#it's very cool to have someone engaging so much and so deeply with something i wrote <3

[msmargaretmurry]

Thank you so much for answering all my asks, I get excited for each bit of new info you share (even the heartbreaking ones, LEON, poor thing, it wasn't nice but he really does deserve to act out...) I'm coming to the end of my haw reread (I've been slowing down because I don't want it to end!), and we know that Matthew, between the asg and that final game against Leon, is trying to get over the thing he finally acknowledged was a thing/a thing he wanted... what is Leon up to in this time? (And is there anybody worrying about him the way Brady and Taryn are for Matthew?)

you're very welcome, anon! i'm glad you've been enjoying! ❤

leon during that stretch is up to similar things as matthew, that is, trying to get over it. he's mopey, and he's sad, and nursing a very tender heart, but he's so sure the thing with matthew is over, so he's trying to focus on moving on. just the slow process of trying to let himself heal, which is tough, because on top of being heartbroken he's honestly still kind of worried about matthew, so trying to heal involves hardening himself toward matthew in a way that just doesn't come naturally to him. he's a feelings guy, he's not good at not feeling.

connor fusses over him a bit, obviously, and gives him a place to wallow with with company when he wants that. his other close buddies on the team can see that he's down about something but they don't know the details, and don't do a lot of prying, because leon shrugs off any questions and is honestly pretty good at distracting himself while hanging out with his buddies. the thing is, leon doesn't really need people worrying about him to the extent that matthew's people are worried, because leon is less of a mess lmao. the people close to him aren't NOT worried, because he is clearly bummed out, but it's a different kind of worry. leon has an emotional support system and he's leaning on it, and the people he's leaning on trust him to talk to them if he needs to.

he is not wearing the stl t-shirt anymore, though. he is leaving it in the bottom of his dirty laundry for the foreseeable future.

[thebibliosphere]

How do you deal with going to events with catering (that wedding, presumably) with your very strict dietary requirements? Do they accommodate? Do you bring your own plate? Do you just sit there? If you just sit there, do you do it with a plate of food in front of you, or no plate, or empty plate?

It depends on the wedding, but often, I'm too hard to cater to unless it's being hosted in someone's home, and they're cool with me bringing stuff.

Most venues won't let you bring your own food. The last time I asked why, they told me it was a health and safety issue--which, having worked in catering, I get--I just find it deeply funny, considering if I ate their food, I'd be going for an expensive trip in the wee-woo wagon to the nearest ER. (Not even Disney feels comfortable catering to me, and Disney is ridiculously good about accommodating allergies. The last time we went, I brought a packed lunch into the fancy restaurant and got a thumbs up from Mickey.)

Usually, I'll sit with food in front of me and not touch it. If there's a menu, I tend to get the opposite of whatever @mothman-etd is getting so he can sample both dishes. If I'm sitting with people who don't know me, they tend to leave me alone, but if they ask why I'm not eating, I just say, "Oh, I've been ill." or something to that effect. Usually, it's enough to make people not want to ask more.

If they do pry, or they've heard from someone else that I'm "weird" about food, I'll explain that I've got severe allergies caused by an immune disorder, and the venue couldn't cater to me, but not to worry, I ate plenty before I came. If they keep being rude about it, I shut the conversation down as politely as possible. If that fails, I just stop engaging and pretend I can't hear them.

If they do know me, they know enough not to ask and just let me enjoy spending social time with them without making a big deal out of it. They know it's hard to be included in social interactions when so much of our society revolves around sharing food. It's nice to have people not make a big deal out of it.

[balioc]

Is this a concept-formulation that's already kicking around out there somewhere? It might well be. It feels like the sort of thing that someone would already have developed. But it's new to me, at least, so I'll muddle around with it as best as I can.

On one end of the spectrum, you've got the musical hook. A hook is maybe two seconds of music, if that. And when you hear it, if it's good, you get a concentrated spike of -- oh, yeah, that's the shit right there, this exact experience in this exact moment is fucking awesome. And then, as soon as it's come, it's gone. All you can do is wait for it to come back later in the track, or rewind a few seconds, or maybe just replay that tiny little scrap of music in your head.

The pleasure of a good hook is incredibly condensed. It doesn't even really extend into the rest of the song, let alone into the rest of your life. To experience it, you have to be listening to those exact few bars (if only in your mind). It has no penumbra, no shades-of-experience that color other aspects of your existence. On the other hand, well...when you're listening to those exact few bars, you know it, and it's great. If it's a good enough hook, you kinda just want to listen to it over and over again, like you're popping Pringles or something.

All the way on the other end of the spectrum, you've got something like a traditional-style TTRPG campaign.

Even when it's being run masterfully, a game like D&D has a very low proportion of that's the shit right there moments, and a very high proportion of tedious yak-shaving stuff. Every so often you get your critical success in a high-stakes moment, every so often you get your awesome monologue or your big-drama scene or whatever...but for every moment like that, there's a hundred moments or more of the other stuff. The commonplace D&D play experience is famous for its vast amounts of OOC joking-around, which is not how things look when people are deeply engaged with the art on a moment-by-moment basis. And, of course, not every campaign is run masterfully. Sometimes boredom, or eye-rolling, is what you get in almost every moment.

And yet people love their D&D campaigns, like really incredibly a lot, and are deeply affected by them, and not-uncommonly have their whole lives changed by them.

The correct model here, I think, is that the pleasure generated by that kind of TTRPG experience is super diffuse. It's almost all penumbra. The awesomeness doesn't inhere in any one moment, or even any one scene or any one story arc. It inheres in the broad strokes of the campaign, in the ongoing knowledge that YOU ARE YOUR COOL CHARACTER and you go on a million cool adventures, in the mythos and the running jokes that add up invisibly over time into magic. And it pervades the entirety of your existence. You can think about it when you're lying in your bed, you can chat about it with your friends over lunch, and the awesomeness is just as much there as it is when you're actually playing. Maybe more so.

**********

Once you start looking at art through this variable-diffusion-of-appreciation lens, you can see many different points on the spectrum.

It's obvious that a short story is more concentrated than a novel, which is more concentrated than a series; it's obvious that a movie is more concentrated than a TV show. But it's not just the choice of medium that pushes in one direction or the other. It's a million different choices concerning content and style. Lushly descriptive language, in prose fiction, serves to concentrate the reader's appreciation into the moment of reading -- it forces the expenditure of extra attention for the sake of creating a beautiful mental moment, which in the vast majority of cases will be gone and forgotten almost instantly. Abstracted and philosophical language does the exact opposite, pulling the reader out of the narrative for a little bit for the sake of giving him something to roll around in his head. Suspense, and surprising plot developments, are concentration techniques that can have their full effect only during the transition from unspoiled-to-spoiled (and they serve to emphasize and heighten the moments of that transition). Archetypical, iconic plots are diffusion techniques that trade predictability-in-the-now for satisfaction-in-contemplating-the-story-later.

Sitcoms strike me as being vehicles for diffuse appreciation, to a huge extent, even more than other TV shows of comparable length etc. Much of what makes them good is just the presence of the characters and their distinctive shticks in your mindscape, in a way that builds from episode to episode without any particular grounding in specifics. When I think about a sitcom that I like, I find myself concluding that I like the show overall more than I like any single given episode. Which is weird, right? You'd expect some sort of bell-curve thing where the best episodes, or even the best individual moments, rise up above the averaged-out mass of the whole. But no.

**********

Fannishness is, overall, a very diffuse form of appreciation. This is true in the very-obvious sense that you're enjoying the work during a time when you're not actually consuming the work, by dint of consuming/producing fanworks and talking with other fans etc. But it's also true in the somewhat-less-obvious sense that the enjoyment-of-the-thing usually ends up very unrooted in the specifics of the thing, the plot beats and characterization details and so forth. You have a big beloved vibe, with lots of bits and bobs attached, and you can take the bits and bobs you like best and rearrange them however you like best when you're engaging in fandom.

**********

I believe it is overall true that concentrated appreciation is much more legible than diffuse appreciation. More legible to artists and art theorists, more legible to marketers and consumers. When you talk about art being good or bad or successful or unsuccessful, it's very easy to think in terms of "what is it like to consume this moment-by-moment?", and much harder to think in terms of "how does each piece of the work pervade the whole of the work, and also the general thoughtscape of the consumer?" For this reason, concentration techniques are associated with prestige, and high-prestige analysis tends to focus on a work's ability to generate concentrated appreciation.

...I also believe that different people want to be appreciating art, in the ideal case, at different levels of diffusion. There are people for whom a good artistic experience means lots of crack-hit awesome moments, and others for whom a good artistic experience means getting to live in an infinite penumbra, and others who fall at every point in between.

**********

For reasons I may discuss later, I think this concept-suite is extremely valent to the construction of theater LARPs, and the tension between people who expect more-concentrated enjoyment and people who expect more-diffuse enjoyment is responsible for a lot of the Wars Over What's Good within that sphere.

[thesherrinfordfacility]

im borderline animalistic where the 40s scenes are concerned and i have a lot of feelings about them that deserve a thorough run down now that we've had more delicious🍲 content🍲 and im in full fledged soup mode

ive talked about a lot of these different bits in different posts but i feel it's a good point to pull them altogether and build on them now that we've had more content, so yeah a lot of this will just be me repeating myself

major kudos, thanks, and my eternal soul goes to @theeminentlyimpractical (prev @lalie-go), im convinced someone visited them in the night and bestowed them the true gift of prophecy that in this instance has been the equivalent of pouring kerosene over the dumpster fire that is my brain rn,,,,,, and they're much smarter and more observant than me and that needs celebrating

✨inhale✨

so ive always been intrigued by the juxtaposition of the 1941 church scene and then the 1967 bentley scene from my very first watch of s1 because their tones are so polar opposite to each other.

you have the church scene (specifically the aftermath) which is so tender and revelatory and hesitant, but like in the same way that a baby bird takes flight for the first time. and it's almost voyeuristic in that you literally see the moment where aziraphale realises that he's in love with crowley. that moment is so deeply personal and vulnerable that it's almost painful to watch through the metaphorical keyhole.

it's a huge development moment for many reasons, but for me specifically bc i think aziraphale is somewhat convinced that he's the only one in on this giddy little secret, so he's a bit flirty and heart-eyed at crowley, but whole-pussy convinced that it's just a cutesy lil secret and he's really subtle and crowley won't cotton on.

then we have the bentley scene in '67, and it's so bloody cold, and awkward, and stilted, and almost hurts to watch - it's voyeuristic in a very different, bare way, in that we see aziraphale so closed off from crowley, but unable to help himself in getting involved because if he doesn't, crowley could end up getting seriously hurt, or wind up dead. and that's unthinkable, so aziraphale placates crowley with the holy water (because crowley will just simply get it another way), and controls the situation that way.

in fact, the whole scene is about aziraphale being in control - of the conversation, of the tension, of the entire emotion of the scene - and is in such contrast to the church scene where we see aziraphale as close to out-of-control as we've seen him so far, at least at that point chronologically. crowley attempts to weedle aziraphale into engaging with him, and aziraphale somewhat releases a little, mollifies him with the offer of a picnic or a dinner at the ritz...

and crowley latches onto this, onto this small chance that aziraphale is giving him, almost like he's trying to comfort aziraphale by offering, or trying to make amends for something. but aziraphale is back in control, never having really lost it, and closes off any opportunity of moving forward. he's regretful, we can see that on his face, but he needs to make space for himself, give himself room to breathe - like he's been suffocating.

now we come to what happens between these two points. i thought that something happened during the Dinner of '41, but now im not so sure. this is because it transpires that we have entirely separate scenes in the 40s era apart from the church and the dinner. but starting with the Dinner of '41, we see that aziraphale is coy, and employs his signature look-look-away mannerism which honestly i think is his biggest tell when it comes to crowley.

crowley is so chilled and relaxed in that scene - leaning back at this candlelit dinner, seemingly in his element, as if his inner monologue is just willing him to Be Cool™. im almost wondering if he's observed this candlelit dinner, and how aziraphale's acting, and is interpreting it as aziraphale just being grateful for saving him and his books, and wanting to make up after the holy water argument, no way does it mean anything more than that. but let's face it, crowley has been besotted for literal millennia and will take anything he can get, any scraps aziraphale cares to throw him.

and now that we know there's further 40s content in the form of the windmill theatre, and aziraphale's magic act. there's a few things to remark on that set the scene (once again the vast majority of which stems from lalie so all apollo memes are to be flung their way thanks)

we know that aziraphale performs a magic show at the windmill theatre, and is accompanied backstage by a well dress older woman and vaudeville/burlesque-style dancers

that woman is played by dame siân phillips, and neil alluded that georgia tennant was in discussions for a role which she ultimately turned down as she didn't feel she was the right fit for someone with that amount of historical importance - which points very firmly to this being the same role, and that role being laura henderson (owner of the windmill)

on a similar historical note, the windmill's theatre manager was vivian van damm (advice: read up on him, he was a genius as concerns finding loopholes in indecency laws at the time), who was VP of the London magician's club, and "held charity shows at the Windmill Theatre"

we know that on the set, along with aziraphale being in his magician's outfit and crowley in his 40s outfit, there were extras dressed up in period-appropriate military uniforms

the opening sequenece shows a bus with "Wings for Victory" on the side. WfV Weeks were campaign weeks in the UK during ww2, starting in march 1943, where each county (US translation in case it gets confused: counties in the UK are almost like states in the US) was essentially set with a target to raise money for the war effort (specifically RAF i think?) and would have competitions with each other to raise the most.

so i feel at this point it can be reliably surmised that WfV was running, a couple of years after the Dinner of '41, and aziraphale (probably having fallen in love with magic after coming across this magician's club of van damm's), get roped into doing a WfV performance at the Windmill.

where is crowley in this, you ask? well he could very well have just seen aziraphale advertised as an act, or if they're still on good speaking terms aziraphale may have simply told him. i feel though that is almost an unspoken hobby of aziraphale's, judging by the crowley s1 reaction to aziraphale liking magic, and ordinarily crowley wouldn't be caught dead discorporated going to a magic show.

now a couple of years previous, we hear glozier say to crowley, "anthony j. crowley! your fame precedes you". but why? why is crowley famous? it doesn't strike me as quite right that crowley is a secret agent or anything, however much a bond nerd he is. but it is the kind of area where i could imagine crowley gets caught up in... so what if he has a job in the heart of soho as (and stick with me here)... a bouncer?! think about it - working hands-on in a sordid, seedy theatre (at least that's how he would spin it to hq) but gets to be outright fiendish to any patrons getting a little too frisky? i think it's PERFECT but whatever-

in any case, i feel like this would just be one of those brilliant coincidences where aziraphale and crowley have an it's always sunny moment, a hilarious double take at each other in the theatre, but aziraphale is quickly whisked off to get ready and get on stage, but not a moment before my boy absolutely bricks it as he's about to go on (this screenshot seriously sends me each time it's so funny). i truly believe that a lot of dutch courage was drunk and a lot of miracles were employed that night haha

so fast forward post performance, and we get this utterly adorable shit being cutesy in his dressing room, congratulating himself on a job well done, spinning around in his lil feather boa, adrenaline (or whatever the angelic equivalent is) pumping, heart racing, just being a complete diva. its aziraphale's world and we're just living in it:

and then crowley comes in, still completely bemused as to what he's just witnessed, and maybe not expecting to encounter an incandescent, bubbling, and probably bladdered af angel spinning around in a fluffy feather boa dancing his approximation of the can-can. aziraphale whirls around, "CROWLEY!!! DID YOU SEE ME?! 💃", and starts blathering about how it all went and how it was so nerve wracking but once he got in the swing of it it was perfect and amazing and oh crowley did you see it, did you see me-

all the while getting crowley (who btw feels like he's just stepped into the twilight zone and not quite sure what to do with himself) totally covered in feathers and, and-

now idk if i feel like anything zesty happening between the two of them would be hugely out of character. and it probably is, and ive probably just provided the fodder material for about a thousand fics, but look if im right in this, im never shutting up about it as long as i fucking live-

what if then aziraphale in his alcohol-fuelled joy just leaps at crowley? huge smothering hug, feather boa and all, and is just essentially vibrating with the happiness and pride and whimsy? and he does that coquettish look-look-away thing that he does? and crowley - oh, crowley my baby boy - knows he should probably slam that pause button because this angel is utterly soused and definitely is not thinking straight... but just wants to soak up how happy and flirty aziraphale is right now? yum up another scrap tossed in his direction, but potentially misreads it all a little bit wrong, and try to take the next step? and aziraphale-

aziraphale very quickly sobers up, entirely miracle-less, and just gets the tiniest bit (see: fucking horrendously) spooked? WOAH this is a bit beyond where i wanted to go? no crowley, we can't do this? i can't do this? im still an angel and im not ready for this?

and someone walks in - it's not aziraphale's dressing room after all. we know from the opening sequence that there's a box in the theatre (which i think is just the artistic depiction of the dressing room scene, not an actual box), from which we see a figure lurking behind aziraphale just as they pull away...

im fully aware that this is completely theoretical and equally improbable but huns my purpose on this site is to provide unhinged commentary as content gets released and ill be DAMNED if anyone says I don't deliver ✨

is this what happens? that there's a very hurried, guilty shuffle away from each other, a very deliberate effort on aziraphale's part not to look at crowley, and a hasty and frightened exit from aziraphale just as crowley is about to apologise? he only just got his angel back after the holy water tantrum, and he's already pushed him away again, by going too fast?

(SIGH EDIT: so i guess the above paragraph does happen but it's got me wondering if the people that interrupt them are glozier and harmony fresh off the national express coach from hell? idk it still kinda fits? tentative but plausible (lmao this sums up my approach to gomens speculation, tentative but plausible))

[max1461]

I've said this before, but there is a basic fact (ok, it's actually a subjective judgement, but I think one so widespread that it could almost be called a fact) that I think the world would be better off if more people were comfortable acknowledging, and it's this: violence is really bad, but also kind of cool.

Almost everyone acknowledges at least one half of this. I've never seen someone who appears to believe that violence is totally fine but also sort of boring. So when people fail to acknowledge this, it's usually in the form of accepting one half of the statement and not the other—generally because they appear to contradict each other, even though they actually don't.

Anyway, if you believe that violence is bad and therefore not cool, not something to be appreciated aesthetically, then you run into a tension with the undeniable desire that many people have engage with violence in some capacity. Even people who would never in their lives commit real violence often enjoy violent stories, or seek out simulations of violence of varying degrees of fidelity. This is the need that many sports serve, as well as much BDSM and various other things. If you are committed to denying the aesthetic merits of violence, you run the risk of

feeling unnecessary shame or guilt over your own aesthetic attraction to violence,

shaming, guilty, or needlessly pathologizing other people for this aesthetic attraction, despite it being extremely widespread and not inherently harmful,

needlessly narrowing the breadth of human experience that you allow to yourself and others by denying this avenue of aesthetic expression,

and, maybe worst of all,

fostering social norms which fail to sufficiently distinguish fictional and simulated violence from real violence.

This last scenario can result in various harmful outcomes. At least some people will seek out outlets for their interest in violence one way or another, and even if they themselves would be contented with fiction or safe simulation, a lack of clear delineation makes them more likely to end up in the proximity of people who are comfortable with the real deal. As a result, they may either come to harm themselves or end up having real violence normalized for them.

A failure of delineation between truly violent acts and mere interest in violence also makes it more difficult to clearly talk about violence in terms of the harm that it does. A lot of people phrase their opposition to violence in terms of some sort of vague "ick factor" (something, I should note, very easy to weaponize against marginalized people), and I think this failure of delineation is part of why. Disconcerting ideas are conflated with harmful actions, and thus "harm" and "disconcertingness" themselves and conflated. Or maybe the causality runs the other way, I don't know. Anyway, it's important to keep distinctions clear in one's mind, that's the point.

On the other hand, if you accept that violence is kinda cool but deny that violence is bad, well... I think the problems are obvious. I mean. You might be inclined to do violence that way, which is not good. I don't think this point needs much more elaboration.

It also seems to me that there are a lot of people who nominally believe that violence is bad, who would claim to be against it, but don't really hold this position very deeply. There may be all kinds of reasons for this. Anyway, if you're that kind of person, and you are suddenly find yourself desirous to do violence (either for the above-mentioned aesthetic reasons or out of a genuine desire to cause harm to others), I think it can be easy to turn around and find lots and lots of "exceptions" to your original position, which free up your conscience to enact or advocate violence in many circumstances. This is, I think, a big part of the explanation behind what I'd like to call the "unthoughtful revolutionism" of many online political opinion-havers (left and right), and also maybe plays a role in callout culture and so on.

And anyway, I've also been using terms like "simulated violence" and "real violence" a little too cavalierly here, I think. I mean, people actually do get concussions from playing football. MMA is nominally simulated violence, but, like, holy shit have you seen that shit? It's scary. So I think the line in inherently fuzzy, and one does have to be careful. The deciding ethical factor in any given instance may indeed not be if the violence is "real" (this may be impossible to deduce), but whether there's consent, or informed consent, or proper safety precautions, or whatever. Significant thought does indeed need to go into this kind of thing, and I think "well, it's not real violence, so it's fine" could indeed be a thought-terminating cliché. But in my experience (obviously biased by various factors), the much more common thought-terminating cliché is something to the effect of "why would anyone enjoy that, it's so violent?" and I think this does more harm than good.

[kiwiana-writes]

okay I just have to say this. like I know it's kinktober but I'm sorry alex and henry love each other??? there's no way they'd enjoy things like free use. I think your writing is amazing and I love that you write them loving each other and not being all degrading and stuff but yeah

*Aaron Burr voice* ...okay, so we're doing this.

First of all: You did not, under any circumstances, "just have to say this". You literally didn't. You read something on AO3 that you didn't enjoy, either followed the link to my tumblr or already follow me on here idk, clicked the link to send an ask, wrote out this little kinkshaming tantrum, toggled anon on, and hit send. Those are all choices you made. Own them. As someone who is an asshole at least 40% of the time, you've gotta own when you're being an asshole. Trust me.

Second of all: You are, very genuinely, welcome to interpret/headcanon Alex and Henry's sex life however you want. I feel like this sounds like sarcasm through text, but I mean it. My interpretation of them as people who would be into some freaky stuff is no more or less valid than someone who thinks they never do anything more hardcore than that necktie after the gala in Berlin. If the characterisation doesn't land for you, then it doesn't land for you. That's cool. Not all fic will work for all readers.

Third of all: From the bottom of my heart, fuck off.

The back button exists for a reason. It has existed for at least the length of kinktober 2023, I assure you. You are not, at any point, required to engage any further with a fanfic that you are not vibing with, whether that's because of the premise or the characterisation or the writing style or any other reason. But by the same token, writers are not required to write the things that cater to your sensibilities specifically. There is so much tender lovemaking out there for this pairing. A lot of it is excellent. Go find it and enjoy.

But more than that... I don't know how to tell you that a whole bunch of real life people get off on a whole bunch of stuff that isn't romantic and sanitised, and a whole bunch of people explore those things inside of relationships in which they are very much in love, and those two things are only connected insofar as loving someone makes it easier to trust them with the weirder parts of yourself. Real life people who are deeply in love with their partners get off on free use, or being verbally degraded, or being slapped, or any number of other things that may yuck your personal yum. Unless you're fucking them, it has less than nothing to do with you. Get over it.

[ananicoleta]

hiii! character ask questions here! 6 and 25 for bugs bunny (*￣︶￣*)

Hiiii! Thanks for the ask! 🫶

6. What is something you have in commom with this character?

Hmm. Not many things actually. Bugs and I aren't really alike if I think about it. I guess I can relate to the fact that he's a simple guy who just wants to live and enjoy a simple life, to just have fun. That's how I am too for the most part. I don't want a luxorious life, I just want a nice one. The difference between my life and Bugs' is that he somehow always manages to get into the most absurd and tangled situations whereas my existence remains pretty uneventful for the most part.😂

(I would also maybe, MAYBE say that, just like Bugs, I get angry whenever I witness an injustice. The reason I am hesitant to say this is because I don't see Bugs as necessarily being justice-driven. He is a nice guy who sometimes feels bad about others and will try to help them, especially if he percieves them as being more helpless than he is. I identify with that. But he is also very quick to get revenge and very ruthless when he does so, sometimes going to far, so I'm kinda meh about this. Bugs, like I said before, just wants to live his life and doesn't go out of his way to bring justice or fight corrupt systems or whatever. I see myself as more of an activist, more outspoken about these issues and more driven to fix them than him.)

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

At first, I really saw Bugs as this untouchable really cool guy, who never took anyone's bullshit, was perfectly capable of defending himself and of making a complete fool out of anyone who crossed him because he was always ten steps ahead of them. At the same time, he wasn't an asshole because he had a strict sense of morality, an intolerance for injustice and corruption and a tendency to help others in need. Basically, in my eyes he was almost perfect, his only flaw in my view being his slightly inflated ego (but I saw that ego as being sort of justified seeing as he was Bugs freaking Bunny).

Now my view of him is much more nuanced. I certainly don't see him as being almost perfect. He is actually, from what I've noticed, deeply flawed.

A lot of Bugs' power rests in his image and the way he crafts it. He is not as untouchable as he claims to be. He actually fears being alone and forgotten. In Space Jam 2 we can see this fear. He can't function without other toons to engage with, without an audience to applaud him, without someone to laugh at his jokes and humour him. He needs that validation because deep down he's actually very afraid and not at all as confident as he seems (this can be a result from his rocky beginning as a character aka the trauma he suffered in the first years of his creation, with him being a copy of Daffy at first, not being liked by the audience, almost being scrapped away and finally, being redesigned and starring in 'A Wild Hare' in 1940 -- which is considered to be his actual debut -- and being a huge hit).

Secondly, Bugs has a really elevated view of himself. At first, I thought that he truly was a "noble" character, but that doesn't really apply to him. He thinks of himself as being a nice guy -- which to an extent he is -- but he is actually much more selfish that he likes to admit and can be very ruthless when he wants too. This can be seen especially in his earlier shorts when he was a literal menace to society. Then in his later cartoons he became calmer, more contained, more calculated. He began thinking about his image more and how he can manipulate it in order to make himself seem the best and the coolest in the room. Not to say that Bugs doesn't have morals, that his values are inconsistent or flighty. He deffinetly has a moral system and he sticks by it. However, he thinks he is a much better person than he is, which makes him feel justified whenever he gets revenge.

Not to mention how emotionally constipated he is. Look at 'Looney Tunes: Back in Action', where this is shown very well. Daffy means the world to him, that's clear, and he would literaly realign the stars for him -- except he can't say that out loud. He has to act like he doesn't car, like he's too cool to care (nit to memtion tbat everything with Daffy is a power game, a competition and he can't risk losing it by being vulerable, open and sincere). He himself doesn't even know/can't articulate what he's feeling because, if we look past his ability to read people very well, then Bugs isn't really good with feelings. (This movie also ephasizes his selfishness once again -- he wants Daffy back because he misses him, but he dpesm't really consider the duck's demands of an improvement)

Wow, I really went off om that last one huh? Go figure. My point: at first, my perception of Bugs was more simple and it reduced him to a seemingly flawless but, at the same time, one-dimentional character. Now, however, I see him for the flawed but not dislikable character that he is: a huge ego but no aspiration for fame or fortune, a well-defined set of morals that he truly believes in but a manipulative and vindictive nature, an unbelievable calmness that restrains the mischiveous soul of a prankster, an almost perfect image that hides a lot of secret fears, insecurities and feelings. He is a very complex character indeed and I love him for it. :)

[luvtonique]

Sometimes I wanna administer my services as a person who just asks questions to creative writers to help them write.

I just watched a looping cartoon where a cyborg girl on low battery power is panicking due to that fact. Her battery runs out, and an automatic solar charger on her body recharges her enough for her to wake back up.

In this loop, the overlying conflict is "Low Battery," so you'd think the character on screen would be doing something to conserve battery power.

However, she focuses on fixing her voice module (likely because the animator wanted to do a cool little voice modulation thing where her vocal clarity is awful at first and slowly becomes more clear), and then starts to attempt to repair her missing leg before running out of battery power.

I know it's not some kind of masterful piece of creative writing that's supposed to be deeply engaging, it's just a little looping 40-ish second animation someone made.

But I just sat there with an eyebrow raised like a Dreamworks character and went "Now wait just a second, this plot makes no sense"

Why would she fix her voice module if she's alone?

Why would she try to repair her leg if her missing ARM might be a more functionally useful thing to repair in her current state?

Why wouldn't she do LITERALLY ANYTHING TO CONSERVE HER BATTERY POWER?

And most importantly, why would she be panicking if she very clearly has a solar charger that activates automatically upon her running out of battery power?

Again, I get it, it's not meant to be anything more than an artsy little looping animation, but these are things I swear to God so few writers even consider. If you're going to introduce a conflict that's the entire plot of something, why would you make the character(s) just completely ignore the conflict and panic about entirely unrelated things?

If there's a safety net that's in place specifically to prevent the conflict, why make the character(s) panicking?

Like why do so few people ask these questions???

I had a friend who had an android OC that had depression, and I asked them "Why did someone program them to have depression?" to which they replied "Oh, because they're a brain in a robotic body."

I then looked at some of their example art and pointed to an instance of them downloading a "personality matrix" that made them into an obedient pet-play kink character, and I went "So you've clearly established they can download new personalities, so why wouldn't they download something to cure their depression? You've shown that your character is constantly sad, constantly complaining about their mental health, constantly being used as vent-art for your real life mental issue, but you've also established in-canon that your character can easily fix that problem. So why don't they?"

They then responded by stating the pet-play part was no longer canon, because "Make an android OC with depression" was more important to them than thinking logically about the canon they've created. It just baffled me, and still does.

People are so much more concerned about creating a character that fits some kind of label or opinion or self-insert than they are about actually utilizing their own established canons to create potential resolutions for character conflict.

People don't want character growth, they want a walking symbol representing something they believe or some archetype they find attractive, and they want that character to never change, never improve and never overcome any issues they have because doing any of those things would change their character.

Am I just incapable of writing brief posts

[antiv3nom]

ive been enabled so im making a new post for it <3 n e ways welcome to my list of what characters the straw hats would play in guilty gear strive

luffy - sin kiske/may

ok first of all im entirely biased but luffy would fucking LOVE sin, like the bit of him eating to get buffs would DEEPLY entertain luffy (although he'd use it entirely way too much and get blown up for it)

but for both characters, i think he'd be a big fan of doing like one hit and a simple combo and absolutely DESTROYING someone's health bar, which fits for both of these. he wouldn't be very GOOD at the game because he wouldn't be able to sit still and wait for openings or anything of the sort but boy would he be great at corner pressure (until he gets dp'd)

zoro - nagoriyuki

i swear to you im not just giving the sword guy the sword guy (although that's certainly a factor because i bet you that'd influence zoro's character decision) but like. zoro is also the type to want to do one combo that does a ton of damage

i think he'd be moderately better than luffy and defense and neutral though, being able to open people up with pokes (cough cough beyblade cough cough), but he'd CONSTANTLY spend too much blood, although he plays surprisingly well inside of blood rage

nami - asuka r#

nami is the type to want to stand on one side of the screen with her opponent on the other side of the screen and just shoot so many fucking cubes at them honestly. plus i think she'd be really great at keeping track of spells and resources while she plays

however if u can get in on her? it's over, she has negative defense and constantly flails and mashes her way to death, but otherwise she's a pretty solid player. also, im a wizard's whimsy believer regarding nami so. asuka!

usopp - happy chaos/axl low

usopp is ALSO a zoner main but like. to the fucking extreme. hes GOING to guard crush loop you from across the entire screen hes GOING to rensen your ass for a whole round hes GOING to be sent through the fucking wall if you close in on him

sanji - giovanna

ok so i actually think this is a cool decision because like. we see gio use her hands in like...2? 3? of her moves? like its 5p 2p and 6p and thats about it. and its GIVING SANJI!!!!

i do think that sanji would have fun playing a rushdown character but also he'd get so good at playing defense bc he doesnt want to let gio get harmed

chopper - jack-o' valentine

CHOPPER WOULD HAVE A FUCKING BLAST PLAYING JACK-O'!!!!! i dont think hed be good at strive by a long stretch but hed LOVEEEE controlling the goobers and all the silly animations hed be having the time of his life

the ASSUMPTION might be faust but i think chopper finds him too creepy to enjoy playing him regularly

robin - anji

robin is a fucking MASTER in neutral i am convinced of this, specifically that she can just. get her opponent to do what she wants. so easily. and then she uses spin and kills them! as is her right!!!

this one is more vibes than anything but i do think she'd enjoy spin and counter as moves to just fuck with her opponent in a major way, plus anji just being a graceful motherfucker

franky - potemkin/goldlewis dickinson

franky doesnt want to play your silly little game. he doesnt want to hold your mix, he doesnt want to set up oki, he doesnt want to play neutral, he wants to KILL YOU AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE

this isnt how he approaches things in life but i think theres something about strive that would just make him want to do the biggest damage possible with the least amount of hits and he'd want to land every fucking pot buster and behemoth typhoon to ever exist. unfortunately this means he wouldnt entirely be engaging with the strategy side of the game and would frequently be blown up but if he can get one grab on you hes happy.

brook - i-no

look. ok. the music connection is awesome and i think brook would enjoy mixing you into oblivion but. i have never met an i-no player who doesnt play her at least in part because she's hot. and thats absofuckinglutely how brook would choose who he plays LMAO

like its JUST the nature of the world. but in terms of gameplay yeah i think he'd like flitting around the screen with her hoverdash and divekicks and he'd have so much fun with her pressure and mix

jinbe - sol badguy

ok for legal reasons i have to specify that like i have met jinbe and know him im thr series but not super well so take my opinions with a grain of salt. but anyways i think jinbe would have a lot of fun with sol, he feels like the type who wouldnt like play strive much on his own but REALLY get into it when playing with other people, and i need him to experience the euphoria of hitting a clean hit hvv or getting a wallbounce combo

i also think he's another fan of doing a shit ton of damage all at once but i think he's willing to do some comboing and some setups to get there, and i think he's get REALLY fucking good at stagger pressure it would be scary

[ot3]

i was wondering if youre so inclined if u would mind explaining whats so good about disco elysium? all i ever see ppl say is that its communist and theres old gay men which is like. well cool but that doesnt tell me anything about it actually. it seems like a lot of reading but its not like thats stopped me before (<- read all of orv on your reccommendation and hasnt stopped thinking about it since)

disco elysium is just a really meaningful piece of work. For starters, the prose is beautiful when it's not being funny as well, the world is rich and intricate and fully believable, and the characters are deeply compelling. Disco Elysium has you playing as an amnesiac detective coming out of the tail end of a more or less suicidally thorough bender a completely different person. It's up to you to pick what kind of person he is, but you can't choose to be Not a fuckup. You're still just a fuckup. You're always a fuckup.

I really found the way disco elysium dealt with mental illness to be super refreshing and honestly the most cathartic almost any media has been on the subject, for my personal tastes. I find a lot of media where mental illness comes into play leans either too indulgent or too saccharine for me. By indulgent i mean it really wants you to buy into How Sad we're supposed to feel about our character's mental state. And by saccharine I mean stuff that's focused almost exclusively in portraying mental illness in an almost hurt/comfort way, for lack of a better term. Disco elysium is not about the poignant, tragic beauty of mental illness nor is it about taking this character on a journey of Coping and Healing, although you could definitely play it closer to one way or another. Disco elysium is a game about being at war with your own brain and body, but also you still also need to work because. Well. It's your job, dipshit. It's humorous, it's crass, it's completely off the wall, capable of balancing the absurd and mundane in severe extremes to result in the realest feeling portrayal of mental illness I've come across. It handles addiction in what I'm sure is a similar way, but I can't speak as much on that subject because I don't have any firsthand experience with being an addict despite my best attempts to develop some sort of chemical dependency in the last two years.

But also yes, the game is very much about communism. Everyone saying that is absolutely correct but I think it's hard for people who haven't played it to understand just how About Communism it is. The author of the game and the novella its based off of is a self-proclaimed communist from estonia. This is not a western perspective on communism, nor is it a truly soviet one. It's a perspective on communism from someone who grew up in a country that was occupied by the soviet union multiple times and only regained its independence in 1991. It's a really fascinating thing to engage with because it just approaches politics so differently than any western stuff I've seen.

The game is in many ways miserably depressing and wholly pessimistic, but it's not the pessimism of the truly misanthropic doomer, it's the kind of pessimism you find in someone who is looking for any reason not to be pessimistic and just not finding any. It's a narrative that looks into it's main character, and looks into it's own world and is desperately searching for any reason to believe there's hope there and coming up empty handed every time but, god damn it, still looking. I think that right now something with that sort of message is important. It's a piece of writing that says to it's audience 'things are bad and getting worse, and we can't pretend otherwise, but this is your world. live in it.' And also it's really fucking funny. It's really one of those things I think as many as people a possible should experience. You won't find anything else like it in the world right now.

[poppy5991]

Moral Injury in MHA:

Moral injury isn’t really commonly addressed in media outside of shows on combat vets, so it’s really cool to see how well it’s written. It’s very common, almost ubiquitous, in those of us who worked the pandemic.

So first off, what’s moral injury?

Here’s an entry from the national center for PTSD: (TLDR: A moral injury is where your moral framework is shattered when you witness or are asked to carry out tasks that conflict with your core beliefs.)

“In traumatic or unusually stressful circumstances, people may perpetrate, fail to prevent, or witness events that contradict deeply held moral beliefs and expectations. Individuals may also experience betrayal from leadership, others in positions of power or peers that can result in adverse outcomes. Moral injury is the distressing psychological, behavioral, and social aftermath of exposure to such events.

In order for moral injury to occur, the individual must feel like a transgression occurred and that they or someone else crossed a line with respect to their moral beliefs. Guilt, shame, disgust and anger are some of the hallmark reactions of moral injury (e.g., "I did something bad.", "I am bad because of what I did.")…Another hallmark reaction to moral injury is an inability to self-forgive, and consequently engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors (e.g., feeling like you don't deserve to succeed at work or relationships).

Lady Nagent:

I adore this character and her whole arc is a metaphor for moral injury in first responders.

With Lady Nagent, we see both sides of moral injury. Not only is she asked to act against her morals in line of duty, she also experiences having her views about humanity/the world shifted toward the extreme negative.

(This is called a trauma stuck point. So for example:

People are mostly good, but sometimes make mistakes or act out of fear. -> Everyone is capable of horrible evil and people inherently can’t be trusted.)

Hawks:

We also see this in Hawks when he is asked by the commission to infiltrate the LOV. These are both characters who are asked to violate their principles in the line of duty and they both suffer for it psychologically.

There’s also some of this in Iida’s arc with Stain, but not as much as we see with these two^

In combat vets, moral injury is often associated with wartime experiences. But it is also common in healthcare: for example seeing hospital admin sacrifice patient care/safety, having to bite your tongue because facts that can save lives become politically unpopular, or having to work way outside your scope of practice.

Or in other cases, having to provide services to people you find objectionable. A common one in natural disaster response is having to put sex offenders (legally must be sheltered, but can’t be put in a congregate setting with access to kids) up in hotels while children sleep in cots.

[not-poignant]

You have a very broad readership; do you still, like most ao3 writers, use writing as a way to make friends? If so, how do you manage both to make connections and keep from uncomfortable parasocial engagements?

(admitting: I like your work a lot, I have a similar interest in writing trauma and recovery, I would like to befriend you, but I don't want to bother you bc lots of people want to be friend with writers they like and there's no way you'd have energy for all of them!)

Hi hi anon,

So...this response might be disappointing, but I didn't use fanfiction writing as a way of making friends. That's not why I started, and it's never been the reason for me to be in fandom.

(Thoughts about friendship and stuff under the read more, it's pretty personal so no obligation to read. The TL;DR is I am bad at friendship and I also am not like 'most AO3 writers' (is that really why most AO3 writers write?) in the sense that I never wrote fanfiction as a way to make friends and it's very weird to me sometimes that people actually do this as a motive).

When I turned up in fandom, it was a very private experience for me. I didn't know anyone else locally who shared the same fandom/s I do. When I shared fanfiction on Livejournal, I did so to complete strangers who I never got to know better, or to people who were already friends through other interests.

I've never gone to fandom conventions (there's few here, and I have severe social anxiety. By the time I thought about going I was in my late 30s, and just felt like I'd be too much of an outsider even among fellow outsiders - again, I shared almost no fandoms or ships with anyone I knew locally, and no one I'm friends with / know in person reads my fanfiction). Fandom was always an incredibly isolated experience for me.

When I joined AO3, it wasn't with a view to making friends. I was extremely burnt out, I'd quit my previous job as a professional artist because I couldn't see a way of making the income work out, and I just wanted to write a very angst-filled story that would help me deal with my loneliness which I didn't see as something that would ever change. Writing about a character who's experienced centuries of loneliness was like 'cool, yeah, I'm gonna write about him.'

I did end up making friends, but it was kind of by accident! And not all of those experiences were positive. One person in particular became quite toxic and cruel towards me, and I experienced my first kind of encounter with...I guess what I would call the uglier side of fandom life and also just friendship and relationships. It took me a long time to recover from that experience (and to learn what emotional abuse is), and after that I shut down and stopped kind of making friends on the internet.

I have made friends through the writing since (they're usually the mutuals I also have on Instagram, or here, or people I've DMed in Discord etc.), but I haven't really sought it out actively and I think anyone who knows me well enough that we've private messaged a few times, also knows that I'm quite aloof and reserved, and that I will engage quite deeply sometimes but then disappear for a few months (or years) re: communication, which is a remnant of a period of time where I used to get sometimes 200 Whatsapp messages in 5 minutes from someone who expected me to be accountable to her every second of every day when she was awake and wanted me to be.

On top of like, severe social anxiety + PTSD, and being very reserved in general, I would also say I'm very time poor. I don't have much time for the friends I already have and care about. I often view myself as quite a poor friend, who is not good at starting and even worse at maintaining connections. I'm also very private. As in, I will happily tell the world I have PTSD. But I won't tell my friends in a private conversation when I'm having a bad night, and I don't give friends many opportunities to connect. Even with really close friends, this is an ongoing issue that I'm working on.

So as for befriending, that's extremely sweet of you anon, but who I am in my personal life is sometimes very different to like... the way I can respond in comments or to anons, because it's actually easier for me to talk to strangers sometimes than it is for me to talk to friends, lol. I honestly think some of the people I consider my friends don't even know that I do, because I don't really behave like one. I chat online regularly to one person only, and one other person intermittently (and they're a romantic partner) and that's it. Everyone else I chat to pretty rarely in DM. But I do turn up in the Fae Tales Discord every day.

I don't actually think lots of people want to be my friend, tbh? Not in a 'woe is me' way, but simply because I think some people do grok that kind of... polite distance or that sort of warm 'I care for a lot of people but I am also quite personally walled off' kind of way. The good news is a lot of the folks in the Fae Tales Discord also share a lot of interest in writing trauma and recovery, or have those experiences, and I know a lot of good friends have been made within the like...faedom itself. A lot of neurodivergent, trauma-focused folks have met each other through this writing, and it's really cool seeing the different friendships that have sparked up between people. There's a lot of extremely like... skilled, talented, interesting people that I've met through this job, who I admire, respect and want the best for, and am very happy to talk to.

But yeah I'm a bit difficult to befriend, anon, and that's been an ongoing thing all my life, tbh. But it did specifically get worse in fandom because of some early fandom experiences when I started out in Rise of the Guardians fanfiction.

[arrgh-whatever]

Hi!

Honestly, I would like to name all the numbers, but that wouldn't be a good idea

So 16, 23, 25 for Maric and 2, 12, 14 for Pauk please. I hope that not too much questions

(my eyes hurt again so unfortunately there will be no drawings.. just lots of text)

16. What is your OC's pain tolerance like?

Very high. This happened due to the huntings and trainings his grandfather was taking him to in his early years. When Maric was hurt it was celebrated as a very good thing. So this is just how his brain developed. A shorter answer - he's sadomasochistic.

23. What emotion is the hardest for your OC to process? How about express?

The hurt from betrayal. When The Wanderer left his side he felt confused because in his head this wasn't even a possibility. He rarely likes anyone and respects even fewer but when he does it's genuine and he's convinced that these people like and respect him the same (if not more).

It's not the first time he had to go through this and like the first time he decides to switch to other thoughts and feelings rather than trying to figure what went wrong.

On the outside he also seems indifferent but will try to avoid the topic and will be less engaged in his usual activities for some time.

25. What is your favorite thing about your OC?

He's not a very complex villain but his hunger for superiority delights me. He needs to feel special because he was raised as "special and talented" and now he constantly needs to fill this hole.

Also his design. He has a little white heart on his behind like he's a plush toy for absolutely no reason. It's not even visible in the story. I just like the fact that it's there.

-------------------------------------------------

2. What's something about your OC that people wouldn't expect just from looking at them?

He's sensitive. He looks very calm but every comment and every joke on him hurts him deeply and stays in his mind for a very long time. The Wanderer's playful behaviour and blunt jokes seem to only annoy him but they in fact hurt him. (And I don't think The Wanderer sees it. He thinks they're cool and doesn't seem to realize that Pauk's not just peeved, he sincerely hates him)

He is but it's not conscious. He's tired of feeling guilty and scared his whole life so now he seeks freedom. He genuinely wants to feel better and have a better life he just doesn't know how.

12. Is your OC self-destructive? In what ways?

He figured if he'll stop bottling up his anger and will go against everything that made him miserable he'll finally find happiness.

Unfortunately it's just destroying his whole life and makes him feel even worse.

( He's a sweet domestic kitten and just needs someone to share his troubles with :( )

He wants to be just seen at least.

14. How does your OC want to be seen by other characters?

I think he wants to seem interesting enough to talk to. He doesn't have any big goals. Maybe just a bit more respected by some individuals.

[galactic-pirates]

Something I don’t see talked about (and yes I know that’s a loaded opening sentence but I have feelings so I’m going to ramble) is how it feels to come to art late.

Like people throw out examples like George Clooney being 40 or something? Or Samuel L Jackson, or you know there are many, of people who came into something older and then were fantastic at it. It’s like a “it’s never too late” reassurance and ok cool, cool, but that doesn’t really help.

I didn’t draw as a kid. I hated art class at school because they didn’t teach. I wouldn’t know how to get the effect I wanted and given no guidance (but plenty of “that’s not what I wanted” criticism). If I found a workaround it was wrong. Like I spent a ridiculous amount of time drawing a model train once by measuring every single line. Best drawing I did as a kid but my teacher told me I was never to do that again as I should spend no more than an hour on the homework.

Part of this was probably being undiagnosed autistic. I need structure and rules and I need to understand. I can’t just experiment how I probably should. So I internalised the “I am not artistic, I have no artistic flair” and I didn’t doodle or decorate. I would be envious of the other kids who did. My notes always looked so boring. We didn’t do art at home. Mum always tells the story of how she was excluded from art class at school for “being a waste of public resources” and so is adamant she can’t draw.

For some reason at 19 I decided I wanted to draw. But again with an undiagnosed autistic need for things to be “right” and obviously any lines I made were ‘wrong’, plus the computer was where I sought answers I fell very quickly into tracing photographs. That was a huge mistake because it taught me nothing and only made it worse if I tried to draw without the crutch - as obviously that was much much worse in comparison.

You see I didn’t have the willingness to draw something awful that little kids have (because to them it isn’t awful) and I judged myself so so harshly. I wanted to draw what I imagined and I found workarounds, like modelling programs to make my own pose references, or smushing multiple references together - I still do this and I absolutely hate it. It doesn’t help but it’s like that bandaid trying to hold a water leak back - it’s better than what I can do without it, so I keep going back for fan events etc. as I feel if I’m gifting someone something it needs to be the best I can do (and merlin knows I am deeply ashamed of what I have posted for past exchanges, 30+ hours or not of effort it was baaaad).

A few years ago I decided enough was enough and I needed to “go back to basics” and get away from the computer. I have got a ridiculous number of courses from places like Udemy/Domestika and enough art supplies to open a small store. I talk a good game - I can sound like I know - but my hand does not.

The problem with the YouTube videos or the courses is these people are skilled - obviously, I mean that’s the point - but sometimes they will show their “old art” from when they were 13 or something and it’s better than what I can do now, or maybe at 9 or something it was about the same but that’s 9 - I’m going to be 34 this year.

I’m still that kid that wants to be told what steps to take. I am still flailing and I still don’t know how best to move forward. Worse I am not a kid and so I feel ashamed I guess. And I’m also alone because there is no actual person I can talk to. I have looked into in person art classes but there’s nothing suitable. I need to find a path forward.

But to circle back to “coming into art late”. I’m 33 and surrounded by so much inspiration (I see art and I so desperately want to be able to make something half that good). But that’s a curated thing because people only post their good stuff (obviously) and so I don’t want to post my shitty stuff so I can’t engage with “art tumblr” or whatever, and I’ve never been good at engaging anyway. I have always felt like an outsider in every community I have tried to join. Plus with fucking AI I don’t want to post my stuff online (although it’s so bad if it did get scraped it would probably act like poison).

So yeah basically flailing and lonely.

It’s deeply demoralising and frustrating. I have never put in the practice time that I should have but that is more to do with my chronic mental health issues than anything - but that then compounds the age problem as I am not 19 any longer. It has been getting on for 15 years - actually I hate putting it like that because then I have to see that I have been wanting to draw for nearly half my life and I have still not managed it. I am still flailing around near the starting line.

Anyway yeah I just feel like nobody talks about being older, and still being shitty at things, and how damn lonely and scary that is. I get majorly stressed out everytime I try and do “serious learning” as I guess it’ll take time and I will be shitty for a lot longer. Maybe there’s also a point here about adulthood and immediate gratification I don’t know. I just know I wish for the impossible to be able to be the child I never was I guess, to start art when people are supposed to - as a kid - and get this stage done and so I can be better. Is that just me wanting to skip the work? Maybe I don’t know.

It’s as I said - I have feelings.

[inlocusmads]

You've talked about Nora's favorite movies, but what the ones she has never understood the appeal of?

Thanks for the ask!! There are a few films that Nora doesn't understand the appeal behind; most of the stuff she sees she kind of gets it even if she knows isn't for her, but when Nora's a hater, she's a hardcore hater.

Starting off strong with Titanic (1997) She gets the film - it's a doomed love story, yada-yada-yada but it isn't for her. She couldn't really get behind the romance, she doesn't understand why it's regarded as a piece of iconic cinema and even with multiple viewings, she only has positive things to say about the acting and not really much of the movie. Nora's not a critic to point out any specifics, but if the movie just has the vibes of "ehhhh" she probably isn't going to elaborate further. Instead if she wants her 'doomed romance fix' she'd probably go watch La La Land or something.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) Nora cannot understand the appeal of 'love fixes it' films, mostly because for half the story she was under the impression that the characters sharing this united motive will help them see the world a bit different, y'know not play into the "hey falling in love works!!! just trust me bruv!!". She doesn't get it, it's fine, she isn't the targeted audience, but she will be a hater simply because the story just went nowhere.

The John Wick franchise (2014-) Okay maybe Nora enjoys the first film, that doesn't really make her actually care for the rest of its sequels. Something about the course of the story going from "hey look at this guy who wants to avenge his wife & dog's passing" to "cool guy with gun, pencil pewpepwpew" makes her want to punch somebody. She couldn't care for the rest of the plot, she hates the gunfire - pomp and circumstance and if she wants to see a good revenge film she'd probably rewatch Oldboy or Inigo Montoya's scenes from the Princess Bride. She's a hardcore hater of the franchise.

American Psycho-esque films (2002): She gets it, c'mon who doesn't want a morally-grey protagonist led down paths of obsession, reinvention, etc etc - but eh, she can never really get into them. If Nora wants to see a film about someone getting obsessed with their craft, she'd switch genres and get into art - Whiplash, Amadeus, Black Swan etc. She gets the message, but yeah, you can never really have her sit through a viewing and have her be invested in it.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014): The colourful setting was the only thing that kept her watching. Nora kind of got bored, the humour was okay, she didn't really find herself following the plot, she liked the character relationships but besides that, it isn't part of her "you need to watch this film before you die" list and she didn't find it that compelling as the narration set out to be.

Here's the thing - Nora loves one-off films or films part of an anthology. You can't keep her engaged with sequels unless she feels compelled to watch it. She doesn't like it when a movie tries to be "layered with depth"- sometimes simple stories are tons more compelling than anything else. It's part of the reason why she enjoys the joy of a simple, short contemporary film.

Nora also doesn't really care for romance in stories (she doesn't hate it, c'mon P&P is like one of her favs) because the romance/family dynamics - the kind she saw in her parents, her uncle etc, was very practical. Nothing of the 'doomed/ oh no I'll die without you' which is why she just has a hard time trying to understand it (it's also why she loved and cherishes films like Past Lives, The Farewell, etc). And also when emotions and themes like 'revenge' is either sensationalized in a way to appeal to an audience (have them 'ooh and aah' at how cool and smexy a character is) or deeply villanized when she prefers to have it treated as an integral process in their journey.

So yeah, these are some of the films she doesn't get the appeal of. It's not like she has a list of 'movies I fucking hate' handy somewhere. If she doesn't think a film is for her, she stops watching midway and moves on but that doesn't exempt her from being an absolute hater online - leaving scathing Letterboxd reviews.

[rcrisdraws]

omg your ocs they all look so cool please tell me about them!!

For context the story takes place in an alternate universe where 'Japan' is on the mainland in late Sengoku era as provinces try to crystalize power (the setting itself is kinda bonkers but I'll leave it like that for now). Also ghosts, spirits and gods (kami/kamuy) are very much a real tangible thing.

And these guys are part of a gang: there’s a core group and satellite groups that come and go depending on the situation, though mostly it’s the core group that moves between the satellite groups – their goal is destabilization of the current samurai class as the poor and disenfranchised are seeking justice, especially given the warring era that has been going on for the past decades. They’re called the Mononoke Ikki by outsiders due to their elusiveness and seemingly non-human capabilities.

The groups most notable member is definitely Nagato, a man who can inflict pain onto others by injuring himself simply by being in the your vicinity – on top of that he’s said to be quite a skilled and vicious fighter despite being frail: his body is covered in scars and he’s very gaunt, malnourished even. On top of that he is also Ainu (and trans). The group respects him greatly for all his efforts, but he’s a difficult man to engage with. The place as a whole that he occupies in this world is complicated and in his attempts to move towards independence and justice he’s still managed to harm exactly those who he’s trying to protect - he’s a can of worms.

But not de de facto leader:

That honor goes to O-Kiku. She’s tiny, only 4’5/140cm, but she’s charismatic, determined, ruthless even. She’s the one that built most of the relationships the group benefits from and has so far manage to achieve all that she set out to do; she manages to command respect, even if her motives aren’t entirely clear, she manages to convince. The only person that actually seems to know the true goals she’s actually aiming for is Nagato, both of whom are apparently founders of this group; they’re the core of the core of this Mononoke Ikki – would be a shame if something were to happen to that wouldn’t it?

Especially since men like Kojuro, a man from a fishing village, the province of which seems to always be under some outsider’s rule, always struggling for independence; a man who came packaged deal with his own gang that see him as a symbol of resistance against the oppressive classes, especially since his forehead is tattooed branding him as a murderer (of samurai, twice.) He also has tattoos on his back, taking pride in being seen as a pest by the ruling class. He’s deeply loyal to O-Kiku’s cause, for better or worse. Oh and he’s absolutely massive in stature, tall and muscular he dwarfs almost everyone he stands next to-

There’s also Acipo, the oldest of the core group, also Ainu, trying his darnest to take care so that Nagato doesn’t throw himself off the deep-end just yet, but his attempts always seem a bit too gentle to ever seem to steer him in the direction Acipo hopes him to go into. Still he’s an anchor, not just for Nagato, whom he knows since he was a child, but to the entire group, offering experience and reason.

Another member of the core group, somehow even more elusive is a frail woman that goes by O-Ai, or just Ai. She doesn’t talk a lot and has a blind eye, while at the same time she exudes an even greater aura/blood lust than that of Nagato’s to whom she is very close with. She hands around Acipo a lot as well and I’m not sure how much I can talk about her without giving away key aspects of not just the plot, but the relationships that uphold that plot-

Last to join the core group is a young man that chose to cut his hair; he’s of samurai blood, not just that, he’s from the Hokke, he’s of the Fujiwara, and yet decided to desert all that and tag along, drawn in by the fact that he at last found someone else that shares that 6th sense, that ability that Nagato and Ai have. He’s also most definitely feral, and despite his upbringing is consistently rude and obstinate, but a fantastic archer.

Tagging along with the group there’s also Hiko, a mercenary that was sent to investigate the Mononoke Ikki and report back, only she found herself enthralled by the goings on of the inside of the group. She seems to be about the only person that challenges O-Kiku’s choices, equally charming, but fun, playful even. She’s Romani, but she was detached from her people for most of her life and like most of the people of the group, finding herself walking a thin line in a liminal space of intersecting identities.

Not formally part of the group and only barely tagging along, there’s Monashir, Hiko’s girlfriend. She is also Ainu, but unlike those from the gang, she’s a core part of her community, whom she’d do anything to protect. She does not like Nagato, or appreciate the way he goes about things. She’s a mother, she has responsibilities, which sometimes barely leave her to be herself and again her character forms one of the main pillars of the emotional conflict going on between these characters.

Oh I almost forgot. There’s a ghost too; just a genuine, man-eating ghost. His name is Honda and someone’s going to get into this guy’s pants ;)