#i truly don't think i write him mean enough tbh but to be fair most people have been!! really nice to him so far!!! few serious arguments!!

[talentforlying]

what's that quote from nbc hannibal like "extreme cruelty requires extreme empathy"? that's a constantine ass theme right there. he is as capable of being cruel as he is capable of caring for others, and he cares very, very deeply for others.

[sixstepsaway]

i've had some thoughts bouncing around for a while about ofmd s2, and in light of the news, i'm going to brain dump some of them. if you don't feel like listening to me complain about HBO and would rather just go cry about OFMD not getting season 3, that's chill, go ahead, no hard feelings

so.

season 1 was absolutely the definition of lightning in a bottle. it had great acting, great writing, gorgeous set and costume design, it was great, and not only that but it was unabashedly queer

jim had a whole episode dedicated to "actually i'm not a woman i'm just jim" and then everyone - even the bad guys, even the antagonists, even their nun nana, everyone - referred to them as they/them after that, no questions asked

the main character went through an arc that was basically figuring out his sexuality and going "oh shit, i love a man" on a show that was not directly advertised as "OUR QUEER MEANS DEATH" like a, y'know, Queer Show would be

and stede and ed's romance felt like it was important. It felt like the pirates of it all was mostly incidental, background, filler, just fun to pad out the situation and give them things to be challenged by (the badmintons!) while also being fun on its own. it's the kind of show where if you pulled all the characters out and slapped them into a whole other situation like space agents or time travellers or everyone lives together in a loft runs a bakery... it'd still work. sure, the badmintons would be less murderous and run a competing bakery or something, but it'd still work, because the focus was on the characters, and on the romance between stede and ed

the first three episodes of season 3 felt that way too. the love between stede and ed was paramount and if you swapped to a mafia au or a bakery au it'd still work (with some gentle adjustments for ed's Behavior™ to be fair)

but.

season 1, they kept saying it was a rom com, and it felt like one. it was just a rom com that was set at sea! how fun!

now, rom coms have tropes. they have genre-specific things that you kind of expect from, well, a rom com. you expect mess. you expect things like ed fucking off with jack because he doesn't feel good enough

(i've recently been rewatching new girl and although some of the humor makes me cringe, it's still a great show, and one of the main things about it is that everyone is messy. no matter how much schmitt loves cece, he's going to make mistakes. no matter how obviously nick and jess are going to end up together and belong together, they're going to sleep with the wrong people, make mistakes, break up etc. it's as much a rom com as ofmd.

one of the things that makes new girl so good and makes me love the main couples so much is how hard they work to be together, how they fight adversity and the mess of their own flaws and toxicity and still get together because they love each other most, in the end)

i remember in s1 thinking how if stede had been a woman, jack would have been too, and ed would've had at least one romantic/sexual scene with jack when he ran away with him

but i also remember thinking, "yeah, but the show hadn't explicitly done the his name is ed reveal and the kiss on the beach yet, and the reveal hits so hard, it makes sense not to do that earlier", and tbh i stand by that

which brings me to s2, after the first three eps, where they tried to go back to rom com and it just felt... forced.

rom coms usually have adversity. they have other characters that directly and truly threaten the main pairing by being interesting to those characters! no matter how you feel about izzy, he was framed as a love interest or as an ex that was still complicated, but the show very much tiptoed around that

does "i have love for you" and "i loved you best i could" make sense for the characters? yeah.

do i feel like if ed was a woman, she and izzy would've had a messy rebound relationship for stede to have to contend with, for the two of them to come out the other side of wanting each other from? yeah.

ofmd s1 felt unabashedly queer. s2 felt like they didn't want to be too gay.

they put olu with a Woman™, they put jim with a woman almost like it was less queer and more acceptable this way than queering olu, they completely waved off olu and jim's relationship and dropped any concept of polyamory because that would've made it even queerer, not less queer

(i'm using queer here as a definition more of breaking boundaries and being outside of the norm to the extent it makes cishets deeply uncomfortable and the queer in question aren't conforming to society's standards. and this reading of s2 (and s1) is entirely subjective, it's just what's been bubbling here for me)

pete and lucius went from "we don't own each other" to marriage, with no footnotes of what marriage meant to them specifically, whether they were, in fact, conforming with the 'norm' of marriage (exclusivity, labels, definitions etc) or whether they were still chill about these things or whether this now meant no more penis drawings

the queerest episode was probably the party episode (which was so good), but even that was especially queer because some cast members fought to make it so (con wanting izzy's drag to be beautiful not funny has HAUNTED ME, because that means it was originally supposed to be played for laughs!!) not because it was that way naturally

the fact i read somewhere that the party and the drag was originally lupete's wedding makes so much more sense to me because yeah, they WOULD have a wedding like that, but instead they got a lame final episode wedding because it would have been way too queer to do it at calypso's birthday with drag and queer joy everywhere

it also would have been more realistic to the lucius and pete we got in season 1.

there were a lot of things in season 2 that felt... weird. we've talked about it. we have all talked about it.

the final episode, even outside of the thing i hated most, was just horribly written imo. there's big sweeping gestures and no kind of real emotional pay off for the main relationships (lupete included), and everything got tied with a neat little bow at the end

i remember when we were told s2 was 8 episodes and how much the budget had been chopped thinking, "ha, we're so not getting a season 3"

i remember when i realized how weirdly rewritten most of season 2 had been thinking, "yeah, there's not going to be a season 3"

i remember when bitching about ed's arc being totally truncated and handwaved thinking, "mm, we're not getting a season 3"

and i remember when the Revenge sailed off into the sunset with everyone but ed and stede on board thinking, "oh yeah, we're done."

just enough was left open that a season 3 could happen.

just enough was left open that if a miracle happened, there'd be something to do with season 3.

but i genuinely, 100%, hand on my heart, think djenks knew he wasn't getting a season 3

and don't get me wrong, i'm not absolving him of the poor writing choices he made in season 2, but i am saying it makes a lot more sense if you think of it from the perspective of corporate meddling and having everything taken away while he was actively trying to make season 2

we already know HBO cut the budget a ridiculous amount so they just had to make everything work with what they had. we already know HBO cut the episode number.

season 2 plays out like they prepped a good chunk of it, ready for 10 episodes, and then HBO cut the budget and cut the episodes

and so things had to be changed and chopped about. ed's arc got lots of screen time and focus for three episodes (before the cuts) and then things got quicker, and fast

characters were cut for time and for budget reasons.

and then i think towards the end of production and the end of writing, djenks learned the odds of season 3 were minimal at best, and he panicked

i think the original plan was probably for ed's arc to go for the majority of season 2. maybe a middle piece where he and stede tried but it still wasn't Right (last night was a mistake) because ed had so much to work on and so much to heal

i genuinely wonder if the finale was completely rewritten at the last minute because to me it makes way, way more sense from a narrative standpoint for things to have been more staggered out. let's consider ten episodes instead of 8:

episodes 1-5: same as they were when aired, including the gravy basket giving us set-up for what ed's dealing with internally, giving us something to latch onto and prepare for his redemption. NO KISS AT THE END OF EPISODE 5. episode 6: ed is still wearing the bell. he's sort of done his amends with lucius, but now he needs to do amends with the rest of the ship. stede is still learning his piratey ways, so there's hijinks in the background. jim and archie and olu try to decide what their relationship is after the garlic and all, and debate room arrangements. lucius and pete announce their engagement. stede and ed nearly kiss. episode 7: more ed redemption arc. he's still working at things, he's shying away from violence because violence is what took him down this dark path to begin with. maybe we get some discussion of his father. stede, blind to ed's flaws, insists he's nothing like his father! ed tries to make amends with izzy but somehow this is the hardest of all because he hurt him the most of all. izzy gets chance to apologize for what he now sees as his part in pushing ed down into the darkness (trying to drag blackbeard back) and izzy's apology makes ed feel worse somehow and gives him some absolution when he finally figures out how to return his own. ed kisses stede but says he wants to take it slow. episode 8: wedding episode!! calypso's birthday!! ed uses his loot to bankroll lupete's wedding. stede reacts with violence to ned and we know from everything before that ed is actively trying to distance himself from the violence of piracy because, yeah, of course he is. is it a good idea? nope. does it make sense to his character for him to still be putting a good chunk of the blame on piracy for his actions, rather than accepting the parts of his whole and learning how to regulate those parts healthily? yes. anyway, stede reacts to his own violence by clutching for ed, ed feels after like his boundaries were pushed. same as show. episode 9: ed is having a meltdown. he and izzy have started to heal, so izzy watching him stare at fishing boats and just chatting to him like nothing happened actually makes a lick of sense. lupete are on their honeymoon at jackie's. olu gets to hook back up with zheng and archie and jim want to go along because they're not super happy on the ship still because although ed is doing better, the past of what he does still hangs over everyone. olu, zheng, jim and archie do not discuss the poly of it all properly, and it's hilarious and a mess, and gives us something to look forward to handling in season 3. ed freaks out about stede being violent when he's the one thing he felt like wasn't violent (and thus safe for him to be with), and about taking it not at all slow, breaks things off and runs away. izzy gets stede to come back to the ship. stede gets into a fight with zheng, the bombs go off, whatever (not a fan of this for her sake but if it has to happen, it can happen) episode 10: ed is off fishing but it's not going well and he's pissing pop-pop off all the time because he's not good at fishing. stede and co are handling the ricky of it all. the episode is mostly the same at the start, but instead of ed immediately going "omg, i gotta save bae" he doesn't find out about the attack until right at the end of the episode. stede and co make it back to the revenge and escape safely, and when ed retrieves his leathers and returns he thinks they're dead! he threatens/tortures/whatever some english and they say no, stede escaped! they all escaped! the season ends with ed, all decked out in his leathers, with his sword, now in the position stede was last season: staring out over the water, planning to find the man he loves.

this sets season 3 up for ed to be on his own for a little while, for him to handle and figure out how to channel his violence into something 'good' (wanting to find his love, wanting to protect his crew etc).

maybe season 3 flashes back to baby!ed again and the fact his first act of violence against his father wasn't motivated by anger or spite, it was motivated by wanting to protect someone he loved: his mum.

then season 3 they find each other again, and maybe they meet in the moonlight for the parallel to hit even better, they finally get back together properly, for good, with maybe some comedic issues along the way, and ed finds his place in the world to be less "blackbeard, the terror of the seas" and more "ed protects those he loves."

i honestly think this is probably how the show was originally meant to go, or at least something close.

i think midway through season 2, djenks heard it was over and he (rightfully) panicked and threw together a finale that tied up as many loose ends as he could because he knew.

and i dont think there's anything that could've been done about it. i think it was dead in the water (no pun intended) the moment all the MAX/HBO/whatever reshuffles happened, I think it was too queer and I genuinely think executive meddling made a lot of the more queer elements go away, possibly right down to trying to wipe away the exes/love interests of it all with that whole father figure thing

and, again, i'm not absolving djenks of some of his more baffling writing decisions. he's a grown man and he makes his own choices. but i am saying i think it explains a LOT about why the finale we got is what we got, and i'm not sorry stede and ed ended the show together rather than apart or with their lives hanging in the balance or something

anyway these are just a bunch of thoughts i've been having, tied together by the cancellation.

[alicentsgf]

Let’s use my dusty knowledge of the Plantagenet era and talk about the white hart in HotD. I've had some really muddled thoughts and feelings about that scene and the way it framed Rhaenyra’s struggle for the throne to the general audience, but I also think there might be deeper meaning to it than what was initially obvious. If GRRM was as involved as he says, then at least some of this was likely deliberate; he's made no secret of taking inspiration from history, especially British history. The world of ASoIaF often rhymes with it.

The white hart wasn’t mentioned in Fire & Blood, and in my opinion its inclusion in the show seems to be not only foreshadowing Rhaenyra’s journey, but perhaps even commenting on the unreliability of F&B as a supposed “factual” account.

In our world the white hart is not just symbolic of royalty and burgeoning heroism, its much more specifically recognised as the heraldry of an English king; the deposed and disgraced Richard II. Though the only thing historians can agree on with Richard II is that he was considered physically beautiful by his contemporaries, modern historians at least somewhat unanimously write of him as a fair enough ruler, but for his belief in his own divine authority, as well as a lack of willingness or ability to play the political game, all of which facilitated his downfall. Simon Walker wrote of Richard II, "What he sought was, in contemporary terms, neither unjustified nor unattainable; it was the manner of his seeking that betrayed him." ...Sound familiar? Richard later died as the prisoner of his successor, the usurper Henry VI, a man whose expected inheritance Richard II had once subverted.

(There's also something to be said for the fact his rule and subsequent deposition has been argued as the groundwork for the War of the Roses; the real life inspiration for the events of A Song of Ice and Fire... maybe don't quote me on that to any historian though, it's heavily contested.) 

So, Richard II was supposedly a good enough man and ruler by contemporary standards, but he is remembered overwhelmingly negatively, most likely because of one very specific depiction; Shakespeare's Richard II. An unflattering depiction, steeped in exaggeration and a somewhat understandable need for drama. It's now the most widely-known representation of him. So is it possible that, through the white hart scene, we're being told Richard II and Rhaenyra run parallel to each other in one more way? How accurate is Fire and Blood truly, when it comes to its depiction of Rhaenyra? Does it meditate on her faults and exagerate her cruelty? Almost certainly. Is it any more accurate than Shakespeare's Richard II? Perhaps not.

My local pub happens to be called ‘the white hart’ (not even a weird coincidence tbh, it's just a very common pub name), and it has a framed copy of Richard II's heraldry (the image above) on the wall. I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at that thing wondering about the symbolism of the crown sitting around his neck and the golden chain that trails from it. The implication of a crown as the thing that holds captive this noble animal… What better way to describe the claimants of the dance? It's not only Rhaenyra, but Aegon too, who is the stag with the crown at their throat, golden chains dragging them down.

[boyfridged]

In regards to your recent reblog, the only evidence I’ve seen about the pit madness stuff is the daniels interview. And even that interview says that Jason was always crazy so I don’t think it’s a reliable source. The comics themselves say Jason’s breakdown was caused by the video Bruce sent him. Every action Jason has done has always been 100% his own choice, he may have been mentally unwell but I don’t think the pit played any part in that.

i don't really have time nor energy (nor enough interest in it tbh) to compile the list of sources but i can promise you that it's not the only mention of it. first of all, ableist language that is a common ground for both the concept of magic-induced "madness" and regular psychosis is used to describe jason by other characters often enough that it gets blended with each other for readers -- which i think is more of an issue of writing than the readership, because the writers should be sensitive to such issues. second of all, even in annual 25, winick wrote that whether it was lazarus pit that made him this way was a "question that would always be asked" (winick does point at the knowledge that he was unavenged being the reason, but it is not unequivocal). and i guess it is truly the question that will always be asked because it's at least the 7th time i get an ask in this spirit.

i appreciate that you want to reply to my ramblings, but i'm sorry, i'm kinda tired of discussing this topic (i like talking to people on here, but also the problem of autonomy is not something that interests me much in terms of jay nor that plays a big role in my reading of him -- i have written way too many academic essays on the meaning of the term to think it's a question that can be answered in a tumblr post about a comicbook character), so i will just copy-paste a fragment from this post that i think answers the sentiment that "every action jason has done has always been 100% his own choice" from here:

so, regarding whether or not everything he does is fully his choice– i think it’s a bit of a reductive presumption and question in general. i’m sorry for getting philosophical but most discussions of autonomy in the field presume that the circumstances someone finds themselves in already limit autonomy a fair share. and at the end of the day, jason’s position in the narrative and in the world he finds himself post-res are so obscure that it is the point that he doesn’t get much choice in how he communicates his grief. and grief and madness are themes that blur into each other too. i think, very much like in hamlet, the question of whether the protagonist is sane or mad doesn’t actually matter much because the extreme circumstances call into question if there’s a “normal” response to this situation at all.

if you want to be realistic about it, you have to ask how much someone who has been raised (in good faith and not fully intentionally) to believe it’s their duty to fight criminals and protect people only to get brutally murdered, resurrected, kidnapped and finally given access to assassin training at 16/17 can be believed to be a fully self-aware and autonomous person.

if you want to think of it in terms of what the story is about, at least the initial stages of it (so the lost days & utrh for example, as well as countdown, if you will) then it doesn’t truly matter that much. this is something that can hold weight if there’s talk of redemption – and in the narrative he’s not alive enough for it as things stand anyway (and sometimes he’s just written as a very much redeemed corpse without any significant build-up leading to it.) to me, a perfect story would address his wrongdoings, but also highlight it's not the core of his personality; but still, this is such thin ice to walk on with all the classism and ableism inherent in his development as a "villain" and "anti-hero."

[thequibblah]

pwp anon here and im always down to hear your thoughts about arranged marriages in the the regency time period

sure, i pontificated abt this in the DMs of no less than two people so we may as well air it out for everyone's reading pleasure/displeasure, no?

i am by no means a historian, i am simply a reader of things, and regrettably many of the things centre around english/british history. i also recently read a truly fascinating account of marriage through the ages recommended by bestie @clare-with-no-i, called marriage, a history by stephanie coontz, and i will hopefully not absolutely fuck up what i have just learned from there.

but the concept of arranged marriage with jily specifically seems to me like a misunderstanding both of what an arranged marriage means (x1000 for the regency) AND of jily's dynamic — which i've come to realise i have quite strong and dare i say particular, sticklery, text-faithful views about which i know not everyone really cares about.

so with that out of the way,

i've said this a lot of times ik. but part of the thing with AUs for me is that i feel like i have to keep some elements of jily's canonical backgrounds/dynamic. otherwise i'm not really adapting these characters to another setting, am i? and to me one of the fairly significant things is james's privilege.

in AUs i want him to either be directly confronting it (if it's that kind of story) or suggest that he has already begun to confront it, or will have to confront it eventually. this is of course not because i, like, get off on putting them on an unequal social footing — on the contrary, one of my favourite things as a jily shipper is exploring how both characters grow out of immaturity, learn not to misunderstand each other, and come to love each other.

truthfully i don't like not making james rich to preemptively smooth over any discomfort in their relationship. for one it feels tied to his ignorance and his generosity, his confidence and his insensitivity; for another discomfort is part of life and part of love. feels disingenuous to write that out tbh

you could argue that this stuff really shouldn't matter for fluff that's meant to be escapist and easy reading, to which i say yeah, fair enough, to each their own. it's not like i close out of any modern uni au fic i come across where james isn't immediately established as baby warbucks, shouting "this isn't canon-aligned!"

BUT! when we're talking period marriage, or especially "arranged" marriage, it's pretty clear that discomfort is part of the premise. like, the point is watching them get comfortable with each other over time, and it feels a bit like cheating to me to minimise the uphill battle to begin with. pretty sure everyone here is here for the lizzie-darcy, not the lily-of-means à la emma woodhouse who could really have her pick of gentlemen!

now, on to "arranged" marriage. i put this in scare quotes because really, it seems like a weird qualifier to make for certain periods of history and certain social situations, and i sometimes wonder if people know what they mean when they say arranged!

like, i'm indian. an arranged marriage doesn't mean you're trussed up in a wedding outfit and shown to your future spouse on the day of the event (...though it can, unfortunately) — that is not the chief characteristic here. what it means is your families know one another, the match is advantageous for whatever reason (you share a community, a religious subdivision, said families really get along, they think you two are suited) so the families are like "let's make this happen." love is not necessarily a factor, but then for the vast majority of human history, to our knowledge, it really hasn't been, for most marriages across rungs of society. like, my guy the farmer's son might have been fond of his neighbour's daughter, but he's still thinking about how she'll help on the farm, if she can support his trade, what she brings to this economic partnership.

because that's what it was. an economic partnership.

our notion of arranged marriage is a closer analogue for royal marriages, i think pretty much across cultures and time periods. so you are a prince and you're set up with this princess because you need her uncle's support, or her father's money, or some such.

e.g. you are henry fitzempress and you want to keep england and normandy and anjou, and to do so you have to watch out for louis, king of france. so you very smoothly marry his ex-wife, eleanor of aquitaine, because aquitaine is an immensely powerful territory and eleanor brings you that in her dowry as well as every other sort of support you might need against louis — men, arms, money, the works. done deal!

or, let's look for an example with less ~choice~: you are the future henry viii (shocking beginning given "less choice", i know) and your brother's just died, but your lowkey cheapskate dad henry vii is not keen on giving back catherine of aragon's dowry, and like, he's taken all this trouble to bring her here and make an alliance with her parents, what the fuck's the point if she's now free to go marry someone else???? and possibly build a different alliance that weakens england??? no! henry my son you will marry her now.

but notice that both people are bringing immense value to matches like this. it's the perks, not the person. it is ruinously stupid to try and arrange a match with someone (a woman, really, this goes one way) who doesn't bring you a valuable dowry, whether that's actual income, income via land (see aquitaine), or at the very least nice noble connections (see gregory cromwell, son of thomas cromwell of advisor to henry viii fame, marrying bess seymour, the sister of then-queen jane seymour. for the cromwells, a family of commoners, to connect themselves with the old aristocratic seymours and become the king's in-laws was a nice little arrangement, and of course it's good for the seymours to solidify an alliance with the up-and-up cromwells too).

a dowry, for those unfamiliar, is an inheritance kept aside for a woman that becomes an attractive incentive for her future husband, as he will eventually get that inheritance when he marries her. a dowry is not a bride price — it goes from the woman (from her father or another male relative, usually), to her husband upon marriage.

talk of dowries is all over pride and prejudice. the Big One is georgiana's dowry, which wickham has his eye on when he tries to seduce her. but note that even mrs bennet, who if i'm not wrong is the daughter of a tradesman (i.e. not gentry/nobility), has a dowry of her own settled upon her by her father at the time of her marriage, which can only be inherited by her daughters after her death. if i recall right lydia's (nonexistent) dowry is handled by darcy. this is bog-standard stuff — leaving aside implied misogyny women-are-a-burden things, the idea is that a bachelor's household is of course going to grow when he gains a wife and a family, so he's gonna need some means to settle down

or let me pick a whole 'nother example — in downton abbey, mary, the eldest daughter, basically knows she's going to marry the man who inherits her father's estate, because it's a nice way to keep it in the family (rather like the bennets wanting one of their daughters to marry mr collins). they have, in a word, an "understanding." i don't think i need to explain here, though, why mary, an heiress in her own right even if she can't inherit her father's actual property, is hardly a cinderella in need of a prince

and i think you can already see where i'm going with this + the jily socioeconomic dynamic — i just don't see a world in which james's (presumably better off) parents are like, yeah, this is the girl for you, we've set it all up, not to worry, enjoy the wedding night. put crudely, what the hell kind of leverage does lily's family have over them?

like okay, i am hard-pressed to call this "arranged" because he asked her, and she consented (given ofc the caveat that she didn't have a great deal of choice), but mr collins and charlotte is a decent example where he's kind of (cringes) "doing her a favour" by marrying her, because she's really not very eligible — her parents are gentry but not well-off, and she's a spinster. but he needs a wife and doesn't really mind those things because he has a decent income and doesn't need (and, really, couldn't get) an heiress. and even then is it really arranged? it's arranged by mr collins, which to me is just "man decides who he'll marry"

so it seems to me that when people say "arranged marriage" what they really mean is reluctant/forced, which, again, i'm not sure i see that happening between people of different stations (one condition applies and i'll get to that) unless james is royalty, and even then lily had better be something, or james is about to piss off eeeeeeveryone at his court.

to be regency-specific, i think too people underestimate the amount of free choice the average gentleman would have had in making his own marriage. no matter how overbearing his parents, he could probably get away even with not honouring an "informal agreement" arranged by them when he and his intended were younger. and that's not even touching upon the fact that this is james specifically, and these are his parents specifically. fleamont and euphemia are canonically indulgent, and i can't fathom a world in which they insist on marrying james off against his will, to a girl equally reluctant.

(and this may be controversial, but nor can i see james consenting to such a match, even if he already has feelings for lily. it icks me out to think of him roping her into marrying him for like a billion reasons, but especially because this is something jily antis say all the time about canon, that he somehow compelled her to marry him. given a time period where a man of means probably could get away with that, it strikes me as skeezy to have the romantic lead — and, again, james specifically!!! — do it. imagine, basically, james as the mr collins to her lizzie — not exactly arranged either, but her mother sees the benefit of the match and encourages it, and it's a hard thing to say no to. it is shocking enough that lizzie says no to mr collins, and he even points out that she probably won't receive another offer. i find this not very romantic idk about you lol)

finally, courtship in the regency was a ritual. your parents don't just sit down with her parents and decide for you (and again, certainly not indulgent parents like james's). you'd still want to dance with her, formally express interest in her, ask her guardian's permission, and ask for her hand — and hopefully you're doing something in all that time that constitutes getting to know her, or at least seeing if you'd like to be married to each other. if you rushed into a marriage (i'm trying to spitball scenarios in which jily wouldn't know each other and therefore wouldn't be in love yet at the time of their marriage), people would talk — and the #1 thing they'd say is probably that she accidentally got pregnant somewhere along the way so the families are trying to save face rq.

in fact this is the one exception i could see with this whole arranged marriage shtick. if they were somehow caught in a compromising position, they would have to go on and get married asap, and you could argue that this might turn out to be reluctant depending on the circumstances. for instance in the bed-sharing fic i just wrote, two's a crowd, they are certainly not courting or in love, and lily's well aware that if word of this behaviour gets out it won't look good for her — and james knows too what he'd be honour-bound to do.

but honestly i find this to be such a depressing premise! it's sad and awful and reminds me uncomfortably of lydia bennet, who's really stuck in a shit situation to any modern reader imo. even lydia fancies herself in love with wickham before they elope, and needless to say he's probably not exactly in it because he has tender, poetic feelings for her.

that's not to say that love couldn't come out of something like this, but it's not a premise i feel like tackling in the regency era specifically, when you can get the yearning and the drama and all that without curtailing choice in such a specific, embarrassing way. (like, to have to write that social shame... eurgh. my own stomach would turn going on about women ruined and whatnot. there is a julia quinn book that features this and i won't say which one, but frankly i found the way it was executed downright ridiculous and very much un-james anyway)

i just think that a premise more realistic to the characters would be where they like what little they know of each other and then learn to love each other once they're married — less dramatic, i know, but also less contrived. sometimes romance is in the smaller things.

as an aside, my royal au, which is set several centuries before the regency, is probably the only fic i'll write with an arranged marriage, though it's more of a marriage of convenience — which is really a more apt, specific descriptor, i think, for those kinds of marriages. like, both parties are getting something out of this, and neither is under illusions as to whether or not they are in love. they wouldn't really expect to be.

[bigskydreaming]

Why do You dislike Scott Snyder? I mean I have my reasons.. like a lot of the Court of Owls stuff, his convoluted plots, making Dick a punching bag for the broody bats, horrible at writing the family as a family he literally wrote Death of the Family I mean....*kill bill sirens* ... Also the ''son of a Damian'' line from Black Mirror etc. But I'm curious if you have more reasons since I'm pretty new and I'm told that he likes Dick and wanted to write Dick focused books and I don't.. buy it.

LOL yeah, all of that for sure, and I mean.....tbh, I don’t pay enough attention to his interviews and stuff to even be aware that he’s said that about liking Dick and wanting to write Dick-centric books, but I’m with you on that....not necessarily meaning anything.

God knows I’ve lost track of how many fic writers in this fandom swear up and down they love Dick Grayson and yet I avoid their stories with extreme energy, lmao, because I’ve read enough of their takes on DG that I’m like hmmm, yeah, we are not the same, lol. I mean, there’s a certain couple fic writers who just are like....DETERMINED to mention Danny Chase every single time I make a post about why I’m annoyed by the focus on Dick’s allegedly infamous temper. And its always the exact same song on repeat, they’re like “OH-HO, so apparently you don’t remember the time Dick choked Danny, a literal CHILD, just because Danny had the nerve to tell him Jason died, cuz like, I do, and it was AWFUL and Danny could have died TOO y’know, that’s how mad Dick was.” 

And then I just kinda stare at these words that apparently mean things, and enter a fugue state where an unknown amount of time passes and by the end of it I feel 80 million epochs older, and its like....no, I absolutely do remember that time when Dick grabbed Danny by the shirt and yelled in his face because he just found out his brother died and Danny said “what’s the big deal, its not like it doesn’t happen all the time” and this was absolutely not an awesome and fun scene for anyone, no matter how understandable Dick’s upset was at the time. BUT, I also happen to remember, since y’know, it was in that literal exact same issue, how then Dick went to see Bruce, and due to BRUCE’S upset about Jason’s death, Bruce literally punched his remaining son to the ground, screams about how it was all Dick’s fault, and kicks him out of the house Dick grew up in and tells him to leave his keys with Alfred. 

And its like......the very same people who LOVE to throw around references to Danny Chase in order to puff up the claims about Dick Grayson being volatile and extreme and having a Dangerous Temper like, flat out REFUSE to ever even ACKNOWLEDGE that scene with Dick and Bruce, from the literal exact same issue, because they at the same time claim that THIS was bad writing and OOC and Bruce would never.....but apparently, the writing from ten pages before it was just fine and completely accurate and Dick absolutely would not only ever, he would always, and thus Dick’s Legendary Dangerous Temper is canon and its why Dick can’t have nice things or people being nice to him in these writers’ stories, its too Dangerous, he might get mad I guess.

And each time this comes up on this site, I’m always like....hey, science side of tumblr, is it possible that insisting on vilifying Dick for his reaction to someone in the wake of Jason’s death whilst simultaneously refusing to acknowledge the scene of Bruce’s reaction to Dick is canon or in-character despite existing in the exact same issue and written by the exact same writer.....like....could this be one of those double standards I’m always going on about? And isn’t it in fact reasonable to question just how much or how little someone actually means it when they say they love a character but want that character flogged in the middle of the town square for a Bad Reaction to something that also prompted a Bad Reaction from another character but this character, they’ll like, throw themselves in front of a moving train if it keeps someone from daring to even suggest that THEIR reaction was canon and in-character and might potentially say something damning about their temper or behavior with friends or family?

*heaves endless sigh of endlessness*

Sorry, that example was right there on the tip of my brain today because like....I literally just saw another post around this oft-deceased and resurrected and killed to death again dead horse like, five minutes ago and then came to dip into my ask box for the first time today and it was like.....destiny. Assuming destiny has some free time to kill and nothing better to do, which, I mean, hey, everyone’s allowed a hobby is all I’m saying.

LOL sooooooooooo, ANYWHO, its just like.....ugh, I’m so over being expected to take at face value any writers, whether professional or fan, saying “oh but I love this character or that character, and due to that being my preface to everything else I say or do in regards to this character, you have zero basis for claiming that you do not like or trust my depiction of this character because ummm, read much? I literally JUST said, I love them though? Wow. Insert scoffs of incredulity here, I don’t even know how to talk to someone who thinks I don’t like a character I claimed I like just because literally everything else I say or do about them paints an opposing picture to the contrary.”

LMAO. Sorry. Had to get that off my chest. But yeah, like, I think EVERY canon Batfam writer has made a similar claim in recent years about pretty much every Batfam character, and at a certain point it starts to be like....okay, if all of you are telling the truth here, shouldn’t we see more canon evidence of like....these characters that you’re writing, like....actually even LIKING each other? At what point are we allowed to question the legitimacy of you saying oh I totes love this character, that’s why I write their family as abusing them, that’s just love, baby, that’s what it looks like.

Personally, I’d like to see more of us at least using qualifiers? I mean, I do say I don’t hate Tim, or Bruce, or any of these characters, but I get how people could be dubious about that and be all, umm, you rant about them a lot, because like...yeah. Fair. That’s a valid critique. SO its a lot more accurate for me to be like, I love 90s Tim and I just have become increasingly less enchanted with the character over the past twenty years since then, enough so that my knee-jerk reactionism to people bashing Dick’s character BECAUSE of what Dick did or didn’t do to Tim in their eyes, is like.....disinclined to view the situation or his character these days through 90s-Tim rose-colored glasses. 

Similarly, I truly don’t hate Bruce, at least not when he’s not being written as physically and emotionally abusive and/or just plain neglectful, BUT I absolutely despise the abuse apologism rampant in most fandoms, but particularly in this one, where people will make like Cirque-de-Soilei contortionists in order to prove that Bruce beating this kid or that kid isn’t actually abuse, its cuz they made him do it....rather than people just being like, no, that’s abuse right there on the page and I don’t stand for it or stan that Batman, so I have zero desire to defend that scene or his actions there from his perspective, and am totally fine with taking a seat when someone speaks up about how much they hate what Bruce did to his kid there in that scene and how it affects their read of the characters as a whole.

Its like....that too, is a thing you can do, instead of just.....trying to explain why Bruce isn’t abusive see, because what happened there wasn’t actually abuse, since it couldn’t have been, because Bruce isn’t abusive, see, he would Never.

And yet so rarely do people actually do that, and we have people literally championing themselves as members of the Good Dad Bruce Protection Squad when the frank reality is there CAN BE NO GUARANTEE of him ever and always being a Good Dad, when like....his characterization, ultimately, is dependent on how he’s written by canon writers who ARE NOT US. Which makes that desire to see him as just a good dad and nothing but a good dad always, like....not quite as understandable as it otherwise might be, and instead just kinda....willful, an admission that a lot of fans in this fandom will just flat out ignore all evidence to the contrary of this stated claim about what Bruce inherently IS, when inherently all he is happens to be a character who manifests whatever those in creative control of him choose to manifest via him. Like.....there are ways to go about that kinda thing, its just....that isn’t it. Something like “Proud member of the Keep Bruce Wayne a Good Dad Squad’ or something along those lines? I’d have ZERO issue with, because that’s ACTIONABLE, not WILLFUL. It posits not that Bruce simply IS this way and there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it, but rather that just because he isn’t this way in some instances, that doesn’t mean we have to agree with it or condone that interpretation of him, y’know?

But people are like....unwilling to make that distinction or hold that nuance a lot of the times, so my dislike of Bruce as he’s written in certain ways or by certain writers like....grows and evolves and mutates into Godzilla rampaging through downtown New York, until its understandable that people reading my blog intermittently and who don’t follow everything I say on the subject are like.....”Bold of you to claim you like lizards in this one post when I have here nine other posts where you’re just like, FEAR the murderous monster-lizard destroying New York for it is Dangerous and Fearsome. Cuz one of these things is not like the others, bud.”  

*Shrugs* Anyway, all of that’s just my allergy to Staying on Topic, so make of it what you will, hopefully you get what I mean though even if you don’t have like, the requisite Kalen-Garbled-Nonsense Secret Decoder Ring. Back to Snyder though....yeah, he can claim he likes Dick all he wants, because y’know what, Tynion says the same thing and its been well established by moi that my fondest wish for Tynion is that he be kept far, far away from Dick’s character whenever possible. And I’m pretty sure Tom King claims he loves all these characters and we’re all like HAHAHHAHA and we know Lobdell insists he loves Jason Todd and its like wow how curious then that hardly any other Jason Todd stans love you.

The ironic thing about my random bouts of ugh Snyder in a lot of posts however, is that......tbh, its not even his depiction of Dick that makes me dislike him as much as I do? LMAO. I mean, I’m not a fan of it personally, for a lot of the reasons you mentioned, but I don’t like a lot most canon writers’ depiction of Dick these days and haven’t for years. The thing I really dislike Snyder for, personally, is his depiction of Damian.

Its just.....its very Not Good, a lot of the time. Oh, there are moments here and there, but you could claim that for any writer, really, but for the most part, like.....ooof, I haven’t read Snyder’s work on Damian recently enough to really cite specific moments off the top of my head, because I’ve been avoiding anywhere he’s writing Damian for awhile now BECAUSE of it, but....a LOT of the ‘demon brat’ shit in regards to Damian comes from Snyder’s work, and like, I’m always kinda like “hey is making Demon anything the go-to nickname for a kid of Arab descent who is already compared to a terrorist enough as it is like....really the best we can do” to begin with, and Snyder absolutely 100% does not help with that.

To be fair, its not remotely like its all just on him, the stuff that has had a lot of us complaining for years about the blood son crap and the insistence on acting like there’s this stark divide between Bruce and Damian and the rest of the Bat siblings, I mean, see: Tom King again, its just. Ugh, okay, Im gonna have to get back to this in the near future with actually sourced gripes about why I think Snyder’s Damian in particular is absolute crap and could he just not, though. Because it really is my chief complaint with him, like I was never gonna be a fan of his in general just because he’s someone who's like DARK MULTIVERSE BATMAN FUCK YEAH and I’m someone who’s like DARK MULTIVERSE BATMAN UGH FUCK WHY.....lol....BUT like I mention in other posts.....its not like he’s incapable of doing decent stuff or that he’s never written anything I like, because ironically, he IS the biggest canon backer of Duke Thomas and pretty much single-handedly responsible for Duke retaining as much of a presence as he has in recent years instead of just appearing and blipping out of existence like a one-hit wonder, and that can’t be overlooked or considered inconsequential.

That just also kinda makes it all the more annoying that his Damian is so very.....objectionable to me, but yeah. Anyway, that’s the curious case of my very mixed feelings on Scott Snyder, with a side dish of generalized “lol oh, so you do in fact love this character? Well magically all my criticisms of your take on them have now disappeared!”

[lizzybeth1986]

I don't know if you're reading any other choices books but when it comes to focusing on one LI over others, there are far worse offenders than TRR/TRH, especially The Elementalists (Beckett) and Open Heart (Ethan). I'm not saying TRR is perfect but its treatment of all LIs is still a million times better than in most other books, tbh.

As it turns out, I did try to read TE. And I left it early on, especially after it became clear that Beckett was going to be that LI that ate everyone's space (plus for me the "you can try something new even though we asked you at the beginning of the series what your MC's sexuality was!" scene was the death-knell. I never went back to that series and I don't think I ever will). I followed Open Heart through friends who were playing it and what I heard (and read) was enough for me to never want to touch that book.

What I find interesting is your argument that TRR is "a million times better than other choices books" in terms of "treatment of all LIs".

Please, enlighten me. Exactly what is a million times better? The fact that this one LI has an entire extra wedding coded for him and his mother appearing at his (optional) second wedding (after chapters and chapters and chapters of content that explored his issues in depth), while another one is treated by her bride as some sort of bridesmaid/wedding planner at their own wedding reception? That another LI is supposed to not react much when his father dies (though to be fair, at least he gets a better deal than the remaining two do).

That the newest LI in that group had had numerous glitches in his wedding and they never bothered to even focus on his background, such that his future sister-in-law (who happens to be the sister of the LI they put so much effort into, what a coincidence!) is the 'Beaumont' that gets the most focus? And whose 'growth' (as the writers put it) into fatherhood was never important enough to show?

What else do you consider "better"? That one of our LIs in TRR - if single - was on the verge of being paired up with the woman who bullied her (back then, complaints like the ones I keep making were what barely prevented that from happening)? That the resolution to her arc involving her parents was weak and had no effort or heart put into it, especially in comparison to how painful that story was? That she is often treated like "token Asian woman with a sexuality we don't want to even talk about" in the story rather than an actual character with a background in a real country? That these same writers...who could have learned a lesson from those previous books and done better...now force her into a painful situation, and she is expected to repeatedly brush it aside because "well at least one of us can have that baby, right". That's your definition of a "million times better"?

I think there are a couple of things you need to keep in mind. One is that to compare books like TE and Open Heart to the TRR/H series as it stands is like comparing apples to oranges. Especially when you speak of TRR Book 3, and the format they're still following in TRH. Just because nothing seems amiss in your playthrough doesn't mean there is fair balance. There's a whole lot of stuff buried in different LI playthroughs that won't be apparent if you view them in isolation.

A Liam stan who worried about Liam's strangely distant behaviour in Book 3 could assume it must be due to a coding struggle, unless they'd seen how Drake scenes were done in different chapters. A Hana stan may probably not be entirely clued into the writers' intention to make Madeleine an alternative love interest for her in playthroughs where she was single, unless they saw variations in Hana's dialogues in the Costume Gala scene. That format doesn't exactly allow you to notice a lot of things, resulting in a lot of shitty stuff and very problematic writing just floating under the radar.

This is not to say that there are things you won't notice in the other books. Of course there's plenty you might not see based on your choices. I'm just saying that comparing a format where you're not exclusive with an LI yet, with one that is supposed to be coded primarily towards separate LIs (resulting in four separate playthroughs in a single book) doesn't exactly work. Of course it's going to be easier to figure out how much a character like Beckett eats into the story and space of the other LIs - because the format itself was supposed to support exploring different characters, and TE wasn't doing the work the other characters needed. Of course it's going to be challenging to figure out how bad things truly are in a format like TRR unless you're looking at all four playthroughs. It's why my QTs are the way they are. Not because I find so much pleasure in complaining, but as a resource.

The other thing to keep in mind is that just because other books are more obviously blatant about their favouritism, you shouldn't just simply minimize the shit someone's finding in a book you like (with solid proof, might I add!). Notice how throughout this response I never once tried to minimize your legitimate complaints about those two books? You should try that. You don't have to put down the legitimate concerns someone has over a book just because there is worse out there.

If you want to write about how bad the balance is in Open Heart and TE, no one is stopping you. Write about it. Or if you're not able to do that, go to the inboxes of people who post about these problems, and discuss your concerns with them. Just don't be dismissive about problems I have proven time and again to exist in this book, and pretend that a storyline that forces its lone female LI into painful situations just for drama, and then moves on to other things and other people like they never mattered, is "not perfect but at least a million times better". Don't be that asshole.

[tsui-no-sora]

(sorry finn's followers. this got long)

you don't understand how much i would prefer it (whatever It is) to be caused by cdream as opposed to an external force (ie. xd), just for keeping a cohesive narrative with good causality and shit, but also for the blorbo to finally, actually DO something for the first time in eight months (the upcoming lnv stream and daedalus arc don't count because that's 90% dream Reacting to others rather tahn pursuing his initiative from s1 +2) but and i mean this very respectfully. cdream Is hot shit and Has the revive book and Is pretty good at manipulating people, but unless he's struck a secret deal with Xd or planning a server wide doomsday 2.0, I don't think he's powerful enough to incite a 'world changing event' (especially when considering ccdream's genera addendum of 'dynamics and relationships changing', like cdream could Do that, but probably not on a mass-scale and in a way that revitalizes the entire server)

im incredibly glad we won't get a physical reset of the server, i would Not deal with that, that would be just Awful. i'm also trying to keep my expectations humble, most importantly because i really can't fathom what in god's name they could have planned to make everyone log onto the server again without changing anything about it physically. a collective memory wipe (maybe to a certain point in time, maybe to different points in time for different character, maybe every character is set back to the worst moment in their life and have to work from there <- not expectations just musing) i'm really a little brought empty on ideas. let's truly just hope that it isn't another soon or another oups we had to cancel an entire arc because one (1) cc didn't show up.

yeah, i guess ccwilbur is a pretty trustworthy cc most of the time, and 'I'm gonna miss c!wilbur' could just as well have been meant to say that he's gonna miss actively writing the characterand as i've said him saying that wilbur's still gonna hang around after finishing his lore was during a time when he still planned to do play the last arc entirely solo, so i don't how much plans might have changed since.

and yeah, i don't think he's gonna pull another nov 16 and follow up on all the death flags. i feel like most people can agree that some suicidal bitch commiting suicide, coming back, trying and yes. failing Hard to be better and then just commiting suicide Again would be incredibly depressing. maybe that's what he's going for (that or leaving), but i feel like there's there's definitely gonna be some intervening force.

'i don't think about themes because it doesn't work in this kind of media' don't you dare say that to alexis "legacy" cc!quackity headquarter's face ever again. like i mean there's definitely character's that are just little guys someone has fun telling a story with/ weren't initially written to have a specific theme, but i think it's fair to atleast consider 'legacy' to be important to cc!quackity's character, since he literally spelled it out for us last stream. obviously you can feel like it doesn't really come across as a 'theme' in the medium but i think that considering the amount of effort and structuring ccq puts in his streams, it's fair to think about his story having intentional themes (why do i have such a strong opinion on this help)

you don't have to do your streamers like that, but Yeah. ccdream is literally worse than cctommy (was), and tbh, outside a bunch of lore clips i've Never watched a ranboo stream. also what the hell did beeduo do, you're making it sound like they had an irl divorce. i have strong feelings of disappointment of for his lore even considering that he's literally just a teenager (like im one to judge im two years older than him terrible at finishing Anything) and i can understand losing motivation or being overwhelmed but from a fan perspective it just sucks. honestly at this point i'd be happy with 30 second 'ewranboo blew up the prison because [reason] and decided to help dream because [conversation they had] and heard his voice because [weird enderman thing]' because it'd help a Lot

oh. you mean you have followers from My side of tumblr, i was talking about stuff that even my loyal cwilburian and cinnter moots would tear my throat out for. idk, lots of people like having all the different opinions on their dash at once, like i prefer browsing different sub communities on their own because i Really don't feel like getting slapped in the face with a 'actually cphil was Pogchamp for killing his suicidal son' 7am opening tumblr in the morning, but still like. know that even your favourite meta writers aren't going to know All the details. and i mean. i guess there's also people who aren't terminally once and don't notice 85% of what's going on their dash.

yeah. whatever episodes ccmicheal went through was just weird, because it felt really disconnected from what Both the fans and other ccs have expressed on the topic, it really had the vibe of 'I'M not getting enough attention so let's throw everything down a sandhill' <- relates the to beef you're having

i dunno. i feel like with time i kind of got used to it, we already had it in the first big lore drought (the time when you first joined) and while i have a bunch of concerns about wilbur's storytelling (how is he going to satisfactorily tie up his story in One stream) i am comforted by the fact that atleast my guy gets an real, solid ending. because i don't know how your dash looks but on mine most anxiety centers around stories frizzling out entirely, being discarded or irreversibly changed due to cc negligence (for examplem when we still had hope that cranboo was going to continue his story but it was already. 5 months since he died and got stuck in limbo)

to be very honest, a lot of my hope for c!crimeboys relies on how unhinged cc!crimeboys are about their little ocs, yes they're going to literally throw them in hell but they're also gonna cry over a single scene with them in a fan animation. optimism everyone.

oh sure, cq Freaked out (and i cannot emphasize that enough) at the prospect of cdream being out of prison, he knew he'd fucked up, he knew he'd tortured a person fully capable of paying back every ounce of suffering and festering pain that he caused i don't know how much charlie dying impacted that because the ending of the last lnv stream really kind of showed him pretty much giving up on defense. that is not to say that i'm seeing him go down entirely without a fight, that is to say that i think there are going to be both stark differences as well as parallels between him and sam.

fr you can't just ask your little brother if he deserved being abused by the green teletubby. cwilbur i love you and i get that you did not want to see your hero in a bad light but sometimes you're the most ass awful person on this entire server. same with 'well i think you should have used camp fires' my man. have you ever heard of something called Tact.

that scene in one year later was sure something, i love that cwilbur's hero worship was used as both an element of comedy (he's a pathetic overly emotional 40yo. goof) and mild horror as in he is lovingly. and loudly daydream gushing about the guy that almost killed tubbo last time they met. very good arc 10/10

listen i know it comes from a very different corner of the fandom, but i very much respect stone theory, like i get where it comes from (i also just wanted to see cwilbur, ranboo and punz working on a project together. it would have been funny okay) but to be entirely frank, i don't think it's gonna happen given the way insonsolable played out at large (i like to believe that ccwilbur is better at threading a story than leaving a single blib hint i couldn't find even though i knew what i was looking for) and the fact that we literally only have one cwilbur stream left.

take your time, i really just want to see because there's always the possibility of me being both blind and deaf and missing something really obvious lmao

Gonna put this under read more because it got so long and I feel bad cluttering somebody's dash with this

Yeah that's actually another thing I relate a lot to the Stone Theory because idk what he's planning on doing or what he could possibly do build a monument underwater to pray for server unity or something I don't freaking know

I really hope he does somehow cause things to occur by his own hands and Volition it would just be more interesting than it just occuring and well whatever the plan is must be a very big thing and well he is the admin and connected to XD and has the revival book so capable of things he is

But yeah idk what it would be like also in a in real world sense of course it actually changing the server just depends on everybody else playing along with it more than anything that could actually happen in streams I think

I don't think there would be much need to change things physically for it to work even with a memory wipe of any sort but truth to be told I just don't want it to be a soon thing and at least knowing that the place will be physically okay it's good enough for me

Yeah I think there's gonna be some extra limiting force to whatever it's gonna happen in his ending and I do think he meant actively writing the character and playing it more than anything else after all it will be different after the story is done I think that while the plans surely must have changed a little because of the sudden give me one more month bit with Eret they must have stayed pretty consistent throughout those bits or at least I think so because I was utterly convinced the Friend and XD bit had been completely abandoned and turns out it wasn't so I think he's pretty determined to do whatever he envisioned for his story occur

Little side track about c!Niki yeah I would have liked more anger as well maybe something closer to what happened with c!Fundy but I also don't really mind her just not holding the same intensity of anger any longer after so long and I think that's mostly just because I relate to it I had a really bad fall out with a very old friend and I was so angry about it at the time but now it's been so long that I just feel kinda bad and that's it so for me it makes sense but idk

And here is where I get sad over c!Niki and c!Fundy cuz we haven't gotten content of them ever :((

I mean personally I don't think cc!Wilbur cares a whole lot if his story is incredibly depressing or not aka basically everything from a little before Pogtopia up until now and I don't really think he's thinking super hard about what message it will send or something like that also taking messages from random streamers very seriously seems dangerous to me

Nonetheless I don't think that's where it's going because that's not really the sorta storyteller I think cc!Wilbur is

I don't think legacy was really a thing for his character before that specific stream now with the framework of legacy being important to him like we know now we can re contextualize some of his pasts actions with a consistent framework and that's kinda the thing with a lot of of the characters looking at for example c!Ranboo's first stream by itself is very different than c!Ranboo's first stream when you also know that he lacks memory that he plays defensive that he keeps all of his thoughts mostly to himself and that he doesn't like governments and then you can make a theme out of it but I really don't think most streams are done with the theme already in mind

So yeah that is a theme for him specifically I don't think most characters have themes and it's important to his story after knowing it so searching desperately for a theme before it seems counterproductive to me

"You are making it sound like they had an irl divorce" Well kinda nah I'm just joking they just you know don't really interact like before

Cc!Prime Boys really only talk about their characters once when all the Astros align and everything happens just right but at least cc!Tommy is more straight forward catch cc!Dream just saying well what is most commonly accepted as a goal for him would be this which would lead to certain behaviours being seen in this manner by this group of people if you think about this way you could arrive to these other conclusions like king just tell me your plan please

Yeah I don't wanna go up to Ranboo's face and say I demand you give me lore if he's not into it anymore that's fine too just I would like 20 minutes on a stream where he says all of that or a fic or a Reddit post or by this point I take a Twitter thread cc!Eret style just because as a fan I would like to understand him better

[Here I start to remember I joined the fandom as a L'Manberg main and Ranboo lover even though I don't really watch him anymore]

Oh I can't relate to that at all if I see an opinion that talks too badly about my little mewo meow with no consideration for my poor little feelings I immediately wither away and die (Exaggerating but still I do very much prefer looking at what I like and not looking at what I dislike when I can afford it) so it's difficult for me to understand other people willingly wanting to follow me to see things they disagree with but all the power to them I also am into Karmaland another series with cc!Q in it and there's people who follow me for the meta posts I do about them and it's so odd because they have c!Dream enjoyers sympathizers apologists and everything else you can imagine don't interact go die and it's like why you following me then

Your takes too hot they are gonna burn through the tectonic plates yeah same mostly I just get dsmp content out of going through the blogs that I already follow because for me the actual tags are downright unusable

Yeah that's pretty much how it felt like to me saying that actually the Dream SMP is dead and it's the audience's fault felt just really disconnected from reality like the DSMP fandom legit doesn't do anything but grow it's the most active fandom I ever been on but simply expecting that oh now I'm on this smp so even though I just stream by myself at 4 in the morning I should get just as many views as any other lore stream does ever seems kinda silly a shame tho cuz I actually did really like the concept he was going with with his lore same with Eryn

I also really want to see more Tina and Aimsey lore c!Aimsey and c!Tubbo have such an interesting dynamic and the fact that c!Tina is actually a demon in disguise is really cool and now I'm missing lore with my c!Tina my c!Tina she will always be famous

My dash mostly just cares about c!Dream's plan but I guess that makes sense because beyond whatever his plan might be there's not a lot more to infere for him there's also no way for him to ever achieve a happy ending to call it something unless the Dream Team suddenly decide to accept each other again and he's able to get over his plan

I do rather appreacite the fact that at least for sure c!Wilbur will have an actual ending as painful as it is it's always for the best for all stories to have proper endings I also hope eventually the Dream SMP storyline as a whole will have a concrete ending tho I don't know how that would look like

Yeah same if I just didn't know who the actual people are I would just assume oh c!Wilbur is dead already and that's that but I know cc!Wilbur and cc!Tommy adore their story each other and the smp as a whole also something I think which same with the Ghost Quackity stuff is that if they were really going to do that they wouldn't make it so incredibly obvious months in advance and I also remember that cc!Wilbur said that what he liked the most was subverting the audience's expectations and doing something completely different that what people expect him to do and same happens with Quackity lore nobody is ever really able to predict it so I still think it's gonna be mostly fine at the end

Well the bunker itself still exists so I like to imagine maybe he just goes there because it's one of the few things that give him safety it's a reminder that he still has this nation even if no not really and a trustworthy competent builder like Foolish by his side and he has made himself a very bad enemy but he still has this layer of protection maybe he just goes there and thinks about Charlie and about why he can't seem to ever keep anybody he cares for close to him before long

He's for sure not going down without a fight but I think that initial spark of intense anger and fear that he might have had before Charlie's death is pretty extinguished by now

Oh my god the campfires thing that was one thing I really liked about that stream Tommy seeing the little bedrock statue by Drista and laughing and showing his little makeshift camp thingy because it's like one of the two things about that era of his life that aren't just a constant terror and sadness on him and Wilbur just deadpan going you should have used campfires like oh my God that guy he's something else

He really is so emotional is actually one of the traits I like the most about him just like that one time he just randomly happened to break some dirt underneath him and he felt all the guilt of the world at once that wet cat has a lot of emotions inside his heart (Also I watched that stream while writing the Dream Redemption Arc fic and i was so tempted to during that one fight scene they have just make him say I love you directly to Dream like he does on that one stream where he just openly goes yeah man I love Dream but I held back because the scene was getting too hardcore even for my Dreambur infested brain)

Well for the stone theory the main proof isn't that bit of the stream like at all the proof comes from other past streams which I suppose you do know because you know what it is that bit of the stream is just noted because it gives off the implication that they met and discussed something important in the past which could be tied up to the stone theory

I also personally don't really believe it's going to happen mostly because Ranboo already dropped off the planet and Wilbur only has one stream left and now we know that what Techno needed all those materials for was completely unrelated so now the only possibility for that to be explored is for it to just be said during staged duo lore but I still think it would be cool

[kalosstarters]

I haven't done one of these in a while... Obviously people don't ask you enough. (I think it's so fun) Anyway, when Alain and Mairin kiss for the first time, who do you think will initiate it? and how do you think it will be? (Shy, passionate, etc) Maybe a little description of the time and place? ;)

Lol I guess I don’t show my opinions enough for people to send asks - or I do but people simply don’t care about the same things as I do (I mean let’s be real, Marisson is far from a popular ship in this fandom. And in a way I can understand it, but then again, it as a ship and the characters on their own get a lot of unnecessary hate too.. But I’m not here to talk about that now!)

So, the first kiss is obviously an important thing in many of  the fanfics involving ships, and that is one of the reasons why I actually have given this topic quite a lot of thought and formed my headcanons quite a while ago (are they good tho? Hmm idek, there’s always room for improvement). But the answer to the first question is that when they properly kiss for the first time (there have probably been a few cheek kisses etc before that - initiated by Mairin of course) it’s Alain who initiates it. Not because Mairin doesn’t want to kiss him, because she does, but like I said in one of my headcanon posts, I believe Mairin is too scared that Alain doesn’t care about her that way and she’d ruin their friendship if she did that. That would be the last thing she’d want. Besides, I headcanon that she too has some emotional walls she needs to overcome before she can admit her feelings to herself and to him. 

Anyway, I’ve written the scenario of how the kiss happens, probably last summer or fall, but I’m not gonna share it here yet because I am hoping that one day I’d be able to finish the full fic and post it as a whole. But this is how the scene goes: after seeing a romantic movie (which funnily enough involves a chespin and a charmander) Mairin starts wondering how it feels like to be kissed (because for one reason or another she hasn’t been kissed yet at that point, by anyone), and Alain is hit (OH my gosh I wrote “hot” first, well that is kinda true too :S) by some moment of craziness and after staring at her for a long while he leans in to kiss her and when the kiss ends, he tries to push it off by saying “well now you know” or something like that (I don’t remember the exact wording in my fic anymore, tbh). Well, they act kinda shy for a while after that, but then one day Mairin decides to challenge Alain to a battle, partly to break the tension, and it just so happens that it’s also the first time her Chesnaught beats his Charizard (fair enough, Alain doesn’t use mega evolution that time because he feels that wouldn’t be fair, but charizard is strong nevertheless). Alain compliments her and says that she truly has come a long way (hmm I think I have written a longer version of this??? I honestly don’t even remember anymore what I have written or published and what not. Whoops.) Needless to say, Mairin is really, really happy when she hears that and in her moment of happiness she runs to him and gives him a quick, excited kiss on the mouth. After that they realize that it doesn’t feel bad at all, and well, it sorta becomes a habit (not in public, that’s for sure, but when they are alone in their tent, that’s a different story). 

So that’s the story of how their romantic relationship starts evolving. (it still takes several months after the first kiss that the 3 important words are said). This happens about a year after they start traveling together again, which means Mairin is 17 and Alain 22.

Edit: after writing this I saw a fan art of Mairin and Alain (almost) kissing and Mairin looked scared and Alain dominant. That is just not the way I see these characters, not at all. Mairin would be the one to initiate anything romantic most of the time, and Alain would be like “are you sure” (sometimes even about the smallest things) because he would not want to take advantage of her.