#im invested in like. every plotline...

[ohio-thestate]

new hyperfixation incoming

[lemmeurs]

okay. here is my 1600+ words essay on raphael. if anyone would like to adress anything from it, please do but keep it civil! i am so damn invested in this topic, i wanna hear everyone's thoughts

raphael rant

(DISCLAIMER: this essay was not written in order to justify Raphael as a character or any of his actions or intentions. i am completely skipping any point of morality, whether my own or just in general, i simply wanted to somehow try and write my feelings and thoughts down while looking at the whole thing from an objective point of view, analyzing the design of the game, the plotline and his whole persona and just.. idk i wanted to see whether anyone else felt the way i do because i have been going INSANE over this for the past few days)

hi. i have come here today to express my thoughts and feelings on Raphael the cambion and "his final act". this is being randomly and spontaneously written in my notes app so please excuse the absolute chaos that this essay will be (no i won't be rereading it, fuck it we ball) (CONTAINS BG3 ACT III SPOILERS!!)

first of all — i am so beyond devastated that he gets killed. and not just by anyone, he gets killed BY US. THE PLAYER. WE AS THE PLAYER DELIVER THE FINAL BLOW THAT ENDS HIS EXISTENCE. not only is that very upsetting (because come on, hot devil man, obviously i don't wanna kill him??) but it also makes me feel so.. awful. like, everything about this is wrong and i hate the fact that there is no other option.

because let's review the course of the story in the house of hope:

- we barge into his house unannounced, uninvited, while he is absent

- we invade his privacy by entering what's his own personal space (yes, i know he stole it from Hope in the first place but that is not the point here — whatever his devil business is, it's still HIS, you know?? like he is a devil, this is the kinda stuff they do and honestly? i didn't want to stick my nose into it. but obviously i did because tHe sToRy etc etc. but still, it was his own thing that basically doesn't affect the player in any way so TECHNICALLY you dont have to free Hope. you can, if your character's moral compass advises so, but it doesn't affect the main plot.)

- we then proceed to walk around his house freely, lie to his archivist in order to look at the stuff we're already planning to steal

- we meet his personal incubus whom then we have the chance to either use or kill (i fought Haarlep so that's the point of view i'm looking from at this here, in which case i also robbed their corpse) and we rob his safe. and his whole bedroom actually. we read his journals. we use his bath.

- then obviously we go and rob his entire archive which includes all of his most precious possessions

- upon stealing, we slaughter every single creature in his house, fighting our way through to get to Hope's prison

- we then kill the two spectators he has guarding her (they were probably super hard to obtain??) and we just. free his prisoner. because yeah, that is the right thing to do, IM NOT SAYING THAT'S WRONG, but let's say we skip morality for a second, let's just focus on the fact that we have no ulterior motives in freeing Hope. we just wanna mess with HIS business because why not since we're already ruining all of his plans.

- and then we have the audacity to try to leave before he comes back and act like we were never there while his entire house is turned to shit.

now let's look at this list again but this time keep in mind the fact that at that point, he hasn't done A SINGLE THING to us. like, he has never harmed us, he treated us with (let's call it) "respect" and politeness, he was fine with our hesitation towards his deal and was willing to give us time. he was never aggressive towards us, he was never "the enemy".

and now you can say - okay wtf is wrong with you, that man literally admitted his intention of conquering the worlds, enslaving all mortals and basically becoming the tyrant of all while also most likely stealing everyone's souls for his own pleasure.

yes, he did, and yes, that's bad. but just because those were his intentions does not give us the right to do all that shit to him AND THEN KILL HIM. AS IF WE HAD THE RIGHT TO SERVE JUSTICE HERE?? YEAH HIS PLANS ARE EVIL BUT IT IS NOT UP TO US TO DICTATE HIS CONSEQUENCES. HIS PLANS WOULD ONLY SUCCEED IF WE GAVE HIM THE CROWN IN THE END, SO JUST- DON'T?? LIKE DO YOU GET WHAT I MEAN. IM NOT TRYING TO JUSTIFY HIS ACTIONS OR INTENTIONS, BY ALL MEANS. i'm just trying to express how weird this all made me feel because not everyone decides to play as the selfless, lawfully good hero of all, protecting the world from all evil, ever! this is roleplay, afterall!

and them obviously he comes home. he is furious, as he should be. but mostly he's betrayed because, as weird as it may be, he trusted us. he admitted to growing "quite fond of us, in his own way". he thought we were some weird sort of.. acquaintances? friends maybe? (again, i know most of our relationship with him is mostly just him manipulating us but still, it's quite clear he wasn't expecting this betrayal) and we just barged in there and disrespected him in the worst way possible. so obviously he wants to kill us now and obviously we can kill him since he's just a boss in a game. and that's what we do. and then.. that's it. we're the good guys. we ruined a man's whole career because we needed one of his toys, murdered him in his own house and just left. and we're supposed to be the good guys.

i think the source of my problem is that Raphael is never introduced as evil. we don't meet him as the big bad villain that we know we'll have to kill at some point. i swear to god, at the beginning of act 3 i trusted that man way more than i trusted the Emperor and i was so close to agreeing to his deal just because i felt like i could trust him and he would keep me safe (for some reason, let's blame it on those wonderful eyes of his).

we meet him so early on in the game and he follows through all 3 acts, making it feel like he's gonna be some key character that will matter in the end - turns out, no! we were just supposed to rob and kill him. and that's literally it. talk about wasted potential.

when i first met him i got the "unofficial narrator" vibes from him, as if he was only supposed to seem intimidating and "evil" but you could sense there was so much more to him and i was dying to see how his story would unwrap. i was so ready for a redemption act, a plot twist, anything. man was i disappointed. because how cool would it be if he turned out to be a part of the "gather your allies" quest?? imagine having him as an ally and an ACTUAL friend in the end??

and don't even GET ME STARTED on what the orb in Helsik's shop shows you after you kill him. the fact that he's not even dead yet but ABOUT TO BE DEVOURED BY MEPHISTOPHELES. ABOUT TO BE DEVOURED. BY HIS FATHER. HE. WHAT. THATS THE ENDING HE GETS. and we are the ones that served it to him when he got RIGHTFULLY pissed at us for doing all that shit to him. and im supposed to just be fine with it?? i'm supposed to feel like this was the ending he deserved and i did the right thing??

god what i would give for a different way. idk. striking a new deal with him. saving him from Mephistopheles afterwards. REDEMPTION ARC?? ANYTHING?? NO? THATS IT THEN?

now i know that you dont HAVE to kill him, you can either agree to his deal or just ignore him and the house of hope altogether. but that just defeats the whole purpose of this character?? agreeing to his deal and giving him the crown at the end results in a pretty bad ending and ignoring him means that yeah, you don't have to kill him but you also don't get anything else from him anymore. like he has no other endings, just either death or his big evil plans. and for a game with so many choices and so much branching, it just feels almost weird that that's all he is there for. then why do we meet him in act 1? why does he follow through to act 2? (yeah, astarion, i know, but i cant help but feel like they could have put a completely different way to read his runes there if they didnt want Raphael specifically to help us) WHY ARE WE ALREADY SO USED TO HIM BY THE TIME HE PRESENTS HIS DEAL? if the whole hammer business is the only thing he's in the game for, then we may have as well been introduced to him only in act 3 during the whole Voss quest. but we knew him already and he felt like some sort of a.. friend lets call it? idk. this just does not make sense to me and makes me genuinely so sad.

as i'm writing this, it's the third day after ive completed the house of hope and i literally can not think about anything else. like my mind is just going on and on about this and i cant get over it!! im actually GRIEVING a fictional devil and i dont know what to do with all these.. thoughts.

so now i actually genuinely MISS THAT MF. I MISS HIM. GIVE HIM BACK. I WASN'T DONE AND NEITHER WAS HE. PLEASE PLEASE LARIAN I CAN FIX HIM—

okay i think thats it for now. idk i wrote this so chaotically i already forgot what i said and didnt say. im just. im feeling so many things. im so fucking sad and mad that this is how it ends. rest in peace hot devil man i will never forget you.

[spiderpussinc]

who you mind sharing some spiderdads headcanons you have, or do "the explain your otp in 5 minutes" meme? no pressure though! i love your art and fic too

im soooooo bad at this kind of question bc i kinda love thinking about a bunch of different/concurrent options like. you know how every fic is its own universe and you watch the same steps happen with little alterations so the same guys fall in love 101 times that's my brain... HOWEVER I've been thinking a LOT about ITSV Peter/Miguel lately --

Either comic-canon based settings where he's the usual single hero in his natural habitat OR directly /before/ ITSV itself; divorced midlife crisis spider-man who's always struggling to make rent is SUCH a good spot for Peter's stakes, and it sucks how people just want to make him rich or magically the avengers solve all his problems to basically erase what makes him compelling. I think its a good choice the spidey movies do -- to make it all a lot more ground-level, without outside interference -- so he has to make the tiny decisions.

Miguel getting stranded in the past!! HOW COME THERE'S SO LITTLE STUFF ABOUT MIGUEL AND PETER MEETING IN THE PAST? Doesn't need to be ATSV plotline compliant. A macguffin gets him there, or sends him to Peter's universe, come on! The important part is having them on a ground level sandbox.

THE REAL FUN STUFF: The cheesiest stupidest meetcutes you could ever imagine. Endless possibility. Spitballing: Peter/Miguel being unaware of each other's identities and renting the same apartment because neither of them has the funds to fly solo. Peter being suddenly spooked by the appearance of a brand new edgy spider-man in the vicinity. After all these years. Miguel not knowing how much he can say because Peter's sort of convinced this is a villain ploy of some sort to fuck up his public persona.

REAL-LIFE, both of them are suspicious about the other as a Weird Fidgety Roommate type. Neither can complain much because, again, it's rent on NY. You mind or business. or not.

Maybe Alchemax doesn't even exist in this universe, tipping Miguel off that this is an alternate timeline and he's really on his own. Maybe the ruling company here is Roxxon or Future labs or whatever; there's a lot of those in comics. He kind of HAS to eventually come clean about being universe-displaced to this world's Spider-man -- Peter begrudgingly accepting that there's a second spider-guy around on the condition that Miguel isn't gonna do anything catastrophic while he's here to completely blow up Peter's image, or give J.J. Jameson fodder to attack him.

Maybe they start working together. Maybe it's a casual partnerships thing where they happen to be tracking the same shady incident and decide to wrap it up as a duo; maybe they just agree to patrol the neighborhood together on busy weeks since they just.. suspiciously... seem to be around at the same place... at the same time... overly concerned abt the same shit....

Miguel has a superhuman investment in Not Letting This World Turn into a Future Dystopic Hellhole; Peter just kind of wants to live and solve problems as they come by but these two motivations really synergize. Peter doesn't even need to ask why, just damn okay dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Respect!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!1!!1!

Secret Identity investigations. Secret Identity mishaps. Secret Identity fumbles. Lyla accidentally busting out that Peter Parker is Spider-man via advanced facebook voice recognition fuckery. (LOL) Hell, maybe in THIS Miguel's version of 2099 it was already revealed Peter is spider-man, after he died. How'd he die? Maybe it was a bad end. How does Miguel feel about that? About meeting with a ghost? Endless possibility.

EVEN MORE FUN STUFF: both of these guys are *SO* intensely defined by a lack of support system around their secret identities. WALLOWING in guilt. Spider-man always seems to ruin their lives, in the worst ways. They're too proud to let normal people intervene, or the ppl themselves deeply resent the fact Spider-man exists. It's fun to think of a reversal scenario where Peter/Miguel have each other's backs, can help the other dress wounds, can show up in a pinch to prevent disaster from occurring with some supervillain 10 blocks away while Peter is trying to land a new job interview as a highschool teacher or science columnist. IDK It doesn't have to be constant uphill battle to get someone else to understand why they do what they do and what the stakes are; they're the same kind of crazy.

And okay, maybe you don't want the spidersonas falling in love before their real identities do..... still VERY ripe options around for Miguel sneaking home with a limp or a really fucked up arm and his healing factor isn't nearly as good as Spider-man Prime's, so Peter is like 'WHAT the FUCK happened to you?' And even though he can tell Miguel is lying. He is not going to bust him out for it. Because he's been lying for 20+ years. Instead, Peter just takes it upon himself to teach him how to get his shit fixed. Temporary armslings and icepacks and sprays and current-time medication that is different to what Miguel is used to in the future; friendly neighborhood Peter Parker who minds his business and will not ask you if you're secretly Daredevil for Reasons but that will, however, tell you to stop blocking attacks with your fucking head. He learned this lesson earlier than most superheroes.

(The reverse scenario is still sweet! Peter's taciturn roommate who wears sunglasses indoors and is weirdly secretive about everything seeing him come home with a busted out eye and hes like damn. Do you want to split a pizza or whatever. You look like shit)

Miguel is not actually as experienced as Peter! He /could/ use the tips!!! Peter has been Spider-man ever since he was 15 years old. Miguel became Spider-man due to a freak accident at MAXIMUM 4ish years ago. Probably less. Figuring out how to do it not alone would be genuinely a good experience for him.

Miguel moe x1000 as the future man who kinda doesn't get the weird counterintuitive way things work present-time 💔 flipside; Miguel seeing the beginnings of bad future patterns like musk trying to buy twitter and deciding to take matters into his own hands. sorry this is just hilarious to me. Even if he's not beating these guys up its still awesome to imagine him as an insane ranting tech essayist who goes on hour-long takedowns of NFTs on youtube or being like GOD WE NEED VACCINES TO BE COOL AGAIN FUCKKKK

Among all of this though, I think one of the most appealing aspects of having them as an unit is that they don't have to lone-wolf shit anymore. (and they Have been lonewolfing it for SO long.) Feels good feels organic

I could go on but I need to actually write and I just... think they can be so entertaining. We don't have to be so dependent on the movie here pulling from regular superhero shenanigans Really works. They sort of complete each other. Immediate productive boost on both of their morales. Get Peter/Miguel pilled with me rn

[klapollo]

im sorry normal people was so fucking boring. it started strong but then it just stayed at that level of intensity (or lower) almost the entire time. i got less invested in the characters the more i knew about them. they both just seemed to float through every scene despite ostensibly moving their plotlines forward through some degree of proactivity. even the most intense scenes had this static, staid quality to them that kept a wall between me and emotional investment. they all just hem and haw and go to parties and shuffle around and get drunk and do things for no discernible reason other then i guess the craic of it all. rooney's style of writing was fine but i usually like introspective character pieces but by the end of this it was a SLOG

i just bought intermezzo too i really hope this was a one off issue

[quill-pen]

In modern day, Bess introduces Eb to sitcoms.

Like, he knows what they are, but he never watched them before, calling them "insipid, pointless drivel". After his redemption he decides he needs to try them out in order to try and integrate back into the world. So Bess takes up the challenge to help him.

He is most familiar with 'Friends' as Marley actually loved it and made him watch a few episodes, so they start there. Before long, Chandler is his favorite character and he's maybe a little too invested in the Ross and Rachel plotline.

Eb: WHY DON'T THEY JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER LIKE BLOODY ADULTS?!

Bess: Because then there wouldn't be any drama to keep people coming back to watch every week.

Eb: Is it always like this, then? Is this the "thing"?

Bess: Yep, pretty much. Lots of sitcoms have crap like this to keep interest going.

Eb: It's maddening! Infuriating! How can people stand it?!

Bess: I hear ya. Do you want to stop watching?

Eb: Hell no! I need to see how these im imbeciles end up!

Bess: 🥰Welcome to the land of sitcoms, Love.

[rxzennia]

YOUUU🫵

IT WAS YOUU who caused me such a brainrot with how you write aventurine💥

the hibernation/brumation fic was lovelyy😞

anyways hi helloo !! i recently stumbled upon your acc and ive been so invested with your voracity pathstrider series🥹 its so gooddjdfjm

im wondering if there's a continuation to it? the last post had me on the edge of my seat like?? is bbg okay?? is he even still alive😭

the same question goes to the actual game lore in 2.2 HDMFJFJ

REALLY ADORE YOUR WORKSS

me????? why's everyone pointing at me???? 😭

anyways tyvm! always love hearing that readers enjoyed my brainrot 🫠💖 procrastination pays off yall (it does not)

there most likely would not be a continuation, unfortunately - the intention was that everyone dies, literally.

BUT, the voracity series has no chronological order or concrete plotline and every piece under the tag can be read as a standalone and/or a short series (i will make a note if that is the case)!

you can think of thrice shall the bell toll as an au and other pieces as stories of various points in time in a "canon" (where everyone's alive and well and the characters are the same characters).

if it doesn't quite make sense feel free to send in another ask! always glad to answer questions

thank you for your support (´・∀・)

[bookinit02]

beyond obsessed with the development of nancy’s dynamics with the two boys in your take on s5 — while i’m not a fan of st*ncy at all, i think it was clear as day in s4 that nancy is at least physically attracted to steve, and it’s quite refreshing that you don’t shy away from that. and then her admitting she does love jonathan, and the Moment with robin…

the complexity of all of this is so interesting and while byler (predictably) does occupy most of my attention, i find myself so invested in how it’s all going to untangle itself, both in your rewrite and in the eventual s5 we get, because i don’t think there’s a super simple answer there.

anyway im going feral about literally every sentence you’ve ever written for this entire series all the way back to s1, but i just had to say something about this side plot specifically because of how insane it makes me. nancy is a complicated gal we can’t shove her into a box and wrap her up with a bow that easily and you really do that justice !! have a lovely day :)

listen anon i need you to know that this comment was so kind it literally made me tear up😭 i was so so so nervous to post this script specifically because of that scene—i edited it like crazy, and i almost cut it at least a dozen times. but this was always going to be the stoncy arc for season 5, and it was one of the first concrete plot points that i developed wayyyyy back in may when i started planning. i feel like i should make it very clear that i am also not a fan of stancy!! and i believe that comes across in the script as well. but you’ve articulated it perfectly—they’ve set something up for them in season 4, and it would be a disservice to drop that plotline entirely.

predictably, byler occupies most of my attention as well—but the dynamics of the older teens have been a surprisingly strong focus of mine. you’re right, it’s a very complex situation, and i’ve really enjoyed writing them so far. nancy IS a complicated gal!! i’m really honored that you like my portrayal of her. thank you so much for this ask, it really made me feel so much better💗🫂

[dcviated]

mun meme

𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐔𝐍!

★  NAME:  Bear/Will

★  PRONOUNS:  hee/hoo him

★  BEST EXPERIENCE: I think you can get a variety of experiences at a variety of places and each of them will be 'good' or 'cool' in some way. Most of my writing at this point is related to stuff I've done in tumblr, but I don't resent or detest the platforms I used of yore. Avatar games were cool. Discord/IM isn't the worst thing. But I think the best part of writing here is the shared experience for those invested? Easier to see things go down? 

★  PREFERENCE OF COMMUNICATION: Discord, easily. I mean I'm definitely reachable on tumblr IM but once we start getting into plotting I'd really rather move to something... functional. Searchable! And palatable. Tumblr IM is none of these things... it just kinda(kinda) works. So y'know.

Now that said, with the communication... I don't need a ton? You don't have to message me every day? I know I sure as hell don't message everyone everyday... I'm more of a reactive sort. Once you hit me up I'll chat away. But I can be silent for days or weeks on end otherwise. Trying to fix that...

★  MOST ACTIVE MUSE: Wylan is always able to come out and shitpost a little bit here and there. But writing his long posts can actually be a little more taxing. I'd say... Raguna and Eira are definitely the ones buzzing around more? I did a whole variety of drafts today, if you noticed. That said my roster isn't exactly the largest. And most of my public muses aren't the hardest to start a fire under outside of say... Armstrong. He's usually my weakest muse.

★  EXPERIENCE / HOW MANY YEARS: I first got into RP as a result of an ex, but I spring boarded from there into way more things than I started with. I'd say my first writing came about... 2005 or 2006? Hard to pinpoint exactly. So yeah it's been a good 18 years at this point. That said, I was on a huge writing sabbatical between 2009 and 2015, so I can't technically count it all. 2009 is when I dropped WoW (and writing in there) and 2015 is when I gave tumblr rp a shot out of a need to do more creative writing. 😩

★  RP PET PEEVES:  

So here's a few ... I'm grumpy. And specific with my hobby time.

Not meeting halfway with plotting. I get it, sometimes ideas are hard to come by. But if you're coming to someone wanting interactions you can't treat your RP partner like a vending machine rolling out thing after thing for you to clap over. It's important to share the burden (as plotting can sometimes be) and provide some insight. The best plots are a back and forth of "yes, and-" or "no, but-".

Sub-point to this one, but I think most of the onus does fall on you if you're dropping threads to kick off ideas for new ones. Even after a hiatus! It's what I've been doing!

Excessive commentary blogging. Before it was just a lot of dash commentary that had me going 'eh'. But in recent years it's gone past that. I've become disenchanted with blogs that become largely commentary for whatever it is they're doing on discord. All power to those discord groups doing what they do! But it reaches a point for me that I don't really see them as indie, and it can feel insurmountable trying to interact with them if you're not entangled with their zig-zagging plotlines.

And of course~!!!

Blog hoppers. Because for a slow burner and long hauler like myself, they're the most impossible people to write with! Which is a shame, because a lot of the hoppers I come across do seem to have some writing talent to them!!!

★   PLOTS OR MEMES: I.... really don't mind either at this point! It swells my soul when people approach me for plotting or interactions to begin with. I sometimes lament how flexible I can be because it makes getting some things off the ground difficult, but that's beyond inspiring to get something going that someone else made the effort. Just... as long as they keep it going past the greetings. :') See pet peeve point 1.

But anyone wanting to randomly jump into my inbox? More than welcome too!

★  ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S)?: I put a little bit of myself in all of my muses, and find some traits to relate to in all the canons I've added to my roster. But at this point most of the character writing I do comes from some degree of misdirection of my emotion or mindset. Wylan has a lot of my humor, is about all I can really pin down now for my OCs... I may have planted the seeds with facets of my personality but at this point they've all grown far past all that.

tagged by: @more-than-a-princess the old guard need to stick together!!! thanks for the tag <: tagging: @seawrought @darksails @pastballads @mielmoto @psychcdelica and whoever else or nobody whatever!

[fictionfixations]

persona 3 reload (i love)

CW: ACTUALLY. uh. warning for like. suicide?? guns? well its not actually suicide but like. i mean this isnt spoiler free but they use a certain method to trigger their personas that could be very triggering to people so if you're uncomfortable with death and anything related, this is NOT the game for you!

Also spoilers for other persona games

i just saw the entire story of persona 3 reload (well. i watched someone play it. because im not the biggest fan of grinding, but on the other hand listening to grinding in tartarus vods where they just talk about random stuff [actually, i watched CyYu's playthrough. If you don't know, that's Akihiko's VA] is nice to have in the background)

this was the second persona game ive seen. the first was persona 5, which i saw the anime for, but forgot like most of what happened (ive been regaining that knowledge through fanfiction.)

in any case i also spoiled myself to what happened in persona 3 by fanfiction

so i knew. that. protag would die.

but it got me really sad. and with the in-cutscene options where it just. feels so slow.

(and a part of me is relieved that we didnt see them make the realization that we're dead. it was all happy times till the end and i know that wouldve gotten the waterworks coming)

and then the main menu screen??

its just. empty.

and this got me crying (i always hate endings, honestly. the 'will we or will we not meet again?' no thanks i shall live in 'these characters will live forever in a sort of limbo in the same school and nothing changes because yes'. ...although that might be a little too close to a certain twisted wonderland plotline LMFAO)

(also oh my god the osts in this game are such a fucking BOP AGHH)

(i have no clue what my reaction to the plot twist with like ryoji n stuff would be though, honestly. i spoiled myself reading those time travel fanfictions where persona 3 protagonist [either makoto or minato] either comes back to the beginning. ..OR somehow comes back to life??? or appears in persona 5 with amnesia at first. and like. there's one where ryoji was there (as a voice). or the yellow in his phantom thief costume was 'his idea of rebellion' aka ryoji. so then. i went to the wiki. and so yeee.)

in any case i definitely prefer this over persona 5. and that might be because i really got myself invested in the actual story and cared a whole lot about the characters (Cy Yu did a 100% playthrough using a guide as he played the original but respectfully kept the entire thing spoiler-free so ppl like me could fully experience it for the first time while getting the most story :D)

but yeah.

also.

GUNS.

trauma.

ive only seen it a few times in crossover fics between persona games. but. ..i really like seeing peoples reactions to them pulling a gun out and shooting themselves. (sometimes it works. sometimes it doesnt and it breaks because there's a difference to how every persona world works for each game. like. Dark Hour, TV World(? ive never seen 4 but ive seen fics), Metaverse(iirc)... And the shadows I think mean different things.)

also the theurgy's are very pretty. and if i misspelled that i am so sorry.

[miupow]

puppy anon returning after another hiatus bc college and work is saur 💔 lia how can i slay in these conditions !!?? 💔💔

anyways! congratulations on making the decision to make craveverse! im super excited and looking forward to what you produce!!

i saw you express a question a bit back as to whether you should plot it out prior or go chapter by chapter - and idk if its still smthing ur wondering!! so if its not feel free to dismiss - but as someone who has done long fic before id say my happy medium is a little bit of both. you'd want enough to give yourself a couple chapters of buffer while you figure out how to work in the real meat of the plot, but also a few concrete plot points you know you want to hit later on so foreshadowing can be used early on. but also the key word here being "my" because every author should come up with their own mix to keep themselves invested and away from burnout. fanfiction, the medium, fails a little in regards to long fic imo bc it allows reader input at every chapter, which could potentially affect the authors view or or vision for the story.

in regards to overarching plot ideas . . . hmm. whats your ideal end goal you want to achieve w the fic - like a fun horny romp or a mystery series etc? and from there, branching out, do you have a plan for why mc went out into the forest in the first place? :o

anyhow! food for thought and i unfortunately love giving unsolicited advice !! 🥺😔 if any of this was like annoying or i crossed a boundary, lmk!!

- 🐶 puppy anon !!

HIIII PUPPY ANON!!! 🐶❤️ i missed u sm!!! i hope work n school is going well for you heehe :3

im so excited for craveverse too >< thank you for the advice, i think that’s honestly a solid idea,,, might plot out the first few chapters/plotlines and then let the readers input sway the rest ^^

for like. an overarching theme? i want it to be darker, ofc, a little angsty and suspenseful. need drama and conflict :> other than that, lots of sexual tension and smut <33 originally the idea for why mc went into the woods was just because she was dumb and curious, tho maybe giving her an actual reason would be a good idea, set up for some drama!!!

[llycaons]

only 17 hours left on adwd...almost to season 6 of sopranos...end is in sight. dgmw im really invested in finishing them, and I have enjoyed them, but they are both the less fun option of whatever I'm watching rn.

like I just listened to a chapter where a character said something playfully and somber 16 yr old jon snow is like 'the time for playfulness is over...winter is coming' and you know what this book could use some fucking playfulness. a single keynote about the joy of being human or having fun would cut through the grimdark murder-rape-starvation-slavery plots and hit powerfully hard in that like. it fucking matters. what they're trying to do by protecting all these people fucking matters. I already hate that dany's storyline is her wrapped up in being a 'mother' saving helpless and miserable hordes of eastern peoples heavily steeped in orientalist fantasy tropes, but none of them even feel like people. they're just miserable/starving and/or inhumane plot devices, either evil or absolutely helpless, for her to act upon. grrm's handling of slavery is a fucking mess

but back to my original point that this tragedy and bleakness is never balanced out with anything and it's like, ENOUGH. I KNOW! it's not even that the systems are being criticized because they always go above and beyond just for the sake of graphic and gratuitous violence that appear to center some characters affected by the systems of violence, but they do that by fucking over and using other, arguably far more marginalized characters in almost every single mc'a plotline. this is far more obvious in adwd rather than feast, which is a shame because there's a lot of plots in dance that I genuinely like. theon's abuse and identity crisis is really effective, tyrion's relationship with the only other little person we've seen in the book is really compelling, jon's actions at the wall are innovative and interesting, and the reveals involved in the davos and manderly plot was enthralling, and I really do love asha

but like...idk. I guess it was different in the early books but would a single line about joy persisting in the midst of the end of the world fucking kill him. I guess it's not rly his style but jesus christ dude. there's a point at which unremitting horrors stop being subversive to the fantasy genre and just become pointless torture porn

ALL THAT BEING SAID I'm only like 3/4 of the way through so if this happens egg on my face ig

[yaoist]

#I think the main issue is just a disagreement about what superman is fundamentally about

no I think superman fans want you to believe this is some deep philosophical disagreement. im just not that into heroic characters. they're fine but i'm here for the bad guys. i'm tired of being told that i "don't understand" superman i've been a comic book fan for nearly a decade now, i've read his comics for characters I like (Lex), I know what his character is like.

I think if you actually engaged with more of the Evil Superman trope in non-dc media you'd see that many ARE, actually, about the connections and civilian identity part of Superman. Omni-Man and Homelander especially - Omni-Man is defined by "going native" with his family despite intending to be a conqueror and Homelander is defined by his lack of connections due to being abused (and his maladaptive craving for them) and Injustice is defined by Clark losing those connections (even though the story sucks). yeah it's nice to think that the people who make characters you don't like make them because they Don't Understand or have Values Misalignment but these are characters explicitly made to engage with Superman as a cultural icon and a character! civilian identity and values and all!

obviously making some guy evil with red kryptonite is a lazy comic book trope for boring fights. of course if you're looking at 43542 versions of red kryptonite or Evil Nazi Alternate Universe you're going to be bored just like you're going to be bored if you go looking "what if superman was gay?" and find 43324 pink kryptonite plotlines. comic books are full of lazy as fuck shit. but that's not a good reason to throw out every single good exploration of a superman-like character who does bad things. like let's not pretend the alternate justice society in the cartoons wasn't an honest exploration of power and authority (oh, also dealing with his personal connections! shocking!)

like you are just exclusively engaging with media that sucks (supergirl) and media for small children (maws) (no shade i watched it too) and then extrapolating that to everyone else. when i say i like evil superman i don't mean im emotionally invested in fucking bizarro

guys, “what if the obscenely powerful being often compared to a god decided to take over the world and turn it into a fascist hellscape without crime” is a natural question to ask when faced with an obscenely powerful being, and “what if our stalwart protector decided to turn on us” is a natural question to ask when faced with a stalwart protector. it’s THE question you ask when faced with the concept of a superman, and it’s kind of a reasonable one. exploring the natural fallout of a very powerful protector (even multiple times) isn’t “everyone being needlessly edgy” it’s … having an imagination

[steveharrington]

https://youtu.be/HZOppCkC5UM

what do you think of this?

i think some good points were made! and also some bad points were made! i will break it down sorry if this is long but i love talking about st as you all know and this guy packed a lot of discussion into 10 minutes!

good points: he's absolutely 100% right about jonathan and joyce losing their Point in the story. it's so so so obvious specifically with jonathan that he was written and conceived to serve the plotline that revolved around his family, and when he's taken out of those relationships he's basically.....nothing. i've never seen anyone point out how jonathan didn't really need the nancy/steve plotline in s1 because it only really diluted his A plot centered around will before, but it's so true. i also strongly agree with his point about the russia storyline and how taking the characters out of hawkins and trying to bring in the world at large is a big mistake. it's one reason why i felt the russia plotline in s4 specifically was so hard to watch and literally had me wanting to skip every time the scene cut to hopper/joyce/murray because like.....why should i care about this! im invested in whats happening in hawkins, in vecna, and like the california plot okay fine it's tangentially related to hawkins and it brings back brenner etc but the russia stuff just feels so far removed and pointless. also he's so right about the tone of s3 feeling off specifically with scoops troop and how they tried to make a very serious dark plotline into a slapstick comedy.

bad points: the story is not all about will. sorry i will never buy into and subscribe to the whole "it starts and ends with will" thing and that's not even me being a hater, that's just me watching season one and understanding that el is just as relevant to the story as will. the author of this video essay sets up the s1 storyline and concept for the show as a whole as if it was Only ever supposed to be about will going missing and the results of that, which completely ignores the fact that we still have an entire parallel dimension and government sanctioned child testing lab to talk about? if the story was only about will going missing, it didn't need to be about supernatural elements at all. it could've literally just been will getting lost in the woods. but will's disappearance is the entry point for our characters into the upside down, and once they're aware that it exists, it can't just be nicely tied up in a little bow at the end of s1 and everyone moves on with their lives. i will never understand the "stranger things shouldve been one season!!!!!" argument because like how on earth can you expect joyce to get her kid back from the parallel dimension that also ate another teenager, with the lab that tortured a child still operating in their town, and just be like oh okay its over? HUH? like there's no further implications to discuss, no consequences of these discoveries? will went to hellworld and hid from a monster and he's just fine now that he's back home? we're just gonna all ignore it? whew sorry anyways im really defensive over s2 and i hate the suggestion that it's like hastily cobbled together just for the sake of a sequel when really it's such a rich season full of necessary and fascinating further exploration into the UD, the effects it had on the characters, the trauma they endured, etc.

new paragraph but still talking abt the bad points. i also don't agree with the assertion that s4 ended with everything tied up nicely and all the characters having closure. in fact i really don't understand how anyone could reach that conclusion (sorry to the author of that video essay if ur out there) like how can you watch the s4 finale and think "yeah everyone's pretty much good" like hello? eddie's death traumatized dustin and im sure there'll be conflict over the decisions made that led to it, max is literally in a coma, lucas still hasn't received any sort of closure or resolution irt any of his experiences or feelings, will still feels alienated within his friend group and tied to the UD, el still views herself as a monster, nancy/steve/jonathan are an absolute mess with no resolution either relationship-wise or just like personal storyline-wise. even if you don't care about these characters, or you feel like they were never important, the show can't just drop them into oblivion and leave each of their storylines unresolved. and that's what'll happen in s5.

also saying the agent orange speech was the best aspect of the russia storyline is um.....interesting. to me its not "bringing hopper back to his emotional roots" its a very lazy rehashing of the story arc he already overcame i.e. blaming himself for sarah's death and feeling like a black hole. like we already did that. and now we're doing it again

all in all i think the general thesis of the video is very correct--s5 is not going to be very good. the writers have written themselves into a corner, many of the characters have ceased to serve any function, and the non-stop action that the duffers keep teasing is going to feel like a different show and probably not play to the strengths of the series, which is character work and dynamics. and also he's right aliens is the best sequel ever <3

[lonelyplanetfag]

been wondering . whats trc / the raven chronicles (pls go into detail)

this is probably the best ask ive ever gotten oh my god i could talk abt trc forever

the short answer is that it's a fantasy series of four books and a spin-off trilogy abt four private school boys and their token Girl friend trying to find a dead welsh king (and i know that's like. every red flag possible but hear me out ok)

the long answer is. ough. i know you specified detail but i got frank to read it so im gonna be So Careful mot to spoil anything and im mostly gonna talk abt the main group of characters cuz they have me in a chokehold (and there's so many details about the plotline itself that it's impossible 4 me not to spoil it on accident once i get talking)

in the first chapter you find out that one of the private school boys is going to die. his name's gansey and he's the one who got all his friends roped into his obsession over the dead welsh king. he's like the personification of rushed cursive and accidental insensitivity and passion. he means well but he's overly polite and knows what is objectively too much about business for a seventeen year old

you find out that he's gonna die via the token Girl friend. her name's blue and shes the only non-psychic in a family of psychics that run a Psychic Business out of their house (which is probably really dangerous considering they're all women and live in the middle of nowhere). she makes things Louder when it comes to all the psychic shit and she's like fingerless gloves and tangled necklaces and having too many highlighters 2 me

blue's dynamic with adam is one of my favorites. adam's another one of the private school boys, but he's the only one who isn't filthy rich. he lives in a trailer park and has a family that makes gansey worry so much that he all but begs adam to come live with him (the school has dorms but gansey decided to invest in an old factory instead and lives there with the other two private school boys). the thing about adam is that he wants out of that fucking trailer more than anything, but success means nothing to him unless he got it for himself. he's my favorite character and i could talk about him for days. he's like shitty cars and guilt and the forced silence of things that are loud in nature

then theres ronan. he's another one of the private school boys and there is so much about him. his dad was murdered and he was the one who found the body, his older brother's a dickhead who controls The Family Fortune, and there's so many secrets that go into who he is that i can't go into much detail without mentioning them. he's an asshole in the best way possible and he's like loud music and fucked up religious imagery and anger and violence. also im 80% sure he's franks favorite

noah's the last of the private school boys and has more secrets than ronan does. he's connected to the plot so intensely that i am Not gonna say much about him, but he's like smudged pencil and being forgotten and being remembered

[icharchivist]

A series of events:

-One of my closest friend wants to bite the bullet and try up a3 knowing it is so important to me

-Thing is though that friend in question can't bear topics about theater, so he's really just doing it for me. (I did remind him we could drop anytime and that he didn't have to force himself, he just didnt listen)

-After one episode of the anime, he wants to drop it because nothing interested him

-The next day he tells me to watch another one, and go only by a pace of one a day

-Itaru makes his effect. Friend is now clearly watching for me and for Itaru.

-Yes friend made fun of me when i lost it when Chikage was on screen

-Friend made clear he had very little investment in the rest of spring and only cared for Itaru

-He started to feel emotionally hit by Itaru's storyline

-We listen to the a3 musics then. He's notoriously picky about music but ends up vibing with most of the songs, especially Autumn and Winter. He starts to be interested in Autumn.

-We go to Summer, still aiming one episode a day. Friend doesn't like any of the cast except Tenma he loved at first sight

-Tenma resonated with him and suddenly he insisted we binged all of summer in one day. It fucked him up.

-"I am not invested i can quit at anytime" - said a liar

-after Summer he asks to take a break before Autumn because he's scared of them. He didn't expect any of the characters to impact him but knew Autumn would be his type, and now that two characters he didnt expect ripped his heart out he's terrified of what it would mean for him

-He also asks that we resume to one episode a day

-I end up crying about Winter because im normal and i tease him that with the break and the pacing we wont reach him anytime soon, so i was safe

-Evilness oblige he decides that we're going to bing Autumn and Winter on the same fucking day

-Autumn didnt mess him up as much as he thought. At first. In the following days he becomes obsessed and starts to mostly talk about Autumn to me

-He gets bewildered by how little content Hisoka and Azuma had, saying "i thought when you said their arc were cut you were nippicking what the fuck was that"

-He guesses what were the themes of the plotlines by analysing the few we have and the knowledge they're my fav characters. He's 95% spot on. Now he cares winter because he sees me in every characters send help.

-I show him the game's content that was cut from the anime. He appreciates Winter but mostly because of what he can bully me with

-We had planned to stop there, so that he had a baseline to bully me.

-We didn't.

-He got invested in Azami suddenly and asked that we'd read his chapter together

-It messed him up and everything he thought should have hit with Autumn but didn't ended up hitting him a hundred times harder

-Friend gets overly invested. I send him Wandering Ghost. He loses his mind

-We discuss about the fact the song was not translated on yaycupcake

-The next day, as he's very good with Japanese, he decides to translate it and asks me to update his translation to yaycupcake

-he still refuses to acknowledge he's invested.

-Friend also starts to warm up to the cast members he wasnt found of.

-Friend has now asked me to show him Chikage and Guy. I insist that if we do, we read at least Winter 2nd and 3rd play and Spring 3rd.

-Friend complains because as he understands Japanese he's been mainly *listening* to a3 and have a hard time keeping up with the archive's full auto for the unvoiced events

-I bring up the events are voiced on the JPN server

-Friend decide to start playing it

-(i realize i lost my jpn account so i start one along with him)

-We sign in in time for the last 2 days of the spring 9th play event

-Friend decide to go ham

-Friend becomes obsessed with the event song

-Friend translates the song based on lyrics he found, has asked me to post it on yaycupcake (which i willdo when im back home), and is starting to work on a lyrics video for it.

-Friend still insists he's not involved. Despite the fact he regularly brings a3 up out of nowhere and had like 3 existential crisis provoked by characters.

-Friend is frustrated by all that is untranslated on the wiki and wants to help translate more regardless

-Friend is scared shitless about Chikage because i told him about him and he's terrified it's going to fuck him up (As expected from a Sandalphon lover.)

Tldr: i dragged someone into a3, he started out really disliking it, and now he's so worked up by what isnt translated and is working on things.

So there's that.

[luci-cunt]

im about to go to sleep but when i awaken i hope to find an essay from you on how i get into hermitcraft

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (just got home from work and I have a new puppy so I will be dead for the next week but here's this very quick overview bc I love you and also Hermitcraft)

SO--YOU WANNA FALL DEEPER DOWN THE MCYT HOLE BC DSMP WASN'T CONVOLUTED ENOUGH???? TIRED OF INCOMPREHENSIBLE LORE AND HARD-TO-FOLLOW PLOTLINES FILLED WITH ANGST AND TRAUMA??? WANT SOMETHING A BIT MORE LAID BACK????

OH BOY DO I HAVE THE ANSWER FOR YOU!!!

First of all: Hermitcraft is essentially a series where a bunch of super talented and pretty longstanding mcyt-ers play on a single minecraft server for a period of a "season" and build absolutely fucking insane bases and vibe together. It's all very structured and organized so on every member's channel u'll find playlists for each season.

(oh and by longstanding mcyt-ers I mean literal pioneers in the mcyt community, people who have redstone inventions named after them bc they've been around longer than the redstone itself--etc)

The server is super chill!!! Everyone is very nice and they all get along super well and coordinate things on a discord server so that everyone's got all the info and they also prioritize building over basically everything--which means like, fire tic is off (meaning fire cannot spread), you do not steal anythign unless you will pay it back at least like twice over (once Grian accidentally killed ppl so he grinded them out full enchanted netherite armor/tools + some blocks and this is literally just like, what everyone does)

But!!!! besides all that!!!! where do you start *watching*!!!!

There are something like,,, 30 members on teh HC server??? more??? I cannot remember. Every one of them posts Hermitcraft episodes to their youtube channels, but there's also a HC recap youtube channel dedicated to weekly recaps of all hermit activity which you can find here!!

The thing about HC is that everytime there's a new update to MC, or even just the server starts to get stale--they throw out the world and start a new, completely empty one from scratch and thus is a new "season." Currently we're only a few episodes into the 8th season!

I watch a very limited scope of HC but--here are my limited reccomendations

GRIANNNNNNNN: because of course, we love grian, we stan grian, he has cats--what more could you ask for? Yes you've seen him gracing your screen in MCC and killing it, and you've also most likely seen him in fanart comparing him to Philza bc both are badass MC players with ✨wings✨he's chaotic and super creative and very kind! he also builds lots of mega builds and they are *incredible.* You're gonna wanna watch him if you want some good, lighthearted gremlin content.

Goodtimeswithscar: my BELOVED!!! This man is like, chaos but make it absolutely harmless. He is Dr. Doofenshmurtz levels of unfunctioning in the best ways possible. Mans tries so hard to be a villain and he just akjsd;lfja;sldfkj cannot pull it off and I adore him so much for it. Also he's got a new vibe every season--last season he was a wizard who lived in a giant snail before moving into a massive mining-construciton-thing??? And this season he has very much Howl's Moving Castle vibes. He also streams on twitch!!! Which I would totally recommend bc he's very chill and fun to listen to. You're gonna wanna watch him if you want a little bit more spice to your episodes--what is that spice exactly? Just watch and you'll see >:))

Some honorable mentions of ppl I don't really watch but love:

Pearlescentmoon: she's a new member to the HC server this season and I love her!!! I've only seen her a bit in Grian and Scar's vids but she took down an entire build just to rotate it like 90 degrees we stan an icon.

Mumbojumbo: a redstone fucking madman--also like--posh?? but in an unoffensive way?? I have no idea this man is so white but also I love him?? that doesn't describe him right just--just watch something of his and you'll understand.

Bdubs: my BELOVED!!! he's just aslkjd;flajsdflk everything, idk man just watch a vid and you'll be in love he's just aslkjdf;lasjkf everything. His starter house is a massive moon with a clock hanging from it it's so pog I love him so much watch his videos

OH AND WHAT'S THAT???? YOU GET HOOKED ON HC CONTENT BUT THINK,,,,,,, 'HM--THERE'S NOT QUITE ENOUGH MURDER IN THIS'???

BRO I"VE GOT THE ANSWER FOR YOU!

(also it's very short--I think there's only like 8 episodes cuz there was only 8 sessions--it's complicated but Grian explains it in the first ep dw)

3rd Life SMP

(everyone has 3 lives--losing the first 2 means nothing, but once you die 3 times you goal becomes to kill every other player on the server. It does not go over like this. Roleplay ensues. Gays are had. What the fuck why does Ren have a scottish accent--why is he dead--MARTYN WHAT--)

You want wholesome gays with a bit of angst but an overall happy ending that will make you cry???

Watch Mr. Gaming and Scott Smajor's POV

(they live in a flower filled valley in little hobbit holes and they are husbands and they are not going to murder people bc that is not what nice people do and--oh my god did you just fucking kill my husband alright murder is ok--)

You want lighthearted, roleplay light hilarity???

Watch Grian and Scar's POV

(there's a llama named pizza, grian is bloodthirsty and not even on his red life, and scar really just would rather steal cookies and scam ppl out of their nice clothes than kill ppl)

You want somethign I can't even really describe but there's royalty involved?? and people dying for one another and very dramatic rp??

WATCH THE RED KING AND HIS HAND BRING UPON THE RED WINTER

(there's not even an explanation I can give here, I love them, they're killing it)

(there are other awesome ppl on the server but that's who I was mostly watching, also--Maj--to get you invested here's some mostly spoiler free cool fanart to hook you and some shitposts that are hilarious and very accurate <3 XDD)

Be warned tho man,,, that last episode--on anyone's POV alk;jsdf;lajsd it's ajlsd;fkjsad;lfkj just

Ok sleep time now, I had to cuddle a needy puppy like, throughout this whole thing and typed most of it with one hand you would not believe how hard it is to find and link this many things with one hand if you do not click on every single link I will know and I will stab you <3