced, I was excited as I could be for a video game. Ubisoft was clearly aware of their mistakes with Odyssey and tried to show that they're willing to listen to their fanbase. A world where every area has its own identity? Sounds great. Heavy combat? Hell yeah. Gear and loot that actually matters and is special (unlike in Odyssey where after a few hours of playing you find yourself carrying the same fucking bow 25 times)? Oh my. Choices not for the sake of choices, but story? Yes please. I mean, if you have to implement choices. Even though choices don't really make sense in Assassin's Creed, but that's another topic.

Well, did it deliver (for me)? No. And to be completely honest, I prefer Odyssey, even as the grindfest that it is, over Valhalla, and me replaying Odyssey seems a lot more likely to me, than going through all of Valhalla again. I'm not going to list all of the points mentioned above again in full detail: The world is a bit more intriguing than Greece, but a shadow of what Egypt was. The combat feels heavy, yet every weapon looks too big (????) and it still feels a bit off. My biggest grudge of the minor points is actually the look/the graphics: How on earth does Valhalla manage to look less real than Origins? The fur and pelts on the armor, every piece of cloth, i mean just e v e r y t h i n g looks somewhat plasticy (at loss for a better word here; just compare Origins' outfits in motion to Valhalla's) Anyway, let's get to the real problem here, because all boils down to the point I've mentioned before: Invoking care.

This became very apparent to me after forging the fourth (?; was it the fourth? They all blur together. That's how e n t i c i n g they are. Great.) alliance or so. I didn't give a single fuck about the characters in those arcs. It was very clear that they'd be soon replaced by other characters in the next alliance's arc, which I probably wouldn't care for either, especially, since they all felt somewhat the same: empty. Alliances felt like checklists to do. Even Wincestre, which had an interesting beginning, somehow managed to loose all of its "darkness" after the first two quests. But I could overlook the dreary sidequest-like alliance arcs, if they served the main storyline in some way or form. Now you might ask, what main storyline? E x a c t l y. Looking back, there is none. At least not really. And there where a lot of times playing the game where I found myself wondering, if this alliance-arc-thing I was currently dragging myself through was in fact meant to be the actual story. But it shouldn't be. Was it? I have no fucking clue. My conclusion on what Valhalla's main overarching story is, is what follows:

Eivor's parents got killed when he was a child (never seen before lol), got adopted, and is now part of the Raven clan with his "brother" Sigurd//Sigurd comes home from some raid with the Assassins Basim and Hytham//(Eivor gets the Hidden Blade; I mean, this is an Assassin's Creed game. Big moment. Done in 2 seconds.)//Sigurd and Eivor aren't happy with the new King of Norway.//Sigurd and Eivor fuck off to England (with Basim and Hytham) to set camp there.//Eivor starts to forge alliances throughout England to make his clan's hold on England stronger.// Sigurd and Basim do their own thing.//Eivor meets Sigurd and Basim two or three times throughout his alliance forging.//Basim seems a bit off.//Sigurd says that he was told (by Basim?) that he is a descendant of the gods.// Sigurd wants to "pursue his destiny"// (sidenote: the last few things are all within one (!) short cutscene in a small house. d e v e l o p m e n t.)//Sigurd gets captured and tortured and loses his hand.//Eivor rescues Sigurd.// Sigurd is back in the settlement.//Sigurd distrusts Eivor because Eivor doesn't believe Sigurd and Sigurd thinks Eivor wants to take his title as the jarl (jarls are the bosses of settlements).// And then the end sequence hits. This is where I want to go into somewhat detail again. We go from Sigurd distrusts Eivor to "Eivor, I don't wanna be the boss of the town, so I don't hold a grudge anymore, let's go back to Norway and I'll show you I was right all along" like it's nothing. It's literally just that: You walk up to Sigurd, he says this (more or less) and you sail away. Again: development is taken very seriously in this game. Honestly, at this point I didn't even know that this was going to trigger the ending. My genuine thoughts were "Oh my, finally, after all this grinding, the story is going to start." when in reality of course, ironically, it was going to end. Absolute belter. So you sail to Norway with Sigurd, which takes fucking forever, because OF COURSE you have to sail (for everyone who didn't play the game, yes, sail, that means looking at a viking longship while occasionally moving the stick slightly to change its directions slightly) to your original settlement in Norway, for what feels like far too long, only to say Hi to your dad. Fucking lost it. I thought we were going to assassinate the King? Nah bruv let's just have some quick family talk instead. Some action? Nah. Just get back to the longship. A N D S T A R T S A I L I N G A G A I N. Where? Just around the curve of our settlement in Norway. Yes, they pulled the old trick of the ending is literally just right around the corner of your starting position hehe. Absolute belter. Is this to make it seem like something is about to happen? The calm before the storm? It doesn't work like that. Well, then you actually sail through a storm (lol), which doesn't matter, because Sigurd just says "Let's keep going" and, well, you keep going. Also, to this point the weather conditions have never affected neither Eivors health, nor the ship in any way whatsoever, so why should I be impacted by a storm now? Like, it's a nice thing for atmosphere, but at least make the ship harder to steer or something. Then you walk up a mountain. Funnily enough Sigurd walks in manner that shows that the walk against the storm isn't easy, whereas you, hah, you can just yeet yourself up that mountain like nothing. I could sprint up there. Fucking sprint. Anyway, Eivor and Sigurd enter the Isu temple, because of course, we had to throw an Isu temple in there, I mean, i t ' s A s s a s s i n ' s C r e e d. Was it hinted at before in the story? Not really. Were we chasing or searchig for it? Nah, better get that next alliance going. It just suddenly was. Again: development. So we walk to the main platform of the temple and activate the machine and bam we're in Valhalla (because at some point Ubisoft realised that maybe they should include what is literally in the name of the game). Again, were we looking for Valhalla? Like not in the sense that every viking was, but more in the sense

of was it the main objective of the game? Did Eivor look for a way to Valhalla? Was there anything that led us here other than Sigurd having had a few dreams (that only got mentioned, like, twice?) and being influenced into thinking he was a demigod or something? Nope, Eivor was looking for that next alliance to forge. So, Eivor realises that his experience of Valhalla is fake and he wants to get out. But fake-Odin doesn't want to let him go. In a really weird cutscene (jump to 6:30), Eivor eventually escapes Odin and enters a door with his settlement-family (look, I'm all here for metaphors, but this, this is just utter rubbish. It just doesn't make sense, and there is no payoff whatsoever). Odin actually had a build-up of some sort. In every assassination sequence he's there and talks with Eivor. I actually thought there would be some cool payoff/ending/reveal here. But nah, this ain't it chief. Yet somehow, until here, I had hope. I thought maybe now, building on all this confusion, there's gonna be a relatively good ending. Something enticing. Something that made everything somewhat worthwile. And Ubisoft went: Lol nah. So, you're out of the Isu machine again (for all the non-AC-peoples here: basically like the matrix. Eivor gets hooked up to the machine and experiences alternate reality: Valhalla), and Basim is there. What a twist. The guy that showed up like three times and went from friendly in the first time to super suspicious (like glaring-in-your-face-suspicious) in the two-or-so other major cutscenes he was in, has now been revealed as the enemy. Congrats to that. What a twist. The thing is, and this bothers me a lot actually, it could have been anyone there. It didn't need to be Basim. It wouldn't have felt out of place if it wasn't him. Why? Because Ubisoft failed terribly at making you connect to any character and at building any actual story (or character). It could have been Gunnar, the friendly black-smith in our settlement, and it would have been as fitting as Basim. Then Basim says that this is "for his son". Ah yes, the lost son of Basim, which was mentioned once. Right. Eivor defeats Basim by hooking him up on the Isu machine and gets back to the settlement with Sigurd (in my ending at least. There seems to be a possible ending in which Sigurd doesn't come back.) Cut to the modern day, where Layla now knows the coordinates of the Isu temple, goes there, hooks herself up to the machine, becomes the overseer of time with the other overseer of time which already was hanging out there (I mean yeah, great idea, terrible execution. Build it up, then you can have a payoff. This was just straight outta nowhere, and who cared about Layla anyway.) Anyway, meanwhile Basim, who was still hanging on that machine a fuck ton of years later, pops off, and is now living in the modern day. The idea here is, that we lost the hero (Layla) which caused the (just established) vilain (Basim) to do his fuckery in the modern day. But why should I care? Basim was basically nonexistent in the basically nonexistent story and suddendly I should feel sad or shocked, because he's in the modern day? Is this supposed to be intriguing? And yeah, Layla is "gone". Layla, who had no character building over three fucking games. Why should i be bothered? Why should I care about anything that just happened? Remember when a side character (Lucy) died in AC Brotherhood? That was intriguing. Why? Because they built her as a character we (Desmond) trusted, even though it was in the modern day (which no one really cares about in AC). And this is why Valhalla broke me and Odyssey didn't. Valhalla failed to make me care on a much deeper level. It's just a lot of nothingness. Empty characters in a nonexistent story. And by nonexistent, I mean non-built at all. When I play the game now, I have no actual reason, and throughout the game never actually had any actual reason, to continue. It was a chore. I didn't bother if after three hours of grind I would eventually get a mini-snippet of a husk of a story, and neither do I care now. Everything in

this game is so devoid of sparking curiosity and screams of lacklusterness to the point where I don't even know what I have actually expierenced. For fuck's sake Ubisoft, make me care again. At least once in 40 hours.

May I sum up Valhalla's "story" and content in the glorious words of Catherine Tate: Am I bovvered? The answer, sadly, is a holistic no.

[staranon95]

dincobb blade runner au

okay i got some nice likes on my post from last night, and i finally have some time to draw out my thoughts.

this is going to be heavily inspired by Blade Runner 2049 so yes i will be taking multiple elements from that movie, its story, its themes and characters but with my own special twist.

Din

he is a nexus-9 replicant (styled after Officer K) and works for the LAPD as a blade runner, tasked with hunting down older replicant models (nexus-8 units)

he reports to Lieutenant Bo-Katan; their relationship is a very tense one to say the least. the big part of nexux-9 models is that obedience is hardwired into their genetic makeup, so Din is Bo-Katan's obedient little blade runner, dispatched to the harder jobs that humans can't do because replicants don't matter right?

as part of the replicant build, replicants are given false memories upon their conception since they're formed as fully adult, fully human, you need to have something rattling around in there to kickstart their brain

Din has a named. Din Djarin, but this sets himself apart from other replicants the LAPD has employed in the past. because none of them previously asserted that they had a name. but it's almost automatic for when people introduce themselves to him that he responds with Officer Djarin. it's like a reflex.

as part of Din's memories, he knows they're false. but some of them are so starkly vivid like the image of a child calling him 'papa' reaching up with their arms at him, smiling wide which is weird isn't it? replicants can't reproduce but why does Din always feel struck with the desire that he lost something? that he had to say goodbye to a child? he never mentions this to anyone, not even Bo-Katan, because they don't matter right? they're false. right?

one of the big memories Din has is of this Child. he's slipping a necklace around their neck and saying 'i'll come find you' and he doesn't know why but he's so driven by the urge to find this Child. but he doesn't know where to begin and he can't go against Bo-Katan. he can't disobey

Cobb

Cobb is a nexus-8 model, but he's an aberrant variant of the line in that he's an outlier from the model. he's not as big, not as strong, but still as deadly, and when originally created, he was used for infiltration and surveillance against rebels, uprisings and so on. it's easy for him to blend into the situation at hand. he's highly charismatic which makes him so dangerous. eventually he broke free of those who controlled him and became a rebel figure among the underground replicant freedom movement

as an aberrant nexus-8, Cobb is wanted by a lot of people, the most important person being Moff Gideon, CEO of Gideon Corporation. the GC revived the replicant production after the nexus-8 models rebelled in a bloody war that led to many governments declaring replicants illegal. Gideon wants Cobb because he shouldn't technically exist. it's like he's a mutation, so Gideon pulls his strings with the LAPD to have their blade runner Din sent to find Cobb

now Cobb established himself as a rebellious figure back in the day during the Blackout (canon for the time when all digital devices just stopped working. good times!). one time, however, he did get caught by a human militia. the militia wanted money from his capture, so while they were negotiating with the authorities, they had him stashed away in one of the many bleak recycling operations, chained down and forced to work while his fate was decided.

(2049 is a bleak world and includes child labour. bad times all around)

so while Cobb is chained in place, he comes to know this Child, this special Child with a unique necklace, and he talks to the child (he always talks. he's Cobb) and they build a relationship and Cobb realizes how special this Child is

eventually Cobb is broken out of his interim prison, but before he goes, he makes sure the Child is taken with him, and he makes sure the necklace is left behind so that people assume the Child died here

The Child (it's grogu lol)

The Child is seemingly human, but actually born of a replicant. they are an impossibility and the symbol of a replicant revolution. they can control themselves. they can be free from the human worlds because they were built to survive.

rumors of a replicant child break out and of course Gideon also wants this child for his own purposes. to study. to understand.

later on in the story, we learn that the Child's father (idk who this is yet) had their memories taken and implanted in a nexus-9 model, and that this nexus-9 would become the Child's sworn guardian, but he needs to recognize that drive on his own. he needs to break from the rules that keep him rooted to the humans he works for. that's a journey he needs to take

The Story

Din learns of the Child's potential existence when he happens upon a crime scene. a human possibly killed by a replicant. he's sent to investigate and finds a shallow grave on the property. the bones belonged to a replicant, but it's clear they had been pregnant based on old marks on the bones.

He learns form the crime scene that this human was in contact with known rebel Cobb Vanth based on a photo he finds stashed away along with the body, so the LAPD figure Cobb returned to tie up some loose ends, that he's essentially reemerged and Din is being tasked to bring him in

Din is contacted by Gideon to speak about Cobb's whereabouts, what Gideon knows about Cobb's history, and that Gideon knows about the rumour. that a replicant child lives and that Din will be well compensated if he manages to bring the Child to Gideon

Din follows Cobb's past, learns of who he is, how he broke free of his intended purpose, and Din wonders quietly to himself what that's like? what is it like to be free of human control? to be his own person?

he comes to the recycling plant where Cobb was once held and does some digging on the premises, coming to know the story of how Cobb escaped. he finds the necklace from his memories and realizes his memories can't be fake. otherwise why would this be here? so he digs through the plant's records of all the children who've worked here and finds his name in the ledger. Djarin.

following a series of cryptic clues, Din realizes that Cobb is hiding in the wasteland of Las Vegas, a place that's inhabitable by human standard, but not to replicants. so he goes there. Cobb and Din meet for the first time and duke it out until Din says he knows about the Child and that stops Cobb from nearly killing him.

they talk. Cobb feels sympathetic for Din because he knows how hard nexus-9s have it. to be obedient on that level? how hard must it be for him to be here? but then he realizes that someone must've planted those false memories in Din for a reason. this is where Cobb and Din really connect to each other. how much Cobb wants to show Din he's worthy of a life outside of his purpose. and how much Din realizes he wants to follow Cobb wherever he goes.

surprise attack! Gideon's forces locate the both of them. Din is incapacitated and Cobb is captured. Din is left for dead.

Din is later found by Boba and Fennec, replicant leaders of the underground movement. they patch him up and ask him where his loyalties lie i imagine at this point Cobb has told them of Din's emergence and that he has implanted memories, that he's meant to be the Child's guardian. and Din has to make a choice here. he has to choose to be his own person and fully go rogue. so he swears that he'll rescue Cobb since Cobb actually knows where the Child is hidden

Din goes after Cobb and rescues him from Gideon's clutches. they run and Din realizes how much he actually cares for Cobb. and he doesn't know if he's built to feel love, but he imagines this is what it must feel like. that rush of relief when he sees Cobb is okay, touching him and pulling him along.

Cobb takes Din to the location where the Child is, and Din is struck with all these memories. holding the Child when they were just born. seeing the Child take their first steps, their first words. calling him 'papa'. having to say goodbye to the Child. leaving them forever. and he knows they're not technically his. but they real and they feel like they're his.

so that's how Din and Cobb become parents to their replicant son