#longer answer than you probably wanted

[sirazaroff]

How do you think Velvet flirts with Coco?

This is one of the funniest asks I ever got and im glad cause this is just gold. Like how does the Bun™️ woo her stupid bozo??
————


I have my biased takes on what Coco and Velvet are like as characters, but to start off I wanna focus on what Vel brings to the table.

I think a lot of people have moe’d her down to a nervous/scaredy bunny girl and…that’s not her at all. She’s a real multilayered character who can and will kick your ass flat. She’s also…

- very very attentive to people

- excellent at memorizing things she sees and hears, and quickly at that

- very emotionally in tune with people, herself included

- insanely kind and helpful

- honest about her feelings and will voice her thoughts when ready

Also she’s a bunny like come on. Is baby. It’s impossible to not find her likable.

I can go on forever, but I think these are enough likable traits to work with.


Time to shift. Now we focus on what I think Coco likes in a person:

- Hot girls

- Complexity

- Someone true to their nature

- Some sense of honor

- Someone striving to learn and to better themselves

Hopefully it’s not lost here, but there’s some compatibility don’t you think? Velvet’s got some of those traits that Coco likes.

————

So where’s the flirting? It’s coming I swear, I just needed the background info to help support the answers.

Bun bun flirts two ways: intentionally and unintentionally. The latter is usually what’s happening most often.

Her intentional flirting is what you would expect. Some cheeky words, being a playful tease in her actions like when she flashed her camera in After the Fall. I think she would 1000% take advantage of her physique and incredibly vast skillsets. She is totally totally showing off during training and sparring. Coco might hide her gaze under her glasses but that dumb bitch is so easy. So so easy…

Now her unintentional flirting is basically that Velvet is just doing her thing. She’s comfortable and loved by her team. With them she’s able to be herself and have fun, and that’s what coco loves most. Seeing Velvet thrive and not feel like she has to hide herself away from the world, and with it comes moments and actions that make Coco, much to her surprise, fall for Velvet.

I guess simply put, Velvet flirts by being her cheeky self around Coco, and her leader falls for her every time.

[determunition]

Hi so I’ve curious, (Been nervous about starting my own AU) When you first started posting OFH (on twitter/ao3) how did you get the courage to post it? Were you ever afraid of getting called ‘cringe’ or ‘weird’ or anything else negative? If so how were you able to get over it? (Btw I do love this AU with all my heart!) Sorry if any of these questions are too sensitive!

hi!! thanks for the questions, i'm flattered to be considered a source of wisdom about this x3

OFH/retyrement, like most fandom things i do, started as kind of a silly shitpost thing; i love human AUs, and when my buddy squid_hug made that original text post about the retirement home it tickled me too much to ignore. objectively the scrybes being human old people bickering in a retirement home is a goofy, silly idea, and that's how it started as an AU, down to the written fic. i think that in itself made it a bit easier to post about

however! even with that, when i started posting the first pieces of art it was definitely a "do it scared" situation lmao; i don't remember where i heard this, but in some cases it takes even more courage to do something new when you're already known for something than it does to start something new with no presence at all, and that was definitely true with the retyrement AU. it was my first contribution to the fandom too! i was definitely worried it wouldn't go over well with anyone bc it was so damn niche lolol

my main piece of advice for getting over this fear (besides just doing it scared until you're not scared anymore) is to get yourself a hype squad lmao; though maybe the more accurate term would be a mutual AU ecosystem. i had squid to develop a lot of the AU with me at the start and we bounced a lot of silly ideas off of each other, and now i have a lot more folks around to crack jokes and hype each other up about our art and fics! also at the beginning i had a point where i was feeling a little self-conscious about continuing to post (the AU had a painfully small amount of engagement at the beginning lol), but as soon as i got one (1) ask saying "i wanna see more of this" i took that as my green light to get as silly with it as possible lmao

so ig my TL;DR advice is: don't take shit too seriously, remember it's all in good fun, and surround yourself with folks who enjoy funny lil AUs as much as you do! the second thing can be hard, as it involves uh, putting yourself out there in the first place, but embracing that discomfort is a necessary evil for having a good-ass time! if you can successfully kill the part of yourself that cringes then you'll never be cringe again

godspeed on your own AU endeavors, the digital world is always better for having another crazy creative alternate universe in it <3

[good-to-drive]

Hi! I swear I don't mean to be annoying but genuinely curious what's the difference between Paul fans praising Paul in a post vs say, fans of any other beatle. Is it the overt defensiveness? Also, isn't reiterating Paul's sins every time kind of being like the 'John beet wif' meme everytime there's positive discussion re the band/John ?

Hi!

Don't worry, you're not annoying, but I was planning on deleting this (frankly I delete most of the asks I get from Paul girls) until I realized you're (perhaps unintentionally) coming very close to a legitimate point. Also, I get the feeling that you're genuinely interested in an answer, which is always nice.

That being said, I do want to point out that I never said I have a problem with people praising Paul. If you follow this blog, I praise him a lot. I very specifically said I have a problem with people being "delusional and defensive about celebrities," and the fact that you translated this to "praising Paul" honestly raises an interesting point, but also imho seems like a very harsh perspective on him. There are so many wonderful things to say about Paul that are not remotely unreasonable, because there are many wonderful things about him as a human being.

Also, "bringing up Paul's sins" was actually a comment from a reblog, and while I think they also make a good point it's separate from what I originally said. What I said is that it's frustrating that delusional and defensive behavior from stans brings out negativity towards the celebrity when the celebrity themselves did nothing wrong, and that this is really prevalent in discussion around Paul because in the mainstream Beatles narrative he's usually the hero to John's villain.

All that aside, where I think you're very nearly making a good point is where you compare this to discussing John's history of violence.

The tendency to black-and-white people is present in every conversation, it's just part of how we speak as a culture (or possibly as a species). I like to call it the AITA mentality – the tendency to approach situations from the perspective of “who's the bad guy?” rather than actually trying to draw insight and understand the motivations, emotions, schemas, and experiences involved. (Not that r/AITA invented this mentality, but they did crystallize it into an acronym.) In this fandom that's usually Paul as a kind of heroic victim and John as pitifully evil, which is itself arguably (partly) a delayed reaction to unfair criticism of Paul in the past. It does both men a terrible disservice, converting them into one-dimensional caricatures rather than real, fascinating people.

Reversing this mentality to “Paul was the real villain actually” would very much be unreasonable, which is ironically the exact point of my original post, but the larger point is that the way stan culture poisons any meaningful discussion of a major historical figure by calling it “bashing” to acknowledge actions/beliefs/experiences that conflict with a black-and-white narrative is genuinely sad and frustrating. It makes it hard for people who are legitimately interested in them to have a conversation, and is in my experience a much more prevalent issue than people pushing back by bringing up things that shatter the one-dimensional image.

In regards to John specifically, it would indeed be impossible to understand him without taking into account the predilection to violence that defined so much of his early life and helped develop his belief system, and that's a point that he himself made multiple times. I don't really care for the condescending "John beet wif" characterization of people who acknowledge this, or even people who are disturbed by it. I've said many times that there are valid reasons to condemn everyone in this story. When I say there's a lack of nuance, I don't mean we need to ignore the real harm that John, Paul, George, and Ringo all caused. That's not nuance. Nuance is acknowledging how and why they came to that point, that it was one facet of a larger and more complex character, and trying to develop insight into their social roles and perspectives without trying to snap them into preset hero or villain roles.

And your bringing up John's history of violence was (ironically) a very illustrative example, because he himself was so insistent on it being acknowledged. He did not want to be spoken about in black-and-white terms, not even if it meant being heroized, so it's unnecessary and counterproductive to demand that he should be. Positivity about the band can -- and indeed must -- coexist with knowledge of who they were as full, complete human beings. It's sometimes hard and disillusioning, I get that, but it's just so fucking essential.

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Still haven't messaged my mom back. And I don't think I'm going to.

[pikkish]

idk if this is a good prompt but put doomguy in myhouse.wad I think he would find it enriching

Right, so I've been mulling on this one for a little bit now, n I'm not opposed to writing something for you, I'm just not... entirely sure what to write? Because the thing is, myhouse.wad doesn't actually really have anything to do with Doom as a story. Sure, Doom is important in that it's the vessel through which the story is told and one of the connections between the narrator and his dead companion. But as far as Doom itself goes, and the story about a man who was too angry/stupid to die, fighting demons and saving earth, none of that is at all relevant to myhouse.wad and its story. For all intents and purposes, Doomguy isn't actually a character in myhouse.wad. So I'm not really sure how exactly to fit him in there.

[1wn8ure]

making it through life with benchtrio clenched in both fists

[viewerspookyhappenings]

hey hi, if you don't mind me asking, do you have a backstory to the tattoo? if so I'd love to hear about it :)

thanks for the ask!

so dan has said this quote a few times over the years - in his vid ‘existential crisis’ as well as having merch with it on and also in wad to name a few

to me as someone who has struggled with my mental health my entire life (which turns out was undiagnosed autism! slay!) learning to live in my darkness and be unapologetically myself is the only way i have ever learnt happiness. embracing my cringe interests and stims and shutdowns instead of feeling like a freak for them has allowed me a new sense of self, i love these things about me. it’s taken time but it’s finally true

and having the courage to exist in a queer sense too - i have repressed my sexuality and tried to change my queerness to please other people and hiding who i am also has never led to happiness, so i will never allow myself to do that again

i have hundreds of tattoos and they are a catalogue of things i love and inside jokes and things i find pretty and that make me happy, and since i was 10 years old dnp have been there for me. that’s 12 years of figuring out my mental health and neurodivergence and queerness and transness that they have accompanied me for, and i am incredibly grateful for them <3

(also working as a tattooist means whenever people are available they offer you free tatts)

[somer-writes]

I meant like Zelda games but if you wanna talk about like R6 or something then pop off king

Lmao i got you homie

Excluding the CDI and Japan exclusive stuff, I've played every Zelda game except for Triforce Heroes and the Warriors titles.

Four Swords Adventures was my first Zelda game <3 I was like 9 or 10 the first time I played it and I've beat it more times than I can count. I used to play it on sick and snow days.

Twilight Princess is my favorite Zelda game. It has my favorite art direction, my favorite dungeons, and my favorite bosses. Plus I love its dark tone and the way it demonstrates good and evil being a willful choice.

Currently working through TotK but I have an arm injury thats caused me nerve and tendon damage so holding a controller is hard after 20-30 min :( I like TotK more than BotW for gameplay.

Also on my "currently playing" list is FE Three Houses which is incredible btw (dmitri my beloved) and Baldur's Gate 3 (astarion my beloved).

I play a lot of sims. Like multiple thousands of hours of sims. I've been playing since sims 2. Sims 3 is my favorite for gameplay but Sims 4 has an amazing build mode (except i miss auto roofing). im jellypop on the gallery if anyone wants to check out my builds!

and bc its a snow day and im feeling Nostalgic and Wistful, as a kid my older sister and I used to play games together. We've beat Battle for Volcano Island (i want a switch rerelease) so many times. She always played as Sam once we got her and I always played as Danny. we used to watch each other play games by one of us having a walkthrough pulled up in case the other needed it. I watched her play Epic Mickey multiple times this way XD

regarding R6 i actually dont like shooters save Crysis, Deus Ex, and Half-life. I like dungeon crawlers and single player rpgs. i also enjoy point and clicks, match 3, and puzzlers. I hate online games although Guild Wars 2 is pretty dope.

I really enjoy stardew valley and skyrim/oblivion. Also Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch are both incredible games

non video game wise i play a lot of Magic the Gathering. Primarily commander but sometimes pioneer. I dont play arena and i'm not into the lore XD my most serious edh deck is a rat colony deck and my least serious deck is an esior/falthis voltron build. my first build was kalamax <3

I also really enjoy board and card games! Azul, pitch, canasta, hanafuda.

i play killteam sometimes too but im more into the hobby side of warhammer than the actual game

[icewindandboringhorror]

Everytime I face a new character limit on a website that didn't have them before/used to have really long ones... AUGHHhhh the modern social media world was not made for people like me (lovers of details, rambling, elaboration, thorough explanation, and nuance)

[greenconverses]

Have you ever thought about what you’ll write about after this fic?

Would you ever continue the roman Percy thing or would it be over? Any ideas in the pipeline?

I really don't mean to say this as pressure, but I’m genuinely curious because in terms of fics (and maybe I’m super wrong) this has been your main thing for the past couple of years.

Fic-wise, I don't have anything in the pipeline after I finish this. I simply just don't have the drive like I used to in my teens and early 20s. I'm not sure why, but it's not just related to PJO fic. Fan fiction as a whole just doesn't have a hold on me as a creative medium like it used to. I tend to be an overthinker and with the way fandom is now vs. in ye olden days, there's more pressure to post the "correct" kind of content, so I'm a little wary about starting and sharing new things.

I think I'm mostly insulated from fandom policing via name recognition but I was still like... "is someone going to start shit about the smut chapter??" because of all the omg creepy!!! rhetoric about adults writing in teen-focused fandoms. It's definitely something that's wiggled into my brain over the last few years and makes me more reluctant to contribute. Like, I'm not here to write a goddamn essay on why it's okay to age up characters and put them in adult situations, yet I pretty much preemptively do it to myself every time I start to write, especially for this fic in particular. (SEE WHY IT TAKES ME SO LONG TO WRITE??)

With the show coming out and a new book, I might be inspired to write some new things, but I'm also kinda like, "Okay, I've done this for 10+ years, and I don't want to deal with all the nonsense that's going to come with an expanded fanbase and the weirdness with the kid actors and whatever, so let's just hang it up."

Anyway, once I finish this damn thing, I'll probably primarily work on original stuff. I've been saying that for years and I've done some stuff off-and-on, but I've always been held back by the guilt of not working on the damn fic because my anxiety brain is stupid.

[throwaway-yandere]

You ever wonder how short human lives are? They have the average life span of maybe a pet to most elves, won't they? Or even less. Looking back, isn't it hard to imagine how hard it must be to move on from someone who only lives for a sliver of your own lifespan?

😋 anon

😋 if this is your attempt to making Elf!Haitham the theme of the blog I ain't doing it HAHAHAHAHAHA

[gingerbreadmonsters]

when is this james audio set? i havent listened to it yet ik its meant to be a flashback thing?

my morally questionable nerd has a partner omg

under the cut for minor spoilers, also some theorising on the project meridian timeline:

you've probably seen it by now, so this might be redundant, but yes it is a flashback! it sounds like this audio takes place the night before james leaves to go and oversee project meridian, but i don't know if we know when that is?

it's unclear exactly when in the timeline PM takes place - whether it's taking place in real time, or in the past (e.g. like how everything with the balance storyline (the elliott and sunshine and closeknit one) is happening about a year in the past), or maybe even in the future!

we also don't know how much time elapses between this audio and the first time we meet james - i think we can probably assume that james has been involved with PM for as long as ETS has been in charge, considering how important to this project he says he is to DUMP, but it's unclear how long that is.

in 'Your Owner Takes Matters Into His Own Hands', james says the following:

this suggests that ETS has been in charge of PM for at least 18 months, and it's implied that love must have been capable of some kind of complex thought and speech at that point, so who knows how long PM was running before that! later in that audio, james says this:

which implies that ETS has only been paying particular attention to PM for about a year and a half - so maybe that's when james comes in, and thus when this audio is happening?

however, he also says (across various other audios):

so it looks like ETS was always pulling the strings, and ETS seems to be directly controlled by (or at least moving at the behest of) DUMP - james says in this most recent audio that:

which implies that he's pretty important at DUMP, or if not important then at least valuable - it's entirely possible that james has been involved in this project ever since its inception at DUMP, which means that this audio could literally be happening at literally any point in the last however-old-james-is! it doesn't seem like the project was his IDEA, just that he's been assigned to it, so he's probably only been called in to oversee the actual PM site and make sure everything's going to plan and nobody is breaking covert - however, we have no idea how long that site has existed, or how far into the project he's being called in.

i imagine that if james is being called away for an indefinite period of time (he doesn't know when he'll be able to come back to his listener, saying only that it'll be "god knows how long"), it's probably no more than a few years at MOST? including the roughly-18 months since ETS revealed themselves? but that's pure speculation on my part based on the information we have so far.

tldr: this audio takes place the day before james leaves to go and work on project meridian, but as far as i know we have no idea when (i.e. what date) that actually begins, or indeed when the 'present day' is for the PM storyline in general.

[fleshadept]

sorry if you've been asked this before but i'm curious: when and how did you get into film? i've followed you for some time and you mention being in film school, did you always know you wanted to study film? what/who inspired you? how close are you to graduating? i hope these questions are okay and not intrusive!

i only got into film pretty recently actually!! for the longest time i thought i didn't like movies. i went to uni to major in film primarily to take editing courses because what i wanted more than anything was to be an editor for any of the youtubers whose stuff i liked (which tbf would still be a lot of fun). i dabbled in making videos myself for a while, then kinda fell off.

i had a moment in 2020 when i sort of realized what film could be for the first time and watched a lot of great ones: oldboy (2003), fight club (1999), pride (2014), 13th (2016), portrait of a lady on fire (2019), parasite (2019), us (2019), really 2019 was a fucking great year for movies tbh. and i kind of realized that the reason i had said i didn't like movies was because 98% of what i watched was marvel/family movies and i didn't really look for anything else.

but i never REALLY got into the whole analysis thing or fell in love with film until i watched boy (2010) in april of last year. my letterboxd diary before and after that movie is crazy. something snapped in my brain idk. before that i couldn't really sit through movies very often but after that i just couldn't get enough of it and wanted to see everything movies could do because boy hit so hard and was so, so gorgeous. so i did a deep dive into taika waititi's work (i had seen thor and jojo rabbit and what we do in the shadows before but never really cared who made them) and just went a little bit insane. and started watching every other movie i had even wanted to watch a little bit

and it's funny, because looking back at my letterboxd after this, i realized the moment back in 2020 where i started watching more films for a little bit was kicked off by jojo rabbit. so something about this guy's work was just so effective for me, even when i didn't know who he was, and part of what got me so interested in film was trying to figure out why the hell that was and how he did it. and in the process of that i discovered a love for so many other things i didn't realize i had--filmmaking as well as analysis, production as well as postproduction, even writing! i love it all. but taika's work will always have a solid place in my heart because of that.

[lovequinn]

how did you get your hands on those scripts? do you think there’s any chance you’ll be able to get any other ones?

for finding scripts in general, the best bet is a) creep ebay, and b) to get really involved in the entertainment memorabilia community. collecting prop/wardrobe/crew stuff from shows i like is my little niche hobby that i don't get to talk about that often haha, so being involved with facebook groups/prop sites/getting to know people lets me get my hands on things that never make it onto ebay. a lot of times crew members from a production will also pop their heads in and offer up some of their personal stuff (that's how i got the copies of the scripts i have)

supergirl is an interesting one because the cw is very very touchy about releasing scripts so there aren't TOO many floating around, but i know marc guggenheim sold off some of his copies a few years ago for charity so you'll see bits of certain episodes (like 3x17 and 3x12, i've seen excerpts from both of those on twitter) making the rounds from the people who bought them, and now and then the physical versions are passed around for resale.

right now i have 2x05 (which is what i posted from the other week) with some notes in it from the writers, an early draft of 3x01 (i didn't post anything from this because i know someone else way back when had another copy so i wasn't sure if y'all had already seen the good stuff in it but if i'm wrong and you want me to share some of it, give me a shout!), and some s1/2 episodes sans lena. i POSSIBLY will be getting copies of 2x12, 2x21, and 4x16 soon. i'm exhausting every relationship i have to find some s5 scripts but i'm at the point where i'm convinced the cw burned them all lmaoooooo

[nostomannia]

Fun fact, sol questions every part of her existence. Every traumatic experience, down to her identity. She questions whether they are her own memories, or just something she picked up along the line of stealing innocent people's bodies.

Is her fear of deep water her own? Did she really drown during her first death? Does she even truly enjoy painting, or was it someone else's passion?

Is Solita even her real name?

She doesn't know anymore.

[inkblackorchid]

With the next one of Aki’s stories being a long one, is it something you are planning on finishing before you start publishing chapters, or publishing as you go along? Just curious what your approach is for the longer fics

Ok so as I've said on tumblr (and I think maybe also in the author's notes on ao3?? I forget) before, I at the very least want to finish the first portion of this fic before I start uploading anything. (That portion's end being marked by a particular duel.) From the way my outline is looking right now, that means I'd probably write until chapter 5 or more before I might consider publishing a chapter (there are currently a total of 14 chapters planned). And as of right now, I'm about to finish the first draft of chapter 3.

...But. But. See, the thing is, this fic, due to being extremely plot-heavy, needs to be super tightly written. Like, this thing needs to work. And all the duels in it (yes, multiple) really need to hit the mark, or else this story loses some of its emotional impact. In other words, I'll definitely be extra thorough when it comes to editing this one, too. So at least where this particular fic is concerned, I'm kinda shying away from the "publish as I go along"-approach, because there are too many moving parts here and I want this to be as coherent as possible. So it's a bit of a tossup atm. If I feel confident enough in how fast I'm progressing with the story by the time that first portion is written out, I may start publishing before all the chapters are done. But if there's a chance that I might deviate from the outline later in a way that would require me to go back to a previous chapter to add some setup there? I'll hold off and wait until at the very least the first draft of the whole story is done.

As far as longer fics in general go, though, I'm always more the type who likes to write a bit in advance before publishing. Even with To Be of Use, which had little to no plot and was the only work I've genuinely published as the chapters got done so far, I didn't feel entirely happy throwing the chapters out as I had them. I'm a huge fan of setup and payoff, and callbacks, and foreshadowing, etc. and the thing is, even if you're a very practiced writer, as soon as you're writing a plot-heavy story, you'll encounter moments where you come up with an important thing you want to happen a little later in the story than you meant to, and suddenly need to go back to actually set that up, because you didn't in the first draft of an earlier chapter. (At least this is my experience, your mileage may vary, writing styles differ, etc.) So to write the best thing I can, I usually like to give myself the time to write the entire first draft, then revise that first draft, then do the final edit of each chapter just before publishing it. (This was also my modus operandi for basically all my 5Ds fics prior to Fields of Arcadia. Even if I didn't have the entire story edited and polished yet, the first draft was always complete before I ever started publishing. It's only now that my backlog of pre-written first drafts has caught up to me and I'm forced to keep y'all waiting as I prepare the next big thing completely from scratch in real time.)