#i've read a bunch of fics with the same vague premise

[achillvs]

omegaverse can be an incredibly insightful commentary about social dynamics of class, gender, health status and others, it can be a tale of romantic and sexual nuance and complexities, an exploration of what bonds mean - familial, romantic, platonic; of external and internal expectations, etc etc.

and omegaverse very often can be just some alpha rescuing an abused omega and the omega's kid ships them really hard and really bluntly and the alpha adopts the kid and slowly realises the found family is all they ever wanted in their dangerous life and they all live happily ever after.

and i love them all equally.

[autisticandroids]

are u a down to agincourt guy at all? i notice it’s not on any of ur rec lists (which is valid even if u do like it lmao it’s everywhere so there’s no need to let the people know about it) any chance ur a hater and want to let loose a little 👀

i mean, i'm not really a hater? i'm more an ambivalent.

first of all, to be clear, i've only read map of the world. i tapped out after that, partly because i just wasn't that into it but mostly because there was some unspeakably stupid stuff about godstiel at the end and i was in my sensitive era about godstiel things.

i also tapped out because i had heard some rather withering reviews from two friends who both tried it and had the same reaction, which is that the narrative of dta lacks tension and forward-movement. i, having only read map of the world, agreed with this, because that's certainly true of map of the world. most notably, it's true that dta actively removes tension by taking the basic premise of the story - that cas' dean and dean's cas are both gone - and just.... removing as much friction from that as possible. endverse cas and endverse dean, in dta, had so little positive relationship that seperis had to invent a way of being soulmates (also. cinemasins ding. i hate soulmates. partly for exactly this reason: they're a copout in terms of the messy and therefore narratively interesting work of relationship building) in order to justify why cas was attached to dean. dean seems perfectly happy to stay where he is and is not panicking about losing his sammy at all, samlucifer haunting him in the white suit doesn't even bother him that much! and he's actively happy to start over with a different cas, because he comes from a post-godstiel time and doesn't like his cas anymore.

personally i really disliked the whole dean and godstiel element for obvious reasons, not least because it annoys me that seperis chose to portray dean as *afraid* of godstiel and not just. enraged at him. however i think the much bigger problem, narratively, is the lack of love lost between endverse cas and endverse dean.

the first reason for this is pretty simple. dta dean is not my little guy and he has no relation to my little guy. he's a nice dude for cas to glom onto. and this isn't a crime, generally speaking fics will do this to one or the other of the dudes, and i'm happy to see it done to dean instead of cas for a change. but it means that dean's characterization doesn't matter as much.

the second reason is that dean didn't just lose cas, he lost literally his whole world. his entire timeline. and he should be upset about that, not cas in specific. i would still say he's insufficiently upset, but it's not as specific and personal.

but like.... if dta is about anything, it's about dta cas. and that means the tensions at the heart of cas' character matter. and he should have WAY more trouble slotting new dean into his life!!! like, the reason for thing #2 on this list is basically just me vagueing dta. in canon, the point of divergence for endverse is ftbyam. when cas and dean already have an intense, close, and sweet relationship. it's soured by the time endverse rolls around, but there was something to sour, inititally! and like to me it's also an excuse to like. use the classic deancas trope of having dean give cas a bunch of mundane firsts that he receives with childlike wonder. like in dta dean teaches cas to enjoy food. and like, that's against the spirit! of endverse cas! the point is that he's already HAD all those experiences with another dean but then things went sour!!!! AUGH.

anyway. making endverse dean Just A Bastard With No Redeeming qualities is like. a serious copout. imo. and it's symptomatic of a broader aversion to conflict and therefore a broader aversion to tension and movement and change. and so what you end up with, (again in map of the world at least, but from other people's reviews i suspect the rest remains the same), is a hundred thousand words of portraiture. it's beautiful, and it's lovingly painted. but it's not a story, because nothing happens in it or is being set up to happen.

but also, i wanna be clear. i REALLY liked elements of the portraiture. i think generally speaking people in fandom get their heads easily turned by pretty prose. like if the story is poetic at a paragraph level, they will give it wildly undue credit. but dta's prose really worked for me in a way a lot of other celebrated poetic fics' prose doesn't. like the density of it really adds something meaningful to the story i think. as a character portrait for cas, it really pulls you in.

and the cas characterization is so..... like it's so powerful, to me. for me i think it's more a characterization for canon cas than for endverse cas but also endverse cas is just canon cas with a few different experiences so like it still completely works. like i love the cas stuff.

the magic worldbuilding is like awesome to me. the thing about me is i love a magic system. i will risk it all for a good magic system. one time i was like, to my friend who liked dta, hey is seperis a programmer? and they were like yeah. and i was like yeah i figured. anyway. magic system <3.

and then also i like that endverse cas Lives In A Society. i like all the ocs and the relationships and the history. i wish that was more consistent, like i wish the endverse cas on the page felt more like he was situated in his history, rather than a new man born into his circumstances (so for example, i like that dta cas Quit Every Drug immediately at the start because endverse fic is so weird about drugs so not touching them is a nice choice imo, but it's also a symptom of this disconnect: cas is not weighed down by old habits and old wounds the way he should be. he's not stuck in place. and like that's the POINT of endverse cas: that he has history. and dta cas feels disconnected from that. and this is also wrapped in with my main criticism of how endverse dean and endverse deancas is handled). but i still like that he lives in a society and i think over the course of map of the world seperis becomes a little better at situating cas in a history in small ways instead of disconnecting him.

anyway in the end, dta is simply not my bag, and this is why. but i also get why people like it, because i also like parts of it.

[phoebelovingcare]

So Phoebe, i noticed that you maybe probably most likely finished isat recently...

What are your thoughts so far? If you don't mind me asking.

oh yeah I beat isat uhhhh about a week ago, i was just on a bit of a car ride and discovered that trying to watch a minecraft video in the car made me motion sick </3 so i went looking for isat fanart instead

I played it myself and then discovered just how many little things I missed - I had a tiny bit of help with a couple things, like Twohat for instance, but otherwise I was fully blind and a TON of rng events just didn't happen for me. I remember joking with Wes about Sif fucking up and pulling their dagger out and we talked for a minute about how much Worse it would be if that were an option. imagine my fuckin SHOCK when I get a recommended video for "all dagger scenes and loop chats." the ghost scene got me fuvked up.

I enjoyed it immensely, I've been reading a bunch of fics and am also delighted because it fits my sorta brain criteria of being VERY easily slotted into my Episodic Daydream Situation. I just like having a big open world and a cast of characters and a vague Unsolved Problem that I can throw them at day after day in my head; see also, Worldsense, my fuckin anthology of a hollow knight fanfic hinging on the same premise.

I've doodled a bit of fanart for it, but nothing really finished at all, and also grayscale palettes make me sleepy and depressed so I've been trying not to, like, Keep looking at it. if i were to 100% all achievements it it would have to be done in several sections over a long period of time or my brain would start spiraling siffrin style and That's Bad

isat's a lovely game and quite fun to voice act. sal if you're reading this you are still the antiloop I s2g every tip lead me to the Wrong Place it was amazing. pool