#i want to keep creating and working on stuff since its the few things that give me joy

[ramshacklerumble]

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[naughtyjjk]

nanami kento hates masturbating

characters: nanami warnings: 18+, smut, masturbation, that's pretty much it notes: happy new year!! i type this up in like 30 minutes lol. enjoy my first nanami smut of the year, and i promise i'll get to all my other unfinished wips soon <3

nanami finds it an inconvenience whenever he gets horny.

he hates that he's subjected to his body's desires, and he'll try to power through it every time, but it never works. it's so stupid.

he always tries to ignore it, but he can't focus on anything when his cock is hard in his pants. the bulge is so obvious, so big, that he can't hide it. and trying not to think about it only has the opposite effect; it becomes all he can think about, and it doesn't help that his cock twitches with need the longer he neglects it.

fuck, he thinks, why can't he get it under control? he's not a desperate teenager anymore. he has important things to do; he can't keep wasting time on masturbating.

it's only when his cock throbs, aching painfully, leaking with precum and creating a wet spot in his pants that he finally gives in. it's become unbearable. with a frustrated groan, he removes his belt and unzips his pants, unable to hold back the sigh of relief that escapes him as he pulls out his cock.

he spreads his legs, wrapping a hand around the base of his cock. he feels it pulse eagerly against his palm, hissing as he fights to hold back a moan. he's so fucking hard already. there's enough precum that his entire length is slick as he starts to pump himself, dragging his hand all the way up to the tip and back down again.

his grip is loose at first, as if he's still in denial about how much he needs this. he convinces himself that he can go slow, that he only needs a bit of stimulation to ease his arousal. but soon, he's groaning and whining and stroking his cock like he means it—faster, harder, oh fuck—

it feels good. god, it feels so fucking good, and he can't stop. when he starts to get really into it, losing himself to the pleasure, he pulls up the bottom of his shirt and stuffs it in his mouth, biting down on it to try and muffle his sounds.

that's when his self-control snaps.

the thing is, he knows exactly what he likes. he has urges, he gives in when the temptation is too strong and he's too turned on, he's played with himself before. so he twists his wrist in a way that has him moaning, back arching forward. he pays extra attention to his cockhead, swirling his thumb around the tip and smearing the beads of precum that are spilling out.

"a-ah—hah—ngh—" his breathing comes out in shaky, ragged breaths. he's panting. his hips are moving on their own uncontrollably, without his permission, fucking into his fist like a wild animal giving over to its instincts.

he dips a finger into his slit, rolls his palm over the tip, and gasps. he strokes down the shaft, hips bucking up helplessly to meet himself halfway. his other hand slides up to his chest and pinches at his nipples. the moan that escapes him is awful, low and raspy, making it so obvious how turned on he is.

it's all so filthy, and he's close, he's fucking close. his cock is flushed a deep red, veins bulging out along his erection, streaks of precum flowing endlessly down the shaft. his balls feel so heavy, so full. god, he can't deny it at all anymore. he wants to come so bad.

he strokes himself in a steady rhythm that has him falling apart, trembling and squirming on the spot. it's too much, too overwhelming. and shit, he's so fucking close now. he's—he's going to come. his cock is about to burst, throbbing and throbbing and throbbing—

"oh, fuck—f-fuck—"

his muscles tense and his hips stutter as he squeezes around his cock. his mind goes blank. with a few more strokes, nanami comes hard, all over himself, painting his abs in white. it shoots out in spurts, thick and sticky, releasing everything that's been pent up since the last time he indulged himself.

the worst part is that it feels so damn good. his cock gives one last twitch and he thinks that he could get addicted to this, easily.

but the rational side of him tells him no. it's an inconvenience whenever he gets horny; an inconvenience to masturbate and jerk himself off. think of all the important things he has to do instead.

so he hates it. really, he does. next time, he promises himself that he won't give in to the temptation.

.

tag list: @megumisdivinedogs @urlilwhore @l0rdgeosupport3rr @purple-obsidian @l0rdgeosupport3rr @minni-creations @fos-tis-zois @the-reas0n-is-y0u @cantfeelherface @rxmbzzz @lysaray @zelzablues @str4wbrrycandy @that-goth-bisexual @simping4u @iminlovewqr0w @sharks31 @pseudowho @jisoonunn @outkasti @anathemaspeaks @fushigur0slut4 @barryatsumu @d0nk3y-k0ng @shasaaa15 @wil10wthetree @maskedpacific @genshingeeksworld @itsnotmelo

(comment to be added)

[revelboo]

Hi revel! I’m asking in advance because I know u have like 2763 asks lmao but my birthday js next Friday (may 16)! How would like es and tfp soundwave say happy birthday to their respective humans?

Happy early birthday! Cryptid Soundwave would do a much better job at it than anger issues Soundwave. With ES, you’re getting aggression and mixed signals.

Birthday

ES Soundwave

• “It’s your creation day?” Skin prickling as he leans closer, you wonder why he has to say it like that, growling the words so they sound like a threat. Who does that? Offering him an uncertain smile, you nod. Lazerbeak and Frenzy had been excited about finding out. He just looks like he’s contemplating violence, but that seems to be his normal mode. “Don’t think that gets you out of working,” he adds, the words a snarl as he reaches for you and you stand up so it’s easier for him to pick you up. Does he have to carry you in a fist like that? The jerk carries you like a beer.

• Grumbling softly, he stalks into the back and shuts the door behind him, depositing you on the work table and ignoring as you stagger and glare up at him. “You could at least be a little nicer since it’s my birthday,” you mutter and he ignores that, too. Reaching to pull out the things he’d gotten for you after being told by Lazerbeak it was your creation day. It’s not like he cares. These are just human things you need. That’s all.

• Bending to pick up your tools, you yelp and go down on a knee, flailing to get free when Soundwave just dumps stuff in you. Glaring up at the jerk until you realize what he buried you in. Clothes, food, an actual mattress, pillows and blankets. “Get to work,” he growls, turning away as you dig your way out. Birthday presents? ‘Thank you?’ You call out and he just glares at you. “Now,” he snarls.

TFP Soundwave

• Head tipping toward you, Soundwave reaches out to comb the graspers on the end of a tendril through your hair. Because you’ve been quiet all day, distant in a way he’s not used to. Using a single servo to tip your chin up, you offer him a small smile. “I’m okay,” you say, but you don’t sound okay. “I just kind of realized I missed my birthday here. I think. It’s hard to keep track of days.” Birthday? A celebration of your creation?

• Watching him pull away, tendrils doing an agitated little dance around his frame, you wonder if he understands birthdays. His visor dims like he’s searching on the internet again like he does wherever he doesn’t understand you. Making you realize you have no idea how he was created. He’s alive, sentient, but maybe he was assembled? Which just makes his spike even stranger when you think about it. You two have sex, he obviously enjoys it, but maybe it’s only recreational? Not for reproduction? “How are little you guys made?” You ask and he stills right as he begins playing the happy birthday song for you, the first few notes wavering awkwardly into nothing.

• Frozen staring at you, his tendrils reach for you before he even makes a conscious decision. Sliding against you, touching any skin he can find. Why the sudden interest in sparklings? Do you want young? The thought putting him off balance, torn between his own guilt for his past failures and a hunger that’s shocking in its intensity. Starts trying to play the human birthing song for you again, but he’s distracted now. Aroused. Fixated on that idea even though he knows how bad an idea it is.

[flawseer]

In your last ask, you mentioned misgivings with Book 10's ending, and especially how it pertains to Winter. I absolutely agree, and I know why, but I wanna hear your thoughts on it, too: What's up with Book 10?

The following is a (very long) examination of my personal feelings with regards to the WoF second story arc finale. While it is based on what is in the text, this analysis will be interpretive and fill in blanks with my own thoughts. Keep that in mind.

Hahhhh... okay. Since mentioning it in my last post I’ve gotten several requests to talk about my feelings regarding the second arc finale. There’s probably no way around it then.

If you haven’t read that last post (it was admittedly very long, and so will this one be), I talked briefly about why I didn’t like that part of the story. I have to warn you now, this will likely be the most negative and dour post in the history of this blog. In a few parts it will sound like I hate Wings of Fire, and I want to say now, while I still have the chance, that I don’t. I love this series, thinking about its setting and characters brings me joy.

I also—very emphatically—want to make it clear that I have no ill will against Tui T. Sutherland. I’ve looked around other people’s stuff a bit and there are a huge number of posts wishing violence upon her or threatening her for doing things to her series that people don’t agree with. That is NOT what I am doing here, shit like that is NOT okay! While I will be critical of her choices, I still respect her effort of bringing this vibrant, wonderful world of dragons to all of us.

Also, obligatory last disclaimer: If you liked the finale, that is okay. You are valid for feeling that way. I’m here to share my point of view, not to demand people agree with everything I say. Just be warned that you most likely won’t enjoy what I have to say. If you don’t think you can handle that kind of criticism, this is your guilt-free opportunity to stop reading.

Otherwise, let's get into it.

CW: Discussion of parental abuse, depression, disease, and extreme acts of violence.

In defense of the finale

Before I start to systematically disassemble this narrative and get lost in a quagmire of negativity, let’s talk a bit about the circumstances that brought forth this part of the story. The plot of this arc was a mess from the moment animus magic was unshackled from the restrictions it had in the first arc, and from then on there was no longer any conceivable way to end this story in a clean way. Sutherland had created an invincible, unbeatable, omnipotent villain; he could read minds, see the future with perfect clarity, and anything he could imagine he could conjure into existence at any time with no cost to himself and no drawbacks. She was likely wracking her brain about how to resolve this impossible conundrum. What we got wasn’t good, but I believe nothing could have been. The foundation was rotting and by the fifth book it couldn’t bear the weight of the plot anymore.

The thing about animus magic in arc 2 is that it is so potent, so all-powerful, and so free of restraint that everyone who uses it also HAS to be a simpleton, or they would be able to break the plot immediately and become god. From the moment Darkstalker broke out of that mountain, he could have said “Any and all spells that are cast with the intention to harm me, interfere with my plans, or do something I don’t consent to will not work, from now on until forever”, and he would have instantly won. The strawberry would have fizzled out. The Darkstalker-blocking earrings would not have been created, and no one could have saved the Icewings. On the flipside, Turtle or Anemone could have said “I enchant the concept of animus magic itself to no longer obey Darkstalker”, and his threat would have been neutered. Point is, powers as potent and easy to use as this really need limitations, or they will quickly eat your plot alive.

I don’t envy the situation Sutherland was in at the time at all. If you’re an author, that kind of thing is a nightmare. It really is no wonder she decided to blow up animus magic for good in her next arc, even if I would have preferred it to get more healthy restrictions instead of killing it outright.

The Darkstalker age regression thing

Everyone has talked this part to death already, but if I am to write a thorough analysis of my feelings regarding this finale, I’m going to have to talk about it as well. I’m sorry if I end up repeating a lot of things you’ve already heard.

This final fate of Darkstalker, to have his memories wiped and be reset to an infant, is really uncomfortable. As far as I am aware, though correct me if I’m wrong, Sutherland said in an interview that she didn’t want Darkstalker to die because, in her view, he did not deserve to. We can debate here about the philosophical question of whether anyone is truly deserving of death, and the merits of “justice” and “punishment”, but in general, Wings of Fire did not seem to have any issues killing off its villains prior if they committed suitably terrible acts. That makes this moment stand out as noteworthy.

Who is Darkstalker then--and if we assume villains can be “deserving” and “not deserving” of death--what about him speaks in his favor, or against? The guy had a pretty crappy childhood, coming from a broken home (there is that inadequate parent theme again). He genuinely loved his sister and felt protective of her, and whenever he liked someone he wanted them to be happy and feel affirmed. The thing that Queen Diamond does to his mother is awful and he is justified in hating her for it. He is also portrayed as rather sympathetic in Moon Rising. When he asks Moon to find his scroll for him and not to leave him, he is not manipulating her, he is sincerely begging for her help. He is stuck somewhere underground, trapped in darkness, in a space so tiny that he can’t move. He remains that way for months, lonely and sad. If you just focus on these aspects, it’s easy to understand why he has so many fans who want him to see healthy and happy.

On the flipside, while he is dedicated to the happiness of his friends, he doesn’t always go for the most ethical way to achieve it. He tries to brainwash said friends without their consent whenever they exhibit behaviors he doesn’t like, or when he thinks he knows better and wants to “fix” them. He has very little regard for other people’s autonomy, lies to his loved ones with alarming frequency, and is unhealthily attached to the idea of power. Those things are certainly not good, but they are his character flaws. These are his demons; everyone has them and they make him a person. If this was all there was to it, he might still be a villain, but I’d argue he’d not be wholly irredeemable.

But there are things about him that take him beyond the pale. Things that go beyond the realm of just being misunderstood, or easily excusable.

He is possessive. He wants Clearsight and Fathom for himself, and for them to listen to him primarily. When Indigo makes it clear she doesn’t like him and cautions Fathom against trusting him, he deceives his friends and traps Indigo in a wood carving, just so he can isolate Fathom from his support network and manipulate him easier. He alters Clearsight’s mind to make her more agreeable and stop her from holding him accountable for his actions; while he thinks he loves her, he only loves an idealized version of her that is wholly devoted to and unquestioning of him. This is why, when he later forcibly overwrites Fierceteeth’s existence to recreate her (which is another horrific thing), he tries to excise the parts he finds undesirable to create a perfect version of his lover. But this caricature he has created in his head is not and can never be Clearsight, which frustrates his attempts.

He is vengeful. Not against people who have actually wronged him, like Queen Diamond. That would be questionable, but understandable. What makes this unacceptable is his frequent targeting of innocent people who just happen to be related to the person who wronged him in some esoteric way. He enchants a secret murder knife that kills random Icewings regardless of who they are or what they think about the Queen, just because the one who took his mother from him happened to share their tribe. He hates Turtle and wishes death upon him in Moon Rising just because he is a green Seawing, like Fathom was. And then there is the big one: He tries to kill all the Icewings who are alive in the present day, where Queen Diamond is long dead and none of them have ever even met her. Even his mother, who suffered from Diamond’s actions the most and has the most reason to hate her, is horrified and calls him out on that one.

And lastly, he is sadistic. He revels in torturing those he hates. He forces his father to disembowel himself, while the latter is fully aware and powerless to resist AND the man’s traumatized daughter is watching. Later he sends a magical plague to kill every single living Icewing sans one.

It should be noted that Darkstalker possesses virtually infinite magical power; whatever he declares, with very few exceptions, will happen. Even if he wanted them dead, he had the power to prevent unnecessary suffering. He could have said “Arctic, fall dead instantaneously”, or “Every Icewing will fall asleep and pass away peacefully,” but he didn’t. He wanted them to feel pain and pass away in the most wretched, agonizing ways he could imagine.

So what he chose to do instead is—and I want you to picture this for a moment—Darkstalker sat down, calmly, and said “Henceforth every living Icewing, excepting Prince Winter and those of hybrid blood, will fall ill with an incurable disease. This disease will cause heavy internal bleeding and make its victims cough up blood and waste away for a few days, followed by certain death.”

This spell does not discriminate with regards to who its victims are. The book glosses over the implications, but imagine the ramifications. Young children are notoriously frail, how many newborns got infected and died because of this? How many families were torn apart because they couldn’t get the magic earrings fast enough? Or accidentally got one earring less than there were family members and had to decide who has to die?

Most of the Icewings were physically cured by the earrings, but an experience like that sticks with you for the rest of your life. Somewhere surely, a dragonet watched as his mother put the earring on him and then slowly wasted away because she didn’t have one for herself.

It’s really easy to overlook how horrific this spell is because it isn’t shown or dwelt on. But the trauma, grief, and suffering it caused must have been immeasurable.

And none of those victims have ever even met the person Darkstalker wanted to get revenge on. None of those deaths meant anything to anyone.

The attempted death toll and scale of the calamity here puts even Scarlet to shame. The ones who come closest to it were Queen Battlewinner and Morrowseer with their attempted Rainwing extermination. All three of those died for what they did. Gives you some food for thought for sure.

Peacemaker’s burden

Despite just airing all of his dirty laundry and declaring him an irredeemable villain, I actually do have a lot of sympathy for Darkstalker still. His story is really sad. He was a child born with an amount of power that nobody should possess, and it corrupted him to the point where it destroyed his life before it began. His parents were always fighting and no matter how good his intentions were, he was unable to understand why he couldn’t hold on to his friends and relationship. He kept making mistakes, then made bigger mistakes to fix those, until his hands were covered in blood and he couldn’t stop anymore. My belief is that, after he wakes up in the present and realizes Clearsight is dead, he loses his reason for living and becomes completely lost in his grief.

Therefore, my opinion is that it would have been appropriate for him to die. If not to punish him, then to finally grant him reprieve from all that rage and pain, and let him rest. I think that would have been a dignified end.

But instead he got turned into a baby. ... And then they decided to magically erase his father’s blood from him? I don’t know what it is, but something about that Icewing erasure makes my skin crawl?

The thing that turns this baby twist from weird into highly unsettling is the context. Darkstalker’s mind is erased, then modified into a new person via animus magic. This is the technique a lot of this arc’s villains used to victimize Hailstorm, Queen Ruby, Peril, Kinkajou, Fierceteeth, and Winter. The same technique is now used again, by the heroes, which is a dangerous thing to have your protagonists do if you want them to remain morally upright.

It is also very reckless, because in almost all of these instances, animus mind alteration has been shown to be very unreliable. The spells seem to wear down over time and are susceptible to partial breaking upon encountering certain strong stimuli. Hailstorm—while trapped as Pyrite—seems to retain trace amounts of his former memories, which is why Pyrite is subconsciously drawn to Winter and clings to him all the time. Ruby is able to ignore half of her conditioning because her familial love for her son partially overpowers the magic. Qibli is just straight up able to reason his way out of it.

The thing to note here is that spells of this nature require a very meticulous approach; you can’t half-ass your reprogramming or the victim will just think their way past it. If you alter someone’s mind, the wording of the spell must be ironclad, lest you risk it wearing down over time and even break.

Luckily we have nothing to fear in that regard, because the spell that created Peacemaker was written by a Rainwing with a total of four days of literacy training. No one better mention the name Clearsight to the new baby Nightwing, or next month is going to be rather interesting.

But that’s just speculation on my part. Let’s assume that, somehow, this spell isn’t as unstable as all the others. Somehow Kinkajou threaded all the needles, and masterfully dodged every conceivable pitfall to pen the perfect incantation, despite having been illiterate just a few weeks prior. This one is built to last and Darkstalker is sealed away really thoroughly, for good.

That is still absolutely terrible and morally dubious, because now you have Peacemaker, who for all intents and purposes is a COMPLETELY innocent little kid, saddled with this huge burden of being the certifiable reincarnation of a genocidal ancient wizard. He’s gonna grow up thinking things like “Mommy gets real quiet whenever the topic of the Icewing tragedy is brought up,” and “Why does Auntie Moon look at me like that? One time she accidentally called me a weird name, who is Darkstalker?” “What is this ‘Clearsight’ name my mind-reading friends from the village found in Mommy’s mind?”

In a village that will be full of mind-readers soon, eventually the secret will come out, and Peacemaker is going to learn what was done to him. A huge, messy load of undeserved baggage was forced onto this completely separate, innocent entity. He will be devastated. Whether he then chooses to forgive them for this remains to be seen. To be honest, he would be well within his right not to, and turn resentful.

Poor kid.

Qibli’s callousness

I love Qibli, he is one of my favorite characters. This happens to be his book, and the fact that I fundamentally dislike half of it makes me rather sad. If anything, I hope this tells you that I’m not just hating on it for my personal amusement. I really wanted to like this. I tried to, and I couldn’t.

Qibli is really weird in this one, to be honest. He is suddenly made to be co-dependent on Moonwatcher, fawning over her every third paragraph, saying how much he loves her, how he is an incomplete and dysfunctional wreck without her, how it physically pains him to be apart from her, oh if only the stars would grant his wish and split the mountains apart so that he may fly to his princess, his muse, his goddess of ebony wit. It gets so old.

And it’s not Qibli. He never acted this clingy towards Moonwatcher. It’s more intense than even Winter gets about Moon, and Winter was actually depicted with a crush on her in book 6. Qibli was always just a supportive element, eager to befriend Moon but never desperate, like he is going to keel over if he is separated from his true love five minutes longer. These very frequent love declarations feel so forced coming out of him. It strikes me like it was just written in service of the love triangle. Maybe if we make him confess his love every four seconds readers will overlook the fact that they had no proper romantic build-up.

You might rightly accuse me of bias. I have previously admitted I am fond of Qibli/Winter as a romantic pairing, on the surface this seems like I am just not happy with my pet ship being blocked by Moonwatcher. But I assure you, I am actually pretty flexible and accommodating even towards pairings that contradict my preferences. I have no issues with Winter/Moonwatcher, for example, because the possibility was properly established and they have good romantic chemistry in Winter Turning. In theory, I would have no problem with Qibli/Moonwatcher either if it was ever set up as an interesting romantic dynamic. But to me, it seems like Qibli is written as a good, supportive friend to Moon for four books, only to pivot hard into “Moon moon moon moon moon moon swoon” at the last second, and it just reads to me as obnoxious.

I got distracted. This section is called “Qibli’s callousness”, and I haven’t even talked about the main part.

Qibli and Winter have excellent chemstry together, whether you read it as romantic or platonic—both of these interpretations have merit and are set up. They’re always the highlight of any scene they’re in. Throughout the story arc you get the impression that these two really get on each other’s nerves, but they bond and grow into really strong friends who bicker a lot but have each other’s backs when it counts.

Then there is a scene where Qibli casually tells Winter that he wouldn’t object if someone wanted to mind-control away some of Winter’s more objectionable traits.

This is genuinely a terrible thing to say to your friend. Like, it crosses a line and ceases to be harmless banter; you’re just telling them that there is something you hate about them so much that you wish they were someone else. Winter actually WAS mind-controlled earlier and felt (and proably still feels) guilty about having attacked Qibli in that state. And now Qibli says “Hey, I wouldn’t mind if someone did that to you again! Hue hue!”

It is awful, BUT I don’t necessarily object to Qibli saying this here. Qibli is in the middle of his character arc at this moment, so he is expected to be flawed. He is making a mistake by thoughtlessly telling Winter this horrid thing, and it seems like a believable continuation of his current character track. This is a reasonable development as long as the plot acknowledges that it’s a mistake.

Spoilers: The plot doesn’t acknowledge that it’s a mistake. Qibli never has a scene after where he reflects upon what he said and apologizes to Winter. When Darkstalker has Qibli trapped in his mountain jail and mind-wipes Qibli’s grandfather into a toddler (hey, wait a minute), Qibli gets visibly disturbed. Like, this is so off-putting to him that he gets queasy and Darkstalker hastily changes the spell. That could have been a great way to bring this back. Like in the epilogue, have Qibli track down Winter and tell him about disturbing baby grandpa theater and how he realized that wiping people’s minds is actually messed up and should have never said that to him.

But he doesn’t. He just lets Winter go, allowing him to believe he is broken and needs magical intervention to be tolerable. It leaves me to think that maybe he’s still okay with it, and fantasizing about rewriting his friend’s mind. Great.

Moonwatcher’s character death

You will find as this goes on that, I get the impression that the second half of this book takes all of the wonderful, endearing characters I have learned to love throughout the story and replaces them with really mean, or stupid, or otherwise inaccurate caricatures.

Moonwatcher’s relationship with Darkstalker gets plenty of setup and development in Moon Rising. You get the sense that these two could be great friends if their circumstances were a little different. It does a great job at making you think maybe Darkstalker is just misunderstood; maybe Moon should free him from his predicament.

Then at the end of Escaping Peril comes the emotional gut punch. Darkstalker actually IS a villain. He callously admits to Moonwatcher that he used his magic to make his own father gruesomely disembowel himself. Moonwatcher is horrified and disgusted that he would do that. There is no circumstance in which something like that would ever be okay. She ends the scene awash in tears because the person she thought was her friend is a murderer and a sadist. This is good, that is a natural reaction to what she was just told.

A few hours from there, in Talons of Power, Turtle finds Moon again and she is completely cool with Darkstalker walking free, despite crying her eyes out after feeling so betrayed earlier. That may seem strange, but this is still good because later, Darkstalker’s mind control plot is discovered. This scene was obviously written to set that up, Moon is mind-controlled into forgetting that Darkstalker could do something that morally reprehensible, and thus forgives him. This is also completely in line with his characterization in Legends: Darkstalker. It’s a kind of stunt he would pull to get Clearsight to shut up about him slipping into villainy.

In my earlier post I alluded to a moment where Moon is set to narrative auto-pilot and says something so rampantly off-kilter that it does irreversible, permanent damage to her character. It happens here, in the second half of book 10. Qibli gives Moon the Darkstalker protection earring, and Moon, somehow, says “I’m not being mind-controlled, Darkstalker really is my friend.”

I get what the plot tries to do here. It’s taking this concept of mind-control and adding a nuance, in an attempt to flesh out Darkstalker and give his character depth. He is ready to control everyone in the world, but for Moon, who is his best friend in this era, he wants her to remain herself. Perhaps this is his attempt at attonement for playing with Clearsight’s mind and driving her away from him. It is very touching in a way, viewed in isolation.

Unfortunately, it does not work with the full context of all the books. Because Moon is in auto-pilot mode right now, her main character trait is “Darkstalker=Friend,” so naturally she would speak in support of him. But this revelation has devastating retroactive consequences. The earlier scene that was written with Moon under mind-control is now altered into her having been in her right mind! She is completely okay with Darkstalker’s admittance to cold-blooded torture and evisceration, within hours of being so shocked by it that it made her cry and ready to denounce him. That is such a quick turnaround it’s giving me whiplash. And what’s more it turns Moon from a principled, upstanding girl into a sociopath who casually accepts gruesome torture and murder if it is committed by someone she likes.

Did Sutherland forget about the scene two books ago, where Darkstalker’s actions were so inconceivably horrid for Moon to learn of that she started crying? It baffles me that this made it into the final version. Her saying she was never mind-controlled makes Moon come off as so awful. This torture-excusing lunatic is not the same kind-hearted and insightful character I followed in all the other books.

Kinkajou’s character derailment

The world is a sad place when I have to question the way Kinjajou is written. Fortunately she is mostly fine, despite her having the biggest excuse to act out-of-character since she’s the victim of a mind-altering spell. Her only real moment of “what!?” comes at the end.

I already talked about her role in casting the spell that regresses Darkstalker into an infant. But I didn’t mention how her being the source of it is questionable in itself.

The clue is in the first paragraph of this section: She herself has experienced the effects of invasive mind-alteration. She was cursed by Anemone in the previous book to be in love with Turtle, and kind of half-struggles kind of not with it, it’s really strange. Turtle is appropriately horrified and acts like really awful things are happening, but then it’s mostly played lightly for some reason. My assumption is that Sutherland introduced this plot point, but then realized how uncomfortable this premise really is and tried to downplay it until the story got to a point where it could get done away with.

But I think the takeaway is still supposed to be that this was a horrid thing to do (which it absolutely is), and that Kinkajou will have to spend a lot of time trying to untangle her real emotions from the fake ones the spell created.

The point is: Kinkajou knows first-hand how awful it is to do something like that to another person. Ideally she should never even conceive of the idea to cast a spell like that, but if we’re really set on this Darkstalker baby thing and it has to happen, she should at least be a bit hesitant about it. And afterwards she should struggle with the guilt of having resorted to it. Not celebrate it and be proud, like it’s funny.

The assassination of Winter’s future

Now we come to the part I’ve alluded to previously; the part where all of these threads converge to utterly destroy one character and drive him to the brink of ruin. Let’s talk about Winter.

Prince Winter is the son of Tundra and Prince Narwhal, hatching in the same clutch as his sister Icicle. He spent his formative years being unfavorably compared to said sister—who easily took to traits that Icewing royalty considers desirable—whereas Winter struggled greatly to embody those same ideals. He was just a little too kind, too merciful, too gentle. As a result he often had to endure abuse from his parents, who made him feel like he was defective.

Because he was young and didn’t have any other frame of reference, he embraced this abusive narrative and began to drive himself with a vigor unreasonable for someone of his age. He scraped and cloyed for every bit of credit he could get, obsessing over advancing up the circle rankings in an attempt to “purge” the wrongness out of himself. To make his parents as proud of him as they were of Icicle.

This never worked. He was always seen as the runt, poised to embarrass the family name. Whatever he did, no matter how hard he strived, there was always something he could have done better.

The only real source of love and affirmation in his life was his older brother, Hailstorm. Where everyone else only saw what Winter wasn’t, Hailstorm embraced his brother despite of his “failings” and was openly affectionate with him. When Winter was with him, it was okay to not think about rankings all the time, and just be himself for a bit. I assume Hailstorm fulfilled a similar role for Icicle as well, which is why both of them love him dearly, and Icicle destroys her own life to bring him back.

Winter also has a fascination with scavengers, possibly because they are small and perceived as useless, like he himself is. He likely feels a kinship with them and observes them being craftier and more adept than everyone else sees them. This is therapeutic for him, to see that a thing can have merit even if no one wants to see it.

One day, he and Hailstorm sneak into Skywing territory so Winter can catch a scavenger as a pet. This excursion turns hostile when they are discovered by a roaming Skywing troop and faced with the prospect of capture, possibly execution. In a gambit to save Winter from this fate, Hailstorm mirrors the words of his parents, calling Winter pathetic and useless, so the Skywings will not think of him as a threat and show mercy. His act succeeds in convincing the Skywings, but it also convinces Winter, who does not understand Hailstorm only said these things to save his life. He returns home—believing his brother hated him all along—to face the wrath of his furious family for losing them “the desirable son”.

For all of his life, these themes have repeated themselves and haunted him. “I was born wrong and defective,” “I am unlovable,” “No one wants me.”

A few months after the war ends, Winter is one of the five Icewings enrolled in the newly founded Jade Mountain Academy. Shortly after departing, he unexpectedly returns home, having successfully rescued his older brother and bringing him back. He is made to believe that this erases his mistakes, his mother even pays him a backhanded compliment, an uncharacteristically “nice” gesture. He is promoted to the top of the rankings, finally his parents are proud of him.

But of course it is all a trick. The “adoration” afforded to him was all a ploy. Secretly, his parents abused power and tradition to arrange for Winter’s death. They force him into a lethal trial they intentionally rigged against him, all to finally erase that stain on their family’s honor.

Winter finally realizes the true nature of his parents’ opinion of him. Even when he succeeds, and does everything right, he is still defective, unlovable, and unwanted. He will never be anything else to his family. And so he leaves his homeland, pretending he is dead, resigned to live in hiding forever.

During this time, while at the brink of despair, Winter is able to draw strength from one source: His new friends from the academy. He vocalizes that, for all the abuse he suffered at the hands of his birth family, he fervently believes that THEY would never do anything like that to him. They chose to stuck with him, even when he was awful, and told him he was not hopeless. He was not a mistake; he could be deserving of love.

So naturally, he returns to them; they accept him readily, are willing to be his new surrogate family. When he almost burns to death at a later point, they fear and weep for him. When Qibli sets out to confront his own abusive family, Winter, despite being mind-controlled into a placid potato at the time, feels concerned enough for his friend’s safety to insist to come along (returning the favor of them accompanying him in his time of need in book 7). When Darkstalker’s mind control forces Winter to attack Qibli, he is shown ashamed and guilty of it once the control wears off again.

They bicker and struggle, and make mistakes, they break up but always come back together again. Time and time again the one thing that is always reinforced: When the cards are down, Winter loves his friends, and they love him. They would never intentionally hurt each other, or give up on each other.

I want you to keep in mind how wholesome, and loving, and mutually supportive this ramshackle band of misfits has been portrayed to this point... Because we’re moving on to the arc 2 finale, and it will do everything it can to corrupt all of it and consign Winter to a life of misery.

We arrive at aforementioned scene, where Moonwatcher receives her earring. Just a little bit prior, Winter had learned that Darkstalker unleashed a magical plague onto his people in an attempt to wipe them out. Now here is Moonwatcher, revealing that she is not under any spell, and has aligned herself with this guy willingly, speaking fondly of him as if he was a dear friend who never did any wrong. Winter takes this badly and accidentally breaks a vase; the narrative lingers on this moment and really tries to sell us on how unreasonable Winter’s reaction is, how he is overreacting, but let’s examine that interpretation for a moment.

Moonwatcher doesn’t yet know about the attempted Icewing genocide, but she DOES know about Darkstalker being okay with casting spells to inflict immeasurable torture upon those he hates. WE know that she knows this, so her stance here is already suspect. Yet she goes on to praise Darkstalker and refer to him as a friend. Look at this from Winter’s perspective. This “friend” of Moonwatcher just tried to kill his entire tribe, and he actually succeeded in killing his aunt, Queen Glacier, a person Winter greatly respects. Winter is currently unable to return to his homeland for fear of being branded a traitor. Even if he could return, he knows his obstinate and spiteful family would prevent him from attending the funeral, meaning he is not even afforded the basic dignity of saying farewell to his aunt. The aunt whom Darkstalker murdered by making her vomit her own blood until she withered away in her bed. And here is Moon, absolving the person who did this to Glacier from his appalling actions, despite knowing full well what Darkstalker is capable of and choosing to look away.

I don’t know about you, but I think I can forgive the grieving, emotionally overwhelmed boy for shattering a little pottery after hearing his trusted friend—who held his hand when he was dying—say that the guy who makes people disembowel themselves and wipes out entire countries may be misunderstood and not so bad. I think I would have a similar reaction. In fact, I would never want to talk to her ever again.

There is no way I can read this scene in which Moon doesn’t come off as either an absolute lunatic, or critically stupid and callous. In fact, based on her earlier behavior I half-expect her to get over the news of the attempted Icewing massacre in a couple hours, saying “Eh, it’s kinda bad, but you just have to do these kinds of things sometimes, you know? I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Then there is the part where Qibli makes his off-color comment about how Winter’s brain could really use a good wash. I already went into how it could have worked but didn’t. But with the timing here, we’ve already had Moon spit on their friendship, so as Winter’s other closest friend, it naturally follows that Qibli also craps on his feelings.

Consider the context: Winter comes from an abusive household where his parents forcibly tried to change him away from who he was to purge the “wrongness” from him. When they betray him and he narrowly escapes their attempt on his life, he re-affirms his belief in his friends, and the knowledge that they wouldn’t treat him like that gives him the strength he needs to keep going. But now, Qibli asserts that Winter DOES need to be altered, thereby AGREEING with Winter’s abusive parents, rendering Winter’s affirmation from book 7 erroneous. Qibli WOULD treat him like that if it made Winter less “intolerable”.

Neither Moonwatcher nor Qibli ever make an attempt to repair this rift. Winter is left betrayed and alone.

Stuff happens, and the forces of the Nightwings and Icewings come to blows over Jade Mountain. With his two closest friends having written him off and his support network eroded, Winter relapses into thinking he is worthless, seeks validation in unquestioning patriotism, and realigns himself with his abusive family by throwing himself into the battle. Nobody wants him to, in fact his parents still hate him for it, but whatever. His father dies and his mother blames him for it.

Meanwhile Turtle, Anemone, and Qibli are cooking up a solution to the battle problem. They have the idea to make everyone’s minds connect in a huge empathy wave for a few moments, which I think is a pretty interesting idea for what it’s worth. But then they teleport both armies back to their homes, and the spell sweeps Winter up with them, taking him out of the rest of the finale and bringing him to the Ice Kingdom. The characters say “whoops” but aren’t further concerned with the situation. It’s all a big laugh.

Let me remind you that Winter is currently considered not welcome on Icewing territory. His family, whom he was sent back with, is extremely abusive and vindictive. His friends know this. Said parents have previously arranged for him to be killed, and are still on record as wanting him dead. His friends KNOW this. And now he is alone with them and a gaggle of other royal Icewings who all are extremely pissed off at him for ruining their sacred trial site.

It is very possible that he is being torn apart and mauled by an enraged mob right now. He could be forced into captivity and flayed. Maybe the interim regent is sentencing him to death and getting the rope ready. There is a million different horrible things that could be happening to Winter right now, while he is trapped alone with people who hate him, things his friends would be reasonably able to anticipate. And nobody is doing anything to get him out of there, to suggest bringing him back, even though it would only take a single spoken sentence to do so! They aren’t even concerned!

Then the climax happens, strawberry thing and all, and we get the coup de grâce. After all is said and done, the group decides that Winter is untrustworthy, and that they must protect the secret of Darkstalker’s fate from him, because they fear if he knew he would kill Peacemaker.

Moon, who read Winter’s mind in book 6 and reached out to him about how the “ruthless Icewing warrior” persona in his head is a facade and how she sees he has a gentle and good heart... Moon, who in book 7 finds out about Winter’s secret deal to kill Glory and STILL trusts him, who calls out his bullshit to his face because she KNOWS how kind-hearted Winter is and that he would never resort to murder... Moon who, again, held his hand while he was dying... thinks that the dragon she has reminded of his compassionate nature time and time again would kill an innocent child.

This is disgusting. Moon believing that is so far off the mark with regards to anything this group has embodied or done for any of the last 4 books, that my only conclusion can be that these are different characters. Maybe the Nightwing library collapsed on top of original Moon, and when Darkstalker magiced her back to health she came back wrong or something. I don’t know.

So after all of this, Winter is left alone. He somehow escaped from the Ice Kingdom; luckily there is a timeskip so we can just gloss over the horrible situation he was put in by his friends. He thinks about Jade Mountain. He reflects on everything that happened, how his parents never really loved him... How they hated him so much they tried to kill him... How he despaired, but found solace in his friends who loved him for who he was.... How those friends then betrayed him too and magiced him away... How they didn’t care about what happened to him... And he decides he is done. He won’t bother going back. A few people, probably Sunny, reach out to tell him he is welcome back, but he says “it wouldn’t be fair to other Icewings if an exile took up a bed”. The decision isn’t hard to make, after all there is nothing left for him there. Everyone has written him off, moved on and left him behind.

Kinkajou visits sometimes, tries to stay in touch, but that’s just how she is. Maybe the others sent her to check on whether he’s going to become troublesome. They don’t trust him. Better to keep an eye on him, he might kill the baby.

With nowhere else to go, Winter moves to Sanctuary, a place for rejects like him. I picture him standing there, at the edge of a cliff staring blankly into the distance. He is completely alone; no one wants to go near him or talk to him beyond the bare necessities. He could probably make new friends with the Talons of Peace if he tried, but there is no point. Why should someone like him have friends? It wouldn’t work. They’d just decide he is too inconvenient to be around. Sooner or later they would just tell him to leave anyway. It's better not to try, so he doesn't get hurt again.

And slowly it dawns on him. His parents had been right all along. It was never them, or the others, it was him. He is the problem. The Icewings said it, Qibli said it, Moonwatcher said it. There is just something fundamentally wrong with him.

He is defective. He is unlovable. Nobody wants him. He will never be anything, or have anyone. And so he stands at the cliff, looking over the broken vase fragments of his life... This is who he is. Prince Winter. A mistake.

And quietly, where no one knows or cares, he does the only thing he has left to do... he begins to weep.

As it is written, the tale of Winter is the story of a boy who is told he is wrong for being alive. He closes his ears and tries to keep walking forward, desperate to prove that he is not an error, that he has merit. But this book comes out and it unmistakably says that he doesn’t. He is nothing, and he deserves to have nothing.

And I just cannot accept that.

Why did this have to happen?

I think that the author was really struggling with the ending of this book. I’ve said before how much of a corner she wrote herself into with such an invincible villain. I think she came up with the strawberry idea as a solution to this problem. But as she was writing it, the characters kept fighting her. It was not a natural solution, not a decision the characters—as they were established—would ever make.

So concessions had to be made to force the issue. Established traits had to be bent slightly to make this plot work. The farther she went, the worse it got. The concessions piled up and turned into contrivances. Eventually the characters were no longer acting like themselves. Their bonds got stretched too far and some snapped. It’s a very tragic pitfall that occurs with long-running series.

I think Sutherland must have also been tired. Writing an entire book is a monumental task, and writing 6 connected ones even moreso. She also comes out with these things really quickly. Maybe she was burnt out? Maybe she wanted to be done and her attention lapsed. Maybe that’s why she forgot that Moon knew about the disemboweling. It seems reasonable to believe when you consider that the next story arc would make a relatively clean break from the problems of this arc, especially with regards to the magic system.

But I don’t know what ultimately happened, so I can only speculate. I reiterate, I bear no ill will against Sutherland for writing this. Even if I kind of hate everything about this finale, and very vocally wish it would be different, I don’t want this examination to generate (or reawaken) any hatred towards her, or to attack her personally. I understand the pain of an artist who gets trapped with something for too long and has to find the means, any means, to see it through to the end. I criticize the story, but I could never hate anyone for that.

But for me, I do not consider this half of the book as part of the story. The characters act too unnaturally for it to have happened. So to me, it didn’t. We don’t know what happened, maybe Darkstalker is still out there. Maybe they dealt with him. Maybe what actually happened is my crappy and self-indulgent rewrite of the ending which I will never show to anyone because it would be really embarrassing.

But whatever actually ended up happening, I am sure Winter never ended up at that cliff, pondering how worthless and meaningless his life was. He is currently at Jade Mountain, surrounded by friends who love him, and bickering with Qibli about the correct solution to their advanced calculus assignment that is due tomorrow.

Is there anything left to say?

Probably.

I didn’t talk about Anemone yet. You know, in the epilogue she enchants herself a bracelet that makes her “not be so mean all the time”. I find that creepy. To me it reads as Anemone voluntarily brainwashing herself with magic to erase her negative traits instead of growing past them naturally because she finds them undesirable and wants to work to change for the better. I would ordinarily assume that this is an overreaction on my part, and I’m just reading the scene wrong. But no, we just got through a part where the heroes brainwashing someone is treated as an unequivocal good and worthy of celebration, so I think my reading may actually be spot on. Why are we letting the little kid alter her own brain without supervision? Hello? Tsunami? Someone intervene maybe? This cannot be healthy.

Turtle stands out to me as the one bright spot in all of this. He (and Peril, but she’s mostly out of focus) remain as the only main characters of this arc who don’t have any mind-boggling out-of-character moments or sudden streaks of uncharacteristic callousness. I really like the part where Qibli goes to free Turtle from his captivity and plans to give him an earful about the comically unhelpful messages he’s been sending him. But when Turtle asks if what he did was helpful, Qibli sees how beaten down and exhausted Turtle is, and wordlessly drops his frustration to tell him “Yeah, they were helpful.” That is the true Qibli shining through for a moment, showing that he cares about the well-being of his friends.

Do I hate the pairing of Qibli/Moonwatcher? No. Well, I DO hate how it happened in the book, and how the story tried to assassinate Winter’s character to resolve the love triangle and make it happen. I don’t hate it on principle though. If you are a fan of Qibli/Moonwatcher and want to write fanfics about it, please do! I absolutely encourage you to do that! Maybe you can fix this mess and turn it into something that’s actually properly handled!

Mightyclaws keeps the power that Darkstalker granted him past the finale. That means all the spells that Darkstalker cast are technically still active. Does that mean the Icewings have to wear earrings for the rest of their lives? Do they get sick again if they take them off? Is Peril forever cursed to think of Darkstalker as a cool old uncle and has to somehow reconcile how everyone else thinks of him? How did the Nightwings relinquishing their powers work, do they have to wear the earrings forever too now?

And there is one more thing to mention.

My confession

You may have already intuited this, if you’ve been following the content of my blog. It is very heavily skewed towards the first and second arcs of the series. I would now like to confess something.

When I read the second half of book 10, I found it so disillusioning, Winter’s fate so upsetting... that I put down the series then and there. And I haven’t picked it back up since.

That’s right, I have not read arc 3. I don’t know if that makes me a fake fan. I know pretty much everything that happens in it, the controversial twist at the end, Pyrrhia coming back into the story later, Snowfall getting brainwashed by a piece of jewelry until she cares about a plot that had nothing to do with her or the fate of the Icewings, etc..

It’s not out of malice, or because it’s a new continent. The opposite in fact; I would have greatly prefered a clean break with a new setting—Bug-themed dragons in a slightly more contemporary, developed environment sounds fascinating and full of potential. I don’t hate Pantala or the new characters.

I just... I can’t really do this again. I can’t handle the thought of Pyrrhia coming back post-Darkstalker, with Winter showing up and talking to these guys again like nothing happened, seeming like a different person, joking around with them like his entire character wasn’t dragged through a mountain of manure to make the plot bend a certain way. I think as long as this is the ending that the story is continuing from, seeing that would just make me miserable.

Maybe I will just stay in the parts of the story that I fell in love with. And imagine a version of reality in which Pantala is allowed to exist on its own, where Swordtail was the fourth POV character of arc 3, where Queen Wasp stayed the villain throughout, and Snowfall got her own legends book about how she reformed Icewing society and fixed all the shit that poisoned Winter’s life, so future generations don’t have to suffer through the same stuff he did.

~~~~~

If you’re still with me, thank you for reading this far. I think this is everything I ever thought about the finale of the second story arc, so now I never have to talk about it again. Writing this was difficult. I found it crushing at times. This will probably stand as the only overtly negative post I have ever made on this blog. I love Wings of Fire, and I want to celebrate it. To add to it, not tear it down.

I hope this wasn’t too boring, or painful, or frustrating, or soul-crushing to read through. I’ll see you later, hopefully with a more constructive post.

[teencopandthesourwolf]

read on ao3 HERE

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“I'm good, Stiles.”

Stiles thinks about the times when, all too often, he himself says I'm good in that particular way, and thinks about how it actually means everything in his life is currently lighting up like a dropped match landing in a trail of gasoline.

In the space of a single heartbeat, he knows he would somehow harness the contents of an entire fucking lake to dampen down that metaphorical trail for Derek, murdering the thought of that lost little boy playing Hide-Go-Seek in Derek's pale eyes.

Only he isn't about to start talking about things being on fire. Not to Derek, not ever.

Instead he says, “I always had this rule, you know, where I’d flat out ignore a problem and wait for it to—and I used to swear to myself that this would actually happen—” His lips drag themselves up one side of his face as he sweeps an arm dramatically through the drizzling rain and the pressing twilight. “—just go away.”

He then allows his arm to fall unceremoniously to his side, and the sound of hand slapping khakis rings out through the sparse and quiet branches of the preserve's stripped bare trees.

“Okay.” Derek says the word with an infinitesimal shake of his head, looking as if he wants Stiles to stop talking.

Thing is, if Derek wanted Stiles to stop talking he would say Stiles, stop talking.

So, Stiles troops on.

“And it kind of worked, a little bit. For a little while, at least. ” He takes a hit of chilly November air. Releases it slowly, enjoying the crazy plume of breath-smoke it creates. “Until I met you,” he shrugs.

Derek blinks and it's a betrayal, giving away his hard-won secrets.

Stiles briefly wonders who else—who left in the world—would know this about the werewolf standing opposite of him. Stiles doesn't need to be a ʼwolf to know this stuff, not when it comes to Derek Hale.

He tries not to look at Derek's lips when Derek licks them before asking, “What are you talking about, Stiles?”

“Magick,” he answers, his feelings and other things shifting underneath the layers of his skin, crackling away like a hundred tiny Roman Candles traversing his bloodstream and manifesting as gooseflesh.

Rolling his hoodie sleeve, he lifts a cold hand between the two of them and allows a miniscule fraction of whatever beats like a heart at the earth's core to flow up through the ground and into his feet and up his legs and down an arm, warm and thrilling, to then spring free out of his right palm.

A small sphere of pure light around the size of a tennis ball now glows about an inch above his hand, kind of like an oversized firefly—and just as alive.

“Cool as fuck, huh?” Stiles mutters, basking in its incandescence, super-proud of himself. Then he gets to his point. “Deaton showed me how to harness my spark, yeah? But I would never have found it in the first place, if you hadn't followed Scott and I into the woods that day.”

Derek blinks again. His jaw ticks like a clock.

“Stiles, that's a little like saying one, two miss a few, ninety-nine, a hundred,” he deadpans, and Stiles can't help but bark out a laugh.

Then he steels himself for one anticipatory moment before daring himself to take a step closer to Derek.

Derek stays put.

“Doesn't make it any less true,” Stiles shrugs.

Derek just stares at him for a moment, before peering down properly at Stiles's little orb, for the first time since Stiles summoned it.

“You've been practising,” he says simply, his eyebrows doing their thing.

He's now staring at Stiles's effort as if he wants to sink his fangs into it, like you would a quarter to test if it's real.

“Is it freaking you out?” Stiles asks.

“No,” he answers flatly. “I think it's cool as fuck,” and he looks up at Stiles like he might want to keep looking.

Stiles wants him to never stop.

“Then here, you can have it,” he says.

He takes another step closer to Derek.

They are toe to toe, now, and still Derek doesn't bolt, nor pounce, nor warn Stiles off.

So, Stiles—really slowly—reaches for Derek's hand.

Derek lets him.

Stiles then transfers the light to Derek's palm, cupping his hand around Derek's to ensure it keeps hovering there. He directs their hands to Derek's chest, stopping right over his heart and flattening them both there, he and Derek watching as Stiles's spark dissipates into Derek's body, leaving behind a few wispy tendrils of light that Stiles guides back into himself with a couple of waves of his free hand.

“Now, whenever you're good, I can be right there being good with you, even if I'm not around,” Stiles says, and then he hopes and hopes when he asks, “Is that okay?”

Derek smiles, and it's the first truly happy-looking smile that Stiles has been privileged enough to witness blooming on that beautiful, beautiful face of his.

“It's better than okay, Stiles,” he says. “It's magick.”

.

unedited, soz! this is for @dontcallpanic (pip knows why) <3

.

...edited version now found HERE on ao3 if you want to drop me a comment xp

[digitalsymbiote]

Hello! I have a question. I want to start writing about mech pilots, but my only real exposure to the genre is Armored Core and some Gundam stuff. Do you have any recommendations for written fiction involving such themes? Preferably short stories and the like as I intended to keep my own writing in the shortform.

Thanks!

-Mina.

Hello! Welcome to being normal about mechs :3

So if you're looking for short-form content, one of your best bets is probably checking out the #mechposting tag on here, since AC6 came out there have been a number of folks writing fun little stories about mechs and how they work and how people interface with them.

Here's some reccomendations, aside from my own writing:

@catgirlredux has written a number of very cool and interesting short stories about its "HAKs".

@ross-hollander has been writing a ton of little blurb posts about mechs for the past couple months, with some very fun ideas in them.

@abalidoth has written a couple things, its story "Replanting" is phenomenal.

@super-ion has written some really good stuff, check out xer stories "Valiant" and "The Engineer"(which was inspired by my writing and I'm very flattered about it)

"Kintsugi" from @k1nky-r0b0t-g1rl-wr1t1ng is another phenomanl story, as well as "Convergence" from @foxgirlbytes (both of these are NSFW)

My good friend @shiftertech has written a couple fun pieces, and my GF @frostfangalphabitch has written a few things more directly inspired by AC6 that are very good.

@dreamofhircine has also written some phenomenal stuff that was certainly formative to a lot of writers in the space.

I'd also recommend checking out stuff inspired by and/or in the setting of Lancer, it creates a pretty nice backdrop for mechposting stories and has a lot of fun lore to play with.

@autumnalwalker 's "Kindly Basilisk" is one of my favorite mechposting stories ever.

I'd also recommend checking out the Empty Spaces tag. While it's not really mechposting, Empty Spaces tends to have a lot of similar vibes, and a number of folks writing in the mechposting space got started in Empty Spaces.

[cloverapple]

I've been trying asleep methods since forever but i have no idea of how to do an awake method

You can find so much great advice about shifting your awareness while you’re awake, and I absolutely encourage you to dive into it because people explain things in all kinds of different ways. It’s like a buffet, and you can pick and choose what resonates with you.

The way I usually do it—and it’s better explained in this post—is I count to distract myself, detaching and sinking into a meditative state. I use my emotions to feel myself in my DR, letting hypnagogia do its thing and distort my awareness until I choose to shift.

But something I’ve realized recently is that the method of awake shifting, where you lay down and pretend you’re already in your DR or affirm that you’re about to shift, puts way too much focus on when you’ll shift. It creates this crazy pressure to shift instantly, to feel symptoms, to make it happen right then and there. Like, you have to shift in the blink of an eye. And it’s all on time, which isn’t always the vibe.

Removing the expectancy to shift at a certain time from awake shifting (or any method) and taking the pressure off could actually make a huge difference for people struggling with this. I’m not saying that deciding you’re already in your DR and trusting yourself doesn’t work. It does, trust me. But the mind doesn’t work on one straight path. Just like there are a million ways to learn something or think about something, there are many ways to go about shifting your awareness to another reality.

So, when you’re there doing your awake shifting process, remember a few things:

• Your subconscious already knows you intend to shift. Setting an intention isn’t this big, complicated multi-step thing. If you decided to lay down to shift, the intention is already there. Your subconscious knows. Let. It. Go. Unless it feels true to you, unless it feels good, empowering, or aligned, there’s no real need to keep hammering in phrases like “I’m shifting now,” “I’m going to shift now,” or “I am shifting.” You’re just giving it commands, when all you need to do is trust. Trust is the command.

• When you’re trying to convince yourself, trying to convince your subconscious into thinking you’re already in your DR, the core of whatever you’re doing—whether it’s convincing yourself your surroundings have changed or that you’re already there or heading there—is about one thing: feeling it emotionally. You’re trying to evoke the emotions of being there. That’s where it’s at.

But that begs the question—how do you let go while channeling emotions at the same time?

Well, here’s the magic formula I’ve mentioned a few posts ago: High Emotion + Low Attachment = Flow.

This is how we live life every single day without even realizing it. Think about it:

Throughout the day, you’re not fixated on the act of living itself. You’re just living. And how do you live? By experiencing emotions.

Shifting is the same way. You don’t focus on the act of shifting, you don’t cling to it. Your subconscious already knows what you want. You simply channel the feelings of being in your DR, of living in the end, of already having what you want. And you don’t get attached to it. Why would you be attached to something you already have, right?

Now, this is just one approach to shifting. This doesn't mean all other interpretations of shifting awake are wrong. Even this one might not resonate with you for all I know. You could tailor this advice to your own style; use affirmations, listen to music, meditate, or even treat this as a precursor to another method. You could toss this all aside and use stuff like assuming you’re already in your DR, assuming you’ll wake up there, or assuming you have the ability to shift— all perfectly valid methods I’ve recommended before because they work.

But here’s the thing about all of this, and this applies to asleep methods too: when you strip it down to the bare bones, deconstruct it to its simplest form, it’s all about this:

Trust + Feel + Let Go.

“I’m already in my DR” – It’s because you trust that you’re in your DR, you feel yourself in your DR, and you let go, relaxing into the experience.

“I’m shifting to my DR” – It’s because you trust that you’re shifting to your DR, you feel the emotions and sensations you would if you were in the process of shifting, and you let go.

“I will shift to my DR at any moment” – It’s because you trust that you will shift, you feel the emotions you would knowing it’s going to happen, and you let go.

“I’ve already shifted” – It’s because you trust that you’ve shifted, you feel yourself in your DR already, and you let go.

Each of these statements works because it boils down to trusting the process, feeling the reality as if it’s already true, and letting go of the need to control the outcome.

I hope this makes sense lmao <3 Good luck in any case :)

[trashytracktales]

k i need to share this theory cause grrr there’s something about lando that actually gives me a little bit of a ick and i need to share. since we’re all friends right? 🫠

it’s his house.

NO WALK WITH ME. Because i’m speaking from what we’ve seen from the quadrant videos and streams. imagine you’ve been dating a few weeks it’s all new and he brings you to his house for the first time. You walk him hoping to get a bit of spice time sexy time. chill around cuddle, you know.

and there’s him everywhere.

NO SERIOUSLY.

he has his helmets EVERYWHERE, paintings about him EVERYWHERE, trophies EVERYWHERE, pictures EVERYWHERE. memorabilia EVERYWHERE.

but to me it’s mostly the paintings, like i get its a nice thing to keep them and he’s super cute because they are probably fan made or something but he’s got SEVERAL in every room. about him. about him in the car. about him on the podiums.

is it just me or it’s a red flag? I don’t know man sounds like boy’s got an ego yeah?

(lando norris pls invite me to your house i can cook i can clean)

Oui, bestie. I get what you’re saying. HOWEVER, I think it depends a lot on how you look at it. Personally, I don’t mind the helmets or trophies and all that stuff. That’s literally his life’s work on display, and I think it’s kind of beautiful. Like, imagine grinding your whole life for something and then feeling weird about celebrating it in your OWN HOME?? AW HELL NAH. He earned that.

And also, man lives alone. He could paint the walls mcl papaya if he wanted, no one’s stopping him ✌🏻😗

Now, the paintings... I hear you, it can get really crowded. If every square inch of his house is covered in artistic tributes to himself, including one hung strategically above the toilet, then yeah, I might PAUSE for a second. I doubt that’s the case, but I need to see for myself hehe 😁

*me outside his building, begging to let me see the inside of his bathroom

Anyway, back to this, the fact that he keeps and cherishes most of them is so sweet 🥺🤍. That means every fan-made painting and every little gift someone took the time to create, actually means something to him.

If he invites you into that space, I think it’s because he trusts you enough to show you the most personal, unfiltered version of himself. And honestly, being surrounded by little pieces of him everywhere you look would probably be the last of your worries, because why pay attention to that when he’s RIGHT THERE 👀

So, I wouldn’t call it a red flag, I’d call it a very human thing. My own place is full of things I’ve achieved, memories I made along the way, and hobbies that make me me. If anything, this is how you’d really get to know him, beyond just the funny guy on mcl’s yt channel, the unhinged dude on twitch, or the driver on your screen.

Don’t get me wrong, he definitely has an ego, but it’s not from the fact that his face is on everything or that his name is everywhere. That’s just a side effect of his job. His ego comes from... other places. But that’s a different conversation ;)

I’m sure that if you end up moving in together, he’s definitely going to make room for your personality too. But until then? Let him have his little Lando museum.

[wettblanket]

ok ok with the fan fiction stan thing getting traction. stan as an artist in general...he manages to break into the comic scene, gets noticed by some pretty big companies bc of his sci-fi adventure stories knock it out of the park. he gets commissioned to draw and write a few character stories for DD&moreD. of course he creates incestuious twins and plays it off like 'oh game of thrones did it and its fine'. hes not projecting his inner desires or anything.

weirdly enough the mini story with the twins gets popular and the big boss company decides to keep stan on full time. with steady income he's able to start taking better care of himself, getting his teeth fixed (adult braces bc im projecting), indulging in some hobbies (he likes cars and collecting the little matchbox sets <3 ), and generally nerding out now that there's no one who originally knew him around. he's not disappointing anyone bc they didn't know the expectations his family/town/brother set on him. stan is free to be his true self.

he makes a lot of weirdo friends (the goth chick who does the ink work, Jimmy Snakes who is always dressed as a biker for some reason (he doesn't even own a motorcycle), the two writers who won't shut up abt anime) and settles pretty happily into his new life.

ford, avid DD&moreD follower he is, eats up the twincest content. he feels personally touched by it and commissions heaps of fanart. he desperately wants to meet the person who created the twins so he can pick their brain about all these decisions. maybe ford accidentally stumbles upon stan's commission prices (ford loses his mind knowing he's abt to get art from the twincest creator) and geeks out hard. stan finds it very endearing, not a lot of people are as vocal abt their enjoyment of the twins. they end up chatting thru letters or message boards and slowly building a mutual bond.

both want to boink each other silly (but keep it under wraps bc they've never even met face to face) and agree to met up at the next con. cue excited high school girl crush antics. trying to look the best they can for their online bestie and being all hyped up to meet each other.

stan sees ford first and puts the puzzle together immediately. he's a little torn up abt it bc they've not spoken since stan got kicked out. he pretends to just be an assistant to the famed twincest artist bc his gut is all squirmy at the thought of ford knowing hes the one who wrote those characters. it would be too obvious and ford would go right back to hating him.

ford is still hurt/pissed from their high school days (he never got closure or an apology) and is snarky abt stan's current job bc its not like he knows or cares abt anything dd&mored. they argue abt story lines of different characters/campaigns and ford realizes with a weird thrill that his brother is a nerd. no, stan knowing all the different illusion spells in the game doesn't give ford a boner shut up.

stan gets pulled away to do con stuff and ford just ends up stalking him the whole time, seeing all the thing stan is in to now. (there may or may not be some possum themed creature like ducky momo or chikuwa that stan is obsessed with bc I said so and it would be cute n funny) ford starts to wonder if maybe they could start again since they have all these things in common. maybe he'd be able to connect on a deeper level with his twin now that they enjoy the same things?

[jccatstudios]

HULLO!!! let me just say. it is absolutely INSANE what youre doing with this comic adaptation project. guys read it highly recommend 1000/10. everything is so gorgeous, so brilliantly adapted from the book into a visual medium, so full of those little touches that only a comic can really add to a story, that i am amazed beyond words every single time you post a page update. and i just think like ??? how wonderfully blessed is the soc fandom to have someone in it who is so dedicated to such an extensive project ?? the love and effort youve put into it really makes it shine and i find it extremely impressive. anyway may i ask what is/are the main thing(s) keeping you motivated to continue working toward your goal of finishing x pages? how do you you overcome lack of motivation? i know its kind of a question everyone has but im interested in hearing your thoughts 🫠

Wow, thank you very much!!! So glad you appreciate the comic. I'm really happy that this project has been received so positively over the past few years. It's always nice to hear that my fellow SoC fans think that the work I do encapsulates the story we love.

To start off, this project has several motivations behind it:

I've always been a very self-motivated person when it comes to my ambitions. While making comics has always been something I enjoy, at this point, it has evolved into something habitual. I can't do it every day due to other engagements, but I am always doing something related to comics. It comes to a point where I even get antsy if I haven't made something in a while. Making comics a habitual practice helps keep motivated since I don't have to put any effort into starting my work anymore.

As a soon-to-graduate senior in college, I know that making it as a comics professional can be an uphill battle. To me, becoming a comic author is a high-reward career, so it comes with a lot more risk. If I want to achieve my goals, I have to work at my craft faster and more frequently than my peers. This comic started off as a way to get more practice outside of school. While it may not be completely accurate, it is said that comics mastery takes 1000 pages. It motivates me to know that every page I finish, regardless if I'm happy with the final product or not, brings me closer to that ideal of mastery. I'd say I'm around the 500–600 page mark, so there's lots more to do!

Lastly (and I think this might be the most important one), I love this story. My motivation behind each page comes from the fact that I want more people to read it. There are so many people out there who would love SoC, and I think that untapped audience lies in people who love comics. Most of you here are already fans of the book, and I always want to create something that existing fans appreciate, but the true endgame is to make new SoC fans out of this comic.

As for overcoming lack of motivation, I don't think I have any good advice for that. I try to keep a "just do it" attitude about my work, but even I struggle with staying motivated to do normal life stuff. I guess the best thing to do is find something small that makes the task more enjoyable. Listening to music/podcasts/audiobooks/videos or making myself a nice drink are my go-tos for encouraging myself. Like many people, I also read Atomic Habits recently, so I find myself saying "I'm the type of person who does (insert activity I don't want to do but I should)." Funny enough, that seems to do the trick to push me through many daunting tasks.

[starry-bi-sky]

Part two of the "Clone Danny" au

The link to the first part is put above!

His friends know that he's phantom, they help him out just the same as before. Due to not having any ghost powers, Danny has to rely on tech and outsmarting the ghosts a lot more than before. He can't keep stealing tech from his parents' lab either, and he can't ask them to fix it if his stuff breaks. He teaches himself how to fix it.

(Its a lot of sleepless nights stealing his parents' blueprints and trying to study them. And a lot of late night research and talking with Tucker on how to build and understand tech. He refuses to rely on Tucker for his gear)

He talks to Sam about fashioning a persona as both Phantom and as Fenton. She's been to a lot of rich parties, she's seen celebrities and how they act. A "careless party boy" won't work for Danny. He's no A-Lister. But coward, feeble Fenton works just fine. Minus his smartass comments, which he can slowly start phasing out of his "civilian" life under the guise of there being ghosts.

He draws into himself, keeps his head down in class, wears baggy clothing. Ghost fighting at night really does a lot of the work for him, since he's so tired in class that he doesn't bother putting his hand up or participating. He can play the part of "loner, loser Fenton" pretty well, and ups the ante.

Phantom already has a small fanbase amongst the A-listers for being the strong, silent confident vigilante-hunter protecting them from the ghosts. Nothing much changes there other than a few minor things. Anyone who knows ASL knows he's a major fucking smart-ass who keeps cracking jokes and puns at the ghosts.

Danny learns self-defense after getting his ass beat too many times (he also gets Really Good at gym because he runs a LOT after ghosts. He eventually learns to make trackers to stick onto them when they fly away) and even gets a few ghosts to help him after he befriends them while they're exploring Amity at night. Its nothing professional and he still gets hurt a lot, but he knows how to throw a better punch than before. And he knows how to dodge better.

Since he's going for a "get them tfo of here before my parents get here" approach, danny takes a more of a "talk first, fight later" route. this... kinda works. mainly for the non-hostile ghosts. its how he manages to get some of them to help him with fighting.

Danny's honestly really, really clever. He largely relies on his wits since he doesn't have any powers to force ghosts back into the ghost zone.

TUE still happens it just occurs a little differently. Vlad Masters still wants Danny to be his son and Maddie his wife, etc. But he also wants to turn Danny into a Halfa like himself, since he knows that Danny has mild ghost abilities, he thinks he has the capacity to turn into a halfa.

Dan happens when Vlad manipulates a grieving danny into agreeing to become a halfa like himself. Except it kills Danny fully, and in his rage, Danny, now dead and a ghost, rips out Vlad's ghost half and merges with it and creates Dan. So not too different from canon.

….actually i change my mind. Danny’s ghost doesn’t merge with Vlad. Danny’s ghost tears Plasmius apart for lying to him. Dan is entirely Danny, just big and hurting and wanting to hurt others because of it. His emotions are big so Dan is big.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 4.5 (Dani interlude) Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 7.5 (Dan Interlude) Part 8

[the-nox-syndicate]

SysNotes devlog 1

Hiya! We're a web developer by trade and we wanted to build ourselves a web-app to manage our system and to get to know each other better. We thought it would be fun to make a sort of a devlog on this blog to show off the development! The working title of this project is SysNotes (but better ideas are welcome!)

What SysNotes is✅:

A place to store profiles of all of our parts

A tool to figure out who is in front

A way to explore our inner world

A private chat similar to PluralKit

A way to combine info about our system with info about our OCs etc as an all-encompassing "brain-world" management system

A personal and tailor-made tool made for our needs

What SysNotes is not❌:

A fronting tracker (we see no need for it in our system)

A social media where users can interact (but we're open to make it so if people are interested)

A public platform that can be used by others (we don't have much experience actually hosting web-apps, but will consider it if there is enough interest!)

An offline app

So if this sounds interesting to you, you can find the first devlog below the cut (it's a long one!):

(I have used word highlighting and emojis as it helps me read large chunks of text, I hope it's alright with y'all!)

Tech stack & setup (feel free to skip if you don't care!)

The project is set up using:

Database: MySQL 8.4.3

Language: PHP 8.3

Framework: Laravel 10 with Breeze (authentication and user accounts) and Livewire 3 (front end integration)

Styling: Tailwind v4

I tried to set up Laragon to easily run the backend, but I ran into issues so I'm just running "php artisan serve" for now and using Laragon to run the DB. Also I'm compiling styles in real time with "npm run dev". Speaking of the DB, I just migrated the default auth tables for now. I will be making app-related DB tables in the next devlog. The awesome thing about Laravel is its Breeze starter kit, which gives you fully functioning authentication and basic account management out of the box, as well as optional Livewire to integrate server-side processing into HTML in the sexiest way. This means that I could get all the boring stuff out of the way with one terminal command. Win!

Styling and layout (for the UI nerds - you can skip this too!)

I changed the default accent color from purple to orange (personal preference) and used an emoji as a placeholder for the logo. I actually kinda like the emoji AS a logo so I might keep it.

Laravel Breeze came with a basic dashboard page, which I expanded with a few containers for the different sections of the page. I made use of the components that come with Breeze to reuse code for buttons etc throughout the code, and made new components as the need arose. Man, I love clean code 😌

I liked the dotted default Laravel page background, so I added it to the dashboard to create the look of a bullet journal. I like the journal-type visuals for this project as it goes with the theme of a notebook/file. I found the code for it here.

I also added some placeholder menu items for the pages that I would like to have in the app - Profile, (Inner) World, Front Decider, and Chat.

i ran into an issue dynamically building Tailwind classes such as class="bg-{{$activeStatus['color']}}-400" - turns out dynamically-created classes aren't supported, even if they're constructed in the component rather than the blade file. You learn something new every day huh…

Also, coming from Tailwind v3, "ps-*" and "pe-*" were confusing to get used to since my muscle memory is "pl-*" and "pr-*" 😂

Feature 1: Profiles page - proof of concept

This is a page where each alter's profiles will be displayed. You can switch between the profiles by clicking on each person's name. The current profile is highlighted in the list using a pale orange colour.

The logic for the profiles functionality uses a Livewire component called Profiles, which loads profile data and passes it into the blade view to be displayed. It also handles logic such as switching between the profiles and formatting data. Currently, the data is hardcoded into the component using an associative array, but I will be converting it to use the database in the next devlog.

New profile (TBC)

You will be able to create new profiles on the same page (this is yet to be implemented). My vision is that the New Alter form will unfold under the button, and fold back up again once the form has been submitted.

Alter name, pronouns, status

The most interesting component here is the status, which is currently set to a hardcoded list of "active", "dormant", and "unknown". However, I envision this to be a customisable list where I can add new statuses to the list from a settings menu (yet to be implemented).

Alter image

I wanted the folder that contained alter images and other assets to be outside of my Laravel project, in the Pictures folder of my operating system. I wanted to do this so that I can back up the assets folder whenever I back up my Pictures folder lol (not for adding/deleting the files - this all happens through the app to maintain data integrity!). However, I learned that Laravel does not support that and it will not be able to see my files because they are external. I found a workaround by using symbolic links (symlinks) 🔗. Basically, they allow to have one folder of identical contents in more than one place. I ran "mklink /D [external path] [internal path]" to create the symlink between my Pictures folder and Laravel's internal assets folder, so that any files that I add to my Pictures folder automatically copy over to Laravel's folder. I changed a couple lines in filesystems.php to point to the symlinked folder:

And I was also getting a "404 file not found" error - I think the issue was because the port wasn't originally specified. I changed the base app URL to the localhost IP address in .env:

…And after all this messing around, it works!

(My Pictures folder)

(My Laravel storage)

(And here is Alice's photo displayed - dw I DO know Ibuki's actual name)

Alter description and history

The description and history fields support HTML, so I can format these fields however I like, and add custom features like tables and bullet point lists.

This is done by using blade's HTML preservation tags "{!! !!}" as opposed to the plain text tags "{{ }}".

(Here I define Alice's description contents)

(And here I insert them into the template)

Traits, likes, dislikes, front triggers

These are saved as separate lists and rendered as fun badges. These will be used in the Front Decider (anyone has a better name for it?? 🤔) tool to help me identify which alter "I" am as it's a big struggle for us. Front Decider will work similar to FlowCharty.

What next?

There's lots more things I want to do with SysNotes! But I will take it one step at a time - here is the plan for the next devlog:

Setting up database tables for the profile data

Adding the "New Profile" form so I can create alters from within the app

Adding ability to edit each field on the profile

I tried my best to explain my work process in a way that wold somewhat make sense to non-coders - if you have any feedback for the future format of these devlogs, let me know!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Disclaimers:

I have not used AI in the making of this app and I do NOT support the Vibe Coding mind virus that is currently on the loose. Programming is a form of art, and I will defend manual coding until the day I die.

Any alter data found in the screenshots is dummy data that does not represent our actual system.

I will not be making the code publicly available until it is a bit more fleshed out, this so far is just a trial for a concept I had bouncing around my head over the weekend.

We are SYSCOURSE NEUTRAL! Please don't start fights under this post

[rqbossman]

Hello Mr Bossman! (and possibly anyone else who reads this)

Its an honour to be here, I have a few questions. First i appologise for the long paragraph, you may dismiss it for the questions at the bottom. For context, i am here after finishing TMA and being up to date with TMAP, i then went over and listened to RQG, and have just finished listening to Epilogue 3 and might i just say, good sir I am grateful for your podcasts. I am currently just a few months away from my final exams of High School, and as someone who even just 1 year ago was very lost, struggling with school and being just overwhelmed. TMA isnt exactly comforting, but the characters and plot managed to serve as a good form of escapism while sorting myself out. I found my self engaging more in creative things that i had originally put aside in favour of maths and science (which i hated but thought i needed to do). I started drawing again, even if just fanart. and i found things going well. By finding podcasts, story telling and these communities have helped me in my own understanding of what i want in life. I got an ADHD diagnosis earlier this year, and almost directly after started RQG and as my first hyperfixation (that i was aware of as an hyperfixation) gosh dang it hit hard. (in a good way). Ive been able to do so much more creative writing and drawings, and got re-involved with a small dnd group with some friends who i played one game with almost 4 years ago now. So overall, inspirational sounds cringe, but it was. Im doing my best with the upcoming exams, but trying to get in to Medicine is not my only prority, and the fact ive been re-introduced to my first love (Literature and story telling), im planning to go do an Arts degree and i know i wouldnt have been able to confidently make this decision, or even have survived this long in the school system without the work you and your coworkers do. Now the sap is out of the way, Question time! (if you could answer even just one of these questions it would be so cool)(they go in order of RQ relevant to random stuff)(dont feel pressured to answer all/any. i know i wrote alot): 1. what would you say is the best way to draft out a long-form story. (with "Erasing the Line" as an example) Did you start at the end, with the links to the overarching plot.

2. When working with the players (in a form of TTRPG), what did you do to make sure you didnt miss relevant timing of plot points/ avoid creating spoilers while still giving enough detail?

3. What are good places to start with making a job out of storytelling/voice acting/audio etc. In the case of RQ, how is this a job and where do i sign up please! /j (what i mean is, how is best way/how did you find all the people involved and was there a common path that you were all on before getting to where you are now?) 4. Do you have recommendations for Terry Pratchett Books, i may be an literary-leaning student, but it seems i have never actually properly read any of his books. so where is best place to start?/What did you read first?

5. Similar authors or similar inspirations? Did you have a favourite podcast you listen to in your free time that you havnt had a hand in producing/directing/working on. 6. Favourite song/album/artist. And more specifically, what you like listening to in background when doing either writing or (for ttrpg) character research/game planing. 7. Since the olympics are on at the moment, what has been your favourite sport to watch, if you have been watching at all. Thank you for your time :)

Thankyou for all the kind words. Knowing our work is helping people really keeps our engines fired up. Let's see if I can't answer your questions: 1. I "sandbox" which is where I just shove everything I can think of into an unorganised bullet point list. Characters, setting, plot, all of it in one big mess. Then I decide what type of story you want to tell, copy and paste to a new document and then start to organise the thoughts (with the sandbox on standby if new stuff comes in I don't know what to do with). I think of it like scultping, you cut away bits and reshape until something comes out the other end that is story shaped. Only then do I attempt to build the sandcastle and put something coherant together like a synopsis or scratch draft etc.

2. Very tricky. I did a complete review and update of all notes after each recording session and don't forget the audio eas edited. I made lots of gaffs that you never heard as audience.

3. I contacted anyone I could convince to take part and just proved I was serious by overworking. I don't reccomend that route. Unfortunately it really is "who" you know. That doesn't mean chase established professionals as much as it means you need to get out there and associate with other up-and-comers who match your vibe. For me the route was long and windy and not a particularly good example. 4. I normally recommend people do not read his books in publication order. Don't get me wrong, its wonderful watching his craft grow from one title to the next but I would recommend new readers tip their toe into his later works to see if they like where he ended up before committing the time. I often recommend 'Monstrous Regiment' as people's first one. My favourite though is 'Thief of Time.'

5. I don't get much time to listen to podcasts in the last couple of years. I used to listen to a lot of non fiction. 'Stuff you Should Know' and that ilk. I also read a fair amount of classic YA fiction to unwind (Windinsger trilogy, Bartimeous, stuff like that.) 6. Paul Simon's Graceland but when working I assemble a playlist for each seperate project that is tonally appropriate. If I really need to focus I listen to Classical Minimalism. Or the Old School Runescape soundtrack. I'm allowed to be ecclectic. 7. I am actually in an incredibly busy work crunch at the moment so haven't seen any of it!

[quantomeno]

Further discussion on the theme of 'fallible gods' in Bionicle

I want to preface this by saying it is ironic that the fandom so heavily idolises Greg Farshtey and hangs off his every word when the story is literally about how those in control of a universe can make dumb decisions.

With that aside...

Bionicle has a few core themes and the story does an excellent job of keeping them at the forefront despite the constant changes of genre and tone. Today we will talk about how Bionicle explores the idea that those in positions of power (or who have great abilities) are as human as anyone and thus just as liable to err. The following follows on from discussions in this post and also the video linked in that post, but I'll probably repeat a lot of that stuff anyway so you don't need to read/watch all that.

Bionicle begins with a world of myths and legends. The audience is positioned to identify with the Matoran and be amazed by the strength of the Toa and the wisdom of the Turaga, yet as time goes on it is revealed the Toa are actually quite childish and the Turaga have been lying to them. Then we see Metru Nui: a world of technological wonder lead by the wise yet firm leader Turaga Dume. Turaga Dume who approved of the Vahki. Turaga Dume who gets impersonated by the big evil guy and no one really notices. We meet Toa who have betrayed their cause, we meet Toa who lose, we meet Toa who were once Matoran who then became the Turaga we revered on Mata Nui.

And from then on, the revelations only get bigger: the universe's spirit is a robot whose neglect for its inhabitants led to its own demise. The being that caused the fall of the robot is not the mystic entity of darkness, but just an overly dramatic bit of smoke in a suit of armour who has an aggrandised ego. We see Matoran go to save Toa and become heroes while also making their own mistakes, being plagued by internal demons and making difficult sacrifices.

Then we see Mata Nui as a 'human': he takes on the form of those who created him, the Glatorian (I just realised I said the Great Beings were Agori but they're Glatorian. I forget they're different species). And he learns to be 'human'.

And then we learn that the reason for the whole robot universe's existence is because the Great Beings neglected their own duties and made the robot as a way to save their planet.

All this is pretty straightforward though; I'm just setting the groundwork. Because I think there's one final level to this which rarely (if ever) gets discussed, and I alluded to it a bit in that preface: us.

See, I like to think that the Great Beings were, in some respects, meant to represent the child playing with their toys. Bionicle is a story about creation (and destruction) and so much of the story is tied to the physical sets. If the makers of the Matoran Universe are the Great Beings, then doesn't that mean the child playing with the Bionicles is, in a sense, acting out their role in the story? They are the ones who build the Toa and the Matoran and the Turaga, who give life to their stories by telling them with the toys.

The other side the idea that anyone can be a hero is that heroes are just like everyone else. We are all fallible and even those with great power make mistakes. However, it is when you believe yourself to be better than others that you make the greatest errors. You eschew unity since you believe you can go win alone, you forgo your duty because you consider it beneath you and you believe you deserve a more glorious destiny. The Great Beings are just 'some guys' because we are just 'some guys'. The Matoran are just 'some guys'. So are Terry and Mata Nui. Everyone in life (real life) is just 'some guy' (I should say some person but guy sounds funnier and it evokes the everydayness of things). No one in power or authority is inherently deserving of that role; they must work towards it and show their worth. While they may have talents that make them better in some way, they are subject to the same foibles as anyone.

No life is more special than another, for all life contributes to something greater, every act can bring so much goodness if only you can see it. We are the Great Beings, we have the potential and the skill and the knowledge to achieve so much, but only if we can understand the value of the littlest thing, because we are fundamentally no different from the least of us. Toa should not forget they were once Matoran, just as Great Beings should not forget they are Glatorian.

Let's end with a fitting quote from Ihu:

You are mistaken, Nuju. All of life is a journey, and the journey is not about how high you climb or how far you walk. It is about what you learn on the way, and how you choose to use that knowledge. Use it to help others, and the glory of Mata Nui will live inside you. Use it only for yourself, and though you may walk among us, you will have no more spirit than a block of protodermis.

[deepinthegroves]

HII its viperr sending asks on anon bcs i keep forgetting that you cant send asks on ur alt ,,, anyway for the superhero ask game : 🔍, 🕷 !!! (also the new blog theme EATSSS)

ahh thanks viperr <3 (@viperrf1sh / @viperrshifts)

answering for my spiderverse reality...

🔍 : MARVELOUS MAGNIFYING GLASS . . . who was the first person to discover your secret identity? how did they react to finding out?

the first person to discover my secret identity was peter parker. i had managed to hide this for months, and had even convinced my parents to let me move out because i didn't want them to find out. he was sitting in my living room when i entered via the hatch that leads to the rooftop (it's a penthouse apartment), and i was pulling off my spidersuit to throw in the washing machine when he walks into the kitchen to just see me there, mask off and about to take off the suit. we both screamed when it happened, as is the natural reaction, and i banished him to my living room to wait as i got changed (magically).

[for context, the hatch to the rooftop is linked to my kitchen-slash-laundry area and when i drop down from the hatch, he heard me coming in. the area has windows and stuff but i usually have the blinds pulled down (for situations like these) so my neighbours don't see spiderman dropping into my apartment and connecting the dots.]

i eventually explained everything to him and he was kinda amazed? of course he worried over the fact that i'm putting myself in danger but i took the opportunity to explain to him the whole deal with my family to reassure him that i'm fine and know what i'm doing and he made me promise to include him and allow him to help however he could.

🕷 : SLATE SPIDER . . . what is your hero insignia? what symbol do people know you by? what does your hero suit look like? who created / designed it? what is your color scheme?

my hero insignia is like the typical spiderman one but with a heart in place of the usual spider body. there are a few designs on pinterest and i took inspo from that <3

as for symbols, i'd say as long as it's spider-related? obviously, they'd recognise the insignia, it's all over the news, but if someone were to draw a random spider, i think most people would associate it with me too.

my hero suit is the usual spandex one but a dark red with gold lines. there are swirls around the suit that meet and form spiderwebs, but my entire suit isn't covered in it. i wear belts around my waist and i have a bag/ pouch hanging on the right, which i've charmed to make it bottomless (hammerspace, basically) so i can keep things in it and not lose them. i designed the suit myself, and though it's plainer than the things i'd usually design, it was a choice i made so the public wouldn't recognise my style and figure out my identity (because i have a fashion magazine that i'd show my designs in, alongside other designers that work with me).

for my tech, though the original few were made by me, the rest of it were peter's designs. he's great at tech (though i fear there may be some OSHA violations...) and he constantly helps to create some for me, for it to cover the gaps between what's lacking from my spiderpowers and the need to secretly use my magic if i ever end up in a situation where i need to wield it. some things he has made is an expandable shield as a bracelet, smoke bombs that has some sort of gas that's safe and yet disorientates?, and he installed night vision on my mask so i didn't have to use magic for that.

sorry if this is hard to visualise – i tend to change my suit in my imagination and i'm not the best at describing these, which is my only option since i can't draw lol.

[aicosu]

Guys, I hate to do this.

Any of you who know me in any circle know that I'm a very professional, very private lady who hates any sort of disc horse breeds that might give me a headache. But this one is important, and my goal here is the integrity and reputation of artists.

For my credentials: I have been a part of five zines in the past. Two I moderated, and one I ran, created, laid out, printed, and shipped in its entirety.

So anyway:

HELLCHEER ZINE BULLSHIT

I joined Hellcheer and the Kindred Freaks Zine very late. Well, after sign ups, check-ins, etc. I saw it was happening in april-ish and shot a DM to the twitter to join. I did both a full art page and a cosplay page.

At the time, the server was quiet but kind. We got updates on the number of orders and books being made.

@Lawless is the runner of the Zine. They created and organized it. They are in charge of the main emails, the selling website, the orders, the shipping, and the funds. (To be clear, this level of sole responsibility is not ABNORMAL in a zine. And is not always an issue.)

@Valerie is the 'social media' mod. They are in charge of managing announcements and answering questions on Twitter and Tumblr. Please keep in mind: No one wants anything but a fast and easy recovery for both Lawless and their mother. Medical emergencies, heck—LIFE happens. It's always okay to put a hiatus on anything, even product with money, in order to take care of yourself and family. Every single contributor only wants them to be clear in what they need and how we can help.

So lets break down what's happening.

Back in May, Lawless went radio silent on the status of books and merch coming in. Another contributor and I, @Toguchin, start dming Lawless to make sure everything is on track. They come back after a week and apologize for being MIA, explaining that their mom got sick. We thank them for all their hard work and wish them and their mom well.

On July 15th, after contributors and customers inquire on delays to meeting the announced shipping deadline, Lawless makes a twitter post saying shipping has started and contributor copies will be happening. They proceeded to go MIA from the server discord and have been since.

The following week, contributors and customers discover that shipping HAS NOT started. Labels have been created and printed, but nothing appears to be in transit at all.

Toguchin and I started getting reached out to by customers worrying their packages are lost. We report this to the zine server to NO RESPONSE. Except @Ashlee, the discord mod who also has heard nothing.

July 20th to 22nd with customers complaining and theorizing a scam in mind; Toguchin and I propose that PDFs be given out to assure and apologize for delays.

We as a server discover a few things: 1. We cannot access the list of buyers at all in order to email apology zines because Lawless did not share the account information with anyone. 2. We cannot access the main email for the same reason. 3. Valerie, the social media mod, deleted discord and distanced themselves from the Hellcheer fandom and has not been checking the Twitter or tumblr, or discord notifications since May.

Ashlee and Ichikun contact Valerie to sign on.

I made a new email and said fuck it, we need to do something to assuage fears, let them send receipts to honor their zines. Valerie didn't know what to post or say or how to answer everyone, so I gave them a copy paste.

Still no words from Lawless but hoping for the best knowing the have a medical emergency, Ashlee and I begin answering the new email for PDFs, but cant help people change addresses or give them any update!!!

Throughout the weeks mods and contributors ping Lawless constantly asking if they need any help! Any help at all, answering emails, changing order addresses, heck a few of us ask if we can pick up the books and packages and ship stuff for them so they can hands off the project and take care of their mom. No response.

We send message after message saying if Lawless can share picture proof, that would be great cause scam theories and chargebacks are starting. BUT ALSO, we let Lawless know we and customers will ABSOLUTELY UNDERSTAND delays if they just communicate it. That if they post in server and on Twitter that shipping needs to wait a month or two, no one will mind. No responses.

July 31, Lawless makes a Twitter update with comments disabled that they are shipping ALL packages that monday with a picture of packages. They also call Valerie privately and tell the issue that USPS refuses to pick up shipments from Lawless has, and they can't leave their mothers side from the post office. They also claim they can only deliver ten packages at a time at the post when they go. *USPS has no such rules. Me and other mutuals who run shops have never had such a problem.

A week later, we realize that customers and our packages are still not in transit. Labels printed only. Most of us assume all packages are just label printed and sitting at Lawless' house.

We beg for updates from Valerie or Lawless. Valerie doubles down on Lawless old reasonings and also officially goes MIA until present day.

Throughout August, USA packages get delivered. A few more updates are made straight to Twitter and Tumblr with comments off. Radio silence in server.

As packages arrive, we all become aware from people's posts and pictures that random Stranger Things Art Stickers are included. No credit to any artist is given? No contributor is responsible for this art. These are suspected to be BOUGHT from Amazon. STOLEN arts amazon sellers resell in packs. NO contributor is okay with this!!! Valerie responds with no response at all.

As of now:

No response to missing digital copies. Ashlee and I cannot give out any without receipts because we have no access to buyers list. Nor can we answer missing packages inquiries cause we have no info. International packages unaccounted for. SCRUNCHIES FREE OR OTHERWISE UNACCOUNTED FOR. Zero word on contributor copies. Zero word on donation status. Zero word on generated profit or book and shipping cost. No way to verify funds at all. No word from Lawless to contributors since July 15. From Valerie since the 31st.

Some notes:

Turning off twitter comments was NEVER what any one of us wanted. A ZINE LAYOUT was never shared. So until people had them in hand or in PDF none of us realized that the credits DO NOT POINT TO ANY SOCIAL MEDIA. All of our usernames are handle-less? This was extremely disappointing. This one matters to me: Our FanEdit artist was not aware their work was not getting a full page. Again no pre-layout was shared. So their work is tiny and in the margins of the front and back. That's not okay. All of us wanted to help in any way we could. NONE of us doubt Lawless intentions or emergencies. But lying, misleading, non-communicating and turning off comments are all things we did not consent to. All of us only wanted a cordial, honest response. None of us actually cared about delays as much as we did communications. There has been many noticeable times Lawless has been online, posting privately or otherwise, even active on Discord and has not reached out.

Why make a post:

Customers should know contributors fought for them. That we did everything we could and our reputation as artists in the fandom shouldn't be tarnished cause two creators decided to disappear. Contributors should get their copies. Many of us BOUGHT bundles. I've been in five zines and every single one gave out free contributor copies WITH merch!!

I'm also attaching all server screenshots for integrity. I'm in half a mind to release the zine PDF publicly, for free, for everyone at this point. I personally think it's only fair since many are still missing just that. But I do not want to insult anyone who paid for just the PDF regardless of the potential contribution to charity. But it's really up to customers, not me.