#i want to do a bunch more things like this in the future

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

I am now at least far enough away from the incident that I can give some more articulately expressed opinions about Kriemhild and that part of Traum, and also my general bugbears when it comes to Higashide. To really elaborate on them, I want to make a point of comparison to show this isn't just like, bias getting in the way, and that's Caster.

Well Medea. Obviously.

Caster has a really big advantage going for her over characters such as Semiramis and Kriemhild. She has two gigantic and well-written visual novels backing her up. While the first thing you probably think of when it comes to Caster is her relationship to Kuzuki, you can probably think of a bunch of different things that you know Caster for. Caster's relationship to Kuzuki is a big part of her character, but it is not the only part of her character, and most importantly, it adds to her character. It is in and of itself a jumping off point for discussing her relationship with Jason, how that has affected her, and what Caster is looking at her future for.

Bu it's not her entire character. She still has a very complex relationship with Saber, and Hollow Ataraxia's character interactions with her and the rest of the cast are all interesting, not to mention her own interactions with Kojirou either. She exists as a character beyond that, and that is also very likely why Kuzuki is just not a factor in F/GO at all. She is a strongly written character that is recognizable without him.

When it comes to Semiramis and Amakusa, Apocrypha itself is written fine although I don't really believe in the two of them having real chemistry with each other, especially as time has gone on and more of Semiramis backstory has come out, Amakusa feels very written in but without the proper framing to me to make it work. But as time has gone up, unlike with Caster, Semiramis has had her entire character swallowed up by this relationship, even though canonically she shouldn't really remember it. This is obviously to some extent fanservice, but this is a problem, because it means that Semiramis stops existing as her own character. There are entire interludes about her history that are boiled down at the end to just being about Amakusa. If you want to know Semiramis like you would Caster, you can't.

A good relationship adds to the character, it does not BECOME the character. This is especially weird because Amakusa has had a lot of interesting screen time and character writing without Semiramis being present. It starts to feel like there's only really one important character in the mix. There's Amakusa, and Amakusa's girlfriend. That's weird.

Kriemhild is that on turbo, but the issues with her writing go even further. At least with Semiramis, while her relationship with Amakusa is strange, it's not necessarily contradictory. It's definitely odd, but not out of question. Kriemhild, especially for those who have summoned her and didn't go through Traum quickly, is in a contradictory boat. She clearly in her dialogues does not like Siegfried, even if she still loves him, and it's also clear he is directly responsible for a ton of hurt that she felt. This is consistent of what we know of Siegfried, it makes sense that he would do these things, we've already seen him do it in Apocrypha. Here, we are being asked to confront the human cost of that. In Apocrypha, he's not screwing over anyone we care about. But here, he's directly hurting people, and by extension, leading to their death.

Siegfried's actions are not portrayed particularly nobly, they're considered mistakes, at least in part chiefly by Siegfried who wants to live a life doing the right thing now. So it makes sense that Kriemhild would be extremely bitter and angry at him. He...abandoned her, and didn't even explain himself. That's extremely fucked up.

For almost the entire chapter in Traum, we're not given any indication that there is going be a flip-flop in character motivations. Kriemhild is portrayed, consistently, as being antagonistic to Siegfried. She wants her revenge on him, she calls him leftovers, she talks about destroying the world he keeps trying to save. Zhang Jue hides away Siegfried not because he believes that Kriemhild will turn on the realm for him, but because, as a Berserker, Kriemhild is likely to become extremely unstable upon seeing him.

Even later on, when Siegfried approaches Ritsuka and asks for a favor, the most likely conclusion to come to, knowing Siegfried, is that he wants to fulfill his wife's revenge. That makes sense from a character perspective. Siegfried's actions have consistently trended towards those that self-sacrifice to protect others.

The problem when it comes to Kriemhild is that it is both contradictory to what we've been communicated with in the story, and that the end result is that it destroys her character. It is both bad, and quite frankly, very cheap. It's a cheap use of the love conquers all trope. In the span of one to two sentences, Kriemhild implicitly forgives him for everyone that he's done, reverts to a lovey-dovey wife, and even reneges on everything that to this build are the foundation of her existence as a Servant.

It turns Kriemhild into nothing, into what is insanely flat, because all of her depth has been removed. What is left is a character that is entirely one-dimensional. Nothing exists for Kriemhild past her love of Siegfried anymore. There's no discussions about hurt or pain or the twenty years of vengeance beyond Kriemhild immediately turning a double face on it.

There's not a nicer way to put this, so let's just get it out of the way now. Siegfried will continue to be a character independent of Kriemhild. Unlike say, Sigurd, whose character is primarily defined on his relationship with Brynhildr, Siegfried's character is not defined really at all by his relationship to Kriemhild. Kriemhild has no path from here, and as we can glimpse in further events, her character is entirely defined by her relationship with Siegfried. What are her character motivations past this point? Well obviously its not ANY of the ones we took pain to previously establish.

This is classic, textbook, misogynistic writing. Kriemhild has been turned into a lamp.

Siegfried is a very popular character, and I imagine for a lot of people, there is incentive to ignore all of this. Siegfried is getting his happy ending, he's getting his wife back. But if you cared about what Kriemhild's character was, this sucks tremendously. Reconciliation is not off the table, but what happened is not reconciliation. It's not anything resembling that. Kriemhild essentially loses all of her agency, so dramatically she dies after this happens.

Like at least Urobuchi would have just killed her.

[sleepy-vix]

How to annotate your books like i do

i'm writing this because i am bored :)

📰🪶

what you will need:

- a bunch of annotation tabs in a variety of colours (you can buy these on amazon)

- a pencil (preferably tiny so it's not always in your way, but that's up to you.)

- no pens. too permanent and they bleed

- no eraser

- no ruler

- no highlighters, colour pens, or colour pencils

- a pencil hook holder thing that you attach to the plastic flat thing that your annotation tabs are on and put your pencil through. compact. keeps all your stuff together when you're not using the pencil

- a book. obviously

- a drink: optional, and unrelated.

How i make the key:

choose colours that match your book. I usually pick out 5 based on intuition. This is how i make my key:

- the darkest colour is for sad/ horrifying/ basically wtf moments

- i always have one for quotes

- i sometimes have one for fun fact; depends on the book

- i like to have a tab that i label as "hm" which basically means "ooh interesting idea proposed here" (not all books will let me have this tab. like a fantasy book wouldnt have this tab, but a dystopian book would. i love it when books allow me to add this tab ^^)

- sometimes i have one for beautiful descriptions and writing

- i have one for cool protagonist moments

- i have another for 'cool character moments: side characters' (i only give side characters their own tab if i find that i am very attached to them. like i was reading the poppy war, and i was bookmarking kitay moments alot so i decided to give him his own colour)

honestly, i do alot of this based on my intuition, and i like to adapt it as i go along

also here are some more general facts abt my annotation habits:

- i usually leave space in my annotation key because half way through the story i will probably add more to the key

- i don't believe in having a tab for plot points. i'd much rather write my thoughts on foreshadowing and plot theories in the margins of the book with my pencil. i see no need to give it a tab

- my pencil is everything. i try to use pencil to express my thoughts whenever i can. i only tab when i really loved a scene or line and feel that my future self would want to easily flip to it

- i don't force myself to be articulate in my written annotations cus there's no space to be. most of the time i just wrote lol, aw, draw a skull, draw a straight lined face, or draw a crying face so that my future self can see what i was feeling when reading it

- i don't like underlining a whole paragraph, i feel like it looks clunky. so instead i draw a bracket like this [ in the margine so it draws my attention to that entire paragraph and future me will know that i found that entire paragraph to be interesting

- my lines are messy, and i love it. it breaks my reading rhythm to bust out a ruler and meticulously rule my lines, i just wing it and move on

- usually, in my annotation key, to start with, there are no tabs for ships. i usually add that in later on if there is any that i care about. if there is romance that i don't care about then i simply won't add a tab.

my annotation experience is very personal and it's done for my future self, or anyone that would like to see my personal thoughts on the story.

i don't care to annotate in a logical way. i won't make tabs for every main character or every plot device or every romance ship. that makes me feel like i'm shallowly categorizing the scenes in the book... ykwim?

- ooh also, by the end of the book, if i find that i am head over heels in love with it, i'll usually go back and draw on any blank space i can find (i try to draw the scene that is happening)

btw none of these photos are mine

thanks for coming to my ted talk

[christopher067]

little necklace wip for you today :)

this is a fun necklace that will be coming to patreon tomorrow ♡ i have been wanting to make something like this for a while so I'm so excited to put it out :):)

[thelaurenshippen]

Hello! I'm loving Breaker Whiskey, it's so beautiful and it's also making me better at Morse Code, lol. I've got a question about episode 60, though, what's the music that's mixed into the morse and static? It sounds like a very old recording, and I love that sort of thing. Thank you for sharing your shows with us!

ahhhh this makes me so happy!! I LOVE that it's getting people into Morse Code, that thrills me.

(some spoilers below about episode 60 of @breakerwhiskey, including additional explanation from me that you may or may not want)

yes, the music mixed into episode 60 IS an old recording! it's a song played on a phonograph - I use a service called Splice to get a lot of the sounds I've put in a bunch of my shows, and there's a pack that's all sounds from vintage audio devices. there's a few of those sounds mixed into episode 60 - a phonograph song, the sounds of wax cylinders being played, and a recording of Thomas Edison explaining the phonograph - all of them distorted to be mostly unrecognizable.

the song file itself is just called 'phonograph song' - I think a bunch of audio engineers just recorded whatever they could off the vintage resources they had - but as far as I was able to glean from the lyrics (they're not that much clearer even undistorted) it's an 1860s confederate rallying song, which I thought would be just about the worst possible thing that you could hear played at random over a radio frequency. I wanted the sounds all together to be menacing, and Whiskey has talked a lot about the myth-making of America vs. the cruel reality, so it felt on theme.

that said, the phonograph sounds were chosen mainly for the literal quality of the sound - that tactile, fuzzy wax static - rather than any true story importance. there are story-relevant sounds mixed in there, but I'm not going to tell you what they are or what they mean!

[scorndotexe]

man i feel so fucking hopeless constantly truly what is the fucking point

[dancing-with-stars]

guys. guys !!!!

[spaceratprodigy]

WIP ROUNDUP

Thank you for the tags @bokatan @the-lastcall 💖💕

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! Tag as many people as you have WIPs.

open tag to anyone who wants to jump in!

–

I don't have any writing WIPs at the moment but I can share what's currently on my to-do list regarding (mostly) the art prompts currently in my ask box 👍 if y'all wanna ask abt what ideas I'm cookin' up for them :]

but also if you know abt any of my OCs or AUs in general y'all can ask abt any new ideas for them directly too!! iykyk sorta thing

Ask Box Art Prompts:

Faith/Max Smooch Prompt

Iris/[Dealer's Choice] Smooch Prompt

Faith/Max Autumnal Prompt

Faith/Max Intimacy Prompt

Iris/Deacon Intimacy Prompt

Faith/Jasper Autumnal Prompt

AUs/Other:

Maril Meets Rinzler

Pride & Prejudice AU (with captastra)

Western AU (with darkfire1177)

Phantom AU

Iris/Nick Detective Agency Date Night

[spider-man-2o99]

when are you gonna see the new spiderverse?

it's not set in stone or anything, but we're aiming for sometime within the first week of its release if we can afford it!!

(on the note of spoilers: i Strongly Prefer to not be spoiled, but they won't like. Ruin My Life or really even my Day, i just would prefer to not be spoiled cause it's. like. a dick move, y'know? thanks. love yall)

[sanchoyo]

ummm no im not a 'job hopper' haha...im like barbie. multiskilled. multicareered, even. put some positive framing on my impulsive and flighty nature please 😤

[savrenim]

the worst bit about being Super Excited about a new original project is, like. the knowledge that. at best. people aren't going to see it for a year and a half to two years. and that it's really hard to go "hey trust me I'm going to have something so cool in like two years so please stick around now"

[wistrearchived]

more bg3 kira thoughts ... the admittance when she speaks so softly, i don't want you to die. and she isn't worried about them perishing in battle or through an encounter in their adventures, she's worried about them dying by her hands. because she knows that if she was the one to kill them, it would be painful and cruel ... and they did not deserve that. she looks at them while they sleep believing they are safe in the camp, not knowing one amongst them is itching for the knife.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[andthebeanstalk]

Thank you, younger me, for drawing so many things in which the lines were never quite right. It is quite literally the only reason I ever figured out how to get them right.

[caramelmochacrow]

overanalyzing haruna and tsubaki's conversation in the my prince event bc i got nothing else to do.

their conversation begins after aoi goes to get some beverages for her and haruna. before that though, aoi says that she's been getting better and better at acting as romeo ever since she started practicing with her. aoi praises her, tells her that everything feels right, but she says that the only problem she has is that it lacks authenticity; it lacks motivation.

haruna, right after aoi notes this, says and i'll quote: "Focus on my motivation, on authenticity over an idealized role...."

then aoi goes to get beverages and tsubaki appears with boxed lunches, telling her that it tastes better than it seems.

she thanks tsubaki for the boxed lunches and tsubaki asks haruna how practicing is going, haruna answers that she's getting better and better thanks to aoi. she also adds the fact that aoi memorized the lines to help. tsubaki says that it sounds like something aoi would do, and asks if aoi was acting as juliet.

haruna says that tsubaki is correct, but she believes that aoi should've been acting as romeo, with how charming and prince-like she is, she believes that role would suit her more.

tsubaki's face, as soon as she hears this, turns serious. she hesitates before answering with "i see".

right after, haruna says that she has been copying aoi's mannerisms whenever she plays as romeo because to her she is the perfect image for romeo.

now, before this episode in the story, aoi and haruna met up in a cafe and aoi opened up a little bit about herself, she told haruna about the fact that she likes making jam, that she's afraid of bugs, and the reason she started djing. (im not adding more to this because it isnt connected, as much as i want to do it though.)

back to what was happening, haruna says that she pales in comparison to aoi, who is, "so confident, so cool, so..."

tsubaki, hearing this, says and i'll quote: "you haven't learned anything, haruna. you've only seen aoi on a superficial level."

haruna tells tsubaki that it wasnt her intention, but she then remembers aoi saying that "everyone seemed to like it" and it hits her that aoi was just going with what people told her.

tsubaki tells her that aoi isnt sensitive enough to be bothered by it, but there is more to what haruna sees. she says that aoi is deeper than that and that she would appreciate it if she haruna could see every part of her.

incomes the quote of tsubaki saying that she loves likes every facet of aoi and then aoi herself shows up. tsubaki gets flustered, tells her she made boxed lunches, and runs away.

after aoi chuckles about how she got them boxed lunches, haruna apologizes for seeing her just for her looks and actions, not what was under it. aoi tells her that she shouldn't be sorry and that she appreciates the compliments with a smile. haruna wonders in her head if what she was saying was true, if she truly meant every word she said.

now, since tsubaki and haruna's conversation is done, im gonna go to aoi's initial 3* card story "the girl with the long hair".

tsubaki and aoi were going to meet up in a cafe and tsubaki was late, after aoi says that she just got there too because she took a walk to pass the time tsubaki apologizes and says that she "made a reservation online but the beauty salon made her wait", aoi assures her that it's alright because she doesnt mind. she also notes that tsubaki has long hair, so it must be a bit harder to take care of.

tsubaki asks if that's the reason why aoi has hers short and aoi answers with "not really no. i just think it suits me."

tsubaki then asks if she ever wore her hair long and aoi answers that she used to in high school, tsubaki chuckles and aoi asks her what's funny about it so tsubaki answers that she has a hard time believing it.

aoi then tells her that she can show her a photo from before, and tsubaki agrees, i will add the fact that tsubaki sounds excited here compared to aoi who sounds nervous when she was about to show the picture.

tsubaki looks at it and notes that it isn't how she imagined and kind of freezes for a moment, aoi asks her if she was alright and that she was right there. tsubaki then says that that's what makes it so hard to believe and aoi says that was the reaction she usually got, she also says that the others photos of herself at those times werent as cute. after she says that, she tells tsubaki about how people saw her as a crossdressing boy and tsubaki's face relaxes to a serious one and she asks aoi if it ever bothered her. aoi replies that she just tries to stay positive and says that she tells herself that she looks better in short hair and that it was more manageable.

tsubaki tells aoi that she's envious of her, maybe talking about the fact that aoi can manage to stay positive about something for so long, then aoi then changes the subject -- and attention -- to tsubaki, telling her that she hopes tsubaki keeps her long hair (making it seem that aoi thought she was talking about hair) because it suits her and then while she's flustered, asks her what she thought of the lyrics.

there is a only a slight difference in the card story because u cant read their thoughts, but u can tell that tsubaki caught on the fact that aoi has difficulty seeing herself as cute because of how her classmates treated her in high school, while for haruna's case, when she saw aoi's photo properly knowing who it is, she doesnt catch it, she doesnt see it. all because aoi managed to hide it well. thanks to that, it goes to haruna thinking that aoi was being kind and considerate because she was acting like how she should be, but aoi tells her that she just does it to be considerate and that she cares for them. haruna then says a note to herself saying that "to play a romeo convincingly, one must sincerely care for others." and that she must be kind and considerate to juliet because that will make her role feel natural.

now then. when aoi was going to show haruna the photo, her face was blank, no emotion, just a polite smile. comparing that with tsubaki's, she was nervous looking and nervous sounding: hesitant. this probably connects to the fact that she had her poker face on when she isnt with rondo.

aoi changing the subject by telling both of them that she doesnt mind or compliments them is something people do in real life, (take it from me, who does this all the time) she knows how to avoid and take away the attention from herself or the subject of the conversation. that's why in most event stories, unless theyre focused on rondo or aoi herself, she almost doesnt talk at all.

oh yeah, tsubaki saying that her boxed lunches are tastier than they seem is connected to the whole thing of the event, which is trying not to judge the book by its cover.

i honestly have no idea how to end this so just. like. take this. my mind is fried and i cant word my thoughts on it anymore.

[larrysblooming]

i feel like I’m losing my mind

[catboyfurina]

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